Meanwhile back at the ranch...

While I was pottering over the bridge in Mostar, the Royal Festival Hall opened its doors at last after its snazzy refurbishment. It's taken two years of building work and some two decades of blundering beforehand; now they're doing nothing by halves. From Friday evening until yesterday there was a grand jamboree of free music and dance inside and outside the venue. Billy Bragg led a festival of mass busking and wrote some new words for the finale of Beethoven 9; a floating chorus took to the waters of the Thames; dancing both Bollywood and ballroom was on display; 2500 school kids were involved; and 18,000 performers in all. Unfortunately I missed the lot, but going to Mostar was my own decision and in any case there's plenty more to come.

Tonight, for example. The grand first night gala: a concert in three parts with all the resident orchestras (they'll play together for the first time), two world premieres - Julian Anderson and the ubiquitous Birtwistle - plus a big party in the ballroom afterwards. Dress code is given as "to celebrate" and there'll be wall-to-wall champagne. It looks sure to be a night to remember. The big question: purple silk or sea-green linen? Either way, the tango shoes will be shown off... A full report on the state of the place will follow in due course. And from now on it's business as usual at the RFH: the LPO's first real concert is on Wednesday, with Vladimir Jurowski conducting and Imogen Cooper playing the Mozart D minor Piano Concerto; and on Thursday, the inimitable Brendel is giving a recital. Speaking of Vladimir, here's Richard Morrison's interview with our favourite resident maestro from The Times the other day.

It's going to seem weird after experiencing the Mostar opera premiere the other day, in a little theatre covered in a smallpox rash of shelling damage.

Just back from Bosnia-Herzegovina

Here's an extract of the poem by Goran Simic on which the new sevdah opera by Nigel Osborne, with libretto by Simic, is based. Like the poem (from Simic's book of poems Immigrant Blues), the opera is called Differences in Demolitions.

In the Country where I live
when a house has to be torn down
a few workers arrive with a contract,
tear down the house in a few days and leave
and later nobody remembers any more the names of those
who lived there until yesterday.

In the Country I came from
before the house is torn down
an armed police squad arrives
and an ambulance for someone who might want
to die grieving under the demolished roof
beneath which he was born long ago.
For months afterwards even the children avoid the place
where once there was a house
because of the ghosts of ancestors who moan
from the spiderwebs and weeds.
There the demolition ball is heavy as a curse.

That's just the first part...

Here's a taste of the difference between London and Mostar.

*LONDON*
Do not leave your luggage unattended. Any unattended bags may be removed and destroyed.
Hold the handrail on the ecscalator. Stand on the right.
Do not allow children to ride in the luggage trolleys.
Do not allow children to play on the escalators.
Dogs must be carried.
From 1 July smoking will be banned in all enclosed public spaces in England.
'We are sorry to announce that the 15.55 service to Hounslow is delayed by approximately six minutes. We are sorry for the inconvenience this may cause to your journey.'
All places wishing to present live music must apply for a very expensive licence.
Those with five cars exhort those of us who take trains to oppose planned parking restrictions and pricey residents' permits in our road.

*MOSTAR*
'Attention! Dangerous ruin. Access and parking forbidden.'
'Ticket: Differences in Demolitions. National Theatre, 8pm.'... 8pm: people start to arrive, drink and talk to each other in the square. 8.25pm: doors open; stampede for best seats. 8.40pm: first sounds...
'Oh, Jess, it's best not to wander off the paths into open patches of grass. There could be landmines.'

A trip like this can cause some ructions in the soul. I need to process this before writing about it fully.

Meanwhile in Milan...

...Our dear colleague Opera Chic has been on the receiving end of a sense-of-humour failure on the part of La Scala's in-house lawyers. We're still trying to think of any other musical organisation that would turn their noses up at free publicity to the value of thousands of $$$s...but she's being forced to replace her logo in case someone mistakes it for the official La Scala one (...yes, really). Solidarity from London, OC!

(If I had any idea how to design my own logo, the one I'd pick to rip off would probably be London Zoo, because London's musical life is so full of strange fish. As things are, the Blogger template will have to suffice.)

Wednesday

Sokolov, a.k.a. PianoGod, is playing at the Wigmore Hall tonight and Guess Who Got The Last Ticket?!? :-)

Meanwhile I'm swotting Noel Malcolm's excellent book Bosnia: A short history. The early 1990s come surging back. The names we heard daily on the news: Milosevic; Arkan; Srebrenica; Sarajevo. The pigs-ear that resulted not least because Western governments, it appears, didn't have the first clue what the conflict was really about.

A few examples. An arms embargo was placed on the entire region - which left most of the old Yugoslavian supplies in the hands of the Serbs, but the Bosnians without recourse to defend themselves. "No-fly zones"? Unenforced and unenforcable. "Safe havens"? Ditto. UN peacekeeping forces? Nice idea, but they ended up becoming human shields. You can scarcely miss the frustration in the text:

"It fell to the British government, as holder of the rotating presidency of the EEC, to chair a joint EEC-UN conference on the entire situation in Yugoslavia...The paralysis of the Wrst was made only more apparent. John Major obtained what he thought were solemn pledges from the Serb leaders to lift the sieges of Bosnian towns and cities and place their heavy weaponry under UN supervision. It later emerged that 'supervision' was to be interpreted in its original, etymological sense: UN monitors were allowed to look over the artillery pieces above Sarajavo every day while they were being fired."

Off to Sarajevo tomorrow.

What did I just say about loudness?

The Times runs an article today saying that rock music really is getting louder, and that it is definitely not a good thing. It has an adverse effect on human physiology, makes listeners feel fatigued and sick, drives neighbours round the twist and wrecks the music. WTF, why did it take so long for anyone to notice?

Here's a sample:

...Peter Mew, senior mastering engineer at Abbey Road studios, said: “Record companies are competing in an arms race to make their album sound the ‘loudest’. The quieter parts are becoming louder and the loudest parts are just becoming a buzz.”

Mr Mew, who joined Abbey Road in 1965 and mastered David Bowie’s classic 1970s albums, warned that modern albums now induced nausea.

He said: “The brain is not geared to accept buzzing. The CDs induce a sense of fatigue in the listeners. It becomes psychologically tiring and almost impossible to listen to. This could be the reason why CD sales are in a slump.”

Geoff Emerick, engineer on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album, said: “A lot of what is released today is basically a scrunched-up mess. Whole layers of sound are missing. It is because record companies don’t trust the listener to decide themselves if they want to turn the volume up.” ...

Elgar's 150th anniversary...

Edward Elgar was born 2 June 1857 in Broadheath near Worcester. Here's the latest in a spate of articles about him - this by Richard Morrison in yesterday's Times, on the perennial enigma of the Enigma Variations.

It's kind of strange hearing Elgar the morning after Bosnian sevdah and Romanian Gypsies. Thank heaven there's room in the world for all of them.

UPDATE: Monday 4 June, 8.50am - discovered a pretty interesting take by Stephen Pollard in The Times the other day, in which he makes it clear that our own dear Arts Council doesn't think there is room in the world...

Barbican burns down

Metaphorically, that is. Went to the latest concert in the Gypsy Music festival last night and heard these guys. Ever seen the Barbican bopping like mad to Bartok? I have now. Please welcome, from Romania, TARAF DE HAIDOUKS:

Now add a packed hall, yelling, whistling and dancing in the aisles, and a smattering of classical musos looking on with dropped jaws (that'll be me & pals) and you get the idea. It was fast, it was loud and they took no prisoners. The place went bananas.

The cimbalom player boggles eyes and ears alike. Last time I saw one close to, in a restaurant in Budapest, I thought the instrument was simply a poor substitute for a pub piano. Wrong! This was wall-to-wall fireworks and white-hot energy - harpsichord and rock drummer rolled into one. The fiddles were fevered and furious, the accordion sounded like a clarinet, and the singing - Romany? Romanian? I'm not sure - the men's voices are direct, natural, communicative, conversational, and even if you don't understand a word it doesn't matter, you still get the general idea and that's fine.

Amira, the Bosnian sevdah singer, was the curtain-raiser to all this. She has a beautiful, sweet, soulful voice; the music is haunting, deeply sad, distinctly Mediterranean in sound (lots of Turkish influence, if I'm right) and her band was super, especially the pianist Kim Burton who isn't Bosnian but British. Fabulous rapport between them.

I have certain issues with overamplified music - not least that it makes my ears hurt for hours afterwards - which is why I don't go more often. And it would perhaps have been nicer, at least more 'authentic', to hear them unamplified (preferably somewhere in the wilds of Romania). All the same, this morning my head is reeling with wild Gypsy sounds and a smattering of Bartok, Kodaly and Khatchaturian that they 'regypsified' (including the Romanian Dances) and that will never sound the same again.

And more Schumann...

Here's a super little promotional video from EMI about Jonathan Biss's Schumann album, which gives a good taster of his playing and personality and has handily found its way onto Youtube.

Shoo, man

My poor old piano has been a bit neglected lately. Last week my editor (novels) went on holiday for half term and I can't make much progress on the revision of Hungarian Dances until I have her feedback. Instead, with an hour or two to spare, and Tom safely shooed away to Glyndebourne, I took the plunge and opened the lid.

The great thing about being an official amateur - no concerts, no lessons, no exams, no pressure - is that nobody can tell you what to do, or, more importantly, what not to do. No-one can say, "Don't you dare touch the Schumann Fantasie, it's too hard for you!" So I dare. I touched the Schumann Fantasie. I read through the first and last movements and as much of the March as I could manage without going cross-eyed, and nobody could hear me or stop me. And it's heaven. Surely no piece represents pure romanticism more than this one. To touch Schumann is to hold starlight in your hands, even if only for a second.

Here are two favourite recordings: Marc-Andre Hamelin (Hyperion), full of wonder and tenderness and fleetness; and Jonathan Biss (EMI), replete with good sense, empathy and a deep, pure humility in the representation of genius.

Achtung, piano fans: Jonathan Biss is playing the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Sunday afternoon, 3 June. Beethoven, Webern and Mozart, and guess what? The Schumann Fantasie.

Hough rejected from Vietnam

The other day, the Telegraph revealed that the pianist Stephen Hough has been forced to cancel a performance in Vietnam because the authorities 'could not guarantee his personal safety'. The report suggests that Hough's writings about the Catholic church's attitude to homosexuality may have sparked this extremely unfortunate reaction. The Telegraph's site has a video clip where you can see Hough playing some Mompou and talking about the incident. Frankly, it's Vietnam's loss. Stephen is one of the finest British pianists ever. End of story.

Go west, young woman

One of the most excellent people in the UK recording business is about to join the brain drain and head for the US. Melanne Mueller, who's been the marketing and PR half of Avie Records with her partner Simon Foster, is off to NY this weekend to become vice-president of the core classical division of Universal. Melanne is a real musician - she started out as an oboist and played professionally in the States before going into the record industry. Nice to know that a big label is still capable of taking on someone who knows something about music, musicians and people as well as products. She'll be much missed in the London scene.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ERICH!

Erich Wolfgang Korngold: born 29 May 1897 in Brno. A nice round 110 for a nice round composer! The 'unofficial' Korngold website has a very good front page full of 2007 events commemorating the 50th anniversary of his death, and if you're a fan it is well worth exploring. I have just finished listening to a super new double CD set about to be released on Naxos of the complete music from The Sea Hawk, plus hefty chunks of Deception: William Stromberg conducts the Moscow Symphony Orchestra.

Composer in Baghdad

Thanks to Alex Ross for the pointer to this blog by Daniel Todd Currie - a composer who's now serving as an engineer in the American air force in Iraq.

Radiant Leonore, but trouble down t'pit

Karita Mattila must have been born to sing Fidelio. Opening afternoon (a Sunday matinee) found the Finnish soprano conquering Covent Garden at one stroke. She's about six foot tall with a knock-em-dead stage presence; this was the first time I've been convinced that poor little Marzelline could have been taken in. Her voice has the strength and purity of a laser. Never mind that The Times ran one of the bitchiest articles imaginable about her the other day (no wonder artists don't like talking to British journalists - this was so unnecessary, I don't see the point of writing pieces like that, I mean, really...). She's one of the greats; I doubt that Leonores get better than this.

A pity that the rest of the show wasn't consistently up to her level. First, the opening bars of the overture revealed some nasty stuff in the pit, namely the horns. I suspect it was widely assumed around the house that they'd spent Sunday lunchtime in the pub, but this morning Tony Pappano told me that it was more serious than that: the first horn had hurt his lip and as a result there'd been a last-minute cabinet reshuffle, with first horn playing third, etc. I'm not sure that the rest of the orchestra recovered from the experience; there was some uncomfortable ensemble (or lack of) and generally the effect felt lacking in tension, especially compared to Mark Elder's recent account at Glyndebourne. But there were some fine moments - a wonderful hushed tone at the beginning of the magical Quartet - and perhaps things will settle down as the run progresses: the ROH hasn't done Fidelio for around 15 years.

Production: fresh from the Met, directed by Jurgen Flimm and set in a prison in the 1940s or 50s. A world where guns are casually tossed about, where Pizarro wields a champagne bottle in one hand and a pistol in the other; the prisoners are kept in cages three storeys high. Leonore, not Rocco, takes it upon herself to let them out for the King's name day, and they emerge in absolute silence before the chorus begins - the effect is both touching and startling. Anyone hoping for the Leonore No.3 Overture before the last scene will be disappointed - but the opera works perfectly well without it, since the duet between Leonore and Florestan acquires a climactic significance that can sometimes be dissipated by the interpolated orchestral work.

Ailish Tynan is a fantastic Marzelline, Eric Halfvarson and Terje Stensvold excellent as respectively Rocco and a ferocious, neo-Con-style Pizarro. The big surprise, literally, was Endrik Wottrich as Florestan. He's huge. Massive, like something out of Lord of the Rings. He looks like he spends his life body-building. And then he opens his mouth and out comes - this rather odd voice. Bizarrely small, given the size of the soundbox. Unfocused, tight and lacking resonance, with rapid continual vibrato but no real centre to the tone. A physical match for Mattila, but certainly not a vocal one.

Of course, anyone who was anyone was there, my dears. We ran into Elgar expert Michael Kennedy, Sunday Times critic Hugh Canning, politician-turned-presented David Mellor and the inimitable Sean Rafferty from Radio 3's In Tune, and said hello to fellow blogger Stephen Pollard, who's already written up the show...we have some pretty different opinions, but are in perfect accord over Mattila.

UPDATE: Tuesday, 1.30pm: Fellow London music blogger Intermezzo, whom I've shamefully neglected to add to the blogroll until now, was at Fidelio too, struggling with the sightlines, feeling seriously scathing about the orchestra and has no time for the first horn...

A damp bank holiday

I have a piece in today's Independent about Britten & Aldeburgh - rather content to see that it made the Editor's Choice listing on the website. Not sure I did work out what it was about Suffolk that inspired him, but I found some fascinating stuff by Hans Keller, and tried to give a plug for the excellent local fish and chips, though that has been cut.

Off to Covent Garden to interview Maestro Pappano this morning. More about yesterday's opening performance of Fidelio later on...

Sticking up for Edu

Everyone else is busy writing about Elgar now. His birthday isn't until next weekend, but here's conductor Sakari Oramo in The Guardian with a ream of good sense. What Elgar needs, he insists, is foreign champions. Dead right. With the same peculiar nationalist whateveritis that insists you have to be Russian to play Rachmaninov, English musicians have tended to prevail in Elgar - whose fault? Promoters? Record companies? Elgar's perceived 'Englishness'? Sakari says something I've been saying for a while, which is that Elgar's music is not particularly English: his principal influences are Strauss, Schumann and Wagner.

Michael Kennedy takes the Englishness line in a different direction in The Telegraph, but I guess he/they would. He begins with 'Windflower', Alice Stuart Wortley, talking about Elgar coming from the heart and soul of England etc etc.

Oh lordy, and The Times says we're wrong to downplay his love of Empire. That's all he needs... but at least they are offering free downloads (only short ones, mind).

Pay your money and take your choice. Or alternatively have a look at my angle on the matter in my archive.

Tasmin Little is going off to the Far East and Australia next week to tour the Elgar Violin Concerto around Kuala Lumpur, Perth, Adelaide and, appropriately enough, Tasmania (which is what will take over Launceston and Hobart when they hear her play!). Meanwhile I missed Philippe Graffin's performance of the piece in its pre-Kreislerised version in Liverpool with the RLPO and Tod Handley on Thursday night. I had to give about a talk about Schumann and Brahms down the road in Manchester at the same time - this went well, by the way. It was in the Bridgewater Hall, one of my favourite venues, combining good modern design, excellent acoustics and a relatively intimate atmosphere. My fellow Indy journalist Lynne Walker and I discussed the cross-currents between the composers and persuaded the resident CD player to cooperate with illustrations now and then.

I'm still overwhelmed with relief when I walk on to a concert platform and find that I do not have to play a piano.

Sevdah at the Barbican

Next week (1 June) the Bosnian sevdah singer Amira is playing the Barbican, part of a celebration of Gypsy (and Gypsy-influenced) music and film. She's also at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester the next day. Good piece about her in today's Guardian:

All who survive a war remain scarred, each in their own way. For Amira, who was studying economics when Yugoslavia brutally disintegrated, war pushed her into song. And not just any song, but sevdah, the ancient lyric ballad of Bosnia. Sevdah - the word is Turkish and suggests desire, yearning, thwarted love - has existed for hundreds of years in this region, often composed of just a voice and a saz (a Turkish lute). Yet it took Bosnia's suffering to focus the world's attention on this small nation's music. Sevdah bears comparison to Portuguese fado and Spanish flamenco; all three are vocal arts rooted in Arabic courtly love songs from a millennium ago. Amira, who comes to the UK for the first time this week and whose debut album, Rosa, is a recording of startling beauty, looks set to do for sevdah what rising Portuguese star Mariza has done for fado.

I am going to Bosnia on 7 June and will hopefully be learning much more about sevdah, the war and musical healing.

Cheers!

Big cheers for shoutout to Stephen Pollard who, along with the tremendous Clive Davis, has now had his blog taken under the fold of The Spectator. His opinion is that here we do what we say on the tin. And he's got an eye for La bloggerissima Opera Chic too.

The Red Shoes - a.k.a. Cosi fan tutte

Phew - I have something in common with Dorabella, even if I can't sing. Opening night of Cosi fan tutte chez Glyndebourne yesterday; there's Fiordiligi in blue and Dorabella in red and cream with marvellous red suede shoes, and as coincidence would have it I'd donned my favourite scarlet tango heels for the occasion. I hope this serendipitous little incident helped to dispel the dazzlement of the delectable Rinat Shaham upon my starry-eyed resident fiddler, who had a rare night in the auditorium (some of the violins are doing job-shares in Cosi, as it requires too few of them) and was keen to see the reincarnation of his favourite Carmen.

Besides the shoes, Cosi is a treat: a period production by Nicholas Hytner with a light touch and some superb moments - notably that the men in their disguises get nowhere wooing their own fiancees, but when they swap, the sparks begin to fly, rather to their dismay. And soon after giving the girls the advice to 'have your cake and eat it', Despina brings in tea with a real cake - chocolate. Dorabella tucks in. Fiordiligi stares at it in horror, as if one mouthful might kill her...

The cast was largely unfamiliar to me (apart from Rini); particularly striking was the powerful tenor of Pavol Breslik as Ferrando and the characterful Despina of Ainhoa Garmendia. Rachel Harnisch as Fiordiligi hadn't been feeling well for the dress rehearsal and had marked the role, with her understudy singing; it could be that yesterday she wasn't quite at full strength. I hope to hear her again later in the season.

Best of all, though, was the orchestra. Our own LPO - conducted by the newest and youngest of all the baby Rattles on the circuit. Robin Ticciati has recently been appointed music director of Glyndebourne On Tour; he has a post in Gavle, Sweden, as well; and he looks all of 12 years old, though is around 25, with copious Simonesque curls. A few seconds into the overture, I found myself sitting forward thinking 'heck...?!' This was truly musical conducting; airy, smooth, stylish. Joined-up thinking and moving was taking place on that podium. Ticciati looks like a dancer, phrases like a singer and balances his ingredients like a masterchef. In terms of preparation and polish with cast and chorus, he maybe has some way to go - but I reckon his destination includes some interesting, exceedingly high-up places.

A video of the production is available, filmed last year with Ivan Fischer conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

At some point, I'll find a knife to stick in the notion that the plummiest of vibrating singers (and this lot are plummy) must be accompanied in Mozart by that lean-mean-string-thing, that silly period-practice-equals-no-vibrato tokenism... But for now, Dorabella must have left the knife in her cake; and the sun shone. It was a great evening.

Vengerov and the healing power of music

Speaking of organisations that enable music to change lives, Maxim Vengerov has just given a recital in a neurological hospital in Putney, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Live Music Now. Richard Morrison went along to report for The Times. Vengerov tells him, among other things, the following:

“This kind of work is my first passion. This is where I think music belongs. And it has a wonderful effect on me, too, not just on these people here. You see, when you talk to severely brain-damaged people, they may not understand what you are saying. But once you start playing music, you are speaking to their subconscious. And what happens is that the effect of that bounces back. So I, as a musician, get in touch with my own subconscious. It goes in both directions, this therapy.”

Read the whole thing here.

And while we're reading Richard, here's his review of the Glyndebourne Macbeth, which will tell you a little more about those cardboard boxes. Also see Ed Seckerson in the Indy.

Thursday

Apololgies for thin-on-the-screen blogging. Heavy week ahoy. But if you're in Manchester on Thursday (24 May) and fancy hearing a wonderful concert of Brahms and Schumann, come to the Bridgewater Hall and pop along to the pre-concert talk at 6.30 when Lynne Walker and I will be be discussing 'Mystery, Mastery and Madness' - the cross-currents between the lives and works of the two composers. In the concert, Gianandrea Noseda will conduct the BBC Philharmonic in the Brahms Double Concerto with Olivier Charlier and Alban Gerhardt as soloists, plus, appropriately, Schumann's 'Spring' Symphony.

No.15

According to Scott Spiegelberg, JDCMB is now officially no.15 out of the top 52 classical music blogs. I'm not entirely clear how this is calculated - it involves Technorati and maths, and my strong points do not notably include understanding of either. Still, 15 sounds all right to me. Scott has the full list.

New section

I've added a new section to the sidebar entitled MUSIC INSPIRATIONS, linking to the websites of organisations that enable music to change lives. I've started with three, but there will be others in due course. Please explore!

OMG. She's back

The sensational Rinat Shaham returns to Glyndebourne to sing Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, opening next Tuesday, 22 May. I fear I shall have to put an electronic tag on Tom for every single performance.

Here's 'Rini' as Carmen...need I say more?



But hey. I can get my revenge: Rini has a brother, Hagai Shaham, who's a fabulous violinist (=prerequisite), and looks my kinda guy. Here he is with his answer to the Gypsy:



Cold showers all round.

Giuseppe MacVerdi

It's going to be a hot summer. Whenever the first Glyndebourne dress rehearsal is cold & wet, the weather for the rest of the season is glorious. Yesterday, we pinicked in the car with a thermos flask of soup.

Suitably atmospheric, of course, for the Scotland of Verdi's Macbeth. Hmm. Last year I thought that Betrothal in a Monastery was about to become the hottest ticket in town, but it wasn't, so I won't risk my luck this time. Suffice it to say that IMHO Richard Jones's production is startling, fresh, original, clever and a treat for anyone who likes hairy knees. And I'll never be able to look at a cardboard box in the same way again. Vladimir Jurowski's conducting is red-hot, seat-of-the-pants stuff and the singing - Andrzej Dobber as Macbeth and Sylvie Valayre as his blonde-beehived Lady Macbeth - is top-notch.

Debate will probably rage over whether Macbeth is this full of irony and black humour, and no doubt many will think not...but, weirdly enough, the production suits Verdi's remarkably effervescent score and I found the second half both powerful and moving.

An heroic family

Do have a look at this extremely touching short film from yesterday's BBC Newsnight in which presenter Gavin Esler and his daughter Charlotte discuss the impact on their family of Charlotte's diagnosis with Hodgkins Lymphoma last year, when she was 14.

My sister died of ovarian cancer aged 45 in March 2000. Today would have been her birthday.

The miracle of Melisande

Well, the miracle of Debussy. I've started to feel that Pelleas et Melisande is the most rewarding of all operas: every performance I've attended has been like hearing it for the first time because there's something special to notice on each occasion. The Royal Opera's co-production with Salzburg does leave a thing or two to be desired - notably, costume designs that don't induce the good punters of Covent Garden to titter audibly at every character's first entry - but with Simon Rattle in the pit, Angelika Kirchschlager, Simon Keenlyside, Gerald Finlay, Robert Lloyd and Catherine Wyn-Rogers on stage, and as Yniold a young boy named George Longworth so musical that he almost stole the whole show, it didn't really matter.

Angelika looks fabulous in her now famous Red Dress, but the others, in huge, white, padded, puffed and pointed clown suits (without red noses) seem to have walked straight out of a cross between Star Trek and Dallas, and the way that stagehands push the foldaway sets round and round in circles during the first half's interludes, with associated squeaks, could have been usefully cut back. There wasn't much wrong with the actual direction - the characters emerged as well-drawn and believable - but the design...oh well.

Rattle controlled the dramatic pace marvellously and the orchestra sounded super - detailed, transparent and balanced extremely well with the singers. Hard to believe it was the same band that played that mismanaged, lumpen Mayerling the other week (conducted by, oh dear, um, one Mr Wordsworth).

Pelleas remains a conundrum of an opera because - well, what do you do with it? Nothing kills it stone-cold dead as much as naturalism. It's a Symbolist work, a conceptual piece where nothing can be taken at face value. So it begs a conceptual rendition. At least, one would think so. The music is what really counts, though; starship outfits or none, I still went home floating.

A good way to start the week

A note from Korngold supremo Brendan Carroll not only alerts me to the presence on Youtube of this clip, but also explains that the pianist/comedian Great Dane was a tremendous Korngold fan and knew the composer in Hollywood.

This is, of course, Liszt...

Bonne anniversaire, Monsieur Gabriel

Those eyes. That moustache. And oh, that music... Happy birthday to my beloved Gabriel Faure, born on 12 May 1845.

Vladi scoops the RPS!

Our own utterly glorious Vladimir Jurowski, principal conductor designate of the LPO and music director at Glyndebourne, has been named the Royal Philharmonic Society's Conductor of the Year! (Just in time to do Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane in November :-))). He's opening the Glyndebourne season with MacVerdi's Macbeth next week. Vazhazdarovye, Vlad!

Bach to basics...

...while I was up to my eyeballs in kitchen building site dust, Jeremy Denk had one of those moments of pure inspiration...see what happened when a certain composer answered his ad...

Angelic Angelika

Here's my interview with Angelika Kirchschlager from today's Independent. A glorious singer and a strong, expressive woman full of intelligence and intuition, she is about to take on Debussy's Melisande at Covent Garden. The piece doesn't really have much to do with trouser roles, despite the standfirst.

Violinist scuppers Iran-US rapprochement?!

The Indy today runs a startling news story about the curtailment of a Sharm-el-Sheikh dinner in which the Iranian foreign minister left in a huff - possibly because of a violinist in a red dress...

Classical Brits...

This peculiar awards ceremony took place yesterday. I don't think it quite matches up to what I was told a few weeks ago. A nice PR person called me and said that the Classical Brits wanted to go upmarket, that a certain Very Wonderful Tenor was going to be singing on the big day and that if the paper would take something then they'd fly me out to Vienna to interview him. Boss wasn't keen - we've probably had too much VWT recently - so (*sigh*) I didn't go. Now the results are out: guess what? Paul McCartney, Katherine Jenkins and so forth. Fine if you like that sort of thing; I didn't think Sir P's album was as utterly dreadful as some would have us believe. But it's not exactly going upmarket.

A couple of noteworthy notes, though: they gave a lifetime achievement award to Vernon ('Tod') Handley, who deserves a knighthood far more than most British conductors who already have one. And the young violinist Ruth Palmer won a prize, having had the gumption not only to raise enough sponsorship dosh to hire the Philharmonia and make her first recording off her own bat, but to play stupendously well on the disc.

Poor old Erich

Oh dear. I hate writing things like this.

I know Korngold is difficult to play, difficult even to decipher, and can be overwritten etc etc, but still I don't think that's any excuse for what I heard last night.

It purported to be the Sinfonietta that EWK penned at the tender age of 15 and which induced Sibelius to describe the youngster as 'a young eagle'. Of course it's great that they programmed it - but I couldn't think when I last heard a professional orchestra and conductor produce such a dreadful performance of anything.

Most of it went around half the necessary tempi. The balance was non-existent. The dynamic contrasts likewise. Light, shade, colour, ebb, flow, the white-hot energy that flows in Korngold's musical veins, all were spectacular by their absence. Some of the players seemed to be struggling and ensemble didn't really come into it. My companion put it well, saying she was astounded that such non-four-square music could be made to sound - utterly four-square. Korngold normally changes his time signatures and expressive instructions every few bars - flexibility is crucial... The best I can say is that they played it at all.

The culprits? The BBC Concert Orchestra under Barry Wordsworth. One didn't expect the Berlin Philharmonic, of course, but it was depressing, particularly as the concert was well sold and most people there would never have heard the piece before and won't know how beautiful it can be. Besides, Wordsworth is probably the only conductor in Britain who knows the work well, having performed it a number of times at the Royal Ballet for La Ronde. Perhaps it would have been better if he'd decided just before the concert that he didn't believe in it...

Before the interval our friends Philippe Graffin and Raphael Wallfisch did a splendid job with the Miklos Rozsa Sinfonia Concertante and afterwards we all went for a pizza, which was nice.

1 May

The first of May, hooray, hooray,
It should have been a holiday
But Mrs Thatcher took it away,
So while in Europe people play
Here in silly old UK
We have to go to work today
Except for those who cause affray.

So here are some new colours, spurred on by lilac trees, late apple blossom and a few early roses that have been fooled by weeks of sunshine into thinking it's June.

Banned!

The Royal Festival Hall is reopening in a grand bonanza on 11 June after a major refit that is supposed to fix its acoustics. They're working flat out to finish the thing on time and are now giving some acoustic test concerts to help them perfect the final stages. On Saturday night, the LPO performed a whole evening of Brahms with Vladimir Jurowski, starring the one and only Vadim Repin in the Violin Concerto.

I was BANNED from attending. No journalists were allowed in.

Not like word isn't rife on the ground - everybody I know seems to have been inside and heard something, even if not that concert, in the past few days. Tom, for once in his life, is too scared to say a word, but elsewhere rumour has it that the stage is much larger than before and that in the rear stalls underneath the balcony you can actually hear the orchestra.

London is now chock-full of journalists trying to source leaks - which might not have been the case if we hadn't been shut out.

Slava forever

A friend has asked me to share my few personal memories of Rostropovich...

About three years ago, I interviewed him briefly backstage at the Barbican for The Strad's 'Double Acts' back page about his working relationship with Maxim Vengerov. The maestro turned on his very considerable charm and talked in rapturous terms about his much younger colleague.

Thing is, I'm a closet cellist-manquee. When I heard Han-Na Chang (incidentally, a Rostropovich protegee) play in Verbier 4-5 years back, it hit me between the eyes that the cello is the most beautiful and expressive instrument on the planet. And that if I could have my time over again, I would learn it and play it and never stop. It would have solved everything I disliked about playing the violin (high frequencies buzzing in one's left ear, plus desperately close, fiddly fingering), not to mention the piano (too many notes, my dear Horowitz) and the repertoire is 20-carat gold...

So at the end of the interview, I thank Maestro for the joy and wonder of his playing, which I heard on a few memorable occasions, and mention that I would love to have played the cello. "When you decide to start," said Maestro, "then let me know, and I will be your teacher."

I missed my chance. Well, he'd have been disappointed in me. I'd have got the strings the wrong way round and been severely blocked by the very notion of trying to go above third position.

The last time I saw Rostropovich perform was in Vilnius in 2004, where he conducted the Tchaikovsky Pathetique Symphony. It was glorious: like stepping into a Melodiya recording from the 1950s...The march in particular was far slower than most conductors take it these days. A friend asked Maestro about his choice of tempo later on. His response, apparently, was: "It's a march." You must be able to march to it. It made sense. And the final movement: devastation alive, raw, eternal, unforgettable.

Farewell, Slava

Mstislav Rostropovich has passed away.

The Guardian has a full obituary, tributes from James MacMillan, Steven Isserlis and others, and a selection of recommended recordings.

He was a pervasive musical figurehead, a by-word for inspiration and idealism, a last link with Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and an unforgettable presence with or without his cello.

UPDATE, 8.15 Saturday 28 April:
A press release from 98.7WFMT, Chicago's Classical Experience, informs us that the radio station is paying tribute to Rostropovich today by broadcasting recordings from its archives of his cello performances and conducting. In addition, the station is airing voicemails and reading emails from listeners recounting memories of the world-renowned musician, who visited Chicago many times during his lifetime. Rare interviews have also been posted on wfmt.com.

There's a very touching tribute by Richard Morrison in The Times. He says, among other things: "...the music from Rostropovich’s cello wasn’t just beautiful. It was a transcendental message of hope, surging and irresistible, from one soul to another – his to yours. If I live to be 100, I don’t expect to hear another sound that touches me so deeply."

Clive Davis posts a video of Rostropovich playing Bach and some pertinent political moments from the New York Times's obituary.

UPDATE: Sunday morning: Opera Chic has a series of tribute posts and some very interesting links to news sites etc.

JDCMB Pick of the Proms

Rightyho, prospectus duly plundered. What follows is just a taste of the interesting (or just really attractive) dates that didn't make the national press yesterday.

15 July: Buskaid and the Soweto String Ensemble meet John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists. Intriguing.

18 July: Kurt Masur celebrates turning 80 by joining together his two orchestras, the Orchestre National de France and our own London Philharmonic.

21 July: A short but lovely French Prom featuring Steven Isserlis in Saint-Saens's Cello Concerto No.2, and also Faure's Cantique de Jean Racine. Thierry Fischer conducts.

23 July lunchtime: recital by seriously hot fiddler James Ehnes and pianist Eduard Laurel.

29 July: Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble/Mark Minkowski with Anne Sofie von Otter; programme includes Berlioz Les nuits de'ete.

30 July: Yefim Bronfman plays Esa-Pekka Salonen's Piano Concerto, with composer conducting.

3 August: Semyon Bychkov conducts Rachmaninov Symphony No.2 with BBCSO.

6 August: Renee Fleming evening, with Korngold arias from Die Kathrin and Das Wunder der Heliane among the goodies.

12 August: Gotterdammerung conducted by Donald Runnicles, Christine Brewer as Brunnhilde.

25 August: Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw in Wagner and Debussy.

4 September: Barenboim and the Vienna Phil go Austro-Hungaromanian.

8 September: Last Night stars Anna Netrebko, Andrew Kennedy and Josh Bell. OMG, please tell me Netrebko isn't going to sing 'Rule, Britannia'?!

PS - huge thanks to Alex Ross for picking up on the Tasmin busking story and noticing what the crux of the matter really was...

A very different kind of festival...

I regret not having discovered, until today, violinist-blogger Simon Hewitt Jones's reports from the Mozart in Palestine festival through the first half of April. It's a moving travelogue full of insight and incident, lavishly illustrated with photos and videos - well worth reading in its entirety if you haven't already. Don't miss the 'Queen of the 1001 Nights' aria...

Prommms

I had a lot of s*)% to deal with yesterday and everything happened at the time I should have been heading for the Proms launch. By the time the sighs of relief had been breathed, 'Old Nick' would have finished his speech. So for the moment here's the report from today's Independent giving some of the highlights...which include an evening with the mind-boggling Nitin Sawhney, a Brass Day (billed as 'loud'), and a new composition by Rachel Portman about Hurricane Katrina (Portman is best known as an excellent film composer, and a refreshing change from the Anglo-German youngsters trying to be Berg a century too late).

There's also an evening with Michael Ball, of which Nick Kenyon apparently said "We are responding to what audiences want to hear". Cue yells about dumbing down. It's Nick's last season. Maybe he just doesn't care any more?

On the other hand, anyone who saw Michael Ball as Purcell in the Tony Palmer/John Osborne film England, My England, may stop and reflect that it's not such a bad idea. Maybe we ought to listen first and judge afterwards.

I'll pick out some suitably idiosyncratic JDCMB Proms (assuming there are some) once I've plundered the prospectus. Meanwhile, you can see the full listings of what's on.

The trouble with an iPod...

...at least, a very small one...is that if you forget to take it out of your pocket, you can later discover that it's been through the laundry.

Crying for Argentina

The other day a strange girl stopped me at my local station and said "I love your shoes." I was on the way to the South Bank in the most live-in-able of my tango-style heels from Buenos Aires. The young woman turned out to be a dance teacher.

Any of you who remember our pathetic attempts at learning the tango a couple of years ago will probably have surmised that after the big trip to South America in January 06, we admitted defeat (de feet were not OK). Wow, do I miss it. The CD Canciones Argentinas had me hankering after the place, the atmosphere, the music, that peculiar brand of bone-twisting nostalgia.

Buenos Aires is not the most beautiful city I've ever visited, the food was not the finest in the world, I can't speak the language and I can't dance the dance. The people were extremely charming (especially a certain leather jacket salesman, who was Cuban), yet there was a slight undercurrent of unspecified threat, and as for the driving, you take your life in your hands when you step into a taxi. But what can I do? It's got under my skin. I miss it. I want to go back.

Problem - my editor tells me that South America is 'the kiss of death' in fiction. I don't know why. Perhaps Isabelle Allende has a monopoly, or perhaps it's just that people can't jump on Easyjet and check out the locations for themselves in a cheap weekend. I doubt that my next book is going to be tango-centric, much as I would love it to be. So there's only one thing for it...

...hunting down Astor Piazzolla on Youtube from the safety of my London study, where coincidentally I've spent the morning chewing over concepts concerning solitude, loneliness and the peculiar sonic qualities of the violin that make it so perfect as a vehicle for such emotions. So here is Piazzolla, with fiddler friend, in 'Soledad'.

First knight of the Proms

Here's my piece about Sir Henry Wood from today's Indy. Sir Henry was the public face of the Proms for their first five decades.

This year's Proms launch takes place on Wednesday, after which we can all plan our summers.

Why people write...

The BBC's website has today posted an interesting little article about why people try to write novels.

I've just sent my No.3, as yet without confirmed title, off to my editor, the scariest moment of the year. Now, after spending yesterday imbibing the new Ian McEwan novel On Chesil Beach, I'm suffering intense attacks of humbleness. It's the most astonishing book, perfectly fashioned, as wonderfully balanced as the Mozart string quintets the heroine plays (ouch - my new MS features the G minor...resemblance, sadly, ends there). It's a piece-of-ivory examination, with McEwan's usual razor-edged detail, of a young couple's disastrous wedding night in 1962: the way that the course of a life can be determined by a gesture left unmade, a loving word left unsaid.

Now, the following is NOT a criticism. I'm just interested to see that the violinist, Florence, is portrayed as potentially frigid. Of course she's actually just very young, over-innocent, English, repressed...but could this be misinterpreted as yet another stereotyping of classical musicians as sad, sexless beings who can't loosen up?

Ironic if so, because a lot of professional classical musicians are rampant. Passionate, wildly sexed-up beings, with filthy senses of humour, who love the electric energy of the adrenalin rush in performance, the thrills of being on stage giving their all, the ecstasy of being adored; wine, women(/men) and song... Some have crazy lives and idiosyncratic ways of letting off steam. But frigid? lol.

That's one reason some of us write.

Ashkenazy stops, but Perahia is back

Opera Chic has some distressing news: Vladimir Ashkenazy has apparently decided to stop giving concerts as a pianist because he has a degenerative joint condition in three fingers of his left hand. He'll still be conducting and recording, though. (Report was in the Milan Corriere della Sera). I remember hearing him give an all-Beethoven recital at the RFH about twenty years ago (possibly longer...) and retain an impression of beautiful tone, utter absorption and intense empathy with the late sonatas. Allegro Films is hoping to release Christopher Nupen's documentary about him on DVD in November.

The good news, though, is that Murray Perahia, who had a lot of trouble with a lingering hand injury, is back and giving a London recital at the Barbican Centre on Monday. The programme includes Bach, Beethoven, Schumann & Chopin - info & booking here, PDQ. Here's Perahia playing a very lovely Mendelssohn Song Without Words:

Speaking of busking

Apparently Nigel Kennedy was heard discussing Tasmin's little excursion with Sean Rafferty on Radio 3's 'In Tune' yesterday and quite fancies the idea of having a go himself, though he used to do it for real as a student in New York. Meanwhile rumour has it that at least two other national newspapers are (or were?) planning to carry out similar stunts.

On a slightly more serious note (no pun intended), the violinist David Juritz, leader of the London Mozart Players, is going to busk his way around the world for four-and-a-half months. He's calling his project 'Round the World and Bach'. He starts in June and plans to play solo Bach through Europe, Asia, Australasia and the Americas, with a stint in his native South Africa. The project will raise money for a new charity, Musequality, which aims to finance community music projects in deprived areas and is administered by the Musicians' Benevolent Fund. Follow his progress, and sponsor him, at roundtheworldandbach.com.

When Tasmin went busking...

I spent part of Tuesday afternoon standing under the Waterloo railway bridge watching Tasmin Little playing Vivaldi and shouting "Give us a copper!" to the passing builders - and (above) performing 'Happy Birthday' for a celebrating child. Yes, the boss asked us to do a London edition of the Washington Post/Josh Bell experience - and it was fascinating to see where the results were similar and where they differed. Although the actual statistics were in the same general ball park, we found the experience anything but relentlessly depressing.

Londoners like music, their children really love it and many people knew they were hearing something special. I think they just didn't want to have to pay for it.

Read all about it in today's Independent, here.

BTW, the coverline is FIDDLER ON THE HOOF. But guess which musical, opening in May, is advertised on the back?!? I'm assured that this is complete coincidence.

What a surprise!

An announcement came today that the new director of the Proms will be Roger Wright, controller of Radio 3. Nicholas Kenyon, who's leaving to head the Barbican, was controller of Radio 3 before he took over the Proms. John Drummond, Proms supermo for years before that, was also controller of Radio 3 first. So we're really, really surprised. I wonder if they'd ever considered anybody else?

Still, gut reaction is that Wright's a good bet. His innovations at Radio 3 have been a willingness to embrace technology, the offering of groundbreaking downloads - they proved too popular for their own good - and occasional saturation bombing with whole weeks devoted to one composer. He has a feel for the big gesture, the grand style and the pushing out of technological boats, all of which go down like hot muffins at the Proms if they're carried off well. Perhaps he'll bring a breath of comparatively fresh air in to the arena.

That is, if he has the time - he's staying on at R3 as well.