Marin takes Vienna

Marin Alsop's selfie from the Last Night of the Proms

Heartening news this morning that Marin Alsop has been appointed chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Vienna, despite all the glories of its musical history, has never exactly been renowned for the heights of its progressive gender egalitarianism, so this announcement carries some extra heft. She'll be taking over from Cornelius Meister and will assume the post on 1 September 2019 for an initial three years - and will, of course, be the orchestra's first female chief conductor.

Now we need more splendid conductors who happen to be female to be elevated to prominent posts, where they will be worth their weight in gold both as role models for the future and as musicians in their own right and their orchestras'. Incidentally, there may well be some London orchestra jobs up for grabs in the next few years - one of them appears to have a vacancy right now - and the opportunity will be staring them in the face. Let's hope a manager or two has the foresight to approach the right person.

Jude Kelly, as you know, is leaving Southbank Centre to concentrate her energies on WOW - the Women of the World Festival. In a thoughtful interview with the Guardian the other day, she said it's not enough to be a feminist: you have to do something.

To that end, I've done something very small that I hope will be reasonably useful: I've added a sidebar section here on JDCMB devoted to resources for women in the music world. You can use this as a one-stop-shop to click through to sources of funding like the PRS Foundation's Women Make Music and the Ambache Charitable Trust, courses like RPS Women Conductors, projects like Dallas Opera's Women Conductors Institute and more. I'm on the lookout for links to add, so if you know of one that ought to be there please send it my way, preferably via Facebook or Twitter. This is about organisations that can offer support and development to many, rather than individual artists' websites. But you'll also find there a link to my Women Conductors List (it runs to well over 100 names and sites) and that is always open to updating with individual names. Thanks very much for taking a look.

Thanks, too, for the powerful response to yesterday's shoulder post. I now have recommendations of at least 10 different osteopaths!


If you've enjoyed this post, please support JDCMB at GoFundMe here

Shouldering the pain

I've done something unspeakable to my shoulder. It may be a delayed reaction to the return journey from Johannesburg last week, with bad seat position overnight plus some ungainly moves with a heavy suitcase at Heathrow. Yesterday I spent in a fog of agony and the strongest over-the-counter painkillers Superdrug could provide, thanks to which I managed to attend a wonderful performance of Das Rheingold by the LPO/Jurowski at the Festival Hall, but without much brainpower to respond.

Friends have been kindly suggesting all manner of treatments, but I'm hesitating. That's because the very word "chiropractor" brings back a whopper of a memory from my college days: my sorry year and a half trying to recover from tennis elbow as a music student, in a university that should have known better, in a town that loathed its students on principle.

It's struck me recently - notably in the Hammerklavier project and the Korngold Violin Concerto - that sometimes we don't play the music that's there. Instead, we play our attitude to it, or what we think the right attitude is. It doesn't often do musical expression much good. That's how we get "Beethoven's Hammerklavier: I Respect It But I Don't Love It" performances, as well as deeply destructive "Korngold Is Hollywood Which Is Sentimental, So Let's Add Sugar" recordings. In both cases, the notion could not be further from the composer's intentions. We're not playing Beethoven or Korngold. We're playing our preconceptions about them. Which obviously is a rather rubbish thing to do.

Why is that relevant to sore arms? Well, it shows how our minds sometimes work. It becomes relevant when the attitude being expressed in professional performance is not to a piece of music, but to a person, and the issue is not playing a concerto or sonata, but treating a medical condition. What follows is not to denigrate the thousands of excellent, devoted and disinterested health workers who look after us all in difficult conditions day and night. It is one experience that occurred 30 years ago. I don't know how widespread such experiences are - but it seems unlikely that I'm the only person who ever encountered such a situation.

The correlation of physical to mental health - and, indeed, mental attitude - is powerful and merits the deeper investigation it has received in recent years, but it seems to be still much misunderstood. And it can work both ways. Blame the physical alone and you may miss a psychological component. But any tendency to blame the mind first and foremost would risk missing very real physical issues. In the year and a half I spent trying to recover from my tennis elbow - 1986-87 - I also came down with glandular fever. The first reaction from every practitioner I consulted in that town was that "it's all in the mind". I don't know how they'd reached that conclusion when all I'd said was that I was a second-year music student, I had a sore throat and a chronic fever and my arm hurt. They sent me to the university counselling service. I sat there saying I had a sore throat and a chronic fever and my arm hurt.

If you are a music student in a place notorious for its privilege, where everyone outside those walls - including, it appeared, some GPs and some 'alternative' practitioners - expect those from the university to roll in being entitled and stuck-up, it can be very difficult to get past this expectation. They don't see the actual person. They may not even see the injury. They see what they expect to see.

I tried the Sports Injuries Unit. Yes, there are designated hospital units for people who've sustained injuries pursuing a physical activity such as sport and they'll take remarkably good care of you if you've been playing rugby or rowing or whatever. But for a painful case of tennis elbow acquired through over-assiduous practising of the Chopin 'Revolutionary' Etude, you'd be shoved in a corner with a grudging ice-pack and some slightly ineffectual ultrasound, with tut-tutting because you haven't just injured yourself that day, you've been suffering for weeks (while you tried to get appointments for some treatment), and that's not really in their remit. The psychological message delivered with that ice-pack, surrounded by big chaps with "Football Is Life" t-shirts, is roughly: sports are good and a nice hobby, so we'll support that, but what do you mean music is your life? "I got my sprain playing centre forward. What about you?" "Playing Chopin." "Yer wot?" (The Eighties were a more polite decade than the present one, even at their most objectionable.)

Then I tried a chiropractor. I found myself facing a huge bloke from Yorkshire with a face like bacon and hands like beefsteaks, who said it was all in my neck - and proceeded to make certain that it would be. He should have been a butcher. I've never experienced, before or since, such pain at the hands of another human being (and I know I'm lucky in this respect), let alone someone who charged money for inflicting it. I remember coming out of that session dizzy and nauseous, knocking on the door of the nearest friend in the nearest college and almost passing out on her floor. Perhaps he was a rogue or a quack, I don't know, but I will never, ever try a chiropractor again.

Back in London for the holidays, I went to the family GP who'd known me since I was born. He did a blood test - which the university town GP hadn't done before sending me for counselling - and it revealed a virus of the glandular fever type. For that, there's not much you can do except take fever-reducing pain-killers and rest up with herbal tea. He prescribed anti-inflammatory pills for the arm, which helped a bit, if temporarily, and suggested a cortisone injection. I declined because a violinist in our circle of friends had had a cortisone injection in her arm for a similar problems: a mistake was made and she was left unable to play at all. But through our family GP I should probably have accepted it. I've had cortisone injections since then, carefully prepared by disinterested medical professionals with scans etc, for other problems that cleared up instantly as a result.

Still at home, I tried acupuncture next, doing a reasonable imitation of a porcupine splayed out on a table unable to free itself of its spines. They said it wouldn't hurt. It did. They said it wouldn't bruise. It did: I came out with a plum-and-charcoal-coloured hand. They said it would rebalance the energy to make the pain better. It made it worse. I've often been assured of the wonders of acupuncture since then, by some eminent musicians whose problems have been cured by it, but I think I'll give it a miss.

One day I went into a chemist to look at various on-the-shelf remedies in case I'd missed something. In a little book called 'Homeopathy for the Family' I found a recommendation for "pains in ligaments". I don't actually believe in homeopathy, but as I'd tried almost everything else, I thought I'd give it a whirl. I bought a little bottle of tiny white pills, which cost about £1.50. Two weeks later I was better.

I'm not recommending homeopathy, though. It hasn't worked for me for anything else since. I think the difference here was that at this stage I wasn't putting myself in the hands of people who, due to an institutional loathing of young people who dared to study music and play the piano, had quite possibly set out to make our conditions worse. Such an idea was absolutely unthinkable at the time. But looking back, I can't help wondering if that was the actuality behind the scenes.

My heart goes out to musicians who are suffering physical injuries and navigating minefields as they seek a solution. Today, three decades on from my experiences, the understanding of music as a physical pursuit that can give rise to physical injuries has been transformed and institutions such as the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine, Help Musicians UK, the ISM and the Musicians' Union, as well as the conservatoires themselves, are brilliantly organised and supportive if you are unlucky enough to need treatment, advice, counselling or financial aid for time off. But it's sobering to think that after 30 years, I am still angry about what happened to me then.

Meanwhile, I don't know what I've done to my shoulder, but I am leaving it to voltarol and co-codamol for a few days and will avoid heavy lifting for a week or two. At least now I don't have to practise the 'Revolutionary' Study.


If you've enjoyed this post, please support JDCMB at GoFundMe

Sounds of Silence - a guest post for Holocaust Memorial Day, by Jack Pepper

It's Holocaust Memorial Day and our occasional Youth Correspondent, Jack Pepper, has sent me an article for the occasion. When many of us feel lost for words even today, facing such horror, Jack (who's 18) has encapsulated the pain of these memories most eloquently. Over to him...

JD

Sounds of Silence

Jack Pepper

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day and we should reflect on the tragic loss of musical talent amongst the millions who were slaughtered – a loss that amounts to more than a statistic

Having visited Auschwitz-Birkenau myself, it became clear that we can never truly comprehend what happened there. Although we musicians are eager to speak of the undeniable power of music to heal and bring hope, our art could do little to ultimately save the lives of so many talented musicians in the Holocaust. That is perhaps what makes it so shocking. The Nazi machine did not care for expression, talent, potential or individuals. Music is perhaps the ultimate expression of our humanity – an “outburst of the soul”, as Delius put it – and so it seems to me symbolic that even music could not truly act against what happened. Music is the strongest form of expression, something which touches people of all cultures and backgrounds; it is a sign of the monstrosity of the Holocaust that even music was powerless to prove to the perpetrators that their victims were normal human beings. When music fails, emotion has failed. The “soul” has been suppressed.

For Holocaust Memorial Day, 27 January – the day that Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated – it is right that we reflect upon the individual stories of those who were so cruelly taken away. The Holocaust aimed to dehumanise Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, Poles and the disabled. In a 21^st-century democracy that respects the freedom of individuality, we remember those killed in the Holocaust not as a vast number, not as a statistic, but as individual human beings.

A human being like Viktor Ullmann. Killed in Auschwitz in October 1944, Ullmann’s work could not escape his circumstances. His chamber opera, Der Kaiser von Atlantis, was also called The Abdication of Death; the plot describes how death has been overworked, and chooses to go on strike. Sections of the libretto were written on the back of deportation lists to Auschwitz.

A human being like Alma Rosé. The niece of Gustav Mahler and the daughter of violinist Arnold Rosé, for ten months Alma was placed in charge of the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz. When she first conducted the ensemble, the average age of its players was just 19: one year older than me. Rosé insisted on the highest possible standards of performance, rehearsing the orchestra for ten hours daily. Justifying such hours was not difficult: “If we don’t play well, we’ll go to the gas”, said Rosé. She died in April 1944. The orchestra was disbanded by October.

A human being like Pavel Haas. Composing whilst working in his father’s shoemaking business before the War, Haas received the Smetana Foundation Award for his opera, Šarlatán (The Charlatan). For this work, Haas collaborated with a German writer, which – since he was a Jewish composer – had been forbidden by the Nuremberg Laws. To avoid difficulties, Haas changed the German-sounding name of the opera’s main character to its Czech equivalent. After its premiere in 1938, the opera was not performed on stage again until 1998. Having been interned in Theresienstadt, Nazi propaganda films showed Haas taking a bow after inmates had performed one of his operas; having been filmed for this propaganda, Haas was taken to Auschwitz. According to conductor Karel Ančerl, who was sent to Auschwitz with Haas but survived beyond the War, upon arriving at the camp both musicians stood side by side. Ančerl was about to be selected to go to the gas chambers, and at that moment Haas coughed. As a result, Haas was selected instead.

A human being like Robert Dauber, who was just 23 years old when he died of typhoid in Dachau. Unlike Ullmann’s chamber opera, many of the works Dauber completed whilst imprisoned make little or no reference to his position in a camp. Music, presumably, was an escape. 

Gideon Klein
Photo: Orel Foundation

A human being like Gideon Klein, who had been forced to abandon his plans to study at university once the Nazis had closed off higher education to Jews in Czechoslovakia. He gave his manuscripts to his partner in the camp shortly before his death, a poignant example of how music can so quickly become a memorial, a testament to an entire life of work. 

A human being like Carlo Taube, who before the War had made a living playing the piano in cafes in Vienna and Prague. He, his wife and his child were all deported to Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944. None of them survived.

These were all real people. They had such lives ahead; Ullmann had studied with Schoenberg, Haas with Janáček, Taube with Busoni. Imagine what the musical world would be like without the teachers; no Schoenberg, Janáček or Busoni. Nobody knows who their pupils could have gone on to become. An entire future was destroyed, numerous possibilities denied. Their stories are far more than a list of anecdotes for an article, far more than a shocking statistic. These were all real people.

Perhaps most disturbing is that the perpetrators enjoyed music too. Hitler famously idolised the work of Wagner, whilst Maria Mandel - the SS Officer who created the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz and who is believed to have been complicit in over 500,000 deaths - particularly favoured Madame Butterfly. Shockingly, the perpetrators were all real people, too.

There are many stories that shock a modern-day reader, we who are used to (and perhaps take for granted) the comforts and luxuries of modern life. This Holocaust Memorial Day, we should remember the individuals behind the statistics – the human stories the Nazis sought to destroy – and, in doing so, we ensure that the aims of the Holocaust are never realised. Seeking to destroy the humanity of the prisoners, instead the humanity was only magnified. The existence of music in such desperate circumstances proves that, despite the evil, somewhere there was decency. Emotion. Empathy. Although music could not prevent such savagery, its existence reminds us that despite chaos, killing and suffering, some people, somewhere, maintain a flicker of humanity.  

JP

WORDS AS MUSIC

If you're around north London on 10 February, please join me and my fellow musical Unbounders Tot Taylor (author, The Story of John Nightly, and record producer extraordinaire), Lev Parikian (author, Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear?, and conductor) and Miranda Gold (author, Starlings and A Small, Dark Quiet) to discuss those glittering, magical realms in which music and literature intersect. MAP Studio Café, 45 Grafton Road, London NW5 3DU. Tickets: 020 7916 0545.

Tchaikovsky wears Prada

I'm back from my travels and have hit the ground running - notably to the Barbican last night for a stunning concert by the Filarmonica della Scala and Riccardo Chailly with Benjamin Grosvenor as piano soloist, and this morning to Cobham to give a coffee-talk in the library (hence only posting this mid-afternoon).

I've reviewed the Milanese concert for The Arts Desk:

Chailly at La Scala.
Photo: Brescia e Amisano, Teatro della Scala

You could probably guess from the assembling audience that the orchestra making its Barbican debut last night came from Milan. That many mink coats rarely congregate in a London concert hall. And under the baton of Riccardo Chailly, its music director, the Filarmonica della Scala – vastly more than the house band of Italy’s most famous opera house – delivered an evening of luxurious sophistication, dressing over-familiar repertoire in haute couture that made some otherwise much-maligned masterpieces shine out like Cinderella on her way to the ball...

Read the rest here.  And I promise never, ever to grumble about Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony again.

More Tchaikovsky: if you're following my Swan Lakeian progress, you'll enjoy an article which was absolute treat for me to write. For the Royal Opera House Magazine I visited the Royal Ballet offices and talked to director Kevin O'Hare, choreographer Liam Scarlett and designer John Macfarlane about the new production of the ballet, the first the company has created for around 30 years. They've now put the piece on the website, so here it is.

Marianela Nuñez & Vadim Muntagirov in their new Swan Lake costumes
Photo: Bill Cooper, (c) ROH 2017

Challenges for a ballet company can scarcely be greater than staging a new production of Swan Lake. It’s everyone’s idea of the perfect classical ballet, almost ubiquitously familiar, along with its glorious Tchaikovsky score, and perhaps the bigger the ballet company, the bigger the challenge becomes. Now The Royal Ballet is about to unveil an ambitious new version of the story of Prince Siegfried and Odette, the doomed swan princess, from choreographer Liam Scarlett – its first for 30 years. 

‘We want it to feel like a big, opulent Swan Lake that could only be by The Royal Ballet,’ says The Royal Ballet’s director Kevin O’Hare. The corps de ballet of swans will wear tutus, not the longskirted dresses they were previously assigned – another feature that hints at the classic status O’Hare is hoping for. ‘I think everyone deserves a chance to take a fresh look at the great classics,’ he comments. ‘Of course there’s an emotional wrench in saying goodbye to Anthony Dowell’s production, as so many of our dancers have grown up on it or performed in it as children. But it’s important to refresh things every so often. This production has been a long time in the making and we’re very excited about it.’...

The rest is here.

And meanwhile the funding for Meeting Odette has now reached a very hopeful 59 per cent thanks to some extraordinarily generous pledges this week for which I am profoundly grateful (you can, of course, place your own pledge here and help to make the book happen).