Songs of names, in Berlin

Meet Max Raabe, German 1920s superstar. Only he's not. He's here right now. The singer has spent his entire career steeped in the soundworld of the Roaring Twenties and the less roaring, but more complex and nuanced early Thirties, from America, Germany and more: Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, the Comedian Harmonists...

He's long been a luminary at home, but now his fame seems about to spread. Riding the crest of the "vintage revival" wave, while London theatres are foot-tapping to the irresistible strains of Singin' in the Rain, Top Hat and Cabaret, Raabe has been taken up by Decca and we can expect an album from him in the new year. On Tuesday I went to Berlin to check him out.

I love this stuff. It's not as distant as you might think. My late father-in-law - who was lucky to escape Berlin in 1936 by being sent to school in Britain - was a passionate fan of the Comedian Harmonists as a boy. When we took him some CDs of them about ten years ago, he hadn't heard them since the Thirties, but, aged over 80, he still remembered all the words. And then there was my own supposed/distant/fabled Famous Relative in New York, Eddie Duchin, a band leader and celebrity in that era, who has always fascinated me for obvious reasons. Today the dance music of the Jazz Age is difficult to classify - but it occupies a niche of its own. Either you love it or you don't, and it so happens that I do.

With his 14-piece band, the Palast Orchester, Max Raabe is playing for a week at one of the more extraordinary theatres I've encountered. The Admiralspalast Theater, on Friedrichstrasse, is among very few venues in the German capital that survived World War II and the communist era more or less intact. It's an Art Deco gem - originally opened as a bath house around the turn of the century, it morphed into a "pleasure palace" and an ice-rink before settling into theatre-dom in the Twenties following a sleek refit. The plush red and gold detail of the interior was added in the Thirties (with all that that implies) and walking in today one can scarcely help imagining the officials who might once have been there to check out the Comedian Harmonists - Germany's most successful popular group of the time, three of whose six members were Jewish and who were therefore forced to disband in 1933.

Raabe told me before the performance that his grandmother used to attend shows there as a young girl. He has been drawn to this style of performance since the word go. At the age of 12, he says, "I used to put on my father's top hat and perform songs like this..." Growing up in the Westphalian countryside, he dreamed of moving to Berlin and becoming a performer, so duly enrolled to study there as an opera singer. But along the way, he and some friends got together to form a 1920s-style band for fun, to entertain at student balls. They found themselves in demand. He's never looked back.

Perhaps this is Historically Informed Performance meets the Twenties: many of Raabe's songs are transcribed note by note and instrument by instrument from the recordings of the time. "We now have more than 500 to choose from," he declares. And they're certainly varied, ranging from 'Singin' in the Rain' itself, in English, to a delicious Cuban Rumba, to a French number or two and the Comedian Harmonists' big hit, 'Mein kleine, gruene Cactus', which got the strongest cheer of the evening. It's a little difficult to sit still in a theatre and listen to it all, because if your feet are anything like mine, they'd like to take a turn around the non-existent dancefloor. 

The Palast Orchester, full of spirited and amazingly versatile musicians, does all the tricks of the time: coordinated standing and swooping, switching from instrument to instrument (sousaphone to string bass, sax to clarinet, and, more unusually, trumpet to violin). For one song with a naval theme, two of the trumpeters brought in a basin of water and blew a bubbly refrain or two through it. (Left: the sousaphone player warms up before the show...)

The style is slick, light, elegant, rhythmic. There is no soup. Wit and whimsy are uppermost; and even in the more romantic numbers, there's a careful balance between irony and a sincere heart. But there are a few nice little updatings: the use of projected images from time to time so that we can see the musicians in close-up; and a specially made Muppet-style figure who crosses the projection now and then, just enough to raise a gentle laugh.

And, speaking of updating, Raabe writes his own material as well, in style. "I want to capture the same kind of wit and elegance you find in the songs of that era," he says - indeed, his nonchalant presentation style, unfussed and very smooth, takes its cue from the world of Cole Porter himself. His opening song on Tuesday was one of his own: it describes a party at which every celebrity you can think of is present, including Karl Lagerfeld and Lars von Trier, but our protagonist is "only here for you...". Past style meets present-day preoccupation in a sort of musical Heston Blumenthal of unlikely yet excellent flavour.

But in performing the songs of the era, it's all about credit where credit is due, and Raabe always introduces the number with the names of its composer and lyricist. "When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the music did not disappear," he says, "but the names did. Great names, like Friedrich Hollaender, who worked with Max Reinhardt..." Hollaender composed, among other things, the music for Die blaue Engel, starring Marlene Dietrich. He was, of course, forced to escape Germany and made his way to Hollywood. "There were so many fantastic composers and writers whose names had to disappear. We always say the names."

Is this Raabe's song of names, then? (pace Norman Lebrecht). Is he restoring the lost world of these refugee songwriters, bringing them home at last to the land that betrayed them? Is it all part of the ongoing, protracted healing process - present, but always painful - that you see all around you in Berlin? It's tempting to think so. But Raabe just smiles and says: "I think that would be oversignificant. We are just here to entertain."

I think he is doing a little more than that. Who knows, maybe that's one reason he's going global.

Socks for the Lilac Fairy?

The other day the Royal Opera House held a Q&A session on Twitter with two of the Royal Ballet's top stars, husband and wife team Marianela Nunez and Thiago Soares. Fans tweeted their questions and at 5pm Marianela - everyone's favourite Lilac Fairy and Odette right now - and her lovely resident prince picked a selection and answered them online. The questions ranged from favourite roles/choreographers to issues about dancing around difficult sets to the challenges of a dancer's physical regime. One fan even asked Marianela what her shoe size is... because she wanted to knit her some socks.

It struck me that I've never heard a classical music fan offer to knit socks, or indeed anything else, for a favourite soloist. A test tweet I put out, pondering why nobody's yet offered to provide Lang Lang with home-made gloves, produced a flood of snide witticisms. One person said mittens would do better. Another quipped that perhaps Schumann's hand-stretcher would do him some good.

OK, so perhaps Lang Lang wasn't the best choice... and it was probably a little unfair on our dancers... But the attitudes of ballet fans and music fans to the top practitioners of their art is so different that I started wondering why.

Ballet fans queue outside the stage door for autographs. They send or even throw flowers (well, they used to, pre recession). They offer to knit socks. They want to know what the stars eat, or don't eat. They're disappointed yet concerned when a favourite dancer is off with an injury; they wish them a speedy recovery. They trot back to the same production time and again to test out the different casts and enjoy the compare-and-contrast process (our friends at The Ballet Bag often post about this). There's a high degree of sympathy and rather a lot of love. Ballet fans seem to be seriously nice about their enthusiasm.

And classical music fans? Be too successful a musician and they start to hate you. Be a woman and you risk having to fight a patronising, sexist atmosphere. Bring out a recording and someone will tear it to bits online if not in print. Give a concert and someone will bring in a recording device without your agreement - and the halls won't even stop them. Hold a political opinion and someone tells you to shut up and play, or shreds your musicianship because they don't happen to like your views. Suffer injury or be ill - especially if you're a singer - and you get a reputation for cancelling and letting people down. Hey, they've paid a lot of money for their seats and that apparently means you can't lose your voice even if you have. And you don't get true adulation until you're over 60. Our fans not only don't like their soloists; it often seems they don't even respect them. If you're a fan, be enthusiastic about a favourite performer and you're regarded as a non-critical idiot who's over-impressed, or suffering a post-teenage crush, or second only to a stalker.

Why this discrepancy? Looking at the questions for Marianela and Thiago on Twitter (hashtag #askthedancers), it seems that many come from people who themselves dance, professionally or semi-professionally or just for fun (like me), or did so as kids. They're concerned with issues of daily life: how do you eat, manage injury, spend your spare time if there is any? Ballet fans identify with the dancers. There's always someone they'd like to be, given the chance. They understand the processes better because they do it themselves, or have done at some point.

Now, I'm not saying that concert and opera-goers don't play and sing, because a lot do. Yet the degree of ignorance about what it takes to be a top-flight musician is much more extreme. Anyone can see how devoted, indeed possessed by the profession, a dancer must be; but some concert-goers don't even realise that a pianist has to practise every day ("Do you have a piano at home, then, love?" someone asked a well-known soloist friend of mine. "What's your day job? D'you work in a bank?").

The sheer physicality of musical performance is frequently downplayed in favour of the high-falutin' issues of poetry, philosophy, historically informed whatever, artistic fulfilment and so forth. That means that little consideration is given to, for example, performing conditions. The number of excellent musicians who have to face their craft being hobbled by the effects of freezing cold venues, lack of food or even tea, or lousy, badly-maintained pianos doesn't bear thinking about. International soloists travel much more than star dancers. Nobody seems eager to make air travel any pleasanter anytime soon, but the toll it takes on the body and mind can be severe. Why do we still expect soloists to function like automatons and regard them as unprofessional if they're unable to give 500% in an unheated venue on a snowy day after a long, stressful journey? Our lack of understanding of the profession means that we often don't let them do their best, even though that is all that they want to do.

Perhaps it is time to start communicating a little better regarding the absolute slog involved in a high-level musical career. Injury may not be quite as hefty an issue as it is for dancers, but it is really not that different. Being a professional musician involves intense physical labour, yet the number of performers who suffer serious injury or illness yet are simply denigrated for their own absence is quite alarming.

How to tackle these issues? Ideally, more people should learn to play musical instruments themselves. We need to identify more with the people who perform the music we love, and that means learning their craft from inside. Meanwhile, maybe we need to hold knitting lessons for classical music fans. My first pair of gloves will probably go to Benjamin Grosvenor.

Friday Kaufmann

I've been neglecting you, dear readers. I'm on a crazy diet to try to fix the stomach problems I've been having since this time last year - it is officially stress-triggered, by the way (many of you know what happened this time last year). I've been a bit preoccupied trying to find things I'm allowed to eat.

That means treats have to be aural rather than oral...so here is Jonas Kaufmann in Lohengrin. Anja Harteros is Elsa. Production by Richard Jones for Bayreuth. Kent Nagano conducts.

A firebird as a swan

It's been noted everywhere, since Natalia Osipova hit town the other day, that the Russian prima ballerina assoluta-in-the-making isn't necessarily a natural Odette. She's more firebird than swan, setting the place so much alight as Odile in Act III that it's no surprise everything goes up in smoke at the end. On the other hand, why should Odette be a moaning minnie? A swan is strong, fierce and near-supernatural, a favourite symbol of mythical purity and grace, the creature that leads Lohengrin and seduces Zeus. And, incidentally, a swan can break a man's arm.

Osipova's swan is Odette with a modern twist: fabulously musical, she goes into slow motion with those wonderful ritardando spins, or chooses an arabesque angle all her own, her Bolshoi training's super-extension a vivid contrast with the expert ensemble but contained style of the Royal Ballet corps. We may want to see her leap, but she wants to act - and for good reason. Her Odette is slow to trust yet quick to love, which makes her betrayal all the more tragic; and Osipova gives us an inspired moment before she throws herself into the lake that is the instant Odette cracks. Visibly, before she embarks on her final mime, she realises she can take no more: now her mind is made up and nothing will stop her. Acosta's Siegfried follows her, of course. But it is Rothbart's death that we see on stage, and the ferociously marvellous Gary Avis seems to drown in a turbulent lake of vengeful swans. We experience our heroine and hero's last moments vicariously through his.

Here is Anthony Dowell coaching Marianela Nunez, Thiago Soares and Christopher Saunders in the climactic pas de trois - from the Royal Ballet Live webcast last April. (I love how the pianist gets totally carried away - and the thing that Dowell describes as "the Judy Garland moment"...)



Back to Osipova & Acosta: it was the Black Swan pas de deux that sent everyone nuts, and with good reason. Osipova works the audience with the instinct for timing, and virtuoso teasingness, of a prize comedy actress, though her interpretation is certainly not about laughs. In her solo, she goes into a phenomenal series of turns and extensions with that trademark slow control; then seems about to do it again on the other side, until, with a glance into the auditorium, seems to say "nah, maybe not...". The smile she flashes at the conclusion would have set the house aflame even if the sequence of fouettes - and whatever else it was that she did in those famous spins, which were doubles with knobs on - had not already done so. Acosta's whirls themselves drew a loud whoop of joy from somewhere in the stalls in mid flow: like Papageno, I think he could have won a few auditorium marriage proposals given the chance. He is a dancer who, like Dowell, can own the stage with the move of one arm and can hover in the air for what feels like a whole minute when allowed, in the Black Swan finale, to leap. If only they would bring back Siegfried's Ashton solo in Act I...

Speaking of which, it hasn't escaped any critic's notice that this production is a wee bit past its sell-by date. The lurid designs, for a start. The schlock-Gothic Act III is more Rocky Horror Show than royal ball. Rothbart looks, as owl, like a cross between Rod Stewart and, unfortunately, Jimmy Savile (what has Rothbart been doing to his troop of bewitched maidens anyway?), and later, in the ballroom, more like George Michael on a really bad day. However powerful Gary Avis's acting - and no character dancer could be more so - it's hard to take Rothbart seriously in this get-up.

But though it's the designs that cause the most complaint, I have to add my usual bug-bear about the limited benefits of supposed "authenticity". Going back to the original text as far as possible means that we lose all the old RB production's gorgeous Frederick Ashton contributions (except the Neapolitan Dance, which would probably cause a balletomanes' riot if chopped). In Act I, it's not only Siegfred's solo that I miss, but also the old Ashton waltz. David Bintley's choreography for the waltz, apparently based on an original-version 'Dance of the Stools' - the wooden sort, I hasten to add - is irritating, fussy and chaotic and the maypole adds nothing at all except clutter. Meanwhile Act IV is missing some of my favourite music - the clarinet-led, Russian folksongish lament - jettisoned in favour of a pretty but interminable waltz, when there are waltzes galore elsewhere already. Also, Ashton's Act IV made spectacular use of possibly the most dramatic piece in the whole score, which does not come into this version at all. The current staging does win on drama in Act IV - but at a price.

But hey. We weren't there for the production, but for Osipova - and it was her night all right. I was sitting next to a dance critic of long experience and some renown who remarked that bringing in a star like Osipova is a move that could inspire the whole company, showing them all what's really possible. And going home, I bumped into Brian, My Ballet Teacher, who was in ecstasies, saying that Osipova had delivered moments in the role as he had never seen them done before. Brian has lived and breathed classical ballet all his life - he used to dance leading roles with London Festival Ballet and his classes are gloriously poetic and Vaganova-inspired - and he knows what he's talking about.

The orchestra, under Boris Gruzhin, was on mostly excellent form - what a treat to hear such luxury Tchaikovsky - and it's hard to imagine the violin solos played more wonderfully than they are by concertmaster Vasko Vassilev, whose deep amethyst tone is now an essential part of Royal Ballet Tchaikovsky classics as a brand. Please, Kevin O'Hare, couldn't we have him go on stage for a curtain call?

The Mikhailovsky Ballet - of which Osipova and her usual partner/husband, the utterly incredible Ivan Vasiliev, are members - is coming to Britain in the spring. Doing, among other things, Swan Lake. If the First Couple of Dance are there, buy, beg or steal a ticket.

Alma's gift?

Phone call from Simon Usborne at the Indy yesterday asking what I made of the "prodigy" Alma Deutscher, who has just been spotted and tweeted about by Stephen Fry. She's seven. She plays both the violin and the piano extremely well and has composed an "opera" as well as a piano sonata or two. Read his feature here.

So, here she is. What do you make of her?



My feeling is that she's very good, for her age, but I don't think she is an actual "prodigy", let alone, heaven help us, a "new Mozart". She's a seriously gifted kid who's been very well taught (and whose "shy and softly spoken" father hasn't demurred from uploading her efforts to Youtube). She's having lessons at the Menuhin School, which is exactly what should be happening. A top-notch training, good nurturing and please, no record companies yet, and she could become a fabulous young artist...in seven to ten years' time.

A prodigy in the Benjamin Grosvenor or Evgeny Kissin sense tends to play with both technique and musical maturity far beyond their years. Alma is certainly advanced, but she doesn't do that.



As for "writing an opera"...Now, look. I first tried to write a "novel" when I was 12, and I finished it, and it was about 50 pages long, and I was very excited that I'd managed it, and I showed it to Mum and Dad and they were thrilled, as of course they would be, but we didn't have Youtube or E-books then and nobody would have dreamed of putting it out there for all and sundry, and I'm very glad because it would be bloody embarrassing now. It's great to do things young, but one day you really are not going to want your starter efforts being gawped at...

More worrying is the fact that where music is concerned, maybe the public is just too ignorant to know the difference any more?

For those who are interested in the life-imitating-art spooky side of novel-writing, I regret to say that Alma's father's name, Guy, is also the name of Alicia's father in Alicia's Gift (which was published in 2007) and of course Alicia's name begins with an A too, and this kind of thing does keep on happening, turning up out of the blue 3-5 years after hitting the page... For the same reason I now know how the Hungarian Dances characters' last conundrum would finally resolve itself.