The stupendous Finnish soprano Karita Mattila with her prize
Tuesday night: the lights are low and the music's high on the agenda. The Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards are the annual UK jamboree that celebrates the best and brightest of music-making here on Brexit Island. Last night's was filled with warm welcomes, joyous encounters and plenty of good food and wine at The Brewery, round the corner from the Barbican. Andrew MacGregor and Sarah Walker of BBC Radio 3 served as hosts, there were enthusiastic words from RPS chairman John Gilhooly ("Live music is...priceless; live music is...sparkling...") and winners received their silver lyres from no less distinguished hands than Stephen Hough's.
In the bad old days when there was plenty of (or at least a bit more) money in the industry, we used to sit at this celebration through long speeches that would say how dreadful everything was and what a scandal it was that there wasn't more music on TV, and so forth. Now that the whole business is in mortal peril with the prospect of the economic and practical disruption likely to result from Brexit, paradoxically an atmosphere of celebration prevailed, with Stephen Hough declaring in his speech that we should embrace challenging music, stop apologising, not expect classical music to be for absolutely everybody, stop patronising the young ("we offer them Primrose Hill when they're ready to climb Ben Nevis") and appreciate the upside of the museums model which is, as I've often remarked too, not something to be disparaged on autopilot, but actually encourages great care, good display and creative communication with the audience. I hope he'll publish this speech somewhere.
A video message was also beamed in from the great Thomas Quasthoff, remarking that we have enjoyed 70 years of peace in Europe thanks in large part to the existence of the EU and that he would like there to be a similarly bright future for his 18-year-old stepdaughter's generation. Many of us cheered - not that there's much we can do about it, faced with a government apparently determined to drive our economy and our society alike over the Brexit cliff no matter how much damage it will do, and an opposition that seemingly won't oppose.
And the awards? It was quite a crop. Honorary membership of the RPS was presented to filmmaker Barrie Gavin, who has documented splendid quantities of 20th-century composers from Korngold to Boulez. The ceremony cited "the care and attention to detail which he invests in each and every subject, and his ability to demonstrate insightful authority and profound understanding".
The shortlisted conductors: Richard Farnes, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla and Donald Runnicles.
Photo montage from classical-music.com
Along the way there were treats aplenty: the news that Classic FM is commissioning new pieces from seven young composers; an award for the Lammermuir Music Festival - which is a relatively new organisation, having only launched in 2010; and the rare treat of seeing the only-two-ever Takács Quartet leaders together, the violinist-turned-conductor Gabor Takács-Nagy collecting the well-deserved prize for the Manchester Camerata, which he's leading to brilliant things, and Edward Dusinberre modestly accepting the Creative Communication prize for his wonderful book about playing the Beethoven Quartets, Beethoven for a Later Age (published by Faber & Faber). The Manchester Camerata's award was essentially for its Hacienda Classical strand, with which apparently it's going to open Glastonbury this year. But I don't think it hurt that they also played Beethoven with Martha Argerich.
The Learning and Participation award was won by the UK's first disabled-led youth orchestra, the South-West Open Youth Orchestra, their achievements attested to by a moving video. The Young Artist award went to pianist and Lieder specialist Joseph Middleton, the two composition awards went respectively to Rebecca Saunders for Skin and Philip Venables for 4.48 Psychosis, and the Audience Engagement prize to the East Neuk Festival - it was indeed a good night for Scottish festivals. Fretwork won Chamber Music and Song, violinist James Ehnes was awarded the Instrumentalist prize and Karita Mattila swept to victory in the Singer award.
I managed to squeeze into a dress I haven't worn for two years, hug four former interviewees, catch up with the whole Garsington team (they were shortlisted for Idomeneo), apologise for a non-attendance at something to entirely the wrong PR person, and win the best dessert of the evening as my annoying dietary condition meant that instead of whatever everyone else ate, I was given some utterly glorious chocolate goo. A fine time was had by one and all.
Lloyd Webber with a young musician from In Harmony, Liverpool
It’s all go at Birmingham Conservatoire. There's a
new £57m building nearly ready for next academic year, state-of-the-art
technologies to open up music education to the world – and a launch in the form of a Royal Gala
concert on 11 March 2018, which the conservatoire has announced will be conducted by the CBSO’s own music director, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. The college's new home includes a 500-seat concert hall and a 150-seat recital room, an experimental projects room, a jazz club, an organ studio and 100 practice rooms, as well as some remarkable digital developments.
I caught up with the conservatoire’s head,
Julian Lloyd Webber, who assumed the post in 2015 after having to bring his cello career to a close, to ask him about the challenges facing an institution on
the brink of what should be a historic breakthrough, yet at a time of enormous
national uncertainty. But the main challenge is not Brexit, says Lloyd Webber: instead, it is a national education system that fails the creative side of life...
JD: Julian, how’s the progress on the new
building?
JLW:
It’s manic at the moment. From the outside it almost looks complete now. There’s
still a lot of work to do inside, but we’re promised it’s all on schedule.
We’re a little bit nervous because we know we’re going to have a great,
great building and we have to go in there and make sure everything is working
properly. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be here.
JD: The, er, Walk of the Valkyries preview on Youtube is most impressive. The new facilities look state-of-the-art.
JLW: It really is. The whole place is built
around a “digital core”. In practice what it means is that any room in the
conservatoire can be linked with any other room. So if you’re giving a class it
can be relayed to someone in a practice room five floors up. Everything is
interconnected.
A lot of it is about being able to do live
classes outside, to relay and receive streaming live. Already we have a Soweto
project Arco, run by our head of strings, Louise Lansdowne, who comes from
South Africa and has created this programme, which is just growing and growing.
We had Sheku Kanneh-Mason come in to do a recital which was shown live to our students in Soweto, so already we’re starting – but in the
new building you’ll be able to do that anywhere and at any time.
JD: It’s great that Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla is
going to conduct the conservatoire orchestra's royal gala. Does this represent a
strengthening link between the institution and the CBSO?
JLW: The conservatoire opens to students on
25 September and we’ll be doing quite regular concerts from soon after
that, with quite a lot of
broadcasts. We open officially with our royal patron, Prince Edward, at a gala
concert in the main hall with our orchestra and Mirga has agreed to conduct it.
It’s good for the city and I think it’ll be wonderful for the students. And it shows
her interest in music education – she’s pretty keen on working with the
conservatoire. We already have a very strong link with the CBSO – possibly a
closer link than any other conservatoire with any symphony orchestra. A lot of
their principal players teach in the conservatoire; we have an arrangement
where sometimes our students can play along with the CBSO in rehearsal; and
also we have showcases where our students play at Symphony Hall just before
their concerts, twice a year with the orchestra and twice a year with our
pianists. Many of our students are in the CBSO Youth Orchestra. I think the
links are closer than anywhere else. It’s a great opportunity for the students
to be playing alongside people of that level.
An envisioning of the new-look Adrian Boult Hall
JD: What other ‘USPs’ do you want to
develop further?
JLW: When I first came in I was expecting
to have to make changes, but I’ve been really impressed with the heads of department.
The piano standard is extremely high – for instance, one student has just been
accepted for the Van Cliburn Competition, which is difficult to get into.
Some of them are so good, really good, but what this brings me to,
which I think is a USP for the conservatoire, is this: they are friendly, they
collaborate and they try to help each other. I think that’s an atmosphere we
have which is very special. Colleges can be very competitive. We’re competitive, but some institutions encourage that competitiveness and sometimes almost
encourage students to compete against each other. We don’t. We try to encourage
them to help each other, which is quite a different ethos.
We have had a pretty hard time at the end
of the old building’s life – it felt unloved and
uncared for in the middle of a building site. It hasn’t been easy. We lost our
main concert hall, so this season we’ve been going out into the city to play, which in many ways has been a good thing and a real learning
curve for students. Because we haven’t had a hall to give orchestral concerts
in, we’ve been going to lots of different venues around Birmingham, including the Town Hall and Symphony
Hall. I think there really is a spirit here of pulling together and getting
down to the job of making music as best we all can, and I want to carry that
spirit into the new place. It’s a completely different kind of building – bigger, more open, state of the art – but I want to keep that
community spirit.
JD: One hears that you’re an extremely
hands-on principal, always there and interested in everything…
JLW: For me it’s a natural extension to
what I’ve always done. I didn’t particularly want to go into conducting when I
had to stop playing the cello. I’ve always been involved in music education
with Sistema, In Harmony, etc. My father taught at the Royal College
of Music for many years and became director of the London College of Music, so that side of it feels very much in the blood. I can’t get to as many concerts as I’d like because there’s
so much going on here! We have a great jazz department – we offer
degree courses in jazz, which is quite unusual – and the standard is very, very
high, with people coming from all over the world for them. We had a whole
string of concerts at the end of last term and a concert at BirminghamTown Hall
where they launched the conservatoire's Ellington Orchestra. I had so much on that I nearly didn’t go,
but I was extremely glad that I did because they were so superb. It was really
one of the best things I’ve heard. I try to be
hands-on and I try to care for the students, because the music profession is
tough, it costs a lot of money now for students to go to conservatoire and I
feel a hundred per cent on their side. I want to help them as much as I can.
Julian Lloyd Webber in Birmingham
JD: So all these wonderful possibilities
are opening up, there’s this fantastic new building…and then along comes Brexit.
What do you think the main challenges are going to be, specifically for the
conservatoire but also for music education in this country generally?
JLW: You said Brexit?
JD: Yep…
JLW: There was a sudden bleep on the line.
JD: Maybe someone’s censoring us!
JLW: Well, Brexit…It’s kind of impossible
to know what exactly is going to happen. I’ve tried not to be pessimistic and
decide the whole world has ended. The Erasmus exchange programmes we’ve had
have been brilliant and I would hope and pray that they continue. But we have a
huge number of students from China and we’re developing the relationships with
Japan and Korea – we have a lot of far-eastern students. To be honest, I’m more
concerned about the state of the UK’s music education system than about Brexit. That’s because we can only reflect, in conservatoires all over the country, the
students that are coming through. Of all those countries in the Far East, I
can’t name one in which music education isn’t absolutely the norm. Children
learning music is a normal thing; in families that’s what children do. That’s
increasingly reflected in the standard of what they’re producing. But here,
with the EBacc and taking arts subjects out of the curriculum, we will pay the
price for that. I think we already are.
That concerns me more than anything else at
all, because it’s so hard to bring these things back. There’s a knock-on effect
through the whole profession, with peripatetic teachers deciding not to do that
for a job because there’s no work. That is the thing that really, really
concerns me. We’ve been around a while, this country; we can deal with Brexit
and I cannot believe that we will not be working with students and people in
Europe, so I haven’t been as pessimistic as everyone else. That doesn’t mean I
think it’s a great idea, and the whole situation with visas could be a
nightmare. But I think we will survive it and I think ways will continue for us
to do a lot of business in Europe.
JD: How much can the Conservatoire do to
encourage music education at grassroots level?
JLW: We’re trying to do that. Richard
Shrewsbury came in at the same time as me, July 2015, as learning and participation manager, which we didn’t have before. He’s full of ideas and now
we’re working with over 3,000 school students. These things cost money, of course, and we
don’t have as much as we would like, but he’s doing an absolutely brilliant
job. Now we’re trying to work with the music hubs, we’re going into schools and
we’ve just had a competition for Shakespeare Week among schools all over the region, composing a piece based on Shakespeare works. We
need to do this, we need to be filling the gap the government has created – and I
think that applies to all conservatoires. I think we have a duty to do it. By definition
it’s only a drop in the water, though it still is a drop. But I think the core
responsibility for music education has to lie in the national curriculum. Why
should the whole state school sector be deprived of music?
JD: Last but by no means least, what’s your long-term plan for the
Birmingham Conservatoire?
JLW: We’re going to have the best building
and the best facilities and we already have a stream of great visiting artists,
so it’s not a question of making huge changes; it’s adding to what’s already
there. We’re making judicious appointments – for instance, we’ve brought in
James Galway as international chair of flute, we’ve got Catrin Finch as
international chair of harp, we’ve got people coming in now who are the top and
I want to continue that. I said the first time I came in to all the visiting
teachers that the standard is really good already, so nobody needs to be
worried – but I want to make sure it goes on and that we bring in the best that
we can and therefore attract the best students that we can. We want to make it
the best.
Quick note: if you're around the Southbank Centre for the Belief & Beyond Belief Festival today, please pop along to the pre-concert talk. Tonight's performance includes Beethoven's Ninth, with the LPO conducted by Kazushi Ono [replacing an indisposed Christoph Eschenbach], and I've been drafted in to moderate a pre-concert discussion with professors Matthew Bell of Kings College London, an expert on German literature, and Benjamin Walton of Cambridge University's music department. We'll be exploring the history and context of the symphony and Schiller's Ode to Joy. Ballroom floor, Royal Festival Hall, 6.15pm. Please come along and say hello.
A terrible journey; a moving tale; a fortunate end. Many have not been so lucky. Last week a young Kurdish musician was drowned while trying to reach his brother in Belgium, dying with his violin in his arms.
Here is Rami's story. His album is released today.
After travelling thousands of miles from Syria with his violin on his back, 21-year-old refugee Rami spreads a message of hope with his life-affirming debut album ‘My Journey’, released on Friday 5th May on Decca Records. The lead single ‘Ode to Joy – Anthem for Europe’ is being released digitally in support of the British Red Cross as part of Red Cross Week (7-13 May) to help raise awareness of people in crisis, wherever they are.
In 2015, Rami was studying at a music school in Homs, Syria, but as war developed, he had no choice but to flee the country in search of safety. He travelled from Syria, through Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Germany, on foot and by boat, often running and swimming for his life. However, through this exhausting journey, Rami managed to keep his violin safe by wrapping it in cling film and carrying it on his back.
After travelling from Syria to Lebanon and Turkey, it took four attempts to get a boat from Istanbul, and after the engine failed, Rami and other passengers rowed through the night until they were picked by the Greek coast guard and taken to Kos. Rami says, “I arrived and I was so tired. I slept together with the violin because I was scared of someone stealing it.”
From Athens, Rami travelled to Macedonia. At a camp on the border, he started to play a beautiful Arabic-influenced version of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ for his fellow refugees, and was heard by journalists. He then travelled to Serbia, where he spoke to journalists about the bad living conditions. Rami was punished for his actions, separated from his friends and deprived of food and drink – until a security guard noticed the violin and Rami started to play for him. Rami explains, “This made him very happy. He started to film me and then spoke to his wife. He got a lot of enjoyment from this.” The security guard reunited Rami with his friends and they continued on the next stage of their journey from Belgrade to Budapest by train.
After Rami was thrown off the train by police, he walked through the forest from Budapest with a friend. However, police caught up with them, and running in different directions, Rami became separated from his friend – and his violin. Rami was taken to a camp, which he described as “so bad and so sad” with everyone living in tents in hot and dusty conditions. He left the camp and travelled through the night to Austria, and onward to Munich and Sasbachwalden in Germany. He was given refuge there and – after telling his story to a local woman – he was handed a violin.
Rami was then transferred to a sports hall in Lahr, filled with bunk beds and more than 200 families, and he practised in the room with washing machines. He found a local church to pray and practise in – and a photo of him playing violin there appeared in a local newspaper. After seeing this, a German couple offered him a room in their house and gave him the chance to practise his violin in quiet and taught him German. This marked the start of a new chapter for Rami, which led to him making his very first album.
Alex Fraser, Director of Refugee Support at the British Red Cross said, “A huge thank you to Rami and Decca for this collaboration which will help raise funds for the British Red Cross. Rami’s story is incredibly moving and shows the dangerous journey refugees undertake to find a place of safety.
The Red Cross works in countries spanning migratory trails across the globe. The funds raised from this single will go towards supporting our humanitarian work, supporting refugees arriving in the UK as they start to rebuild their lives and be reunited with their families.”
Exciting times here as summer approaches and the Garsington Opera team gears up for the world premiere on 28 July of Silver Birch, the new opera by Roxanna Panufnik with a libretto by me plus some Siegfried Sassoon poetry.
There's a supposition doing the rounds, though, that Silver Birch is a "community opera", but in fact we've called it something else: a "people's opera". And for a good reason.
A "community opera" is generally about the experience of those taking part in it, who in many cases are not auditioned. This "people's opera" is about the audience too: whether or not they are seasoned opera-goers or first-timers at a performance, the show should be equally enjoyable for all.
We do have a wonderfully large community involvement, but everyone has been auditioned and there is a strong professional core.
The Learning and Participation department has led the project, with Karen Gillingham, head of the department, as director; 180 people are taking part in the performance, including children from local primary schools, members of the armed forces, the Garsington adult community choir - and also a truly fabulous solo cast of some of the best young singers in the country.
Victoria Simmonds (mezzo-soprano) is our strong-hearted Anna
It will be performed on Garsington's main stage, with the company's music director, Douglas Boyd, conducting it himself.
So it is, really, for everyone and about everyone. It's all about all of us working together. That's one reason we love it so much, and we hope you will too!
