Mind the Bach

It's been a week of things not working terribly well - from my internet connection to the Victoria Line and beyond - and I managed to miss the fact that my article about music in the London Underground ran in yesterday's Independent. Here it is. It is basically a fun way to suggest Schumann's Blumenstuck as suitable listening when, due to signal failure, you are bloomin' stuck.

Happy birthday, JSB

It's Bach's birthday. Have a listen to how Brahms and Schumann's close friend Jozsef Joachim played his music. This rendering of the G minor's first movement was recorded 104 years ago. (Fascinating line-up of comments on Youtube here.)

A talk in Hampstead

The Hampstead Authors' Society has very kindly invited me to give a talk on the afternoon of 12 April. I've written an article about the creative processes (or whatever they are) behind Hungarian Dances et al which is now up on their website. The afternoon includes tea, cake and a walk on Hampstead Heath - also the possibility of a visit, later, to the Hampstead Observatory if the sky is clear.

Anyone in the Westminster area this month should take a look at photographer and writer Zsuzsanna Ardo's exhibition How long is the journey? Zsuzsanna, the founder of the Hampstead Authors' Society, was born in Hungary and has been back there to capture images of Roma communities with her sympathetic, humane and inspiring eye and camera. The exhibition is at the European Commission, 8 Storey's Gate, Westminster, until 28 March.

More about Hungary & Hungarianness here.

Up the Amazon without a paddle

The trouble with the mighty Amazon.co.uk is that you can't phone 'em up and tell them that they've put your book in the wrong category. [update: unless you are clever enough to find the corner of the haystack in which that particular needle, the phone number, is concealed; seems like I'm not.]

If you check the Hungarian Dances page, you see the following:

Popular in this category:
#38 in Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Performing Arts > Dance > Folk

Yes, they have put it not under FICTION but under FOLK DANCE. So if nobody knows it exists then it's no wonder. I've plastered it all over everything I can plaster it all over, it had a lovely plug in the Indy with my piece on I Capture the Castle, it has its own website (under construction but coming soon) and Andras Schiff has given me the loveliest quote to quote (and I have successfully added it to the Amazon page). But if some twerp puts it on the wrong virtual shelf, none of this is going to be the slightest bit of use. And now it's Easter. People who have proper jobs get Easter holidays, which means that however hard I yell, there'll be nobody to yell to until the schools go back.

You, dear readers, would find it easily because you'd know what you were looking for. But we have to reach fiction readers who would enjoy it if they knew about it. They won't know if they're online shoppers because it won't appear in their Amazonian suggestions and promotions because one person, somewhere, assumed that it's about which foot to put where in the Csardas.

I could give them some ideas for that.

Happy Easter.

Horny tales from the pit...

If only Gerard Hoffnung had been with us at the ballet the other night. My pal and I were having a girly night out treating ourselves to the Royal Ballet's gorgeous production of The Sleeping Beauty, starring Tamara Rojo. We were in seventh heaven, a.k.a. the amphitheatre at Covent Garden, finishing the interval after the hundred-year sleep and waiting for Prince Florimund - who bore an astonishing resemblance to Mr Darcy - to appear in the middle of the 18th century and wake up the rock-toed daughter of King Florestan The Fourteenth with a good snog. But he has to go hunting first, and the hunting horns are the first thing Tchaikovsky gives us in Act II. The lights are down, the conductor Valeriy Ovsyanikov is ready on the podium, and...

...silence. Followed by a few gentle rustles. Nobody seemed quite sure what was happening.

Then came the tell-tale shuffles at the back of the pit as the missing players slunk on. Dear reader, unless I am very much mistaken, it was the horn section!

We were sitting too high up to see their faces clearly, but I reckon Hoffnung could have done a good job at imagining them... He could also have conjured exquisitely the expressions of the trumpet players who had to echo the fanfares but sounded suspiciously as if they were laughing as hard as I was.

I do love The Sleeping Beauty. The idea that the missing of one name from an invitation list can spark world-changing events. The sheer sadism of the choreography - Marius Petipa must have been an ogre. The way that Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat don't even consider killing Mr & Mrs Bluebird in the final act. The way that all those fairies bestow upon Princess Aurora the gifts of song, wisdom, beauty, gentleness, etc, yet the thing she seems to do best when she grows up is to balance in 'attitude' on one toe for a very, very long time (see pic). At least she meets Mr Darcy in the end. And Tamara Rojo and Federico Bonelli are a glorious pair, totally in harmony - they look made for each other.

Minor production quibbles from a ballet nut: if they kept Ashton's solo for the prince, choreographed for Anthony Dowell, why did they jettison his Garland Dance? The new one by Christopher Wheeldon sticks out like a sore thumb. Lots of cuts to the music, as if fast-forwarding through the dramatic scenes - and only the briefest gesture at the hunting party, not even a Farandole. One notes that the show finishes bang on 10.30.

Still, it looks great - the designs by Oliver Messel have been reconstructed from the 1940s classic production that shot Fonteyn to stardom - and the dancing is simply astonishing.

The horns, when they were there, played jolly well, as did the rest of the orchestra, and Sergei Levitin worked magic with the violin solos.

Affluent prawns for lunch, anyone?

Spotted by my unofficial LPO correspondent out in HK.

The LPO website has a tour blog, though when I last checked it was stuck at a cultural divide regarding Korean food on 10 March. There are some good footy photos, though. Keep an eye on it here.

Meanwhile, over in the Far East...

...the LPO has reached Hong Kong. The Tomcat reports from the harbour front that Christian 'Wow' Tetzlaff has now gone home and Nikolaj 'Phwoar' Znaider has joined them to play the Brahms concerto. I don't know if it's the piece or the sheer energy that these fiddlers impart, but something always seems to happen in the Brahms. Tetzlaff broke a string when playing it in London and trotted off to fit a fresh one; and apparently Znaider's chin rest took a tumble in Hong Kong and there was a kurze pause while repairs were done backstage. After which, he not only came back to finish the concerto but also elected to join the orchestra for the Tchaikovsky Pathetique, sitting next to lucky first fiddler Yang Zhang for the occasion (see pic).

Meanwhile, the LPO lost the football match against the Hong Kong Philharmonic 5-6. Moving on to Taipei tomorrow.

Solti and I are sitting in London gazing at the rain...

My favourite book

Wrote about Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle for today's Independent.

On a totally different tack, does anyone know anyone in London who can make Hungarian canapes for 80-100 at a reasonably reasonable rate?

Yehudi Menuhin said:

"Each human being has the eternal duty of transforming the hard and brutal into a subtle and tender offering, what is crude into refinement, what is ugly into beauty, ignorance into knowledge, confrontation into collaboration, thereby rediscovering the child's dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love."

He died nine years ago today. Here he is (aged 16) playing the first movement of the Bach Double with his mentor George Enescu in 1932 - a recording treasured by violinophiles the world over.

'ere we go...

The London Philharmonic on tour in South Korea, not to be outdone by the New York Philharmonic in North Korea, took the opportunity to play football against the Seoul Philharmonic yesterday and beat 'em 3-2. Two of the three goals were scored by ace first trumpet Paul Beniston. LPO concerts at Sejong Center for the Performing Arts and the Seoul Arts Center tonight, tomorrow and Thursday. Pictured: before...and after!

While the tomcat's away...

The LPO set off yesterday for a two-and-a-half week tour to the Far East and, briefly, nearer East. They've just arrived in Seoul and will be playing there in a few days' time. Then off to Hong Kong, Taipei and finally Abu Dhabi. I would like to offer a special Ginger Stripes prize to whoever it was who invented Skype.

While the Tomcat's away, the mice need cheering up, so we are watching Charlie Chaplin on Youtube. Here is that famous scene from The Great Dictator involving Brahms's Hungarian Dance No.5.

Culture minister with foot-in-mouth disease

Howard Jacobson has a brilliant piece in today's Independent about our so-called Culture Minister Margaret Hodge's foot-in-mouth about the Proms. Could someone please a) send her a DVD of the Buskaid/English Baroque Orchestra's Prom last year, b) actually force her to watch it, c) wash her mouth out with soap? The joke is on her in the end, because she evidently is thinking of the Last Night of the Proms (the good ol' jingoism debate), and therefore makes one suspect that she doesn't know what happens there the rest of the summer...

This week in pictures #2

Meanwhile, along the Danube, the LPO took Korngold home to Vienna. A fabulous trip, one of the rare tours when I can't resist going along - two concerts at the Musikverein with principal conductor Vladimir 'Vlad' Jurowski, pianist Jean-Yves 'Silver Shoes' Thibaudet (Ravel G major), violinist Christian 'Wow' Tetzlaff (not pictured, sorry), a stunning Tchaikovsky Pathetique Symphony that was mercifully free of both mobile phones and clapping after the third movement, a hair-raising Prokofiev 5th, and as encore on the second night, the Zwischenspiel from Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane. It went down a treat in the golden hall's luminous acoustic; a strong round of applause greeted Vlad's announcement of it and far more followed the piece itself. At a post-concert reception, every dignitary in town seemed to be praising it and declaring delight that Korngold was back in the repertoire at last.

We visited the exhibition about Korngold and Papa Julius that's currently running at Vienna's Jewish Museum, put lovingly together by curator and record producer supremo Michael Haas. Highly recommended: you can see Jan Kiepura's costume from Heliane, the cigarette cases showing Jonny versus Heliane, Korngold's Oscar and his dinner suit; and the plentiful music examples, many of them exceedingly rare, could have kept me there all day. Particularly enchanting is a whole bank of historic recordings from Korngold's operetta arrangements - part of his work that today has been nearly forgotten but that kept his family in clover and got him away, to some extent, from the pernicious interference of Papa. It's hard to imagine a more Viennese sound than Korngold's aria arrangement of Tales from the Vienna Woods crackling gently out of a lost world. Closes 18 May, highly recommended to all fans.

The final photo shows Tom with Pieter Schoeman, who after seven years as the LPO's highly praised and inspiring co-leader has now been made official joint leader on an equal footing with Boris Garlitsky. Much goulash to celebrate.

This week in pictures #1

Hungarian Dances is out today! Above, pictures from the presentation of the book courtesy of the British-Hungarian Fellowship which took place at the Hungarian Cultural Centre on Tuesday night, featuring Eva Norton, chairman of the BHF, who organised the event; Lady Valerie Solti who spoke movingly about the book in relation to her husband's experiences of leaving Hungary and read some extracts; and a slightly overwhelmed author.

'HUNGARIAN DANCES' HITS THE ROAD

I'll be off for a week or so, so here are a few snippets to keep you busy.

THURSDAY 6 MARCH is Hungarian Dances publication day. I will be at Richmond Library, Little Green, Richmond-upon-Thames TW9 1 QL to introduce the book at 6.15pm. Readings, questions, refreshments, signed copies etc. Admission free, but please reserve a place by phoning 020 8940 0891.

FRIDAY 7 MARCH I will be at East Sheen Library, Sheen Lane, London SW14, for a teatime intro to same, at 3pm. Readings this time from ace local actress Geraldine Moffatt (who was in Get Carter), plus intro, questions, signed copies, refreshments provided. Admission free too, but please reserve a place by phoning 020 8876 8801.

The book is now in stock at Amazon and can be ordered here.

And to put you in the mood for this very violiny tale, here is Jascha Heifetz playing Dohnanyi's Andante Rubato Alla Zingaresca, with a wonderful Hungarian Gypsy photo montage. Enjoy.

Back soonish

To forestall any more barbed comments from the likes of Viola in Vilnius below, this is just to say I am, as a friend of mine would say, "under the snow". Normal blogging, both writing and reading, to resume as soon as humanly possible.

Whatever will they think of next?

First it was classical music in the London underground to soothe commuters. Now it's ballet-dancing traffic cops - at least, in Timisoara. Read all about it.

More about traffic, too, in the marvellous tale of how a motorbike courier made everything possible for ace soprano Marina Poplavskaya, who's about to sing Tatyana in the ROH's Eugene Onegin - here's my interview with her from yesterday's Independent. Spassiba balshoy, Marina, and toi-toi for the big day!

Oscar and Dario

Big cheers and congratulations to our fabulous Italian turned Londoner Dario Marianelli, whose music for Atonement last night scooped the Oscar for Best Original Score. Watch his 'thank-you cam' spiel here. And for a more in-depth look at the score, read his interview at Music from the Movies here.

Heard the one about the naked busker in the ROH 'Salome'?

If not, hear it in the Sunday Times today, here.

Meadows, 35, will appear in a new production of Richard Strauss’s Salome, where he will take centre stage at the end as the executioner, chopping off the head of John the Baptist before handing it to Salome.

How did a busker capture the spotlight inside Covent Garden? The transformation began when Meadows, a body builder and former Mr Wales, was spotted in the piazza outside the opera house by David McVicar, one of the world’s best opera directors.

“I saw him outside and thought that he had just the right body for the part,” said McVicar. “But he also had the ability to move well, and, particularly importantly, to stand still, which is necessary for the role of the executioner as for much of the time he is stationary in the crowd...”

Viva Maya & Rodion

The Shchedrins have been in town for last night's UK premiere, chez BBC Maida Vale, of Rodion Shchedrin's Concerto Parlando for violin and trumpet, written for Philippe's festival in St Nazaire in 2004 and now recorded by said violinist, trumpeter Martin Hurrell and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mikhail Agrest for future broadcast on BBCR3 and, we hope, an eventual CD.

I'd have posted something ahead of the concert, but it was already chockablock and about 40 people were turned away at the door. For future ref for those within easy reach of Little Venice, it's worth keeping an eye on the Maida Vale studio concerts because they offer world class music free on your doorstep, if you book in quickly...

This morning I went to interview Shchedrin, who is not only charming but utterly fascinating (more of this in due course). His wife, Bolshoi prima ballerina assoluta Maya Plisetskaya, kindly autographed one of her DVDs that I'd brought along.

For ballet nuts like me, Plisetskaya is basically God. Here she is in Maurice Bejart's Bolero, choreography as startling and elemental a force as she is herself. (It's only viewable on Youtube in two parts, but at least it is viewable.)

Barenboim at last

So Sunday morning a blog comment pops into my inbox from our Ozzie-in-London reader Anne, offering a ticket for Barenboim's last Beethoven recital that afternoon. I dropped everything (indeed certain people would be justified in not talking to me for a while) and ran.

It was indeed a remarkable occasion.

Got there to see banks of seats in the foyer where usually there are none: the box office area looked like hospital outpatients, with around 40-50 people sitting in wait for returns. On the ballroom floor, a big screen was ready to relay the concert to the overflow - at first there were about 20 seats in front of it, but many more appeared as if by magic as time wore on.

In a boxed-out area near the Mandela door, a film about Barenboim was being screened, so I went to have a look. He talked about how his grandparents arrived in Buenos Aires from Russia and got married on the boat, how there was always music in the apartment because everyone who visited was there for a piano lesson with his parents, and how the Argentinian capital was a melting pot of religions and nationalities over which nobody worried for an instant. Then someone's mobile rang and instead of soaking up the maestro's words of wisdowm we were all treated to her bellowed conversation: "I'M IN THE ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL WATCHING A FILM ABOUT BARENBOIM, IT'S ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING..."

No mobiles in the concert, though. A saintly silence prevailed, except for coughing between movements. Barenboim strode on to huge applause. At the risk of upsetting fans here, I'd say he could give us all a lesson in how to make the most of an entrance. He stands, holding the attention for a good while, gazing about, before bowing; he generously turns his attention to each section of the audience in turn - left, centre, right, and everyone sitting behind the piano...

Rather than placing the three last sonatas together, Barenboim had chosen to mix the early, middle and late works in each programme. This one consisted of Op.14 No.1, Op.7, Op.54 and Op.111. Several points stood out a mile. One was how anybody could make the harmless little Op.14 No.1 sound like a masterpiece. The next was how Op.7, which I love and have learned, but seemed to be hearing for the first time, could suddenly shine out as the Eroica Symphony and Fidelio rolled into one. And a third: Barenboim literally made the piano sound like an orchestra. Every phrase seemed to be assigned an instrumentation, and by some bizarre alchemy the sound of that instrument came gliding out of the Steinway. No doubt about it: the final phrase before the last deep trill of the introduction of Op.111 was a trio of French horns. Don't ask how he does it: I've no idea.

Later a record producer friend remarked to me: "Normally, if I heard someone play the piano like this, I'd say he ought to become a conductor." And in terms of velocity and accuracy Barenboim's technique, to be frank, ain't what it used to be. Anyone who doesn't allow for pianists to play wrong notes or occasional unevennesses wouldn't have been happy. But if musicianship of old-fashioned, idealistic grandeur, seriousness of purpose and deep, complete assimilation of not just the music but the kernel of its spirit still counts for anything in this mad world, this was the proof.

I've recently been reading a book by Swami Omananda Puri, a.k.a. the second Mrs John Foulds (real name Maud McCarthy) which is filled with extraordinary soundbites of eastern philosophical wisdom. She asserts that Beethoven kept a copy of the Upanishads on his desk. I can't say whether or not this is true, but hearing Barenboim play the second movement of Op.111, I could believe it.

Who can interpret what lies behind late Beethoven? Yet to me it has never seemed clearer that the variations follow a mystical pattern. Simplicity and purity; growing life that builds to full tilt (if a somewhat stately version in Barenboim's hands); subsiding into exhaustion and the temptation of death's freedom; transformation of the soul beyond the body; heaven; and finally a descent into the simplicity and purity of rebirth. Too much of a mystical absorption to allow for tears, but later I compared notes with a friend who, like me, has lost much close family - we had both experienced lingering thoughts of them.

You may think all this is tripe, of course, but it's a true reflection what went through my mind listening to this concert - so take it or leave it.

Something about the afternoon felt deeply valedictory. All right, it was the last concert of a very intense series, but I know I wasn't the only person present wondering whether we will ever see Barenboim play these pieces again here. There's no particular reason to believe that we won't - but this felt like a farewell, the end of an era.

There was a good ten-second silence at the end. Then the clapping, and everyone stood up straight away. Was the applause for Barenboim's playing, or his personality, idealism and downright statesmanship in being one of the few public figures who talks any sense about the Israeli-Palestinian situation? I suspect the split was respectively about 40% to 60%.

I still prefer his old recording from the 1960s. But I'm glad I was there.

Today's article

I have a piece in The Independent today, exploring - in the wake of Barenboimania - why profundity is good box office at the moment.

Thanks to doughty reader Anne, who offered me her spare ticket for Barenboim's last recital on Sunday afternoon, I was present at the final installment of the Danny-&-Ludwig Show. I am preparing a detailed post about it, but have had One Of Those Weeks and as yet no chance to finish the thing. Check back soon.

Eddy Duchin's 1930s Music Blog

After months, nay years, of hoping and hunting, I finally found something I always hoped must exist: film of Distant Cousin Eddy Duchin at the piano with his band, dating from 1936. OK, we could have done without the roller-skaters, but long-lost coz seems adorable: full of charm, fun and musicality.

Had a good trip recently?

Violinist David Garrett fell down some stairs and smashed his Strad, the 'San Lorenzo'. Ouch.

Perhaps I'm thick or something, but I hadn't come across this guy before. The article in yesterday's Indy linked above says he's one of the country's foremost young performers, previously a child prodigy and now 'the David Beckham of the violin' (hmm, given the photo I'd say that's being unfair - he's actually rather dishier, n'est-ce-pas? And playing the violin is a far sexier thing to do than screwing up the penalty shootout....[fanfanfan]). Of course, it's not impossible that the reason I haven't heard him play is that he does stadiums, and I don't tend to go to them, preferring the up-close-and-personal experience of places like the dear old Wiggy. Sample the video on his site and don't be put off by the woolly hat - in the interview he says he's a disciple of Ida Haendel.

Guess what, his new album 'Virtuoso' is being released in the UK on 24 March. It also turns out that he's at the Barbican tonight. Playing, uh, Valentine's Day Love Classics (ie, the Bruch) with the London Concert Orchestra and conductor Robert Stapleton, promoted by Raymond Gubbay.

I don't recommend breaking your violin, ever, for any reason - but hey, it's great publicity, and the timing couldn't have been handier.

On other occasions, I regret to say I've come across fiddlers (no names) who've had reason to collect on the insurance on their valuable instruments and enjoyed the resultant pleasant change of lifestyle.

Yours truly, being a confirmed fiddle fetishist, is now heading for a cold shower. Happy Valentine's Day to one and all.

Aw, shuks

After being overwhelmed by the wisdom of Barenboim on Newsnight - yes, real coverage of a real classical artist on a real current affairs programme is still possible, just - this Britblogger is overwhelmed all over again by discovering a tribute from Opera Chic, blog skyrocket style guru from Milan! Aw, shuks... Well, that's the first and last time my picture will ever share a screen with 'PregsTrebs'.

The actual publication date is 6 March, but Solti insisted on posing with the book as soon as it plopped onto the doormat.

New arrival!

The new book, hot off the press...

Beethoven's Messiah?

Michael Church writes an ecstatic review in today's Indy of Barenboim's latest recital in his Beethoven Sonatas cycle at the RFH. I apologise for not being able to write one myself, but actually I can't get IN, having not planned ahead. I'm simply not used to a situation where you cannot get a ticket for a piano recital in the Royal Festival Hall for love or money.

Michael writes:

If Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas are classical music's New Testament, Daniel Barenboim is turning us all into his disciples. Special seating has been installed for those queuing for returns, and the standing ovations are extraordinary: these things usually start with a few groupies, then others gradually haul themselves up, but with Barenboim, the whole hall is on its feet in a trice. And I can't recall a musical series with so many big- and small-screen stars attending night after night. This disarmingly modest man has become a cultural messiah.

Apart from the fact that I wouldn't really describe Barenboim as 'disarmingly modest' (having interviewed him a couple of times), what I can't quite get my head around is the idea that this is being regarded as something new. I learned all the Beethoven sonatas - by ear - as an insomniac teenage piano-nut with a turntable, headphones and the LPs of Barenboim's Complete Beethoven Sonatas on EMI, recorded back in the late 1960s. Our Danny was in his twenties. They are stupendous. When I wasn't listening to him, I was listening to Schnabel, who was also revelatory - but it was Barenboim who grabbed the imagination's heart-strings from note no.1; somehow one sensed his identification with every aspect of Beethoven, from the profound mysticism to the humour, from the personal tragedy to the great humanitarian idealism. And now, if Beethoven is the most idealistic composer who ever lived, he could have no better match than Barenboim.

If you can't get into the concerts, just have a listen to those discs.

UPDATE: Wednesday, 9.15am: Intermezzo offers some advice on how to (try to) get in.

LPO 08-09 season

George's comment on the 41 Hours post, asking about the LPO programming for the 08-09 season, is timely. He wants to know why Vladimir Jurowski has scheduled works he's conducted recently such as the Tchaikvsoky Pathetique and the Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances.

I may be closish to my orchestra-in-law (does this make Vladimir my principal-conductor-in-law?) but I'm not privy to their decision-making processes. In the speeches at the launch, however, Vladimir and MD Tim Walker announced that one important theme in the season will be Tchaikovsky, the influences upon him and his influence on his successors. I guess you can't do that without those two works. The crucial thing, it seems, is hearing them in a different context, coming to the music from an alternative vantage point that can change the way you listen to it.

But if you think that the new season will only be about repeating war-horses, you'd better think again, fast. Here is a selection of VJ's other Festival Hall programmes:

24 September (season opening):
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No.8
Mark-Anthony Turnage: Mambo, Blues and Tarantella - Violin Concerto (world premere) (with Christian Tetzlaff)
Ligeti: Atmospheres
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

27 September
Strauss: Metamorphosen
Hartmann: Gesangsszene (with Matthias Goerne)
Brahms: Symphony No.2

25 October
Tchaikovsky: Iolanta (complete, concert performance)

18 February
Vladimir Martynov: Vita Nuova (world premiere of complete opera)(with Tatiana Mongarova and Mark Padmore)
Martynov says: 'Dante's Vita Nuova is not a text about love. It is a text about text about love. Likewise, my opera Vita Nuova is not just an opera. It is an opera about the history of opera as the most important genre in European culture. It goes back even beyond the earliest operas to reveal the genre's historical prototype - a medieval miracle, but dressed in the alluring beauty of high-Romantic operatic language'.

22 April
Kancheli: Another Step
Yusupov: Cello Concerto (UK premiere)
Silvestrov: Symphony No.5

31 May
Mahler: Totenfeier
Mendelssohn: Symphony No.5
Torsten Rasch: Mein Hernz brennt (UK Premiere)

Something for the weekend

Serge Gainsbourg and friends playing 'All the things you are' in 1964. Oh yes - Serge Gainbourg was one hell of a fantastic jazz pianist. I love his style, the atmosphere of intimacy and friendship, the caress of the keys as he ends the piece...

If only this was what music-making could be all about, a little more often, a little more now.

Nice news...

...that my novel Hungarian Dances has been accepted for a Dutch edition by De Kern, the publisher in Holland that has already brought out Alicia's Gift (as Wonderkind). Of course there's only one language I find more difficult than Dutch and that is, er, Hungarian...
:-)

Meet Alex Prior...

...if you haven't already. The British prodigy of Russian ancestry and inclination is a very busy lad. Here's my piece about him - and prodigydom - from today's Independent. The online version includes a video clip from his new ballet, Mowgli, which he's just been conducting (yes, conducting at the tender age of 15) in Moscow.

I haven't quite worked out how they could call the performance on Sunday the 'official world premiere' when the thing has already been performed, last summer, but that's publicity for you. Or someone. On the strength of the video, the ballet seems unlikely to set up in competition with Disney or The Lion King, but the rate at which young Alex is churning out music is absolutely amazing. The real test will be what he's doing when he's twice, or three times, his current age.

Parenting, plus good teaching, is what helps any child prodigy to sink or swim; it cannot be otherwise. Almost a hundred years ago, a boy from Vilna (now Vilnius, capital of Lithuania) named Jascha Heifetz made his debut at the age of seven; he grew up to be (arguably) the best violinist of the 20th century. He said: "Child prodigism – if I may coin a word – is a disease which is generally fatal. I was among the few to have the good fortune to survive." Many haven't been so lucky...

Events of the last 41 hours

* ... Christian Tetzlaff's E string broke in the first bar of the Brahms Violin Concerto finale chez LPO/Jurowski on Saturday night. He zipped off the stage to change the string rather than grabbing Boris the leader's fiddle. Apart from that, the best Brahms concerto I've heard in 20 years.

* A mobile phone going off in the last bar of the Tchaikovsky Pathetique in same concert. Vladimir held up his baton after the basses reached the end and maintained silence until the ringing expired. It became the spookiest moment of a staggering performance - almost like the death of Tchaikovsky's own phone.

* A study-day on Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time at the QEH yesterday. Included the very first screening of a new film about its origin, entitled 'The Charm of Impossibility'. Fabulous. I urge all Messiaen fans to see it if and when they get the chance.

* A quiz at the Royal Opera House in aid of the National Youth Orchestra, at which the great and good of the musical world, including the national broadsheet newspapers, the National Theatre, the ROH, a bunch of 'Maestri', BBC Radio 3, the Barbican, etc, buy tables, build teams and compete against one another. Now a well-established annual highlight, though this was the first time I'd taken part. The Guardian won again (it usually does), even though its editor is chairman of the NYO and organises the shebang. It was b****y difficult, too, heavily biased in favour of those who know how to handle early music, Britten and crosswords.

* Heard extract of Jonas Kaufmann's long-awaited new operatic aria disc on the radio. Meistersinger Prize Song - taken so slowly and rendered so sentimental that all the stuffing fell out. It was positively painful - and a terrible disappointment to those of us who were trying so effortlessly to love him.

* Hubby's departure on tour to Toulouse and Spain at 5am today.

* The news, fresh from Opera Chic, that Anna Netrebko and Erwin Schrott are pregnant!!

Blimey. Time for a trip to the gym and a stiff g&t.

Classical music goes underground

More and more stations on the London Underground are piping out canned Mahler to calm us all down. Neil Fisher has an article about this in today's Times. Is it about crowd control, banishing yobs or persuading us that our commuting lifestyle is pleasant?

Quietly, steadily and, if not secretly, then certainly stealthily, London Underground is rolling out a compulsory classical diet. And it's joining a growing group of local authorities, transport companies and even supermarkets across the country. The idea? If we are all stressed out, we need calming down. And if we are antisocial yobs looking to cause some bother and steal Travelcards, we need moving on. Somehow classical music seems to fit the bill in both cases.

Perhaps this is why Brixton is already well used to it, as I discover while the blast of Schubert's Unfinished is throbbing through the ticket office on a Tuesday lunchtime. The station first got plugged in more than four and a half years ago, a test site to see whether the embryonic scheme deserved expansion. Clearly it seemed to do the job; as of the beginning of this year 40 stations have now been equipped with the necessary kit, and they range from the positively genteel (West Brompton) to the Wild East of the District Line - Dagenham, Upton Park - alongside more mixed South London spots such as Balham and Morden.

I'm interested in the question of who chooses the music - see later in the piece for info on the 40-hour playlist - not least because I'm convinced he/she has a macabre sense of humour. I was at Vauxhall Station the other week, trekking from South-West Trains to the Victoria line to get into central London, and unfortunately for me it was rush hour. The glum-faced populace plodded en masse at the necessary snail's pace towards the ticket barriers. And what were they playing over the Tanoy? Mahler's Symphony No.1, slow movement.

Yes. Quite.

As if winining all those Gramophone awards wasn't enough...

...ace British pianist Stephen Hough has won first prize in a poetry competition!

Read his beautiful prize poem 'Early Rose' here.

UPDATE: 10 Feb 9am...and read Jeremy Denk's priceless response over at Think Denk here!

What Pierre-Laurent said last

When I interviewed Pierre-Laurent Aimard about Messiaen for yesterday's feature, I also asked him what he would say to encourage someone who'd never heard any before to try it. His response wasn't in the piece as printed, but I think it is beautiful:

“Many qualities can make you love this music. You can be touched by its spirituality, transported by its energy, and moved by its overproportioned dimensions; you can be fascinated by its rhythmical life; you can be seduced by the colours and harmonies which lead you to the borders of timbre; you can be absorbed by the multiplicity of inspiration, whether local to different parts of the planet or historical, ranging from ancient music to recent. In the end, every listener can decide which dimension in this accumulation of experience is for him or her the most important. But certainly this music reflects someone who can invite us to open other dimensions in ourselves, from meditation to ecstasy, and to open our ears and minds to a world made of multiplicity.”

Look what we can do now!

My article previewing the Messiaen Festival at the South Bank is out in The Independent today. The website has just been revamped and I switched on this morning to discover that not only are sound-clips now included amid the text but Youtube video as well. Have a look at it here. Unfortunately there's no clip from the Quartet for the End of Time, which is central to my article, but we can fix that here - see below...



The festival 'From the Canyons to the Stars' opens at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Saturday 2 February with the Ensemble InterContemporain playing the eponymous piece. On Sunday there's a study day about the Quartet featuring a screening of a new French documentary which I'm told includes interviews with those who were there in Stalag VIIIA; there's a round-table discussion in which I will be participating along with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Jonathan Harvey, Robert Scholl, Christian Poltera and the South Bank's Gillian Moore, and the day will finish with the Nash Ensemble playing the work twice (6pm and 9pm). The festival continues until the end of this year - no kidding - and promises to be London's Messiaen Fest of, so to speak, all time.

Kreisler & Rachmaninov play Grieg

And they win...

This is to mark the anniversary today of Fritz Kreisler's death in 1962. Enjoy.

Après moi le déluge?

News from MIDEM in Cannes as reported in The Times today. This covers pop, but what happens to our side of things?

Just think, some of those opera singers and conductors might be forced to reduce their fees, shock horror.

With CD sales in free fall and legal downloads yet to fill the gap, the music industry has reluctantly embraced the file-sharing technology that threatened to destroy it. Qtrax, a digital service announced today, promises a catalogue of more than 25 million songs that users can download to keep, free and with no limit on the number of tracks.

The service has been endorsed by the very same record companies - including EMI, Universal Music and Warner Music – that have chased file-sharers through the courts in a doomed attempt to prevent piracy. The gamble is that fans will put up with a limited amount of advertising around the Qtrax website’s jukebox in return for authorised use of almost every song available.

Thoughts, folks?

MEANWHILE, the Arts Council has been forced to say 'er, right, maybe that wasn't our best idea' and is promising a reprieve to some of the groups whose funding it wanted to slash for no immediately obvious reason - this may include the London Mozart Players. We haven't yet seen the name City of London Sinfonia on the list, but are hoping that that is simply an oversight on the part of newspapers that don't know what a chamber orchestra is.

ALSO, from comments received on JDCMB recently, it's obvious that certain people in Philadelphia are still ogling beloved Vladi. He's back here this week, conducting at the RFH on Wednesday. Paws off our maestro!

"People who couldn't even spell classical are into it now"

Yesterday, having been warned off the fiddle concerto at the RFH, I spent a happy evening doing something I don't do often: watching TV. Solti fans may know that BBC2 had a documentary about tigers in India...but what caught me off-guard was a follow-up programme to The Choir, a reality TV series following what happened when a choral conductor named Gareth formed a choir at a school in Northolt, north-west London, trained them up and took them to China to enter an international competition. The cameras returned to see where they all are now, as well as recapping on the series for those who'd missed it, like me.

I ended up in tears.

The kids had prepared two numbers for the competition: 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' and Faure's 'Cantique de Jean Racine'. Faure?! They were stumped. First, the competition stipulated that one song had to be in a foreign language. Secondly, they just didn't see, when they tried it for the first time, how they could sing this.

Leaving aside the issue of why decent, normal schoolkids from multicultural backgrounds in a city that considers itself the capital of Europe should recoil in horror at the notion of using another language - they did it. They fought and grumbled and one stormed out. But they did it. They learned the Cantique, took it to China and sang it from memory. First, they sang it to their mums, who couldn't believe their ears. At the contest, the choir didn't get through to the second round, but they'd had an experience that moved them to bits and will stay with them forever. None of them had had the first notion of classical music before this. They assumed it was 'a bit boring' and not for them.

And the long-term effects? One, the shy Chloe, had found the confidence to sail out of school into a job that involved giving presentations. She'd found she prefers singing classical music to pop - she couldn't put her finger on why, but said "it feels good" (or something like that). One boy who'd never sung before was at college and wanting to form his own band. A lively blonde missed the choir so much that she went out and joined another. A 13-year-old was now singing in his church choir and loving it. And one boy - the one who'd thrown the tantrum - said: "Even people who couldn't spell classical before are into it now."

Tasmin started her Naked Violin project by wondering what it would take to get music through to people. This programme made clear that one thing it takes is opportunity; another is a little effort, on everyone's parts. The rewards for that effort? Immeasureable.

BBC TV now has an 'iplayer' facility, which I hadn't anticipated using...but you can see programmes online for 7 days after they've been screened. So here is this one.

Naked Violin update

Tasmin's Naked Violin has a deservedly glowing review in today's Times. Meanwhile she is happy to report more than 120,000 hits and a terabyte of downloads so far. She assures me that a terabyte is not a species of dinosaur.

Wilhelm Furtwangler...

...was born on 25 January 1886.

Here he is conducting the overture to Wagner's Die Meistersinger in Berlin in 1942, complete with banners.

Worth seeing, too, the Istvan Szabo film based on Ronald Harwood's play Taking Sides, a chilling tale of the victimisation of Furtwangler by a pig-ignorant deNazifying American official after the war (and btw includes a delectable few moments of Rini Shaham singing jazz).

Also would like to refer you to Tony Palmer's documentary The Salzburg Festival: A brief history (it's the better part of three hours long) in which the director interviews Mrs Furtwangler. She recounts that her husband stayed in Germany during the war because it was threatened that if he left, his entire orchestra would be disbanded, drafted and sent to certain death the Front.

Please fasten your seatbelts for an uncomfortable few minutes.

Bravo Barenboim

Fantastic article by Richard Morrison in today's Times about Daniel Barenboim. Read it here.

Sorry about thin blogging this week. one of those weeks.

RIP Joan Ingpen

Joan Ingpen, founder of the artists' management agency Ingpen & Williams, has died aged 92. Her fascinating obit is in the Independent today.

Extract:

She founded Ingpen and Williams in 1946 and for 15 years worked to establish a list that included the singers Hans Hotter, Geraint Evans and Joan Sutherland, and the conductors Rudolf Kempe and Georg Solti. When Solti became music director of Covent Garden in 1961, he asked Ingpen to dispose of her agency and join him at the opera house as controller of planning. After some thought, Ingpen accepted, Howard Hartog took over Ingpen and Williams (which is still flourishing today) and the new administrator began to make her mark almost immediately at Covent Garden.

And what has become of the Williams side of the agency, you may ask? Williams, dear readers, was her dog.

Happy birthday, Chausson!

It's Ernest Chausson's birthday (thanks to Wonderful Webmaster for the reminder!) - 153 today - so here, in two parts, is what is for me probably the ultimate interpretation of the Poeme, played by Georges Enescu. Just audio, but that's all you need.

Enlightenment, please?

JDCMB has had an astonishing number of hits today from people in America doing Google searches on JASCHA HEIFETZ BIRTHPLACE.

I've been there. Here it is, above - photographed during my trip to Vilnius, Lithuania, in June 2005. But why is everyone looking for it now? Have I missed something?

UPDATE, Sunday 11.50am: thank you. Mystery solved: I'm informed that it was a crossword puzzle clue! Mad props to whoever set the crossword.

Tomorrow, Saturday 19 January...

On Saturday 19th, tomorrow evening, I will be interviewing the inimitable John Lill about his life, career and strong views on the state of the musical nation in the pre-concert event at the Royal Festival Hall. Kick-off is at 6.15 and admission is free. Come and say hello!

Later in the evening John is playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.1 and the programme also includes Rachmaninov's Second Symphony (to me the aural equivalent of vodka with chocolate). Roberto Minczuk conducts the London Philharmonic.

38 seconds of Toscha Seidel

Mad props to Philippe Graffin for sending us a link to this clip showing the utterly incredible violinist Toscha Seidel playing a few tantalizing seconds of a Brahms Hungarian Dance.

Seidel, whose tone could burn down a house, was a one-time rival of Heifetz in the class of the great (Hungarian) teacher Leopold Auer, but I remember hearing once that Heifetz was considered the tough cookie who could survive a heavy-duty international career and was therefore selected for pushing. The results go without saying. Seidel never emerged from his shadow and ended up in Hollywood, where he performed on the soundtrack to Intermezzo (Ingrid Bergman's debut) and recorded Korngold's Much Ado About Nothing suite with the composer. A discussion about Seidel on www.violinist.com, which I've just found, also suggests that he played in a band in Vegas. Oy.

If anyone has access to any more film of Seidel, we slidey violin fans would be forever indebted if you were to post it to Youtube, pleasepleaseplease.

Bewildered of SW14

Puzzled by news of the stand-off between Russia and the UK over, of all things, the British Council. My own contact with this organisation consisted of two green and pleasant years, some while ago, editing a magazine named Soundings which helped to promote British music of all types and was distributed via BC offices around the world. A nicer, more mild-mannered and traditionally British bunch you couldn't hope to find. I believe that the gentleman who then headed the music section eventually left to become a poet.

Perhaps it's just the old schoolyard story: the quiet, sensitive ones are the easiest targets for the bullies...Otherwise, this could very easily become a latter-day Graham Greene novel.

Meanwhile it looks as if the planned exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870–1925 from Moscow and St. Petersburg, will go ahead, opening on 26 January.

Little goes large!

Back from hols, missing the sun...but the limelight isn't far away. It's firmly on Tasmin Little, whose free download The Naked Violin went live on Monday and promptly attracted so many hits that it briefly crashed the server. She's going great guns with 12-13,000 downloads per day, articles in most of the papers and music magazines that count (see mine today in The Independent) and masses of radio and TV coverage coming up too. She'll be live on BBC1 on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday at 9am, talking and playing. Don't miss the music itself - download here!

Have some Madeira, m'dear...

....ooh, yes please.

Back next week. x