JD on R3 today

I'm on BBC Radio 3's CD Review this morning at approx 11.05, chatting with Andrew McGregor about six Bach and Bach-ish discs. Not least, the Goldberg Variations on the accordion. Tune in here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mns4j

Strewth! Papageno gets a proposal

So it's opening night at ENO, they're doing The Magic Flute and at the moment Papageno counts to three in case a girl will agree to marry him before he hangs himself...someone does. A lady in the second row put up a hand and said "All right!"

The hunky baritone Duncan Rock, recipient of the RPS's new Chilcott Award (in memory of the late soprano Susan Chilcott), kept admirably calm and carried on, but made sure to give this unexpected fiancee a round of applause at the end of the opera. 

The Magic Flute - the fairy-tale that becomes magically deeper the lighter it is - had meanwhile fizzed by in a feast of that gorgeous Mozartness that has made this my favourite opera always and forever and confirmed it in that status yet again. In short, it evokes the way music can protect us through life's most terrible trials, and the way those trials strengthen the bonds between lovers. Never has it felt so true. Its profundity within that feathery touch is comparable, to my ears, only to the comedies of Shakespeare.

It's the last revival of Nicholas Hytner's classic production that has run since 1988. Our friends at What's On Stage suggest that something interesting may be lurking in the works by way of a new take. We're watching that space.

Meanwhile the well-chosen cast made the most of the fun, with plenty freedom to turn it their own way - "Strewth!" shouts this very Australian Papageno, spotting the snake. Shawn Mathey is a full-toned Tamino, Elena Xanthoudakis a powerful and charismatic Pamina, Robert Lloyd holding the stage and the low notes as the stringent 18th-century patriarch that this production makes of Sarastro. Rhian Lois as a Welsh Papagena joined Rock for the delicious upward ride in the Papageno family nest, complete with seatbelt [pictured above - photo credit: Alastair Muir/ENO].

Luxury casting for the Three Ladies with Elizabeth Llewellyn, Catherine Young and Pamela Helen Stephen. The Three Boys were superb. Everyone's favourite character, The Queen of the Night, was an admirably ferocious and focused Kathryn Lewek. And Boris the Bear - one of four cuddly furballs who pad out of the woods to enjoy Tamino's flute recital - is on Twitter as @abearnamedboris and has his own blog...

And in the pit, an auspicious presence: Nicholas Collon, kicking off the new season with his ENO house debut. The Magic Flute is no small ask, but he seemed nothing daunted; the pace never faltered and neither did the sparkle. If I have one little suggestion, it's to give it a tad more time and space here and there to let us breathe the emotion ever so slightly.

It's Friday afternoon, so here is a mega-Mozartian Friday Historical: The Magic Flute conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1937. Click through to Youtube for the full cast.

What the Dickens is going on?

A lovely festival at West Malling, Kent, near Gads Hill where Charles Dickens lived, is taking the chance to have a good look at the great author's connections with music. Seemed like high time someone did this, this being the Dickens bicentenary year, et al, so I asked its artistic director, Thomas Kemp, for an e-interview to explain what he's up to and why. Get down to Music@Malling from 27 to 30 September.


JD: Tom, what made you want to celebrate Dickens's musical life?

TK: I was brought up in Kent and had my first violin lessons in the kitchen at West Malling primary school! It is a very historic market town with a lot of interesting buildings from diverse historic periods. In the 19th century, Town Malling was famous for cricket and Dickens visited the village on many occasions - he immortalised the cricket ground in The Pickwick Papers - a scene that used to be on the back of a ten pound note: a landscape that can still be viewed from my old primary school.  The fact that there is this connection led me to programme music that was connected to him.

Music@Malling also promotes the work of living composers and this year the featured composers are Judith Bingham and Huw Watkins.

JD: Which were Dickens's favourite composers? With which musicians was
he friendly? In what ways was he supportive of them?

TK: Charles Dickens' sister Fanny was one of the first students at the Royal Academy of Music and he married into a musical family.  He loved opera, went to concerts and met many eminent performers and composers at dinner parties. These included Chopin, Mendelssohn, Auber and Meyerebeer.  He also met the soprano Jenny Lind and the violinists Paganini and Joachim. Dickens made some very astute observations about the music he heard and the performers he listened to. He particularly liked Mozart and appreciated Bach - Joachim played unaccompanied Bach to him in his house at Gad's Hill - a few miles away from West Malling. He described the experience as "more romantic and suggestive than most of the ravings today, which are set forth as profound and transcendental poetry." It was quite unusual to listen to "old" music during this period and Dickens astutely recognised that Joachim was the first great violinist to make a name for himself by playing the music of other composers rather than exclusively his own - as had been the case with Paganini.

JD: What influence do you think music had on his writing?

TK: There are many references to music in the novels and these are used to provide a fascinating social commentary on the function of music in 19th- century England, where music was the dominant form of domestic entertainment.  Many of the traditional airs and songs that he sang make their way into his writings and I think that there is a musicality to the way Dickens uses words.

JD: Tell us something about the Dickens-themed concerts you're doing at Music@Malling?

TK: The festival features his favourite composers: Mendelssohn, Chopin and Mozart and, in a concert on 28 September, there will be a series of readings from his works narrated by Matthew Sharp. Jonathan McGovern also will sing some of Dickens'  favourite lieder. There is a link with Judith Bingham in that she wrote a piano piece called Chopin which will be heard alongside the Chopin Cello Sonata and Trio in the 28 September lunchtime concert. One of the chamber works that Bingham wrote for Chamber Domaine focuses on the effect of war on children. My Father's Arms, a piece Bingham wrote that will be performed at the Festival, in a way is a mirror of the social concerns that run through Dickens' writings. Mozart features heavily in the programming as it provides an excellent balance to the contemporary music and he, by all accounts, was Dickens' favourite composer of all. The festival culminates with a performance of Symphony No.40 in G Minor, which has all the pathos and bitter-sweetness of a Dickensian novel.

Below: a sample from the inaugural festival shows Tom conducting Chamber Domaine in Mahler's Fourth as you probably haven't heard it before...

Stop press: Meet the Leeds International Piano Competition finalists

The finalists have been announced at the Leeds International Piano Competition. See them in action this weekend! They are a commendably international bunch and there's a famililar face or two among them. But no Brits. And no girls.

Here they are: Federico Colli from Italy (age 24); Jayson Gillham from Australia (age 26); Andrejs Osokins from Latvia (age 27); Louis Schwizgebel from Switzerland (age 24); Jiayan Sun from China (age 22) and Andrew Tyson from the USA (age 25). In the centre, of course, Dame Fanny Waterman, founder of the competition and, as ever, chairman of its jury.

More information about the competition here. 

You can listen online to performances by the semi-finalists.

I'm a bit narked to discover that despite all the buss and fother over the BBC's big Piano Season, with Lang Lang, Lang Lang and Lang Lang, the TV coverage of the Leeds will begin on 21 September and run on Friday evenings for six weeks. The finals are this weekend, however, and by the time the TV gets on the case, it'll be a bit late. There is no live TV coverage of the final. Once upon a time, this was mandatory. JD is not impressed. 

No Brits, no girls, no live TV. So much for the musical Olympics.

Update: forgot all about it, but my novel Alicia's Gift features a pretty major episode at the Leeds Competition, just sayin'... Paperback available here, e-book just out and downloadable here.

Is nothing sacred? Here comes the Friar with the X factor

The other week I got a call from Decca. Could I pop in and talk on camera for a documentary about their latest signing? He's a tenor. Friar Alessandro.  That's right - a singing friar. A Franciscan from Assisi.

A what? I had a sneak preview of his first CD, which is out next month. They want him to be "the next Italian tenor". (Odd, since they already have the next Italian tenor, it's just that he's Maltese.)

There are a lot of issues at stake here, especially when you realise what happened to Soeur Sourire back in the sixties, so I've written about a big sense of squirminess in today's Independent.

Here is Soeur Sourire, who was rather wonderful, but had the most terrible time. There's a recent movie about her starring Cecile de France (2009) if you want to know more.