The Philadelphia Story

That was the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1949, with Eugene Ormandy, in Birmingham, rehearsing a spot of Brahms. Blimey. That, people, is one heck of a great orchestra.

Fast forward to yesterday, when the board of the Philadelphia Orchestra yesterday voted for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the finest orchestras in America, hence the world, and its budget for this season, $46m, sounds kind of huge from little old London. So what's gone wrong? The New York Times has the most informative article I've yet seen, explaining it all.

The news comes only a week or two after the strike at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra was (mercifully) resolved, while orchestras are folding in Syracuse and Hawaii, and while the shenanigans in Brazil around a maestro of mythic-sized arrogance should not bear acceptance by any member of the musical community anywhere in the world.

It's further proof (you'd think we'd have enough by now, but it seems not) that purely private funding is no way to ensure the thriving life of a national treasure: philanthropy and endowments are fair-weather friends. There've been management problems in Philadelphia before now, as the NYT piece shows, but we should take all of it as a timely warning and learn never to rely solely on one means of garnering lolly for anything.

But still, allowing an orchestra like Philadelphia to go bust is like letting the National Gallery do likewise. A great orchestra, like a great gallery, is a showcase - a living showcase - for the wonders created by human beings over the centuries. They remind us we're people, that we have brains and that we have souls and they inspire us to become more than our ancestral apes could ever have dreamed. In a gallery, you walk and look. In a concert, you sit and listen. Breughel or Bach, Titian or Tchaikovsky, Monet or Mozart - you decide.

Art belongs to everyone, folks. It knows nothing about our personal circumstances. Just because you don't have any dosh it doesn't mean you are not entitled to experience the best artistry that humankind has to offer - or, if your natural talent allows, the right to acquire the skills to create it yourself. And don't you ever forget it.

So sit and listen to this: the Philadelphia Orchestra in its glory days, an American orchestra under its Hungarian-born conductor Eugene Ormandy, playing English music. Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. And if you can't play it (I'm told some readers outside the UK can't), try the extract of Scheherazade from 1978 below.

UPDATE: Peter Dobrin's Philadelphia-based blog has frequent updates on the situation. UK readers may find it intriguing to look at the comments he receives and note the difference in mindset between some American concert-goers and our own. I'm glad to say I've never once heard anyone in the Royal Festival Hall grumble about young people getting cut-price seats.

London Philharmonic scoops Olympics recording

Uh, right...so that's what those mystery sessions on the schedule were. We wondered. Bit late. And it's a bit ironic, too, since Tomcat is a kind of national anthems boffin and is forever searching out peculiar places with loony tunes to strut about and fool us with. But the sessions are in amongst a bunch of other stuff and they didn't need all the violins, so he decided not to do them. DANG.

Here's the story as told by the BBC website:

London Philharmonic to record Olympic nation anthems

The London Philharmonic Orchestra is to record the national anthems of all 205 countries participating in the 2012 Olympics. 

Composer, conductor and cellist Philip Sheppard will take charge of the recordings, which will be played at the medal and welcoming ceremonies.

Recording starts in May at London's Abbey Road Studios.

It will take the musicians at least 50 recording hours over six days to finish the project.

Mr Sheppard said he hopes working at the iconic studios will help "creativity".

He has been working on the anthems since October, to make each one sound "unified".

Each anthem had to be up to a minute in duration and Mr Sheppard said it was a challenge to condense them.

"Uruguay is about six-and-a-half minutes long, so there comes a point where one has to chop it down, without offending the country in question," he told the BBC.

"But Uganda is only nine bars, so I had to come up with a way of making it last longer without it being repetitive."

London 2012 chairman and two-time Olympic champion Lord Coe said: "The playing of anthems at victory ceremonies is one of the most emotive parts of any Games and it was an incredible moment for me at the Moscow and Los Angeles Games.

Palmer does Holst

Don't miss Tony Palmer's grand-scale exploration of Gustav Holst's life and work, In the Bleak Midwinter, to be screened on BBC4 on Easter Sunday and released on DVD the next day. Apart from the revelations about his nature and beliefs which are outlined in my piece about the film in today's Independent (read it here), it contains extracts from The Planets - which, wouldn't you know it, wasn't originally about planets at all - played by the Savaria Orchestra from Hungary, conducted by Tamas Vasary. The orchestra apparently used to be the Hungarian State Somethingorother - it moved cities and changed its name - and they'd never played a note of good old 'Mars' before. Frankly, my dears, you've never heard anything like what they do with it. Tony says he felt "pinned to the wall" by their intensity. And all they're playing is...exactly what Holst asked for in the score. The article has been somewhat chopped, so I may run the Director's Cut here at some stage.

Mark Padmore and the sausages

A tenner for a tenor from washmedia on Vimeo.

Apparently our superduper British tenor Mark Padmore costs the same as a bag of flour, a train ticket (depends where and how far in advance you book) or... 4lb of sausages. Seems like the Britten Sinfonia, which has invented an inspired form of crowd-funding entitled 'A Tenner for a Tenor', are maybe not aware that we're all supposed to measure our food weights in kilos these days. (Something to do with the EU, don't ask me. I'm cool with either. Vegetarian, though.)

Anyway, sausages aside, the scheme is designed to raise money to commission a new work for marvellous Mark from jolly-good Jonathan Dove. It's going to be premiered in a year's time and broadcast on BBC R3. Since our local Waitrose is selling Lindt chocolate Easter trinkets for a terrifying £5 each and I think Mark and Jonathan together are an awful lot better than two bunnies, I'm going to contribute. Are you? More details from Britten Sinfonia here.

Afterwards, I'll have to grill them about the experience...

What's in the party bag?

It was time for an away-day by a north London canal yesterday as we were treated to lunch and the annual BBC Music Magazine Awards ceremony at Kings Place. The music industry was in a remarkably good mood, all things considered, and there were some great prizes to celebrate. Record of the Year went to Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet on LSO Live, with the doughty band headed by Big Valery. Not that he was there - but subleader and chairman Lennox McKenzie had a good story about how VG phoned him five minutes before they were due onstage in Vilnius, and said "I'm here..." "Where?" "Look up..." And over went an incoming plane...

The person who was there to present them with the award, though, was Prokofiev's grandson, "Nonclassical" musician Gabriel Prokofiev. Something about his face is... a chip off the old block. Just look at Grandpa.... It was a really nice thing to do and made everyone very happy.

It was a good day for "best of British" admirers, with wins for a disc of David Matthews's symphonies, Purcell's The Fairy Queen from Glyndebourne on DVD, and so forth. But Russians other than Prokofiev were also well represented: Alexander Melnikov took the instrumental award for his Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues, and the chamber music award went to violinist Vadim Repin and pianist Nikolai Lugansky for their disc of Franck and co (left) - the boys themselves couldn't make it to Kings Cross, but sent in a wonderful thank-you video in which accents and aspects alike were absolutely worthy of Creature Comforts. The France-based label Harmonia Mundi scooped no fewer than three awards. I was sitting next to them and by the end we had to be careful not to kick the glassware. Felicitations, mes amis - vraiment un good haul and jolly well deserved.


You can see the full list of winners and watch the awards ceremony online by clicking here.

Now, dear reader, when you attend an awards ceremony, you get a party bag when you leave. So what's in the BBC Music Mag Awards goody trawl? The magazine, naturellement- in which you can read, among other things, my Composer of the Month article about Dvorak. Next, a couple of the discs - not sure if we all got the same ones, but in my bag were the Bach Motets conducted by Masaki Suzuki and the debut disc prize CD (which I've heard, reviewed elsewhere and gave 3 stars out of 5). Next: a glossy copy of BBC Gardens Illustrated, a bag of Kettle Chips, a pocket-sized bar of Green & Black's white chocolate (...all gone!) and a packet of grow-your-own tomato seeds. I'm sure there's a metaphor in the tomato seeds. If I find it, I'll let you know.

Huge thanks to Olly Condy and his brilliant team for a lovely day, and all best wishes to Daniel Jaffe, the magazine's erstwhile reviews editor, who is leaving now to write a big biography of Gustav Holst.