Tuesday, December 05, 2017

Belatedly, Marnie at ENO

Sasha Cooke as Marnie
Photo: Richard Hubert Smith/ENO

I finally got to see Marnie, Nico Muhly's latest opera, at ENO. Here's my review, for the Critics' Circle website - a second opinion for them, but it seems that I and the other critic were among the few who liked it. But...what's not to like? My quibbles are explained in the review, and are not limited to "Liebfraumilch and soda", but for the most part it was jolly good, for a number of important reasons...

Read the whole thing here. http://www.criticscircle.org.uk/marnie-english-national-opera-2/

Sunday, December 03, 2017

Power cut

Grim reports emanate from the US about an alleged incident involving of one of its leading conductors - James Levine, no less. This is under investigation and in the meantime people must stick to the facts. But here the ISM has released statistics suggesting that 70 per cent - SEVENTY per cent - of self-employed people working in the classical music industry have experienced sexual harassment. This indicates not just a few salacious whispers; it suggests an entrenched, industry-wide problem.

Come hither...
Of course this is far from unique to classical music. I've encountered colleagues in the fields of law, universities, publishing, pretty much everywhere, in which sexual harassment has been a blight on lives and careers for as long as anyone can remember. But there are particular issues in our little corner that make music a particular hot-house.

As far as I can tell, these sexual abuse scandals aren't chiefly about sex. They're about power. They're about those with power over others enjoying wielding that power, and the fact that there's very little to stop them. Where power is an issue, you have to look at who has that power, and what structures, or lack of, are providing it.

Most of the music industry is self-employed. Very few practical musicians in the UK have an actual, salaried, regular-income, full-time job - a few orchestras out of London, but that's about it. Many orchestras, while a primary commitment for their members, are set up so that their members are technically self-employed, which can be artistically a good thing since they can't be ordered not to play in chamber ensembles, not to teach and not to pop off and do a concerto from time to time. But they don't have any employment rights. Get into any form of trouble and employment lawyers will swoop, offering help, but then take one look at your terms and conditions, or lack of, and say: "Oh." Wholly freelance musicians have perhaps an even more difficult situation, though there's more freedom to turn elsewhere if one situation goes pear-shaped.

This doesn't only apply to musicians, of course, and sometimes things are worse when you are employed, because you can't escape as easily. I've been technically freelance since 1993: after working for various magazine companies, each of which treated its staff worse than the last, I decided it was better not to be dependent on one bunch of jerks for an income, but at least spread the load, keep options open and stay at a safe distance. (To say nothing of working from home and avoiding the hellish Open-Plan Office; the latter must surely play some role in the UK's appalling productivity record.) Nearly a quarter-century later I still burn with fury about how certain institutions and individuals behaved, and there are plenty who have it worse than I did.

Why do people behave this way? Why why why? Because they have problems of their own. Because they want to feel powerful. Because they do have a tiny amount of power, and it's the only way they can feel themselves [sorry] experiencing that power. Still, sometimes the psychology behind the larger structures at play can be jolly interesting.

An orchestra, for example, is set up like a classroom. You sit at "desks" in pairs - just like school (or school in the 1970s-80s, at least). You have set, 20-minute breaks after Double Mahler or whatever. There's a Big Person up in front of you, giving the lesson, and you have to be quiet and concentrate on what he/she is telling you to do, and do it, or else your parents will get a Letter (OK, not quite, but you see my point). If the result is an infantilised mentality, it's possibly that pushing the psychological buttons of school makes people regress to the age of 13.

The thing is, those people are adults and should be responsible human beings. But the set-up is not designed for responsible human beings. It's designed - like so much in society - to keep people 'in their place'. At root, it's the same mentality that makes musicians use the trademen's entrance, entrenched across centuries. And so if there are 'personnel problems', it can be difficult to solve them. Few orchestras employ a trained, responsible, personnel manager (or "Human Resources", that hideous '80s term devised to transform people into commodities). The closest thing, usually, is the fixer, but his/her job is more about making sure there are enough violins present to make the requisite sound, rather than stopping them from tearing each others' eyes out. A section leader might be expected to "line-manage" his or her section, but just find me anyone who's OK with that and knows how. They're trained to play music, not to make other people behave themselves. Higher up the tree, individuals who are good at programming seasons or booking fine soloists aren't necessarily comfortable - despite splendid salaries - with facing, investigating and cautioning/firing someone. This seems to be a fundamental weakness in the system.

Other elements in the atmosphere facilitate nefarious goings-on, too. When some managers, record companies, journalists and more focus on how young women look, rather than primarily on how they play, a fervid, charged, sickening atmosphere is encouraged. Basically, this industry can look like it's a pimp to its young women. Why? Sales. Money. And sometimes the women want careers, so they put up with it, and in some cases are even accused of encouraging it themselves. But social media threads (especially "below the line" comments) occasionally turn into something resembling a verbal gang-rape.

This is not just nauseating; it facilitates the normalisation of sexual harassment. It stops those in the industry taking the matter seriously. In a law firm, a harassment situation would be investigated and those responsible held to account. It would be taken seriously, extremely seriously. But in the classical music world, from what friends and contacts have told me, raise the problem and you'd probably get back a snort of derision, advice to watch your own back or a declaration resembling "she were askin' for it, weren't she..."

And so if those who wield the power are people who enjoy misbehaving, it's unlikely that anyone would stop them. There aren't defences. The union's power appears quite limited. In the main, you have to fight back for yourself. But the self-employed person, as we've noted, has no employment rights. When your income can vanish in the twink of an eye, no wonder most people don't dare to speak up.

We need better, stronger structures for musicians. We need stronger unionisation - which means more people joining the union and making it work. We need more solidarity among those in the profession, rather than the every-person-for-themselves mentality that prevails when life is insecure, the field is ferociously competitive and there's an imbalance of supply and demand. We need well formulated, sensible, thorough, up to date codes of personal conduct (pun unintended) in institutions that can hold everyone to account, top dogs included. And we need, urgently, to put an end to the salacious objectification of women musicians and of gay male musicians too.

There will almost certainly be more accusations against more powerful men. As innumerable threads have noted since last night, people in the music industry have been hearing "rumours" about Levine for years. That doesn't make any of it true; rumours are just rumours and you can't go around accusing people on the basis of hearsay. But I can think of several conductors who could be next, people about whom other people have attempted to warn one another for decades. I'd hazard a guess that there'll be more women speaking out, and men too.

As I write, my cats are having a tiff in my doorway. Ricki is bigger than Cosi. He bullies her. He's the bigger animal, so he seems to think he's entitled to unseat her from the best perches, the comfiest cushions, the warmest snooze spots. We try to intervene, but it's difficult to explain to a cat that this is wrong, because they are animals, however cute, and they don't understand. But we are people. We have sophisticated language, philosophy, civilisation, art, comprehension. We have the inherent capacity to rise above base instinct and become fine, enlightened individuals and build fine, enlightened societies. We should be able to do better than animals. Instead, we're doing much, much worse.


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Saturday, December 02, 2017

Doing Papageno, Prospero, Pelléas and Pagliacci proud

I've spent part of this week on tenterhooks, chasing one of the best-loved of all British baritones for an urgent interview deadline. He's appearing as Tonio in I Pagliacci at the Royal Opera House, opening tonight - and something had happened to his arm. But finally 9am Thursday arrived and there on the line was...


Simon Keenlyside
Photo from classical-music.com

...and we had the most fascinating chat. Most of the interview will appear in the magazine of the Musikverein in Vienna, auf Deutsch, but some of it is for right here, right now.


JD: Simon, thank you so much for making time to talk. I heard you've had an arm operation. What happened?


Simon Keenlyside: I fell through a trap door 12 years ago and shattered both arms, though I didn’t know it at the time. The ligaments that hold the bones on had gone. It’s only been the muscles holding it on and one by one they got tired and snapped off - left arm triceps, left arm biceps and I’m sure this is the last one. It usually takes a year to get it back, and in that time I’ve overcompensated with the right arm and it just snaps. 


But you know, in the light of lovely Dima Hvorostovsky passing away, I keep things in perspective. It’s very annoying, I can’t sleep and the pain is big, but it’s just an arm injury, it’s just mechanics. 


Something about people, not just singers: as Dima got older, he got nicer and nicer. He was such a nice man, such a kind man, never mind his wonderful talent. And he had two young children...


JD: Now that the operation's done, how are you enjoying Pagliacci?


SK: Oh, I love it! That aria’s my favourite in the whole baritone repertoire. I think it’s wonderful and beautiful - and actually I love this opera deeply. I used to feel quite offended that wonderful maestri like Muti and Abbado used to consider it "cheap" music. I don’t agree at all, I think it’s a great, great piece. The baritone aria, if you peruse the words, couldn’t be more of a credo for any of us. I just love it. And right now, when my arm is so painful, it upsets me quite a lot because it’s so in keeping with what I’m singing about. Life reflecting art reflecting life reflecting art, chicken and egg in a nutshell. 








JD: You're extraordinarily versatile - you seem to have done everything from Papageno to Pagliacci to Prospero - and that must mean being versatile about productions too. [The ROH's 1950s-realism Cav and Pag production by Damiano Michieletto won an Olivier Award, but hasn't been universally adored - the revival, starting tonight, gives us a chance for another look...] Do you have a preference for modern productions or traditional ones?

SK: Well, I think it would be a mistake to set PellĂ©as et MĂ©lisande in the baroque period - and I don’t like Figaro set after 1930 - because by and large you lose the whole discussion about rights, responsibility and class. The points that are made are about general humanity, but are made through issues of class, and that is lost. If there’s no distinction in class between the Count and Figaro or Don Giovanni, Don Ottavio and Leporello, or what they consider the ordinary people, the servants, Susanna and Figaro, then you can’t make the point. I think that makes it very difficult. It just becomes a toe-tapping evening with nice tunes. 


On the other hand, I’m thrilled to bits when we dispense with the need for Masonic symbolism in The Magic Flute. It’s a distraction. The closed world of the Masons can just as easily be represented, to my mind, by the closed world of, say, banking, or anything that shows a world or society that one man, Papageno, doesn’t want and his friend, Tamino, does want. It represents something - if you get hung up on what a set of compasses represents I think you’ve missed the point. 


Sometimes getting into a diffeernt time period can make it more difficult, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that if you dislike something so much that it makes you miserable, then resign and go home! And if you are going to stay, then please don’t stay and moan the whole time. Help, as far as possible, the director to realise what he/she wants to do. The piece, guess what, will live to fight another day and you’ll get to do your thing another time. And occasionally a little nugget of interest will present itself to you and you can add it to your toy-box of your life’s experience in that role. It’s really interesting. Sometimes it comes from the most unexpected of quarters.


JD: Could you give us an example, please?


SK: Truths for performing artists often reveal themselves viscerally rather than intellectually. For instance, in Flutewe know "in vino veritas" and we know that when the young man [Papageno] is told by the Priest that he’s failed, he’s failed in everything, and he rounds on the Priest and says "But I don’t want anything, I never asked you for anything, all I wanted was a glass of wine and maybe a nice girl. That’s all I wanted!’ and the Priest says ‘That’s really all you ever wanted?’ - in frustration the young man says, "Well, yes, actually." Then he gets his wine, he drinks it and says "wow, wonderful, beautiful, fantastic..." And he says "I wish…I want…what is it that I want?" 


And if you get the timing right as the singer, you will see in the audience a lot of shiny bums on seats shuffling uncomfortably. You will see elbows being nudged into, usually, old men’s sides; you can see the winks and nudges and looks to one another; and as if that wasn’t already rather lovely, you then get ten notes from a man who could have written any melody under the sun, ten notes that are as close to the Marseillaise as we know it now as any notes could be. And if you look at the original scores, which I have, there aren’t even the embellishments. The Marseillaise itself would not have been embellished with its syncopation as it is now, and it was written only shortly before Flute anyway as the European anthem for freedom. 


So I think what Mozart is saying, and I’m certain in this belief in my little truth, he’s saying ‘What is it you want?’. Given Mozart and da Ponte’s whole operatic discourse on freedoms and liberties in Figaro, Giovanni and Così, I think Flute you’d put in the same boat. What is it you want? And there comes the melody from the least threatening instrument imaginable, the glockenspiel, saying again and again: freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom. But not the freedoms of the da Ponte operas. The freedom to be that which you want to be, but at nobody else’s expense. That’s a long-winded answer to your question - but that’s the truth I believe was revealed to me through hundreds of outings. 


The Royal Opera House's Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci opens tonight. Booking here. 



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Monday, November 27, 2017

Flummoxed Monday, plus a recipe

It's been a strange week. Our concerts at Burgh House and the Barnes Music Society went wonderfully. Since then I've listened to 52 different recordings of Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' Sonata (results will be in BBC Music Magazine in January). I've mulled over the tragedy of Hvorostovsky - the news brought back difficult memories since I lost three close family members to cancer too young. I refused to get caught up in the "let's get Mariss Jansons" mob because life is too short. Yesterday I went to hear Imogen Cooper play Beethoven, Haydn, Chopin and Adès at the Chopin Society's series and marvelled particularly at her pure and exhilarating account of Op.110. That was both curative and unforgettable.

So here's a seasonal recipe, which I hope will be curative and possibly unforgettable too. I cooked it for some very dear musical friends the other day after listening to the 'Hammerklavier' ten times, which is why it's called "Beethovenian" - but the golden baked squash, the dusky mushrooms and their strong, concentrated flavours might merit the notion too.


BEETHOVENIAN BAKED BUTTERNUT

1 good-sized butternut or coquina squash
200g pack of cooked, peeled chestnuts (or roast them yourself if you prefer)
1 30g tub dried wild mushrooms
3 tblsp olive oil (or other if preferred)
Several sprigs of fresh thyme
Seasoning

Pre-heat over to 200 degrees. Soak the dried mushrooms in boiling water for about 20 mins, then drain, but keep the tasty mushroomy water to use in a sauce or something. Peel the squash (easiest to do this if you cut it into quarters first), scoop out and discard the seeds. Chop into cubes around 1-2cm. Pour the oil into a baking dish, put in the squash pieces and roll them around until coated. Sprinkle on the thyme. Cover with foil and bake for about half an hour - take the dish out every ten mins or so and turn the pieces over. Chop the chestnuts into halves or quarters as you prefer. When the squash is just about done, add the mushrooms and chestnuts to the baking dish, stir them into the hot thymey oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake for another ten minutes or thereabouts.

This is seriously yummy. We had it as a side-dish to garlicky chicken with a gravy made of the mushroom water, a squeeze of tomato puree, a dash of red wine and a little vegetable stock, boiled up and reduced to concentrate the flavour. But it could be a nice veggie main course in its own right: try adding a herb/pine nut/breadcrumb topping, or a good sprinkling of grated cheese or both.

Bon appetit.


Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Farewell, Hvorostovsky

Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Photo: Pavel Antonov
Tragic news on St Cecilia's Day: the Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky has died at the age of 55 after a long battle with a brain tumour. His office has issued a statement saying that the singer "died peacefully", "surrounded by family", adding: "May the warmth of his voice and his spirit always be with us."

Goodnight to this glorious artist. Cancer is a scourge that robs us prematurely of too many of our best and dearest beings. It has now taken another gem away.

Here is some film of Hvorostovsky's surprise appearance at a gala at the Met in New York in January, singing an extract from Rigoletto.