DECCA SIGNS BENJAMIN GROSVENOR

It's the best piece of news I've heard from the recording industry in yonks: Decca has announced that it has signed Benjamin Grosvenor, the 18-year-old British pianist, to an exclusive contract. It's not a moment too soon. Benjamin is one of the finest talents I have ever come across, bar none: a pianist whose musical instincts are so profound, so natural and so right-sounding that he leaves you wondering why not everyone else plays like that too.

He is the first British pianist to be signed to Decca in 40 years (their last ones were Clifford Curzon, Moura Lympany and Peter Katin) and their youngest artist in history. He'll be making his first Decca disc this spring and it will be released in July, featuring Chopin's Four Scherzi, Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit and short works by Chopin and Liszt. He's still studying at the Royal Academy with Christopher Elton, but the country's never forgotten his astonishing performance, aged 11, in the final of the 2004 BBC Young Musician of the Year competition (when Nicola Benedetti won - and rightly so, as 11 is just too young!), or the insights offered in the TV programme Imagine that was devoted to him soon afterwards. Now he has, literally, come of age. Here's the article I wrote about him in The Independent last year.

Nice one, Decca. Hang in there, Benjamin.

FROM DECCA'S PRESS RELEASE:

Paul Moseley, Managing Director of Decca Classics says:

'This is an enormously significant moment for Decca. As a British company proud of its heritage what could be more satisfying than making this agreement with the most exceptional British pianist to emerge in decades?  Benjamin has evolved from a child prodigy to become an artist of extraordinary imagination and flair. Above all, he has a sound that is all his own.  The time is now right for this major new step in what will certainly be a long and very successful career. We are thrilled to be part of that and look forward to many landmark projects together.'

Benjamin Grosvenor says:

'I am very pleased and excited to sign this deal with Decca. It is a great honour to be asked to record for a company with such an illustrious history and which has recorded so many of the musicians that I admire. I am very much looking forward to getting into the studio to record such wonderful repertoire.'


Benjamin is a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and here he is under their auspices playing Chopin...

Daddy Florez wows the world

It would have been a dream evening even without the announcement, but in the interval of Le Comte Ory last night, broadcast and cinecast all over the planet, Juan Diego Florez told us that his son, Leandro, was born just 35 minutes before curtain-up. JDF offers the following information on his website:

Our son Leandro was born today, April 9th 2011, at 12:22 New York time, with 3.77 kg (8 pounds 5 ounces) and 53.34 cms (21 inches). We thank all fans around the world for your good wishes 

Julia and Juan Diego

Leandro was born at their New York apartment, in water; a natural unmedicated birth. Juan Diego received the baby and placed him on Julia's chest. Then Juan Diego had to rush to the Metropolitan Opera House for his Comte Ory performance, which began at 13:00. The performance was broadcast in cinemas around the world, and although he had a sleepless night, the performance was a success.

As for Le Comte Ory, it's a piece of such whimsical Franco-Italian perfection that it's hard to believe the Met has never EVER done it before. I caught it on Radio 3 from the comfort of my study as the local cinecast was sold out and I had fond hopes - which foundered at once, of course - of continuing to write while listening. The singing was way too good for that. The story is as silly as all the pictures of Florez dressed as a nun suggest, but the three leading roles, Countess Adele, Comte Ory and the page Isolier, sound dazzlingly impressive at the best of times. And when they're respectively Diana Damrau, JDF and Joyce DiDonato, who could ask for anything more? 


Comic opera generally gets far less credit than serious, but personally I'd pick Ory over Trovatore any day, any year. It's more difficult to write (and perform) good comedy than wonky melodrama - even that Hollywood screenwriting guru Robert McKee says that comedy is the hardest thing - and though the Ory story isn't precisely subtle, Rossini paints it with the lightest of musical brushes. Several times it spills over into pure genius and it's never less than joyous. The three-in-a-bed-romp, as the Sun might have called the last trio, sounds as pure as can be: one of those all-too-brief ensembles that can hold you rapt, outside and beyond time, with scrunchy harmonies worthy of Mozart on a good day. On stage just then, Adele thinks Ory is a nun, Ory thinks Isolier is Adele, and Isolier is a trouser-role so is conveniently masculine and feminine at the same time, so...well, work it out. They are all saved by the bell.

Here's the coda to the trio:

The Met has been remarkably slow on the uptake with this one, and thank goodness Florez, 38, is doing it so visibly now; that high tenor lead cries out for him (so to speak). Glyndebourne gave a terrific production as long ago as 1997, and it's on video, with the lovely Annick Massis as Adele. ENO staged it back in the 1970s; I don't remember who sang, but I do remember my father - an oddly severe character with a secret penchant for Carry On films - positively rolling in the aisles. 

If you're within reach of the Curzon Mayfair, you can dash in for the 'encore' showing this morning at 11.30. But it was perfect just as it was here last night, audio only, on the airwaves, and I'm happy to stick with the memory. That's how we learn to stop worrying and love bel canto. Meanwhile the proud papa - interviewed by Renee Fleming in the interval, said he was ecstatically happy and sent love messages over the airwaves first to Julia, then to Peru, then the rest of South America, then the blighted Japan... 

Super Shoutouts from the Stratosphere... Music for All #6

The morning after the night before...Fiona Maddocks in The Guardian is the first review I've seen of the big Barenboim bonanza at Tate Modern last night. 

Extract:

The standing ovation began before Daniel Barenboim had played a note. On Friday night, to a crowd of about 1,100 who only learned of this impromptu free concert three days earlier, the legendary pianist celebrated more than 60 years since his performing debut with a quixotic recital in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. If Barenboim wanted, as he said, to drag the classics "out of the ivory tower", where at least he might be guaranteed a good acoustic, he succeeded. The sound was not dissimilar to a public swimming pool, but everyone listened attentively and no one minded.

"Quite frankly I was tickled at the idea of playing here," he said, interrupting his all-Chopin programme with his characteristically fluent chat and sharp humour. "What would you like me to play? A polonaise? A waltz?" he challenged. "Bach," replied one brave soul. "Bach? I am here to play Chopin. I will play his Minute Waltz. Is that okay?" ...

Read the rest here... 


Barenboim had strong words to offer about the importance of state funding for music education, too. Fiona reports:

"Music is part of life, music is part of culture," he said. "Governments should put money into teaching music to all, from the kindergarten on." This urgent cry was also heard at the influential Salzburg Global Seminar on music this week.

His interview with the BBC's Will Gompertz is headlined CLASSICAL MUSIC FOR ALL. 
Extract:

[Barenboim] says there should be a "radical change of the education system", so that "children don't just learn literature, biology, geography and history at school, but you also learn music". Because, he thinks, "through music you get over many obstacles you have in daily, normal daily life outside music".

And, he added, if people are to get something out of classical music they need to put something in:

"There's no point in telling people just go there it's so simple it will happen. That's also not true, it's not a good way. I think that people need to know that to get something out of classical music they have to really want to go there and open their ears. And really concentrate and listen and then they will really get a lot out of it." ...

"...[F]ind a new public and wanted to find the people that are curious. The people that maybe feel they don't know enough about music and don't dare to come into contact with it. And maybe through this kind of action they will. Maybe they will come. In the end curiosity is the most important because if you are curious you will acquire the knowledge that you might not have presently."

The Salzburg Global Seminar, mentioned above and co-chaired by Sir Nicholas Kenyon and Sarah Lutman from Minnesota's St  Paul Chamber Orchestra, ran earlier this week and carried the title The Transformative Power of Music. The roster of participants included many distinguished musicians, academics and big-time arts administrators. I can't see any politicians on the list, though. Here is some more information about the seminar; I hope this doughty collection of people are able to move the message forward. Some of the questions they are asking are:

When and how has music played a role in social and political change? How has music raised awareness of social injustices? How can music bridge cultural differences? How can music help to unleash the talents of marginalized youth? What role can new technologies play in this process? What contributions can music make to peace-building and reconciliation efforts? And, finally, how can we maximize these positive impacts of music? 

These are fine questions. Now we need some answers, fast, and a way to get the message home to the decision makers in government. 

In America, the marvellous Kevin Spacey has been speaking to Congress, making the case for greater funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. Read about it in the Huffington Post. I imagine the chance of him succeeding are limited, given that American snottiness towards the arts is almost as extreme as that in the UK, but at least he has tried. Here a bunch of our finest actors including Sam West and Penelope Wilton went to Downing Street this week to deliver a petition. We hear that David Cameron wasn't even there. 


As for the commentators who heap scorn on the arts - sometimes even if they are devoted attendees or even critics - SHAME ON YOU! Dan Rebellato has a good go at them in his Theatre Blog, here. 


Nicholas Daniel, oboist extraordinaire and one of my contributors to SHOUT OUT! this week, emailed this morning to tell me that the summer courses for the Bedfordshire Youth Orchestra have just been cancelled. "We are all gutted," he says.

My husband, Tom, who's been in the first violins of the London Philharmonic for nearly 25 years, probably wouldn't have been there at all if he hadn't got the bug for orchestral playing by attending his county youth orchestras and especially their summer courses. As we've mentioned here before, few British string players get jobs in the top British symphony orchestras today: the applicants who tend to play best usually come from countries where there are stronger systems for free music education for a wider range of children at a younger age, where ambition is encouraged, and where scorn is not poured on the talented ("Well, you're hardly going to be Yehudi Menuhin, are you," said a schoolteacher to Tom back in 1970 or so, a teacher who had never heard either Menuhin or little Tommy). The exceptions tend to be the ones whose exceptional inner determination can override all that and sustain them despite what often feels like no support from anywhere or anyone. I can promise you that I've never met anybody on this earth more determined than my good old Tomcat.

His family was not musical; he came from a one-horse town in the Midlands where only one or two other children were learning the violin; then he studied in Manchester with a violin teacher who couldn't play - as it happens, a Hungarian who'd been injured escaping in 1956 and no longer had the use of one hand. And it was only thanks to the county youth orchestras in Staffordshire and Cheshire that he met a peer group who inspired him and gave him the necessary ambition to push himself to a new level. - among them, a then-youthful fiddler who ended up as concertmaster of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.
You may say: fine, if those opportunities weren't open to him, he'd have done something else and what does that matter? Perhaps he'd have been a doctor (two siblings are medics), a tour guide (he's good at languages, not that anyone encouraged him with that either) or a PR executive (he's good with people and organising things). But it does matter. The point is, he had a choice. Music was his passion and he knew it would be his life. Are we to face a future for the UK where a young person with that talent and that passion finds that they can choose any profession they like except the one they really want, because its necessary foundations are scorned by an establishment that doesn't understand it? 


Don't let it happen, people. Don't let our children, grandchildren, nephews and great-nieces/nephews be turned into machines, denied the chances of expression, discovery, creativity and fulfillment through understanding that distinguish human beings from animals. We have minds, we have souls - yes, we do - and we use them. It doesn't cost very much and it brings extraordinary returns, both measurable and - more valuably - immeasurable.

To say that future generations may not have that choice because we can't afford it is stupid. And will land society with an awful lot of trouble when that generation grows up disaffected - and realises what we've done to it; what we had, what we could have had had we made the effort, and what we needlessly threw away at the stroke of a politician's pen.


Catch up with this week's Shout Out! Music Education for All:
No. 1: Tasmin Little, Barry Douglas and Julian Lloyd Webber;
No. 2: James Rhodes, Errollyn Wallen and Nick van Bloss;
No. 3: Paul Lewis, Nicholas Daniel and Eos Chater;
No. 4: Margaret Fingerhut and Leon McCawley;
No. 5: Clemency Burton-Hill and Philip Sheppard.

SHOUT OUT! MUSIC EDUCATION FOR ALL #5

Thanks to everyone for the extensive support and encouragement for SHOUT OUT! MUSIC EDUCATION FOR ALL this week! Here is today's haul: TV presenter Clemency Burton-Hill and cellist, composer and very constructive thinker Philip Sheppard both have some strong words for us. 


Meanwhile a message from 'Add Music to the English Bacc' tells us that the implications of excluding it from the subject range would be much more far-reaching than simply leaving musicians unqualified: it would most likely mean that music would not remain in the National Curriculum at all. The fight is in fact for its very survival. 


The new issue of Classical Music Magazine, out today, is guest-edited by Julian Lloyd-Webber and is devoted to the issues surrounding music education. It's a matter of urgency. It takes so long to build up a system - yet a whole generation's hopes and aspirations can be swept away along with that system at one stroke of a politician's pen. Don't let it happen.




CLEMENCY BURTON-HILL TV presenter, writer and violinist

Let’s get something straight: this is not about creating a new generation of professional musicians. Okay, so we have no idea which of our future Rattles or Terfels or Lloyd-Webbers might never emerge if these cuts to music education services go ahead. But let’s put that galling vision of lost potential, both cultural and economic, aside for a moment.

This is about creating a new generation of human beings. The question of whether it matters that local music teaching in Britain is to be slashed is a question that goes right to the heart of who we are as a society – and more importantly, who we want to be. And not because we want to produce armies of future Lang Langs – although, imagine! – but because the things that a music education in childhood can inspire are inestimable, even if that child does not grow up to be a ‘Musician’.

When it comes to education, I’m aware that I have been blessed. I attended top secondary schools (on full music scholarships, as it happens) and I went on to study at one of the best universities in the world (when it was still pretty cheap to do so). But I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the single most important element of my education was not the high-achieving school or the storied college: it was being given a violin when I was a child and being taught the universal language of music at the same time as I was learning to speak, to communicate, to navigate my own little place in the world. Through music, especially in group lessons, I began to grasp a deeper understanding of my relationship to other human beings, and not just those around me, but all over the world. Music teaches us so much more than music, some of which is calculable, provable, quantifiable – the discipline, the team-work, the brain-hand-eye co-ordination, the sheer mental rigour; some of which – the humanity, when it comes down to it – is ineffable, and precious. We jeopardise it at our peril.




PHILIP SHEPPARD cellist and composer

The way that local authorities are passing on the cuts without an intelligent and lateral thought process is alarming and short sighted. While it's easy to get angry at the government for instigating this chain of events, we are all victims of a situation rooted partly in greed, partly in ignorance, and wholly in short-termism. As a creative community we need to balance anger with practical solutions.

No politician is going to champion music while it is perceived as a luxury. We know that active music-making is an extraordinary vehicle for developing intelligence, developing a sense of self and learning immensely subtle communication skills. Plato believed that everything could be taught through gymnasia and music, yet these are the subjects being eroded from the curriculum.

I think this is the time for bold moves.


Why not develop a system for teaching music to a far wider range of pupils, with training for parents too? Many of the mothers I talk to at toddler groups are embarrassed to sing to their children, yet this is the most important developmental musical phase. Kodaly technique, Dalcroze Eurythmics and pure Suzuki (not the Western interpretation of it) are potent ways to teach large groups of chdren advanced musicianship at relatively low cost in terms of teacher/pupil ratio. In fact I think it's possible to weather the cuts whilst widening the reach of our music tuition.

Students who show particular aptitude for music through voice classes could be offered free instruments (on loan) and free class tuition. This could then filter through to individual coaching where talent becomes evident. The purchase of instruments used to be a major stumbling block to many parents but these days you can get quite a decent student violin for £50. I have worked many times at the Harlem Center for young musicians in New York, which has developed a meritocratic instrument loan scheme. It functions in an environment where music education has even poorer funding than the UK.

I know this all sounds very idealistic, but the bigger the idea, the more likely it is to attract backing. I spoke at a committee in parliament this week where the overwhelming impression was that the voters don't feel strongly about music, therefore it's not a priority for any government.

We as musicians need to be hugely creative in demonstrating that music is the oil smoothing the engine of a civilized society, whilst also suggesting systems to deliver training highly efficiently.

The critical element that I feel is passed over is the importance of creative composition for children. If drama or art was taught one-to-one with an emphasis mainly on the interpretation of existing works, it would be a scandal, and yet we allow this to be the case with many aspects of music training. Repertoire and technique alongside the constant creation of new work will engage children and parents to the point when there is an overwhelming demand for more - preferably free - music tuition.

Friday Historical: Music of the Spheres

Apparently NASA has released the information, and sounds to back it up, that the stars sing. And I don't mean Domingo. No, way out in the back of beyond the solar system, the actual, physical, blazing stars are making a right old noise. And we can learn a lot about them from the type of sounds they make. The big ones rumble. The small ones are higher pitched. BBC Breakfast news didn't actually tell us how these sounds are produced. But it's not April 1 any more, and it's a wonderful excuse to run a Friday Historical of the Vienna Philharmonic playing Josef Strauss's gorgeous waltz, The Music of the Spheres, conducted by the mesmerising Carlos Kleiber. I wonder what scientists on other planets might learn about ours from listening to this? Enjoy. (More Shout Out! later on...)