Off to memory country lane

As part of the seasonal runaround, I'm off shortly to the place without which I wouldn't be here now, writing this: the Dartington International Summer School of Music, near Totnes, Devon. It's going to be my first visit in...well, I wouldn't like to say exactly, so please accept 'quite a while' as the time-frame. This year it has a new artistic director in the eminent form of John Woolrich, and among delights that await is an oboe recital by the one and only Nick Daniel and a chance to listen to Stephen Kovacevich, aka "The Bishop", giving masterclasses. (A mild digression sparked by masterclass-panic memories: in another of my musical dreams t'other night, it seemed that I had to learn to play Chopin's Piano Concerto No.1 in four days flat, and I knew I had the music, but I couldn't find it anywhere in the music cupboards, or the attic, or under the piano, or my study or...oh phew.)

So I will leave you with a treat: here is Andras Schiff playing Bartok's Third Piano Concerto at the Proms a few weeks back, with the Halle Orchestra conducted by Sir Mark Elder. They're repeating this in Manchester in October. But it was at Dartington that I first encountered Andras in person. Back then, he was an unstoppable rising star who loved to play the piano from sunrise to moonset - and inspired us all to want to do likewise. The week of his Dartington masterclass knocked my teenaged self sideways (so, too, did a few lectures by Hans Keller). The place, the atmosphere and the amount I was learning seemed magical beyond belief.

Yet it's only now, looking back, that I know fully how lucky I was to be there, and to meet the people I met and experience the musical contacts that followed in the six or seven years subsequent to that. It's not often - in life - that you tumble completely by accident into the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Enjoy the Bartok.

I love you, Nigel Kennedy

Blimey, guv - good old Nigel is at it again. In an age when much of the world feels toothless and truthless, he hasn't lost one bit of his bite or his bark. The Guardian reports:

In a broadside at fellow musicians, he said that some were sidelining Bach into "a rarefied and effete ghetto" while others were turning "philosophical masterpieces" into "shallow showpieces". He despaired at musicians who have "learned the same technical way [and who] all play the same technical way".

A protege of Yehudi Menuhin, Kennedy wrote in programme notes for last weekend's performance that "four melodic notes from Yehudi are worth more than a thousand from any of our living violinists", adding that "Bach speaks through Menuhin's violin".

It takes someone with real passion and chutzpah to speak up like that; not many dare to. Of course, he's generalising a little... I wish he could have heard Alina Ibragimova's mesmerising Chaconne at Wilton's the other week. No doubt this latest outburst will leave his targets pretty peeved, but I don't think that's his aim. I think he speaks up because he flippin'well cares - and you can hear that in his playing. That's why he's still here and still at it after all these years.

Read the whole thing here.

Wagner was here...

I've just been to paradise, aka Lucerne. This Swiss lakeside city has got to be one of the most beautiful spots in Europe (and its KKL concert hall matches that point for point).

Wagner must have thought so too, because he lived here, at Tribschen (above) - a beautiful, good but gentle walk along the lakeside from the hall, the house is in a location second to no other. And it was here, on the stairs, that he assembled an ensemble of musicians to play the Siegfried Idyll to Cosima - who was upstairs in bed - on her Christmas Eve birthday. The view from the house is really not bad.

The only thing in Lucerne to convince you that you're still in the real world is...cost. With the Swiss franc among the world's strongest currencies at present, and the dear old pound plummeting, you pay, for example, more than six quid for a frappuccino and about seven for a reasonably decent sandwich. When I have written my 25th bestseller and all the other 24 have been filmed starring Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, I shall consider moving there. More about the concert I attended soon, but for now, suffice it to say that it was the Lucerne Festival Orchestra with Abbado...

Meanwhile, I wrote a piece about the agony and ecstasy of film music, for The Independent - it came out on Friday in time for the film music Prom and pays special attention to that desperately underrated centenary boy of 2011, Bernard Herrmann. Couldn't post earlier as was on the move, but here it is.

Yes, Korngold is in it too, but he would be - and I'm also delighted to say that next year I'll be doing a Radio 3 Building A Library broadcast to choose the finest available CD of the Violin Concerto, which is good news because it's a sure indication that now there are plenty available.

Laughter, please!

The first-ever Comedy Prom kicks off on Saturday night. And alongside star turns by Kit and the Widow and soprano Susan Bullock, Danny Driver is the pianist in a brilliant spoof piano concerto by one Franz Reizenstein, (born Nuremberg, died North London). I went to interview him for the JC, so here's the piece about the pianist who wants you to laugh when he plays. (The piece says 'tomorrow' for the Comedy Prom - that's because the JC is a weekly paper that hits most mats on Friday mornings. So don't worry. It's film music tomorrow and laughter on Saturday.)

In the following clips he's playing something a bit less funny: York Bowen's Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra (1907). Toi-toi-toi for your Proms debut, Danny!

The Lang Lang of ballet?

The Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe of China's version of Swan Lake is back in town tonight and could make Rudolf Nureyev turn in his grave. I took a sneak peek and my preview of the show is in today's Independent. It's incredible, but is it art? And does that matter?