A WALK THROUGH THE END OF TIME: 5 MAY

We are giving my play A WALK THROUGH THE END OF TIME as a rehearsed reading at East Sheen Library, Sheen Lane, London SW14, on 5 May at 7.30pm. The library is about 1 min walk from Mortlake Station (20-ish mins from Waterloo on South West Trains). Do join us! Find more details here: http://www.jessicaduchen.co.uk/01_news.htm

Holst: the Director's Cut

Here's the extended version of my article last week in which I interview Tony Palmer about his stunning and lavishly musical new film Holst: In the Bleak Midwinter. Don't miss the broadcast on Easter Sunday, BBC4 - and watch out for the Hungarians of the Savaria Orchestra with Tamas Vasary, playing The Planets for the very first time. They seem possessed by it.


But first, here's an extract of Holst's Hymn of Jesus. I sang in it once at Dartington about 100 years ago and, dear reader, I didn't know what had hit me. At the time I considered myself a young woman who was out of step with English matters musical and avoided anything remotely religious like the proverbial choose-your-preferred-infectious-disease. I'd never heard of Theosophy and wasn't too sure that 'mysticism' wasn't something you saw when you looked down a microscope. Whoops. Just listen to this... (Btw, in case your were wondering, I still avoid religion whenever possible - just not where music is concerned.)

HOLST, TONY PALMER AND THE MYSTIC PLANETS

Jessica Duchen

Gustav Holst’s The Planets is one of the best-known pieces of classical music ever written by a British composer. How strange, then, that we know so little of the composer’s other music – or, for that matter, of the composer himself. But Tony Palmer’s new full-length film about him, In the Bleak Midwinter – due for screening on BBC4 on Easter Sunday – contains more than a few startling revelations about this apparently quiet and enigmatic figure.

First, it turns out that The Planets originally had nothing to do with planets at all. And the composer whose melody (from “Jupiter”) became the patriotic hymn “I Vow to Thee, My Country” loathed those words because they were, according to Palmer, “the opposite of what he believed”. Holst was a passionate socialist, allying himself during World War I with a “red priest” in Essex who once pinned to the church door a note announcing “prayers at noon for the victims of Imperial aggression”.

Palmer first became interested in Holst when the composer Benjamin Britten told him, during a 1967 interview, that he owed Holst a great deal in terms of influence. And it was in the library of Britten’s Aldeburgh home, The Red House, that Palmer eventually viewed letters from Holst that proved his attitude to “I Vow to Thee”. Looking at manuscripts of The Planets in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, he was able to see that the title, subtitles and names of planets were afterthoughts to an existing piece. As for Holst’s political convictions, as with the rest, the information had always existed, he says – but nobody had yet added it all up, recognised the heart of the matter and made the sum of it public.

The Planets’ first moniker, Palmer says, was simply Seven Large Pieces for Orchestra. Subtitles were added later, and the title “The Bringer of War” only became “Mars” later still. To Holst the “Bringer of War” meant something quite different: Palmer suggests that this extraordinary music depicts the mechanised, industrial capitalism which Holst saw as an impersonal machine threatening to crush humanity beneath its relentless wheels, bringing the horror of war as its inevitable companion. While the exact date of its composition is disputed, it’s thought to be spring 1914 – making it, with hindsight, a work of alarming prescience.

But the central spur of the planned Seven Large Pieces for Orchestra was neither astrological nor political: it was Theosophy. This pantheistic spirituality pioneered by Helena Blavatsky was immensely popular in the late 19^th and early 20th centuries, influencing figures as diverse as the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, the artist Paul Gauguin and the poet WB Yeats. It drew on eastern philosophies, notably Buddhism and Indian spiritual traditions; and Holst was involved in it enough to learn Sanskrit. Many of his works have an intense eastern flavour, including the three-part suite Beni Mora, his Four Hymns from the Rig Veda and the operas Savitri and Sita. The work that became The Planets was conceived as a mystical journey of the evolving spirit: “The Bringer of War” symbolises the lowest level, while “The Mystic”, which became “Neptune”, is the highest.

Holst makes his own place in the journey clear: he worked his name into the music as a driving motif in “The Magician” (“Uranus”). The notes GSAH in German notation (in English notation G-E flat-A-B) stand for “Gustav Holst”. It’s peculiarly touching to think of this otherwise unconfident little man recognising, deep down, that as a composer he was a magician as well.

His heritage was anything but British. He was born in 1874 in Cheltenham to a family of German descent (not Swedish, as has often been stated) that had immigrated to Britain from Riga, then a part of Russia, where they owned property. The Holst name carried an aristocratic ‘von’, which their ancestors had bought from the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. At the time of World War I, Holst had to pay to get rid of the title by deed poll.

Sickly and short-sighted, Holst suffered all his life with neuritis, which affected his right hand and arm so much that he could barely hold a pen. Composing in his music room at St Paul’s Girls’ School, where he taught for many years, he would sometimes strap the pen to his finger in order to be able to write. At other times, he enlisted the help of a young teacher and a student to take down his musical notation and play it back to him at the piano. The room was kept as warm as possible, since heat eased the neuritis. This was also why as a young man he lived briefly in Algiers, whence he rode his bicycle into the Sahara Desert.

But Palmer says it was only when he visited Thaxted in Essex and saw the church to which Holst gravitated on spotting the red flag inside that the puzzle of the composer’s life really began to make sense. “He clearly had very strong socialist sympathies,” Palmer says. “He conducted the Hammersmith Socialist Choir, he taught at Morley College, which was set up specifically to bring education to the working classes, and St Paul’s Girls’ School was doing something similar in a way, by bringing education to girls who had been denied it before.”

Holst delivered copies of the Socialist Worker from his bicycle around Thaxted and developed a strong friendship with the Christian Socialist vicar, Conrad Noel, who flew the red flag and the green one of Sinn Fein side by side and encouraged Morris dancing in church as a form of worship. Holst’s outlook did not extend to pacifism: he volunteered for army work during World War I, but was turned down, partly because of his poor health, but largely because of his German name.

He always remained something of an outsider. While his friend Vaughan Williams – a relative of Charles Darwin – benefitted from fine connections, Holst had no such advantages. He lived quietly in a cottage by the river in Barnes; he made his living by teaching and composed at weekends from nine to five. His marriage was less than happy and ill health plagued him. He was convinced, furthermore, that he was a failure – indeed, the only time he ever heard The Planets played by an orchestra was in an “open rehearsal” paid for by Balfour Gardiner, a wealthy composer and conductor. Holst died aged 59, after an operation for a “duodenal ulcer”; the illness was probably stomach cancer. His only daughter, Imogen, who died in 1984, spent much of her life struggling to keep his legacy alive.

The Planets has more than flourished since then, along with his St Paul’s Suite and the famous Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter. Why so little else? “Partly it’s the overfamiliarity of The Planets,” says Palmer. “We know it so well that we think that’s what Holst is. But there are other reasons. He had a variety of different publishers, not just one, so it was never in anyone’s interests to promote him. He wasn’t well off, and there wasn’t the machine of patrons and protectors around him that composers like Vaughan Williams and Britten enjoyed. He never had anyone to help him at all.”

Palmer’s film has tackled not just the neglect of Holst’s other music, but the ennui of The Planets too: for the musical extracts from it, Palmer worked with the Savaria Orchestra and the conductor Tamás Vásary in Hungary. The musicians had never played it before and gave a completely fresh performance straight from the gut, as Palmer had hoped. They obey Holst’s instructions to the letter, taking his own marked tempi – often much faster than we’re used to – and using wooden rather than coated sticks to strike the timpani in “Mars”. The effect is overwhelming. “At the end the timpanist asked me if she was loud enough,” says Palmer, who’d felt “pinned to the wall” by the orchestra’s intensity. “She certainly was! But she added, ‘I just played what it said in the score.’ And that’s what Holst wanted.”

Palmer’s film tells a moving tale, illustrated with swathes of Holst’s startlingly original music. Perhaps it can turn around, at last, the fortunes of British music’s most unlikely hero. If so, it’s not a minute too soon.

Holst: In the Bleak Midwinter, directed by Tony Palmer, is on BBC4 on Easter Sunday

The Philadelphia Story

That was the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1949, with Eugene Ormandy, in Birmingham, rehearsing a spot of Brahms. Blimey. That, people, is one heck of a great orchestra.

Fast forward to yesterday, when the board of the Philadelphia Orchestra yesterday voted for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the finest orchestras in America, hence the world, and its budget for this season, $46m, sounds kind of huge from little old London. So what's gone wrong? The New York Times has the most informative article I've yet seen, explaining it all.

The news comes only a week or two after the strike at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra was (mercifully) resolved, while orchestras are folding in Syracuse and Hawaii, and while the shenanigans in Brazil around a maestro of mythic-sized arrogance should not bear acceptance by any member of the musical community anywhere in the world.

It's further proof (you'd think we'd have enough by now, but it seems not) that purely private funding is no way to ensure the thriving life of a national treasure: philanthropy and endowments are fair-weather friends. There've been management problems in Philadelphia before now, as the NYT piece shows, but we should take all of it as a timely warning and learn never to rely solely on one means of garnering lolly for anything.

But still, allowing an orchestra like Philadelphia to go bust is like letting the National Gallery do likewise. A great orchestra, like a great gallery, is a showcase - a living showcase - for the wonders created by human beings over the centuries. They remind us we're people, that we have brains and that we have souls and they inspire us to become more than our ancestral apes could ever have dreamed. In a gallery, you walk and look. In a concert, you sit and listen. Breughel or Bach, Titian or Tchaikovsky, Monet or Mozart - you decide.

Art belongs to everyone, folks. It knows nothing about our personal circumstances. Just because you don't have any dosh it doesn't mean you are not entitled to experience the best artistry that humankind has to offer - or, if your natural talent allows, the right to acquire the skills to create it yourself. And don't you ever forget it.

So sit and listen to this: the Philadelphia Orchestra in its glory days, an American orchestra under its Hungarian-born conductor Eugene Ormandy, playing English music. Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. And if you can't play it (I'm told some readers outside the UK can't), try the extract of Scheherazade from 1978 below.

UPDATE: Peter Dobrin's Philadelphia-based blog has frequent updates on the situation. UK readers may find it intriguing to look at the comments he receives and note the difference in mindset between some American concert-goers and our own. I'm glad to say I've never once heard anyone in the Royal Festival Hall grumble about young people getting cut-price seats.

London Philharmonic scoops Olympics recording

Uh, right...so that's what those mystery sessions on the schedule were. We wondered. Bit late. And it's a bit ironic, too, since Tomcat is a kind of national anthems boffin and is forever searching out peculiar places with loony tunes to strut about and fool us with. But the sessions are in amongst a bunch of other stuff and they didn't need all the violins, so he decided not to do them. DANG.

Here's the story as told by the BBC website:

London Philharmonic to record Olympic nation anthems

The London Philharmonic Orchestra is to record the national anthems of all 205 countries participating in the 2012 Olympics. 

Composer, conductor and cellist Philip Sheppard will take charge of the recordings, which will be played at the medal and welcoming ceremonies.

Recording starts in May at London's Abbey Road Studios.

It will take the musicians at least 50 recording hours over six days to finish the project.

Mr Sheppard said he hopes working at the iconic studios will help "creativity".

He has been working on the anthems since October, to make each one sound "unified".

Each anthem had to be up to a minute in duration and Mr Sheppard said it was a challenge to condense them.

"Uruguay is about six-and-a-half minutes long, so there comes a point where one has to chop it down, without offending the country in question," he told the BBC.

"But Uganda is only nine bars, so I had to come up with a way of making it last longer without it being repetitive."

London 2012 chairman and two-time Olympic champion Lord Coe said: "The playing of anthems at victory ceremonies is one of the most emotive parts of any Games and it was an incredible moment for me at the Moscow and Los Angeles Games.

Palmer does Holst

Don't miss Tony Palmer's grand-scale exploration of Gustav Holst's life and work, In the Bleak Midwinter, to be screened on BBC4 on Easter Sunday and released on DVD the next day. Apart from the revelations about his nature and beliefs which are outlined in my piece about the film in today's Independent (read it here), it contains extracts from The Planets - which, wouldn't you know it, wasn't originally about planets at all - played by the Savaria Orchestra from Hungary, conducted by Tamas Vasary. The orchestra apparently used to be the Hungarian State Somethingorother - it moved cities and changed its name - and they'd never played a note of good old 'Mars' before. Frankly, my dears, you've never heard anything like what they do with it. Tony says he felt "pinned to the wall" by their intensity. And all they're playing is...exactly what Holst asked for in the score. The article has been somewhat chopped, so I may run the Director's Cut here at some stage.

Mark Padmore and the sausages

A tenner for a tenor from washmedia on Vimeo.

Apparently our superduper British tenor Mark Padmore costs the same as a bag of flour, a train ticket (depends where and how far in advance you book) or... 4lb of sausages. Seems like the Britten Sinfonia, which has invented an inspired form of crowd-funding entitled 'A Tenner for a Tenor', are maybe not aware that we're all supposed to measure our food weights in kilos these days. (Something to do with the EU, don't ask me. I'm cool with either. Vegetarian, though.)

Anyway, sausages aside, the scheme is designed to raise money to commission a new work for marvellous Mark from jolly-good Jonathan Dove. It's going to be premiered in a year's time and broadcast on BBC R3. Since our local Waitrose is selling Lindt chocolate Easter trinkets for a terrifying £5 each and I think Mark and Jonathan together are an awful lot better than two bunnies, I'm going to contribute. Are you? More details from Britten Sinfonia here.

Afterwards, I'll have to grill them about the experience...

What's in the party bag?

It was time for an away-day by a north London canal yesterday as we were treated to lunch and the annual BBC Music Magazine Awards ceremony at Kings Place. The music industry was in a remarkably good mood, all things considered, and there were some great prizes to celebrate. Record of the Year went to Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet on LSO Live, with the doughty band headed by Big Valery. Not that he was there - but subleader and chairman Lennox McKenzie had a good story about how VG phoned him five minutes before they were due onstage in Vilnius, and said "I'm here..." "Where?" "Look up..." And over went an incoming plane...

The person who was there to present them with the award, though, was Prokofiev's grandson, "Nonclassical" musician Gabriel Prokofiev. Something about his face is... a chip off the old block. Just look at Grandpa.... It was a really nice thing to do and made everyone very happy.

It was a good day for "best of British" admirers, with wins for a disc of David Matthews's symphonies, Purcell's The Fairy Queen from Glyndebourne on DVD, and so forth. But Russians other than Prokofiev were also well represented: Alexander Melnikov took the instrumental award for his Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues, and the chamber music award went to violinist Vadim Repin and pianist Nikolai Lugansky for their disc of Franck and co (left) - the boys themselves couldn't make it to Kings Cross, but sent in a wonderful thank-you video in which accents and aspects alike were absolutely worthy of Creature Comforts. The France-based label Harmonia Mundi scooped no fewer than three awards. I was sitting next to them and by the end we had to be careful not to kick the glassware. Felicitations, mes amis - vraiment un good haul and jolly well deserved.


You can see the full list of winners and watch the awards ceremony online by clicking here.

Now, dear reader, when you attend an awards ceremony, you get a party bag when you leave. So what's in the BBC Music Mag Awards goody trawl? The magazine, naturellement- in which you can read, among other things, my Composer of the Month article about Dvorak. Next, a couple of the discs - not sure if we all got the same ones, but in my bag were the Bach Motets conducted by Masaki Suzuki and the debut disc prize CD (which I've heard, reviewed elsewhere and gave 3 stars out of 5). Next: a glossy copy of BBC Gardens Illustrated, a bag of Kettle Chips, a pocket-sized bar of Green & Black's white chocolate (...all gone!) and a packet of grow-your-own tomato seeds. I'm sure there's a metaphor in the tomato seeds. If I find it, I'll let you know.

Huge thanks to Olly Condy and his brilliant team for a lovely day, and all best wishes to Daniel Jaffe, the magazine's erstwhile reviews editor, who is leaving now to write a big biography of Gustav Holst.

Hitting the high pitches

Ever wondered what the ladies of the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra do in their spare time? Ace Munich fiddler Corinna Desch got out her video camera...

It's part of a video competition in which you can choose your favourite team. To vote for these orchestral Rhine maidens, click here: http://www.brigitte.de/frauen-wm/teams_detail.php?tid=376

DECCA SIGNS BENJAMIN GROSVENOR

It's the best piece of news I've heard from the recording industry in yonks: Decca has announced that it has signed Benjamin Grosvenor, the 18-year-old British pianist, to an exclusive contract. It's not a moment too soon. Benjamin is one of the finest talents I have ever come across, bar none: a pianist whose musical instincts are so profound, so natural and so right-sounding that he leaves you wondering why not everyone else plays like that too.

He is the first British pianist to be signed to Decca in 40 years (their last ones were Clifford Curzon, Moura Lympany and Peter Katin) and their youngest artist in history. He'll be making his first Decca disc this spring and it will be released in July, featuring Chopin's Four Scherzi, Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit and short works by Chopin and Liszt. He's still studying at the Royal Academy with Christopher Elton, but the country's never forgotten his astonishing performance, aged 11, in the final of the 2004 BBC Young Musician of the Year competition (when Nicola Benedetti won - and rightly so, as 11 is just too young!), or the insights offered in the TV programme Imagine that was devoted to him soon afterwards. Now he has, literally, come of age. Here's the article I wrote about him in The Independent last year.

Nice one, Decca. Hang in there, Benjamin.

FROM DECCA'S PRESS RELEASE:

Paul Moseley, Managing Director of Decca Classics says:

'This is an enormously significant moment for Decca. As a British company proud of its heritage what could be more satisfying than making this agreement with the most exceptional British pianist to emerge in decades?  Benjamin has evolved from a child prodigy to become an artist of extraordinary imagination and flair. Above all, he has a sound that is all his own.  The time is now right for this major new step in what will certainly be a long and very successful career. We are thrilled to be part of that and look forward to many landmark projects together.'

Benjamin Grosvenor says:

'I am very pleased and excited to sign this deal with Decca. It is a great honour to be asked to record for a company with such an illustrious history and which has recorded so many of the musicians that I admire. I am very much looking forward to getting into the studio to record such wonderful repertoire.'


Benjamin is a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and here he is under their auspices playing Chopin...

Daddy Florez wows the world

It would have been a dream evening even without the announcement, but in the interval of Le Comte Ory last night, broadcast and cinecast all over the planet, Juan Diego Florez told us that his son, Leandro, was born just 35 minutes before curtain-up. JDF offers the following information on his website:

Our son Leandro was born today, April 9th 2011, at 12:22 New York time, with 3.77 kg (8 pounds 5 ounces) and 53.34 cms (21 inches). We thank all fans around the world for your good wishes 

Julia and Juan Diego

Leandro was born at their New York apartment, in water; a natural unmedicated birth. Juan Diego received the baby and placed him on Julia's chest. Then Juan Diego had to rush to the Metropolitan Opera House for his Comte Ory performance, which began at 13:00. The performance was broadcast in cinemas around the world, and although he had a sleepless night, the performance was a success.

As for Le Comte Ory, it's a piece of such whimsical Franco-Italian perfection that it's hard to believe the Met has never EVER done it before. I caught it on Radio 3 from the comfort of my study as the local cinecast was sold out and I had fond hopes - which foundered at once, of course - of continuing to write while listening. The singing was way too good for that. The story is as silly as all the pictures of Florez dressed as a nun suggest, but the three leading roles, Countess Adele, Comte Ory and the page Isolier, sound dazzlingly impressive at the best of times. And when they're respectively Diana Damrau, JDF and Joyce DiDonato, who could ask for anything more? 


Comic opera generally gets far less credit than serious, but personally I'd pick Ory over Trovatore any day, any year. It's more difficult to write (and perform) good comedy than wonky melodrama - even that Hollywood screenwriting guru Robert McKee says that comedy is the hardest thing - and though the Ory story isn't precisely subtle, Rossini paints it with the lightest of musical brushes. Several times it spills over into pure genius and it's never less than joyous. The three-in-a-bed-romp, as the Sun might have called the last trio, sounds as pure as can be: one of those all-too-brief ensembles that can hold you rapt, outside and beyond time, with scrunchy harmonies worthy of Mozart on a good day. On stage just then, Adele thinks Ory is a nun, Ory thinks Isolier is Adele, and Isolier is a trouser-role so is conveniently masculine and feminine at the same time, so...well, work it out. They are all saved by the bell.

Here's the coda to the trio:

The Met has been remarkably slow on the uptake with this one, and thank goodness Florez, 38, is doing it so visibly now; that high tenor lead cries out for him (so to speak). Glyndebourne gave a terrific production as long ago as 1997, and it's on video, with the lovely Annick Massis as Adele. ENO staged it back in the 1970s; I don't remember who sang, but I do remember my father - an oddly severe character with a secret penchant for Carry On films - positively rolling in the aisles. 

If you're within reach of the Curzon Mayfair, you can dash in for the 'encore' showing this morning at 11.30. But it was perfect just as it was here last night, audio only, on the airwaves, and I'm happy to stick with the memory. That's how we learn to stop worrying and love bel canto. Meanwhile the proud papa - interviewed by Renee Fleming in the interval, said he was ecstatically happy and sent love messages over the airwaves first to Julia, then to Peru, then the rest of South America, then the blighted Japan... 

Super Shoutouts from the Stratosphere... Music for All #6

The morning after the night before...Fiona Maddocks in The Guardian is the first review I've seen of the big Barenboim bonanza at Tate Modern last night. 

Extract:

The standing ovation began before Daniel Barenboim had played a note. On Friday night, to a crowd of about 1,100 who only learned of this impromptu free concert three days earlier, the legendary pianist celebrated more than 60 years since his performing debut with a quixotic recital in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. If Barenboim wanted, as he said, to drag the classics "out of the ivory tower", where at least he might be guaranteed a good acoustic, he succeeded. The sound was not dissimilar to a public swimming pool, but everyone listened attentively and no one minded.

"Quite frankly I was tickled at the idea of playing here," he said, interrupting his all-Chopin programme with his characteristically fluent chat and sharp humour. "What would you like me to play? A polonaise? A waltz?" he challenged. "Bach," replied one brave soul. "Bach? I am here to play Chopin. I will play his Minute Waltz. Is that okay?" ...

Read the rest here... 


Barenboim had strong words to offer about the importance of state funding for music education, too. Fiona reports:

"Music is part of life, music is part of culture," he said. "Governments should put money into teaching music to all, from the kindergarten on." This urgent cry was also heard at the influential Salzburg Global Seminar on music this week.

His interview with the BBC's Will Gompertz is headlined CLASSICAL MUSIC FOR ALL. 
Extract:

[Barenboim] says there should be a "radical change of the education system", so that "children don't just learn literature, biology, geography and history at school, but you also learn music". Because, he thinks, "through music you get over many obstacles you have in daily, normal daily life outside music".

And, he added, if people are to get something out of classical music they need to put something in:

"There's no point in telling people just go there it's so simple it will happen. That's also not true, it's not a good way. I think that people need to know that to get something out of classical music they have to really want to go there and open their ears. And really concentrate and listen and then they will really get a lot out of it." ...

"...[F]ind a new public and wanted to find the people that are curious. The people that maybe feel they don't know enough about music and don't dare to come into contact with it. And maybe through this kind of action they will. Maybe they will come. In the end curiosity is the most important because if you are curious you will acquire the knowledge that you might not have presently."

The Salzburg Global Seminar, mentioned above and co-chaired by Sir Nicholas Kenyon and Sarah Lutman from Minnesota's St  Paul Chamber Orchestra, ran earlier this week and carried the title The Transformative Power of Music. The roster of participants included many distinguished musicians, academics and big-time arts administrators. I can't see any politicians on the list, though. Here is some more information about the seminar; I hope this doughty collection of people are able to move the message forward. Some of the questions they are asking are:

When and how has music played a role in social and political change? How has music raised awareness of social injustices? How can music bridge cultural differences? How can music help to unleash the talents of marginalized youth? What role can new technologies play in this process? What contributions can music make to peace-building and reconciliation efforts? And, finally, how can we maximize these positive impacts of music? 

These are fine questions. Now we need some answers, fast, and a way to get the message home to the decision makers in government. 

In America, the marvellous Kevin Spacey has been speaking to Congress, making the case for greater funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. Read about it in the Huffington Post. I imagine the chance of him succeeding are limited, given that American snottiness towards the arts is almost as extreme as that in the UK, but at least he has tried. Here a bunch of our finest actors including Sam West and Penelope Wilton went to Downing Street this week to deliver a petition. We hear that David Cameron wasn't even there. 


As for the commentators who heap scorn on the arts - sometimes even if they are devoted attendees or even critics - SHAME ON YOU! Dan Rebellato has a good go at them in his Theatre Blog, here. 


Nicholas Daniel, oboist extraordinaire and one of my contributors to SHOUT OUT! this week, emailed this morning to tell me that the summer courses for the Bedfordshire Youth Orchestra have just been cancelled. "We are all gutted," he says.

My husband, Tom, who's been in the first violins of the London Philharmonic for nearly 25 years, probably wouldn't have been there at all if he hadn't got the bug for orchestral playing by attending his county youth orchestras and especially their summer courses. As we've mentioned here before, few British string players get jobs in the top British symphony orchestras today: the applicants who tend to play best usually come from countries where there are stronger systems for free music education for a wider range of children at a younger age, where ambition is encouraged, and where scorn is not poured on the talented ("Well, you're hardly going to be Yehudi Menuhin, are you," said a schoolteacher to Tom back in 1970 or so, a teacher who had never heard either Menuhin or little Tommy). The exceptions tend to be the ones whose exceptional inner determination can override all that and sustain them despite what often feels like no support from anywhere or anyone. I can promise you that I've never met anybody on this earth more determined than my good old Tomcat.

His family was not musical; he came from a one-horse town in the Midlands where only one or two other children were learning the violin; then he studied in Manchester with a violin teacher who couldn't play - as it happens, a Hungarian who'd been injured escaping in 1956 and no longer had the use of one hand. And it was only thanks to the county youth orchestras in Staffordshire and Cheshire that he met a peer group who inspired him and gave him the necessary ambition to push himself to a new level. - among them, a then-youthful fiddler who ended up as concertmaster of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.
You may say: fine, if those opportunities weren't open to him, he'd have done something else and what does that matter? Perhaps he'd have been a doctor (two siblings are medics), a tour guide (he's good at languages, not that anyone encouraged him with that either) or a PR executive (he's good with people and organising things). But it does matter. The point is, he had a choice. Music was his passion and he knew it would be his life. Are we to face a future for the UK where a young person with that talent and that passion finds that they can choose any profession they like except the one they really want, because its necessary foundations are scorned by an establishment that doesn't understand it? 


Don't let it happen, people. Don't let our children, grandchildren, nephews and great-nieces/nephews be turned into machines, denied the chances of expression, discovery, creativity and fulfillment through understanding that distinguish human beings from animals. We have minds, we have souls - yes, we do - and we use them. It doesn't cost very much and it brings extraordinary returns, both measurable and - more valuably - immeasurable.

To say that future generations may not have that choice because we can't afford it is stupid. And will land society with an awful lot of trouble when that generation grows up disaffected - and realises what we've done to it; what we had, what we could have had had we made the effort, and what we needlessly threw away at the stroke of a politician's pen.


Catch up with this week's Shout Out! Music Education for All:
No. 1: Tasmin Little, Barry Douglas and Julian Lloyd Webber;
No. 2: James Rhodes, Errollyn Wallen and Nick van Bloss;
No. 3: Paul Lewis, Nicholas Daniel and Eos Chater;
No. 4: Margaret Fingerhut and Leon McCawley;
No. 5: Clemency Burton-Hill and Philip Sheppard.

SHOUT OUT! MUSIC EDUCATION FOR ALL #5

Thanks to everyone for the extensive support and encouragement for SHOUT OUT! MUSIC EDUCATION FOR ALL this week! Here is today's haul: TV presenter Clemency Burton-Hill and cellist, composer and very constructive thinker Philip Sheppard both have some strong words for us. 


Meanwhile a message from 'Add Music to the English Bacc' tells us that the implications of excluding it from the subject range would be much more far-reaching than simply leaving musicians unqualified: it would most likely mean that music would not remain in the National Curriculum at all. The fight is in fact for its very survival. 


The new issue of Classical Music Magazine, out today, is guest-edited by Julian Lloyd-Webber and is devoted to the issues surrounding music education. It's a matter of urgency. It takes so long to build up a system - yet a whole generation's hopes and aspirations can be swept away along with that system at one stroke of a politician's pen. Don't let it happen.




CLEMENCY BURTON-HILL TV presenter, writer and violinist

Let’s get something straight: this is not about creating a new generation of professional musicians. Okay, so we have no idea which of our future Rattles or Terfels or Lloyd-Webbers might never emerge if these cuts to music education services go ahead. But let’s put that galling vision of lost potential, both cultural and economic, aside for a moment.

This is about creating a new generation of human beings. The question of whether it matters that local music teaching in Britain is to be slashed is a question that goes right to the heart of who we are as a society – and more importantly, who we want to be. And not because we want to produce armies of future Lang Langs – although, imagine! – but because the things that a music education in childhood can inspire are inestimable, even if that child does not grow up to be a ‘Musician’.

When it comes to education, I’m aware that I have been blessed. I attended top secondary schools (on full music scholarships, as it happens) and I went on to study at one of the best universities in the world (when it was still pretty cheap to do so). But I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the single most important element of my education was not the high-achieving school or the storied college: it was being given a violin when I was a child and being taught the universal language of music at the same time as I was learning to speak, to communicate, to navigate my own little place in the world. Through music, especially in group lessons, I began to grasp a deeper understanding of my relationship to other human beings, and not just those around me, but all over the world. Music teaches us so much more than music, some of which is calculable, provable, quantifiable – the discipline, the team-work, the brain-hand-eye co-ordination, the sheer mental rigour; some of which – the humanity, when it comes down to it – is ineffable, and precious. We jeopardise it at our peril.




PHILIP SHEPPARD cellist and composer

The way that local authorities are passing on the cuts without an intelligent and lateral thought process is alarming and short sighted. While it's easy to get angry at the government for instigating this chain of events, we are all victims of a situation rooted partly in greed, partly in ignorance, and wholly in short-termism. As a creative community we need to balance anger with practical solutions.

No politician is going to champion music while it is perceived as a luxury. We know that active music-making is an extraordinary vehicle for developing intelligence, developing a sense of self and learning immensely subtle communication skills. Plato believed that everything could be taught through gymnasia and music, yet these are the subjects being eroded from the curriculum.

I think this is the time for bold moves.


Why not develop a system for teaching music to a far wider range of pupils, with training for parents too? Many of the mothers I talk to at toddler groups are embarrassed to sing to their children, yet this is the most important developmental musical phase. Kodaly technique, Dalcroze Eurythmics and pure Suzuki (not the Western interpretation of it) are potent ways to teach large groups of chdren advanced musicianship at relatively low cost in terms of teacher/pupil ratio. In fact I think it's possible to weather the cuts whilst widening the reach of our music tuition.

Students who show particular aptitude for music through voice classes could be offered free instruments (on loan) and free class tuition. This could then filter through to individual coaching where talent becomes evident. The purchase of instruments used to be a major stumbling block to many parents but these days you can get quite a decent student violin for £50. I have worked many times at the Harlem Center for young musicians in New York, which has developed a meritocratic instrument loan scheme. It functions in an environment where music education has even poorer funding than the UK.

I know this all sounds very idealistic, but the bigger the idea, the more likely it is to attract backing. I spoke at a committee in parliament this week where the overwhelming impression was that the voters don't feel strongly about music, therefore it's not a priority for any government.

We as musicians need to be hugely creative in demonstrating that music is the oil smoothing the engine of a civilized society, whilst also suggesting systems to deliver training highly efficiently.

The critical element that I feel is passed over is the importance of creative composition for children. If drama or art was taught one-to-one with an emphasis mainly on the interpretation of existing works, it would be a scandal, and yet we allow this to be the case with many aspects of music training. Repertoire and technique alongside the constant creation of new work will engage children and parents to the point when there is an overwhelming demand for more - preferably free - music tuition.

Friday Historical: Music of the Spheres

Apparently NASA has released the information, and sounds to back it up, that the stars sing. And I don't mean Domingo. No, way out in the back of beyond the solar system, the actual, physical, blazing stars are making a right old noise. And we can learn a lot about them from the type of sounds they make. The big ones rumble. The small ones are higher pitched. BBC Breakfast news didn't actually tell us how these sounds are produced. But it's not April 1 any more, and it's a wonderful excuse to run a Friday Historical of the Vienna Philharmonic playing Josef Strauss's gorgeous waltz, The Music of the Spheres, conducted by the mesmerising Carlos Kleiber. I wonder what scientists on other planets might learn about ours from listening to this? Enjoy. (More Shout Out! later on...)

SHOUT OUT! MUSIC EDUCATION FOR ALL #4

Did you know that the deadline for the decision on whether music should be included as a subject for the English Baccalaureate is 14 April? Nor did I, until this info appeared on Facebook in the group called ADD MUSIC TO THE ENGLISH BACC. The ISM website has some template letters for you to download & write to the powers that be PDQ: http://www.ism.org/news_campaigns/article/musicians_fight_for_place_in_baccalaureate/
Apparently the Times educational supplement has reported that only one in 10 Labour MPs think music should be included, and no (0) Tory MPs do at all. If it were to be excluded, it's anybody's guess as to how any gifted young musicians hoping to study music at any institution - here or abroad - would be able to support their aptitude with an academic qualification.

For today's SHOUT OUT! it's over to two wonderful British pianists: Leon McCawley and Margaret Fingerhut. And keep scrolling down to today's previous post to see Daniel Barenboim's words on how music can bring people together...

Catch up at the following links with SHOUT OUT 1 (Tasmin Little, Barry Douglas and Julian Lloyd Webber), SHOUT OUT 2 (James Rhodes, Errollyn Wallen and Nick van Bloss) and SHOUT OUT 3 (Paul Lewis, Nick Daniel and Eos Chater)

MARGARET FINGERHUT pianist


One school that I visit is facing huge hikes in the cost of music lessons from its local authority. It is set to rise astronomically, apparently by over £10 per hour.  This will obviously put instrumental lessons beyond the reach of less well-off students. Furthermore parents will also have to commit their child to a full year’s tuition, so if young Fred takes up the oboe but decides he doesn’t like it after one term, the parents still have to pay for his lessons for the rest of the year.  Evidently that’s likely to discourage kids from taking up a musical instrument in the first place.

A propos what can be achieved if children are encouraged rather than dumbed-down to, I am reminded of the indefatigable and much-missed Maureen Lehane Wishart.  She had an almost missionary zeal to enrich the lives of youngsters in her locality of Somerset. She once had 40 12-year-olds from all ethnic backgrounds from a deprived area in Bristol camping in her garden at Jackdaws for nine days while they worked at the choruses from Monteverdi’s Vespers.  They then gave an hour long performance from memory - in Latin, if you please - at a local church, attended by their families and friends. Apparently everyone was in tears afterwards.  Just imagine a world where this sort of thing could happen as a matter of course in our schools, for ALL children.

LEON MCCAWLEY, pianist

I don’t come from a musical background.  However, my parents made a fortunate decision to buy a piano for me and my siblings to play on and had a small collection of classical music records in the house. In my childhood spent in a small village in Cheshire, my only real exposure to music was in my local primary school and having paid lessons with a local teacher. Fortunately, I had schoolteachers who understood the value of music. There were musical productions, carol concerts and peripatetic teachers coming into the school to introduce and teach a variety of instruments to the class. All these things were part and parcel of a school education. It is sad and incredulous to see that they are fast disappearing from the curriculum. Even though I eventually was able to go to a private specialist music school to pursue my dream of becoming a concert pianist, I owe a huge amount to my FREE primary school musical experience.

We can’t expect everyone to be converted to the great joys and riches of classical music, but if there is no basic introduction offered at a young age, we can expect very bleak times ahead.

BREAKING NEWS: BARENBOIM TO GIVE FREE CONCERT AT TATE MODERN TOMORROW

Yes, you read right. At 9pm tomorrow evening, 8 April, the great Daniel Barenboim is indeed giving a surprise concert and talk in the rather astonishing setting of the Tate Modern, with members of his Berlin Staatskapelle, and admission is FREE. Everybody is invited to attend and see the event from the Turbine Hall Bridge or video relay in the Turbine Hall.

Why? It's an anniversary party with a difference: the "pianist, conductor and communicator" is marking the 60th anniversary of his performing debut and apparently also the release of his new recordings of the Chopin Piano Concertos, a solo Chopin recital from Warsaw, Tchaikovsky and Schoenberg with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and, later this year, the Liszt concertos - in a new affiliation with Decca and Deutsche Grammophon.

We don't get to hear Barenboim for free every day, so if you're in London then head down there PDQ. (But remember to register for tickets first... link is below & allocation will be done tonight and tomorrow.)

Please note his words below, especially if you have been enjoying the SHOUT OUT! MUSIC EDUCATION FOR ALL series here on JDCMB this week. Barenboim's statement is a very welcome surprise addition. Every day this week I have been running strong statements from some of Britain's leading musicians about the vital nature of making musical education available to all children, regardless of their family's ability to pay. Contributors include Tasmin Little, Julian Lloyd Webber, James Rhodes and many more. Catch up here, here, here and here.

Barenboim says: ‘Engaging with music and the arts is one of the most important things we have in life. Performing a piece of music and listening to it with an open mind can tell us many things about the world and ourselves. If people can reach mutual understanding and even harmony over a work of art in this world of conflict and despair, this gives me hope and encouragement that we reach with the arts where we can’t get with words alone.’

All tickets to his performance at Tate Modern are free, with limited capacity. Please register here for tickets: http://decca.com/barenboim/index.html

PS - You read it here first. xj