Local heroes come home... to Hull

Xander Parish in Ballet 101 (photo from the Yorkshire Post)

Maybe it's something in the Humber's water, but an inordinate number of superb British ballet dancers have come out of the pleasing historic town of Hull, which is often termed - most unfairly - 'the armpit of England'. Those dancers include Kevin O'Hare, director of the Royal Ballet, and Xander Parish, the first British dancer in the Mariinsky, so it's worth celebrating - and that's exactly what Hull, currently the UK City of Culture, did on Saturday.

Having refurbished and built new sections for its New Theatre, it was an inspired idea to call in the Royal Ballet for a reopening gala - the company's first visit to the town in 30 years. Hull's home-grown stars were out in force. Parish put in an appearance out of Russia; alongside him were his sister Demelza Parish, a Royal Ballet first artist; Joseph Caley, now a principal with English National Ballet; Elizabeth Harrod, an RB soloist, aka Mrs Steven McRae; and the local ballet school that can really take the credit for laying the foundations of their success, the Skelton Hooper School of Dance and Theatre, brought their current youngsters to strut their stuff alongside.

(photo: Yorkshire Post)

The theatre is an art deco gem, full of 1920s Egyptian-reference detail, done up in style even down to the fonts on the signage. For the evening it was packed with all ages, newcomers, seasoned balletomanes and everything in between: elderly or disabled ballet fans in wheelchairs, schoolchildren guzzling crisps and sweets throughout and cheering to the rafters as soon as the music stopped, little girls turning cartwheels in the shiny new foyers. Outside, another 5,000 people braved the chilly night air to watch a relay to the big screen in the park. In the afternoon, a hundred local children had participated in Take Flight, an outdoor performance led by the brilliant young Australian dancer and choreographer Calvin Richardson, inspired by Swan Lake. Richardson himself proved one of the gala's highlights, performing a stunningly-shaped contemporary Dying Swan solo to Saint-Saëns, with amazing freeze-frame arms.

But then, almost everything in this generous programme was a highlight. William Forsythe's The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude - that Schubert finale for three girls and two boys that leaves you  breathless just from watching  - was a tremendous opener, with Marianela Nuñez, Beatriz Stix-Brunnell, Akane Takada, James Hay and Valentino Zucchetti (though the lime green and magenta sets the teeth on edge a bit). A warm introduction from O'Hare paid tribute to his own Hull background, then introduced Parish for a star turn in Ballet 101 by Eric Gauthier - a dazzling array of ballet poses interacting with narration and showing off Parish's steely technique. Parish (whom I interviewed for The Independent a few years back) had set off for St Petersburg after feeling he'd had to carry one spear too many; now the Russian company has moulded him into a magnificently princely principal, his mile-long limbs and super-wide wingspan enhanced by the open-hearted Mariinsky style. Fortunately Ballet 101 showed off that he's far more than a mere gentlemanly presence - though he can do that too, as evinced by the Sylvia pas de deux, serenely performed with the enchanting Yasmin Naghdi.

The star turns thrilled from start to finish: Natalia Osipova and Matthew Ball in the balcony scene (minus balcony) from Romeo and Juliet was my personal number one: Osipova, one-of-a-kind volatile, vivacious and scarcely touching the stage, offset finely by Ball - a beautifully classic dancer in the English tradition, poetic and very gentlemanly indeed, with the special quality of never looking rushed, no matter how fast he spins. Edward Watson and Melissa Hamilton (who's home from Dresden and on sizzling form with fine-tuned, sinewy strength and presence) brought a very grown-up Wayne McGregor pas de deux, Qualia, in which they do plenty of things that one didn't think a human body could possibly do. At the other end of the spectrum, Steven McRae and violinist Robert Gibbs took the stage together for a rip-roaring tap version of Monti's Czardas, choreographed by McRae. This list could carry on - it's only a taste of the wonders on offer.

Here's Steven performing Czardas on World Ballet Day, with violinist Vasko Vassiliev:



Parish's fellow Hull dancers pulled a special weight, and that of others. Demelza Parish shone in the world premiere of Heart's Furies, a trio by Andrew McNicol set (rather startlingly) to the first movement of Janáček's Piano Sonata and capturing its turbulence and anguish. Joseph Caley turned a different kind of anguish - Hamlet's, no less - into the dazzling jazzy solo from David Bintley's The Shakespeare Suite, and later joined Takada for the Le Corsaire pas de deux to close the performance. Harrod and McRae finished the first half with a beautiful, heartbreaking account of the last pas de deux from The Two Pigeons, complete with supremely well-behaved birds. A colleague who's seen the work innumerable times assured me that they sometimes aren't, and that once one of them fluttered off into the gods and eluded capture for several hours thereafter.

The ballet school gave an apposite piece of their own called A Dancer's Story, simple yet very effective: children in a Hull backstreet gaze through a dance studio's windows, then are transformed into its pupils, watching and learning from the older students.

And if there's one a "takeaway" thought from the evening, it was this. Part of ballet's mystique, its mythology, its self-narrative, is the image of the child drawn to dance by seeing her/his peer group dancing and longing to join in. Partly it's the Nutcracker story: the child transformed into the woman she longs to become. Partly, it's something within all of us, the atmosphere of those long-lost formative years recaptured in the unique language of dance and recreated for new generation after new generation. But in classical music, are we missing this type of narrative?

It can happen if you join a youth orchestra: the youngsters at the back of the second fiddles can be inspired by the older leaders, an example that spurs them on to work hard and follow their dream (that's how my OH started out: in the Cheshire Youth Orchestra, whose leader at the time happened to be the teenage Peter Manning, now the Royal Opera House's own concertmaster). But to reach that point, the smallest children have already had to start playing, to have been inspired to start and work their way to a halfway decent level of ability. You don't often get to press your nose to the glass of a music school's window and long to join in, and the only way to do this via the TV is usually the BBC Young Musician of the Year, which happens only every two years and now mostly on a non-mainstream channel with limited actual performances. In ballet, though, we wouldn't even question the notion that that's how it begins, that you have to start training very young, and that that's how most kids get interested: through the example of their peer groups. Is there some way we can make this story a bigger part of music as well?

Photo: Danny Lawson/PA

Meanwhile, I doff my hat off to pianists Kate Shipway and Robert Clark, who stormed Gottschalk's Tarantella while Francesca Hayward and Alexander Campbell charmed and fizzed through Balanchine's high-jinks choreography. The pianists, violinist Gibbs and cellist David Cohen deserve medals of their own, especially as the whole thing had to be considerably amplified because of the big-screen outdoor simulcast.

Huge congratulations, then, to this year's City of Culture and wishing Hull the best of the best for the rest of it.


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Rattle's big night

Rattle and the LSO.
Photo: Doug Peters/PA

THIS IS RATTLE. The posters greet you at the main entrance, on the programme cover, everywhere around the Barbican. And the first sound that meets your ears is of children singing. The foyer is crammed with opening-night concert-goers gazing up at a choir of primary-school kids on the balcony showing off their musical skills to the manner born. It's a great way to start the big night that marks the opening of Sir Simon Rattle's long-awaited return to Britain as music director (yes, music director, not chief conductor) of the London Symphony Orchestra. Explore their website to read about the plans for innovative digital work, outreach, British music focuses, streaming, filming and even some rather fine concerts. These are going to be exciting times, or so one might hope.

"This is music, this is what we believe.

Music is for everybody, music is a right.

It's the air we breathe, the water we drink." 

--- Sir Simon Rattle

Rattle has been on the TV, on the airwaves, in the newspapers. He only has to sneeze for it to make the headlines, it seems. Having a household name at the head of the LSO can only be a good thing for musical life here. And his chosen opening night programme was something that probably no other conductor could get away with and end up still speaking to the management: a musical marathon of five works by British composers, four of them alive and kicking hard, two of them present to take their bows, and among them names of the type that in other settings sometimes strike fear and paralysis into the hearts of potential attendees. Not so here: the crowd, if occasionally bemused and unquestionably challenged, at worst read its programmes and at best positively lapped up the craggy music by Helen Grime, Thomas Adès, Harrison Birtwistle and Oliver Knussen before relaxing into the sunlit garden of Elgar's Enigma Variations. If there was champagne for the musical soul of London, food for thought was never far away.

The first half could scarcely have been better chosen. First was a new work commissioned by the Barbican for the LSO, a five-minute piece by Grime named 'Fanfare' - but 'Overture' might have been better, since it seems to contain the seeds of much more than its moniker suggests. Vivid string syncopations and starbursts of percussion made celebratory noises, but the wide-ranging imagination in terms of forces mingling - whether punchy musical motifs or glitter-rich orchestration - suggested there is plenty to build on and possibly expand.

The young Simon Rattle, portrait by Norman Perryman

Adès's Asyla is 20 years old: a tried and tested piece of diamond-hewn musical ammunition, premiered by Rattle in Birmingham back in the day, and since then played all over the world. That probably gives it 'modern classic' status, but it only becomes more startling on repeated hearing. Its swirling dreamscapes, its visionary, passacaglia-like slow movement, the simultaneous unfolding of extraordinary ideas one on top of another, the adopting of club music techniques (the programme includes a story from Adès about how writing this passage landed him in hospital with a suspected heart attack) - all of this sounds more original, fresher and more bizarre every time around. The piece can sparkle a little bit more than it did last night, perhaps - I've heard tenser, tauter accounts - but placing it centre stage was absolutely the right thing to do.

Christian Tetzlaff was the soloist for Birtwistle's Violin Concerto of 2009-10, which shows the doyen of British composers in relatively mellow mode. While the orchestration has a dark, cave-like spaciousness and resonance, or sometimes moves like a leviathan in the deep (the tuba writing helps), Tetzlaff was caramel-toned over the top, a poet amid a mass that sometimes comprehends, other times discusses, and often serves to offset the eloquent tenderness of his thoughts. It's a collaborative concerto, essentially: wind players emerge from the ranks to set up solo spots alongside the violinist one at a time, and Tetzlaff did all he could to spur them into playful musical discussion. The octogenarian composer, who today somewhat resembles a comfortable, shuffly polar bear, took his bow to a respectful ovation.

Oliver Knussen's Symphony No.3 is a short three-movement work of sensitive, moody, atonal architecture, begun when the composer was all of 21 in the early 1970s, and completed in 1979. Rattle tackled it with enormous affection, shaping and pacing it splendidly. If it proved one big chew too many for a single evening, probably few would have admitted it yesterday; we could reflect, instead, on why it is that when there are so many fine pieces of modern British music in existence, we can wait years for them to return, then get three at once (London buses, etc...).

It's also intriguing to think that while the idiom of this music was fully current by 1973, that was almost a half-century ago - yet the basic style of what's thought of today as mainstream British modern music has not changed much. The finest voices within it are individual and distinctive, and produce occasional masterpieces. But now, one could reasonably contend, isn't it time to move on?

Settling into Elgar's Enigma Variations after all of this was like stepping out of a deep lake onto dry land. The sense of gravity is transformed. Your breathing changes. You know where your feet are. Rattle's account of the variations homed in on the affection of the composer for his "friends pictured within" - and he coaxed the LSO strings into some Seidel-esque marvels on the G string in "RPA", a hush to end all hushes at the start of "Nimrod", an elusive, butterflyish, cherishable delicacy in "Dorabella" and a moment of anguish for "***" on her long sea voyage - for everybody, there must be one that got away. The finale was a giant musical bear-hug. The orchestra, playing its many socks off for its new boss, blossomed and shone; and the hall, too, was full of friends - friends of music and art and joy. If anything represents hope in Brexit Island today, it's the return of Rattle.

And there's that elephant stalking the corners of the room. The ambition expressed in the Barbican last night is vast: new initiative will follow new initiative and even the new hall was spoken of as a budding reality - though a lot of money still has to be found through donors and sponsorship to make it happen. Nobody said what many of us are thinking: how on earth are we going to manage any of this after Brexit?

What will happen to the LSO's large contingent of European players? What will happen to international touring if we end up with visas, customs and tariffs even to travel a couple of hours to Paris or Amsterdam? How can we continue to attract the world's greatest soloists if the pound plummets still further and our fees can't remain even slightly competitive on the world stage? Would Sir Simon have come back at all if he'd known Brexit was going to happen? (They asked him this on the TV news. He said it would have "given me pause".) It's possible, of course, that our civil servants, working behind the scenes, can avert a worst-case, crash-out Brexit, but there's scant sign of competence, understanding or realism among the front-bench politicians who seem hell-bent on driving us smack into the cliff-face, determined to sacrifice everything of the public good to a public opinion formed on the basis of proven lies.

Welcome home, Sir Simon.


If you enjoy JDCMB, please help to fund its year of development at GoFundMe. I'm trying to raise £5000 by next June.

Out now: Zimerman's first solo album since 1994

It's out. And it was worth the wait. Pianophiles have hung on for a new album from Krystian Zimerman since 1994, when his Debussy Preludes won a Gramophone award. Concertos, yes; a rather wonderful piano sonata by Grazyna Bacewicz along with her piano quintets, yes; but all alone, no. Finally here it is: Schubert's A major Sonata D959 and B flat major Sonata D960.

These are unlike any other interpretations of these works that I've heard: he makes them entirely his own, and they scrub up like buried treasure after a bath. Yet with such eloquent phrasing, you feel Schubert himself is speaking to you directly, with something urgent, profound and life-affirming to communicate. If you only listen to one thing this week, make sure it's this. Incidentally, if you're a vinyl nut, this album will soon be available on LP as well.

Here's one Spotify extract...this is the Andante from the B flat major Sonata.

Back in May, into my in-box popped a message from DG: could I go and see Krystian, interview him and write the booklet notes? ("Er, let me have a think and get back to you..." said I, or not exactly...). Here are two little tasters of the resulting text, in which he talks about his view of the sonatas and the genesis of this project. Lots more inside the CD booklet. 

JD: How would you characterise these sonatas?

KrZ: I think they contribute significantly to our view of Schubert’s greatness. He switches into a different gear, daring radically new ideas in harmony and polyphony. Compared to his earlier sonatas, they could almost be by another composer.

The slow movements of the D959 and D960 sonatas are maybe the saddest music I know: the major keys are even sadder than the minor, because this is complete resignation, complete acceptance, perhaps thinking of leaving this planet and ending life. The middle of the A major’s slow movement is revolutionary. It’s a milestone in music: a tremendous tempest where all hell breaks loose. You feel it almost foreshadows Wagner, because it looks incredibly into the future. Yet both sonatas have scherzos that are full of humour, and gorgeous last movements in which Schubert integrates so beautifully the singing character of the cantilena.

I find the repeats absolutely necessary. In D960 the low trill in the left hand occurs fortissimo only at the end of the exposition, in the first-time bars, and it’s completely different from the other three times we hear it. But also, when you return to the beginning it sounds transformed after you’ve heard the whole exposition. The movement is long, but I have tried to choose a tempo that is always fluid, with plenty of breathing.

...

JD: The recording venue was the Kashiwazaki City Performing Arts Centre, Japan. Kashiwazaki is the location of a gigantic nuclear power station. After a terrible earthquake there in 2007, you gave a fundraising recital for the town – and to thank you they later offered you a week’s use of this hall?

KrZ: Yes, I am extremely grateful to the town of Kashiwazaki and its mayor, Mr Hiroshi Aida. The hall was built after the original Performing Arts Centre was destroyed in the earthquake, and is designed by a student of the great acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota. I thought it was among the best acoustics I had encountered and I thought I would love to record there. In Toyota’s halls, every note is clear, yet each is in a cushion of warm surroundings. For example, playing in Suntory Hall feels like flying – the piano opens up and you can do incredible things because you are so inspired by this acoustic.

...We arrived to record the Schubert… in three metres of snow. The staff were unbelievably generous, providing heating, food and four people to run everything smoothly, even when we worked until 2am. I am also very grateful to my excellent sound engineer, Rainer Maillard, who agreed to continue working that late. We recorded everything using 32-bit technology, perhaps for the first time on Deutsche Grammophon.

The snow was so deep that one night we had to shovel our way out. But inside, it was another world and I was able to spend five days completely immersed in Schubert.


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Something for the weekend: Paris with Jonas

Jonas Kaufmann's new album of French arias, entitled simply L'Opéra, is out next week. Being JDCMB readers, dear friends, you are probably going to like it, so here is Sony's beautifully made trailer, narrated by the man himself.

He strikes a fine balance between known and unfamiliar repertoire, with the presentation on the video informal but informative, classy but unpretentious. He's accompanied by the magnificent Orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera from his home town of Munich, conducted by Bertrand de Billy. Ludovic Tézier joins him for the Pearl Fishers duet and Sonya Yoncheva for scenes from Massenet's Manon that even blissed out my cat, Ricki, not thus far noted for his appreciation of anything other than supremely refined playing of Mozart piano sonatas.

The album also includes dark-hued accounts of Massenet's 'Pourquoi me réveiller' from Werther and the Flower Song from Bizet's Carmen, but culminates in the glory of Berlioz's Les Troyens, performed with multifarious colour and vast, mature, refined authority. We hope you love it as much as we did.

Release date is 15 September and there's more info here.

To the Conway Hall be true

As the capital's concert series gear up for the new season, here is a spotlight on an undersung yet extraordinarily valuable venue in central London. Still, you might not know about it unless you'd been lucky enough - as I was - to have been taken there every Sunday night right through your childhood and adolescence to hear and learn the chamber music repertoire.

My father was a regular at the Conway Hall's South Place Sunday Concerts and I went along from the age of about 8, mesmerised by hearing great live music at close quarters and contemplating the mysterious quote above the proscenium arch, 'To Thine Own Self Be True' (it's from Hamlet). A while ago the London Chamber Music Society moved its Sunday concerts to Kings Place and Conway Hall started its own. The first concert for 2017-18 is this Sunday, 10 September, 6.30pm: the Tippett Quartet and pianist Emma Abbate play a delectable programme of Haydn's String Quartet Op.103 and the piano quintets of Schumann and Dvorák.

I'm not sure I'd be here now without those Sunday concerts' influence. So I got together with the pianist Simon Callaghan, who's in charge of the programming, and asked him what it's like to run them.

The Badke Quartet rehearsing in the Conway Hall.
(I remember that lamp from when I was a kid...)

JD: Simon, how did you come to be running the concert series at the Conway Hall?

SC: In May 2008 I met Giles Enders who was then the manager of Conway Hall at an English music event at the Royal College of Music. We chatted and I became very interested in this historic place I had never heard about, and its potential as a first-rate concert venue! I visited the following week and the idea of me taking over as Director of Music was born. I won't lie and say it's been easy - it was a steep learning curve - but I've enjoyed every minute, especially the opportunity to hear wonderful chamber music every week and get to know lots of world-class musicians.

JD: Please give us a few vital statistics about the hall?

SC: The hall seats just over 400 people and is cherished for its wonderful acoustic, no doubt enhanced by the mainly wooden fittings throughout. Players of all instruments love experiencing the warm, intimate atmosphere and it is particularly suited to small chamber ensembles. The music can be enjoyed from any part of the hall but I particularly enjoy the centre of the balcony where the full 'bloom' of the sound can be absorbed!

The London Mozart Players and Howard Shelley. Photo: Tonmy Lam

JD: I’ve been going to the Conway Hall most of my life, as my father used to take me to the Sunday evening series. What does the place mean to you? What is it that inspires such loyalty in its audience?

SC: I think the 'down to earth' atmosphere coupled with the consistent high quality of the music making is what inspires such loyalty in our audience. Added to this is the variety of repertoire on offer, which draws a healthy number of new audience members each week. Since the first time I went there in 2008, I have grown ever fonder of the whole place and particularly the main hall, where every member of the audience can see the words 'To Thine Own Self Be True' above the stage throughout the performance, adding a contemplative element to the experience of the music.

JD: When you’re dealing with an audience who love their Beethoven quartets but might not be so open to unusual pieces, how do you handle the balance between pleasing them and attracting new people with other repertoire?

SC: This is a issue I'm not sure I will ever get to the bottom of! Our audience come from very varied backgrounds and while there is indeed a good number of people who come every week, our more adventurous programmes tend to attract lots of new people, which is great. I've also spoken to lots of our regulars recently who have developed quite an appetite for a greater variety of repertoire, so we are getting there. Contemporary music performance is something that traditionally was very common at Conway Hall, so I'm keen to do more of this, and perhaps even to commission some new works.

A Valentine's Day concert...

JD: What are the chief challenges you’re facing with this series at the moment? How would you like it to develop from here?

SC: The exciting developments and growth in our series in the last couple of years have left me greedy for more. My main challenge now is to make sure more and more people get to know about Conway Hall and especially the wonderful musical events that happen there. I speak to people almost every week who have recently discovered it and wish they had done so years ago.  It usually only takes one or two concerts for people to become hooked!

JD: Please can you point out a few highlights of the new season?

SC: It's very tricky to choose! Every concert has a real 'raison d'être'. We have our usual offering of string quartets and piano trios of course, but we're straying a little off the beaten track with a violin and guitar recital, and pre-concert performances featuring repertoire for harp and double bass, and even electric guitar. Balancing the programme we start and end the autumn series with two great piano quintets and two great clarinet quintets. There really is something for everyone.

JD: What would you say to encourage newcomers to attend a concert at the Conway Hall?

SC: I would pass on to them the comments that I've heard from many newcomers. They love the hall and its acoustic, of course, but what is special about Conway Hall is the atmosphere.  We are not stuffy, not overly formal, we just want to create the best ambience for everyone to enjoy the music and bring the audience and performers as close to each other as possible. Everyone in the audience has a chance to chat to everyone else if they so wish over a drink in the interval, and I know many long friendships that have been born through a mutual love of music and attending concerts at Conway Hall.