Farewell, Russell Hoban (1925-2011)

Very sad today to hear of the death of one of my favourite novelists. Russell Hoban may have been best-known for his children's books, but his adult fiction retained their sense of playfulness and fantasy - something most of us lose with the passing years. His Turtle Diary was the first that I read - about two lonely Londoners who set out to rescue the turtles from the zoo, but don't quite release themselves while they're about it. The Medusa Frequency is a virtuoso take on the Orpheus myth - again featuring a compassionate portrait of contemporary London, but with twists of fantasy that are by turns chilling and glorious in their audacity. Here is a full obituary from The Guardian.

But musicians might know Hoban best for his libretto for Sir Harrison Birtwistle's astonishing opera The Second Mrs Kong, written for Glyndebourne and premiered in 1994. Details of the plot and structure are here along with some excerpts; and the libretto was published by Universal Edition. Hoban plays with concepts, reality and imagery the way a circus performer might perform on the high wire. The only safety net is the term 'magical realism', except that there isn't much realism in there - it's slanted entirely to the magic. In the opera, The Idea of Kong falls in love with Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring, aka Pearl. I still remember well the wild, high, shimmering voice of the singing mirror; and the deep-bronze, luminous tone of Philip Langridge, who sang The Idea of Kong in a gorilla suit...

I once went to Oxford to see the Glyndebourne Touring Opera's Kong with a writer friend who was also a big Hoban fan. That day there was a problem in the theatre and they couldn't get the set of the previous night's opera off the stage, so the cast delivered a semi-staged version in costume in front of the curtain. It was still fabulous. And we spotted Hoban in the bar so went up to him (my pal was braver than I was) to express our enthusiasm. We found him a charming, generous man, with the same twinkle in his eye that you can find in his glittery writing.

MIRROR: It is not love that moves the world from night to morning, it is not love that makes the new day dawn. 

PEARL: Not love?

MIRROR: No. It is the longing for what cannot be...

PEARL: The longing for what cannot be?

MIRROR: The longing for what cannot be. The world needs the power of your yearning, the world needs the power of your love that cannot be fulfilled.

Yehudi plays Handel in 1929

You know that feeling when the captain says "Cabin crew, ten minutes to landing," and they dim the lights...but 25 minutes later you're still reeling about over Stansted in high winds and for once the Ryanair staff have stopped trying to sell you burgers or scratchcards and are eerily quiet? Oh - you don't? Lucky you. Me, I thought we were all gonna die.

Glad to be alive the next day, so it seems a good idea to celebrate. I was looking for a nice historical clip of Handel's Messiah so that we can be suitably seasonal - also, I, er, gatecrashed a rehearsal of it in in Aarhus yesterday and, um, it's a really, really good piece, even without the singers. The adorable Maestro Giancarlo Andretta was filling in the vocal lines quite spectacularly from the podium.

But while I was looking for Messiah, I found this. It was recorded by the young Yehudi Menuhin in 1929. Let's have it instead, because it's to die for (only not in a plane...).

RIP Tony Fell (1931-2011)

Back in - well, never mind - I came out of a postgrad year at university, decided not to pursue a longed-for attempt at being a professional pianist and started looking for a job. I found one. It was at Boosey & Hawkes, the eminent firm of music publishers, and I spent a happy year there, mostly proofreading scale books, before an opportunity in music journalism seemed too good a chance to miss and I jumped ship. Boosey & Hawkes, though, holds some happy memories, among them the affection and respect the whole company held for its managing director, Tony Fell.

The news of Tony's death at the age of 79 is sad indeed. It was always lovely to run into him around the music world after his retirement from the company - he maintained a strong presence on the London scene and as chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Society he was a hands-on reformer and galvanising influence, always positive and energetic. He will be sorely missed. Here is Boosey and Hawkes' tribute to him, written by Helen Wallace. (Original here: http://www.boosey.com/cr/news/Boosey-Hawkes-remembers-Tony-Fell-1931-2011/12353)

Boosey & Hawkes remembers Tony Fell (1931-2011)

(December 2011)

Boosey & Hawkes is sad to announce the death of music publisher Robert Antony Fell, on Tuesday 6 December, aged 79.

Tony Fell was Managing Director of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers from 1974-1996, and served on the company’s Board until 2000. Driven by an inexhaustible enthusiasm for music, he proved a positive, dynamic and clear-sighted manager, and was in large part responsible for modernising the company’s publishing business and positioning it at the heart of the international music scene in the latter part of the 20th century.  

Fell was a keen amateur cellist and pianist throughout his life, but his introduction to the music business came though his father, who had managed the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Scottish National Orchestras. After graduating from King’s College, Cambridge in English and Modern languages, he joined the London music agency Ibbs & Tillett, becoming assistant London concerts manager until, he used to say, ‘penury drove me to ICI’. In 1956 he moved to Johannesburg as a design and print buyer for ICI’s Publicity Department, before moving to Hortors Printers, during which time he founded and conducted the Johannesburg Bach Choir. In 1967, increasingly depressed by the political situation, he became director of the company publishing Drum, an outspoken political magazine for Africans. It was during a second stint at Hortors as MD that Boosey & Hawkes sought him out and invited him to interview for the post of Managing Director of the London music publishing business.

Fell had been looking for a way back to the UK, and this move was decisive, bringing together his interests in music, publishing and innovative management practice. He found a once-distinguished company in something of a time-warp, with no standard times for instrument-making, no coherent publishing policy, and nothing linking market intelligence with production strategy. 

He also found a deeply divided firm: the ‘toffs’ (music publishing staff) resided in Regent Street, while the printing and instrument-making staff considered themselves the ‘workers’ in Hendon and Edgware. Throughout his time in the company Fell fought continually to protect and develop the often lucrative publishing business from being bankrupted by the cash-hungry instrument firm that would ultimately be sold and outstripped by foreign competition. His task was hampered by a complex political situation on the Board involving hostile factions, with the representatives of the original Boosey and Hawkes families set against the more recent American majority shareholders. Fell became a Director of the parent company in 1977, but it was not until 1985 that he was finally made MD, Group Publishing, with an international remit that allowed him to create the cohesive team he’d initially envisaged.

One of his first and most influential decisions was to appoint a highly-informed Head of Contemporary Music, the scholar and writer David Drew, in 1975, who had been editing the contemporary music journalTempo. Fell recognised that the firm had lacked a figure with a finger on the pulse of contemporary music since Donald Mitchell’s brief appointment in the early 1960s; no new composer had been signed for a decade. ‘It was like running an atomic power station without any physicists!’, he recalled. Working with Drew, and, later, David Huntley in the New York office and Janis Susskind in London, close relationships were forged with an impressive list of composers. Under Fell’s watch, contracts were signed with European figures including HK Gruber, Robin Holloway, Kurt Schwertsik, Henryk Górecki, James MacMillan, Louis Andriessen, Unsuk Chin, Harrison Birtwistle and Detlev Glanert and Americans Leonard Bernstein, Steve Reich, Elliott Carter and John Adams.

He was particularly active in complex dealings with the Stravinsky and Copland Estates (Stravinsky remained his personal hero) and consummating agreements with Steve Reich and Leonard Bernstein. These two deals were made in dramatic circumstances when the current CEO had shaken confidence in the New York office by firing its much-respected Head. Thinking on his feet, Fell risked his own job by confronting his boss with the composers’ own lawyers when the latter arrived in Manhattan to reprimand Fell for disloyalty. His analysis was endorsed and the signings proceeded, proving to be a turning point for Boosey & Hawkes in the USA. 

His cunning streak (he was known by some of his colleagues as Machiafelli) was tempered by a ready sense of humour and an infectious, boyish enthusiasm for music. He never ceased to discover new qualities in old scores, or explore contemporary music that excited him. His commercial decisions were coolly made, but his overriding aim to serve the composers whose music he genuinely loved came to define the whole ethos of the music publishing team. One of his key strengths was in recognising those of others, as his legacy of appointments and acquisitions proved. 

On leaving Boosey & Hawkes, Fell took on the Chairmanship of the Royal Philharmonic Society (1997-2005), and successfully modernised and refocused its role to support new music, young musicians and to recognise excellence in the live music arena. He was Chairman of the British Piano Concerto Foundation (2000-2) and from 2006-8 he took on the honorary Directorship of the charity Future Talent, which seeks out and supports young musical talent in socially deprived areas. In 2011 he was appointed Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society for his services to music, an honour rarely bestowed. His delight in playing chamber music – and tennis – with friends never waned. 

Tony Fell is survived by three daughters, a son and seven grandchildren from his marriages to Katinka Mullins and Patricia Blackwell and by his wife Janis Susskind (Publishing Director of Boosey & Hawkes).

Helen WallaceAuthor of Boosey & Hawkes: the Publishing Story (2007)


A private funeral will take place and donations to the Royal Philharmonic Society and Marie Curie Cancer Care are encouraged in lieu of flowers.

A memorial celebration for Tony Fell is planned at the Wigmore Hall in London at 11 am on Saturday 28 January.

Apart from the Sarah Lund sweater...

...Aarhus is a rather civilised place where the arts are concerned. I returned with a green Sarah Lund sweater from the Christmas market, having passed a pleasant weekend with someone who is finding life and atmosphere there pretty agreeable.

The town has a state-of-the-art concert hall with Artek acoustics that seats about 1,200 and was opened only a few years ago. This to supplement its older (though not much older) hall, which now houses opera. The new building includes a specially built pop auditorium and a chamber music hall. Have a look at some more designs here. Next door is a museum of modern art on the top of which is a "rainbow" promenade: you walk round in a circle admiring the panorama of the beautiful old seaside city, enwrapped by a succession of different colours.

The orchestra, when I arrived, was in the middle of an unusual Italian concert featuring a lot of Respighi and a piano concerto by Nino Rota (Benedetto Lupo was soloist). This programme was given twice. The orchestra rarely rehearses more than four hours a day and many weekends are free, the principal concert evening being Thursday. Taxes and prices are high in Denmark, but the orchestral salary is higher after tax than comparable jobs in the UK, which would entail many more hours and more antisocial ones, though fewer allocated to each programme. The orchestra is state-funded, so need not be in thrall to a dictatorship of sponsors or the fear/loathing of them (contrast, for example, with India and the 2012 Olympic Games - they have been burning an effigy of Lord Coe over this - or Alice Oswald and the TS Eliot Prize) and the job carries with it conditions that British musicians barely dream of, such as pensions. Backstage, there's a succession of soundproofed practice rooms and a comfy common room with tea and coffee on tap as long as you wash up your own mug, and many of the players stick around for a drink after the show. They seem to get along with one another quite well.

The town's conservatoire is also accommodated in the new concert hall complex. Students attend free of charge. European students, indeed, can all attend free of charge, assuming I have understood this correctly. It's hard to get your head around it when you reflect that our British conservatoires, along with all arts courses in the country, have just been wiped off the face of the state-funded map.

Owning a car in Denmark is exceedingly expensive, so the city is not at all congested. There's a goodish network of buses and people cycle a lot, with a succession of properly planned and well-organised cycle lanes. The city centre, around the gorgeous and very ancient cathedral, is full of little cafes and ancient timber-framed buildings with deep window casements. Generally the interiors are very well heated and properly insulated from the cold climate.

You can walk through the beech woods by the sea and enjoy a cup of fabulous hot chocolate in the old restaurant in the forest. There's a set of exercise equipment by the side of the path which you can use for keeping fit - go for a run, do some weights exercises and move on. The equipment has not been stolen and remains unvandalised.

It's not London. It is cosy, calm and contented. Staggering degrees of contrasted wealth, poverty and greed don't seem to apply. There isn't all that much going on in terms of cultural adventure, but family time is a major priority. Parents might even take their children to the modern art museum on a Sunday, or go for a walk together. They mightn't be obliged to work 24/7 leaving their kids to fend for themselves at the local fast-fat takeaway. People seem happy.

That's not to say there are no problems. I know there are problems, having met people from ethnic minorities who were experiencing them, while other friends have been made redundant and jobs are in short supply. There are cuts, too: the bus timetable, for instance, seems to have been decimated, and one friend tells me there's a lot of knife crime, though matters like "a lot" are relative and I am a Londoner. Nevertheless, the contrast between there and here hammers home quite how far we have travelled down some very silly and self-destructive paths indeed.

Music students, if you don't want to enter your adult life in debt up to your back teeth, you could do worse than start learning Danish. I find the language pretty difficult - it is so "swallowed" that relating what's written to what you hear is kind of awkward, though we could try watching The Killing with Danish subtitles as good way to get started. Someone tells me it's really quite easy. Just like English, only 1000 years out of date.

Debussy and friends aid Japan

I've just been to see the pianist Noriko Ogawa about her Debussy festival in Manchester in January. Together with the BBC Philharmonic and friends, she is exploring the cross-currents between Debussy and Japan - the influence of oriental culture on the composer and his influence, in return, on Japanese composers of the 20th century and today. Fascinating stuff and I'll be explaining it all at more length soon. But Noriko was in Japan at the time of the earthquake on 11 March - you may have seen her speaking about it from Tokyo on Newsnight - and she has been hard at work fundraising via concerts and other means for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami, which left vast numbers homeless and deprived of their livelihoods. She has had some Black Cat greetings cards specially designed - each one costs £2 and all profits go to the Japan Society Tohoku Earthquake Relief Fund. If you haven't done your Xmas cards yet, here's the purrfect chance. Right, one of the four images. You can buy them online here. Debussy, by the way, used to frequent the club Le Chat Noir in Paris.