My R3 Chopin Ballades podcast

If you missed my Building a Library today, comparing recordings of Chopin's 4 Ballades on BBC Radio 3's CD Review, you can download it as a podcast here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/bal

Enjoy!

Tomorrow on Radio 3...

Tomorrow morning my Building a Library on the Chopin 4 Ballades is on BBC Radio 3 at about 9.30am. I may live-tweet it. Or I may hide. Haven't decided yet.

After the Wagner play last Sunday, another Alicia's Gift two nights ago, getting an iPhone yesterday and trying to learn how it works (a decision that has taken, um, 5 years) and generally trying to stay on top of everything, I'm knackered. So...time for some wonderful ballet.

I've often wondered why the Chopin Ballades haven't been choreographed more often - apart from the obvious challenges for the pianist in residence, they would seem a gift to the world's great dance dramatists, wouldn't they? Until now I'd only found Jerome Robbins's The Concert with its marvellous Butterfly dance for the Third Ballade....but John Neumeier has created La Dame aux Camélias to Chopin, and here are Sylvie Guillem and Nicholas Le Riche working absolute wonders with a pas de deux to the great G minor Ballade No.1 - sexy, doomed and devastating. (Ne tirer pas sur le pianiste...)

Exciting young conductor signs with Percius

This is the space to watch that I mentioned yesterday...

Percius, the artists' management company headed by John Willan, has signed up Gad Kadosh, a young French-Israeli conductor with whom I was much impressed at Bernard Haitink's Lucerne masterclasses a couple of years ago and who was also in that sought-after selection for the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition this year. I'm told we can look forward to his UK debut in 2015.

Here's his biog from the Percius website.

Gad Kadosh is a young, intensely engaging Israeli conductor with a keen musical mind. Currently working as second Kapellmeister and assistant conductor at Theater Heidelberg, Gad received the first prize in the MDR Conducting Competition (MDR Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig), in 2011. He was then selected by Bernard Haitink as one of seven candidates to take part in his 2012 Conducting Masterclass in Lucerne with the Lucerne Festival Strings.
Journalist Jessica Duchen writes: “I first encountered Gad Kadosh at Bernard Haitink’s Lucerne Festival Academy masterclasses and was immediately impressed with his sensitivity, intelligence and intense musicality. When he took the podium the music seemed to flow naturally out of the orchestra; he allowed the piece to speak for itself. I hope we will hear a lot more of him in the future.”
Gad studied piano performance at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel-Aviv University and was awarded scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. He went on to study conducting with Vag Papian in Israel, Lutz Köhler in Berlin and Martin Hoff in Weimar. Prior to his position in Heidelberg Gad worked as Solorepetitor and Assistant Conductor at the Theater für Niedersachsen in Hildesheim.
In Heidelberg and at Winterthur he has conducted Tosca (Puccini) and Die Fledemaus (Strauss), and in Hildesheim works such as Don Pasquale (Donizetti), Eugene Onegin (Tchaikovsky), Das Land des Lächelns (Lehár) and Ein Walzertraum (Oscar Straus). Whilst Classical and Romantic repertoire form the core of his current oeuvre Gad has worked with young composers and conducted contemporary repertoire; he has directed ensembles such as Klangzeitort and Zafraan in Berlin, and conducted Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot (Maxwell Davies) and Arlecchino (Ferruccio Busoni).
Future appearances include performances of Cosi fan Tutte (Mozart), Die Fledermaus (Strauss), Rumor (Christian Jost), Babar, der kleine Elephant (Poulenc), Ifigenia in Tauride (Traetta), Un ballo in maschera (Verdi) and his debut at Longborough Festival Opera in 2015.

SINS Sunday!

The world premiere rehearsed reading of my new play about Wagner, Sins of the Fathers seems to have gone down pretty well yesterday at the Orange Tree. The audience laughed a lot, the actors seemed to be enjoying it (I think) and the performance zipped by and I got a jolly nice round of applause too, and it was all a bit wonderful. Our fabulous cast was Sarah Gabriel (Vicky/Cosima), John Sessions (Wagner) and Jeremy Child (Frank/Liszt).

A few pics from the rehearsal, complete with a reasonably idiomatic piano score of Tristan und Isolde and the magic bottle of Chateau Tristan 1865...

A soapbox and an orange tree

A weekend full of anniversaries kicks off with a new weekly "soapbox" slot, which the stringed instrument dealers Amati.com have asked me to write. They've even drawn me standing on one!

You can read my first Soapbox tract here. It's about Great Britten, of course.

And so tomorrow it is the world premiere, as rehearsed reading, of my new play Sins of the Fathers, about Wagner, Liszt and Cosima, at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. Info here. Call the box office for returns.

What does a playwright do all day once the thing is written and delivered? Well, I've been hunting for candle glue, preparing some labels for the bottle of magic wine and sourcing Wagner's dressing gown. Social media proved worth its weight in gold where the latter was concerned: an appeal on Facebook ("Urgent: need a silk dressing gown for Wagner, must fit John Sessions") has produced a friend - the real sort, not only the Facebooky sort - who inherited an antique silk red paisley number from her great-uncle that fits the bill to perfection. Now we just have to find the right something for Liszt to wear. A cravat should do the trick.

From this anniversary line-up, Verdi is missing. Only one thing for it: over to Jonas...