Newsround

Ursula Vaughan Williams died on Tuesday. Here's her obituary from The Guardian.

Norman Lebrecht has written a big piece about Korngold. Taster:

Korngold, 110 next month and 50 years dead, richly deserves to be welcomed back to the concert hall. But he deserves even more to be recognised as a pioneer of an allied art, an art that now cries out for a new Korngold to rejuvenate its methodology. The time has come to erase the line between movie and concert music, to encourage the likes of John Adams, Thomas Ades and Mark Anton Turnage to try their hand at lifting film tracks out of the Korngold groove and into 21st century modalities.

Read the whole thing here.

And in The New Republic, Richard Taruskin has published a philosophical tract in the guise of a book review, declaring that classical music's problem is its defenders... and in the 24 online pages, I reckon he makes some very pertinent points. Rather than summarising it here, I suggest you read it and make up your own mind...

Taster:

...The discourse supporting classical music so reeks of historical blindness and sanctimonious self-regard as to render the object of its ministrations practically indefensible. Belief in its indispensability, or in its cultural superiority, is by now unrecoverable, and those who mount such arguments on its behalf morally indict themselves. Which is not to say that classical music, or any music, is morally reprehensible. Only people, not music, can be that. What is reprehensible is to see its cause as right against some wrong. What is destroying the credibility of classical music is an unacknowledged or misperceived collision of rights. The only defense classical music needs, and the only one that has any hope of succeeding, is the defense of classical music (in the words ofT.W. Adorno, a premier offender) against its devotees.

PS - apologies for lumping all these different meaty topics together. I am up to my eyeballs at present with 400 pages of novel proofs plus preparations for Korngold event on Saturday.

Anne Sofie's Terezin CD

Anne Sofie von Otter's new disc of music from the Terezin concentration camp is one of the greatest CDs I've ever heard. Read more about it here. Then buy it here.

UPDATE: Sample it at her website here.
MORE UPDATE: More about the incredible and very personal background history to the disc here.

Bravo Solti

Wonderful Webmaster alerts me to the fact that Sir Georg Solti would have been 95 today. So by way of tribute, here's how he turned things round at Covent Garden.

For opera fans: indigestion

oh dear...English National Opera has set The Coronation of Poppea on a cruise ship. (Am also a tad intrigued to see this critic describe Monteverdi's tale of lust, murder and unscrupulousness as a 'comedy'.)

Sounds like ENO is giving its audience indigestion yet again, after what seems to have been a seriously gorge-sticking Carmen directed by Sally Potter, with Don Jose as a security guard. With the singers ENO has at its disposal - Kate Royal as Poppea, Alice Coote as Carmen etc - and a terrific orchestra, not to mention London's plethora of great talent right on the doorstep, the place really should be able to do better.

Korngold features today on Music Matters, BBC Radio 3

Presenter Tom Service features Korngold in BBC Radio 3's flagship magazine programme today at 12.15. Includes interviews with biographer and apostle Brendan Carroll, Academic Erik Levi (who is joining Brendan, me and Ben Wallfisch for the South Bank round-table discussion next Saturday), Andre Previn, Korngold's daughter-in-law Helen and archive material from the composer's sons Ernst and George. You can hear it online for 7 days after the broadcast. More info here.

UPDATE, 12.55pm: It was a great feature - with one bad mistake. The date given at the end for the UK premiere of Das Wunder der Heliane is wrong. Tom says '14 November' and it is actually 21 November. But if you turn up on 14th, you can hear Nikolaj Znaider play the Violin Concerto.

Also, I'm not sure that they made it clear that Korngold's sons George and Ernst are not actually alive - their interview extracts were from archive material which I believe was provided by Brendan. AND nobody mentioned the kick-off events in the QEH Korngoldfest on 27 October: 1.30pm, Barrie Gavin's documentary; 3.30pm, the discussion. Nash Ensemble is after that.

Korngold piece in today's Independent

I have a largish piece about Korngold in today's Independent.

A Korngold rarity - countdown # 2

I found this on Youtube and could hardly believe my eyes/ears. This is from Korngold's mid-1930s Hollywood musical Give Us This Night starring Gladys Swarthout and Jan Kiepura, the great Polish tenor for whom Korngold created the role of The Stranger in Das Wunder der Heliane. Kiepura plays an Italian fisherman who is 'discovered' and transformed into an opera star, singing Romeo to Swarthout's Juliet. Here is the love duet that closes the opera-within-a-film and the film itself. And if you think this is OTT, just wait until you hear Heliane.

I have only ever seen this film once before, on a tiny reel-to-reel machine in the basement of UCLA in 1993. Some of the melodies are so delicious that if Pavarotti had got hold of them they'd have been world famous 20 years ago.

Enjoy.

Korngold countdown begins

The amount of excitement surrounding the forthcoming Korngold celebration at the Southbank is absolutely fantastic. Latest news is that BBC Radio 3 is to feature Korngold in 'Music Matters' on 20 October and will be talking to people who were close to the composer in person; and on 26 October 'In Tune' will be interviewing musicians involved in Korngold Day on 27th, including Anne Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg.

Here's a link to the details of 27th. (Not sure how/why he has been transformed into 'Eric' on this page, since his name is, was and always will be Erich Wolfgang...)

And here are links to the LPO's Korngold Focus concerts:

2 November: Film music, alongside works by Waxman, Newman, Rozsa, Williams etc. Includes the UK premiere of Korngold's 'Tomorrow' from The Constant Nymph. John Wilson conducts.

14 November: Orchestral programme conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, with Nikolai Znaider as soloist in the Violin Concerto. Programme also includes Zemlinsky's Sinfonietta and Shostakovich's Symphony no.6.

21 November: UK premiere of Das Wunder der Heliane, concert performance conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.

And finally, here is Renee Fleming singing 'Ich ging zu ihm' from the Prom on 6 August, on Youtube. Listen, watch and marvel. Heliane lives! (The embedding function is not available for this video.)

NB

In case anyone was hoping to come to my Alicia's Gift reading at The Red Hedgehog in Highgate tomorrow (it was flagged on my permasite), please note that it's been cancelled due to circumstances beyond my control. Hopefully the one on 8 December, linked to the recital by Peter Donohoe, will go ahead.

Meanwhile in Vienna...

...Opera Chic is having a lorralorra fun. Following on from the more daring inspirations named after Mozart and Tchaikovsky, I hope that the shop she's been frequenting might consider creating a special gadget for the Korngold anniversary? It wouldn't be inappropriate to certain bits of Das Wunder der Heliane...

On a slightly different note, Solti the cat, while somewhat 'indisposed', has discovered some Youtube video footage of Richard Tauber, whose voice conveys the essential spirit of Vienna. And the home movie passage shows him cuddling some lion cubs.

Myra Hess Day at the National Gallery

...It's today, and I'm not there. I should currently be listening to Piers Lane and the Doric Quartet playing the Elgar Piano Quintet on the spot where Dame Myra and her musicians sat during the years of the Second World War, when the gallery was cleared of most of its paintings and Hess moved music in instead to raise Londoners' spirits. Last year's day devoted to her memory - the first ever, unbelievably - proved so popular that someone listened to our calls for it to become an annual event, and Piers intended today's concerts to be a tribute in a wider sense, to music as a consolation in times of war.

They opened at lunchtime with a concert of Bach transcriptions for one and two pianos; at teatime, Anita Lasker Wallfisch gave an interview about her wartime experiences; and this evening the concert featuring the Elgar Quintet was to end with the Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time.

Annoyingly, I pulled a tendon in my leg at the gym earlier today and am hobbling about. So instead of being there, I am watching Dame Myra on Youtube. You can too. Here she is playing the Appassionata at the National Gallery in 1945.

Cheers

As from yesterday, our friends in the Netherlands can read Alicia's Gift in Dutch under the title Wonderkind.

LPO cup runneth over

I'd hoped to give a full report on the glittering party that followed the LPO's anniversary concert the other night: the fantastic big-band playing of its Renga Ensemble with Scott Stroman, the speech by arts minister Margaret Hodge, the dusky and charismatic figure of Vladimir Jurowski encircled by adoring fans, the champagne [sorry, Pliable! I've no intention of being at loggerheads with anyone; it takes all sorts, etc, and there's enough room on earth for Adorno, Cage, Rachmaninov and Moet & Chandon]...But we only caught about 10 minutes of it because we were backstage trying to force Tom's locker open. The key was bust and his wallet and sandwiches were on the wrong side of the door.

We also survived our first ride in a brand new RFH lift which took us to the top floor around 7pm and then didn't want to let us out. Again, all was well when it changed its electronic mind, but there was a worrying minute in which we thought there'd be an empty seat in the first violins.

Vladimir's account of the Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances, however, was an event that would surely have made Sir Thomas Beecham proud of the orchestra he founded 75 years ago. Vladimir is a spiritual type, interested in zen, meditation etc, and perhaps this comes across in his conducting in the moments of stillness, the intense focus, the darkness gathering invisible momentum in the background, ready to erupt. The final 'dance' seemed an apocalyptic evocation of a collapsing world.

I'm not going to write about the Mozart and Beethoven because I can never get past the mental image of a Cornflakes packet being thumped when I hear those 'authentic' 'period' drums. But here's a full review from The Telegraph's Matthew Rye.

Happy Birthday, London Philharmonic!

Seventy-five years ago today, the London Philharmonic Orchestra gave its first concert. On the podium was its founder, Sir Thomas Beecham. Tonight at the Royal Festival Hall the LPO is performing a celebration concert for its big birthday, with its new principal conductor, Vladimir Jurowski (left), and it's a programme to adore:

Richard Bissell: Fanfare for a 75th anniversary
Mozart: 'Prague' Symphony
Beethoven: Piano Concerto no.4 with Maurizio Pollini
Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances

Richard Bissell, by the way, is the band's very fine First Horn. There's no need to introduce Pollini, but I'd like to say that he's one of the pianists I have most admired and respected all my life. An interview I did with him a few years ago left me with the impression that he's a mensch: a person of absolute integrity who lives and works according to strong ideals. No pretence, no fuss, no nonsense: simply the real thing.

Should be an evening to remember.

Here's a more recent interview with Pollini by Richard Morrison (The Times, 28th September). And to inspire, here's the maestro playing the second movement of the concerto, with Abbado conducting.

mad props

First to a blog called International Listings which has to do with luxury real estate. Its proprietor has kindly seen fit to include JDCMB among the top 100 blogs suitable for the super-rich, classifying it under 'Odds and Ends'. It's a culturally interesting phenomenon, this, but the promotion is appreciated.

Also to The Official Blog of the Grateful Web, which liked the Brahms picture, points to a number of interesting blogs of all types and recommends a search engine which I keep meaning to try out.

Next, the estimable Stephen Pollard at The Spectator, who has kindly included JDCMB on a very elite blogroll. Different politics, but shared interests!

And last, but by no means least, to the Sunday Times, which last week named Beloved Clara as its audio book of the week. I was basking in Baden-Baden and missed it on the day. Tres drole.

Raising a glass at the Gramophones

Spent Wednesday at the Gramophone Awards. Suffice it to say that the Dorchester is a splendid venue, the food was superb and the champagne flowed. More importantly, so did some very astute prizes.

I was particularly pleased to see the veteran record producer Christopher Raeburn being presented with a Special Achievement accolade. We miss people in the industry with his level of artistic judgment, musical idealism and integrity. Bravo.

Also thrilled that Jonas Kaufmann's CD of Strauss Lieder won its category, with some strong words from the relevant commentator about how fabulous this glorious tenor is.

Speaking of tenors, who should turn up but Juan Diego Phwoarez! Montserrat Caballe was to be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award, but apparently her taxi was involved in an accident on the way to the airport. She's unhurt, but missed the plane. JDF, as her colleague and friend, accepted it very graciously on her behalf. He also accepted a prize for one of his own recordings, too: the rarely heard Rossini opera Matilde di Shabran. (Last night he gave a concert in the Rosenblatt Recital series. I couldn't get in. Nobody could.)

Brahms did well. There was a prize for the German Requiem from the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Simon Rattle, with soloists Dorothea Roschmann and Thomas Quasthoff, and for Nelson Freire's recording of the two piano concertos, which happily scooped Record of the Year. A true artist, Freire: a musician of honesty, finesse and intelligence through and through.

Julia Fischer, the wonderful young German violinist, was Artist of the Year, voted for by millions of listeners to some 15 radio stations around the world. Young Artist of the Year was Vassily Petrenko, the youthful Russian who's currently making the kind of waves at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic that would please a surfing champion.

But the show was rather stolen by the Instrumental Award: Steven Isserlis's Bach Cello Suites. Steven was on tour, so he sent a friend to pick up the prize. The friend was none other than ace comedian Barry Humphries. And it didn't take him long to have the entire ballroom in stitches with jokes such as one about how a friend mixed up the words 'falsetto' and 'fellatio'. That word must have been a first for the Gramophone Awards...

There are many more prizes and you can read the full list here.

UPDATE, 6.07pm: The Overgrown Path appears to think we should all have stayed home to improve our souls by reading Adorno instead. He is right to imply that contemporary music did not have a major presence in the selection. One award was presented for a CD of music written in the past decade - it went to Julian Anderson - but only one. I would love to see the huge variety of contemporary music being encouraged and celebrated with more prominence at such events. We should perhaps note that the full title of these awards is The Classic FM Gramophone Awards.

Been here...

Baden-Baden, where I plucked up the courage to join Tom & the orchestra for a Tristan-dash (check in Heathrow 7.30am, plane delayed 1.5 hours - though not, this time, due to a cat in the hold, just the usual London airspace nonsense; arrive Frankfurt 12.45pm, leave Frankfurt by coach 1.20pm, hold-up on the autobahn, arrive B-B 3.30pm, scheduled start of opera 4pm, actual start of opera necessarily 4.15pm, finish playing 10.15pm, much beer 10.30pm).

Mad, perhaps, but wonderful as well: it was worth every minute of the extra stress. Glorious performances of Lehnhoff's breathtaking blue-light-of-nirvana production from Glyndebourne; Nina Stemme and Katerina Karneus resplendent as Isolde and Brangaene, Robert Gambrill as Tristan, Bo Skovhus as Kurwenal. The excuse for exporting Glyndebourne wholesale (I think this was the first time they've done so) was the Herbstfestival in B-B's marvellous Festspielhaus - once the station at which Brahms, Turgenev et al would have arrived in the town. The all-star line-up meant that on the first morning we met the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra at breakfast in the hotel, and on the second the Vienna Philharmonic, which caused much interest in the LPO because they turned up to the dining room mostly in jackets.

We stayed on between nos.3 and 4 (Thursday to Sunday) and went sightseeing. There's something magic about Baden-Baden, which is utterly unspoiled, surrounded by hills that are lathered in rich, varied woodland; the air is pure, the Friedrichsbad allures with promises of steam rooms and massages, and you can walk half an hour to Lichtental to see Brahms's flat, along the Lichtentalerallee which is dotted with 200-year-old weeping elm trees that would have been sizeable 50-year-olds when Brahms, Clara Schumann, Turgenev and Viardot walked here in the 1860s. Just a pity about the food...too many sausages...

Above, top to bottom: the Turgenev bust in the park; Brahms himself (frei aber froh? Really, Johannes? Look at those eyes...); Brahms's house; and the house that Turgenev built (which bears a cruel plaque saying 'Villa Turgenev, kein zutritt') next to Pauline Viardot's, which has been knocked down and replaced with apartments.

Why no statue of Pauline?

But the day after coming back, I went to Paris to investigate what Cecilia Bartoli is doing with Pauline's legendary big sister, Maria Malibran.

Not everyone likes cats

The LPO, fresh from last week's Southbank triumph, headed for Baden-Baden for the opening leg of a short run of Glyndebourne's Tristan und Isolde. Dress rehearsal & three performances, several days apart: the band is supposed to fly there and back for each occasion (on performance day, via Frankfurt and a 2 1/2 hr coach journey). The other day the first show started late because the plane was held up. We hear that this was because of problems with a cat in the hold.

Sir Georg 'Ginger Stripes' Solti asks me to point out here that he was safely at home tearing up manuscripts in the study.

Blogging may be thin on the ground due to performances 3 & 4 to which I'm heading tomorrow. Taking camera along to find B-B 19th-century haunts of Clara Schumann, Brahms, Viardot, Turgenev et al.

Adieu, Marcel Marceau

Marcel Marceau, master of mime. 1923-2007.

The rest is news

Alex Ross's book The Rest is Noise has reached print at last. Congratulations, Alex - and I'm looking forward to the UK edition from Fourth Estate which is due out here in spring. Stylists as fine as Alex are a rarity in classical music writing and this volume looks certain to become a classic. If anyone out there still hasn't sampled Alex, here's a link to his Sibelius chapter - some of the most beautiful writing about music I've ever seen.

Chris Foley of Collaborative Piano alerts today to an interesting innovation: he's created a Classical Music Pagecast on Pageflakes. Technotwit here hadn't come across this idea until now, but it's good: the ultimate blogroll.

Opera Chic has found a real Italian tenor and links to a Youtube video of him singing Nessun Dorma. Voice to die for. Name: Fabio Armiliato. Thanks, OC!

And over at Think Denk, Jeremy has created a side-splitting scenic spoof: Shakespeare's little-known tragicomedy about life, love and death al dente among passionate youngsters in New York, Romeo and Juilliard. Get along there quick and meet Romeo, Mercutio, Candy and the Ghost of Dorothy DeLay.

Some of my favourite men wear tights

The Guardian today runs an extract from the autobiography of Carlos Acosta (picture above shows him without said tights...photo credit by Tristam Kenton, from The Guardian).

When the news reached my father's ears that I was running around the streets with gangs, he said to my mother, "We have to do something, Maria, otherwise we're going to lose the boy." Our neighbour Candida, whose nephew was one of the principal dancers with the Cuban National Ballet, had a suggestion: "You say he likes dancing? Why don't you send him to ballet school?"

My father's eyes lit up. Ballet! Suddenly there was hope. I was only nine, but I still remember that day when my parents told me their plans.

"What's everyone in the neighbourhood going to think? They'll say I'm gay!"

"Listen, you're my son and the son of the tiger shares his father's stripes. If anyone calls you gay, just smash his face in, then pull down your trousers and show him what you've got between your legs."

"But Papito, I want to be a footballer."

"Your mother and I have made up our minds, and that's that. It's your future, my boy!"

Meanwhile I have a hot date with my tv tonight: special documentary Nureyev: From Russia with love on BBC2 at 9.30. Watch clips here. And BBC4, the digital channel, is showing the Fonteyn & Nureyev film of Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet immediately afterwards. Is Acosta the closest thing we have now to Nureyev? I reckon so...

Nureyev, for a while, had a house about ten minutes walk from where we live. Sometimes I stare over the wooden gate towards the door that was once his, trying to imagine a creature as self-willed and wild as that living somewhere as ridiculously bourgeois and uneventful as this suburb. Not that he stayed long. One biography tells the story that he decided to move after an occasion when he left late for a performance at Covent Garden and jumped on the District Line at East Putney in the wrong direction.

Krystian speaks...

My German isn't brilliant, but I think that this open letter from Krystian Zimerman explains why he and Gidon Kremer did not appear together as originally planned at this year's Salzburg Festival.

For those of us who rely on the universal language that is music, here is KZ playing two of Gershwin's Preludes in Japan. I'm told that he also made a substantial speech to the audience - in Japanese - about American politics and the war in Iraq, but that has not as yet made it on to Youtube.

Enjoy.

Et a propos de St Nazaire...

...here are some famous goings-on from up the road in St Marc, courtesy of Jaques Tati a.k.a. Monsieur Hulot, on his holidays. This episode includes the conversational reference to St Nazaire plus...well, you have to see it.

A walk through the end of time...

Back from France...as I'd suspected, my technotwit tendencies (or inadequate laptop) prevented any blogging en route.

My play 'A Walk through the End of Time' was premiered on Saturday as part of the opening night of the Consonances Festival - a privilege indeed, and an astonishing experience.

The Alveole 14 of St Nazaire's former Nazi submarine base eyesore has been renamed LIFE and transformed into a venue for experimental performing arts which turned out to have a startlingly good acoustic; ours was the first show to take place inside it. Actors Marie-Christine Barrault and Charles Gonzales gave their all, director Ilonka van den Bercken from Amsterdam devised some beautiful coups-de-theatre, a young Dutch artist created projected drawings to illustrate the action in real time and the closing performance of the Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time by Charles Neidich, Philippe Graffin, Raphael Wallfisch and Claire Desert was unforgettable. And afterwards the mayor of St Nazaire awarded me a medal. :-)

More pics on my permasite. For the moment, above: the American War Memorial on the beach at St Nazaire; the set inside LIFE; and a would-be playwright with Raphael Wallfisch (left) and Philippe Graffin (right).

September

It's September - so here is the late Lucia Popp singing 'September' from Strauss's Four Last Songs in 1977, conducted with tremendous panache by Solti. The sound is slightly crackly, but the voice's purity and directness goes straight to the heart. She died much too young in 1993 and is still sorely missed.



Not much blogging last week, due to final work on the manuscript of Hungarian Dances, which went back to Hodder & Stoughton yesterday for typesetting.

Blogging will be scant for the next couple of weeks too, as I'm off to France. Remembering foiled intentions of blogging the Viardot concert at St Nazaire a year ago, let's just say that I'll blog the progress of the Messiaen play if I can, but as it'll involve the same laptop, same hotel and same brain, it mightn't happen.

A bientot...

Gioconda de Vito: centenary of an angel

Gioconda de Vito was my second-ever interviewee, twenty years ago. It was a piece for The Strad to mark her 80th birthday (published in the June 1987 edition); she died seven years later. This summer marks her centenary. I've seen her birthday cited variously as 22 June and 26 July.

I was young and impressionable at the time, but meeting this remarkable violinist remains one of my most treasured memories.

Madame de Vito spoke very little English, but had lived in Britain for decades. Her husband, David Bicknell, had been a producer and executive for EMI; the pair settled in a beautiful stone house on the outskirts of Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, surrounded by countryside and an extensive garden through which a slender river flowed. My interview with her was conducted mainly via David's translation, but after tea she and I took a turn around the garden, during which I met her friends: the local animal population, from flocks of starlings to a family of swans, which she fed from huge cereal bowls on the bank of the stream, as well as squirrels that would eat nuts out of her hand, and some shy roe deer lurking in the wheatfield nearby.

Among the anecdotes that arose were tales of her impossibly early retirement from the violin. She had attended a recital by Cortot when the great pianist was way past his best; the result was a personal resolution not to fall into the trap of continuing too long. She was a deeply religious Catholic, moreover. Having played twice to the Pope, she decided she had reached the peak of her career and that that would be the end of it - even though the Pope himself spent an hour trying to talk her out of abandoning her God-given talent! She spent so long with him that members of her family, waiting to meet her outside, were afraid that she was lost somewhere inside the Vatican. She didn't miss her violin and never doubted that she'd done the right thing.

I'll never forget her eyes, which saw everything and understood life from the heart, language or none. If I ever met an angel in the music world, it was her.

Here is the 1987 article from my archive. And please enjoy her magical Beethoven and the informative film that appeared with it on Youtube only last week.

Buxton break

The Buxton Advertiser ran a lovely news story about Alicia's Gift this week.

Wild Oates!

Fantastic piece in today's Independent about one of my favourite authors, Joyce Carol Oates.

"Many writers are sad, bookish people who are comfortable writing. But as a writer you have access to people. It's your job as a mediator to respect those people – not to ridicule them." Forget prizes and adoration from the critics, Joyce Carol Oates knows why she writes. "A novel should extend sympathy," she says. "That is what a writer should try to do."

If you haven't read her yet, try Blonde, her imagining of the life of Marilyn Monroe, or We were the Mulvaneys. Or more or less any one of her other novels (more than 30, and that's just the ones under her own name...).

Philippe Hirshhorn plays Chausson...

Thanks to good old Youtube, here is a clip of this phenomenal yet not widely recognised Russian violinist playing the Chausson Poeme. Hirshhorn, who died of a brain tumour in 1996 aged 50, is something of a legend in violinistic circles and this playing, along with some perceptive comments from Mischa Maisky, helps to prove why.

A marvel in Manchester

The final evening of the Manchester International Concerto Competition for Young Pianists last Friday was quite an event. With two categories - the 16 and Under and the 22 and Under - the competition had already reached a climax the night before, with four superb youngsters strutting their stuff in Bach and Mozart; but, perhaps ironically, the 22 and Under's strongest impression was left by someone who was also under 16: Jan Lisiecki from Calgary in Canada, who played Chopin's Second Concerto. He's only 12.

Jan took joint second prize with the excellent 18-year-old Jamie Bergin, a student at Chetham's, but much of the buzz focused on him, with grown professional musicians drifting about the cathedral afterwards making remarks like 'touched by God...'. Jan already has a considerable track record, having played 12 times with orchestras including the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, and having performed in a gala concert with Yo-Yo Ma, Manny Ax and Pinchas Zukerman.

Still, first prize went to the right winner: Anja German from Slovenia, who played Beethoven 3 just beautifully. She is 22 and ready for anything. She's studying at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and has also won prizes in the National Competition in Slovenia and the EPTA International Competition for Young Pianists. She wins a series of excellent high-profile engagements around the UK, including London, and the chance to make a CD on the Dunelm label. Child prodigies may be prodigies but they are also children; young Jan deserves time to study and grow up before being plunged into the concert circuit, as he probably will be.

Plaudits too to third prizewinner, 17-year-old Walid El-Yafi, also studying at Chet's, who gave a strong and musical account of Saint-Saens' Third. Bravo to the Manchester Camerata, conducted by Chetham's head of music Stephen Threlfall, navigating four very difficult and exposed works with what must have been limited rehearsal time.

Competition founder Murray McLachlan, head of piano at Chethams', ensured another twist that seems valuable: the jury consisted entirely of concert pianists, an inspiration, he said, from the old days in the 'golden age' of pianism when musicians, rather than pedagogues, critics and others hunting power, were the norm on such panels. Murray wrote an interesting article for Classical Music's 'Soapbox' column a few months back, taking a fresh look at piano competitions, which is reproduced on the competition's website.

The competition has a good roster of backers and media partners and looks set to continue in fine style - and it has steered a clever course that doesn't bring it into headlong collision with the mighty Leeds, serving a different and complementary role in its young contestants' rites of passage. It attracted an extremely international crowd: around us in the packed cathedral we heard Chinese, Russian, Polish, Korean, French, Japanese and more. Hand in hand with the stunning new-look Manchester International Festival, which wants to rival Edinburgh (and may succeed), and the general transformation of Manchester from grimy, industrial, depressing lump to buzzing, happening, modern metropolis, the competition is part of an inspiring north-western renaissance.

Read more about the competition in the Manchester Evening News, here.

When is opera not opera?

When it's comparable to cycling and prostitution, as this article in today's Observer claims, through an interview with the tenor Endrik Wottrich.

Endrik Wottrich, a popular fixture at the annual Bayreuth festival in Germany, has revealed opera singers are turning to drugs and other stimulants to cope with the pressure from the increasing commercial demands on them. 'No one talks about it, but doping has long been the norm in the music world,' he said in an interview with music critic Axel Bruggemann in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 'Soloists are taking betablockers in an attempt to control their angst, some tenors take cortisone to ensure their voices reach a high pitch, and alcohol is standard practice.'

There is more, lots more, in the article, which says that Villazon is suffering from depression, that claques are often extortionists and that greedy promoters may be responsible for wrecking their stars' voices with undue pressure...

Saddest of all is that this is news - most people close to the action have taken this beastly stuff for granted for years. And most dare not talk about it.

Igor blimey

Biopic fans are going to have some fun with this: an interview with actress Marina Hands in today's Times (re her new film of Lady Chatterley in French) reveals that she'll be starring in a film about Stravinsky and Coco Chanel:

Having taken a small part in Julian Schnabel’s forthcoming The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Hands is now readying herself to play Coco Chanel in a film that concerns the French fashion icon’s relationship with the composer Igor Stravinsky. “She supported him financially and they had a fascination for each other,” says Hands. Called Coco & Igor, bizarrely it is to be directed by The Exorcist’s William Friedkin, though this is just one of the talking points that has set the French media buzzing. “They all have a point of view [on her] and no one agrees,” she sighs. “I might go to Rome to rehearse, so I don’t feel the pressure!”

Presumably this is the film of the book by Chris Greenhalgh? Come on, Timesy, credit the author when credit is due. Stories don't get there all by themselves.

Last night...

...there was a screw-up which would take too long to explain, but means that anyone trying to listen to the interview wouldn't have been able to...

More about the piano competition very soon, though.

'Thorn in the flesh' dies at 94

The Russian composer Tikkhon Khrennikov has died at the age of 94, decades after the geniuses he helped to persecute. The Independent's obituary is rather kind to him.

UPDATE: Allan Kozinn in the New York Times is a little less kind.

The truth about Scotland

James MacMillan, one of the finest composers in Britain, never mind just Scotland, has written a fascinating article in today's Guardian about why music has tended to remain a 'black hole' in the soul of his home country.

Scotland's place in the history of European music suffered two near-fatal body blows in 1560 and 1603. The ancient universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen were founded in the 15th century, and music played a vital role. Collegiate chapels cultivated, besides Scottish music, English decorative composition, music by the Burgundian Dufay and Flemish-inspired polyphony. Scottish liturgists travelled to Rome, Paris and the Netherlands, absorbing the fashionable musical traits of the day.

In 1560, the Scottish Reformation stopped this all abruptly. The liturgy became a principal battleground, involving a violent repudiation of the past and of foreign influences. The second blow came with the departure of the Scottish court in 1603. At the very time when aristocratic courts all over Europe were becoming central in sponsoring great composers, Scotland lost the main arena where great music could be created and thrive. The result was an absence from our culture which has damaged the national soul and psyche, and the reverberations of this are still apparent today.

Manchester International Piano Competition kicks off

The semi-finals of the First Manchester International Concerto Competition for Young Pianists, to give it its full name, kicked off yesterday; the finals are on Thursday and Friday.

Organised by Murray McLachlan, head of piano at Chetham's School of Music, the contest's top-notch jury is made up entirely of concert pianists, many of them figures I admire for their sensitivity and musical integrity - Philippe Cassard, Noriko Ogawa, Anton Kuerti, Peter Donohoe, Kathryn Stott and more - and the finals are to take place in Manchester Cathedral, with the Manchester Camerata accompanying the candidates. What's relatively unusual is that the age limit is from 16 to 22 - I'd anticipate that a competition like this will perhaps help to provide invaluable experience for youngsters with their sights set on Tchaikovsky, Chopin or Leeds, occasions on which you definitely don't want to be playing a concerto for the first time. The semifinalists include pianists from the UK, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Korea, Singapore, Switzerland, France, Norway, Canada and India.

I'm going to the final night: Murray thought a reading from Alicia's Gift might help to entertain and distract everyone while the jury makes up its mind. Since the book is about a young pianist from the Manchester region and features competitions in quite a big way, it's maybe appropriate to some degree...

Second Life, now

The hot news today is that the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is going to play in 'Second Life' on the internet on 14 September.

Hang on. If soprano Kate Royal is to be represented by an 'avatar', how does that approximate a live concert? If only 100 people can watch, does that really constitute 'reaching a new audience'? And why should anybody want to nip to a virtual online loo? We waste enough time queuing for the damn things in real life. Forgive me, but there's too much I don't understand about the point of this little exercise, so will refer you straight to The Times, which admittedly isn't all that informative for the uninitiated.

The rest of us can stick with the orchestra's beautiful Elgar Violin Concerto recording with Philippe Graffin and Vernon Handley - and look out for another next month, the Cello Concerto with Natalie Clein on EMI.

This is the LIFE

Welcome to LIFE, St Nazaire. The exterior looks as it always has - this is, after all, the old Nazi submarine base that the Allies never managed to destroy, though they left little standing in the rest of the town. But now St Nazaire has added to the place's usefulness as museum by carving into it a new centre for the experimental arts, featuring Alveole 14, a huge performance space with a back wall that can peel back to open on to the entire harbour...and it is here that my first one-act play, The End of Time, is due to be premiered one month from tomorrow, starring Marie-Christine Barrault. Philippe Graffin, Claire Desert, Raphael Wallfisch and Charles Neidich will play Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time in the second part of the evening. In a special pre-event event, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch will talk about her experiences in the Auschwitz women's orchestra, among other matters, and Philippe and Raphael will play the Duo for violin and cello by Erwin Schulhoff, who was later a prisoner in Terezin. It's the opening concert of the Consonances Festival and the full programme can be viewed here. It continues for a week and features a special focus on Ravel; performers include pianists Pascal Devoyon and Piers Lane, the fabulous Beynon girls (Emily, flute, and Catherine, harp), the Michelangelo Quartet and many more. Info on tickets is here.

Meet the Clarke brothers

Rodney (left) and Andrew Clarke are centre stage in Carmen Jones at the RFH, which I finally got to see on Saturday. As it happens, these sensational siblings are familiar faces from Glyndebourne - and finally they have their chance to shine in central London.

Rodney, a massively tall and very striking baritone, is perfection as Husky Miller (the character formerly known as Escamillo) and Andrew, a high, romantic tenor brimful with charm, plays Joe (Don J) as a repressed mama's boy whose emotions are wrenched out of him in fits of startling violence. He sings the flower song like a dream (and that goes for the original too, which I know because I accompanied him in it in a charity concert a few years ago!). With the gorgeous Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi, born in Soweto and now a south Londoner, as slinky as a cat as superbitch Carmen and a charismatic supporting cast, it's a terrific night out.

I admit, though, to being an old stick-in-the-mud and preferring the original Bizet. Maybe it was something to do with the production - set in Cuba, yet forgetting that Cubans don't have deep south American accents (or, in some cases, perfect English choir school enunciation!), and that you can't actually take a train ("clickety clack, clickety clack," says the quintet) from Havana to Chicago because there's sea in the way. Suspension of disbelief was difficult. Besides, I don't see why Andrew and Rodney and the rest of these superb singers should have had to depend on an all-black show to have the opportunity to make their mark in such a big way. Sherry Boone as Cindy Lou is the best Micaela I've heard in years.

If I ran a record company I'd give the Clarke brothers a contract prontissimo.

PS - the Southbank website for Carmen Jones features an article of mine to introduce the musical in the context of other adaptations of Carmen. Gorgeous pic of Rodney, too.

Wanna learn the piano?

Enjoy...

Strolling along the proms, proms, proms

Tonight at the Proms you can hear (or see, if within reach) a whole evening devoted to the music of Nitin Sawhney, with dance from Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. There's nobody quite like Nitin - he's a natural multiculti, with early musical training covering everything from classical piano to classical Indian and Flamenco; and he has a strong, focused, poetic inner strength that makes his music his own no matter what the external casing is. Should be amazing.

And on Sunday, Gotterdammerung is up for grabs, the last of the Proms' Ring evenings that have spanned the last 3 seasons. The mention of the Walkure evening still sends people into spasms of ecstasy...

My editor has been keeping me busy over this one, so here's the result from today's Indy, which should cause ACD some amusement if he can lay hands on a print copy - it's the Arts & Books Review cover feature, complete with gory-looking Norns, wielding the title SOUND AND FURY. Not my doing, but I can't imagine anything better.

Covent Garden to present UK Korngold premiere

Yes, Die tote Stadt is coming to the Royal Opera House. Not that they're risking trying to stage it themselves; instead they're taking on Willy Decker's production from Salzburg and Vienna. Thanks to Brendan for the tip-off, and to the Unofficial Korngold Website which confirms it and tells us that there will be seven performances, opening on 26 January 2009. Ingo Metzmacher will conduct and the cast is to include Nadia Michael as Marietta, Stephen Gould as Paul and Gerald Finlay as Frank/Pierrot.

Die tote Stadt, as I pointed out in a comment box the other day, has only been performed once before in Britain; in concert; by a non-professional orchestra (the fabulous Kensington Symphony Orchestra and their inspiring, Korngold-friendly conductor Russell Keable). That was a decade ago. Productions? None. This will be the UK staged premiere. I regret that I haven't yet seen this production, but am relieved that they are not taking the one from Zurich a few years ago - with Olaf Baer in high heels and black wings, 'Eurotrash' indeed - or the ghastly thing that was filmed from the Opera du Rhin and that remains the only available DVD of the opera.

Well, folks, it's about time, too. Better late than never.

Read more about the opera in Brendan Carroll's splendid introduction to the New York production, here.

A note of disturbance in Edinburgh

The Times yesterday carried this report, in which the glorious South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masakela, a veteran of the long struggle against Apartheid, expresses alarm about the way that the current South African government appears to be terrified of the power of music. Masakela has written the score for the show Truth in Translation, which is being performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The virtuoso trumpeter Hugh Masekela claims that many of the talented musicians whose voices became symbols of protest against white domination are finding it hard to get bookings in South Africa because the ruling ANC is “terrified” of music as an agent of change.

...Masekela, 68...argues that mediocrity is being promoted in the arts in South Africa because music and theatre are seen as “catalysts” in the destruction of apartheid, and might equally shake confidence in the present regime.

“The administration of South Africa today are terrified of music. They deny it,” he told The Times. “They know that a musical commentary can put them at a disadvantage. They are not afraid of print and journalists, that is considered freedom of speech, but they are very comfortable with the absence of music.

“I am not bitter. I am disgusted...

Hitler had a Huberman record...

A report in today's Indy reveals that Adolf Hitler's personal record collection has turned up, in the hands of Alexandra Besymenski, the daughter of a Russian Red Army officer who looted Hitler's bunker in 1945.

And what's in it? Russian music like Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, Chaliapin singing Boris Godunov, a smattering of Jewish musicians like Bronislaw Huberman...(oh yes, and The Flying Dutchman in case you were wondering). While he was forbidding his troops to listen to anything that wasn't German, he was lapping up the stuff himself.

Many of the records are scratched, indicating they were played over and over again while the war that Hitler began cost millions of lives across Europe and the wider world.

"I think my father found it astonishing that millions of Jews and Russians had to die because of the ideology of Hitler and here he was all the time enjoying their art," said Alexandra.

Read the whole thing here...

Wanted: one brave director

So there she was: the radiant Renee Fleming, in a light green gown full of sparkles and trailing a shot-silk scarf, took the stage in the Albert Hall, voice floating through the stratospheres like a golden eagle (UPDATE: Intermezzo has a photo of her, in said dress). Her Berg Seven Early Songs (actually eight - an extra one had been orchestrated for her) were ideally expressive, dark-toned, that voice blending with the sympathetic BBC Phil as a strand of its fabric; and the first Korngold aria, from Die Kathrin, was sweet and touching.

But she was saving the best for last. With the first notes of the great aria 'Ich ging zu ihm' from Das Wunder der Heliane, something remarkable happened. Renee didn't only sing Heliane; she became her. The tragedy, the rapture, the transfiguration - it was all there. I think everyone in my group was moved to tears. The Telegraph today speaks of the aria's 'intense, jaw-dropping beauty'.

Most think Heliane can't be staged (bad libretto, pretentious, weird, etc etc) but I'm getting the feeling that this isn't so. Because the role could have been written for Renee. She has to sing the whole thing, in an opera house. Someone simply has to stage it for her. Isn't there a brave theatre out there that will take it on? And a very brave director? We're already looking forward to the UK concert premiere of the complete opera at the RFH on 21 November (Patricia Racette will sing Heliane there). Now, I think, there's hope.

Korngold latest

Korngold fans must tune in to tonight's Prom, at which Renee Fleming will be singing two marvellous and rarely heard arias from the operas Das Wunder der Heliane and Die Kathrin. They are utterly gorgeous and I reckon there couldn't be a better voice for them. For those with digital TV, the concert will be relayed on BBC4. Failing that, you can hear it live on Radio 3 and on the Listen Again facility for the week ahead.

La Fleming, incidentally, is to be interviewed during the interval and apparently we're being encouraged to ask her questions by email. But despite trawling all the relevant BBC sites, I can't find the appropriate email address (the words 'bbc', 'impenetrable' and 'typical' come to mind, in no particular order) (or maybe I've missed it...if anyone finds the link, please send it...).

Meanwhile, if you want to hear Korngold's chamber music in a live, intense and intimate Korngoldfest, come to Norfolk in September. Norfolk, East Anglia, UK, that is. More info about the West Norfolk Chamber Music Festival can be found at their music society's site, here.

Summer reading...

I've just heard that the redoubtable A.N. Wilson has written a novel about Winifred Wagner's relationship with Hitler. Entitled Winnie and Wolf, it's due for release on 16 August. Here's the synopsis from Amazon:

"Winnie and Wolf" is the story of the extraordinary relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that took place during the years 1925-40, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner house in Bayreuth. Winifred, an English girl, brought up in an orphanage in East Grinstead, married at the age of eighteen to the son of Germany's most controversial genius, is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, a Teutonic patriot. In the debacle of the post-Versailles world, the Wagner family hope for the coming, not of a warrior, a fearless Siegfried, but of a Parsifal, a mystic idealist, a redeemer-figure. In 1925, they meet their Parsifal - a wild-eyed Viennese opera-fanatic in a trilby hat, a mac and a badly fitting suit. Hitler has already made a name for himself in some sections of German society through rabble-rousing and street corner speeches. It is Winifred, though, who believes she can really see his poetry. Almost at once they drop formalities and call one another 'Du' rather than 'Sie'. She is Winnie and he is Wolf. Like Winnie, Hitler was an outsider. Like her, he was haunted by the impossibility of reconciling the pursuit of love and the pursuit of power; the ultimate inevitability, if you pursued power, of destruction. Both had known the humiliations of poverty. Both felt angry and excluded by society. Both found each other in an unusual kinship that expressed itself through a love of opera. In A.N. Wilson's most bold and ambitious novel yet, the world of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is brilliantly recreated, and forms the backdrop to this incredible bond, which ultimately reveals the remarkable capacity of human beings to deceive themselves.

That should keep us busy on the beach - there's no way I'm waiting for the paperback. Order your copy now...

Wilson has recently reviewed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for The Times and makes it sound positively Wagnerian. Dumbledore as Wotan, perhaps???

More about the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra

Thanks to 'Pamos' for the alert to this fascinating article by Ed Vuilliamy that appeared in The Observer last weekend. He's been to Venezuela to see the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in action and meet some of its young players, whose aspirations and whole lives have been transformed by their involvement with music-making.

Thomas and Isolde

We had a very wonderful evening celebrating Tom's birthday at a gorgeous venue close to Glyndebourne yesterday, kindly lent by the dear friend who lives there...highlights of a heady occasion included the presence of many friends from far-flung places, champagne with which our cup overflowed, our neighbour the fabulous jazz pianist who used to play on the Queen Mary, a lot of potato salad and a chocolate cake with sparklers on top that set off our generous host's fire alarm & produced a fire engine in the drive within minutes. The hunky Sussex fireman was then accused of being a strippergram, though Tom might have been mystified by that choice.

And Nina Stemme was there too, having wandered in unsuspecting with her family to explore the house as tourists during the afternoon, fresh from the Tristan dress rehearsal the day before; we rushed to add them to our guest list. Beg, borrow or steal a return for this production - it is one of the greats - and Nina towers at the top of it, surely one of most glorious Isoldes around. Above, the birthday boy with his Isoldegram.

Of course, Wagner's first draft was called Thomas and Isolde, but his publisher said that the sales and marketing department advised changing the hero's name to something not associated with tank engines. :-)

Talking about...

...the latest singing sensation to be signed up by Universal - baroque singer Elin Manahan Thomas's first solo CD 'Eternal Light' went straight into the classical charts at no.2. She can really sing, but isn't she in danger of being marketed as the thinking person's Kathryn Jenkins? She says not, but do the pictures say otherwise? Here's my interview with her from today's Independent (under the occasional Talking Classical column). And here's her website, so have a listen to her rather lovely voice.