More about Angela

This is EMI's promotional video for the new Gheorghiu/Kaufmann/Pappano Madama Butterfly. The CD has gone straight to no.1 in the classical charts, according to latest press release. As YouTube is about to pull most of its most popular music videos, I thought we could have a quick look at it first.

Now, here are a few bits of my interview with her that didn't make it into the article. The transcript is pretty much as-was (though I've attempted to correct my typos, abbreviations et al). If you read this AND the published feature, you get the complete picture.

(On crying on stage, segueing from the Boheme story in the piece)
"For the applause, it was a standing ovation, but it gives me...because I really put myself there. That’s why. You can say with time you become used to it, you can manage everything in your life. No. I am more sensitive! And open! It can happen. And if you cannot really judge your feelings and everything to know what to do, because you cannot sing when you are crying, even if you are the most perfect actor, you must act, and that’s all! (JD: What about a role like Violetta?) Oh my God! The second act! If I am not controlling myself I can cry all the way from the second act on to the third."

(JD: Tell me about the recording – it’s rare to make a complete studio recording now)
"Yes, in the last years I saw nobody. But I’m the lucky one, if I may say! But the project was almost made 3-4 years ago, and maybe before I record all arias by Puccini, and in the meantime it was of course planned to do it with Tony Pappano because in every recording session, wow, the relationship between us is like a love affair, it’s something perfect, we understand just perfection without speaking – no speaking, just with gesture, looking, and I feel in his eyes and my eyes an awareness of everything ...it’s very good between us this way."

(The unedited version of the Jonas Kaufmann bit)
"We thought to have Alberto because we record a lot of operas with him, but Roberto in that period left EMI and in the same period I needed for a Traviata in the Met a tenor, maybe a new tenor, and my manager gives me a tape of Cecilia Bartoli singing with a tenor, and said he’s singing in Zurich but nobody knows him, just listen. I listened and I said OK – and my manager said trust your instinct. And I said OK, he will be my Alfredo at the Met. So they trust me at the Met to have a nobody...in the meantime I needed here at Covent Garden a tenor for La Rondine because we’d had Roberto and we needed another one, and I said why not this tenor to see how it goes, a smaller role than Traviata. So this happened, I asked him here for La Rondine, they said yes, then they said yes at the Met, here it was very good and at the Met it was a huge successs, and there I said to EMI let’s have Jonas for Butterfly – and everyone said oh my God are you sure, he never recorded. And I said: trust me. It’s like for Roberto, and Tony Pappano – when somebody has an unusual talent I never made a mistake! I have a talent to discover and finally I was right! And I’m happy. And in the meantime he started to record by himself – but it’s not easy to have someone to sing in the studio with someone who never recorded before, it’s a huge challenge for everybody. (JD: I remember hearing his first Strauss Lieder disc and this amazing voice came soaring out...) Yes! So he started his career very late, it’s not a big [age] difference between us, he chose to stay in Zurich & I advised him all the time, basta, finish in Zurich and fly, but it’s your town...and in the end, he listened! (JD: Will you do more performances together?) We have a production here in Covent Garden of Adriana Lecouvreur."

(On how she started and progressed her career, from the Covent Garden Boheme)
"I sang just one Boheme before, for my graduation, but to go from singing one Boheme to singing in Covent Garden, and it’s your international debut - ! But I wanted. And I was very determined. And everything - atmosphere, people around me, I always feel it, I will arrive. Nothing is for me, wow, I am surprised. I was all the time sure because everyone around me was telling me [had complete confidence in me] and they were always making laudation for me – it was all importance, and because I start to sing so early, I sang at 18 my first important concert, Butterfly etc, and so everybody looked at me in a very serious way. I never thought in Covent Garden it would be different from Bucharest, where I had this – wow - my luckiest moment is to have this idea, and my teacher said 'wait a little and your entrance must be in the front door, the most important'. In Covent Garden in was 1991, 92 Vienna, 93 at the Met and the day after an important debut everybody knows you. But I sang then in Covent Garden other roles, but as we see promotion and mass media and everyone knows you, everyone sees you and everybody is speaking about you, and that happened when I made my debut in La Boheme and Georg Solti came to my performance. There he persuaded me to sing Traviata, and because of the story with the BBC, they dropped everything to make live transmission, and all this real story helped me in a way that the day after everybody knows me. So from that moment I try not to disappoint anybody. And it’s not easy. I had a career, I made a lot of things and I think it’s rather important to stay and to stay for many years is very hard, even if people, journalists, critics, they have the right to have another opinion, but for anything in this world the result is what counts, and this is the result!"

(JD: What is your pre-performance ritual?)
"I am doing all the time the make-up. Nobody is working on the maquillage, they are free with me. The only time I work with someone on the maquillage is for photo session or film or television – otherwise, for performances on stage I do my own no matter the style, because I did some maquillage at the conservatory so I know how to do my make-up. It’s very good before the performance, I am not doing the vocalising, I come to the opera house completely prepared, I just put on my costume and go on stage. It’s not necessarily that this is the way – it’s that it’s Angela’s way."

(JD: Since Roberto left EMI, are you still working together so regularly?)
Less, less. The last CD he did Sicialian songs, and we record something together, we record L’amico Fritz for DG, it will be released this year – we did this at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. And we finished out La Rondine at the Met, the premiere was for new year’s day, it was on HD in cinemas all over the world, it was a huge success, but I was suffering because I was very ill! Oh, I was suffering, I was completely kaput! And I took some medicines and everybody around me they helped me, mostly Peter Gelb the director, he said 'whatever happens on stage, there are thousands of people they bought their tickets to see you in Rondine, oh, it’s a disaster, and if something happens I will come immediately and saying to everybody you are the best and we must be with you and you must come again and again and do everything you want, but COME HERE and put on your wig and your costume!' And with all this support I was willing and I said OK, but it was very hard. If you do something badly for an audience at the Met & it’s not just at the Met it’s all over the world...Finally we are human beings. But it was a hard moment for me."

(JD: What will be your highlights for 2009?)
You remind me about highlights, because I spent two weeks recording Butterfly, Jonas came for the last day, and I said to Tony, let’s start with the highlights, and he laughed – 'all the opera is highlights!' And all my work is highlights! So I go to the Met, I have La Rondine, I have a concert in Spain, I have operas in Berlin, I have L’elisir d’amore at the Met, I sing with Rolando I hope everything goes fine [crosses self], I have a new production of Carmen at the Met, I need to finish my new solo recording of Romanian music – you will not recognise me! It’s very interesting."

(JD: So is that of traditional Romanian songs?)
Yes, but I sing them in my way. (JD: We don't know enough Romanian music here in the 'west'...). This is another problem for me, another unfair for culture and politics, because if you’re in my country, and I don’t know about east countries because of the Communists of course, but the world was also in different cultures, because in our culture we learn about your culture, about English and German and French culture, but you – do you think we don’t have the same type of interesting people? We have our poets, our writers, our musicians, our everything. (JD: Enescu...) Of course, but people know him because he decided to live in Paris, but that doesn’t mean he was better than another one who decided to live in Romania! It’s another unfair position. Because people are thinking ah, he’s Romanian, but Romanians, because of the communists, decided to live in another country. But another artist who could not leave the country because of thousands of reasons or because he didn’t want to, he is less interesting, because you don’t know him that means he’s not interesting, he has no value, and this is very unfair! Because of the politics and because of the kind of school training, because it’s very important in school to have general culture, maybe from India and China and Arabic countries, Argentinian, United States, because culture, here is the unfair point, people make the confusion between politics and culture. This is not right – because all of us have the right to discover a genius person, no? We have in Romania geniuses, but we have no reason to discover, so the conclusion is I feel it’s my moment to make a discovery, of my music and my country’s music. I have a Romanian guy who helped me with three musicians from the USA who are doing the orchestration for me, and it sounds modern but also with a completely other type of harmony, because this is the originality, but also because I sing and I hope to make you interested!"

(More about Romania...)
"You know, Russia, Bulgaria and Poland are brothers and sisters, Hungary is related to Finland, and Romania is the only Latin country among them, related to Italy and Spain – we are very different cultures in the same part of Europe, it’s fascinating. (JD [with Hungarian hat on]: I heard Romanians and Hungarians don’t get along...) It’s more legend – more political, not between people and people. And for years Transylvania was this disputed territory, no it’s mine, no it’s ours, so they played ping-pong with it. (JD: Dracula...) No! Dracula is ENGLISH! And because I am Romanian, because of Dracula, someone, some journalist somewhere, of course, didn’t know anything else but Dracula from Romania, so he gave me a nickname, Draculette! And this year I came to the opera house and at the stage door of the Metropolitan Opera House, an American composer, he really goes in a serious way: 'I have the score of an opera for Angela Gheorghiu, named Draculette!' He was serious. And to take the good part of it, we have another composer who starts to write another opera thanks to an English person who gives us our first nickname 'Bonnie and Clyde' – Vladimir Cosma, who wrote for us Marius et Fanny, now he starts to compose for us Bonnie and Clyde! So, you want to play, let’s play! It was sort of funny, so let’s make friends with it! Thank you for the idea! In the meantime I need to be an opera singer. A serious one."

(JD: How did you get along with Marius et Fanny?)
"Perfect – oh, perfect. Vladimir Cosma is originally a Jewish Romanian, all his family are all important musicians – and when I heard he is doing – Roberto told me about Marius et Fanny and he proposed and they got the world speaking – when I spoke to Vladimir I said, Vladimir, wow, you are working on your first opera? And he said yes, but are you interested to sing an opera...Wow, of course! ‘But you never said a modern opera’ – but of course I wanted! It’s a very beautiful opera! First I record Marius et Fanny, then I sang on stage – we recorded in Switzerland – thinking back in that production everyone was French, minus me and the composer, who were Romanian. Marius et Fanny for the French is like a Bible – Marcel Pagnol wrote something, wow, untouchable – well, we dared to touch Marcel Pagnol and the performance and everything related with Marius et Fanny was wow, oh, my emotions, oh, my poor heart, with Roberto and the mondiale premiere to do Marius et Fanny in Marseilles, where they’re like Milano... And they filmed and recorded everything, I was very proud. And I appreciate with Vladimir, he show us everything and we discuss and we give advices relating to an opera singer, because it’s not the same writing music for instruments as for opera singers. For opera singers you need a special culture and a special knowledge because there are some things you cannot do because of the rhythms. So he showed us and we’d say this is good, or make a pause on this note or these words, and the three of us we made a successful opera, voila! And now it was on TV and I start now to try to make other people interested in this opera. It sounds ain the beginning a bit like Bernstein, but in, no offence, a better way; in the second part it is more operatic – wow, it is very dramatic and tragic, and you need a powerful voice to sing it – big emotions, big range, big orchestra. The aria is like Michaela’s aria in Carmen, very big, and hard to sing."

(On Covent Garden and London)
"You know my story with the porters from Covent Garden? One day I finished my performances, I was supposed to sing 5 performances of Pagliacci and there was one performance with another singer, and then the other singer she was ill and they asked me to sing also the last performance. From the opera house we said bye-bye, ciao, see you next year, but then when they saw me again all the porters were so happy that they put money all together and they buy a present for me, I swear. I love them! And it’s very important. I tell to everyone this story – because in an opera house it’s very important that the atmosphere comes from when you open the door. Another story from Covent Garden – I said to one of the machinists, wow, trousers with ‘Royal Opera House’ on you, wow wow! And the day after he brought me trousers with ROH on for me - they made them for me. I swear. I really like the atmosphere in this house. I really like it. And also all the important things for my private life and my profession happens here. Everything is related. And Ioana is here, my daughter, she is English. I like the sound of British accents and I like the sound of English!"

UPDATE, 1.40pm: Mad props to Opera Chic, who's going to town on this one...

Angela!

Angela Gheorghiu: the WYSIWYG Diva. My interview with her was the Indy's Arts & Books Review cover feature on Friday - delayed posting here because I've been away. Angela defends her cancellations, tells us how she discovered Jonas Kaufmann and lets us in on a startling family secret.

The interview coincides with the release of her new CD of Madama Butterfly, complete - rare these days to find a complete new studio recording of any opera, of course, but with Gherghiu and Kaufmann in the leading roles and Pappano wielding the baton, EMI must be pretty confident that this one will sell by the gallon. In The Sunday Times Hugh Canning, who heard the sessions, wrote a feature about the recording and the 'making of'. My piece is a portrait of the lady herself. There isn't a JDCMB 'director's cut' version of the article - they printed it in its entirety - but there may be a few choice selections to add, which I will do as soon as I've unpacked. (Update: DONE...)

I like her. I really do. Because what you see IS what you get. There is no sense that she's pretending to be something she's not. Some artists switch off the charm when you switch off the voice recorder. Angela is A1 consistent. I can't say whether or not she really is 'the last diva' since we don't yet know what today's desperately spoiled teenagers will be capable of if they take the stage, but I don't need to tell you that she's the ultimate out there at present.

As for the Butterfly, it is basically gorgeous. Angela seems to get under the skin of Cio-Cio San, first decorous and enunciating delicately as the young girl, then letting rip as the tragedy develops. The utterly fabulous Kaufmann, though, rather overshadows her in the love duet...

Party bag...

We're clearing up now, washing the glasses, keeping Solti out of the last slice of Sachertorte (it isn't good for cats), and it's time to hand out the party bag. (With special thanks to the Verbier Festival...) Enjoy!



An encore? Thank you, Martha and Genya...

HIGH FIVE: JDCMB celebrates 5th birthday!

JDCMB is 5 years old today! The cake is in the oven and at the cyberposhplace they are chilling the champagne. Meanwhile here's a little retrospective of a few...




JDCMB LANDMARKS

JD meets Rostropovich and is offered cello lessons. Then gets stuck in tube.
In praise of analysis, especially Schenker (but what was it I found in the Faure?)
Grigory Sokolov at the QEH: this is what it's all about. (And now he won't come back because some bureaucrat wants to fingerprint him.)
'Orchestral life: the full story.' In which Tom and his friends spill the beans and drink their contact lenses.
The Ultimate Consoling Music: Schubert and the 7/7 aftermath, July 05.
JDF, 4 metres from JD in the Savoy...
The Joyce Hatto story breaks...
Trip to Bosnia, June 07.
An unforgettable night at the Proms with Buskaid & JEG...
November 07 in entirety, containing much Korngold. Now viewable with hindsight.
In which Krystian Zimerman has RFH rolling in the aisles...
JD turns concert manager and hallucinates about Sir Alan Sugar.
Lake District 08: Two strange girls snog each other on Oleg's cello case, Robert is a Tearaway, Charles gets out the first aid box and Jess and Phil do their best to be Messiaenic...
One of my favourite YouTube clips ever: Cziffra plays Liszt.
JDCMB Poll of the Greatest Living Conductors (we may do another soon...am trying to decide between piano & violin....)

Which brings us to Handel. You might get a surprise if you tune into the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow.

UPDATE: Huge thanks to all of you who've come to JDCMB's biggest-ever blogoparty! And special thanks to Opera Chic for setting up my date for the evening (in the absence of my husband, who's otherwise occupied at the Lincoln Center). :-)

That was fun...

...and now we all need to calm down a little. Here's Pablo Casals playing part of Bach's Cello Suite No.1 at Prades in 1954.

Places remain for Saturday

There are still several places available for my workshop KICK-START YOUR WRITING this Saturday, 28 February. If you'd like to attend, please get in touch PDQ! Links et al are in the relevant bit of the sidebar! The next one will be in late March.

I am very glad to report, somewhat smugly, that the inaugural workshop seems to have helped to spark one attendee into creating one of the best new blogs I've seen in quite a while, LondonJazz...

UPDATE: It appears that Sundays may generally be preferred to Saturdays. If anyone would like to come along in March but would find Sunday 29th better than Saturday 28th, please let me know - this one is still movable!

Cleopatra to wed real-life Cesar of Glyndebourne

It's official, as reported by Slipped Disc, Opera Chic and Classical Music Magazine: Danielle de Niese is going to marry Gus Christie, hereditary head honcho of Glyndebourne and until a few days ago almost certainly the most eligible divorcee in Sussex. We are shedding a sentimental tear over this; they looked the picture of happiness last summer, draped over the picnic rugs together in what there was of the sunshine. Bless. And congratulations!

To celebrate, here is Danni as Cleopatra tying the knot with Giulio Cesare (sung here by Sarah Connolly) on stage at Glyndebourne...

MAD PROPS TO THE SUNDAY TIMES!!

BLIMEY, guv! Bryan Appleyard has been picking the 100 best blogs for The Sunday Times and there is JDCMB, up there with the best o'th'best in the Performing Arts section! Mr Appleyard evidently has yet to discover the joys of Korngold, but what the hell - there's nothing so much fun in life as having a 'strange bias'.

Thanks to my beloved Hungarians for alerting me to this with a congratulatory email. I hadn't read the ST today because I've spent most of the morning, er, blogging. About Russian pianists.

A very happy JD is now looking forward to JDCMB'S 5TH BIRTHDAY coming up NEXT SUNDAY, 1 March. But I can't decide what to do to celebrate... Any ideas, folks?

Sokolov cancels

The other day I promised some less good news about another Russian pianist, and here it is: Grigory Sokolov, who was to have played at the Royal Festival Hall on 29 April, has cancelled his appearance due to visa trouble. The hoops that the British government is demanding artists jump through in order to perform here have now been set so high and made so unpleasant that it appears he has better things to do with his time than bother with them. He just won't come here.

It's OUTRAGEOUS that such bureaucratic claptrap should keep one of the greatest pianists on the planet away from the musical capital of the world! And please don't start writing in to JDCMB with sanctimonious comments about keeping out terrorists - we've had plenty growing up right here in Blighty, and they tend not to be concert pianists, let alone ones of Sokolov's stature.

Consolation prize: Sokolov is to be replaced by Angela Hewitt, who will perform the Bach Goldberg Variations. I'll be interviewing her on stage before the show.

Dreaming on

I've been wondering for a couple of days how best to describe Double Dream, the glorious evening of two-piano bedazzlement from the Russian classical virtuoso Mikhail Rudy and the jazz supremo from Ukraine/Norway Misha Alperin.

The project started life about seven years ago and launched with a beautiful CD, which gives you the idea - take a range of classical works, pass them back and forth at high heat, watch them grow and transform like chemical crystals under waterglass. The concert caught on and the pair have travelled the world with it (most recently Sydney); now, after years of working together, they're at their peak both individually and as a duo. Each maintains his own identity, but together they are more than the sum of their parts. And Double Dream is more than just a concert.

Kings Place was its ideal London home: it has the perfect acoustic of the Wigmore, the space, high-tech capabilities and delicious new-wood aroma of The Sage, the intimacy of, if not quite Ronnie Scotts, then almost. Double Dream is enhanced by creative lighting, opening in darkness (Schumann's Prophet Bird, its feathers in textures you've never encountered before), later blazing into floor-level red for a Prokofiev Toccata adaptation that could have had the startled composer on his feet, cheering, wondering why he hadn't thought of all that himself.

Throughout, a giant screen is poised above the pianists, split in two - one half for each Misha - showing close-ups of hands or faces, Alperin's extraordinary plastic features morphing through vocal ad-libs as he plays and Rudy smiling quietly to himself, his partner and us. The pianists face each other across the Steinways, but the video reverses this: when the images meet in the middle of the screens, a peculiar creature appears apparently with one back, four feet and four very busy arms.

Each pianist has a solo spot: Alperin improvised his way to a tremendous pitch of excitement that somehow drew in an unexpected extract of Rodeo, among other things; Rudy took Petroushka's fairground scene, one of his great party pieces, and, while playing it as written, managed to make it sound improvised. Many pieces are Alperin's own - catchy, irresistibly rhythmic, deliciously virtuoso. And in their far-flung net the pianists trap the shadows of a Chopin mazurka, fleeting moments of Janacek, the silvery gleam of a Haydn adagio. What playing. What creativity. What magic.

On Thursday, the second night of his Piano Dialogues days at KP, Mikhail Rudy joined forces with the actor Peter Guinness, with whom he collaborated a couple of years ago for the British version of The Pianist, his play for actor and pianist based on Wladislaw Szpilman's memoirs. This time it was Janacek and Kafka: the latter's beautiful, quirky Letters to Milena, warm and touching and painful by turns, in which the author traces his love affair with his much younger, married translator.

Kafka and Janacek, the two great and not very bouncy Czechs, never met, but proved a perfect match nonetheless, to the point that from time to time it was almost difficult to remember that it wasn't Janacek who wrote the letters (which half-suggest, like a slightly distorting mirror, Janacek's passion for Kamila Stosslova). Micha paired music and words with inspired sensitivity, grasping the subtlest shades of emotion to match and amplify in the most heart-wrenching moments of In the Mists, the Piano Sonata and extracts from On an Overgrown Path. Again, masterly and unforgettable.

As a finishing touch, each evening the St Pancras Room hosted a screening of a new documentary about Micha, entitled Mikhail Rudy: Portrait of a Pianist, directed by Andy Sommer and narrated (English version) again by Peter Guinness. It's a moving and at times harrowing account of his journey from Soviet Russia to Western triumph and makes all too clear the immense personal cost of such a move - alienation from one's family, a reunion almost too late.

Rudy and Guinness will be doing a two-week run of The Pianist in the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester in June. Meanwhile I am trying to learn as much as possible from their presentation so that we can attempt to make the Hungarian Dances event - similar in format, if not content - perhaps half as beautiful.

Christopher Raeburn and Jimmy Lock both pass away

Mourning today the passing of two of the great driving forces of Decca.

Christopher Raeburn was a great-hearted and golden-eared individual with high musical ideals and an infallible instinct for talent-spotting and development. He was the best-known and best-loved of Decca's producers, having joined the label in 1954 and bouncing straight into the first-ever studio recording of the Ring Cycle. Jimmy Locke was the chief sound engineer and the brain behind the much-celebrated 'Decca sound' from 1963, a 'star among stars' as Valerie Solti says.

Michael Haas has written an obituary of Christopher for Gramophone, quoting Angelika Kirchschlager's tribute: "When you listen to me, it’s not only with your ear, but even more with your soul, searching for perfection not only in intonation but in truth. There is no better example of knowledge, enthusiasm, respect and humanity in this world of music than you!"

Norman Lebrecht is inviting further comment over at Slipped Disc, more are appearing at Gramophone, here and here, and I too would like to invite your memories, tributes and so forth in the comment boxes below, please.

I got to know Christopher personally just a few years ago, but can think of few people in the business whose warm and open nature and absolute artistic integrity inspired so much affection so quickly.

To lose both him and Jimmy within days, and barely a week after the 'realigning' or whatever it is of Decca itself hit the cyberwaves, seems not only tragic but also ironically symbolic...but I don't have to tell you that. You can see it clear as daylight without anyone uttering a word.

UPDATE, 27 February: Here is an obituary of Christopher from The Independent.

When Ivan met Glenn

Over in Toronto, young Serbian-American-Francophile piano hotshot Ivan Ilic (nothing to do with Tolstoy) is making his Canadian debut tonight in a recital at the Glenn Gould Studio and took the opportunity to get a photo with a local celebrity. "Glenn and I were talking about his favourite coffee-shops and Indian restaurants in Toronto," Ivan explains. "He offered me a few prescription drugs, I tried (unsuccessfully) to convince him about Chopin..." He also gives a lecture-recital at the city's Alliance Francaise tomorrow.

I much enjoyed his Debussy Preludes CD on the Paraty label, their order rather effectively (but very systematically) scrambled, which you can sample here. Look out for his London debut soon.

Very successful pre-concert chat last night with Martin Helmchen at the QEH yesterday. Earnest, curly-haired, high-cheekboned, possessed of silky and radiant tone plus fine-tuned brain, Martin proceeded to navigate his way brilliantly through the complexities of the Bach Sixth Partita (the one with the very scary last movement that always leaves me thinking 'THAT is a GIGUE?!')and three powerful extracts from Messiaen's Vingt Regards, towards which mighty complete cycle he's working his way steadily. But his style is made for Schubert. He's launched himself into the CD market with the big A major sonata, a disc that drew an out-and-out rave from BBC Music Mag.

What a very pianoy week this seems to be.

Meet Martin Helmchen

A morning chance to brush up your German and Dutch, from my next victim! ...seriously, this guy looks like becoming something very, very special. I will be doing a pre-concert talk with him at the Queen Elizabeth Hall tonight before his recital in the International Piano Series, where he'll be playing Bach, Messiaen and Schumann.

His new recording of Schubert is the pick of the month in BBC Music Magazine. He's won the Clara Haskil Competition and has been a BBC New Generations Artist and one of the select fellowship-holders on the Borletti-Buitoni Trust scheme. And he's only 26. I will be foregoing the world premiere of Vladimir Martynov's new opera at the RFH tonight in order to hear him.

In case you are considering going to the Martynov, though, rumblings suggest that it is very 'listenable' and that the singers are completely fabulous - well, they would be, as they include Joan Rodgers, Tatiana Monogarova and Mark Padmore. LPO & Vladimir Jurowski take it to New York next week. Here is an article by Jurowski himself about the piece from The Guardian the other day: "Torture by beauty". He says: "Some of the sounds and harmonies he employs in Vita Nuova are exactly that: tortuously beautiful, maybe more than an average European listener can take." (Why does this feel familiar, I wonder?)

The two Mishas hit London

Micha and Misha - Mikhail Rudy and Misha Alperin - hit Kings Place with Double Dream on Wednesday and Friday: classical Russian meets jazz supremo in a wonderful two-piano extravaganza, composed/improvised/inspired. The performances are part of Mikhail Rudy's 'curatorship' days at the hall entitled Piano Dialogues; on Thursday he is bringing together Janacek and Kafka in Letters to Milena, a musical and literary exchange of the type I adore, with narration from actor Peter Guinness. Each evening you can also see the brand new documentary about Micha, starting at 6pm, free.

Regretfully, though, his planned late-night recitals are now not going to happen. I wonder whether this is because Kings Place, for all its excellence, is ideally supposed to help regenerate the seriously grotty bit of London that moulders away behind Kings Cross station. Good new venues should ideally be a great device to pull an area up, but this can take a very long time - it can be 20 years, or sometimes (as at the South Bank) 50. For the moment, there is nothing much at Kings Place except Kings Place itself and, though I am convinced the venue is the best thing to happen to London's musical life in decades, I could understand a classical audience not wanting to emerge into the murk after 11pm, when you tend to put your head down and leg it to the tube pdq. A pity, though, that we will not be hearing Micha play Scriabin.

Soon, more news about another Russian pianist we won't be able to hear elsewhere, for very different reasons...

Meanwhile, here's a taste of Double Dream.

Benjamin's premiere really is a first

Blimey, guv. George Benjamin's one-act opera Into the Little Hill ended up enjoying its London premiere yesterday in the spot the audience probably would have liked to be in all along: the bar. Ten minutes into the show in the ROH's Linbury Theatre, the lights went out, as Alan Rusbridger reports in the Grauniad. The power cut only affected the theatre, so everyone was offered free drinks in the bar while they tried to sort it, but eventually the doughty performers cut the Gordian Knot at 10.15pm and announced they'd do the performance right there instead.

"The audience, which included the Arts Council chair, Dame Liz Forgan, and the former defence secretary, Michael Portillo, stood, sat, crouched and perched on the floor and assorted chairs for the 40-minute work," writes Mr R. There's a video on the site, here, so you can see the scene for yourself.

But...drumroll...is it possible that a Jealous Rival Composer engaged in a Spot of Sabotage? Miss Duchmarple Investigates...

This is what I was really looking for...

...when I found the Muppets and got distracted. Now for something completely different - after all, we can't have Valentine's Day 09 on JDCMB without some serious Gypsy violin playing! What follows is the real thing.

When I give talks about Hungarian Dances, people often ask me if it's based on a true story or stories. The answer is: mostly no, but some of the stories have turned out to be true! Another FAQ is: would this be possible? That the grandparent could be a Gypsy violinist, then marry out of the Roma community and have a grandchild who'd become a classical musician?

Here is a fabulous example of a grandfather and grandson who have gone down exactly that path. First here is the renowned 'primas' (violinist bandleader) Pali Pertis (Pertis Pali in Hungarian), serenading a very Valentiny scene with the actor Jávor Pál.



Now, meet his grandson: the young Hungarian violin star Barnabas Kelemen, here performing a stunning Leclair duo with his wife, Katalin Kokas.



Lots more information about Barnabas and examples of his playing on his website, here.

Happy valentine's day, or something

It's extraordinary what a YouTube search on the words GYPSY VIOLIN will reveal.

Muzak goes bust!

There are some joys to be had from the credit crunch/recession/slump/whatever after all. The Indy carries news that the original Muzak company is filing for bankruptcy protection. Does that mean we can have some peace and quiet again? I suspect not, of course, but we can dream.

I've lost count of the number of musicians who tell me in interviews that piped music in lifts, lobbies and everywhere else they go is the bane of their lives. And I've always thought it's a form of universally administered anaesthetic: something to deaden our senses just enough to stop us getting too clever, noticing and potentially rebellious.

I disagree profoundly with the Indy's leading article, though, which suggests that Muzak was the food of shopping and that music could now encourage us back to the shops. I promise you that there is nothing, but *nothing*, that will drive me out of a shop as fast as music I don't like.

There aren't many shops that play music I do like, of course. Jigsaw seems to have a propensity for the ugliest kind of pop, which is just as well: I adore their clothes, so the noise saves me a fortune! The one piped music experience I remember with affection was one day in Monsoon when they played Abba and all the customers were singing along with 'Dancing Queen'. Most cheering. But I still didn't buy anything.

Interesting to note, though, that genuine full-blown classical music pumped through underground, railway and bus stations clears away the yobs and hoodies like there's no tomorrow and makes the rest of us feel better about life.

Die tote Stadt - the news in brief

This will have to be short because my brain is so overloaded from last night.

So, the news in brief. Mixed feelings about the production, which in certain ways is extremely striking - the stage-within-a-stage in the dream sequence, the stunning projections and shadowplays of the procession, the brief glimpse of Marietta's 1920s showgirl glory at the end of Act 1, and Paul's momentary hesitation on the threshold as he leaves at the very end. Never sure, though, about productions that show one thing while the text tells you something totally different - eg references to the beauty of Marietta's hair when she is walking around Paul's room with a shaven head. But the imagery is concentrated, the concepts focused and mainly appropriate and the walking houses are a super touch.

I think the singers could have done with a break after Act 1 - the three-act version is a preferable format. But Nadja Michael, despite a little awkward intonation on high, does have the power, the presence and the legs for Marietta; Stephen Gould's voice is big enough to carry off Paul's massively demanding role, and when it's a case of standing and delivering he does so to the manner born; and Gerry Finlay stole the show with the Pierrot Tanzlied.

(But I dream of the ideal Paul, with voice, drama, heart and soul, and he exists, if he could be persuaded... PAGING MR KAUFMANN...PAGING MR KAUFMANN....)

Some concern in the extended first half that everyone was running out of steam, including Metzmacher, whose conducting often felt episodic, failing to shape and build the tension across the long spans; eg Paul's first aria describing his meeting with Marietta came over with little sense of its narrative structure, and that wasn't our tenor's doing but our conductor's.

In the second half (well, the last third), second wind seemed to take hold: the procession and the Paul-Marietta scene alongside it were utterly electrifying. And there the full symbolism of the production, perhaps indeed the unconscious symbolism of the opera itself, came shining out: the war of the 19th versus the 20th century...the strictured, superstitious, hypocritical 19th, transfixed by an idealised and unrealistic past, when faced with the glamour, free spirit and sexual liberation of the 20th, is so threatened that it can only strangle it.

And the terror that Paul may not represent only the 19th century, but the wilfully barbarian 21st.

As for mourning... I still can't comprehend how Korngold could have created such a marvel of human empathy at the age of 20. He was only 23 at the time of the premiere in December 1920. Was it the air he breathed, Vienna in the First World War, the crumbling world, the death of childhood, the end of an era? Or did he just...know - and most of all, have the musical technique to reach directly into his audience's hearts when conveying that empathy?

There was a great deal I didn't understand in the opera when I first studied its 'musical and dramatic structure' in 1987. Now perhaps I understand a little better.

What I still don't understand is why I first gravitated to this, of all operas, in good times, student days, well before coming to terms with bereavement became such a dominant theme in my life (both my parents and my sister died within a few years of each other).

Today is the 15th anniversary of my mother's death.

"The end is not as abrupt as that. Your name is still spoken. Your face is still remembered. And what you said, and what you did, and what you failed to do, these are still remembered... As long as one is left who remembers you, so long is the matter unended...until you are quite forgotten...you will not be finished with the earth even though you are dead."

(Ferenc Molnar, Liliom - quoted in the ROH programme...)

Tonight...

...I am finally going to Die tote Stadt. It's not snowing, the trains are running (touch wood) and I hope to report back fully tomorrow morning! Watch this space.

Hungarian Dances goes live at Fiddles on Fire

Glad to report that the Fiddles on Fire Festival - this year, two bonanzas of the hottest global violin playing from Klezmer to Karnatic, first in Gateshead, then in London - is to be the scene of some special Hungarian Dances: Concert of the Novel events in April!

It was all their idea, too. When I went up to The Sage in September, I read from the book, then popped on a sneak preview of Hejre Kati from Philippe's CD. Collectively my audience shot towards the ceiling. The Sage being a wonderful, upbeat, go-ahead arts centre where managers actually speak to one another, someone then looked at my website, saw that there'd been a concert...and an invitation to go live followed soon afterwards.

This is going to be very different from the Kensington event last summer - I have repointed the script to concentrate the action on the story of Mimi Racz. For Fiddles on Fire, we're creating a special programme of 75 minutes, to perform on the two Saturday evenings of the two festival wings, each at 6pm. I've managed to reduce the 130,000-word novel to about 6 pages and with violin music including our beloved Dohnanyi and Bartok, plus Ravel, Debussy, Brahms and, of course, Monti and Hubay, we hope that you'll love the result.

The Sage, Gateshead, event is on Saturday 11 April and I'm hugely grateful to Bradley Creswick, the leader of the Northern Sinfonia, for joining me in this since Philippe has a prior engagement on the other side of the planet.

The London event will be at Kings Place on Saturday 18 April, starring Philippe Graffin and friends. Intriguingly, KP has developed a 'dynamic' ticket system (perhaps inspired by the nearby trains?) in which the earlier you book, the cheaper the tickets are, so...

'Purely classical' chart begins chez Gramophone

BBC news has a story that a new top record chart for 'purely' classical music (as opposed to Katherine Jenkins singing Leonard Cohen and calling it a 'sacred aria') is being launched in Gramophone's March edition and will be updated weekly on their website. (More from Tommy Pearson on the subject here.)

So how useful is this? Should they have done it years ago? Is this an industry that takes 40 years to cotton on to a good idea, in a magazine named after a machine that all but vanished 20 years ago? But now that it is on its way - with the late Richard Hickox doing well - is it actually of any positive value whatsoever? I am put in mind of the book trade, which is desperately skewed by several big, depressing factors that are usually nothing to do with quality but more about who is willing to spend money on what. (If I start telling you what these factors are, though - and how pernicious, how poisonous and how ought-to-be-illegal - someone will tell me to stop being a whingeing author. So you'll just have to take my word for it.)

In short: the discs that become 'bestsellers' are almost certainly going to be those on which the most money is spent in terms of promotion. Promotion means that the public will know something exists (nobody will buy anything if they don't know it's there). The CDs will then bowl on up the chart, and will sell more. Or are we classical aficionados more independent-minded than crossover and pop flock-followers? What do you think, folks?

Alfred takes the cake

Caught the very beginning last night of Brendel in Recital on BBC2 - Haydn, played with magic, detail and profound empathy - but it was getting on for midnight, way past my bedtime. The recital from Snape Maltings, according to the introduction filmed at the concert, showed Brendel at 70, about to embark on a world concert tour. Problem: today Brendel is 77 and retiring; the historical nature of the film should really have been pointed out beforehand. There must be a fair number of people googling Brendel's forthcoming world concert tour this morning...

You can't get any of this on BBC iPlayer, but the documentary, Alfred Brendel: Man and Mask, is snug on Youtube, so here is some of it.

Decca: the obituary?

As I feared...the imminent death of Decca, as reported by Norman Lebrecht. He says:

Still, no point waxing nostalgic. Lots of firms are going to the wall, taking their traditions to oblivion. Decca joins a long queue at the morgue. The regret is that what dies with Decca is more than just a label – it is the very concept of label as a mark of character, a name that united artists and listeners in the search for a particular quality. The idea of label defined the record industry. It is the strategic antithesis of sterile agglomerates like Universal.

Without labels, artists spin off to Starbucks, listeners lose interest and the remnants of the record business go rummaging in dumpbins. Even a number-one classical hit barely shifts 500 copies a week, not enough to support an executive’s pension fund. It’s the end of the line for Decca, the last waltz in a bare-walled studio of dreams."

Far be it from me to 'wax nostalgic' - but this was the label of the glory days, the home of Georg Solti, the label that - largely thanks to the magic ears and brilliant intuition of Christopher Raeburn - helped to build the recorded careers of Cecilia Bartoli and Andras Schiff, among others. This was the label of Benjamin Britten, Kathleen Ferrier, Pavarotti, not to mention his two friends. This was also the label that brought us the Entartete Musik series, spearheaded by producer Michael Haas, encompassing Schreker, Krenek, Braunfels, K/g and many more - a library of great historical value since most of those works are not available to hear elsewhere. This was the label of vision, of class, of...

So, where are the Raeburns and Haases of today? Christopher has retired; Michael divides his time between curating exhibitions in Vienna and producing Opera Rara's discs. If there are any brilliant people left in the recording industry, they are having trouble making their presence felt because the core values are vanishing from the big companies. For instance, in his article Norman complains about the "all-purpose" engineering of Julia Fischer's latest disc on Decca, which he feels does her no favours. Sound quality does matter to the record-downloading public, but what if a company boss does not know that, can't hear the difference and doesn't see the point of spending money on it?

Here in the hackworld, we knew something was going wrong about 20 years ago when a major label (not Decca) held a press conference that included a speech by their new marketing chap, who'd just joined them from a food company and started declaring to a roomful of the most knowledgeable critics in the British capital how amazed he was to learn that Tchaikovsky was gay, so now they were going to develop a 'Tchaikovsky concept' in which... well, if the 'concept' ever took wing, it was quickly buried; but generally speaking the vision began to leave the industry when it chose people whose presumably considerable expertise in accountacy, sales and marketing nevertheless did not extend to a profound empathy with classical music and its market. I am no marketing guru, but it looks like a no-brainer to me: how can you sell anything successfully if you haven't a clue what it's about?

Smaller labels such as Bis, harmonia mundi, Hyperion and some of the artist-led labels like LSO Live, Onyx and Avie, are still more than afloat today largely because they know what they're doing. As Sir Alan Sugar might say, they understand their product. If you don't understand your product, you end up like that Apprentice candidate who was trying to sell expensive day-rents of his red Ferrari in Portobello Road Market - fired. Decca, you're...

STOP PRESS for Brendel fans

There is an actual documentary about Alfred Brendel on BBC2 tonight, at 11.20pm (not exactly prime-time but we can always set the video if we can work out how to use it). 'Alfred Brendel: Man and Mask' follows the great pianist through two years, during which he works with such artists as Simon Rattle and Matthias Goerne, and explores the influences that shaped his life and musicianship. He's also featured in The Culture Show at 10pm - which has extra culture on it today, including our beloved Felix and his birthday. Here, apparently Brendel reveals a fondness for the films of Bunuel.

I don't know yet whether the documentary will be available on the BBC iPlayer after tonight, but if it is then I will link to it here.

Mendelssohn is 200!

It's Mendelssohn day! Over at BBCR3 Felixcitations I have borrowed the JDCMB Cyberposhplace and the Virtualvintagechampers and Felix is holding a party, which the virtualcybercontrollers are providing free of charge on condition that we are allowed to see his trans-spiritual-dimensional guest-list in advance. UPDATE: The post is now up, and open for suggestions of who else he could ask. Drop in for some cyberbubble!

Meanwhile, here are three musicians who should definitely be there: Arthur Rubinstein, Gregor Piatigorsky and Jascha Heifetz. Turn up the sound now and wallow in their glorious playing of the first movement of the D minor piano trio.

(Apropos de Heifetz, yesterday was his birthday. It was also Fritz Kreisler's. I am vaguely pondering what possible astrological connection there could be between the two greatest geniuses of 20th-century violin playing and, um, Groundhog Day.)

snowgold?

This is our street today. Apparently this is the heaviest snow in these parts for 19 years. You know, dear readers, where I'm meant to be this evening. And you know, too, that it only takes a fraction of this amount of snow to stop all transport in the UK. More precipitation is forecast for this afternoon. Hmm.

UPDATE, 1.50pm: TONIGHT'S PERFORMANCE HAS BEEN CANCELLED. All we have in place of Die tote Stadt is, er, a very dead city.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Also cancelled today is the first night of Jonathan Miller's new production of La Boheme at English National Opera. And several big West End jobs...

UPDATE, THURSDAY MORNING: I will now be attending the DTS performance next Wednesday, 11 February. Weather permitting.

I feel like this sometimes....

Pictures by Jane Burton of unutterably adorable cats, from the Telegraph website. Good light relief for the weekend. Some of us need it.

Decca boss decamps to Sony

Hearing that Bogdan Roscic, MD of the Decca Music Group, is pushing off to become president of Sony Classical reminds me rather of the numerous Poles one sees these days at British airports, heading for flights home. Why would anybody in their right mind (which he is) leave Universal Classics - the big one, the quality one, with JDF, Kaufmann and Bartoli to name but a few - to work for a label that's distinctly less glitzy?

A brief news story in Gramophone carries the ominous sentence: "Decca is being subjected to considerable scrutiny prior to an expected restructure by Universal Music." I know that my estimable readers are just as capable as I am of reading between the lines, so I won't elaborate.

If you're looking for Tote Stadt reviews, please scroll to the update on yesterday's post...

bravo...

Well done, all. Yes, it is of course the making of a grand piano - and The Omniscient Mussel is spot-on. They are bending the frame and clamping it in place.

I took the photo during a tour of the Steinway factory in Hamburg on Monday. Lots of good pics, so I will put them on Facebook as soon as I have a spare moment. The reason for the trip will become apparent in due course!

Love the captions, glad I decided not to give a prize as I wouldn't be able to choose!

What's going on here?

No prizes, but here are two challenges for you:

1: What is going on in this photo?
2: Captions, please! (publishable ones...)

Music Matters today

I'm on BBC R3's Music Matters today, talking about Korngold Die tote Stadt and John Adams Dr Atomic - two operas involving dystopian futures, both opening in London in the next month. Looking forward to hearing what Gerald Finlay has to say about singing them both. Programme is available on Listen Again for a week afterwards.

Fiddles in the library

Thrilled to have a full house at East Sheen Library for our Hungarian Dances evening. I talked and read from the novel; Philippe Graffin (left) and Tom Eisner (right, in purple shirt) played Bartok Duos. With a good glass of wine and a little confusion over which violinist I'm married to [=Tom] the evening went with quite a swing! Huge thanks to the wonderful team from the library and Hodder for putting so much energy into this lovely occasion.

Several people wrote to me beforehand to say they'd love to hear a podcast from it, but I'm afraid I don't possess the right technology and wasn't able to record. However, you can hear Philippe and Tom play the Duos on the Hungarian Dances CD, on the Onyx website, and here's the text of my introductory spiel.


A dear friend of mine has a three-year old daughter who possesses a rather poetic turn of phrase, which she trots out when she’s not asleep at times when she ought to be. Not long ago, my friend reported that little Ellie came into the room at 5am and said ‘Mummy, I’ve runned out of dreams.’

Maybe Ellie will be a writer… for any writer, running out of dreams would be a nightmare. You need your dreams, because this is where the creativity begins, or at least the oven where the ideas bake on a good slow setting.

Hungarian Dances is the product of a number of different dreams that all imploded at once when I decided to write a novel about the violin. I’ve always had a thing about the violin, something that I’m afraid goes back possibly to when I fell in love with my violin teacher when I was 18, or possibly even further. My brother, who’s a lot older than me, is an excellent violinist and some of my earliest memories involve sitting on the stairs, listening to him playing sonatas with a pianist friend, wishing that I could join in. Funnily enough, last summer we put on a Hungarian Dances Concert of the Book and when Philippe and his pianist came round to rehearse, I found myself sitting on the stairs listening, thinking ‘this feels familiar…’.

As many of you know, I’ve been trying to combine music and words in various ways for some time. I’ve been a music journalist for longer than I’d like to admit. I’ve written biographies of the composers Korngold and Fauré; my first novel was called Rites of Spring, named after Stravinsky’s ballet score, and my second, Alicia’s Gift, was about a child prodigy pianist.

Music of course has inspired countless writers across the centuries, and somehow we writers who love music more than words always feel that music can speak to an audience’s emotions faster and more directly than spoken language. We hanker for its power! The paradox is that conveying music in words is actually impossible. Daniel Barenboim, whom I’ve interviewed several times, often points this out and he compares it, rather pertinently, to writing about God. You can’t really describe the thing itself, you can only describe the effect it has on someone.

You can probably tell that it has quite an effect on me. I’ve always felt that music and fiction complement each other perfectly – music can be almost as much about telling stories as books are; at their best, both can evoke entire worlds of atmosphere, culture and humanity in just a few well-chosen phrases.

But you can’t ‘combine art forms’ on your own. And being a writer is maybe a more isolated job than being a musician. We all spend hours alone writing or practising, but I imagine that for Philippe, as for most violinists, collaboration is all in a day’s work. For a novelist, it’s not. So, when I met Philippe about six years ago and we decided to cook up a project to work on together, it was quite a new departure for me. How on earth does a writer collaborate with a violinist?

Funnily enough, that first project was the one that hasn’t happened – yet. I don’t think we’ve given up entirely on the notion of making a film… but the central idea turned into a sort of scripted concert telling the story behind the story behind the Chausson Poeme, which is Philippe’s ‘signature’ work. It’s based on a story by Turgenev, one on which Turgenev’s relationship with the opera singer Pauline Viardot had a major impact. The story is called The Song of Triumphant Love; so was our concert, which involved Chausson, Viardot’s music and other composers from their world. It’s not a complete coincidence that my next novel, which is due out in July, is called Songs of Triumphant Love. Maybe Jeremy will let me come back and tell you more about that another time.

Next Philippe commissioned me to write a short story for a CD booklet when he recorded the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante. He said he was going to ask me to do programme notes, but that’s boring – so he wanted a story instead! That was great fun and actually it’s the only short story I’ve written that I’ve been remotely pleased with. Next, he asked me to write a play about Messiaen to be performed before Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. That was a lot more difficult and it went through a number of drafts and incarnations, but finally has hit the stage several times, first in French at Philippe’s festival in St Nazaire, once in the Lake District last summer where we performed it together, and it’s even gone to Australia. Meanwhile Philippe has fed me some of my best journalistic stories. So by the time I started on Hungarian Dances in 2006, we were already a creative team. But I never actually expected him to get so involved in my ever-so-solitary novels.

Hungarian Dances is my third novel and it’s not just the longest but also the most ambitious that I’ve attempted so far. My first two novels are not only about music but about modern family life crumbling under intolerable pressures from the often very artificial society around us. Hungarian Dances is a family story on a grand scale, crossing three generations of what I hope is a delightfully eccentric dynasty of Hungarian musicians who have migrated to Britain. Like the other two books, it’s about the way each generation’s individual experiences affect the others, the way psychological scars are unwittingly passed down through the family. It’s also about the experience of being a first-generation Brit, the clash of two different cultures – in this case Hungarianness and Britishness – and the way we learn to deal with each other, or don’t. There are second chances, new beginnings and the forging of new identities.

But when I first thought up a plan for the book, it wasn’t going to involve either the violin or Hungary. It was just a family story. Until my editor returned my synopsis with the fatal words: “Where’s the music?”

They want music? They got music. Actually they got a lot more than they bargained for. It was the perfect excuse to home in on the violin, my favourite instrument, the one that opens the subconscious floodgates. It so happened that Philippe had just released a CD of 20th-century pieces influenced by Gypsy music and Hungarian players, entitled ‘In the Shade of Forests’. Quite unconsciously, that CD sparked off some crucial elements of the story. I realised only when I was half way through writing the novel that the little Gypsy girl who peers out of the back of a wagon on the CD’s front cover had got under my skin and grown into the character of Mimi Rácz, the Gypsy violinist who transcends her background and its traditions, but at a price… I soon found that the more I delved into the violin, the more everything pulled me towards Hungary. First, many of the great classical violin pedagogues of the 19th and early 20th century were Hungarian – Jozsef Joachim, Jeno Hubay, Leopold Auer, Carl Flesch and more. And alongside this great tradition, there coexisted a very different one: the Gypsy violinists whose playing is every bit as strong and seductive in its own way, but involving a wholly different approach to music-making.

The novel’s heroine, Karina, is the daughter of two musicians who both escaped from Budapest during the Uprising in 1956. She’s born in London in 1970, where her parents have brought her up speaking no Hungarian and knowing almost nothing of her family’s background. Karina is a gifted violinist but has given up performing, to be a teacher, wife and mother; she’s married a very English lawyer, Julian, who’s the younger of two sons of an hereditary peer, and they have a seven-year-old son named Jamie. Karina’s grandmother was the famous Mimi – who was born into a family of Gypsy musicians in Hungary in 1915.

Mimi, aged 10, was performing in a Budapest restaurant with her father’s café band when a philanthropic doctor heard her and decided to adopt her and send her to the Franz Liszt Academy to be transformed into a classical soloist. She was world famous by the age of 20. But her life involves secrets that have lain buried for decades – and they include not only a missing violin made by the great Nicolo Amati, but also missing family members and a long-concealed love affair with a French composer named Marc Duplessis. A series of crises leaves Karina questioning her sense of identity and desperate to learn more about who she really is. As she investigates what really happened to Mimi, her world changes and she finds not only the truth about her family but the truth about her inner self. As in the story of Bartók’s Cantata Profana, a legend of nine hunters who are transformed into stags, the very creature they hunt, Karina grows into the musician she is hunting as her own ideal. And her story and Mimi’s interweave and echo one another in ways that Karina doesn’t always suspect.

Of my novels so far, this is the one that means the most to me, because it’s been one long, remarkable voyage of discovery. I often find that I’m spurred into writing by things that bug me in one way or another. ‘Rites of Spring’ and ‘Alicia’s Gift’ both dealt with issues that either made me angry or required a kind of catharsis, but in Hungarian Dances I started writing simply out of love and fascination. It’s been a process of opening and discovering, not wrapping things up, to the extent that it was really quite hard to let go of the book. I’m still finding ways to keep the process going. I’ve made a website devoted to the book and the associated CD including lots of stuff about Hungary, the recipes that Karina and her mother cook, some Youtube video of the 1956 revolution, and a bonus track for everyone to listen to free of Philippe playing Ravel’s Tzigane, which is from the Shade of Forests CD. It’s at www.hungariandances.co.uk.

Meanwhile the incidents of life-imitating-art since I finished the book have been absolutely incredible. First, when I was completing the book a friend put me in touch with a Hungarian historian living in London. I asked her to read the manuscript and let me know if the historical context was reasonably OK, which she kindly did – but it turned out that not only is her husband the younger of two sons of an hereditary peer but they have one child, a boy whose name begins with J, and her husband’s middle name is Hilary, which in the book is the name of Karina’s husband’s brother.

Next, I’d installed Mimi, aged 91, in a flat in Montagu Square in the West End of London, but not long ago I was introduced to an extraordinary Hungarian lady who is actually 93 going on 21, and she too lives in Montagu Square.

Then last summer, Philippe phoned up. He told me that his old violin teacher in Paris, Devy Erlih, was about to turn 80 and had never received the recognition he deserved – couldn’t I do an interview with him for The Strad, which is the specialist journal for string players? So I did. Well, this amazing man is Jewish with Moldovian origins. His parents left Romania and settled in Paris where his father had a café orchestra, Devy learnt to play by ear and by the age of ten he was the star attraction in his father’s café orchestra. And someone walked in and heard him…. It all felt bizarrely familiar. Philippe and I met him in a restaurant in Paris, had a wonderful interview over lunch then went back to Mr Erlih’s flat to find some photos. And I couldn’t believe my eyes, because right next to his apartment block there was a restaurant called Chez Mimi. And there’s a lot more, the sort of things that are best revealed late at night over a good glass of Hungarian wine… It’s reached the point where I start to wonder just what will happen next.

Of course, the CD happened. As far as I know, it’s the first time that an international classical star has decided to make a whole new album based around a novel. It all began because I asked Philippe to read the manuscript and tell me if there were any violinistic howlers. He read it, then invited me to lunch. And over a very wicked millefeuille he announced that the only thing wrong with the book was that it needed a CD to go with it, and he wanted to make this himself.

He’s put together a very stirring and exciting programme of Hungarian and Hungarian-influenced music with a strong Gypsy element running through it. Some of the pieces are mentioned in the novel – Bartok’s duos and Romanian Dances, some Brahms Hungarian Dances and Monti’s Csardas, for example, so you can hear the pieces you’re reading about. The great Fritz Kreisler is also there, and Mimi meets him briefly. In the book, Mimi’s lover Marc Duplessis, who of course is fictional, writes her two pieces – a suite telling the story of her Gypsy childhood, which I named ‘Dans l’ombre des forets’ after Philippe’s previous CD; and a concerto in Gypsy style – which is lost, along with her Amati. As in life, some things are found, others are not. But Philippe found Marc Duplessis’s lost concerto and played it to me in my front room – a piece which I had never heard before and which was exactly as I had imagined Marc Duplessis’s concerto. It’s by Dohnányi and it’s called Andante Rubato alla Zingaresca. At that stage of production, I still had time to make a couple of changes, so the fictional piece acquired the title Andante amoroso alla Zingaresca and it’s the first piece you hear on the CD.

The process wasn’t all fun and games, though. Last summer turned out not to be easy for anyone and the odds against the recording actually happening were stacked extremely high. At times it looked as if everything was going wrong – for instance the day Tom went to Holland to record the duos with Philippe, everything really did go wrong, including a train being turned back because of an accident on the line. But Philippe pulled the disc off nonetheless and I have to say that when I first started listening to it I turned very wobbly. It seemed to me that Philippe has created in this disc exactly the atmosphere I’d wanted to create in the book; that not only did he understand everything I’d wanted to do with the book, but he’d also found the same ‘dream-pool’ and jumped straight into it too. I dived in and came up with a novel; he dived in and came up with his CD. As a writer it’s rare to collaborate – but to find that someone has decided to dream your dream together with you is simply indescribable.

Last night (Wednesday) Philippe had a big concert at the Wigmore Hall and he played the Chausson Poeme, the piece based on The Song of Triumphant Love. Hearing him play this wonderful music is like the feeling you get when you see a coral island, or a glimpse of the Himalayas, or an ancient Indian temple, or the Monet Waterlilies in Paris. While it lasts, you try to implant it deeply into your mind and your heart so that it can stay with you, and later it’s there to sustain you – you can remember that this was real, that this moment of absolute beauty and wonder is something true and possible and it can renew itself again and again and reconnect you with these mysterious creative forces that make life worth living. That’s why sometimes writers need musicians, and that’s why I am so completely overwhelmed that someone capable of such artistry has put so much effort into diving into my Hungarian pool and found such wonders lurking in its depths.

As long as this is possible, it’s very difficult to run out of dreams.

Charles Darwin on why we need the arts

This marvellous quote appeared in the programme for the Wigmore Hall concert last night:

"...if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature." - CHARLES DARWIN

Take note, politicians...

The other day, travelling home on the train, I found myself next to a gentleman who had just bought, and was reading, a large, highly illustrated, full-colour edition of The Origin of Species. I peered over his shoulder at it for the whole 20-minute journey, entranced. Luckily he didn't mind and was only too happy to share this treasure. The sense of wonder that emanates from Darwin's prose manages to be both balanced and ecstatic - an ideal way of being, perhaps. Marvellous. My neighbour told me he had bought the book at the Darwin Exhibition at the Natural History Museum, which he recommended most highly. I'll be along there as soon as I have a free moment. Lots to explore meanwhile.

Back to speech-writing for library gig tonight now...

Philippe & London Sinfonietta tonight

Do please come and hear Philippe Graffin & the London Sinfonietta at the Wigmore Hall tonight if you're within concerting distance of central London. Philippe found the chamber-music version of the Chausson Poeme hiding somewhere in Paris sometime in the 1990s and it doesn't have many London airings, so this is a rare chance to hear it. It is incredibly beautiful - the effect, compared to the full orchestra version, has the same intriguing charm as listening to a 78 instead of an LP, or watching a black & white reel-to-reel movie rather than Blu-Ray.

And, of course, we've got the library gig tomorrow.

Saturday night...

This was what I sat through & wrote about. Given that I loathe and detest Carmina Burana with a passion I've never bothered to hide, and the music was the star of the evening, you can imagine what the rest was really like. The sub-head isn't mine, as you'll gather from the fact that the review makes it clear that CB is neither an opera nor a romp. This staging was, generally, more CBeebies than CB. The lighting was pretty, though, and I thought it deserved a good mensh, as did the poor old RPO. To judge from the comments on the Indy blogs, everyone else hated the whole thing.

kurze pause...

This week gives a whole new meaning to the words 'nose' and 'grindstone'. The phone hasn't stopped ringing since I got back from India, which is A Very Good Thing, but lots of work. I can't remember when I was last as busy as this. Am wondering whether it's anything to do with the wooden carving of Ganesh, the elephant-god Remover of Obstacles, that we brought back from Cochin...

I can't guarantee much blogging until next week (though will post any of my articles appearing meanwhile). Please have fun with the blogroll - newbies include the blogs of ace pianists Stephen Hough and Jonathan Biss, plus Sebastian's LondonJazz blog for all aficionados.

Taking the 'Dow' out of Endowment

Sobering news in the New York Times today that the Met is in financial straits, its endowment hit by the massive drop in the Dow Jones.

Just as it was riding high in the opera world, the Metropolitan Opera has been bludgeoned by the recession and now faces a “disaster scenario” unless the company finds major cost cuts, including concessions from its powerful unions, the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, said on Thursday.

Here in sunny London, nobody seems to want to talk about what will become of the arts over the next few years. Either they're too scared (or they prefer to spew out bile about Korngold in case the poor unsuspecting public might commit the heinous sin of wanting to see Die tote Stadt...) Seriously, though, the UK scenario is likely to be no less terrifying. But it will hit us later. Seasons are planned two, sometimes three years in advance; government funding is allocated by the Arts Council over three-year periods, and though it doesn't account for everything, it does provide a strong proportion of the money that makes things happen. Sponsorship is drying up left, right and centre, but people are trying nonetheless to be positive and keep on hoping...

Perhaps those who have advocated American-style privatisaion of the arts world ever since the days of Margaret Thatcher will now have to think again. You can't run a nation's cultural life (I mean 'culture' in the old-fashioned sense when it meant culture) on fairy gold that melts away at dawn.

On the other hand, the government is now facing the very likely nationalisation of various banks, a huge bill for unemployment benefit and, heaven help us, the 2012 Olympics. If they decide to divest themselves of some financial minnows along the way, we shouldn't be too surprised. And who, in the Labour goverment, cares anything for the arts? David Miliband's wife is a violinist, but beyond that, um... But replace that with 'who, in the Tory government, cares anything for the arts?' and it'll be time for us all to put on our boxing gloves. Start limbering up at the sandbags now, chaps, so that you are in good fighting shape when the match begins.

Mendelssohn responses...

Mad props to Tom Service at The Guardian and the redoubtable Opera Chic for picking up on the Mendelssohn mystery.

A coupla points in response. First of all, Tom S says Mendelssohn was nursing an 'unrequited' passion for Lind. The point is, it was requited, and evidence is said to point to an affair between the two, who went down the Rhine together on a boat, which...but that's a long story. Nevertheless, the affair required squashing, given both their reputations and Mendelssohn's family situation. It wasn't just an unrequited crush, but a genuine lost love.

And even it's true that a composer's music is not directly connected to his/her biography as such, it is necessarily connected to his mind, personality and general state of being, because every note on the page is the product of a personal choice on the composer's part. We've been over this many times here in the blogosphere. The modernist camp especially will deny every jot of it. Everyone would love it not to be the case, musicologically speaking, since that gives us carte blanche to consider only the notes and not the person who wrote them.

I have never been comfortable with that. Would a non-obsessive, stable individual have written Schumann's unbalanced, stream-of-consciousness works with their impossibly repetitive rhythms? Could someone who was not torn apart by the prospect of early and loveless death have written 'Die schone Mullerin' and 'Winterreise' with the devastating power of Schubert? Could someone not prepared to fight for art, humanity and idealism ever have dreamed up Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? Could a non-megalomaniac have written the 'Ring Cycle'? What about Messiaen, religion and birdsong? This could go on and on.

Mendelssohn was more controlled than most, more self-contained and self-effacing, having fewer such battles in his life until the very end; but would someone not thrilled by the atmospheres of Italy and Scotland have written those symphonies? Would someone normally so cheerful and energetic have produced that last, devastating string quartet?

Now, I'm a 'creator' of sorts too and I know from the inside that what and how I choose to write can tell you much more about me than I'd like. For example: I am obsessive. I try to do too much. I consider myself lazy and should wear my glasses more often. I am easily spellbound. I am a dreamer and sometimes ought to get my feet more firmly back to earth. I have a 'thing' about the violin. I am rather an outsider, like to stand back and observe, and slightly enjoy being quietly subversive. I am drawn to difficult and recovering places, histories and people, and yes, this is indeed because I have experienced difficult times that still require recovery, which has been much aided by music, art, writing etc. There is not one directly autobiographical sentence in any of my novels, nor a single character who is based entirely on a real person; yet everything from the story structure to the specific word is there because I chose it, for better or worse, and each is, I imagine, the sum total of a lifetime-so-far's experience and what I've learned to date about human nature.

I have no reason to imagine that a composer would function especially differently. With the one proviso that, as Tom S quotes, in Mendelssohn's words, "It's not that music is too imprecise for words, but too precise."

Perhaps this helps or perhaps it doesn't, but that's my 2 1/2p for what it's worth.

Mendelssohn and Lind: A Conspiracy of Silence

I promised some news from the Mendelssohn camp, and here it is. Come over to the Indy now and have a look at my feature.

A few January highlights

I don't know how any musician gets any listener out of their warm home through freezing temperatures and shaky bank accounts to a concert hall just at the moment. But here, for those inclined to brave the elements, are a few things that my muso-friends and I are doing this month.

Tonight, 11 January, Kings Place, 6.30pm, part of London Chamber Music Series: the Allegri String Quartet gives its first concert in the shiny new venue, starring the Schubert String Quintet with guest cellist Colin Carr and the London premiere of the redoubtable Matthew Taylor's String Quartet No.6.

Friday 16 January, Royal Festival Hall: The LPO is back, welcoming one of my favourite younger pianists as soloist for Mozart's E flat concerto K482: Jonathan Biss, who not only has an astonishing musical pedigree (mother Miriam Fried, grandmother Raya Garbusova, etc) but possesses the heart, mind and hands to match. His playing has regularly set me hunting through thesauri for rare words of praise. His Schumann CD on EMI is absolutely to die for. And guess what? He's got a blog. ...oh yes, the concert... Marin Alsop conducts and is throwing in not only Till Eulenspiegel and the Daphnis and Chloe Suite but the Firebird Suite as well, so if that doesn't brighten our winter, nothing will.

Next Sunday, 18 January, Royal Festival Hall, 3pm: Stephen Hough, multiple award-winner, startlingly original and insightful musician and, now, fellow blogger (yay! another great pianist joins the blogosphere! even if it is for the Telegraph...) gives a wonderful recital programme to banish the Sunday afternoon blues - lots of Chopin, Franck and Faure, among other things, focusing on the theme of Paris and paying tribute to one of Hough's piano gods, Alfred Cortot. I've been drafted in to be his interviewer for a post-concert talk...you may have some difficulty shutting us up when we get into our stride.

Tuesday 20 January, Symphony Hall, Birmingham: The CBSO is taking to Korngold! This adorable programme conducted by Michael Seal features not only the happily-ubiquitous Violin Concerto with soloist Anthony Marwood, but also the enchanting Incidental Music to 'Much Ado About Nothing'. Yummy stuff, rounded off with Brahms's First Symphony. And I will have to get my voice back fast after Sunday to do the introductory talk at 6.15pm. (This is, so to speak, my Symphony Hall debut.)

Wednesday 21 January, Wigmore Hall: Philippe Graffin and the London Sinfonietta mark the Darwin Anniversary with a brand-new work, 'Age of Wonders' by Michael Stimpson, plus Mendelssohn and Chausson. They are brave: it is sad but true that getting a Wigmore Hall audience to attend new music is almost as difficult as getting a new music audience to attend the Wigmore Hall, though the super-classy venue is currently making a valiant effort to change that by instigating an ongoing series of new commissions. Come on, chaps, give it a go! Besides, the Chausson in question is the Poeme in the rare chamber-music version that Philippe discovered lurking in the Parisian shadows some years ago; and the Mendelssohn is the Violin Sonata that our Felix wrote when he was all of 11 years old: two pieces that we don't hear every day.

Thursday 22 January, East Sheen Library, Sheen Lane, London SW14, 7.30pm: fresh from the Wigmore, Philippe Graffin heads south-west to East Sheen Library for an evening devoted to our 'Hungarian Dances' projects. Full details are already at the top of the JDCMB sidebar, but just to remind you...admission is a modest £2 including wine, and places can be reserved on 020 8876 8801. Tom joins Philippe to play Bartok Duos live in library, I'll read some extracts of the book and, as novelists and starry fiddlers don't work together every day, we'll be discussing what happens when we do. (Our virtual Sir Alan has already given the prize for this task to the dynamic East Sheen Library adminitrative team...)

Thursday 22 January, Wigmore Hall: the above prior engagement means that I have to miss the latest flying visit from the legendary Ida Haendel to the Razumovsky Ensemble and Academy! At this all-day event, the great lady will be giving masterclasses to the students and young artists of the RA, of which she's now the Patron, and at the 6pm concert she'll present the Ida Haendel Scholarship to one of them. She will also be performing with them, notably the Devil's Trill Sonata by Tartini. The 7.30pm concert finds the Razumovskys performing an all-Schubert programme, with the B flat Piano Trio and the 'Trout' Quintet.

Tuesday 27 January, Royal Opera House: The British stage premiere of Korngold's Die tote Stadt! It's true! The acclaimed Willy Decker production, already seen in Vienna and Salzburg, opens at Covent Garden starring Nadja Michael as Marietta/Marie, Stephen Gould as Paul and Gerald Finlay as Frank/Pierrot, with Ingo Metzmacher on the podium. I'll be at the 2 February performance and will make a full report after that. Performances up to 13 Feb. Meanwhile, catch our ROH podcast on the website...if I can get them to fix the faulty link.

That should keep us all busy, and January will be over for another year before you can say 'Erich Wolfgang Korngold'.

Meanwhile, over in the Mendelssohn camp, prepare to light the red touchpaper...

Felixcitations #2

Latest post on my BBC R3 Mendelssohn blog is on the site now.

Win a trip to NY

I enjoy being, in trend-speak, an ambassador not just for 'kultcha' but for London, having been born within the sound of Bow Bells and lived in the UK capital all my life. Recently I joined a reviewing team at Metrotwin, a new venture powered by British Airways, reviewing and 'twinning' favourite places in those two mega-meccas London and New York. You'll find it under the site partners section in the sidebar, but meanwhile:

If you register at Metrotwin.com before 15 January you could win a pair of return economy flights to New York and three nights in The Plaza New York. Conditions apply.

http://tinyurl.com/7t9hnr

Enjoy!

Namaste!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE. We are just back from south India. I hope you've all had an excellent Xmas and wish you health, happiness and peace in 2009.

I've put an album of 60 photos from our trip on Facebook. It has been an extraordinary fortnight, packed with fascinating, wondrous, perspective-grinding impressions. Here are just a few:

We saw:
Tiger paw-prints - fresh - in the Periyar national park
Sunsets the colour of a swami's robes over the Chinese fishing nets at Fort Cochin
Sunrise over the tea plantations at Thekkady
A dazzling display of Kathkali dance
Plantation of cardamon, pineapples, tea, rice and coffee
Amid myriad carvings in the 'city of a thousand temples', Kanchipuram, one showing Parvati embracing Shiva, standing delicately on tiptoe
A kingfisher flashing fluorescent turquoise above carmine lotus flowers on a pond
The Kerala backwaters, from a houseboat
Children as young as 4 begging on the beach
Entire families - mum, dad and three kids - zooming along on a single motorbike
A guest house called Pallava
A bus called Melvin

We heard:
Monkeys 'policing' the jungle by whooping from the treetops (="look out, tigers, here come another bunch of those idiot tourists!")
The sitar, Indian flute, the tabla
The rolling of waves on the Bay of Bengal
The call to prayer in Cochin, where 4 world religions have long flourished peacefully side by side
That there are more than 22 languages spoken in south India
That units of measurement include a 'lac' (100,000) and a 'karu' (10 million) - London is a small city in Indian terms.

We smelled:
Jasmine everywhere in Kerala
Crushed leaves from spice bushes - curry, cloves, allspice...
The bark of cinnamon and sandalwood, the sap of incense and rubber
Ayurvedic hair oil (well, I did - Tom doesn't have hair). It works.
Fish, fish, fish
A great deal else, often in places it shouldn't have been

We tasted:
Fresh coconut water drunk with a straw from the shell
Keralan fish curry galore
White snapper and fresh lobster drenched in garlic butter sauce
Too much channa masala (hot spicy chick-peas)
Fresh green peppercorns plucked from the plant
Home-made chocolate
An intriguing concoction that arrived when I requested peppermint tea: a stew of Tetley's, a handful of mint leaves and about 2 tablespoons of black peppercorns.

We felt:
Thoroughly pummelled by Ayurvedic massage, which seems to have sorted out my bad back
An extraordinary bop on the head from the elephant that blessed us with its trunk in Kanchipuram
The aurora of heat that greets you when you leave the airconditioning behind
Intense sun on our skin
Covered in grime after a day's sightseeing
Terrified on the roads: overtaking is a way of life, whether you're a bus, a truck, an ox-cart, a car, a motorcycle, a rickshaw, a bicycle or an elephant, and traffic lights are in short supply.
That we would have liked to stay for much longer than 2 weeks
Humbled by the wealth of ancient artistry, skills and wisdom
Touched by friendliness, non-aggression, kindness, community and family strength: people supporting extended families on 300 rupees a day (= approx 45p) often appear happier in themselves than most Londoners do
Saddened by the plethora of ingrained attitudes that nevertheless seem to hold everything back. India is a succession of priceless gems strung together on a decaying thread. Marvel after marvel, linked by disastrous infrastructure.
Challenged, moved, churned up
Changed.