Meet Sophie Bevan

Here's my piece from today's Independent about the terrific young British soprano Sophie Bevan -- and her family of 60 (SIXTY) singing Bevans! We also discuss her Wigmore Hall recital debut tonight, her appearance there next week with the Classical Opera Company, why she hates competitions and why she didn't want to be the next Charlotte Church. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/sophie-bevan--born-to-sing-2177870.html

Let's hear it for... the Mozart piano sonatas

In case you hadn't already noticed, BBC Radio 3 is playing every note that Mozart ever wrote, to the best of all our humble knowledge. It's taking 12 days and the initial concept did not precisely make me reach for the "on" switch (I can't listen to music while I write in any case). But today is Piano Day: the Mozart Piano Sonatas are centre stage, thanks not least to the brilliant Leon McCawley and it seems high time for a bit of defence for these astonishing and oft-maligned works.

Now, the curse of received opinion and false tradition works against music of every era. Baroque: precious and vibrato-less. Mendelssohn: shallow. Schumann: mad. Liszt: loud and vulgar. Faure: difficult, austere and drippy. Korngold: Hollywood schmaltz. Cage: random and unemotive. And Mozart piano sonatas: written for fortepianos, designed for home-based amateurs in the salons, therefore insignificant and tinkly. Musicians too often come to the music they play with little more knowledge of the context, truths and texts than such poisonous preconceptions (at least two of the above were notions originally put about by the Nazis, yet have seemingly entered universal knee-jerk-reaction consciousness). Recordings are imitated unthinkingly and thus false traditions build.

Look a little deeper, look into the text itself and take on board what you find. It may not be what you expect.

The Mozart piano sonatas are glorious works. Stop the tinkling, stop the Jane Austen images: the composer of the great C minor Fantasy and Sonata, the frenetic and pre-Schubertian A minor K310, the dazazling F major K533/494 gave us Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflote. He created those incredible string quintets, 27 inspired and beloved piano concertos, the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, and, for heaven's sake, most of the greatest Requiem ever written. So how are his piano sonatas tinkly and insignificant? Strip away the fear of incorrect phrasing, the academic insistence on articulation from a treatise or two and the idea that you cannot so much as touch a pedal while playing them; immerse yourself in the operas, the orchestral works, the choral music. Then come back to the sonatas and plunge in. The colour, fantasy and imagination you can then find is immeasurable. Take the F major sonata above: try it after hearing Figaro and you can find comparable characters in the sonata: the bubbling Susanna, the grand and angry Count, the rebellious pranks of Figaro, the yearning Countess. Place the C minor work alongside Don Giovanni and you find the Don's blazing reckoning within it.

I used to attend the lectures of Hans Keller at Dartington in the early 1980s -- he was already ill by then, but I will never forget his talk entitled Today's Musicless Musician. In his young day, he said, recordings were harder to come by, but music students went out of their way to learn not only the full repertoire of their own instrument, but the composers' vital works in other genres. And the idea that anyone could play the late Beethoven sonatas without knowing the late string quartets or the Ninth Symphony was simply unthinkable. You cannot understand the true spirit of a composer from one work alone. Some tried to argue back: can't every work speak for itself? But he had just given them the answer: it can't, not if you want to do it artistic justice. And if you think it can, you're showing up nothing but your own laziness.(Hans Keller also wrote very eloquently about football, btw. There's now a Facebook group devoted to memories of him.)

R3 will be (I hope) making today's broadcast available on the Listen Again website for UK residents, but in case you miss it or are not on the shores of this green and pleasant land, here is someone they won't be playing: Dinu Lipatti, in the slow movement of the A minor Sonata.

A really new beginning

Over the Xmas hols, while everyone was away, news popped into my in-box about the launch on New Year's Eve of the first full-scale Palestinian symphony orchestra to hit the boards since the band that later became the Israel Philharmonic. I only hope the concerts did take place as planned. Having not heard anything to the contrary, I thought I'd run the following... The pictures were taken when we visited the West Bank last April.

Only an immensely ambitious ensemble would begin its inaugural concert with music by the late György Ligeti. But the Palestine National Orchestra has nothing to lose: it is already perhaps the most audacious new orchestra in the world.

Holding its first public concert on New Year’s Eve in Ramallah, and, remarkably, following this with performances in Jerusalem and Haifa on consecutive days, the PNO is the first Palestinian symphony orchestra of professional musicians to be launched since the orchestra that later became the Israel Philharmonic back in 1948. Its opening programmes were to feature, alongside Ligeti, Mozart and Beethoven, music by two Palestinian composers, Sharbel Dalal and Salvador Arnita, the latter a former organist from Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The PNO is the natural consequence of a groundswell of interest in western classical music that has developed in the Palestinian Territories over the past 15 to 20 years. It is the initiative of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music which, since being founded in 1993, has grown into a network of music schools that teach both western and Middle Eastern musical instruments and styles, with centres in Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and more in the planning stages. 

To say that music has come to represent the life blood of the Palestinians might be an exaggeration, but not by much. When I went to the West Bank a few months ago with my husband, who brought his violin, we visited the ESNCM in Bethlehem -- a little town that bears scant resemblance to the Christmas carol, being neither still nor dreamless. There Jalil Elias, the Bethlehem ESNCM director, described the organisation’s mission in no uncertain terms.

“We teach music to give the children here a new mentality and a new life and we teach them to let them breathe,” Elias declares. “It’s our philosophy, it’s how we can let the Palestinian people, through music, find peace for themselves. We believe that music is one voice for everyone, all over the world. It doesn’t matter if we are Japanese, French, English, Italian or whatever: a soul is a soul. Politics is full of lies, but when you play music like Mozart or Beethoven, you play from your depths and from your feelings and from your fingers and your touch and your heart – it’s truth, not lies.”

The ESNCM offers music tuition to thousands of children, 75 per cent of them on full scholarship, and via an outreach programme to those in impoverished villages and refugee camps. Its flagship is the Palestine Youth Orchestra, founded in 2004, which is made up of young musicians aged from 12 to 26. And Bethlehem’s conservatory is now building a state-of-the-art new home with a concert hall, a music library, 17 classrooms and plentiful studios, due to open in 2011.

In Ramallah I visited the independent music school Al Kamandjati (in Arabic ‘The violinist’), run by the violist Ramzi Aburedwan. Born and raised in a refugee camp, Aburedwan first held a musical instrument in his hands when he was 14 and attended a children’s workshop held by a visiting musician.

“I had always dreamed about playing music but I never expected to touch an instrument,” Aburedwan says. “It was always a far-away dream because of the lack of opportunity, and I was from a poor family that could not afford music lessons.” He went on to win scholarships to study in the US and France, but never lost sight of his goal to return to his homeland and bring music education to children there. Al Kamandjati opened in 2005 with a group of visiting teachers, a motley collection of donated instruments and 20 students. Now, says Aburedwan, the latter number around 500.

The Barenboim-Said Foundation (distinct from the ESNCM, which is also named in honour of the Palestinian writer Edward Said) is yet another a powerful force in music education, centering on Ramallah where it has established an international team of teachers and seeks to make the study of western classical music part of everyday life. Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, though, does not attract universal praise: to some it represents a false image when seen alongside the realities on the ground. “It’s another world,” says Aburedwan. “Playing in the best halls in the world has nothing to do with what’s going on here.” 

Undeniably, given the realities of daily life in the Palestinian Territories, the PNO is launching against all odds. Ferocious logistics are involved in putting on any concert in this region, especially if it requires the transport of a large number of people of assorted backgrounds, residences and permits; journeys through the Palestinian territories are liable to be interrupted for unpredictable lengths of time by armed checkpoints, while the Palestinian populace is subjected to a labyrinthine system of regulations affecting, among other things, entry permissions, number plates, segregated roads (some are reserved for Israelis and settlers only) and the Separation Wall.

But nothing could make clearer the pivotal role of music in maintaining the Palestinian sense of dignity and identity than the establishment of this orchestra. Its opening series is an international affair under the baton of the Swiss conductor Baldur Brönnimann, with the Palestinian-Japanese soprano Mariam Tamari as soloist. The orchestral players include both Palestinian musicians and classical performers of many backgrounds who have visited the Palestinian territories to teach. If it can succeed, its message of hope for the year ahead should speak out loud and clear.

(Were you there? Have you heard about how the concerts went? If so, please write in and tell us.)

UPDATE: Violinist Simon Hewitt Jones writes in to say that actually another symphony orchestra launched in Ramallah just a couple of weeks earlier! This is the Ramallah Orchestra, founded by Ramzi Aburedwan himself, with Al Kamandjati. Simon joined them at their first concert to perform Monti's Czardas. You gotta love the way that the spirit of artistic competition is flourishing so strongly over there. See article here.

ONE/ONE/ONE-ONE

***HAPPY NEW YEAR!***

And here, on 1.1.11, are a selection of 7 Top Reasons to Welcome 2011:

1. Last night our home was the unexpected host of a proposal and subsequent engagement at midnight. CONGRATULATIONS, RUSTEM AND DANIELA! With you around, who needs Wills & Kate? And a huge Mazel Tov to my beautiful Ozzie cousin Mandi and her bridegroom Dean, who tied the knot in sunny Sydney the other day. May 2011 be a year of weddings!

2. Hugh Canning has named the London Philharmonic as Best Orchestra of 2010 in his Sunday Times Best & Worst of the Year. Bravo, orchestra-in-law!

3. The New Year's Day Concert from Vienna was full of Liszty Czardasy stuff and there will be lots and lots and LOTS more to look forward to in the Liszt Bicentenary.

4. Some really good people got New Year Honours, including MBEs for the admirable and energetic Simon and Pamela Majaro of the Cavatina Trust, an OBE for composer Colin Matthews and a CBE for composer/presenter Howard Goodall. Best of all, there's a Damehood for the glorious Felicity Palmer, mezzo gloriosa.

Admittedly, as Michael White points out in the Telegraph, the precise ranking may be disputable. Still, it is good to see anyone in classical music receiving due recognition at the moment. (By the way, we're still waiting for Dame Tasmin. I don't know how these things work, but it's scandalous that our leading British violin soloist has never been awarded any official honour whatsoever.)

5. Glyndebourne is doing Meistersinger this summer, with Vladimir Jurowski conducting and David McVicar directing. Roll over, Bayreuth...

6. I have some terrific projects on the go. For now, let's just say that they may pop up in such diverse locations as San Francisco, Australia, France, Suffolk and the Middle East.

JDCMB housekeeping has taken place in the sidebar and involves weekly links to interesting musical Youtube channels, plus a shameless plug via which you may advertise here, take part in a writing course, etcetera, etcetera.

7. Katie Fforde this morning tweeted the adorable idea that we are now living in the Elevenses. Here's to honey for all!

Happy New Year, folks, with lots of love from me, the Tomcat and Solti.
 

...and a special Strauss Friday Historical

...apropos of Johann Strauss for new year, it's Friday and time for historical treats. Here's Miliza Korjus, accompanied by the matchless solo violin playing (on the sound track) of Toscha Seidel, singing Tales of the Vienna Woods in the 1930 film The Great Waltz. After this, all we need is a bit of cut-price bubbly and we're ready to meet 2011 and whatever it may do. "Something so sweet and so dangerous..."

BRING IT ON!

Merry Christmas from my Orchestra-In-Law

The London Philharmonic Orchestra would like to wish you...this! As you'll see, they are a multinational lot, and this effort does not include possible further contributions in Russian, Latvian and Hungarian. Tomcat is the one speaking Danish. Actually he's from Derbyshire.

Please stand by for the annual JDCMB Ginger Stripe Awards, which take place tomorrow...

Rubinstein plays Chopin

This will probably be the last Friday Historical of Chopin Year, so it's a very special one: Arthur Rubinstein plays Chopin's Etude Op.25 No.1 in A flat major in recital in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire. This was in 1960-something. The picture looks older, the sound seems newer and the playing is a sliver of timeless wonder. I'm not sure that Chopin could be any more perfect.

A sop to our consciences...

Here's my piece from today's Independent on the iniquities of musical organisations that promote themselves with the concept of peace. "If we accept "music for peace" as the panacea of all evils, we are selling short not only everything that music can achieve, which is prodigious, but also the nature of peace itself."

(Update, 23 Dec: the "Quartet for Peace" points out that the four instruments it comprises were actually crafted by the Cape Town-based luthier Brian Lisus. Apologies for misidentification.)

The Violin Viking

My interview with that great Dane Nikolaj Znaider is in the JC and you can read it here Lots about his philosophy of music and life, what it's like to play Kreisler's violin and why he is turning into a conductor... Enjoy!

Elgar for Remembrance

The centenary performance of the Elgar Violin Concerto the other night. Herein is enshrined the soul of...Sir Colin Davis. 

Elgar for Remembrance

"Herein is enshrined the soul of ....."
Those five dots, placed by Elgar at the head of his Violin Concerto, have been causing everyone much fuss, bother and excitement ever since — as the composer no doubt intended. But the centenary of the concerto fell on Wednesday 10th, and the LSO — which Elgar used to conduct himself — celebrated in style with a hotly awaited performance by Nikolaj Znaider, Sir Colin Davis taking the helm. Elgar could have doubled the five dots, for in this performance was enshrined the soul of...C-O-L-I-N D-A-V-I-S.
Sir Colin has had some health problems this year, I understand, as well as suffering the death of his wife. By the end of the Elgar (in the second half) he looked completely shattered. Yet what stood out most of all in the performance, eclipsing even Znaider's playing, was Sir Colin's empathy with the music: for instance the phrasing of the slow movement's second theme, lingering on the topmost notes as if time was holding its breath, involved a rare and precious expertise that comes only with time, experience and the deepest understanding.
Znaider, when he wasn't playing, seemed transfixed, watching Sir Colin's every move. This brilliant Danish-born violinist — with the looks of a Viking, the fingers of a Heifetz, the brain of a budding Barenboim and a violin (a Guarneri del Gesu) that used to belong to Kreisler — is turning himself into a conductor. We hope he won't stop playing the violin — he insists that he won't — but I hear he has been appointed principal guest conductor at the Mariinsky in St Petersburg, which makes him Gergiev's second-in-command. His chief mentors are Barenboim and Sir Colin, and the warm, deeply connected partnership between soloist and maestro was another rare and precious experience, the antithesis of the fast-food collaborations that occupy 90 per cent of concertos. (I have an interview with Znaider forthcoming — will post it as soon as it's out.)
Kreisler's violin seemed less happy, though, making the occasional grumble and buzz deep down and losing its tuning from time to time — Znaider had to do some hasty knob-twiddling and testing mid-movement. This was the violin that gave the Elgar concerto's premiere 100 years ago exactly; this may be the very sound that was in Elgar's ears as he put the finishing touches to the piece. But of course a violin's sound is only partly down to the instrument; much more of it is about the player. As Pinchas Zukerman once told me, a personal sound is something that a violinist is born with; you can develop it, but the essence of it doesn't change. Znaider has his own violin voice and it is not much like Kreisler's: in place of beloved Fritz's honeyed gentleness and whimsy, Znaider plays Elgar as if he's reciting Shakespeare. He tells the story with tremendous seriousness, drama and finely wrought articulation, yet seems to stand back, looking at the forensics of text and structure and, to my ears anyway, playing from within the score but not always within its soul. (I was surprised, too, to see that he was using the music — he's been playing this concerto all over the world all this year and apparently he frequently conducts from memory. Not that it matters, of course.)
Sir Colin also treated us to a wonderful warm-up act in the Mendelssohn Scottish Symphony, which was such fun that we almost expected them to pipe in the haggis at the end. And to start, Nicholas Collon conducted the world premiere of a new work by the youthful Emily Howard, a UBS Soundscapes Pioneers Commission entitled Solar — a musical portrait of the sun, apparently — which involved compelling sonorities and high-density harmonies, well constructed and strongly imagined.
But what lingered was the sense of impending yet understated tragedy in the Elgar: in the shuddering of the cadenza's accompaniment the icy winds of the 20th century arrived to blow away the composer's world, a premonition, perhaps, of the untold horrors ahead. The eve of 11 November is an appropriate moment for it.
A hundred years on, where are we? Was this a premonition too, a chill wind from a graveyard of dreams? I was too churned up at the end to do anything but head straight home, desperately trying to find a quiet corner of the train in which to keep absorbing Elgar's elegies in search of lost time.
The Barbican was packed out. Apparently even Jeremy Hunt was there — he tweeted about it yesterday... I hope he was listening properly and took note of the fact that our world-class orchestras are at the top of their game, but always need to be sustained by well-trained musicians and educated, enthusiastic audiences. With their odious plans on university tuition fees, the inevitable local authority cuts to arts budgets — Somerset has removed its own completely — and the likelihood that more than a hundred libraries will close in London alone, I have the impression that the coalition is not so much pruning back the branches as doing its darndest to tear our cultural life out by the roots. It is a situation far more insidious and dangerous than the spurious window-dressing of "15% cuts to frontline arts", or whatever they call it in the  knowledge of how easily we are duped. While the LSO played Elgar on Wednesday, some 50,000 of our students were finding their voices. Now the rest of us need to as well.
Please read Charlotte Higgins's passionate defence of the arts, which she gave as a speech at the Paul Hamlyn Foundation awards for artists and composers the other day. If you think the cuts to arts funding will have no effect, she says, you are either deluded, in denial or dishonest.
And finally, here's a little diversion: the musical chain-reaction in the lives and works of Saint-Saens, Faure and Ravel, as described in today's Independent by yours truly, trailing Steven Isserlis's exciting series opening at the Wigmore tonight.

Please do not adjust your set....

...normal service will be resumed as soon as possible!

The Perryman Videos

Here are the two parts of my split-screen video chat about music&painting and music&words with kinetic artist Norman Perryman.

PLACIDONE!

Here's my article from today's Independent about the return of Placido Domingo...as a baritone. Enjoy! http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/placido-domingo-if-i-rest-i-rust-2009618.html

Wagner: The Big Question

The latest on the Wagner saga at Bayreuth...here's my piece for The Big Question in The Independent today. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/the-big-question-why-is-wagners-legacy-proving-so-bitter-both-to-music-and-to-his-family-1939675.html

Meet Alice Sommer Herz, 106

Here's my piece in this week's JC about one of the most extraordinary people I've ever met. http://www.thejc.com/node/29251

POLL: PLEASE VOTE!

Should audiences be allowed to take drinks into classical concerts? Please vote in the poll at the top of the sidebar to the left. You can only vote once and polling closes at 1am on 11 February. Thanks for your feedback, and I look forward to the results with interest!

Barenboim: the making of a legend

He's back. Here's my piece from today's Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/daniel-barenboim-how-the-maestro-made-classical-music-the-hottest-ticket-in-town-1882250.html

Xmas presents...

If you fancy giving a signed copy of one of my novels as an Xmas present, I can do 'em. Paperbacks of all four available, plus the Hungarian Dances CD and hardbacks of 'Rites of Spring'. Email me for details or tweet to @jessicaduchen ...

Opera & Ballet: The Odd Couple

My piece in today's Indy about the rapprochement of these two arts...
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/ballet-and-opera--the-odd-couple-1823711.html

ROH Tristan: the reckoning

I was bowled over and out by the ROH's new Tristan und Isolde the other day. Read about it here: http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/2288

Magnum opera

Mad props to The Independent which has included my blog in its 25 best music websites roundup today (but without a link!). And a couple of interesting things I spotted at the Royal Opera House last night. More about the performance of Tristan a bit later, when I have managed to get back down from the ceiling. http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/2287

Beethoven didn't write Fur Elise!

Well, not entirely... http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/2283

In this month's Standpoint Magazine...

...my column is about what has become of the 'Russian school' since the fall of communism. Link via my blogpost here: http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/2260/.

Ebene Forever!

Ebene Quartet scoops Record of the Year at Classic FM Gramophone Awards. Nice one! http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/2255

Speaking of Talks...

I'm giving a talk/reading re Songs of Triumphant Love at East Sheen Library on Thursday evening. Do come along if you can. 7pm for 7.30pm, 1 min from Mortlake Station (SW Trains from Waterloo). East Sheen Library, Sheen Lane Centre, Sheen Lane, London SW14. Love and hugs to all attendees.

The joy of Joyce

My interview with Joyce DiDonato is in today's Independent: http://bit.ly/wUjkW.

JDCMB wins a badge!

We're in another list of the 100 best blogs, this time courtesy of The Daily Reviewer. They kindly sent me a badge - see left! :-)

Divas drop out of NY, but...

...they should just see their replacements, and so should the audiences... http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/2025

Piano Competitions: Return to the Dark Side

Priceless and explosive material in the New York Times today...

The Mariinsky Ring

Here is the truth about the Mariinsky Ring Cycle.... Read all about it at Standpoint.

JD on TV

I will be on BBC1's Breakfast news tomorrow morning (Monday) live between 8.30 and 9am, along with BBC Music Magazine's editor Oliver Condy, to discuss the Mozart juvenilia that pitched up in Salzburg the other day. Please excuse me while I hurry off to do my hair...

and by the way

...I've had two rave reviews for SONGS, here: http://www.lep.co.uk/bookreviews/Songs-of-Triumphant-Love-.5459031.jp and here: http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php/Songs_of_Triumphant_Love_by_Jessica_Duchen

The Proms start tomorrow!

My preview of this year's Proms season is in The Independent today, here.

Breaking through the Silence

Post today on English PEN/JAM's concert in Westminster paying tribute to persecuted Burmese writers. Please come along if you can.

Women on Wires

It's been a slow blog week, due to book launch, deadlines and technical glitches, but the underlying theme has been some seriously wired women, including me.

Some extra news for those who are still accessing the posts via JDCMB Original: Songs of Triumphant Love is to be turned into an audio book! This is really good news, not least because the others weren't, and it's an increasingly popular format.

What Shostakovich did in London

Apparently in 1972 Shostakovich made a rare visit to London for a performance of his Symphony No.15. He had two free evenings. On the first of these, he went to the theatre to see Jesus Christ, Superstar. On the second free evening, he insisted on going to see it again. And said he'd have liked the chance to use some of those instruments. Imagine Shostakovich with an electric guitar... 

The JDCMB social secretary informs me that this was gleaned yesterday at the very lovely celebrations for the wedding of cellist Julian Lloyd Webber to Jiaxin Cheng, formerly principal cellist of the Auckland Chamber Orchestra. Many congratulations to the happy couple!

Solti & SONGS

The now-obligatory picture of One's New Book Together With One's Cat. (I rather love the front cover, although if you've read Hungarian Dances you will guess, correctly, that the novel is less flowery than the image.)

RSS for the new site: please stay logged to JDCMB for now...

Hi all, I'm back. Well, not quite. The site at Standpoint magazine is still being fine-tuned and as yet there's no direct RSS feed for my blog. I have no idea how such things work, but a brief bit of market research via Facebook suggests that you really, really need this, so until they get one up and running there, I will continue to post links here so that at least you'll know the thing exists and you can click straight through to it.

I now have a column in the magazine itself, starting from the July issue, which is out now. I am standing in for their usual columnist, Ian Bostridge. First article is about HAYDN! Read it here.

Here are my blog posts so far:

Introductory post

Mastersingers - from Cardiff to Cohen (on what some of the candidates at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition could learn from Leonard Cohen).

There's nothing like a piano-playing Dame (Arise, Dame Mitsuko!).

Chopin as Prophet - Mikhail Rudy's stage version of The Pianist, in Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre, blows off my socks.

Tribute to a Contemporary Genius - a somewhat ironic heading for a post about what the heck was so great about Michael Jackson?!

Please leave comments on the Standpoint site rather than this one! They are moderated in house, but do appear sooner or later as long as they're not libellous, racist or gratuitously personally insulting.

Please note, too, that the views expressed in my pieces for the Standpoint magazine and website are entirely my own and do not represent those of the magazine or its staff. Please note, likewise, that the views of the other writers therein are entirely their own and have nothing to do with mine.

JDCMB is moving to STANDPOINT

Dear all,

WE ARE MOVING HOME!

After 5 happy years at Blogger, where I've been enjoying adjusting seasonal colours and encountering self-reliant-technotwit-dom on a regular basis, I am taking my blog to the new website of STANDPOINT Magazine.

STANDPOINT, which launched in May last year, is an upmarket, intellectual current affairs monthly with a global approach. I will have a monthly music column in the magazine itself, starting from the July issue, where I'm stepping into Ian Bostridge's shoes (!). And I'll be blogging alongside people like legal eagle Joshua Rozenberg and STANDPOINT's editor Daniel Johnson (who covered the fall of the Berlin Wall for the Daily Telegraph), so I suppose I'll have to be on best behaviour for a while. My first two blog posts are up already; the design is being fine-tuned even as I write now; and very soon it should be business as usual.

They have promised me that I can continue JDCMB exactly as before. I only hope they know what they're letting themselves in for.

JDCMB will continue to be visible here on Blogspot so that the archives are readable and the links followable - I won't have the same sidebar space at STANDPOINT. Please feel free to come back and explore whenever you like.

See you there soon!

L'embarquement pour...

I'm off to France with Tom. Here's something suitable to mark the occasion.

A bientot!

One who got away, and TWO who didn't

Mariangela Vacatello, who won the audience prize at the Cliburn, playing Stravinsky in an early round. The 27-year-old Italian studied at Imola and is a great favourite back home. Here in Britain we can hear her at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 10 July and the Buxton Festival on 13 July. Her semifinal video is a gorgeous performance of the Scriabin Etude for the Left Hand.

Now here's winner Haocheng Zhang in what sounds to me like a jolly impressive Scarbo.



And - after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing involving a mysteriously missing video on Youtube - thanks to Michael Monroe for sending me a link that actually works so we can show Nobuyuji Tsujii playing some of the Hammerklavier:



UPDATE: 5.30pm, Thursday - whatever you thought of the Facts & Arts piece, try this one for nastiness: Benjamin Ivry in The Wall Street Journal, under the title WHAT WAS THE VAN CLIBURN JURY THINKING? I find some of his arguments exceedingly odd - and the Takacs Quartet has not come 'from Hungary' for donkey's years and is in fact half English.

I should warn you quickly, if you are wanting to comment further on any of this, that as of tomorrow afternoon I am OFF until the end of next Thursday and have no intention of straying further from the swimming pool behind our favourite Luberon bed & breakfast than I absolutely have to - and it's in a spot deliciously remote from WiFi. So speak now or temporarily hold your peace!

Van Cliburn competition delivers 'odd couple'

For the first time the Van Cliburn Competition has been won by three Asian candidates: two very young winners sharing the top prize and no 'crystal' (third) prize being awarded. One of the top two was a blind Japanese boy whom some have been calling the 'Susan Boyle' of the piano: Nobuyuki Tsujii, 20, who has been blind since birth. The other, Haocheng Zhang from China, turned 19 during the contest.

Here's a report from Michael Johnson from Facts & Arts, putting most of the situation into a nutshell and including the delicately-expressed information that some of the jurors appear to have voted for their own students, that the contest finished on a 'sour' note, that some felt there was a bias against Russian candidates and that the audience mobbed the Italian finalist Mariangela Vacatello and thought she'd been short-changed. [The Facts & Arts article also alleges that Tsujii is 'mentally handicapped' as well as blind, but as you'll see from the comments this detail is disputed and I am unable to confirm either way, though have found no other references to this condition as yet.]

I dread to think what the music business machine will decide to do with 'Nobu'.

See further updates above!

Yeats for a very sorry morning in Europe

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

LAKATOS!

I'm convinced that our Hungarian friend who took the Barbican by storm last night could play the socks, never mind the red leather trousers, off Znaider, Bell and Mutter combined. There's an image to get the imaginations working...

Sporting those trousers and a diamante-buckled belt, as if the trademark tache wasn't enough to let us know who he was, Roby Lakatos brought on his band, including some very young and phenomenally talented performers, just in front of the LSO. He played the first half unamplified, but what a massive sound he produces - vast and round and as rich as Hungarian venison stew with lashings of goose liver. (The pic is courtesy of the LSO, taken during the rehearsal - no trousers, at least not those ones...)

His cimbalom player, Jeno Lisztes, played his almost-namesake's Hungarian Rhapsody No.21 solo - the damn thing is hard enough when you use 10 fingers, but the cimbalom is rather like playing with two only, and with the notes in odd locations. The roof nearly blew off. One day I will have to share with you an account by Arthur Hartmann of the time Debussy tried to learn the cimbalom. It's priceless. Soon, I promise.

With the programme a mixed bag of lavish Gypsy virtuosity, a couple of solo spots for the orchestra (Strauss Zigeunerbaron Overture and Kodaly Dances of Galanta, well chosen and delicious), a few marvellous jazzy episodes rather a la Hot Club de Budapest, some unutterably incredible fiddle playing and a bit of commercial schlock (Fiddler on the Roof just didn't do it for me in this context, though I love the music), I anticipated an interesting mesh between the Hungarians and the LSO.

Much was more mush than mesh, though. The balance never worked when band & orchestra played together, even when Lakatos & co put on mics in the 2nd half, and I wonder if the very young conductor, Eva Ollikainen, could not perhaps have asked the orchestra to play a tad more quietly now and then. Most people I talked to were great LSO fans yet still wished the orchestra would just go home and give the floor to their guests, full stop.

But full marks of a different kind to the LSO's Maltese leader Carmine Lauri, whom Lakatos took centre stage to share the work that he dubbed, with extreme Hungarian charm, "CsardasMonti" as a duet. Dazzling stuff.

A lot of violinists in the audience were fanning themselves quite hard in the interval with their programmes. Can't blame them - it was a hot night for fiddlers. I hope my programme notes made sense...wrote them while really quite ill...and it is terrifying to walk into a hall and see the editor of Songlines reading your words (he is a Hungarian music expert, to put it mildly). Not sure, what became of the Leo Weiner Divertimento, which either didn't happen or didn't do so in remotely the way I'd anticipated. Suspect the latter.

With encore after encore, a third reprise of Hejre Kati ended the evening after a stunning, exhilarating and rather exhausting three hours. As one friend remarked, I think we all knew exactly what must have happened to Kati by then.

Lakatos is in town tonight!...

...with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican...and I've done their programme notes. Fun! :-) This also means that I finally get to see the guy play live, at long long last.

A bunch of friends are very excited about this too - how else do you get half the violinists of another orchestra to turn up to a concert on their night off? But I also have friends who dislike the commercial turn that Lakatos & co have taken. It depends how purist you want to be. I tend to think that sensational playing is sensational playing, and wonder how the orchestra will keep up with the guys in pieces like this: Cosma's music for Le grand blond (an otherwise forgettable thriller that happens to have a great score). Will report back tomorrow...

Sunny days...

John Metcalf's Endless Song, played there by Ivan Ilic, who is taking the stage at the Wigmore Hall for the first time tomorrow evening. If that isn't relaxing music for a sunny Sunday, I don't know what is. On the other hand, Ivan has a double who tends to turn up winning Wimbledon, so perhaps this is how he winds down before the contest begins.

Tomorrow Roger, um, Ivan, who is American/Serbian living in France, turns his attention to some thornier material, among it Brahms's transcription for left hand alone of the Bach Chaconne, the Chopin Polonaise-Fantaisie, some Debussy Preludes and a bunch of Godowsky's transcriptions of Chopin Etudes (but hey, if you've got it, flaunt it...). You might have caught him on R3's In Tune the other day.

Oh, and he sent me some chocolate from Bordeaux. And not just any old chocolate. This is Lindt, entitled 'A la pointe du Fleur de Sel' - honest, guv, it's choc laced with teeny flecks of sea salt. It is unbelievable. So much so that I am thinking of starting a chocolate blog, in case anybody invents anything even more unbelievable.

Cliburn blog - blimey...

The fur is flying in Fort Worth!

At least, a glance at the heated comments on the Van Cliburn Piano Competition blog shows that people still care about musical standards, musicality and unfair judgments... I haven't been following the contest this time, but am still surprised not only to hear that Lukas Vondracek was knocked out, but that he'd bothered to enter the thing at all. I love the bit in the comments where he suddenly pops up and tells one of the commentators that before she starts judging them all online he'd like to hear her play.

By the way, if any of you read one of my colleagues in the Indy blogs writing "in praise of piano competitions" in which he said that the stories you hear about the nasties are "mainly apocryphal" - no, they aren't. We just aren't allowed to print the bloody truth.

When Erich met Felix

It's Korngold's birthday, and here's an absolute gem of Korngoldiana. This one is Felixiana too - A Dream Comes True, the promotional trailer for Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream from 1936. Chronicling the making of what was then the most expensive film ever created in Hollywood - but careful not to include any of the actual Shakespeare in case it put off the audiences - it contains the only known film of Korngold playing the piano, lashings of Mendelssohn, rare footage of Max Reinhardt himself and the glittering of all the stars at the premiere...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EWK!

Felixcitations co-prod...

I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of the documentary on Mendelssohn that is to be the culmination of the series The Birth of British Music on BBC2 on Saturday. I've written about it on my Mendelssohn blog, and you can read the post here. Whether or not Mendelssohn really has anything whatsoever to do with British music, it's a darned good film, great fun and beautifully made, and there are no sporrans in sight, not even in Scotland.

I have just been informed by BBC Blogomaster that one of my fellow composer anniversary bloggers is planning to set off round Scotland dressed as Mendelssohn sometime in June and wants to swop composer blogs for a couple of weeks. As I am bored witless by his usual chap and have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject, and besides am planning to be soaking up a little Provencal sun at the time, I've offered him instead a simple carte blanche to guest-post on Felixcitatons. Poor dear fellow. I reckon that writing about early music for that long is liable to drive anybody a little bit bananas.

RIP Nicholas Maw

Speaking of British music, one of the best contemporary British composers has just died: Nicholas Maw, whose legacy includes the gargantuan Odyssey and the flawed yet written-from-the-heart opera Sophie's Choice. Here is a fine tribute from Tom Service in The Guardian.