WELCOME TO THE JDCMB CHOCOLATE SILVER AWARDS 2018

Deck the halls with chocolate silver, 

Falalalalaaaah, meow me-ow...

If you've been reading JDCMB for a while, you'll know that TODAY'S THE DAY. It's the Winter Solstice, which means it's time for our very own virtual awards ceremony, in which we take a lighthearted look back at the year's peaks and plunges, while Ricki (chocolate silver) and Cosi (silver) present our winners with a special prize purr and let them stroke their luxuriant fur.

Please come in. Welcome to the CyperPoshPlace! 

No need to stand on ceremony here. All are welcome. No tickets are checked, no charges made for the cloakroom, and the CyberBubbly, being virtual, is limitless, free to all and won't make you drunk. Just the right degree of pleasantly tipsy, if you so wish.

It's been a...well, I can't remember a year quite like this one. It's tense. Everyone is anxious and exhausted and we still don't know what the heck is going to happen to us all, let alone the music business, in three months' time. We, dear world, are the proud owners of a government that currently seems determined to throw us all over a cliff, below which there are food shortages, medicine shortages, island gridlock, troops on the streets, mass unemployment and a violent economic crash, just to prove that 'Brexit' can be done - when actually it can't. It's like trying to take the vodka out of the martini after it's been shaken and stirred. Good countries do occasionally go mad and learn horrific lessons in the worst possible way. We can't be certain that that's not happening to us now.

Message in a bottle: Britain calling. HELP! Please send chocolate. 

[PING. yesterday I went to Brussels on Eurostar. Stopped here en route home.]

Right. Now that that's out of the way, let's PARTAAY like it's 2006!

Have a drink, enjoy our cybercanapes, meet and greet the great and famous of many countries and all centuries who have come to celebrate with us. Here's Ludwig, with Josephine on his arm - at last. Here's Anna Magdalena, pulling a grumbling Johann Sebastian away from his work. Over there Robert Schumann is giving Steven Isserlis a hug, and Fryderyk Chopin, holding a flat parcel about the size of a mazurka manuscript, is asking if anyone's seen Alan Walker arriving, please, because he has a gift for him. I personally am going up to embrace Gabriel Fauré before we do anything else... merci, mon cher Monsieur Gabriel, et grand bisous! The rainbow glitter balls are spinning, gold bit-lets are dropping from the ceiling and Ricki and Cosi are ensconced upon their silken cushions, ready to present the prizes.

Quiet, please! Thank you... First, let's have a huge round of applause for each and every musician who has touched the hearts of his/her audience this year. You're wonderful. You help make life worth living. We love you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your inspirational artistry.

👏👏👏👏👏👏💜💜💜🎶🎶🎶🎵🎹🎻🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

The first prize, though, goes to Ricki himself.

BEST CAT: RICKI

Because of everything that happened this year, the very best was that Ricki survived. In April he came down with a terrible infection: pyothorax, which turned into sepsis. We had to rush him to an animal hospital near Luton Airport and nobody really thought he was going to live. He was in there for a week and a half and we had twice-daily reports - some hopeful, others less so, several times asking if we wanted to grant permission for him to be put down if in the night he took a terrible turn for the worse. It was agony. Ricki is the sweetest-natured cat in the whole world, he's my personal most-special-cat-ever, and he wasn't even four years old. Against all the odds, by some miracle, he pulled through. He's now bouncing happily around doing megapurrs and chasing his own tail when he's not chasing his sister or mellowing out on the armchair in my study while I work.

NB: One person wasn't too happy about this: Cosi, whose nose promised to be thoroughly out of joint. She was furious when he came home and she no longer had Sole Cat status. This prize has involved some serious trade-offs including copious quantities of fish.

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ICON OF THE YEAR

It's got to be Leonard Bernstein. The year's been bookended by super-Bernstein: Wonderful Town and 'The Age of Anxiety' with Simon Rattle and the LSO back in January was the most fun I've ever had without joining in a conga. Wonderful Town went wonderfully to town. Bravi. And the other weekend I adored hearing Candide live again - one of my big favourites, for all its flaws. 

And what an injection of energy this centenary has been: bursting out all over with glorious tunes, snarky, sparkly lyrics, dazzling drama and the musical world's most enormous heart. Here's Lenny himself, with the incomparable Christa Ludwig and castanets, a long way from Rovko-Gubernya - the superbly cutting celebration of internationalism, from Candide.

SINGER OF THE YEAR

Sarah Connolly at the centre of the Brexit protest
Photo: EFE (from Las Provincias.es)

Step forward, please, Dame Sarah Connolly! You have been a searing firebrand of inspiration to us all, throwing your weight into anti-Brexit campaigning, and offering a Fricka in the Covent Garden Ring cycle whose power and magnetism makes the whole story turn upon her intervention. Thank you for your glorious singing.

Here's a mesmerising aria from Handel's Ariodante.

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR

Hello and welcome, dear Kathryn Stott! What a privilege it was to be part of your Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville this summer. (OK, it was winter there, but it sure didn't feel like it.) Being up close in an intensely programmed week of musical festivities that run for round about 12 hours every day, one gets to see how things work, and I soon realised there's nothing you can't do. You put together a programme of glorious variety and dazzling diversity, played a phenomenal range of chamber music under extraordinary pressure, kept cheerful and social and even went paddling at the tropical island concert [above]. Saying Brava Bravissima is not enough. I note that Ricki and Cosi are both letting you do their tummy fur, which is very special and not often permitted.

Come on, play us some Fauré. You know you want to. I have him here in person, ready to cheer you on.

INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR

Boris Giltburg
Photo: Sasha Gusov

This award goes to Boris Giltburg, partly because I'm furious to have missed two of his recitals this year for different reasons. There's a glut of glorious piano playing out there are the moment, but only a handful of musicians to whose recordings I find I have to listen flat out on the floor with the volume right up and sod what the neighbours think. (Actually, that's not fair, because we have wonderful neighbours.)

After I commented on this, thinking that it was more characteristic behaviour for heavy metal fans, Boris sent me a tweet saying he's a bit of a metal-head himself and recommending some tracks for me to try. I tried Metallica. I loved it. (Yes, there's a genre specially for people who seek all-out-intense virtuoso musical experiences and have long curly hair.) Step up to the podium, please, Boris!

YOUTHFUL ARTIST OF THE YEAR

Fatma Said
Photo: from BBC website

Just listen to this Brahms song from the incredible young Egyptian soprano Fatma Said, currently one of the BBC New Generation Artists. What more could I say?! Welcome a thousand times, Fatma!

ARTIST OF THE YEAR

Roxanna Panufnik

Step up, my wonderful composer colleague and collaborator-in-chief, Roxanna Panufnik, who has been flying high this year, which contained her half-century celebrations. What a joy it was to see her bring the houses down at the Proms and Symphony Hall, with music that is growing, deepening, daring more and more. (You can hear our next joint effort in Baltimore in March, by the way, under the batons of Marin Alsop and Valentina Peleggi...)

Here's Roxanna's 'Unending Love', from her latest album Celestial Bird, sung by Ex Cathedra

AND ONE STUFFED TURKEY

An orchestral director who was in favour of Brexit, despite running an orchestra that depends on carnet-free, visa-free touring and includes members from some 22 nationalities, most of them European. He may have changed his mind for all I know, but it's a bit bloody late now. For shame. 

PROUDEST MOMENTS

Sharing a stage with Roderick Williams, Siobhan Stagg and the Goldner String Quartet among other wonderful musicians in Australia, for Being Mrs Bach, is something I'll remember all my life with great joy and slight disbelief that it really happened. But it did, and it was great.

Going to Paris to see the manuscript of the Fauré Requiem was also unforgettable - what a joy to explore its marvels together with Bob Chilcott and the BBC Radio 4 team! I came over quite tearful. The result was on 'Tales from the Stave'.

I've been working on more librettos since Silver Birch and am delighted with the new youth opera that Paul Fincham and I are writing. It is scheduled for Garsington on 2 August 2019 and it's an adaptation and updating of Wilde's The Happy Prince – to The Happy Princess. Paul has been working in the City for a few decades, but after winning an award for his first film score, he's ditched the day job to get back to his first vocation. In his Cambridge days he was music director of the Footlights, working with the likes of Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie, and I can promise a few very persistent ear-worms are finding their way into the new piece.

More pieces with Roxanna are also in the pipeline, and so is one with another well-established composer whom I greatly admire, but we can't announce it just yet.

I can say, though, that writing librettos is my favourite thing in the whole world and if I'd realised this 20 years ago I'd just have done that to the exclusion of as much as possible else. It's a task that is creative and collaborative - there's nothing lonely about it. It blends words and music to the ultimate degree. And it culminates in a live musical experience so you see people actually responding and you feel the vibration in the theatre. I love love love love love it.

Last but by no means least, Odette made target in June and the next few months were devoted to getting it ready for publication. It's out now, and flying. The blog tour this past week has produced some reviews that collectively show that the book does what I wanted it to do, and after 26 years, it's wonderful to see people enjoying it.

WEIRDEST MOMENTS

There are always a few, and 2018 was no exception. 

There was the time my husband challenged Norman Lebrecht to a duel after the celebrated Slipped Disc blogger took issue with some of the decisions made during the Radio 4 Women's Hour Power List. Glad to say the cats prevented piss-takes at dawn.

There was the other night. For some reason we thought it would be clever to go to Iceland in the dead of winter to see the Northern Lights. We reckoned without the fact that other sightseeing has to be done in the few scant existing daylight hours, and that late-night excursions looking for the Aurora involve standing around for hours in sub-zero temperatures, and we both got sick. We did see the Northern Lights, though - sort of. A kind of grey misty effect on the horizon, with some sparky, starry things jumping about within it. Here's my photo of it.

Otherwise...the whole year's been a bit weird, and I fear the next will be more so. 

Good luck, everyone, and solidarity. Let's pull together and try to stop this disaster while we still can. And don't forget the chocolate.

Happy big birthday, Steven Isserlis!

Steven Isserlis is 60 today!

I have flipping' well missed his big birthday concert on Monday at the Wigmore Hall - which included appearances by Simon Keenlyside, András Schiff, Radu Lupu, Ferenc Rados, Josh Bell and Connie Shih - because for some reason we'd thought it would be a good idea to go to Iceland in the middle of December to try and see the Northern Lights... As my Dad used to say, one lives and learns.

Steven Isserlis
Photo: PA

Anyway, it was a wonderful excuse to pop up to north London the other week and interview Steven himself. We talked about music, books, cellos, Rabbi Moses Isserles, Schumann, Fauré, Bloch, the perils of curly hair and the Marx Brothers, among much else. You can read the whole thing in the JC, here. 

And here's one select story.

His Twitter account makes lively reading, full of hair-raising stories about his travels with his cello. “I was on a Japanese airline, business class — very nice — and I asked the stewardess if she could help make up the bed,” he recounts. “I thought she said: ‘Are you sexy?’ It took me a minute to work out that ‘Yes, I’m in 6C…’”

Here he is in a spot of Fauré": the Romance in A major, Op.69, with pianist Pascal Devoyon.

'SWAN LAKE' JDCMB CHRISTMAS COMPETITION

WIN A SWAN LAKE CD AND A COPY OF ODETTE

Vladimir Jurowski's recording of Swan Lake in its original 1877 version - before Drigo got his paws on the score - is an absolute stunner, out now on Pentatone Classics. The State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia 'Evgeny Svetlanov' offers sleek, intense playing, the sound quality is excellent and in Jurowski's hands the dramatic climaxes become utterly hair-raising, almost Wagnerian in their magic and majesty. And in the box there's even a set of instructions for how to fold your own Origami swan.

Swan Lake is the inspiration behind my new book, Odette, in which the ballet's heroine meets the present day head-on. This week Odette has been on a 'blog tour' which has found it termed 'enchanting', 'magical' and 'absolutely unique' (for which I'm extremely grateful and happy.)

I'm delighted to say that Pentatone is offering a copy of Jurowski's splendid Swan Lake recording for our JDCMB Christmas Competition. This is your chance to win a double prize: the CD and a paperback copy of Odette.

For a chance to win, simply answer the following question and email your response to: jdcmblog@gmail.com before Christmas Eve, 24 December 2018.

QUESTION:Which ballerina danced the role of Odette/Odile in the world premiere of Swan Lake, at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, on 4 March 1877?

I will put all the correct entries into a hat and the one to be drawn out wins the prize. The winner will be notified by email. The prize will be dispatched when the post office reopens after Christmas.

Don't forget that you can see Swan Lake itself on BBC4 TV on Christmas Day at 7pm. It's the Royal Ballet's gorgeous new production and stars Marianela Nunez and Vadim Muntagirov. More details here.

Smash all-male choirs? A choral expert responds

Much fuss has been caused in the choral world these past few days by a suggestion from Lesley Garrett that it's high time all-male choirs were abolished. Some defenders of the great English choral tradition, in which these have featured since forever, have been up in arms. Others lean strongly towards providing equal opportunities for girls to sing, because at the moment they still miss out, and have done for centuries.

I was somewhat amused by a press release that landed in my in-box the other day in which a famous choral conductor vaunted the importance of keeping choirs all-male, saying - without irony - that boys would lose opportunities to make music if they admit girls (um, what does he think has been happening to women all this time?) and that the choir is defined by its people, after which he lists a number of highly distinguished personages going back to the 19th century, who are of course all men. My instinct is to cheer on Lesley Garrett's opinion. At the same time, though, I know it is really not as simple as perhaps we'd like.

What solutions could we present? One is that every institution that has a boys' choir should also start one for girls - indeed, many have already done so. But Anna Lapwood, a choral conductor and director of music at Pembroke College, Cambridge, has another suggestion. Here's a guest post from her on the topic. JD

The choir of Pembroke College, Cambridge conducted by Anna Lapwood sing Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque

GIRLS IN CHOIRS: A SOCIAL ISSUE

I grew up wishing I could be a chorister. And yet, when I saw today’s article by Ben Dowell in the Radio Times advocating introducing girls into King’s College Choir, I was angry. 

I consider myself an advocate for gender equality and for encouraging young woman in choral music. I was the first female Organ Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford; I was part of an all-male choir; I saw how far we had to go before we could achieve equality. 

However, I also eavesdropped on the unique dynamic of an all-male choir. What I saw was mutual respect and support; an environment where the back row understood what it was like to be a chorister, and helped them through it.

Having set up a girls’ choir at Pembroke College, I’ve observed the wonderful dynamic that comes from an all-female choir too: not only the shared singing, but a shared understanding of getting your ears pierced for the first time, or braces, or periods. A girls’ choir like ours, or the choirs at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and Merton College, Oxford, provide an opportunity for a non-linear educational experience, in which children seven years apart can come together to make music. This is unique, and it’s important. 

I have worked with numerous treble lines made up of boys; I have watched them perform as professional musicians to thousands of people without batting an eyelid. I’ve also watched them turn into quivering messes when they’re talking to a girl they fancy. The issue, in my mind, is not one of the sound of the voices; the voices of young boys and girls are both wonderful, and should be celebrated. The issue is one of social implications. 

Research has shown that boys sing better in an all-male environment, in which it is totally normal to love singing, and do it every day. I fear that if we were to mix the treble line, the boys would lose confidence. 

Choral conductor Suzi Digby did an experiment several years ago, creating two parallel after-school classes. One was mixed with 12 girls and 12 boys, and the other was all boys. At the end of two years, both groups had grown to have over 40 singers, and yet there were only two boys left in the mixed class. It’s not a huge step from boys losing confidence to giving up entirely.

Anna Lapwood conducting the girl choristers at Pembroke

Losing boy choristers completely is something I feel would be a great loss for both the choral world and the wider world of classical music. The education of a chorister is gruelling; in addition to the busy life of a school child, he or she is expected to rehearse every morning and sing Evensong almost every day. 

It is this education that produces the lay-clerks of tomorrow, and more recently-formed girls’ choirs are now providing this opportunity for females; daily familiarity with the rhythm and repertoire of choral worship is one of the most important aspects of a chorister’s education.

 If, as has been suggested, girls were to sing half the services in a place such as King’s, this education would be diluted for both the boys and the girls. We’ve made huge progress in the past 20 years, creating more and more opportunities for girls in choral music, and yet we’ve still not achieved equality. In my mind, there is only one way to do this: a choir needs to be set up with an all-female treble line, singing with male and female lower parts. This would be a choir where girls would sing six services a week; a choir where girls would receive the full educational scholarship of a chorister. This would be a step towards equality. 

I have absolutely no doubt that we need to generate more opportunities for girls in choral music. However, these opportunities should be in addition to the ones available to boys, not a call to abolish all-male choirs altogether. 

Anna Lapwood

Director of Music, Pembroke College, Cambridge

Need a place to rehearse? This may have the answer...

Last week I went north of the river to interview Steven Isserlis about a certain big birthday he has this month, to be celebrated with some close friends on stage at the Wigmore Hall (and more, of course - results in the JC soon). On my way out, I met another Isserlis going in: Steven's son, Gabriel. 

A few weeks ago Gabriel launched a new scheme called Tutti to help musicians find rehearsal space when and where they need it. Given the headache that such things cause - even finding somewhere to practise the piano can turn into a student's worst nightmare, as I well remember - this seems an absolutely inspired idea. It functions like Airbnb: those with space can sign up to offer it and musicians who need it can sign up to book in. 

The crucial thing at the moment is: if you have a space to offer musicians, please sign up NOW, using the links below.

Here's Gabriel himself to tell us more about it, after an energising Schumann treat from dad and Dénes Várjon.




CREATING TUTTI

My family have been in music for generations. I like to say that before I learned English, I learned the language of music. I have always been surrounded by music: at home, on family holidays, my family even performed chamber music as part of our Christmas celebrations. 

However, as much joy as music brings, I was always very aware of the less wonderful side of it: the challenges it produces for people who dive in full time. After a brief decade, trying to escape the music in my blood, I gave in and returned, albeit from a different angle. During that time, I had trained in visual arts, audio engineering, and programming, and decided to combine my knowledge and passions into one. 

I spent over a year analysing the different issues that plague musicians, listening to my friends and family talk about all the frustrations they experience. Throughout that time, a number of key issues were most apparent but only one of them sparked a twinkle in every eye when I shared my potential solution: “AirBnB for Rehearsal Spaces.” That simple idea has grown into Tutti and has so much potential ahead of it – we’re just getting started. 

We just launched our very first version a few weeks ago: beta.tutti.space and we have already had a couple bookings come through. We just need people to list their spaces if interested. No one can book your space without your approval – if a musician attempts to book your space, you will be notified immediately and have 3 days to accept or reject the request. If you list your space before 2019, we will provide a photographer to come round to your venue and take quality photos, free of charge. Go to beta.tutti.space and click “List a Space” in the top right, or email support@tutti.space if you have any questions/need any help.

-- Gabriel Isserlis