Following Mendelssohn to Mull: a JDCMB guest post from Levon Chilingirian

Back in the last century - can it really be 20 years ago? - a pianist friend from Edinburgh invited me to go with her to a then-new festival in the Scottish Isles, entitled Mendelssohn on Mull. We went. We had a whale of a time. We stayed in a b&b run by an English couple who'd gone north to escape the rat-race and had filled their house with delicate Dickens vignettes. Concerts took place in delectable places - a school hall, a tiny theatre, bijou churches, the Western Isles Hotel in Tobermory and more. The air was sweet and clear, the soup was hearty and the sheep were everywhere. It's a cherished memory. 

At that time, the violinist Leonard Friedman was artistic director; sadly, he has now passed away, and he is much missed. A couple of weeks ago, I received an email saying how about a guest post from today's artistic director, Levon Chilingirian? So here it is: a return visit to a beautiful island and a unique experience that's become a fine and well-established part of our musical landscape....

Over to you, Levon.

JD

The late autumn of 2002, a flying visit to the remote island of Mull to see if I might be interested to take over as Artistic Director of Mendelssohn on Mull. Stunning scenery and wildly contrasting concert venues...castles, churches (mostly tiny!) and village halls. Could I gather a group of young players to join five mentors and make music?

It took me a few seconds to say yes and the last 11 years have been rewarding - full of fun and sometimes with tears of happiness at the incredible performances I have witnessed.

Always the exhilaration of daily performances is complemented by gatherings at the Mishnish - our second home where a few sociable drinks are often followed by impromptu renderings of Scottish folk tunes late into the night!

The all-time favourite piece, the Mendelssohn Octet has been played in every possible way!! A relay of players for the first 3 movements with everybody joining in for the Finale was our favourite. I can never forget a cat duet sung by the delectable Gaby Lester and Marcia Crayford! We have had visits from Paganini (in a dark alcove in Duart Castle) and a wandering Felix Mendelssohn (in authentic 1829 top hat!) [That'll be Rick Jones in the Mendelssohn anniversary year, 09... jd]

One evening as my group was returning to Tobermory at dusk, we encountered a majestic deer crossing the single-track road ahead of us. I immediately parked the car and watched in amazement as he led his entire family to the top of the hill and disappeared into the wilderness. We have learnt to share this beautiful island with 'heeland coos' and midges. Our music is truly a part of nature and this is why everybody who has experienced it (performers and listeners) has very special memories of Mull.

Levon Chilingirian

Levon Chilingirian is Artistic Director of Mendelssohn on Mull, quite possibly one of the most exceptional music experiences in the world, if not one of the friendliest. The festival celebrates its 25th anniversary this year - a milestone that coincides with the Year of Natural Scotland. For further information about the festival, the venues and the young professionals taking part visit www.mendelssohnonmull.com

Fresh from the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg

I've just been in Bamberg for a few days to listen to the finals of the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition. Top prize went to Lahav Shani, a 24-year-old Israeli now living in Berlin - he is a Barenboim protege (and a bit of a lookalike), and clearly a young man on his way somewhere special. Above, he collects flowers and applause at the final concert. (photo: Peter Eberts)

Having heard only the final round, in which each candidate had 40 minutes to rehearse the first movement of Mahler 1, I was nevertheless a little startled, personally, when the prize did not go to David Danzmayr from Austria, who is nine years older than Shani - an experienced conductor with a strong, humorous and appealing personality who evidently knows exactly what he's doing.

It's clear, though, that the jury's decision was based on the total impression that built up across four rounds and that they saw something in Shani that has the potential to grow, grow and keep on growing. Danzmayr won joint second prize with Tung-Chieh Chuang of Taiwan, who also had a strong body of support among the audience.

But when Shani took the podium for the winner's all-Mahler concert on Friday night, it was time to sit back and enjoy the music-making - and we did, for it flowed with warmth, sense and incipient magic. Will be writing it up in official capacity, so watch this space for links in due course.

Bamberg is the sort of place which...well, just look at it. The whole town feels like it's made of gingerbread. Or it would if the local specialities were not in fact white spargel and smoked beer. The population is about 70,000  -- and apparently 10% of the citizens are subscribers to the world-class Bamberg Symphony Orchestra's concert series. (Imagine that statistic in London... but we can still dream.)

We were very happy to meet Mahler's granddaughter, Marina Mahler, who is patron of the competition. Here she is with some of the gifted youngsters who did not make the final, but who have distinguished themselves enormously by being there at all - the contest takes only 12 candidates out of more than 400 applications. (Here is the full list of candidates, with their biographies.)

Marina Mahler (centre), with Zoi Tsokanou of Greece and Joseph Young of the USA... Zoi lives in Zurich and has been doing a good amount of opera. Joseph is based in Phoenix, Arizona, and has recently made debuts with the Colorado and Tucson symphony orchestras.

Fr Mahler again, with Gad Kadosh (France/Israel), who may have a UK debut before too long. He is about to move - next week - to Heidelberg to take up a "2nd kapellmeister" post at the opera house there. He and Zoi were two of the students I watched in the Bernard Haitink masterclasses in Lucerne last year. Was mightily impressed with them both.

I was less impressed on this occasion with the fact that no women were in the Bamberg final and there was only one on the jury - Frau Mahler herself. Complete list of jurors here. Jonathan Nott was unfortunately off sick.

Most amusing incident of the trip: at the final I was in the hall chatting to Gad Kadosh and Manuel Lopez-Gomez (of Venezuela) when someone from the audience came up and asked me for an autograph. This is the first time I've ever been mistaken for a conductor. It will probably be the last as well.

Newsround...

* Hungarian Dances yesterday at the St James Theatre Studio was a fabulous experience. A treat, a privilege and a joy to perform with amazing musicians in such a great venue. Huge thanks to everyone concerned! More Hungarian Dances later in the year at the Musical Museum, near Kew Bridge, on Sunday afternoon 8 September and Pen Fro Literary Festival, Pembrokeshire, on 12 September. Watch this space for further dates...

* Please read this eloquent piece by Tasmin Little in the Telegraph re sexism in the classical music. She tells it like it is.

* If you're near a big screen tomorrow, go and see the FREE, live, open-air relay of Mayerling from Covent Garden. It is top ballerina Mara Galeazzi's farewell performance with the Royal Ballet and features Edward Watson as Prince Rudolf. I went to see them both in action in the ROH a couple of weeks ago and emerged utterly wrung out by the combination of intense emotion and astonishing dancing. Is Mayerling the greatest ballet drama ever created? Personally, I think it might be. Don't miss it. Take a brolly if you must, but just don't miss it.

* Please support the ISM's campaign to secure funding for music education beyond 2015. There's a petition to sign, here.
Every little helps, or we hope it does.

* Here's a discussion from Voice of Russia radio that I did last week with Alice Lagnado and John Riley about the lasting importance of The Rite of Spring. The writes, the rights, and sometimes the wrongs too. http://ruvr.co.uk/radio_broadcast/77030634/115272201.html


* And here's a Friday Historical in advance, because I will be otherwise occupied this week: Fritz Kreisler and his cellist brother, Hugo, with pianist Charlton Heath, playing one of my favourite pieces from the Hungarian Dances concert: Kreisler's Marche miniature viennoise. (Did you know Kreisler had a cellist brother? Neither did I. They're a gorgeous team.)

Hungarian Dances in Lakes and London

A final reminder that tonight is your chance to catch HUNGARIAN DANCES: THE CONCERT OF THE NOVEL at the St James Theatre Studio, 12 Palace Street, London SW1, at 8pm.

AND AN UPDATE: the thrill of the adrenaline rush...is this maybe why performers get hooked on performing? My piece for Culturekicks: http://www.culturekicks.co.uk/2013/06/04/in-praise-of-the-adrenaline-rush/

We are just back from the Ulverston International Music Festival in the South Lakeland, where we, um, we got a standing ovation...! Which was rather gratifying to say the least, especially as this was a morning coffee concert and by then it was coming up to lunchtime. Huge thanks to everyone at the festival for a day to remember. Above: Anthony Hewitt (who's artistic director of the festival), David Le Page and me, milking our moment of glory in the Coronation Hall... 

I also did a pre-concert talk with everybody's favourite cellist on Thursday night... He and pianist Ian Brown gave a sensational recital featuring, not least, the cello sonata by Frank Bridge, which is a work everybody ought to hear and marvel at, especially when it's played with such eloquence. An English Rachmaninov? Not far off.

Ulverston was the birthplace of Stan Laurel, so look who's lurking just by the Coronation Hall doorway. Oddly enough, I nearly had the opportunity to say "Here's another fine mess you've got me into..." due to a strange incident at 1am the night before our concert... Suffice it to say that Gretel and I were in a huge flap, Tony's dad heroically ventured forth to save the day, and Dave slept through the whole thing.

See you tonight!

The New Creativity - a guest post from James Inverne

I'm away at the Ulverston International Music Festival in the Lake District, doing some nice concerts. More of this soon. Meanwhile, delighted to offer this guest-post from my colleague James Inverne, formerly editor of GRAMOPHONE, about his new Lorca Songs show, which is at St John's Smith Square next Tuesday (and unfortunately clashes with my Hungarian Dances concert at the St James Theatre Studio!) JD

Editor-turned-manager’s new show? The new creativity

James Inverne on jumping across to the other side of the footlights, and writing a show

What exactly is creativity? I remember a rather wonderful anecdote, somewhere in Stephen Glover’s compendium of essays about journalism, “Secrets of the Press” about a newspaper owner who, wandering through his own newsroom, complained to his editor about so many people “doing nothing but staring out of the window”. That, it seems to me, starts to define creativity pretty well – the art of productive window-staring. If you’re faced with a brief, or a challenge, or a job, and you can find a way to expand its possibilities by engaging imagination, context, presentation than you will be dubbed creative.

A few years ago this did not necessarily feel like a great thing to be. At least, as the recession bit and reality hit, the focus of everything seemed to be on number-crunching and belt-tightening. On the web, for instance, it was all about lists, about things that would come high in SEO (search engine optimisation) and those things remain important. But there’s something else in the air, a renewed sense of the importance of creativity. At times of crisis finding “creative solutions” is a phrase one hears a lot, and it usually means cutting budgets. But after that comes real creativity – a sense that we should see what we can make with what we have, of relying once again on our imaginations to make life interesting (and by extension to make things that other people might want to take notice of).

I noticed this a great deal at the big classical music conference in Vienna last week, Classical NEXT. Suddenly record labels weren’t talking (only) about sales figures, they wanted to find creative and distinctive ways to build their presence on the web, or live events that truly reflected what their artists were about. And that, as a fully paid-up creative person, fills me with joy. Because when I left the editorship of Gramophone I wanted to see how far I could push this idea of creativity. I felt sure that there must be a place for it in the traditionally hectic, overtly administrative world of artist management. I felt there must be a way to work with artists one admired in a way that would get across an idea of their artistic identities, their places in the world.

Sometimes that means working closely with conductors and record labels on repertoire and so forth. But occasionally it has allowed me to create exciting new projects and the first of these to come to fruition – called Lorca’s Songs gets its premiere at St John’s, Smith Square this Tuesday, June 11th (gulp). The original idea was to create a part-concert, part-spoken word evening telling the fused history of Spanish music and Spanish poetry – I created it for the violinist Alexandre Da Costa, who has a deeply authentic and idiomatic view of Spanish music (he looks for its darkness and intensity, which he says is the true heart of Spanish culture, as witness his recent, unusually trenchant recording of Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole on Warner Classics).

But then something happened. I started putting it together and the writer in me took over. Suddenly I was creating characters, almost a plot. I became fixated by the Spanish notion of the duende, the sense that art can be so intense that one can sense death. It became a show that lived, it breathes and suddenly what had seemed creative in the idea became an act of creation. For perhaps the first time, I felt something of what (here comes a colossal name-drop, sorry) Johnny Depp once said to me about working with Terry Gilliam – “We turn up in the morning and it’s like you have the skeleton there and you throw bits of meat on it and see what monster comes to life”. Excited, I brought in the great actor Henry Goodman (pictured above) and the leading Spanish guitarist Rafael Aguirre, and we had our show – for violin, guitar and actor.

Writing articles, including reviews, has always felt to me like carving a statue – you have your material, your block of marble, and in fashioning a readable piece from it, well, it feels much like sculpting. Books are a bit different. But a play – to be honest I don’t even know that I would call this a play, and most of the words in it are by Lorca and the rest, but it is drama, I know that much. Maybe it’s even a monster, of a kind. Certainly you can’t fully engage with the dark genius of Lorca or the intensity of De Falla without facing them head-on. As the narrator says in the show, “If we are to experience, let us experience…” I did when I wrote the thing. And maybe to be truly creative you must be unflinching. And guess what – I think it’s a better show this way, and something people will want to see. And that’s not only creativity, not only good business sense, it’s artistically honest. All of which feels rather good.

“Lorca’s Songs” is at St John’s, Smith Square in London on Tuesday 11^th June at 7.30pm. For tickets call 020 7222 1061 or visit www.ssjs.org.uk