I'm off to Vilnius in a few minutes. But I just had to pause to write something about how completely bloody marvellous Bizet is.
Two things brought on this sudden rush of enthusiasm yesterday. First, I'm learning the accompaniment to the Flower Song from Carmen, which I have to play in a concert in Sussex in a few weeks' time with a marvellous young singer called Andrew Clark. It's meant to be a Spanish evening - OK, the Flower Song is as francais as they come, but we're talking Carmen here, so we think we can get away with it. I know the thing backwards by ear, but to play it is totally different: one gets under the music's skin and suddenly its immense skill, its perfect expression, its economy and precision of means and all those fabulous and extraordinarily original harmonies come leaping out as if I've never noticed them before. The man was a first-rate master.
Later yesterday afternoon I was on my way to an interview in Soho and was a bit early, so I settled down in Starbucks for some iced tea. Then noticed that the Muzak was being sung in French. How nice, how Euro-friendly, how refreshing, I thought - a French crooner, albeit a rather bad one. Then - oops - I recognised the tune. Pearl Fishers Duet, of course. Hence probably Bocelli and pal. First thought: how strange that opera can be deemed accessible to the masses only if badly sung and accompanied by some dreadful pootly arrangements instead of the real thing. Second thought: poor old Bizet, if only he could have known that one day people would be hearing his music in Starbucks in Soho. Perhaps, in some way, that proves my earlier point: the man was a first-rate master and his music is going to live and live and LIVE.
OK, time to go get that plane. Back Tuesday, ciaociao til then.
Friday, June 25, 2004
Friday, June 18, 2004
Orange juice, freshly squeezed, with bits
The freelance life often feels like juggling oranges. You have two hands and six oranges and you have to keep them all in smooth motion, without dropping or squishing any. The great advantage of this peculiar existence is that if one of the oranges turns mouldy, you have five left that are still OK and room to bring in a fresh one, if and when you can pick it up.
Journalism, especially in such an 'elitist' field as music, is an uncertain game that involves a lot of frustrated, ambitious, egotistical people (yeah, me too...) who may behave in unpredictable ways. Sometimes they do so at the top of major decision-making corporations, which is the scariest thing of all. For instance, the announcement that BBC Music Magazine is to be shifted lock, stock but no staff to Bristol has hit us freelancers hard in the goolies. Not that the staff have been sacked. They've merely been informed that that is what's happening to the mag and they can go with it if they want to. Unfortunately, they mostly don't.
Bristol is a lovely city: trendy, attractive, nice place to raise a family etc etc. But it's not exactly the centre of the musical universe and getting to London by train takes an hour and three quarters. So far, no editor has appeared on the scene. Daniel Jaffe, author of the Phaidon biography of Prokofiev, has bravely accepted the Reviews Editor post, but as far as I'm aware, that's it. Nobody knows quite what the future will hold.
Meanwhile I am juggling frantically with the more certain oranges in life. This week I have to review a bunch of CDs, write an article about Music for Youth for an arts-in-the-community publication, play with Tom in a charity concert tomorrow afternoon, see 'Beloved Clara' at Chelsea on Sunday afternoon, interview a top music film-maker, prepare material for two substantial articles for said BBC Magazine and organise my interviewing schedule for a five-day trip to the Vilnius Festival in Lithuania next Friday. I have to fit in meetings, a haircut and a full day's training on 23rd for a new string to my bow (of which more if I get through). Definitely feeling squeezed.
But there's good news amid the stress: 'Beloved Clara' got picked up from my Independent article by BBC R4 Women's Hour - Lucy is going to be interviewed by Martha Kearney today and the broadcast will be tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon to trail Chelsea.
Also, I'm thrilled to bits about going to Vilnius. I'm going to find my roots: I'm informed that I had an ancestor in 18th century Vilna named the Vilna Gaon, a famous rabbi, Talmudic scholar and community leader. More usefully, I am going to interview the festival directors and a wonderful composer named Vytautas Barkaukas, whose new double concerto is being played in the festival by Nobuko Imai and Philippe Graffin (who I must thank profusely for suggesting that I go there and setting up the contacts for me. Listen, Philippe, if you ever get tired of playing the violin, I shall appoint you my literary agent!).
Apparently 'thank you' in Lithuanian sounds like someone sneezing. Achoo. Or something like that. More about this after I've been there.
Journalism, especially in such an 'elitist' field as music, is an uncertain game that involves a lot of frustrated, ambitious, egotistical people (yeah, me too...) who may behave in unpredictable ways. Sometimes they do so at the top of major decision-making corporations, which is the scariest thing of all. For instance, the announcement that BBC Music Magazine is to be shifted lock, stock but no staff to Bristol has hit us freelancers hard in the goolies. Not that the staff have been sacked. They've merely been informed that that is what's happening to the mag and they can go with it if they want to. Unfortunately, they mostly don't.
Bristol is a lovely city: trendy, attractive, nice place to raise a family etc etc. But it's not exactly the centre of the musical universe and getting to London by train takes an hour and three quarters. So far, no editor has appeared on the scene. Daniel Jaffe, author of the Phaidon biography of Prokofiev, has bravely accepted the Reviews Editor post, but as far as I'm aware, that's it. Nobody knows quite what the future will hold.
Meanwhile I am juggling frantically with the more certain oranges in life. This week I have to review a bunch of CDs, write an article about Music for Youth for an arts-in-the-community publication, play with Tom in a charity concert tomorrow afternoon, see 'Beloved Clara' at Chelsea on Sunday afternoon, interview a top music film-maker, prepare material for two substantial articles for said BBC Magazine and organise my interviewing schedule for a five-day trip to the Vilnius Festival in Lithuania next Friday. I have to fit in meetings, a haircut and a full day's training on 23rd for a new string to my bow (of which more if I get through). Definitely feeling squeezed.
But there's good news amid the stress: 'Beloved Clara' got picked up from my Independent article by BBC R4 Women's Hour - Lucy is going to be interviewed by Martha Kearney today and the broadcast will be tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon to trail Chelsea.
Also, I'm thrilled to bits about going to Vilnius. I'm going to find my roots: I'm informed that I had an ancestor in 18th century Vilna named the Vilna Gaon, a famous rabbi, Talmudic scholar and community leader. More usefully, I am going to interview the festival directors and a wonderful composer named Vytautas Barkaukas, whose new double concerto is being played in the festival by Nobuko Imai and Philippe Graffin (who I must thank profusely for suggesting that I go there and setting up the contacts for me. Listen, Philippe, if you ever get tired of playing the violin, I shall appoint you my literary agent!).
Apparently 'thank you' in Lithuanian sounds like someone sneezing. Achoo. Or something like that. More about this after I've been there.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Back to the future II
Over three weeks on, my back is still hurting. One of Tom's medical friends in Denmark thinks I may have a slipped disc. I can't help wondering whether CD reviewers are particularly prone to this condition?!?
Monday, June 14, 2004
Yay for the global village
Just back from a long weekend in Denmark, celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary with friends in Aarhus. Tom's first job was in the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, back in the early 1980s. He still speaks the language fluently (incredible) and loves going back. It's a delightful place, pretty and friendly, gentle and fun to be in - and the northern light is sharp and silvery and marvellous, especially at this time of year. We spent yesterday celebrating with friends who are respectively a nurse (Danish), a microbiologist (Danish) and a radiologist (originally Canadian) - walking by the sea and enjoying a bottle or two of champagne in the afternoon on a deserted beach.
In this laid-back, international context, it was depressing to hear about the strides made by the UK Independence Party in the elections the other day. The world has become such a small place that you really can't turn the clock back and pretend that it's unnecessary to team up with anybody but your own little island and its island mentality. I feel very sorry for people who can't see past the end of their own noses. They don't know what they're missing.
In the musical sphere, we're better placed than most to appreciate the benefits of the increasingly international society. Tom's orchestra has recently appointed a Hungarian, a Chinese girl, a Spaniard, someone from Holland, a French violinist, a South African and several Russians. There are several Germans already, an Italian or two and a particularly charming and infamous Brazilian cellist who seems to get tickets for the finals of every World Cup. For Glyndebourne, take all of this, add singers and stir well. Everyone is pulling together towards the same end. Everyone has concerns in common and friends are made across every boundary. Hence boundaries cease to exist.
I'm losing track of the number of international couples that we know. My brother is about to marry an Italian. Our friend Paul Lewis, hotshot British pianist, has just married the Norwegian cellist of the Vertavo Quartet, Bjorg Vaernes - many congratulations to them!! We know couples who are French and American, Russian and Canadian, Tartar and Welsh. And countless others. That's one of the best things about the modern western world: this cultural exchange is endlessly stimulating.
As it happens, I love England. I am proud of our heritage in cathedrals, great houses, beautiful gardens, pretty villages, literature, certain kinds of music, cricket on the green etc etc. But, being privileged enough to live among music and musicians, I don't see any sign of the threat that so many people in this country think that Europe poses.
When Tom moved to Aarhus, he'd spent the past few years at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, living in a cramped bedsit where he had to put coins into a meter to get any heating. He practised all the time and lived on peanut butter sandwiches and orange juice. Manchester in those days was a pretty vile place, grimy and depressed and gloomy. Then he got his job in Aarhus and suddenly found himself in a clear-aired, friendly, clean environment with a thriving cafe society, an easy-going population, lots of bicycles and thousands of Danish blondes. He thought he'd died and gone to heaven.
ALSO - ARTICLE IN TODAY'S 'INDEPENDENT' by yrs truly, about Beloved Clara and the increasing spate of music & words projects going on. Link on the sidebar.
In this laid-back, international context, it was depressing to hear about the strides made by the UK Independence Party in the elections the other day. The world has become such a small place that you really can't turn the clock back and pretend that it's unnecessary to team up with anybody but your own little island and its island mentality. I feel very sorry for people who can't see past the end of their own noses. They don't know what they're missing.
In the musical sphere, we're better placed than most to appreciate the benefits of the increasingly international society. Tom's orchestra has recently appointed a Hungarian, a Chinese girl, a Spaniard, someone from Holland, a French violinist, a South African and several Russians. There are several Germans already, an Italian or two and a particularly charming and infamous Brazilian cellist who seems to get tickets for the finals of every World Cup. For Glyndebourne, take all of this, add singers and stir well. Everyone is pulling together towards the same end. Everyone has concerns in common and friends are made across every boundary. Hence boundaries cease to exist.
I'm losing track of the number of international couples that we know. My brother is about to marry an Italian. Our friend Paul Lewis, hotshot British pianist, has just married the Norwegian cellist of the Vertavo Quartet, Bjorg Vaernes - many congratulations to them!! We know couples who are French and American, Russian and Canadian, Tartar and Welsh. And countless others. That's one of the best things about the modern western world: this cultural exchange is endlessly stimulating.
As it happens, I love England. I am proud of our heritage in cathedrals, great houses, beautiful gardens, pretty villages, literature, certain kinds of music, cricket on the green etc etc. But, being privileged enough to live among music and musicians, I don't see any sign of the threat that so many people in this country think that Europe poses.
When Tom moved to Aarhus, he'd spent the past few years at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, living in a cramped bedsit where he had to put coins into a meter to get any heating. He practised all the time and lived on peanut butter sandwiches and orange juice. Manchester in those days was a pretty vile place, grimy and depressed and gloomy. Then he got his job in Aarhus and suddenly found himself in a clear-aired, friendly, clean environment with a thriving cafe society, an easy-going population, lots of bicycles and thousands of Danish blondes. He thought he'd died and gone to heaven.
ALSO - ARTICLE IN TODAY'S 'INDEPENDENT' by yrs truly, about Beloved Clara and the increasing spate of music & words projects going on. Link on the sidebar.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Epiphany time
Since my fellow music-bloggers are doing their musical epiphanies at the moment, I thought I'd do some too.
It's not easy, because I learned most of my music rather subconsciously. My father, who was a neuropathologist, lived for music when he wasn't at work and used to have BBC Radio 3 on all the time, from 7am onwards. So over breakfast before school I'd probably have absorbed the Dvorak Czech Suite, a Mozart concerto, a Haydn symphony, usually conducted by Dorati - ah, those were the days! - and a piece or two of Debussy or Saint-Saens. I've always been fortunate in having a good aural memory (though I'm fairly useless on visual imagination) so the BBC provided me with a basis for My Life Since Then that has proved more than a bit useful.
Dad also used to take me to the Conway Hall chamber music concerts on Sunday evenings, where I got to know the string quartet repertoire, plus various piano quintets, a trio or three and the Ravel Introduction and Allegro. The latter must have made a big impression because I have a vivid memory of watching Marisa Robles and being transfixed by the sounds she was conjuring out of the angelic contraption under her hands. I still adore the piece. The Conway Hall has a text on its proscenium arch that says TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE. Interesting contemplation material...
More vivid still, however, was something I once heard in the car coming home from the Conway Hall when I was eight. We'd come out from some string quartet performance, got in the car, Dad of course switched on R3 - and out poured the most astonishing sound. A soprano singing passionately in a weird language. An oboe; throbbing off-beat strings; and then a horn melody that transported me to a world I didn't know existed. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard, bar nothing, and I was left (so they told me) speechless.I already loved Tchaikovsky ballet music, but I'd never heard of Eugene Onegin. This was the Letter Scene. Now, however much I enjoy my French stuff, however far I travel to see Korngold's Die tote Stadt and however often I sing through the whole of The Magic Flute in my mind, there is still no opera dearer to me than Eugene Onegin.
I sometimes wonder what my father would think of Radio 3 today if he was still alive.
It's not easy, because I learned most of my music rather subconsciously. My father, who was a neuropathologist, lived for music when he wasn't at work and used to have BBC Radio 3 on all the time, from 7am onwards. So over breakfast before school I'd probably have absorbed the Dvorak Czech Suite, a Mozart concerto, a Haydn symphony, usually conducted by Dorati - ah, those were the days! - and a piece or two of Debussy or Saint-Saens. I've always been fortunate in having a good aural memory (though I'm fairly useless on visual imagination) so the BBC provided me with a basis for My Life Since Then that has proved more than a bit useful.
Dad also used to take me to the Conway Hall chamber music concerts on Sunday evenings, where I got to know the string quartet repertoire, plus various piano quintets, a trio or three and the Ravel Introduction and Allegro. The latter must have made a big impression because I have a vivid memory of watching Marisa Robles and being transfixed by the sounds she was conjuring out of the angelic contraption under her hands. I still adore the piece. The Conway Hall has a text on its proscenium arch that says TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE. Interesting contemplation material...
More vivid still, however, was something I once heard in the car coming home from the Conway Hall when I was eight. We'd come out from some string quartet performance, got in the car, Dad of course switched on R3 - and out poured the most astonishing sound. A soprano singing passionately in a weird language. An oboe; throbbing off-beat strings; and then a horn melody that transported me to a world I didn't know existed. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard, bar nothing, and I was left (so they told me) speechless.I already loved Tchaikovsky ballet music, but I'd never heard of Eugene Onegin. This was the Letter Scene. Now, however much I enjoy my French stuff, however far I travel to see Korngold's Die tote Stadt and however often I sing through the whole of The Magic Flute in my mind, there is still no opera dearer to me than Eugene Onegin.
I sometimes wonder what my father would think of Radio 3 today if he was still alive.
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