Stop the yells

Do you know what you're doing when you yell BRAVI!! a split second into the final chord? 

Especially if there are microphones above the platform?

The orchestra may be recording the piece. If you yell BRAVI - or indeed anything else - before the sound has quite disappeared, you are disrupting the recording.

The entire orchestra will then be kept another half an hour in the hall for a quick patching session.

These days most members of London orchestras, especially the younger ones with families, can't afford to live in London, so they have very long journeys home to places like Tonbridge, St Albans, Lewes or Bedfordshire - when they'd rather be in the other kind of Bedfordshire a little sooner. And with petrol prices high and the congestion charge/parking fees making a car in the capital basically pointless, people take trains. 

Our railways, however, still function on the presumptions of c1958 that nobody is out after 11pm, that nobody has to go on tour early in the morning, let alone on Sundays, and that there are only a handful of people in London anyway, so trains late in the evening are few and far between. 

When you yell before the music is over, and it is not over until that chord has died away, you ensure that more than half those musicians will miss their trains home. They will in many cases have to wait up to another hour for the next one and will get in at some unearthly wee time of morning, completely knackered.

Their spouses will be knackered too, will be fed up with the schedule and may spark a fight. Their children may wake up at the sound of the front door. Everyone has a bad day in the morning, whether at school or at work or on tour. An exam may be shakier than it should have been due to exhaustion. Someone at work may make a mistake in some words or figures or diagnosis. Someone may be late for a vital meeting. And so forth. Everyone does their best, but would have done better still with an extra hour's sleep.

The recording, meanwhile, may be entirely jeopardised. And it doesn't cost nothing to set it up.

This is all because one person in the concert hall couldn't hang on just one second to yell BRAVI.

So please, please, please: THINK before you YELL. 

Thanks.

Free ZooNation! Mad Hatter's Tea Party to be LIVE STREAMED

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party: ZooNation in rehearsal
Photo: David Sandison

I spent an utterly enthralling and invigorating few hours at the ROH the other week watching ZooNation rehearse its new family show for the Linbury, The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, and then writing about it. Huge respect for these amazing dancers who work so hard but manage to create so much fun while doing so. Full feature is in the Independent today along with a photo gallery from the rehearsals.

The show - the first-ever commission in hip-hop style from the ROH - runs from Saturday until 3 January, but the theatre has just announced that the performance on 18 December will be live-streamed on a) the Royal Opera House's Youtube channel and b) the BBC Arts website. If what I saw is anything to go by, it's going to be both terrifically danced and terrifically bonkers - and the tickets have been going like the proverbial hot cakes. Indeed, it's pretty much sold out - just a few tickets left now for Saturday 13 Dec 12.30pm - so you may have to log on to share the fun with ZooNation's dazzling stars Tommy Franzen, Lizzie Gough, Teneisha Bonner and, of course, 'Turbo'.

Orchestras win tax breaks, we hope

In yesterday's autumn statement, the chancellor, George Osborne, announced (among other things) that orchestras in the UK may get tax breaks. A system was brought in for theatre and dance productions back in the summer and the idea is to extend this to their colleagues on the concert platform. This would mean 20 per cent tax relief on home performances and 25 per cent on touring.

But while the principle of it is being welcomed, what nobody seems absolutely sure of is how it is going to work; Classical Music Magazine points out that it is a nod, but not a promise; and also, nobody seems quite certain whether it will make any difference to the fortunes of these organisations once the next round of ACE funding cuts is meted upon them. Here is the ISM response ("the fine detail is still to be worked up").

We suspect that this may be a case of the chancellor giving with one hand and taking away with the other and cynics will suggest that such a pledge could therefore turn out, in the broad scheme of things, not to be worth the paper it's written on. Personally I can't help wondering if it would not be simpler for all concerned just to fund the arts properly in the first place... But let's be grateful for small mercies, no?

Here is the ACE document explaining theatre tax relief.

Women triumph at last at the British Composer Awards

A lot of good news from the British Composer Awards, which held a glittering do last night. Nine first-time winners, and five awards to composers who happen to be female, two of them going to Kerry Andrew. And there's a prize for... Sir Harrison Birtwistle - indeed, few BCAs would be complete without that.

Kerry Andrew scoops the double
Photo: Mark Allen

Kerry Andrew's Woodwose: A Community Chamber Opera scooped Community/Education Project. Her Dart's Love won the Stage Works category.

Rebecca Saunders' Solitude for solo cello won Instrumental Solo/Duo

Kaija Saariaho won the International Award for Circle Map.

Cecilia McDowell's Night Flight triumphed in Choral.

First-time winners included Django Bates, Steve Forman, Ed Hughes, Martin Iddon, Cecilia McDowall, Kaija Saariaho, Rebecca Saunders, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Tom White. 

Birtwistle's sixth BCA prize was in the Vocal category, for Songs from the same Earth. 

The winner of the student competition was Bertram Wee, currently a student at the Royal College of Music, for his Sonicalia for tenor trombone and tuba. A name to remember.

The full list of winners and further information on the awards is available at the BACSA site, here. Meanwhile, we are glad if last year's message has perhaps been heard. Bravi tutti!

Now, remember, the key to the BCAs is NOMINATIONS. Anybody can nominate a piece, but the jury can only consider works that have been nominated. So if you're a performer who's loved playing a new work, a listener who's loved listening to one, or the proud commissioner who's made it all possible, get the nomination in for next time.

When Edward met Gabriel

I spent a very pleasant evening yesterday addressing the London branch of the Elgar Society - a remarkable collection of knowledgeable enthusiasts who meet regularly in Harley Street for lectures and studies of their chosen composer. Membership is highly recommended! People from all walks of life, many with fascinating backgrounds, are drawn together by their love of the great man's music, and I was invited to come along and give the Christmas talk as "something a little different". I went down memory lane a little way, exploring Elgar's impact on my life for, sort of, ever.

One matter we revisited was that of "Windflower" and the Violin Concerto; and it was also a fine opportunity to draw attention to the closer-than-expected links between Elgar and Fauré. Interesting to think that had the publisher's series elected to count Elgar as a 20th-century composer, I might have ended up writing about him instead of, or as well as, his fabulous French colleague, who lived through a decade less of the century. Here is a brief taster from last night.

.......

Fauré and Elgar had the same British patron, the banker Leo Frank Schuster, who was responsible for Fauré having a strong reputation in certain educated circles of Britain, rather to the composer’s own astonishment - though nevertheless not to the full extent that he deserved, as Elgar recognised. On one occasion in 1908 Fauré came to England to hear the rehearsal for the London premiere of Elgar’s First Symphony and Schuster held a dinner party for both composers together, which must have been a fine moustache-fest. 

They had much in common besides those moustaches, silver hair and dark eyes: an elegant sensibility, an unfailing instinct for songful melody, an intimacy of expression and a very rich, flexible harmonic language, which Fauré took considerably further; and each enjoyed an unexpected "Indian summer" of composition in which they produced some of their finest works. They also both had a great fondness for younger women, but thereby hangs many other tales: notably a Vera for Elgar and a Marguerite for Fauré...

Elgar held Fauré in very considerable esteem. After the French composer died, Elgar wrote to Schuster: “He was such a real gentleman – the highest type of Frenchman and I admire him greatly. His chamber music never had a chance here…I feel that it was held up, to our loss. As far as I resent anything – which is not far – I resent such neglect.” There’s no record, unfortunately, of what Fauré had thought of Elgar. But there are passages of Faure in which one can detect a real convergence of style.

I think that what the two shared in musical terms was actually the influence of Schumann. If you take this slow movement from Fauré’s Piano Quintet No.1, written in 1905, you can detect very Schumannesque qualities in the off-beat rhythms and the kind of textures and polyphonies he employs; it’s as if he’s passed Schumann through a prism and turned him inside out.

Or the beginning of the Piano Quintet No.2, written in 1921 during his "Indian summer", features the kind of long-breathed melodies with plunging sighs that we find so often in Elgar but that can be traced straight back to Schumann. First, think of the slow movement of Schumann's Symphony No.2.



Then try the Fauré quintet...

Now, here’s the beginning of Elgar’s string quartet, written just three years earlier in 1918 – a very different piece, but it is nevertheless fascinating to hear the two composers back to back, which doesn’t happen very often. You can detect some of the same kinds of gestures and the underlying harmonic instability that both are evoking, as if the ground under their feet is no longer so solid.

........

If you want to explore the other artistic relationship here in more depth - that between the music of Schumann and Fauré - do try to come to the Aspect Foundation's concert at the 20th Century Theatre, 291 Westbourne Grove, London W11 2QA,  on Thursday. This intriguing organisation - which puts on lecture-recitals with knobs on, featuring top-quality artists - has an evening devoted to the idea of 'Schumann and Fauré: Kindred Spirits', starring our violinist colleague Philippe Graffin, pianist Alasdair Beatson, violist David Adams and cellist David Waterman. More info & booking here.