The other day I went to Cambridge and had a fascinating chat with Stephen Layton, the inspirational director of Trinity College Choir. Layton is one of those rare people who not only lives for music, but whom you can't help seeing does so. You see it in the way his face illuminates as he talks about the composers he loves to perform - whether it's Byrd, Purcell or Eriks Esenvalds - and the disarming sincerity with which he recalls his own start in musical life: he came from a council estate background and found that music "gives me something to live for". He won a scholarship to Eton, came to King's Cambridge as organ scholar, and the rest is history.
We got talking about how many of the best-known British conductors come out of Cambridge. Some musicians of my acquaintance are cynical about this. They think it's the old boys' network that ensures the career advancement. Now, I can't be sure how much of a role that does play. But one thing is clear. Cambridge University is (or used to be - I hope it still is) a melting pot of multi-talented people. If you have the gumption to get an orchestra together and conduct it, you can do so. Nobody will help you, but the raw material will be there: students to recruit to your band, chapels to perform in, halls to hire if you raise the money, college bars in which to put up posters. If you step up, take the initiative and make it happen, you can ensure that you have more opportunities to stand in front of an actual orchestra and perform than many conservatory conducting students will ever get. You won't find any conducting lessons in the music faculty - you might as well be studying languages, medicine or anthropology - but you might have the chance to teach yourself by learning on the job the hard way.
And for some, indeed for most of us, that experience will teach you the things you never forget. You learn to teach yourself by being forced to work out, from within, how it's done.
Some of the best instrumental teachers will leave their students with this attitude and the analytical ability to keep working it out for themselves long after they have finished their formal studies. (That was how I tackled, in my thirties, pieces of piano music I wouldn't have been able to get near as a student. You work out what the problem is, what you need to be able to do, and how to practise in such a way that it becomes physically possible.)
So, to some degree, all musicians need to be "self-taught", because a musical career is an ongoing process in which if you don't keep moving forwards, you move backwards. If you work hard in a systematic way, you'll improve. If you don't, your abilities will ossify. And this is true at any and every age.
But let's face it: you will probably also have some advantage in terms of technique if you have actually had some formal tuition (and this goes for conductors too).
Therefore the fuss attending one young competitor of the Tchaikovsky Competition has reached a point where it risks being seriously misunderstood.
Articles have been appearing saying that Lucas Debargue, fourth prize winner, is "self-taught". Even though his biography makes it perfectly clear that he went to the Paris Conservatoire. It seems he was a late starter: taking up piano from 11 (as opposed to 3), and serious music studies from 20 (not 12). That's not quite the same thing.
It's dangerous to overplay the "self-taught" card because, sad to say, a large part of the British public thinks music happens by magic. That it's something for "fun". That it doesn't take hard work to be good at it. That if you want your kids to have music in their lives as something to enjoy, they don't have to practise every day (despite the fact that it'll be a lot more fun in the end if they can play decently). They seem to believe, too, that if you by-pass all the traditional channels but follow your dream in any case, you'll be bound to come out as some kind of genius. That traditional studies are somehow bad and the inspiration of the moment is good, indeed is everything.
Britain's got canine talent
Pardon my French, but this is bollocks. Britain's Got Talent probably has a lot to answer for, but please note: it was won by a dog.
It bothers me, too, that this attitude is something that might somehow give governments carte blanche to cut funding for music education.
There are people, for sure, who can indeed make some headway on raw talent. But music does not happen by magic. Music happens, for the vast majority of people wishing to make it, by hard graft, long hours of solitary slog, gritty determination and personal sacrifice. Yes, you can teach yourself and many important lessons will be learned that way. But "self-taught" does not mean miracles. "Self-taught" means you did that work, but maybe you did more of it on your own than others might - and maybe you'd have done even better if you'd had good tuition from the get-go. By all means, praise a wonderful young pianist with a slightly unconventional approach. But please don't mistake it for a miracle.
It is ten years since the London tube and bus bombings of 7/7. 52 people were murdered in the attacks, and hundreds were injured.
That day I was supposed to go to the Hampton Court Flower Show with a friend. We didn't make it. Instead, I was at home trying to get hold of Tom, who had gone to a rehearsal at the south bank, and various musician friends who were on their way to the Guildhall, the Royal College and probably the airport.
I remember the sense of unreality that accompanied the fright until their texts pinged back to me. And, much, much worse, the grim, appalling news by email later that told me that a young executive from Rhinegold Publishing (where I worked for eight years and which produces Classical Music Magazine, Opera Now, Music Teacher, and the piano magazine I used to edit) had been killed at Edgware Road on her way to work. Her name was Jenny Nicholson.
A group of friends led by the violinist Philippe Graffin had a concert the following night at the Wigmore Hall and I had to get on the tube to go home from it. And forced myself down that escalator knowing that if I didn't do it then, I would probably never do it again, and it's very difficult to live in London if you can't face getting on the tube, and that a bunch of criminal thugs were not going to scare me into missing that performance, no siree. At the start of the second half, Philippe thanked the audience for coming out to the concert. An audience member called right back: "Thank you for playing for us!" Here's the account from the time...
Some of the musicians came over for dinner the following week and we listened to Schubert. This seemed the ultimate consoling music. I think it remains so.
Yesterday Edward Gardner took his final bow as music director of English National Opera after the last night of The Queen of Spades.
The new incumbent, Mark Wigglesworth, steps up in the new season. We love Mark too, but we are going to miss Ed like the blazes. I have no doubt that the brightest of brilliant futures awaits this thrilling, charismatic and galvanisingly energetic musician. The good news is he's coming back to do Tristan & Isolde next year.
ENO sent out a range of pictures from the event. Below, John Berry, flanked by the orchestra, bids farewell to Ed. I hope the figures high above them are not representatives of Arts Council England.
I had a lovely interview a few weeks ago with Gabriel Prokofiev: composer, grandson of Sergei, founder of Nonclassical and composer of a Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra which is now on the new secondary school Ten Pieces list compiled as a music resource for schools by the BBC. It was in the Independent while I was away in Turkey. Here is a longer version with a good few chunks of bonus material.
Gabriel Prokofiev is pondering, over a Turkish
lunch in Bethnal Green, a surprise development in his career as composer. The
BBC has picked a movement from one of his most famous compositions to date, the
Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra, to feature in its new Ten Pieces list for
schoolchildren aged 11 to 14. The list is second stage in an initiative that began
with a nationwide project to help schools introduce younger pupils to ten
pieces of classical music.
This concerto’s mix of a contemporary
invention – the scratching and sampling of a DJ on turntables – with a
traditional classical format exemplifies Gabriel Prokofiev’s musical inventiveness and looks
like a perfect choice to introduce secondary school pupils to the sometimes
mysterious spheres of contemporary classical music.
“I’m thrilled about this – I couldn’t
believe it,” Prokofiev says. “I’d heard about Ten Pieces and I’m a big fan of
the project. It’s worrying that music education doesn’t seem to be thorough
enough – there could be a lot more – and this is a very efficient way of
introducing children to some key repertoire. It’s exciting to see a
contemporary piece in there and hopefully it’s a chance to encourage young
people at the age when you’re developing your taste in music and deciding which
genres you’re into. I’m hoping that this will help to bring contemporary
classical into their list of choices.”
If you see the name ‘Prokofiev’ on a
musical list, you might well assume that it indicates Sergei Prokofiev, one of
the best-loved composers of the last century. Gabriel, who turns 40 this year,
is his grandson – and in many ways he is a chip off the old block, sharing with
Sergei an intent gaze, high cheekbones and a quiet, concentrated demeanour.
In other ways, of course, they are very
different. Although he says he feels a strong affinity with his Russian
heritage, Gabriel Prokofiev seems a Londoner through and through, living in
Hackney Downs with his partner, a French-Congolese academic and author, and
their three children whom he ferries to primary school in a cargo box attached
to his bicycle. His studio in Bethnal Green is in a crumbling 1960s block that,
he says, is facing potential demolition. The urban flavour of his music remains
powerful: a mix of driving rhythms, gritty timbres and outlines, and a lyrical
thread lurking under the surface that sometimes recalls the sardonic irony and
fantastical textures of his grandfather’s works. His Violin Concerto, premiered
last year at the Proms by Daniel Hope, evokes a narrative about the outbreak
of the First World War and included marches with an unmistakably Prokofiev-like
bite.
It’s entirely deliberate, he says: “I grew
up listening to my grandfather’s music. My siblings and I were aware as
children that we were getting some extra attention because of him – and I think
it made me a bit self-conscious. I love his music, he is my grandfather and
there are so many fans that it’s natural people get excited about it. But I’m
quite relieved that there hasn’t been too much comparison.”
Grandpa Prokofiev
The fear of comparison, he says, made him
at first over-hesitant to become a composer. “As a teenager and in my twenties
I was definitely intimidated,” he admits. “Any creative process is hard graft
and though you can have wonderful moments of inspiration, finishing a piece
requires a lot of work. I think I was intimidated to do that. So I focused a
lot more on popular music, making electronic and dance music and playing in
bands. I found another way of making music. But as I got more confident and
ultimately had a strong enough drive to want to do classical music, I realised
I’ve just got to get on with it. As I was writing my first string quartet I
planned that I was going to use a different surname - and the thought that I’d
be presenting the piece not as ‘Gabriel Prokofiev’ actually freed me up a bit.”
Was he not tempted to stick with popular
music – bigger sales, more income? “Sometimes I wonder if I should have stuck
longer at it,” he admits. “But I was trying to juggle everything and sometimes when
I was involved in a project and should have been going to record industry
parties and networking, instead I was in my studio writing a string quartet. Ultimately
I couldn’t help myself: I really wanted to write classical pieces and
eventually I got some orchestral commissions and decided it was an unmissable
opportunity.
“In pop, although you can earn more money,
it’s a much more thankless world. I had run-ins with record labels because
suddenly you had this weird feeling that your creative control is slipping away
– they’d wanted you to make it sound more like the track that had just been
no.1 last week, you had to make sure your music fitted in with certain DJs’
playlists – this whole side holds you back. For a classical commission, they
never give you strict creative criteria; maybe they’ll specify the duration and
the instruments, but there’s more emphasis on being original and doing your own
thing. With pop music, when I started to get into the more commercial area,
that started to bring with it more restrictions and requirements to conform,
and that was creatively frustrating. I’d find that sometimes I’d made stuff I
was really pleased with, but it turned out it was a bit too original or too
quirky, and people would say ‘it’s a bit far-out, what about something like
this?’, and play me something I found mundane and unimaginative. Often I felt
people were making judgments just because something had been successful – it
wasn’t always about the quality of the music.”
Prokofiev’s father, Oleg Prokofiev
(Sergei’s younger son) was a painter and sculptor, a prominent figure in the
movement known as the Nonconformists – Russian artists whose abstract work did
not meet the criteria of state-approved socialist realism. His second wife was a
British art historian who was allowed to travel to the USSR to research; after
she died tragically young; Oleg was permitted to come to her funeral in the UK,
and defected to the West while here. Gabriel’s mother was Oleg’s third wife,
Frances, and he grew up in Greenwich where the family settled,
Echoes of nonconformity pepper the
composer’s musical life too. Not least, a decade ago he started a record label
called Nonclassical, which has evolved into a veritable movement in its own
right. He says the name was largely coincidence as it derived from a pop label
he had been running, entitled Nonstop – “Originally it was going to be Nonstop
Classical, but that was too much of a mouthful,” he remarks. “Then the penny
dropped...” Launching Nonclassical, he was among the first to devise classical
club nights – presenting classical music in a nightclub setting that would feel
normal and everyday to younger people and help to create a new audience. The
organisation now runs a monthly event in east London.
“I’m always surprised how many young
musicians and composers don’t question a status quo that gives them so few
performances and reaches such limited audiences,” Prokofiev remarks. “It’s natural
that we need to find ways of getting our music out there more and reaching our
own peer group. A lot of different things motivate me; one is that there’s a
lot of great contemporary music and it feels unfair that it’s not made
accessible to many people. You can sit back and blame radio and TV, but the
other option is to get out and do something about it.
“Having played in bands, I was used to this
idea that you write a piece, then you gig it and your friends come and hear it.
I felt strongly with my classical stuff that it would appeal to my peer group,
but when it was performed in the traditional classical setting most of the
audience would be twice my age – there’s nothing wrong with that, but it seemed
a real shame that my friends weren’t there. That was a big motivator in getting
Nonclassical going – just thinking you’ve got to present classical music like
other music, in a more day to day approach, and for me that seemed pretty
obvious. If you’ve put a lot of work into composing a piece and rehearsing it,
then to have only one performance is criminal.”
His Concerto for Turntables is likely to
have a great many more performances now that it is on the Ten Pieces list; and
Prokofiev has his work cut out with a string of commissions, including more
concertos – a favourite medium, he says – and more works involving dance and
drama. He has also been asked to add some new musical creatures to the Carnival
of the Animals by Saint-Saëns and is trying to decide which to pick. I’m about
to suggest a cat – when I remember that possibly the most famous cat in musical
history is grandpa Prokofiev’s, in his perennial childhood favourite, Peter and
the Wolf. “Probably a no-go area,” Gabriel smiles.
We are not amused. Can it REALLY be the case that no women, not even Maria Mazo, were considered good enough to have a try for the final? Or is it same-old same-old yet again?
The piano jury is all male too.
The cello jury includes one woman. The cello final also includes one woman.
The violin jury includes three women. The violin final also includes three women.
Make of this what you will, because it all seems so wonderfully coincidental that I am stumped.
You can watch the final live, and catch up on earlier rounds, on Medici.tv, here.
Good luck to them all and may the best, er, man win.
