Great musicians...oh yes, they exist and many of them are properly recognised. Argerich, Barenboim, Zimerman, Lupu... But the way the wheels of the music business turn, on the next strata down there's a lot of confusion about who is a great musician and who simply looks good on a front cover or has a journalisable hobby such as keeping fierce wild animals. The famous artists are not necessarily the great ones; and vice-versa.
Andrew Clements wrote an absolute stinker of a review about Leif Ove Andsnes in The Guardian the other day, saying, basically, that he can't see what all the fuss is about. Andsnes is a really sweet guy and various of my female colleagues think he's gorgeous. But compare him on purely artistic grounds to a pianist like Grigory Sokolov...hmmm...
Hopefully, if you're reading my blog, you already know who Sokolov is. In case not: he is a big Russian bear of a pianist, a one-time protege of Gilels. His face on a poster is not going to make teenagers swoon, but he is the one pianist I've heard in the last couple of years who has made me rethink everything I ever thought about the piano. His playing is so intense, so concentrated, so beautiful and so wide-ranging in style, dynamic and imagination, from Couperin to Prokofiev, that most others look pallid in comparison. He has a following among the cognoscecnti. But shouldn't people be queuing out past the Thames to hear artistry of this calibre? Meanwhile I've heard about one award a few years ago that involved a shortlist of fine musicians...allegedly selected not least because they also looked good on magazine covers.
I don't think there's any secret about any of this - the music business has worked like this for years - but it does get up my nose because it seems that the way to have your piano recital album hit the charts is now to hug wolves in your spare time. With too many competitions and too much corruption in the awarding of prizes, means of making sensible, independent choices about rising stars have diminished somewhat. Therefore decisions about who gets the recording contracts and the promotion campaigns seems to be increasingly a matter of one person's whim somewhere at the top of a company. That person has to know what they're doing and one can't help wondering, occasionally, whether they really do.
Actually they know exactly what they're doing. But that doesn't always involve signing up musicians on artistic grounds alone.
On that merry note, I'm off to Berlin to interview one of the exceptions: Daniel Barenboim.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Friday, March 12, 2004
Korngold rides again
Opened The Guardian this morning to find a massive article about Erich Wolfgang Korngold and his two finest operas, Die tote Stadt and Das Wunder der Heliane, staring back at me. By Martin Kettle! Not a moment too soon, EWK's going mainstream. There's a new production of Die tote Stadt in Berlin, which seems to have prompted this latest article, and the year 2007 will mark the 50th anniversary of his death and the 110th anniversary of his birth. Read Martin's article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1167046,00.html
Someone needs to do something about the anniversary. Lots of people need to do lots of things. Most of all, someone needs to stage Die tote Stadt in Britain. In its illustrious lifetime, this absolute bloody masterpiece has received just one concert performance in Britain - by the Kensington Symphony Orchestra, essentially a bunch of highly talented amateur musicians (extremely good it was too!). Last year I badgered Glyndebourne about it for all I was worth, only to receive the rather glum outlook that the orchestra pit probably isn't big enough.
Come on, ENO, come on, Covent Garden, what are you waiting for?
Someone needs to do something about the anniversary. Lots of people need to do lots of things. Most of all, someone needs to stage Die tote Stadt in Britain. In its illustrious lifetime, this absolute bloody masterpiece has received just one concert performance in Britain - by the Kensington Symphony Orchestra, essentially a bunch of highly talented amateur musicians (extremely good it was too!). Last year I badgered Glyndebourne about it for all I was worth, only to receive the rather glum outlook that the orchestra pit probably isn't big enough.
Come on, ENO, come on, Covent Garden, what are you waiting for?
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Music, scheduling and international travel...
It's been a busy couple of days and looks like being a busy few weeks.
I am flying to Berlin next Wednesday to interview Daniel Barenboim, who can see me at 1pm on Thursday. That morning, I'm seizing the chance to interview Pascal Devoyon (see Ravel day report, 2 March) who lives there but is flying home just the day before. I fly home straight after seeing Barenboim.
This Thursday I need to see Steven Isserlis to talk about his forthcoming Saint-Saens Festival. He has just half an hour to spare between rehearsals and other interviews before setting off on weeks of international touring. The festival isn't until mid-April, but he's only home this week.
Today I've been writing up an interview with the Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa. She tells me she has just reached the highest notch of Air Miles customership because she spends so much time flying between London and Japan.
How does anyone cope with the possibilities of modern travel? In the music business, most of us have careers that are to some extent international. But this dilemma faces Tom every time the LPO goes on tour. You travel; you perform. Both are deeply exhausting, require total commitment and are somewhat unnatural. Oftener than not, you have to do both on the same day (extra day = extra pay, not what the promoter wants). How can you perform well if the same morning you have to get up at 5am to catch a plane from Stansted and then sit in underventilated aircraft cabins for x hours? How can a normal human body stand it? Soloists mostly have more leisure than orchestras...well, sometimes...but where is the musical inspiration in travelling from city to city playing the same concerto or recital programme over and over again?
Not that I'd fancy being cooped up on a ship on the North Atlantic for days on end, but I can see the attraction of the era when Rubinstein would go on tour to America for several months - it wouldn't have been worth going for less - and could relax on the boat, practise the piano, talk to Stravinsky or Picasso for light relief on board; and at the end of the tour, enjoy a chance to chill out on the ocean wave with a glass of something cold and bubbly.
Because today's crazy travel schedules are possible, they've become necessary. Of course they enable musicians to earn a better living than they otherwise might (today Croydon, tomorrow The World), but if this is a way to ensure engaged, sensitive, insightful musical performance on every occasion then my name is Myra Hess. The musicians suffer; the music suffers; the audience suffers and, dare I say it, may not come back if they don't find what they hear exciting enough.
I hate to post a message that doesn't bear some constructive suggestion, but this one is quite a conundrum. Does anyone have anything sensible to say on the subject? For the moment, perhaps it's enough just to remark that it's incredible that we can hear musicians such as my marvellous interviewees playing as wonderfully as they do anywhere in the world - and exhort them to take good care of themselves!
I am flying to Berlin next Wednesday to interview Daniel Barenboim, who can see me at 1pm on Thursday. That morning, I'm seizing the chance to interview Pascal Devoyon (see Ravel day report, 2 March) who lives there but is flying home just the day before. I fly home straight after seeing Barenboim.
This Thursday I need to see Steven Isserlis to talk about his forthcoming Saint-Saens Festival. He has just half an hour to spare between rehearsals and other interviews before setting off on weeks of international touring. The festival isn't until mid-April, but he's only home this week.
Today I've been writing up an interview with the Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa. She tells me she has just reached the highest notch of Air Miles customership because she spends so much time flying between London and Japan.
How does anyone cope with the possibilities of modern travel? In the music business, most of us have careers that are to some extent international. But this dilemma faces Tom every time the LPO goes on tour. You travel; you perform. Both are deeply exhausting, require total commitment and are somewhat unnatural. Oftener than not, you have to do both on the same day (extra day = extra pay, not what the promoter wants). How can you perform well if the same morning you have to get up at 5am to catch a plane from Stansted and then sit in underventilated aircraft cabins for x hours? How can a normal human body stand it? Soloists mostly have more leisure than orchestras...well, sometimes...but where is the musical inspiration in travelling from city to city playing the same concerto or recital programme over and over again?
Not that I'd fancy being cooped up on a ship on the North Atlantic for days on end, but I can see the attraction of the era when Rubinstein would go on tour to America for several months - it wouldn't have been worth going for less - and could relax on the boat, practise the piano, talk to Stravinsky or Picasso for light relief on board; and at the end of the tour, enjoy a chance to chill out on the ocean wave with a glass of something cold and bubbly.
Because today's crazy travel schedules are possible, they've become necessary. Of course they enable musicians to earn a better living than they otherwise might (today Croydon, tomorrow The World), but if this is a way to ensure engaged, sensitive, insightful musical performance on every occasion then my name is Myra Hess. The musicians suffer; the music suffers; the audience suffers and, dare I say it, may not come back if they don't find what they hear exciting enough.
I hate to post a message that doesn't bear some constructive suggestion, but this one is quite a conundrum. Does anyone have anything sensible to say on the subject? For the moment, perhaps it's enough just to remark that it's incredible that we can hear musicians such as my marvellous interviewees playing as wonderfully as they do anywhere in the world - and exhort them to take good care of themselves!
Saturday, March 06, 2004
CD news
FERVENT FAURÉ ON THE FIDDLE
Not just one wonderful disc of Fauré violin and piano music but two!
Alban Beikircher and Roy Howat have just released the complete Fauré violin and piano music on the Arte Nova label. Alban is the leader of the Arion Quartet and director of the Tonkunst Bad Saulgau music festival. Roy is a highly respected scholar and pianist, remarkably combining two fields of musical activities that British educational establishments used to do their utmost to keep separate! This joyous disc, played with energy, sincerity, respect and beauty, includes both violin sonatas and the short pieces, closing with the rarely heard Air de danse from 'Caligula' in Roy's own arrangement.
ARTE NOVA/BMG CLASSICS 74321 92763 2
Gil Shaham's first CD on his own label, Canary Classics, is called The Fauré Album: with pianist Akira Eguchi and cellist Brinton Smith, Gil plays a wide range of Fauré's finest, including the A major Sonata, the Piano Trio, the short violin and piano pieces and superb transcriptions of several songs. Sound and packaging alike are beautifully produced by Eric Wen, formerly founder of the Biddulph Records historical label. This isn't Fauré the way we usually think of him - not French, self-contained and subtle, but highly expressive and overflowing with heart and soul. But it's so beautiful that I don't think Fauré would mind! Programme notes by yours truly.
CANARY CLASSICS/ARTEMIS ATM 1239
Catch Gil playing the Barber Concerto with the Philharmonia at the Festival Hall, Sunday 7 March.
RED-HOT RACHMANINOV
Krystian Zimerman's new disc of the Rachmaninov First and Second Piano Concertos burns the spots off most competitors. As you probably know, Krystian never does anything by halves and as he told me in our interview that accompanies this recording, 'You don't play the Rachmaninov concertos, you live them'. Forget cool, classical restraint: it's hard to imagine more emotional and romantic playing than this.
With the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Seiji Ozawa.
Deutsche Grammophon DG 459 643-2
Not just one wonderful disc of Fauré violin and piano music but two!
Alban Beikircher and Roy Howat have just released the complete Fauré violin and piano music on the Arte Nova label. Alban is the leader of the Arion Quartet and director of the Tonkunst Bad Saulgau music festival. Roy is a highly respected scholar and pianist, remarkably combining two fields of musical activities that British educational establishments used to do their utmost to keep separate! This joyous disc, played with energy, sincerity, respect and beauty, includes both violin sonatas and the short pieces, closing with the rarely heard Air de danse from 'Caligula' in Roy's own arrangement.
ARTE NOVA/BMG CLASSICS 74321 92763 2
Gil Shaham's first CD on his own label, Canary Classics, is called The Fauré Album: with pianist Akira Eguchi and cellist Brinton Smith, Gil plays a wide range of Fauré's finest, including the A major Sonata, the Piano Trio, the short violin and piano pieces and superb transcriptions of several songs. Sound and packaging alike are beautifully produced by Eric Wen, formerly founder of the Biddulph Records historical label. This isn't Fauré the way we usually think of him - not French, self-contained and subtle, but highly expressive and overflowing with heart and soul. But it's so beautiful that I don't think Fauré would mind! Programme notes by yours truly.
CANARY CLASSICS/ARTEMIS ATM 1239
Catch Gil playing the Barber Concerto with the Philharmonia at the Festival Hall, Sunday 7 March.
RED-HOT RACHMANINOV
Krystian Zimerman's new disc of the Rachmaninov First and Second Piano Concertos burns the spots off most competitors. As you probably know, Krystian never does anything by halves and as he told me in our interview that accompanies this recording, 'You don't play the Rachmaninov concertos, you live them'. Forget cool, classical restraint: it's hard to imagine more emotional and romantic playing than this.
With the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Seiji Ozawa.
Deutsche Grammophon DG 459 643-2
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Ravel Day, Wigmore Hall, 29 February 2004
There can't be many nicer ways to spend a freezing Sunday than sitting in the Wigmore Hall listening to Ravel, Fauré and Debussy. When Philippe Graffin and Pascal Devoyon's 10th Anniversary Concert evolved into two concerts in one day entitled 'Ravel: A Masterly Pupil' - placing the great man alongside his most eminent teacher, Fauré - I was very touched to be asked to give the pre-concert talk.
I swotted Ravel like mad, ended up writing an article about him for The Independent (see link) and discovered some excellent musical comparisons. For example, did you know that the opening of Ravel's Sonatine is virtually modelled on the opening of Fauré's A major Violin Sonata? No, neither did I until a couple of weeks ago. So much in music is simply waiting to be found. We know so many pieces so well by ear - parrot fashion, if you like - yet to have the opportunity to stop, look and notice such things is all too rare. To emerge feeling as if you really know these pieces for the first time is incredibly valuable in a world where we take them so much for granted.
The concerts were marvellous. Philippe and Pascal joined forces with Nobuko Imai and two fabulous Finns, cellist Martti Rousi and his violinist brother Tuomas Rousi. In the coffee concert they played the Fauré Second Piano Quartet and the Ravel String Quartet; the afternoon was mostly duos - Ravel's early Violin Sonata, short pieces by him and Fauré, the Duo for Violin and Cello; then, to finish, the Debussy Cello Sonata and the Ravel Trio. Philippe has a sound all his own - never one to play safe, he takes risks and discovers marvels at the top of the slide... Pascal's exquisite pianism is deep and crisp and even...and Martti has to be seen to be believed, a larger than life personality whose involvement in and projection of the music is mesmerising. In case you haven't come across him before (I hadn't), he runs the Turku Chamber Music Festival in Finland and has won a Silver Medal in the Tchaikovsky Competition.
I was happy that Philippe and Pascal came to join the talk and allowed me to turn myself briefly into Parkinson for a short open interview with them. Philippe talked about Ravel's classmate Enescu, mentor to one of Philippe's own mentors, Yehudi Menuhin; Pascal offered some fascinating insights into Ravel and Debussy's contrasting styles of piano writing; and they both had some interesting contributions to make on the issue of what makes a good duo. I hope I didn't wreck the whole thing by saying 'Cassez une jambe'!
And what makes a good concert? Several of you have said to me that the Ravel experience will 'stay with me for a long time'. Really, that says it all.
See links on left to my Ravel article in The Independent, and websites for Philippe Graffin and Pascal Devoyon.
LOOK OUT FOR:
Philippe's new recording of the violin concertos by Dvorak and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is about to be released on the Avie label. It's the world premiere recording of the Coleridge-Taylor, a gorgeous, gorgeous piece by an extraordinary figure, a black British composer from the early 20th century. Philippe recorded it in South Africa with the Johannesburg Philharmonic - no doubt a story in itself.
Philippe and Pascal have recently made a new recording for Hyperion of rare sonatas by Canteloube and Pierre de Bréville. Scheduled, I believe, for release in June.
Links on left to Avie and Hyperion.
I swotted Ravel like mad, ended up writing an article about him for The Independent (see link) and discovered some excellent musical comparisons. For example, did you know that the opening of Ravel's Sonatine is virtually modelled on the opening of Fauré's A major Violin Sonata? No, neither did I until a couple of weeks ago. So much in music is simply waiting to be found. We know so many pieces so well by ear - parrot fashion, if you like - yet to have the opportunity to stop, look and notice such things is all too rare. To emerge feeling as if you really know these pieces for the first time is incredibly valuable in a world where we take them so much for granted.
The concerts were marvellous. Philippe and Pascal joined forces with Nobuko Imai and two fabulous Finns, cellist Martti Rousi and his violinist brother Tuomas Rousi. In the coffee concert they played the Fauré Second Piano Quartet and the Ravel String Quartet; the afternoon was mostly duos - Ravel's early Violin Sonata, short pieces by him and Fauré, the Duo for Violin and Cello; then, to finish, the Debussy Cello Sonata and the Ravel Trio. Philippe has a sound all his own - never one to play safe, he takes risks and discovers marvels at the top of the slide... Pascal's exquisite pianism is deep and crisp and even...and Martti has to be seen to be believed, a larger than life personality whose involvement in and projection of the music is mesmerising. In case you haven't come across him before (I hadn't), he runs the Turku Chamber Music Festival in Finland and has won a Silver Medal in the Tchaikovsky Competition.
I was happy that Philippe and Pascal came to join the talk and allowed me to turn myself briefly into Parkinson for a short open interview with them. Philippe talked about Ravel's classmate Enescu, mentor to one of Philippe's own mentors, Yehudi Menuhin; Pascal offered some fascinating insights into Ravel and Debussy's contrasting styles of piano writing; and they both had some interesting contributions to make on the issue of what makes a good duo. I hope I didn't wreck the whole thing by saying 'Cassez une jambe'!
And what makes a good concert? Several of you have said to me that the Ravel experience will 'stay with me for a long time'. Really, that says it all.
See links on left to my Ravel article in The Independent, and websites for Philippe Graffin and Pascal Devoyon.
LOOK OUT FOR:
Philippe's new recording of the violin concertos by Dvorak and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is about to be released on the Avie label. It's the world premiere recording of the Coleridge-Taylor, a gorgeous, gorgeous piece by an extraordinary figure, a black British composer from the early 20th century. Philippe recorded it in South Africa with the Johannesburg Philharmonic - no doubt a story in itself.
Philippe and Pascal have recently made a new recording for Hyperion of rare sonatas by Canteloube and Pierre de Bréville. Scheduled, I believe, for release in June.
Links on left to Avie and Hyperion.
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