The Great Gate of...Wimbledon?

Last winter I took a very snowy trip to Paris to see the world premiere of pianist Mikhail Rudy's astonishing venture into musical animation. Having unearthed Kandinsky's original designs for a 1928 theatrical staging of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition - they were quietly awaiting attention deep within Paris's Pompidou Centre - Micha conceived a way to update this ever-musical artist's work for a modern context. Joining forces with an expert animation company, he set about breathing life into Kandinsky.

The result? Micha plays - necessarily in perfect coordination with the film - while Kandinsky dances. The animations don't overload the music with extraneous effect. Different images assemble, deconstruct, kaleidoscope; they're often playful, sometimes ironic, always cool and light in touch. Now Micha is on a world tour with the project: given the blessing of the Pompidou, which is putting out a DVD, he has just taken it to the US and Russia for the first time. And this week you can catch the UK premiere in the Turner Sims Hall in Southampton on Thursday night (17 Nov) and at the Wimbledon Festival on Saturday (19 Nov).

It's a new slant on Mussorgsky. But intriguingly enough, it is far from being the first time a pianist has done his own thing with this music.

Since Horowitz, who coined the term 'pianostrate', many performers have taken as read carte blanche to make their own additions to Mussorgsky's already dazzling score. Partly this is down to the popularity of Ravel's orchestration, which appeared to make people think there was more to the piece than its original composer had put into it himself. So pianists are divided, roughly, into those who stick to the text and those who...don't.

When I wrote a 'Building a Library' piece for BBC Music Magazine a few months ago looking at different interpretations of Pictures, it became clear that Sviatoslav Richter's legendary live recording from Sofia has its revered status for a good reason: sticking faithfully to the text, Richter put in all the colour, magnificence and orchestral effects the piece could hope for through his playing alone. Of the 'pianostrated' ones, Horowitz was incomparable, though Leif Ove Andsnes's Pictures Reframed proved fascinating in its own way. Mikhail Pletnev's, while evoking astonishing, multifaceted, eleventh-dimension sounds that you wouldn't imagine a piano could produce, was cold as ice. Vladimir Ovchinnikov's recording was a sure sign that this excellent former Leeds winner remains seriously underestimated today, and among historical recordings Lazar Berman's remains a personal favourite of mine. I listened to loads of good ones, a few less good, and a monstrous heap of CDs that were well-played, faithful renditions of the score without a hint of interest or originality about them.

Anyhow, that is by-the-by. If you're within batting distance of Wimbledon or Southampton, don't miss Micha's audio-visual treat this week.

London calling...

I just joined Audioboo. Let's see if it works...

A poppy from Pavlova

A poppy special for this weekend: I've just come across this astonishing film of Anna Pavlova in 1923, dancing a little ballet called California Poppy choreographed for her by Mikhail Fokine. The music is Tchaikovsky's Valse Melancholique. (The first part of the video is still photographs, but keep going - the film starts soon.)

11-11-11

I have a piece in today's Independent about music inspired by war, talking to Simon Keenlyside about his recital and CD programe, but also asking why so few composers have been tackling the emotions and the human cost involved in the wars of today. Are people who could conceivably commission one maybe too scared of doing 'the wrong thing' politically and displeasing someone powerful? http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/requiem-for-an-art-form-why-modern-composers-are-fighting-a-losing-battle-6260041.html

Sartorial snobbery on the stage?

The recent row about Rihanna and her bra in the fields makes most classical musicians' clothing look staid, even at its shortest and tightest. 

So why do people get into such a stew over the gorgeous Yuja and her concert attire? At least she looks good in it. And as for orchestras... I'd say "don't get me started," but recently my boss at the Independent did indeed get me started, so here's the result.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/why-do-critics-get-so-hot-under-the-collar-when-it-comes-to-concert-clothing-6259549.html

John Foulds: the true story

Over at Slipped Disc, Norman has linked to a fascinating story from the Western Mail, hauling out, for Remembrance Day, the question "Whatever happened to John Foulds and his World Requiem"?

The work is freely available to listen to on the recording that was issued following its resuscitation and performance four years ago at the Royal Albert Hall, so you can make up your own mind about its quality. At the time, I interviewed Foulds's grandson, gatecrashed the rehearsals and became completely fascinated by the zeitgeist that surrounded the work, to say nothing of Foulds's own astonishing story, and that of his partner, Maud MacCarthy. The World Requiem may in fact have vanished for a good reason: though before that performance expectations ran high indeed, it turned out to be rather disappointing, despite some magical moments. Foulds (1880-1939) at his finest is completely fabulous - a fascinating mind, a generous spirit and an original, ingenious creator and craftsman. But even Sakari Oramo, who is largely responsible for reawakening interest in the composer through his championship and superb recordings with the CBSO, admitted in an interview I did with him some time ago that the World Requiem was not really one for him.

Professor Cowgill's research, quoted in the article, is certainly a fascinating addition to the existing body of material about Foulds, which also includes a book by the magnificent Malcom MacDonald. The article, though, doesn't go into the whole picture of the politics that left Foulds out in the cold. He came from an extremely modest background in Manchester, where his father was a bassoonist in the Halle Orchestra; to make matters worse, Foulds's parents were Plymouth Brethren - aged 13, he ran away from home to escape this oppressive religious regime. Snobbery in the musical establishment was of course rife - but more than that, Foulds espoused strong left-wing views, which increased the suspicious attitude towards him. Living in abject poverty, he found himself forced to decamp abroad for a while and he worked in Paris as a cinema pianist.

But spiritualism, eastern philosophies and Theosophy in particular were both fashionable and popular in Foulds's day. And Maud MacCarthy was an exceptional case. She was a child prodigy violinist, then became a pupil of Annie Besant, who had morphed from feminist pioneer to disciple of Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy. The story goes that when she and Foulds fell in love, both already being married, the two couples sat down together to discuss the situation and agree a conclusion in a civilised manner - though later, when Foulds and MacCarthy went ahead and set up home together, Mrs Foulds (also named Maud) was devastated.

Acceptance of the notion of contact from the spirit world and the dictation of musical themes from the beyond comes through strongly in Foulds's book, Music To-Day - he terms the phenomenon 'clairaudience'. This was nothing new. Even Schumann believed in this sort of thing; there's one famous instance in which he insisted that the theme of his Geistervariationen was dictated to him in a dream by the spirits of Mendelssohn and Schubert (though in this case the unfortunate composer, his mind disintegrating under the influence of tertiary syphilis, had forgotten he'd written it himself and had already used it twice before). As for Theosophy, the poet WB Yeats was another believer, and just two of the other composers lured by the promise of worlds beyond our own - eastern or spiritual or both - were Scriabin and Holst.

What was different was the passion with which MacCarthy devoted herself to her spiritual life, perhaps to a certain extent dragging Foulds along in her wake. She was clearly a powerful personality; Foulds adored her, was absolutely in thrall to her, and seems to have followed where she led. She insisted on the couple's move to India apparently because of a directive she received from the spirit world...

But meanwhile, somewhere in the east end of London, she encountered a beautiful youth - illiterate and poor - who had the ability to channel messages from a group of wise entities that MacCarthy called "The Brothers". We don't know the youth's name; in her books, MacCarthy simply calls him The Boy. She took him to India and set up what today we'd probably call a visitor centre or even an ashram. Devotees came from far and wide to consult The Brothers, as channelled by The Boy, for advice, wisdom and healing.

Foulds, meanwhile, went to Calcutta to be head of music for India's national radio. There he caught cholera and died. Many of his manuscripts were destroyed by the climate or eaten by vermin. We'll never know exactly what was lost, though the idea of an East-West Symphony is both tantalising and tragic. After his death, MacCarthy took the name Swami Omananda, and married The Boy - yes, a swami is a monk and there is a discrepancy there. She insists in her book The Boy and the Brothers that the marriage was only nominal and for appearance's sake, and was never consummated, though the tone of the text suggests at every turn that she was madly in love with him, and was perhaps deceiving herself.

It's only a pity that the World Requiem does not entirely measure up to its back-story. Perhaps, as Remembrance Day approaches, it is time to give it another listen.

A tiger at the ballet: meet Sergei Polunin

He's 21, he's been called "better than Baryshnikov" and he has tiger scratches tattooed into his torso. Sergei Polunin, the youngest star of the Royal Ballet, makes his debut tonight as Des Grieux in MacMillan's Manon. His extraordinary roller-coaster of a story, from rags to incipient riches, as told to me a couple of weeks ago by the lad himself, is in today's Independent.

He's rather lovely - intelligent and self-aware, under that youthful bravado - and I couldn't help teasing him a little when he started talking about how he envies the street life of his former school friend back in Kherson, Ukraine, whom he encountered "walking around in a gang, looking cool". I asked where he lives and he named a reasonably rough bit of north London. Plenty of gangs there, I said. I'm sure they'd have you, what with the tattoos and all. Fortunately he recognises that he can't risk breaking a leg. Still, he's already seen more of real life in his 21 short years than many of ballet (and music)'s practitioners will experience in twice that.

John Adams on 'Klinghoffer' in London & NY

My goodness, the folks at ENO and the Met are brave. They're staging a co-production of John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer, directed by Tom Morris (of War Horse fame). ENO will give seven performances, opening on 25 February. It will be the London stage premiere of this American supremo's most controversial opera. The Los Angeles Music Center Opera, one of the work's co-commissioners, cancelled its planned staging without explanation back in the early '90s and the only one in the US since then took place a few months ago at the Opera Theater of St Louis (read review here).

In a statement that ENO has just put out, Adams has this to say:

"ENO has become the home for my operas in the UK. I count myself a very lucky composer to have such an artistically progressive company in my corner. ENO has already introduced Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic in powerfully committed performances and I expect nothing less from Tom Morris's new staging of The Death of Klinghoffer which has every promise of being provocative, humane and deeply imagined. London audiences are my ideal listeners - sophisticated, musically literate, enthusiastic and of course a little bit insane. I look forward to being among them for the premiere."

His introduction to his opera and its performing history on his site, Earbox.com, is well worth a read. Meanwhile, I only hope that our London audiences won't prove too "insane" to give the work a listen and judge it objectively on its own merits.

A little note about pronunciation...

A few questions this week re how I pronounce my name. The official version is "duCHENNE". But until about 7 years ago it was always DOOchen. Then my brother married an Italian girl and their first son has an Italian name, which sounds a bit funny beside DOOchen but, with duCHENNE, could well suggest a healthy future as a celebrity chef, cellist or conductor. So now you know.

I'm on the radio today

This morning on CD Review, BBC Radio 3, I'm having a chat with Andrew McGregor about some new recordings of piano concertos, both rare and less rare. We're covering Howard Shelley's set of Beethoven, Stephen Hough's Liszt and Grieg, some concertos by Herold (composer of La fille mal gardee and Zampa) and, um, the Busoni. UK listeners can, if you so choose, tune in via the link here, or catch it later on Listen Again.

Krystian Zimerman talks about sound...

...and about pianos, maturity, Rubinstein, Lutoslawski... This seems to be from Hong Kong radio - not sure precisely when the broadcast was, but it seems to have been uploaded about six months ago.



And here's another treasure I just found: Krystian aged about 25 playing the first movement of Chopin's B flat minor Sonata in a televised concert in Japan, 1982.

Artists Against Racism.EU

Andras Schiff tells me that following my interview with him in the JC about the rising tide of racism in Hungary, he has been on the receiving end of a new slew of virulent anti-Semitic abuse, some of which extends to Holocaust denial.

I'd like to draw your attention to an organisation founded by the conductor Adam Fischer, who has recently resigned from the Hungarian State Opera. Artists Against Racism has an excellent website that, amongst other things, highlights the incidents that somehow do not always make our news pages. It is largely but by no means entirely focused on Hungary. It is described as "a union of artists opposed to racism and intolerance in Europe and the world" and it has come into being not a moment too soon.

Less than two weeks ago the conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi (grandson of the composer Erno Dohnanyi) cancelled some appearances in Hungary in protest at the appointment of a new intendant and artistic director with far-right associations at the New Theatre, Budapest. Read more here. Artists Against Racism has further information on this situation and publishes an open letter to the mayor of Budapest, as well as a link to a petition.

Fischer founded the organisation in April. This is his introductory message:

Dear colleagues, dear friends, 

I would like to welcome you on this website. Together with other Artist colleagues I have written an open letter, published in early January in Brussels, calling for more tolerance in Europe. In this letter we expressed our concern about growing intolerance and increasing racist tendencies in Hungary and in Europe as a whole. I would like all artists who feel the same way to start building a network that helps us to coordinate and stand up together against this growing wave of intolerance. In times of economic crisis, it is easy to direct peoples’ frustration against the more vulnerable in society and to use them as scapegoats. Demagogic politicians, due to opportunist and short-sighted reasons, will often stir up hatred against minorities. I think that artists must use their fame to work against such demagoguery. On this site, I would like to create a forum where we can share our thoughts and ideas. I would ask you, first of all, to simply get in touch, so so that we know how many of us who share these ideals. I look forward to your letters and I wish you all the best.
Adam Fischer

This is not an isolated matter. Hungary is not a small East-European basket case, despite its impenetrable language. It's a major European centre bang on the Danube. And in many fields, in many countries, in many ways, there are signs not only of rising racism but also the repression that usually goes hand-in-glove with it. In the US, National Public Radio has just jettisoned an opera show because its host, Lisa Simeone, took part in the Occupy movement. Nor is she the only one to lose her post because of her personal outlook: more info and some interesting, disturbing questions in The Guardian. 

I am still haunted by Maria at Wexford and its evocation of the brute force to which totalitarian states almost invariably resort sooner or later. How do they take control? Their populations, eyes wide closed, let them. They do not notice what's happening until it's too late.

You will find a permanent link to Artists Against Racism in the JDCMB sidebar section entitled MUSIC INSPIRATIONS.

Wonderful time in wet, wet Wexford

OK, so it rained a lot, but I finally made it to the Wexford Opera Festival. This Irish coastal town, with its soft and subtle colours under low-blowing clouds and sweet-scented, damp air, is famous for much more than its delectable strawberries (but do dip them in chocolate. Oh yes...). It's where such luminaries as Juan Diego Florez, Joseph Calleja and the fast-rising Eglise Gutierrez cut their teeth. I thought it'd be good, having been hearing about it more or less forever. But I didn't realise quite how good until I emerged from Maria by Roman Statkowski [who? ed] shaken to the core by Michael Gieleta's staging - so realistic that I'd sat there reminding myself "it's only an opera, it's only an opera..."

Statkowski, since you ask, was Szymanowski's teacher and his dates are 1859-1925. Maria is a political tale based on an epic poem by Mlynarski from 1825, set in an obscure province of what's now Ukraine in the 17th century. Waclaw, son of the powerful Count Palatine, is in love with Maria, daughter of a mere District Governor - and has run away and married her. Big daddy the despot is furious because his son is the apple of his eye, his sole heir and hope. He appoints his henchmen to bump off Maria so that Waclaw can be unencumbered by a wife from the wrong social class. Despot dispatches army to attack 'thugs' who are 'vandalising' his territories; during the mayhem Maria is abducted and thrown into the river to drown. Waclaw discovers that his father ordered his beloved wife's murder and goes to take revenge - but kills himself instead of his father. There's a grand ball complete with polonaise and mazurka, ravishing love music that seems to have escaped from Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.5, and folk elements that seem to have escaped from Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.2 (though this tune was a Ukrainian folk song long before either composer got hold of it).

Structurally it could be an awkward opera - for instance, the eponymous heroine only stars fully in one scene, plus a brief moment in the next before she is murdered. But Gieleta has updated it to Poland of the early 1980s, to devastating effect. The 'thugs' represent the rise of Solidarnosc: Count Palatine becomes the general in charge of beating them down under martial rule.

I had a long, intense talk with Gieleta, who was a child in Poland at that time and saw it all with his own eyes. Nevertheless, he told me, he was keen to capture not only that specific reality, but the universal relevance of a narrative about totalitarian regimes. He described an incident in which a friend from Venezuela had come up to him with tears in his eyes after seeing the performance and declared that it was about his country.

The staging is violent, at times terrifying in its realism - for instance, the scene in which the women take refuge in the District Governor's yard trying to escape from the threatening troops with riot gear and batons, plus a sleazy priest seeking long-haired candidates to comfort; or the injured, blood-drenched Waclaw stumbling about the container yard, hunting for Maria, unaware that she is dead. The party scene captures the ghastly naffness of communist Poland trying to dress up and party, complete with a few manically grinning folk dancers and a desultory bunny girl emerging from a polar bear suit - Berlusconi bunga-bunga this ain't. Orchestral interludes are illustrated by huge black and white photos under falling snow - queues for food, a bus stuck in a blizzard, the grim shipyards of Gdansk - mirrored by tableaux on stage. Apparently on the first night the Polish Ambassador attended and spotted, in one picture of the demonstrations, an image of his younger self.

Daria Masiero was Maria - not the romantic beauty-queen we might expect, but instead a cuddly, down-to-earth girl in a cardigan, caring towards her father and thrilled when Waclaw gives her the gift of a small teddy bear. As Count Palatine, Krzysztof Szumanski's strong-centred bass-baritone packed a tremendous punch, a big voice with oodles of personality (though he didn't quite have the role's bottom notes); he's an alumnus of the Jette Parker Young Artists programme at Covent Garden and we are likely to hear much more of him. In this trailer for the Deutsche Oper Berlin's Le nozze di Figaro, you can glimpse him as Figaro.

Quite a buzz, though, emanated around Waclaw: the Polish tenor Rafal Bartminski, who portrayed the tale's youthful hero as a peaceable, academic type caught up in forces that do their best to politicise him from either side, somewhat against his inner nature. It's a starry role, romantic and beautiful, and Bartminski carried it off to the manner born. (ENO please note, this would be a terrific role for Toby Spence.)

Listen to Rafal sing Schubert's 'Du bist die Ruhe':



Donizetti's Gianni di Parigi - "Johnny from Paris" - couldn't have been a better antidote: a pure bel canto comedy of dinners. The Dauphin of France arrives at an hotel disguised as a wealthy traveller named Gianni, and bribes the muddled hotelier so that he can take over the whole place although it's been booked out long ago by the Princess of Navarra. He's supposed to marry this princess, but hasn't met her and wants to check her out first, incognito. Unbeknownst to him, though, his dad has told her exactly what's going on, so she turns up fully briefed...and the pair try to outwit each other until they finally admit they're madly in love. Caught in the middle is the hotelier, his daughter, the prince's page boy Oliviero and the princess's snobby, self-important chief steward, who finds himself trapped between his sense of 'honour' and the temptation of a giant vol-au-vent. There are some irresistible arias, foot-tapping ensembles and plenty of those Italian crescendi that remind one of being tailgated more and more closely on the Autostrada.

The production, by Federico Grazzini, was costumed in 1950s style - it seems to be the default setting for Donizetti right now - and my only problem with it was that the chorus consisted of the hotel staff. If they'd had two royal entourages to cater for, they wouldn't have time to stand around singing, drinking and asking the princess for autographs.

More superb singing, though. Zuzana Markova, a Czech coloratura soprano, sang bel canto rings round everyone, saving some her vocal richesse for the glittering final scene; and she bore a rather startling resemblance to the Duchess of Cornwall. Edgardo Rocha, from Uruguy, was a cute, luxury-loving charmer as the Dauphin in disguise, with a high and affectionate tenor that suited the music to a tee. But the one who stole the show, as far as I was concerned, was the trouser-role mezzo of Oliviero the page boy: Lucia Cirillo from Italy, who showed absolute mastery and deep, innate, stylish musicality, as well as offering a lovely sense of fun. Not a huge amount of her to hear on Youtube as yet, but here is a spot of Italian baroque in which she's accompanied by the excellent Fabio Biondi and his orchestra.

Wexford has much more on offer than just the evening operas (and unfortunately I missed the third of those, Ambroise Thomas's La Cour de Celimene - you know what Saint-Saens said about Ambroise Thomas, but I'd still have liked to hear it...). There's an impressive fringe programme of morning lectures, lunchtime recitals and afternoon "shorts". I caught an afternoon performance under the umbrella title of Double Trouble: two one-acters about love, marriage and discord in the suburban states, Menotti's The Telephone (with Laurie Ashworth and Byron Jackson) and Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti starring Toby Girling as Sam and Martha Bredin as Dinah.

Having always heard Trouble in Tahiti described with words like 'flawed', I loved every minute of it: Bernstein's high energy, his focus, his versatility, the way there's no emotion he won't have a go at grabbing in music, the way he can juxtapose irony and pastiche in the close-harmony trios with near desperation over the thin and fragile surface that holds our existence in place... Full marks to the lot of them, including director Michael Shell and music director Adam Burnette.

The Wexford audience? People with a true passion for opera, eager to dress up and hear whatever Wexford deems fit to serve them, in the certainty that it will be good, inspiring, fascinating. Many of those I encountered have been attending annually and faithfully for 15 or 20 years or more. Now I know why.

Jonas Kaufmann, packed in polystyrene

You know how sometimes you receive a big box in the post, and you start to unpack it? You work your way through the tape and the cardboard. Then out fly a thousand little polystyrene piecelets that you'll still be fishing out from under the sofa in three months' time. Underneath that, a polystyrene mould to hold The Thing Itself in place. The Thing Itself is in a bag, so you take it out, then find it's also shrink-wrapped in tough plastic casing that is hard to cut through. Eventually you get it out and it's beautiful ... but there's not much of it, and why, oh why, that quantity of packaging? More Thing, please, and less material for the recycling bin?

Welcome to Jonas Kaufmann at the Royal Festival Hall.

He could scarcely have been on finer form if he'd tried. Having come successfully through surgery in early September for a node in his chest - it turned out, thank heavens, to be benign - the German tenor, man of the operatic moment, sounded fighting fit and ready for anything. In a programme mixing verismo arias familiar and less so, a bloom from Carmen, two Wagner jewels and four generous encores, he grew finer and finer as the evening went on. The concert programme held seven arias - surrounded by the polystyrene piecelets of orchestral bits and pieces that could have been fun had they been well played, properly rehearsed and a tad fewer in number. But that's the principle of such an evening. We want The Thing Itself and we will buy tickets. And if the "product" is 60 per cent packaging, there's nothing we can do about that. If The Thing Itself is worth it, we just accept the nonsense.

This one was indeed worth it.

Kaufmann's rise and rise has been magnificent to witness. It doesn't seem so long since his first CD of Strauss Lieder hit my desk and knocked me off my chair. "Do you know this man?" I asked here on JDCMB. Then we didn't. Now we do, and we're at his feet.

What's the secret of his success? Several points stand out: strange, fabulous, magical.

Strange: at first Kaufmann can sound like a baritone - that covered, whispered, speaking low tone. And then he reaches the high notes and there is nothing he can't do up there. Think: cathedral with fascinating architectural details below and high windows positioned specifically to allow the sun to pour in at the psychological moment.

Fabulous: the control. Take one note, probably on the high side, and sustain it. Start at pppp and increase to ffff gradually, keeping the tone steady and pure throughout. That isn't usually how human breath works. Carmen Flower Song: the precise shadings of timbre as the story is told, the nuances of emotion articulated in each word, but also contained in the sound itself. Fabulous too: the diction, German, Italian, French, and the snapping from one style to the next. Richard Tauber's 'Du bist die Welt fur mich', encore no.2, sung almost like Schubert, with an innigkeit suggestive of layers of meaning beneath the surface. Then, whoosh, we're in Pagliacci for encore no.3, 'Vesti la giubba', and we're listening to someone who really ought to be Italian, the way he twirls and spits the melodrama, those words, that laugh, that unbelievable melody.

Magical: his ability to transform himself into the character he's singing, no matter what's going on around him. Above all, Lohengrin. Kaufmann slid into 'In fernem land' as if there could be no more tender, visionary, perfect creation in the history of humankind. As if he really was destined to find the Holy Grail (pace Monty Python). As if he had just parked his swan outside by the Thames and would be off to resume the Grail Quest as soon as the concert was over. That exceptional tenderness was true, too, of his last encore, Refice's 'Ombra di nube', a sliver of under-known perfection that calmed everyone down (after 'Vesti la giubba' had rawked the auditorium).

He's a real pro, of course, making the very most of the occasion, working the hall, hugging the conductor before pushing him back onto the podium for one more encore. And this was a fabulous evening, one that I think everyone in the packed-to-rafters RFH will remember for years to come.

There's a sour aftertaste nonetheless: must the orchestra and audience be treated like budget airline customers? When corners are cut, people know it. For one thing, I didn't spot any translations anywhere in the house: not in the programme (£6), nor any quickly photocopied sheets of paper. A lot of people wanted them and they weren't there. This audience would also have liked better orchestral playing, which goodness knows the RPO is capable of if it has time to rehearse a programme of this length properly. They had another demanding concert the night before and scant chance to do justice to the music they were bashing through. You have to realise that rehearsing costs money... They did the best they could under the circumstances. It's good that there were a few moments when they sounded inspired: the cellos duetting with Don Jose in the Flower Song, lifted to a new level by the marvel of the voice they were shadowing.

But this audience knew what was going on. This wasn't a typical "light classics"-style date and it attracted a different crowd: an upmarket collection of opera buffs and Kaufmann fanatics, ready to listen to Zandonai and Wagner from the classiest tenor on the planet. The bluff was called: during the standing ovation one solitary but loud boo rang out, to the distress of those around it. A nutter? A jealous unemployed tenor? Or perhaps someone who felt ready to tell the promoter a home truth or two? He was drowned out by the cheering - but was noticed.

Crisis at Janacek and Korngold's home opera

A distress call from Brno in the Czech Republic signals the latest cultural victim of the "financial crisis". The opera house in Brno is the country's second-largest, and has a long, distinguished history: not least, the city was the home of Janacek, composer of a raft of the early 20th century's finest operas, and it was also the birthplace of Korngold. According to our correspondent, the budget of Brno's cultural institutions has already been chopped by 20 per cent. The next step, it seems, is that the opera house's ensemble, chorus and orchestra are, allegedly, to be disbanded.

The email I've received suggests that the plan is that they will be taken back after seven months, but that there is no guarantee and the employees don't believe that that will happen. Besides, they have to eat, so they're not likely to sit about waiting, just in case, but will have to seek employment elsewhere.

One of the immediate casualties is the planned staging of Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane in the 2012-13 season, which would have been a co-production with Kaiserslautern.

There's a petition online to save the opera house's ensemble, and the affected performers would be mightily grateful if you'd like to sign it. It's in Czech. Click here.

Update: above right, a photo of the protests this situation has sparked. I've posted some Czech links in the comments box below, too.

Beware, friends. You don't know what you've got until it's gone. Institutions that have taken decades or centuries to establish can be swept away in one stroke of a pen. We live in a copycat world. Such precedents are much more dangerous than you might fondly imagine, of a Sunday morning.

Here's Lotte Lehmann - the first Heliane - singing the opera's most famous aria, 'Ich ging zu ihm'. JDCMB regulars will have heard it before, but that is no reason not to hear it again.

LISZTFEST!

No prizes for guessing whose bicentenary it is today. You should know by now, because this year has been all about LISZT FERENC in all his very many colours. And really, there's only one way to celebrate...

Please sit back, turn up the sound and welcome some of the greatest Lisztians of all time to play some of my personal favourites... I hope you enjoy this selection as much as I've enjoyed choosing it. It's the tip of a very, very hefty iceberg, needless to say. Responses and further links welcome.

GYÖRGY CZIFFRA: TRANSCENDENTAL ETUDE NO.11, 'HARMONIES DU SOIR'


LOUIS KENTNER: LA LEGGIEREZZA (footage from his last Liszt recital in London, 1985)


JOHN OGDON: DANTE SONATA (in two parts. Filmed 50 years ago...don't miss the introduction for a little insight into how TV presentation has changed over the intervening half century...)



DINU LIPATTI: SONETTO 104 DEL PETRARCA


GRIGORY GINZBURG: VALLEE D'OBERMANN (2 parts)



CLAUDIO ARRAU: FUNERAILLES (2 parts)



VLADIMIR HOROWITZ: HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY NO.6 (recorded 1947)


ERWIN NYIREGYHAZI: SONETTO 123 DEL PETRARCA

Friday Historical: Happy Birthday, Solti!

Today Sir Georg Solti would have been 99 years old. "My life is the clearest proof that if you have talent, determination and luck, you will make it in the end," he once said. "NEVER GIVE UP."

His life and musicianship remain impressive, idealistic and inspiring tributes to the blazing fires of his artistic conviction. Here's an extract from the beginning of his autobiography, Solti on Solti:

In February 1997, when these memoirs were nearing completion, I conducted Bela Bartok's Cantata profana with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Hungarian Radio Chorus, and while the performance was in progress a great realization came over me. I understood that my whole life, the whole journey I have made, is contained within the story of the Cantata. 

Bartok, one of my teachers at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, had translated the Cantata's text from Romanian into Hungarian. It tells the story of a father who brings up his nine sons to be stag-hunters, instead of farmers or merchants - 'average' men. As the sons grow, they press their hunt into ever more remote areas of the forest, until one day they cross a haunted bridge and are themselves transformed into beautiful, enchanted stags. The father, worried by his sons' prolonged absence, sets out to look for them; eventually, he crosses the bridge, reaches a wellspring and sees the nine stags. He aims his rifle at the biggest of them, but just as he is about to shoot he hears the stag speak. The stag tells him that he is the eldest of the sons - the father's favourite - and he warns the father that if he tries to shoot any of the stags their antlers will tear him to pieces.
"Come with me," the father begs his sons. "Your mother stands waiting, lonely, loving, grieving...The lanterns are lit, the table is set, the glasses are filled..."

"We shall never return," says the son, "because our antlers cannot pass through the doorway." 

The work ends with the man's heartbreaking realization that his sons have become alien to him and will never again be what they were before. 

I had always interpreted this story as an allegory of Bartok's life, but as I conducted the Cantata that day I realized that I, too, was the stag. I was born and trained to communicate music, just as the sons were born and trained to hunt, and I was lucky to have grown up in Hungary, a country that lives and breathes music - that has a passionate belief in the power of music as a celebration of life. But one day, while I was still young, I was parted from my family and left my native country. I hunted and searched for music, and destiny turned me into the object of my hunt. The circumstances of life became my "antlers" and prevented me from returning home. 

I do not mean to exaggerate my importance, but, like other internationally recognised musicians, I belong to everyone and share with the whole world all I have to offer. The musical and personal rewards of the life I have led have been great, but so have the sacrifices. And there were times when I felt that the rewards would elude me forever."

Solti conducted some of the most memorable concerts I was fortunate enough to attend - I still recall his Mahler 5 at the RFH in c1988, a rendition I long to hear again almost every time I witness any other conductor trying to bring off that piece. Then there was the evening that Decca celebrated his 80th birthday with a party in a big London hotel at which they presented him with the gift of a mountain bike. And of course I'll remain ever grateful to Lady Valerie Solti, who spoke at the Hungarian Cultural Centre launch party for my Hungarian Dances three years ago and described the resonances that its narrative held for the story, too, of Sir Georg.

After Sir Georg's death, Valerie and their daughters established the Solti Foundation, which gives grants to young musicians to aid them in the awkward transition from music school to entering the profession, helping with coaching, travel to competitions, hiring rehearsal facilities, etc. To date, they have received applications from 40 countries. More details here.

Medici TV has a special birthday tribute to him today, a film in which he conducts Wagner, Strauss and Beethoven: http://www.medici.tv/#!/georg-solti-wagner-strauss-beethoven

And here's a small extract from Mahler 5...

Meet The Olympianist

No, it's not another Beethoven cycle... Instead, British pianist Anthony Hewitt has come up with an exceptionally energetic way to stun several birds at one swoop. In the run-up to the London 2012 Olympic Games he will be cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats. Behind him follows his trusty Van Beethoven, containing a grand piano. Each evening he'll give a recital wherever he stops. And it's all in aid of excellent causes: pop some coins in the bucket, sponsor him or come to a concert and you're helping to raise funds for charities that aim to inspire children to take up music and/or sport, notably Big Noise, Musequality and Get Kids Going.

Right now he's busy training. And he promises to wear more clothes than the original Olympians...watch out for them in this video he's made to explain the hows, wheres and wherefores.

The whole tenor of Italy?

Just back this evening from a very lovely week in Puglia. Olive groves, wild waves, Greek ruins, red wine, visiting cat, heaps of sleep, absolutely crazy drivers, crooked car hire, last of the October sun and I read Wolf Hall in its entirety. Ended up dreaming nightly about Henry VIII.

Returned to find my interview with a certain rather popular Italian tenor was in today's Independent. And I'm glad to say that it made a mention in the Editor's Letter in the i as well.

The interview took place at David Bailey's studio; watching the photo session was quite an experience. (Left, in the studio with Veronica, Andrea and David... I'm lurking in the background.) The famously gruff photographer remarks that "opera singers are always good fun". And if you want to spend a four-figure sum without decimal points on a massive 'Opus' about Andrea Bocelli, now is your chance.

I put aside my own mixed feelings about Bocelli's recordings to try to meet him on his own terms and discover a little bit about what makes him tick. The article was somewhat truncated in the paper, so here, dear readers, is:

BOCELLI: THE DIRECTOR'S CUT

In his airy studio in Clerkenwell, David Bailey is hard at work photographing the most popular tenor on the planet. Andrea Bocelli poses quietly, reflectors and flashes creating a light-filled aura around him. His fiancée, Veronica Berti – 25 years his junior and pregnant with their first child (Bocelli’s third) – hovers with the observing entourage, helping to talk him through the session. Amid the fuss, Bocelli, smiling and soft-spoken, his sightless eyes closed, seems the still point of a hyperactive world.

The aim of all this is to produce a David Bailey portrait of the singer for The Official Andrea Bocelli Opus – a project of huge scope and dizzying cost all about his life and work, running to more than 800 pages. The book is designed as a luxury collector’s item and will retail for a four-figure sum. Other productions in the Opus series have been devoted to Vivienne Westwood, Michael Jackson, Ferrari and the Arsenal football team. Iconic names and brands, then, and Bocelli is one too: with over 70 million records sold to date, he is beyond the cosmos when it comes to popularity. His Sacred Arias entered the Guinness Book of Records as the highest-selling solo classical album of all time. Yet in the classical field, many are still trying to work out the secret of his success.

Bocelli’s fans don’t bother with operatic snobbery: ever since his first album went platinum in 1994, they have bought his discs and flocked to his performances, often in vast venues. Recently he sang in Central Park, New York; a DVD of the occasion will be on international release in November. During his visit to London, when I caught up with him, he also appeared in a special 50^th anniversary edition of Songs of Praise on BBC1.

But critics are not kind to him. He gave a recital at the Metropolitan Opera in New York back in February – a programme of songs with piano accompaniment by composers ranging from Handel to Fauré via Beethoven and Strauss, taken from his latest album, Notte Illuminata – but the New York Times slated his “bland homogeneity” and “dogged, unrelenting quality”. His voice offers occasional glimpses of great beauty and deep emotion; at other times its limitations can seem downright clunky. Fans rave over the melting quality of his tone, its gentleness, its directness. Detractors grumble about its lack of expressive range and its pinched, nasal patina.

Bocelli, who is now 53, seems unperturbed by the apparent divide between critical dismissal and popular embrace. “I think in the world of opera that’s the way things are,” he comments, via an interpreter (though his English is not bad). “There’s criticism for absolutely everybody. And in a way this makes it more interesting because, after all, discussion is life.”

Connecting with others through singing, he adds, is “just a question of being oneself. Nature has created us in such a way that it should be very easy to connect and communicate. What’s important is to have no masks, just to be oneself at any time. I think the secret could be that I’ve always taken an interest in other people. I have always felt a need to communicate, ever since I was a child.”

He doesn’t talk about his blindness. Having been partially sighted from the start due to congenital glaucoma, he was rendered completely blind by a football injury when he was 12 years old. His singing, too, goes back to his early years. “When I was a child, everywhere people asked me to sing – in school, in church, in my family, everywhere,” he says. “I understood that it was my destiny.”

Other performers might talk about hard graft, transformation, perseverance, good fortune; Bocelli talks about fate. It is, on the one hand, a very operatic attitude. On the other hand, he adds a pleasantly practical thought: “I am a fatalist, but I also believe very much in the Italian saying that you should help yourself, because God will help you.”

Italy, of course, was the birthplace of opera and traditionally is viewed as the birthplace of great singers to match. Since Pavarotti, though, “real Italian tenors” have been in relatively short supply. For those there are, expectations run high, maybe too high. Italy itself is not what it used to be in terms of opera; the country has been severely affected by the financial crisis and up and down the country theatres have been threatened with closure. Bocelli is from Tuscany – what does he make of the state of his country?

“Crises are complicated,” Bocelli remarks, “and therefore they can only be solved if there’s the good will of everybody. In Italy we’ve never had a government that has tried to decrease the government debt. I think it’s like a river that follows a predetermined path – you can’t really change the direction in which it’s moving. In terms of history I am very close to the thinking of Tolstoy: it is not history that makes men, but men that determine the course of history.” And operatic life? “I think we always see difficulties, but I think the idea behind opera will remain the same. Opera has always touched people’s hearts over the centuries and I think that won’t change.”

One question dogs Bocelli’s steps in the classical world: can he really be called an opera singer? Or should he be taken on board simply as ‘easy listening’? Purists tend to pigeon-hole him together with the likes of Katherine Jenkins and Russell Watson; it’s sad, if true, that he would be left at the starting line if you listened to him alongside today’s younger operatic luminaries such as Rolando Villazón, Jonas Kaufmann or Joseph Calleja.

Unlike certain other ‘crossover’ singers, though, Bocelli has indeed performed and recorded entire operas – he will appear in a production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette in Genoa next February (“I’m studying!” he laughs) and a recording of it will follow. And the more he talks, the clearer it is that his heart really is in opera. His inspirations were the great singers of the past, including his mentor, Franco Corelli, and his one-time champion, Luciano Pavarotti. He knew them both well – “Corelli was a very private, very reserved person; singing was everything to him,” he says. “Pavarotti was a man in love with life. I grew up listening to their records. I listened carefully to all of them because I wanted to capture everything I could possibly capture. They were two very different people, so the result of their singing was very different. Singing is like handwriting – it reflects your personality.”

Bocelli has recorded a great number of slickly produced albums, and sung in countless arenas and stadiums, much amplified – but he has a confession to make. He hates microphones. “Frankly, I’ve always hated them,” he says. “A microphone means I have to sing in a posture that’s not natural to me and it changes the voice, so overall I don’t feel comfortable with that. The best way to sing is the way that nature has provided.”

He admits that he suffers badly from stage-fright: “Always! I am very nervous every time,” he says. “But it’s my job and I deal with it by staying very calm. I don’t have any particular ritual – I just go for it. I am deeply convinced that I can do nothing else, so I have to do this.” 

He is convinced, too, that he is his own harshest critic. “Obviously I’ve grown up following a certain model or several models, and in particular I’ve always loved the recordings of the great singers of the past. So, unconsciously, I want to be like them – but this is not possible because we’re all different, we’re all individuals. Automatically we tend to criticise ourselves because of that. I’ve obviously done the utmost I could do, but when I look back now and listen to what I have done, I would like to change a lot of things, because one is never a hundred per cent happy with what one has achieved.”

As for those other great tenors of today, he’s not interested in competition. “I’ve never actually felt this sense of competing with other singers,” he declares. “My sense of competition is with myself, because I want to do better than what I’ve done in the past. One wants to improve at all times.” But to him, artistic satisfaction is not the be-all and end-all of life: “I’m very happy in general. I’ve always been very happy with my loved ones. It’s the love of those around you that makes you a happy person.”

What, then, is Bocelli’s secret? The appeal of his struggle against adversity? The sweetness and vulnerability of his voice? Clever marketing? All of these probably play a role. But here’s a thought: the quasi-superhuman gifts of a Domingo are glorious, yet it’s hard to identify ourselves with them. Bocelli’s is the voice of the rest of us: we dream, we battle on, we do the best we can with what we’ve got. His voice could have been great. His triumph is that it doesn’t matter that it is not. His success is our absolution.

Hungarian musical tradition alive and well and living in Cornwall

Speaking of Hungary...my piece in this month's issue of Standpoint Magazine is all about the International Musicians' Seminar, Prussia Cove, Cornwall, which was founded by the great Hungarian violinist Sandor Vegh (right) and is now under the artistic directorship of Steven Isserlis. It remains probably the best course of its type in the country and possibly for further afield too. Steven endeavours to keep the values of Vegh and his circle going strong, and the fact that a large number of the most serious and accomplished young musicians in the world have been through these doors at one time or another is testimony to this great tradition's ongoing vigour and value. Frequent maestri include Andras Schiff, Ferenc Rados, Gabor Takacs-Nagy and more - Hungarian and otherwise. Here's the link to Standpoint, where you can read all about how Mr Vegh once tipped a glass of beer over Steven's head (and you know what his hair is like, so, um...). And more edifying stuff too, natch.