'Hello, George? Orchestre de Paris here....'

The other week, conductor George Jackson's account of his last-minute close encounter with the LSO, some lost Ubers and a banana case became my fourth most popular post ever on JDCMB (behind only the London Hamburger Orchestra, the story of Enescu and an interview with the divine Cecilia). So when he called up and said 'You're not going to believe what happened the other day', I thought he'd better tell us about it.... JD

Remember the Horse...

George Jackson to the rescue, once again

George Jackson
Photo: A.P. Wilding

It’s another Sunday morning, but this time, a more civilised 10:30am. And it’s Easter.  I have had an interesting weekend, beginning with fulfilling my role as ‘best man’ for a good friend (go-karting in Tower Bridge and a barbecue-style feast in East London for the stag) and complemented by listening to my local church choir singing the gorgeous Fauré Requiem for Easter Saturday.

I am sipping coffee and very slowly packing my case for a week in Paris, this time, working with my mentor, Daniel Harding, as second conductor for the gargantuan Ives Fourth Symphony (which requires three conductors).  I decide to check-in with the maestro by text, since he likes us to meet half an hour or so before each rehearsal in the Conductor’s Room.

A reply: ‘George, I have an ear infection.  The doctor just told me not to fly and that my antibiotics might clear my ear in 3-5 days. I’m so sorry.  Not sure what the orchestra will decide to do. I’m going to get back to you ASAP.  You might have to take over the concert’.

Shit.

But then of course, I had just convinced my sister that her car had been stolen during the night (April Fool’s!)  So this must be another one of those.  It’s a damn good one!

Daniel confirms, via sad face emoticon, that it is not an April Fool’s….

‘Would you be willing to step in?’

I am fondly reminded of that Eddie Redmayne story, á la Joey Tribbiani.  ‘Yes!  I can ride a horse for the part.  Of course’. Always say yes.

So I do.

Seventy-five per cent of me still thinks this is an April Fool’s, and 25% is flooded with adrenaline. ‘Expect a call’...

The remaining 75% becomes adrenaline as the Orchestre de Paris’s management call within minutes, asking me how I feel, and whether, alongside taking over the main conducting of the Ives, I can also conduct the other concert items: Jonathan Harvey’s ‘Wheel of Emptiness’ with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and Jörg Widmann’s clarinet concerto ‘Echo Fragments’, which features the composer as soloist, and a mixed ensemble of Orchestre de Paris and Les Arts Florissants, pitted at opposite ends of the stage in a kind of orchestral time machine.  It’s a beautifully conceived concert, featuring all three orchestras performing side-by-side.

Remember the horse!

About an hour later, I am in Luton Airport’s branch of Wasabi.  I must be the first customer to inhale their (frankly, delicious) 'Chicken katsu yakisoba bento’ whilst poring over an A1 score of an Ives symphony (there is still a small soy sauce stain in the top corner of the second movement, page 46).  I am sure the other customers think I am rather odd.

Given my illustrious history of Uber mishaps, I am amazed that, having collected my luggage, an Uber is outside Charles de Gaulle within minutes, and we are speeding our way to Pantin, the Philharmonie’s neighbourhood in north-east Paris.

At the hotel, the first room I am given features a man in a dressing gown cooking pasta and watching Formula 1.  A quick trip back to reception confirms that they did give me the wrong room.  New key card for the room next door: that doesn’t work.  Three return trips to reception (and four flights of stairs each time), and I finally get a fresh room.  The Orchestra have very kindly left scores at reception for the pieces I have not yet seen, the Harvey and the Widmann.

I am sitting down at the desk by 6pm, opening up the scores, prioritising for the next day’s schedule (Ives in the morning, Harvey in the evening).

I break for a shower, where I count from 1 to 100 and recite the alphabet in French (that GCSE finally came in useful).  In a rehearsal situation comprising of about 150 on stage (the Ives features a large chorus too), it will be really important to make sure everybody understands clearly where we are starting from.

I doze off for about 90 minutes in the small hours, powered through the night by the adrenaline high.  The alarm officially wakes me at 8 to go into the Philhamonie for the first reading at 10.  I walk
through the deserted streets (it’s Easter Monday after all), track down a bakery where I order a double espresso and a very fresh Pain au chocolat.  Like the Pilgrim in Hawthorne’s ‘Celestial Railroad’, which forms the basis of Ives’ Symphony, I trudge towards the horizon, Jean Nouvel’s spiraling aluminium forming a curtain to open the week to come.

It’s going to be a wild ride….
GJ

Psst, Kaufmaniacs: Tristan alert

Jonas Kaufmann is singing Tristan und Isolde, Act 2, in concert this week with Camilla Nylund (soprano), the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons. The New York Times has a sneak preview video, plus an interview by Joshua Barone. The singing sounds quite good.

Kaufmann.
Photo: Gregor Hohenberg/Sony Classical

NYLUND It’s actually very dangerous to drive a car and listen. You always drive much too fast. [She's not wrong - JD]

NELSONS A few conductors have died during “Tristan.” The reason is Act II. It might seem relaxing, but actually the heartbeat and the intensity and level of excitement — it’s so high that you can’t stand it for a long time. So I don’t want yet to die, but I might.

KAUFMANN Do it on Saturday, so at least we’ve done one concert.

Antonio Lysy: a tribute to his father, Alberto

Handing the cyberspace today to the wonderful cellist Antonio Lysy, son of the now legendary violinist Alberto Lysy (1935-2009). Antonio's projects today include being co-artistic director of the Incontri in Terra di Siena festival in Italy, teaching at UCLA and exploring a range of glorious music in creative formats, from Bach to Piazzolla.

Back in 2001 Alberto and Antonio recorded the Kodály Duo for violin and cello together. This recording was released for the first time just a few weeks ago. Hungarian as Kodály may be, the album is in fact called South America and features works by Piazzolla, Villa-Lobos, Coco Trivisonno and more - paying tributes to Antonio's multifarious background and influences. The South American repertoire is irresistibly seductive and atmospheric, while the Kodály, performed with tremendous intensity, bravura and sensitivity, is more than a treat and a half. In this guest post, Antonio tells us about the coaching his father received from Yehudi Menuhin and Zoltan Kodály himself.

Alberto and Antonio (aged 18) Lysy
Photo courtesy of Yarlung Records

FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH

A guest post by Antonio Lysy

I first heard my father playing the Kodaly Duo for violin and cello when I was 15. It made me really want to learn it with him, but his proclamation was, “No, it’s too difficult Tonino. Maybe in a few years… when you have hair on your chest.”

 

A few years later, I got my hands on the part when I was studying at the Yehudi Menuhin School.  I practiced so hard to prove him wrong, and brought it to his attention strategically, during the summer vacation. He was suitably impressed, which was a rare occurrence, and my father agreed to play it with me (I can’t remember if he checked my chest hair). We worked on it little by little, tenaciously. Little did I know it was to become the piece my father and I would perform most frequently together.

 

As the young protegé of Yehudi Menuhin, my father learned this work for a performance at Villa I Tatti, in Fiesole outside of Florence, with the Spanish virtuoso Gaspar Cassadò in 1958. Zoltán Kodály himself was staying in Florence at the time, creating a unique opportunity for the musicians to work with the composer in preparation for the performance. My father told me what Kodály shared with him and Cassadò.  The composer inspired them on so many levels and they fell in love with the work.  My father’s first main stage performance was with Jacqueline du Pré at the Sermoneta Pontino Festival south of Rome in 1963.  

 

This rhapsodic piece is infused, as most of Kodály’s works, with a deeply-rooted folk style, emanating from his well-known ethnographic research, collected from the countryside of his native Hungary. As he coached my father and Cassadò he often spoke of limitations in notating the music. “You just have to know the style, and recreate the improvisatory nature of the rustic, or gypsy, folk traditions. I can’t write that out even if I tried. You may want to improvise, adding some of those short cadenza-like repeated notes, or play fewer notes there, depending on your mood,” my father remembered him saying.  In other passages, the opposite was true: “Here you have to be extremely precise - I have written it this way for performers to do strictly what is written.”  While these directives may sound contradictory at first, they become clear after one has studied the music carefully.  Kodály’s varied, yet structured musical language unites the rigid and flexible sections harmoniously to create a masterpiece.

As Alberto’s son, I was thus introduced to this work through a unique aural tradition, learning a different musical language and intricate subtleties practically from the horse’s mouth. This was a privilege I knew not to take for granted, and a lesson about teaching music which I have carried with me ever since.

 

I value these aural traditions all the more dearly now, whenever they emerge, working from the source.  I take pleasure in passing them on to the next generation when teaching my own students. Speaking and writing about them is important, but communicating convincingly through the music itself is the ultimate goal. 

 

We recorded the Duo in 2001 just before my father injured his left hand. We used Paul Sutin’s studio in Switzerland.  Having by then played it so often, we felt it was now time to record it. This recording is a loving tribute to my father and what I learned from him. I am very proud to share it, as a crowning of the efforts that went into its making.  Bob Attiyeh and I give our thanks to Paul Sutin and to the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music for letting engineer Eric Swanson and me edit the takes in the new Evelyn and Mo Ostin Music Center.  As with the cello choir tracks on this album, we used Arian Jansen’s SonoruS Holographic Imaging technology to mix the recording into the form you can now enjoy. 

     AL

The recording is available from Yarlung Records, here.

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Sheku and BBCYM flying high

Lovely, that! Sheku Kanneh-Mason playing his own cello version of No Woman, No Cry, which features on his smash-hit debut album Inspiration. I don't need to remind anyone that it was the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition 2016 that launched him out of Nottingham straight into the nation's musical heart.

Now it's time once again for the BBC Young Musician of the Year, which this year celebrates its 40th anniversary. Gearing up for it, a TV documentary on BBC 4 last night explored the stories of the three young stars who emerged last time: Sheku himself plus saxophonist Jess Gillam and horn player Ben Goldscheider. It also traces the competition's history with memories from those who took part - Nicholas Daniel, Natalie Clein, Alison Balsom and more - and many more. I was honoured to be among the commentators.

I well remember when it all began, and as a musical child of sorts I was much exercised to realise, thanks to my own peer group, just how far behind them I was. Seeing the likes of Nicholas Daniel, Tasmin Little and all the rest of them on the TV was a tremendous inspiration - so much so that I even insisted on trying to take up the oboe when I was 13. It was a total disaster, but got me out of hockey lessons for a year.

One hasn't always been exactly uncritical of the format and presentation of the series, which at times has veered too much towards TV for the sake of it and too little towards the actual music - but the 2016 edition was a massive improvement and I'm looking forward to seeing what transpires this year.

You can catch up with last night's programme on the BBC iPlayer here (UK only): https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09xzsbm/bbc-young-musician-forty-years-young


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Well, that was fun.

I'm not becoming a conductor. That was an April Fool's joke. I've said a kindly version of 'gotcha' quite a few times in the past 24 hours, though. In this delightful age, it often seems that many people are ready to believe pretty much anything, and the best thing about April Fool's Day is that it reminds us we have to weigh up the likelihood of what we read being true, or otherwise, on all the other 364 days of the year as well.

I'd love to be a conductor, but as you need a brain the size of Africa, a skin of titanium and the stamina of a super-marathon runner to cope with that profession, I think it's unlikely to happen. It's a friendly dream, a personal fairy-tale.

The whole world is based on fairy-tales, though. Everyone believes in some of their own, whether pre-set religion, nationalism or the magic of music. That's partly why I'm so fascinated by them generally, and that's one reason I'm working on Meeting Odette (which you can pre-order and be thanked for supporting here, and I'd be extremely grateful if you did) and will be spending quite a lot of time with various others over the next several years. My "career" is undergoing some changes. Just not one involving a podium.

PS - this time last year the London Hamburger Orchestra was also an April Fool's joke. They are not moving to Hamburg. (Though I still think it wouldn't be such a bad idea if they did.)