Rites of publishing...

UPDATE 3.35pm: OH MY GOD, it's already up on Amazon.co.uk! You can pre-order RITES OF SPRING here right now!

The bound proofs of RITES OF SPRING arrived yesterday. Bound proofs, in case you've never met any, look like normal paperback books but are actually a kind of mock-up, less polished and requiring correction, but useful for advance promotion, book fairs, sales of foreign rights etc. It's the nearest thing I've seen yet, though, to My Novel In Print. Publication date for the hardback is scheduled for 13 March (they promise me it's not a Friday) and paperback should, I hope, be sometime in May. My agent will be taking her bundle of these to the Frankfurt Book Fair in a couple of weeks' time.

For the moment, I'm staring at the spine of this almost-book that bears my name, the title and the immortal words HODDER & STOUGHTON, trying to get my head around the fact that I've 'done it' . I have to try, however, not to look inside at the text because every time I do, I find something I want to change. And now I can't.

"Artistic fulfillment", for want of a better expression, is very different in writing from that of music. A musician works for weeks, months, sometimes years towards a performance: then, on the day, you're on the spot, producing the goods and feeling the energy coming back to you from people listening. In writing, however long you work on something, when you finally release it to its audience, all you can do is sneak an occasional glance at them while they're reading and say daft things like, "Where are you up to?", "Do you still like it?" or "You know that bit where....well, do you think it's believable?" The immediacy of emotion that you feel in performance is missing; on the other hand, if you've written well enough, the impression you convey has a much better chance of being what you set out to convey in the first place. And unlike a concert, the book on the shelf will be there forever. It's a tad scarey to reflect that RITES OF SPRING will be gathering dust in a library somewhere long after I'm pushing up the daisies........

Read this one aloud

A chicken goes into a library, goes up to the librarian and says: "Book."

"Ah?" thinks the librarian. "A chicken wants a book?" She pushes a book over the counter to the chicken, who tucks it under one wing and goes out.

An hour later the chicken is back, pushes the book over the counter with its beak and says to the librarian: "Book book." The librarian gives it two books. It tucks one under each wing and heads off again.

Two hours later the chicken comes back, gives her back the two books and says: "Bookbookbookbookbookbookbook...bookbookbookbookbook" So the librarian gives it a whole pile of books. The chicken balances the books on its back between its wings and goes away.

At the end of the afternoon, the chicken comes back with all the books and returns them to the librarian. She's very surprised. "Hey," she says, "for a chicken you certainly get through a lot of books."

"Oh," says the chicken, "they're not for me. I've been getting them for my friend, the frog. But every time I give him a book he says: 'Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it."

hanging in there

Combination of lifting suitcases, sitting in cars for too long and worrying about the new book seems to have done in my back, yet again. Hence lack of recent posts, and, no doubt, of current coherence. I made it to half an hour of the LPO's rehearsal at the Royal Albert Hall yesterday but couldn't face sitting through a three-hour concert, so went home and MISSED WYNTON MARSALIS, about which I'm none too happy.

The LPO is touring Britain with Marsalis & his New York jazz band & a gospel choir in a big piece for big forces that he's written called ALL RISE. The orchestra is seriously excited about it - Tom says it's one of the best things he's ever done. I love big band jazz and was looking forward to hearing them in action - but the chairs in the Albert Hall eventually sent me and my lower back home for a hot bath instead. Watching the rehearsal - during which the unlikely combination of Kurt Masur and Marsalis proved quite an original team - was better than nothing, though.

Personally, however, I do have issues with the question of mingling jazz and classical playing in this way. I kept wishing the choir would shut up so we could hear the jazzers. It's a perennial question in the music magazines: do such joint-force efforts, whether with world music or jazz or pop, create something new and stimulating and inspiring, or do they water down their originals into some kind of three-legged hybrid that doesn't quite work? I always try to take the first view, but do sometimes find myself landing with the second despite myself. What do people think about this?

You can see the show in Manchester tomorrow (Tuesday) and Glasgow on Wednesday.

j'adore la France...

Hi folks, back to business as usual after long-awaited week on summer hols in the south of France. Coming back to London after basking on the Cote d'Azur is a bit like Dorothy going back into Kansas from Munchkinland - in many respects! - but mainly in terms of the weather. There is something very, very GREY about England. All the colours are pastel, muted, mild, and just that little bit nondescript. Mediterranean colours are truly colourful...We saw Nice, St Tropez, the Ile de Porquerolles, Aix-en-Provence, Grasse (where they make all the perfumes) and several adorable little towns with markets to die for. What is better, in life, than feasting on freshly baked olive bread, a selection of French cheese, locally grown tomatoes, marinated olives a la provencal, fresh melon and white nectarines and a delicious bottle of local plonk that would probably sell for 12 quid in Waitrose??!? Even arguments in the car couldn't dampen things (I belong to the "I think it was that one" school of navigation...).

Will pick up the musical pieces very soon. In Provence we listened to Ravel, Canteloube, Poulenc, Faure, Berlioz and, um, Brahms. (Who wasn't French. But imagine if he had been..........)

Meanwhile I have October issue cover features in not only BBC Music Mag and About the House, but also The Strad - interview with the truly gorgeous Nikolaj Znaider.

Listening & reading

My friends are busy and so am I! Some news, some things to listen to, some to watch out for, some to read...

Leon McCawley has a new CD out: actually, three new CDs. It's the complete piano music of Hans Gal, a much-neglected figure who fled the Nazis and settled in the UK. He is also neglected, of course, because he insisted on writing beautiful music during the wrong part of the 20th century. He also wrote some excellent books on Schubert and Brahms, inspired by the fact that so few books on music were being written by authors who were musicians themselves. I sense a kindred spirit. Unfortunately he proved too obscure for most of my editors, but I urge you to hear the music. Avie Records has a special offer on this release at the moment.

If you're in northern France, Philippe Graffin's festival Consonances de St Nazaire is now underway and runs the length of this week. Philippe is an expert at creative programming, but this year he's really pulled out all the stops. I wonder whether any British festival could get away with what he's cooked up? Have a look...

Speaking of festivals, pianist Lucy Parham is putting together a Schumann Festival to celebrate the anniversary year about to hit us. It will be held in the Cadogan Hall in Chelsea in February and as well as an orchestral concert with the Royal Philharmonic, a Lieder recital and a coffee concert on Sunday morning, it will include my 'Beloved Clara', with Lucy joined by actors Joanna David and Timothy West. Lucy's website includes a designated Schumann Festival page, but this is currently still in development.

Also at Cadogan, Tasmin Little will be playing Nicholas Maw's fantastic violin concerto on 10 November, in a concert celebrating the compser's 70th birthday.

And on 25 September Roxanna Panufnik's new work for singers and orchestra, The Hare and the Tortoise - her third setting from Vikram Seth's Beastly Tales - will be premiered at the Windsor Festival by the City of London Sinfonia - more details here.

Stuff of mine coming up soon (no online links yet, sadly): all those singers are beginning to appear in print! The interview with Placido Domingo about Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac, and much more, is out now in ABOUT THE HOUSE, the Royal Opera House's magazine (free to friends but also available in the ROH shop). Interview with Jose Cura should be out in the Indy this week sometime. Interview with Barbara Bonney (remember that Salzburg trip?!) should be out any minute, the cover feature for BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE's October edition.

Rome, sweet Rome

There's been a good reason for my blogland silence this week. I've been in Rome. Almost didn't come back.

When Dorothy taps her ruby slippers together and says the magic words, I reckon we all misheard her. What she should be saying is "there's no place like Rome..." That city has an atmosphere like nowhere else on earth. Part of it is the climate, part the history, part sheer beauty. Yes, the traffic is crazy - basically anarchy - and you take your life in your hands whenever you cross a road. But after dark, you're in another world, entirely gold and black and floodlit and shining. Who wants to go to sleep when you can be out in warm, fresh air, gazing at gleaming Roman ruins, enjoying the finest Italian food and sipping Chianti with friends? Not many Romans, it would seem, because the place buzzes until the wee hours.

I somehow associate Rome with freedom, revival, renewal and some kind of inner release that, when I was last there years & years ago, allowed me to get on the back of a Vespa with a strange Italian man and ride through the city's cobbled roads past the floodlit Colosseum at 1am...those were the days...

I went to the Eternal City this time to interview Signora Bartoli about her new album of Italian baroque arias, Opera Probita. The launch event began with a concert in an extraordinary church in the Forum; later, dinner on a roof terrace by candlelight. We did the interview in a building that looks out across the ruins of the Forum, knowing that Handel could have stood on the same spot, drinking in the same sight, nearly 300 years ago.

The album will be out at the end of next month & Cecilia will be giving a concert of this repertoire in London, at the Barbican, in December, for which I recommend begging, borrowing or even buying a ticket at your first possible opportunity. Before then, she'll be in the States, so I urge everyone across the Pond to run to hear her as well. There's a touch of genius about this woman. What a voice. What a personality. What musicianship.

There'd probably be a touch of genius about anyone who could make me rave about an evening of Italian baroque opera accompanied by period instruments. Normally I run a mile from such things, probably because I had it rammed down my throat ad nauseam at university. The other night, however, I was on the edge of my seat all the way through and afterwards was almost ready to go and hug Marc Minkowski and all his Musiciens du Louvre as well. I even elected, later on, to listen to a recording of a counter-tenor (Scholl, naturally), and liked it when I did. This is getting serious!

But would it sound the same away from Rome? South West London is a bit short of ruins and even the antipasti in our local supermarket ain't quite the same......

Last Night blues

This is really a response to John's comments on the 'Still Here' post. I started writing it as a Comments reply, but it was getting too long!

John, please don't worry AT ALL about thinking of New Orleans, as I've been thinking of it very much myself, as have we all in the UK. Something I find upsetting from this distance, though, is that we don't know what is really going on, or why. We rely entirely on news reports that may give an accurate picture, but equally well may not. Clive Davis (see link in blogroll) has some interesting remarks on this subject. Personally, I find it sobering to think that if the disaster in New Orleans had been the result of a terrorist attack, not a hurricane, the administration's response might have been very different...

Last Night of the Proms 2001 was a total washout. Sadly, it's also the only one I've ever been to!! I don't know what else they could have done at the time; the shock waves hadn't even begun to die down and the conductor was American (Leonard Slatkin). I didn't find the event itself either appropriate or memorable - I can't even remember what they played, except the Barber Adagio, and it was only four years ago. Still, nobody was in the mood for the usual sing-song, that's for sure. Yesterday, though, when Paul Daniel remarked that the season had begun at 'a difficult time for London' - ie, just after the Tube bombing - the Last Night was, ironically enough, what we needed in order to start feeling positive once again about who we, collectively, are.

We're not as good at that here in the UK as you are in America. We mostly accept, and value, all the official stuff about diversity - 'our strength is our diversity', and such like - and there is a great deal in this (it beats the hell out of its opposite!). For the most part, we're a successful multicultural society, at least here in London. But actually our strength is not our diversity. It's the unity formed by our diversity, which is slightly different. There aren't a great many traditions to celebrate this. Normally I run a mile from 'jingoism' - one reason I've never been to a Last Night of the Proms except for 2001. But yesterday, I enjoyed it without cringeing, probably for the first time ever.

A few Last Night confessions:
I don't know the words to Land of Hope and Glory, or the second verse of the National Anthem;
I DO know the words to Jerusalem, but mainly because I love the film 'Chariots of Fire' so much;
These days I get a lump in my throat watching 6000 people loving every moment of a piece by Elgar;
I slightly object to all the local folk-song sing-songs that have sprung up as a recent addition via rainy open-air events - why not 'On Ilkey Moor B'at' 'at', 'London Pride' and 'The Keel Row' while we're about it? Where will it end?!?
I feel sad watching it, but that's mainly because it means it's the end of summer;
I normally loathe counter-tenors, but yesterday I thought that Andreas Scholl was the Best Thing Ever On Earth!
Last but not least, I missed the Korngold and the Lambert because I was finishing the first draft of Novel No.2. Yes!! It's done! Now the REAL work on it will begin...

Quote of the day

"I LOVE THE LAST NIGHT OF THE PROMS"
------- Gordon Brown, Chancello of the Exchequer, interviewed on BBCTV's Sunday Morning by Andrew Marr

Still here....

I'm still here, kind of, but frazzled in the midst of a lot of diffferent trips. Lucerne last week. Rome this week, to interview another wonderful singer. Then home for four days, during which time I have to interview Yet Another Singer - what's going on with all these singers?!? I'll have met something like six of the best, so to speak. And I am trying frantically to finish the first draft of Novel No.2 before going on holiday to France the week after. So please forgive lack of blogging at the moment...

...and don't forget to tune in to the Last Night of the Proms tonight - it will feature KORNGOLD, no less, with the second half beginning with the suite from The Sea Hawk. Oh yes! Yes! Yes! About time too. Also, watch out for wonderful Paul Lewis playing Lambert's The Rio Grande, something one doesn't hear every day (though after reading Meredith Daneman's fantastic biography of Margot Fonteyn and seeing Tony Palmer's South Bank Show two-parter about her a few weeks back, I'll never view Lambert in quite the same way again...).

That cat...

A nice surprise yesterday, when BBC Radio Ulster invited me to be interviewed by phone on their 'Sounds Classical' programme with John Teale. They wanted to trail next weekend's Proms in the Park - there's a good big event in Belfast - and someone had stumbled across my Indy article on the nightmares musicians experience during outdoor performances.

So at a quarter to eight John phoned, we chatted over some Venezuelan guitar music and then the interview began. It was just long enough to bring out the story about the harpist and the birdshit and to explain what can happen to valuable musical instruments in extreme temperatures; and long enough, too, for Solti the cat to decide that since he's the resident conductor, he ought to be included. Solti has a miaow loud enough to be heard through the piano and violin being played together, so if he's in the room while I'm on the phone, winding round my ankles and protesting at full volume, everybody gets to know about it. I think that yesterday evening, the whole of Belfast met Solti.

So, any musicians who have trouble with birds at open-air concerts should stop and reflect: it could be worse. It could be cats.

Ciao tutto...

My blog stat measurer tells me that we've had a mysterious rush of hits in Italy, all looking at the photo of the Vuillaume Octobass.

Che cosa sta accadendo?

I hope that's correct. I got it from altavista's Babelfish translator...just wanted to ask what's going on?

Not that my stat counter is particularly reliable. It's under the opinion that Zakinthos is in the UK, that Hyderabad is in Italy, that anyone using AOL is in America even when they're in Europe and that I live in York (north of Watford? Moi?!). Still, it's enjoyable to do the detective work: pondering why some total stranger would be musing over Faure's quoted thought, who's looking for me in the BBC (a phone call solved that one) and how disappointed certain seekers will be when their search on a famous musician's name and the word 'gay' returns them a "no" somewhere from cyberspace.

Blogday!

According to the wonderful Drew McManus, 31 August 2005 is Blogday - a chance for bloggers to recommend other bloggers to our readership. Having been tapping away on Blogspot for a year and a half, I'm still amazed that we've invented a uniquely 21st-century medium with astounding international potential. Today alone I've had hits in the UK, US, Canada, Switzerland, South Africa, Morocco, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. Over the months, regular readers have popped up in the Philippines, Lithuania, Mexico, Argentina, Denmark, Spain, the Czech Republic, Finland, Norway, Sweden and many, many more. Even the occasional hit in Iran, Urugay, Peru, Venezuela, India, Pakistan, Armenia and once (but once only, and my tracker may have made a mistake) Afghanistan. It's something extraordinary.

All my favourite blogs are listed on my blogroll (in impossibly haphazard order, I fear - I WILL put them in alphabetical order one day soon!). I was about to cite a select few, but don't want to upset any of the others, so I'll leave you with a plea to experiment with the list over to the left. To all my fellow bloggers - if you're on that list, it means I love you. Keep up the good writing!

The naked fiddler

Tom has gone to Berlin for the first leg of an LPO tour that will take in a) Germany, b) Italy and Switzerland, c) Bucharest, Zagreb and one or two other unusual places with long names. He arrived in Berlin this evening. His suitcase didn't. Here's hoping it turns up in time for the concert at the Philharmonie tomorrow, otherwise the Tomcat will have no tails and may have to go on in his birthday suit instead.....

Here's a very small something from the Indy today to provide a little diversion. I promise that the stories are ALL TRUE. Printed version is nice, if you can get hold of one, because they commissioned a fantastic cartoon for it. (No, it doesn't involve any nude violinists.)

Back home, I've just emerged from a snowdrift of book proofs, which I've now given back to my publisher, quaking. That's it. Anything that didn't get changed is going to be on a shelf somewhere for longer than I shall be on this planet. Every time I looked at it, I found something more than needed to be remedied..... Anyway, the jacket proof is wonderful - and all I can do now is sit back and wait. Time to get on with the next one. Theoretically, at least. Next week I'm going to meet Tom & the band in Lucerne for two days (hope it's stopped raining); the following week off to Rome to interview a very special singer; and a few days later a welcome holiday in France will be upon us.

More seriously, we've been massively churned up today by the pictures of New Orleans virtually underwater. Our very deepest sympathies from London to everyone caught up in the devastation brought to the southern states by Hurricane Katrina.

Admin...

Simply to let you know that I scrubbed out the Comment facility from the post below because of spam. In future, you'll all have to do Word Verification to leave a comment. Not my fault, just this crazy world we live in...

Oo la la in Edinburgh

This is in today's edition of Scotland On Sunday: my article about the Opera de Tours's production of the musical comedy L'amour masque by Andre Messager & Sascha Guitry. (This is the reason I've been getting interested in Guitry & co recently...). It's at the Edinburgh Festival from 1 to 3 September and I think it sounds fabulous - wish I could be there to hear it. You may need to register at the Scotsman website to get into the article, but it is quick, free and harmless. More info about the show from the EIF website here.

It is extraordinary, the way that one artistic passion can turn out to relate to many others in unsuspected ways. When I set out to write Faure's biography, I had no idea that he would turn out to have connections to one of my favourite writers, Turgenev; or that a ballet of Alain-Fournier's wonderful novel Le Grand Meulnes would have been made to his music (Andrée Howard's La fete etrange - being staged at the Royal Opera House in October); or that his friend Messager would have dedicated to Faure's memory the music he wrote to Guitry's play Deburau which may well have helped to inspire my favourite film Les Enfants du Paradis. Weird, eh? Or simply a symptom of attraction on my part to a particular aesthetic that is shared, in one way or another, between them all? As they say in Russian, 'Bog zniyet...'

Stressbusters

This is the indomitable Norman Lebrecht's inspiring account of how he found himself performing the recitation in Schoenberg's 'A Survivor from Warsaw' at Dartington last week.

Every music commentator should take part in a performance now and then and Norman's article helps to show why.

Speaking of stressful performances, we hear this morning that one of Leonidas Kavakos's strings broke during the Berg at the Prom last night and he finished the concerto on the leader's violin. It must take nerves of diamond, never mind steel, to switch fiddles in that piece, of all pieces, in the middle of the Royal Albert Hall, live on BBC Radio. What's more, Andrew Davis had dropped out and Joseph Swensen was drafted in to conduct instead, somewhat late in the day. Tom and I were down at Glyndebourne and missed the fun...

If I feel stressed out by proofreading my novel and trying to catch last-minute inconsistencies - of which there've been plenty - all I have to do is think 'I will never have to recite Schoenberg, or break a string in a Prom' and I feel better INSTANTLY.

Piano man or shaggy dog?

The mystery of the "piano man" has been solved. This is the report in The Guardian.

Turns out it was a bit of a shaggy dog story. He's from Bavaria and the whole thing appears to have been an elaborate hoax. As for the 'piano genius' element - it does seem that that was the result of mental health workers in the UK not being able to tell the difference between a full-fledged concert pianist and someone who can just about pick out a tune from Swan Lake. The report on the TV news last night was gently accompanied by a background account of Chopsticks.

What a feeling...

I become seriously proud of my husband on an occasion like this. There he was, standing on the stage at the Albert Hall, which was packed to the rafters with music lovers going absolutely nuts over Beethoven 9. Live on BBC TV. Up there with one of the world's great orchestras and Kurt Masur and a wonderful big choir and soloists. What an occasion. In Yiddish, we call my emotion last night 'clibing nachas' - roughly equivalent to basking in reflected glory from one's loved ones, but in truth untranslatable.

The Gubaidulina piece, 'The Light of the End', was stunning. Well worth a webcast listen this week if you didn't catch yesterday's concert in any other way. Full of astonishing imagination and possessed of a rich, instinctive spiritual progression that could only have been articulated through the medium of her own musical language. I'm looking forward to hearing it again in Lucerne during the LPO tour. I normally avoid travelling with the orchestra because of their stressful schedules, but can't resist the idea of two Swiss days in Lucerne! The fact that I don't really like Beethoven 9 is neither here nor there...

Tonight's Prom...

...will be quite an event It features our very own Tomcat and his orchestra, under their principal conductor, the indomitable Kurt Masur! They will be starting with a piece by Gubaidulina and then doing Beethoven 9th. It's going out live on BBC2 - as well, of course, as Radio 3 and the good old webcast. The LPO Prom is always a slightly bigger deal for my resident fiddler than most other gigs, since it is always the first concert after Glyndebourne - having done nothing but opera for several months, one's suddenly out in the spotlight again. And the Albert Hall is very large. Tonight is a little compounded by the suspicion that he'll be in quite a lot of close shots on the TV, because for the Beethoven he's sitting on the second desk of the Firsts, next to the orchestra's glammest blonde Hungarian, who is bound to attract the cameras!

Tickets are a bit thin on the ground, or so I'm told, but the arena queue will be doing its stuff, as ever. Do come along if you can! Gubaidulina is doing a pre-concert talk at 6pm, which should be fascinating, and Tom assures me that the piece is marvellous and very listenable.

Another legendary Prom

One couldn't get into this one the other day for love or money. Annette Morreau's review (click above) really has it in a nutshell.

I did make it, though, to Barenboim's press conference last week -and have to say I've never before been moved to tears in a press conference before. Barenboim seems to have achieved what nobody else anywhere in the Middle East is able to do: bring young people from different sides together to meet one another during a shared endeavour. It's a grass-roots approach, and probably the only way to make any progress.

Five members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra were there with him; one was a young Palestinian violinist from Ramallah whose description of her endeavours to keep her musical training on the rails was deeply touching. After she'd talked about how she'd had a different teacher almost every year - they'd come in from other countries and then leave - Barenboim beamed: "Yet here she is, playing Mahler 1 in London." Two of the others, one Israeli and one Arab, pointed out that they lived just 40 minutes' drive from one another, yet there was no way they would ever have met, but for this orchestra.

The Goethe Institute has quite a good explanatory article about the orchestra's background.

They will play in Ramallah for the first time on 21st August. This is miraculous in itself. Spain - where the orchestra is based - has provided all the orchestra's youngsters with diplomatic passports for the occasion to make it possible. Barenboim's dream is that one day the orchestra will be permitted to play in every country from which its members are drawn...

I've been privileged to meet and write about a lot of fantastic musicians in the last 15 years, but if I had to pick out the greatest one of all, it has to be Barenboim. I don't believe anyone else on earth could have done what he's done for these young musicians.

What my work is sometimes like

...when not editing my book. Have just been to Salzburg to interview a great soprano.

Monday 8 August: call from editor offering the job. Sounds fantastic. I haven't been to Salzburg for 10 years. Agree to drop everything and run.

Monday 15 August: leave house 2pm, train to Waterloo, tube to Bank, walk to Liverpool Street, Stansted Express to Stansted Airport. Meet press officer & photographer, stand in check-in queue for 3/4 of an hour with half of eastern Britain off for its summer hols. Fortunately we are not flying BA from Heathrow. 6pm take off into warm evening sun. 8.45pm arrive local time Salzburg, where someone in the sky has left a tap running. We leg it to the terminal building in our light summer sandals. Morose taxi driver takes us to hotel, whence it is too wet to even consider a gentle stroll up to the Mozartplatz. As for the festival, Cecilia Bartoli & Andras Schiff started their recital at 9pm and it is now 9.30pm, so we can't go there either. We spend a pleasant evening in the hotel restaurant eating spaghetti carbonara, then crash out.

Tuesday 16 August: the rain in Salzburg stays mainly on the press trip team. Press officer is taken ill (result of spaghetti carbonara or chilly, wet weather?). Taxi transfer to another hotel at 9am where record company has booked a suite for the day to accommodate photoshoot and interview. Soprano delayed on Austrian country roads by flooding. She eventually turns up looking bright and breezy, however, and next hour or so is in the hands of accomplished make-up and hair artist. I press my nose to wet glass and long to go out for a walk, but even with raincoat and umbrella this weather is seriously nasty and I don't fancy sitting in sodden jeans for the rest of the day. Press officer has to lie down. The 'Festspielhavs' [the hall's lettering boasts an odd 'u'] offers a morning concert at 11am: a typically earnest, heavyweight Salzburg programme full of Mahler songs. Can't handle Mahler at 11am, so remain a 'festspielhavnot'.

Photographer sets up & soprano appears in glorious concert gown looking several million dollars. The morning passes in a sea of raindrops and camera lights. 1pm: soprano is handed over to me and we lunch together in hotel cafe on the top floor, talking about Mozart while gazing at the Salzburg skyline, full of onion-domed churches and a romantic castle, which remains swathed in grey cloud and water. There are indeed mountains out there somewhere, she assures me... Great soprano talks about her repertoire, teaching, new CD and much more and I am immensely inspired by her insights, her intuition and her self-knowledge. At this moment, wet, tiring trip seems entirely worth it: one can learn a great deal from someone like this even if one can't sing!

2.30pm, great soprano goes home. Our plane isn't until 9pm so photographer, ailing press officer and I sit in cafe putting world to rights, wondering whether we can get out for a walk and see something of Salzburg. We decide against it. I wonder whether to text great violinist whose mobile number I have & who is possibly rehearsing nearby for a concert the next day, to see if I can gatecrash his rehearsal. Look at rain & decide against it: who'd keep a mobile on during a rehearsal anyway? Instead, sit in hotel suite all afternoon, trying to keep warm, drinking copious quantities of tea and reading biography of Margot Fonteyn.

6.30pm, stroll down to foyer, check out and ask for a taxi to the airport...

...and find that apparently there are no taxis to be had in the whole of Salzburg and EVERYBODY needs one. Girls at hotel desk ring every Salzburg taxi company on the internet, keep getting wrong numbers & eventually they begin to panic. An aging Austrian in black tie, accompanied by glamorous girl in high heels black suede shoes and waiting for taxi to concert at the Festspielhavs, yells at them and demands repeatedly, and of course counter-productively, whether they've even been trying. Festspielhavs is a gentle ten-minute stroll away, if that. We are aware that even if we'd got our act together earlier and booked taxi in advance, some irate festival-goer would have swiped it from under our suitcases. Traffic outside hotel door is solid. Rain tips out of sky. Panicking hotel girls retreat into Salzburgian intransigence. At 7pm it becomes clear that if we don't get out of there, fast, we may not make the plane. Press officer, who's been white until now, turns grey. Photographer needs a smoke and a pack horse for her gear. I persuade intransigent hotel girl to write down the best way to get to the airport by public transport and persuade the others to venture to nearest bus stop. A few minutes later we are at the Hauptbahnhoff, which naturally boasts a fine rank of waiting, unemployed taxis. Small airport is full of nerdy families with ballistic children waiting for last flight to Stansted.

Sit on plane reading, then stumble across a page about Nureyev that makes me realise one paragraph of my novel is full of nonsense about Russia because it's taking place ten years too late for that period of history; decide that I have to make a particular character ten years older than he is, which could cause severe complications given that I'm proofing and am not supposed to change anything. Spend rest of trip in blind despair wondering how stupid I've been in other parts of book...

10pm descend from plane. 10.50pm, luggage slowly gasps its way onto carousel. 11.10 a bus condescends to take us to car park. Photographer gives me lift to west London, but exit from M11 to North Circular is closed so we almost end up in the Blackwall Tunnel. 12.20 we get to Acton and my knight in shining dinner jacket - the Tomcat, fresh from Glyndebourne - is waiting to collect me for the last leg of the journey. Start, slowly, to feel as if it's summer again. 12.35, home & hit the whisky.

ADDENDUM, 1pm: in today's Indy, my Proms preview about the great violinist I didn't see in Salzburg: Mr Kavakos - newly nicknamed, in our house, The Chocolate Fiddler (=Leonidas chocolates...). He's playing the Berg concerto at the Prom on 25th. Should be incredible.

August

Tom & Solti
Originally uploaded by Duchenj.

We can't let it be mid-August without putting up a picture of the cat, so here's the latest. It's a better likeness of Solti than of Tom, but I think they both look cute...

A few reviews

...of Tuesday. Here's Hilary Finch's write-up in The Times.

And David Fanning in The Telegraph.

Last (for the moment) but not least, Andrew Clements being ever so patronising in The Guardian.

ADDENDUM: FRIDAY 12th, 9.30am: Barry Millington in The Evening Standard says: "...the concerto is ‘worth hearing for its historical interest and also for its slow movement, which is in a different class. Despite its Puccini-like opening, the Andante Semplice takes wing in an unpredictable way and Philippe Graffin, well established as one of the work’s leading interpreters, soared above the fray in rhapsodical flights of extraordinary beauty."

Just found...

...Evelio, writing absolutely wonderfully on the true nature of love and its detrimental commercialisation. Bravo, Evelio! You've done it again - made my day - as you often do!

Tuesday morning

Only one thing to say to Philippe Graffin this morning: "MERDE!!!!"

You can listen to the Prom tonight via the internet from anywhere: here's the link.

Meanwhile... Tom and I are still reeling from yesterday: we went to see 'The Producers'. Now I know where opera houses go wrong: they're not doing this show! It's the best thing I've seen in a theatre since 'Meistersinger'. And I don't think I've laughed so much since I saw the Marx Brothers for the first time. If you are in London or New York and you have only one free evening to do something, then do this! (Unless that evening is in London tonight, in which case you have to come to the Prom...)

Imagine...

...playing at the Proms for the first time.

Philippe Graffin is doing this on Tuesday. Full details here.

How anyone tackles such a task is simply beyond me. I found it quite scarey enough playing to a nice little roomful of 50 people at the Elgar Birthplace Museum. The Royal Albert Hall can take around 6,000 on a good night. And this should be a good night: the BBC Concert Orchestra in a rather original all-British programme. Philippe plays the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor concerto, which is many decades overdue for a Proms performance. Here's my article from Friday's Indy about "SCT" - there's also a link on the left to my liner notes for his recording on Avie. This is not a dusty rarity. It's a wonderful, wonderful piece. If you're in London, come and cheer him on!

Ooh la la!

Back from Nice, which lived up to its name. Didn't get much proof-reading done...

Speaking of France, now I'm reading up about Sacha Guitry, for reasons which I'll explain in due course. I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who knows anything more about the following: it seems that this 'French Noel Coward' (should one add 'heterosexual French Noel Coward'?!?) wrote a number of 'comedies musicales' with Andre Messager, the conductor, opera house director and much-underrated composer who as a youth shared a flat with my beloved Monsieur Gabriel in Paris - they'd been students together at the Niedermeyer School and later joined forces to write the most glorious piano duet skit on Wagner's Ring Cycle entitled 'Souvernirs de Bayreuth' (hear it and die laughing!).

One of Messager's last works was a comedy, with Guitry's words, entitled 'Deburau'. It is dedicated to the memory of Gabriel Faure.

When I came across a reference to this, I pulled up short: Deburau was the surname of the hero of 'Les Enfants du Paradis', my favourite film EVER. And Messager's 'comedy' is dedicated to the memory of my favourite composer?!? In 'Les Enfants du Paradis' - made in the forties, during the war - the 19th-century genius mime actor Baptiste Deburau is played by Jean-Louis Barrault and the free-spirited woman he loves, Garance 'comme la fleur', by Arletty.

It seems a film was made of Guitry's comedy 'Deburau' in 1951, using Messager's music (sadly it seems it's now not available on video or DVD). An outline of ir that I found on the internet tells me that we are indeed talking about the same Deburau as 'Les enfants' - but the woman that Deburau loves is none other than La Dame aux Camelias, Marie Duplessis. (Camelias - comme la fleur???)

I know woefully little about Guitry, though now I've ordered some books (including a translation of 'Deburau', which is on its way from the States). What I'd like to know is: a) Did Guitry's play spark the idea for 'Les Enfants du Paradis'? It seems that he knew both Jean-Louis Barrault and Arletty quite well... b) Why was Messager's version dedicated to Faure's memory? Was it merely that Faure had recently died (1924) and this happened to be the next thing that his old friend wrote? Or was there more to it than that? Had Faure had any particular interest in Deburau, the Funambules theatre, the story...? Could the pair of them perhaps have gone to the Funambules and seen the real Deburau together?!?

This kind of thing ZAPS me. Here's the subject of a film that changed my life when I was 14 or so, being linked directly with a composer who has changed my life again and again and is still doing so. It seems uncanny and I need to know more! Any leads would be greatly appreciated!

Dreams come true...

...in stages. The proofs and cover design of my book have turned up. The book will be 375 pages. The cover is perfect. I'm bowled over, because I have very little design imagination - when asked whether I had any ideas about how I wanted the jacket to look, all I could come up with was 'for goodness' sake, no lemon yellow, shocking pink, lime green or champagne glasses'! Now someone in that company, somehow, has come up with an image that is strong and simple and that says what needs to be said. The photo, font and entire style is very classy but entirely immediate. I can't quite believe how thrilled I am with it - yet have a seriously odd sensation that I always knew in some strange corner of the brain that my first novel was going to look like this. How? no idea.

Please excuse me for a couple of days while I go off to proof-read...in France.

Mountain excitement

Verbier tent
Originally uploaded by Duchenj.
Back from Verbier. Here's a picture of the scene outside the concert tent the other night. The tent in the picture is the Cafe Schubert, where lectures and pre-concert talks are held. It's quite some setting for music...

The quality of the performances was, as usual absolutely incredible (with one scarey exception). The highlights of our all-too-brief stay were Leonidas Kavakos, Mischa Maisky and Elena Bashkirova playing the Schubert B flat Trio; and Thomas Quasthoff, accompanied by Evgeny Kissin, singing a selection of dark-hued Schubert with a power and empathy that were positively spine-chilling.

During less than 48 hours we experienced all of this and much more. Cello masterclass with Ralph Kirshbaum, lunch & interview with the fabulous Kavakos (stopping on way into street cafe to say hi to Vengerov a few tables away), mountain cable car & glorious walk, amazing concert with Mozart played by Michala Petri, Janine Jansen, Julian Rachlin & various others, a scrumptious fondue, the Quastoff/Kissin gig and the most extraordinary party I've ever been to...

The only upset was a cellist called Alexander Knaizev, who - despite having Kissin as his pianist - gave the most horrible performance of sonatas by Franck and Shostakovich. I disgraced myself by getting the giggles, but I don't think I was the only one. Half the audience loved it; many others fled the moment the Franck was finished. I hung on for the Shostakovich in case it improved, but it didn't.

Some claim to like his 'intensity' - but if someone TALKED to you like that, constantly fortissimo, milking E-V-E-R-Y W-O-O-O-R-D F-O-R M-A-A-A-A-A-A-X-I-M-U-U-U-M E-M-O-T-I-O-O-O-O-N A-A-A-A-L-L T-H-E T-I-I-I-I-M-E W-I-T-H-O-U-U-T A-N-Y V-A-R-I-E-T-Y-Y-Y-Y, you would either think they were crazy or you'd go crazy yourself. Sorry, but that's not intensity. It's emotional claptrap and it has nothing, but NOTHING, to do with Franck, let alone Shostakovich (and this guy, being Russian, should at least have known better there). Plus it takes some doing to make an audience come out of a cello recital in a tent feeling as if their ears have been assaulted by an electric guitar. I was particularly disappointed because I've heard some of his recordings and liked them very much, including his solo Bach.

Anyway, win some, lose some... Verbier is beautiful, thrilling and -given the amount of serious dosh there - remarkably human. This was my fourth visit (and Tom's first) and I hope I'll be able to go back next year.

I'm now about to do extra time on the exercise bike to burn off some of that fondue...

Sunday

OK. I think that's quite enough about Wagner for a bit. My brain's getting twisted.

I'm off to Switzerland for a flying visit to the Verbier Festival tomorrow - back rather too soon. A couple of thoughts to leave you with in the meantime, including the promised Desert Island Discs in case anyone's interested!

First, though, for the literary-minded: in the wake of the bombings in London and Egypt and the continual suicide bombing insurgency in Iraq, how are we creatives to respond? I've often been annoyed by the way that much contemporary fiction seems to be an extended version of what's happened to be in the news - the result is a lot of books that date very quickly - and even my favourite books, which on the whole don't do that, can contain elements that become dated through their 'relevance to contemporary issues'. On the other hand, there's a lot of escapism too: historical novels that bury their concerns in the distant past (though I hasten to add that I love many of those!!). Is it possible for writers and, indeed, composers to handle the impact of our changing world in a creative way that doesn't become obsessed with relevance to these issues? I'm wondering how to make my new novel feel contemporary without getting too involved in such things. It's difficult.

Enough of that - here are 8 Desert Island Discs to enjoy. I've a nasty feeling I've done this before, but can't remember when - and the list has probably changed...

1. Krystian Zimerman plays the Ravel piano concertos - with LSO/Boulez (DG). Perfection.

2. Marc-Andre Hamelin's album 'Kaleidoscope'. All his recordings are brilliant, but this is the one I play most.

3. Mozart: The Magic Flute, conducted by Klemperer with fab cast including Nikolai Gedda, Gundula Janowitz and Lucia Popp. I grew up with this & may be where I am today partly because of it.

4. Tchaikovsky. Mravinsky conducts his own selection from The Nutcracker's most meaningful moments. Another world.

5. Peter Schreier and Andras Schiff in the Schubert song cycles. I was going to choose just 'Die schone Mullerin' but have now discovered that all three are available together!

6. The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto, played by Philippe Graffin in South Africa. This is meaningful to me for long, complex reasons that I've written about before.

7. Andras Schiff plays the Goldberg Variations. Definitely can't do without this.

8. Faure. It has to be Faure. I'd like to take my own compilation of Favourite Faure, but in the absence of that, This will do nicely: historical Faure, including Thibaut & Cortot in the Violin Sonata No.1 and the Calvet Quartet with Robert Casadesus in the Piano Quartet No.1. Having said that, my ultimate Faure choice has yet to appear on CD. I'm hoping that it will do so within the next couple of years.

Wagnerama

The result of my Wednesday Wagner crisis is in The Independent today. Read it online here. The commission began rumbling on Tuesday, was confirmed Wednesday morning & I had to get it finished that day by 5.30. Voila...

Yesterday more nutcases tried to set off bombs on the London underground - thank heavens they didn't kill anyone this time. This morning the pictures are on the front page of the Indy. In the top right-hand corner, however, is a little picture of Wagner. This feels extremely weird.

Blimey...

Beethoven has out-downloaded Bono, according to The Guardian today. This really is interesting. One correspondent quoted from the BBC's message board talks about 'the democratisation of high culture' and I think that's an excellent description.

It seems clear from the BBC's Beethoven symphonies download experiment, and also from a number of conversations I had with some very interesting people yesterday about Wagner (of which more shortly), that people DO want great classical music. They just need to be able to GET AT IT easily. That doesn't mean dumbing-down or doing crossover. It just means changing the means by which the best stuff is made available.

Meanwhile here's a review of that Walkure Prom from today's Indy.

I spent yesterday in the throes of a major, unexpected Wagner crisis which may have been prompted by that Prom (no pun intended!). More of this tomorrow...

aspiration? or perspiration?

I wish I could say that this great tango pic courtesy of George Hunka at Superfluities was me & Tom. Unfortunately it isn't. Picture to yourself a satirical cartoon version starring Pooh and Piglet and the Woozle and it will give you a better idea of how we look. Thanks for the kind words, George; they make me feel better!

This thing called The Proms

In answer to Andrea, here's a quick explanation of the Proms.

'Proms' is short for BBC Promenade Concerts. It's an annual summer festival in central London at the Royal Albert Hall - reputedly the largest music festival in the world. This summer there are 74 concerts, which began last Friday and go on every day until mid September. 'Promenade' = standing. They take all the seats out of the stalls and pack in 'promenaders' - you can also stand in the gallery. Over 1400 standing places are available at every concert, sold on the door for £4. There are also plenty of seats for those who want them. But it's more fun to prom because the atmosphere is fantastic and the sound quality is best in the arena! It's top-quality stuff from beginning to end: the finest orchestras, conductors and soloists and plenty of interesting programming too. There's a whole promming subculture which is to do with etiquette inside, queuing, buying season tickets to the whole lot, etc etc. ... As it's a BBC festival, they broadcast absolutely everything on BBC Radio 3 and now that they have some digital TV channels quite a lot of the concerts also go out on BBC 4. The Last Night of the Proms is when we get the Sea Shanties, Rule Britannia, Land of Hope & Glory and Jerusalem - it's always a bone of contention for those who don't like its 'jingoistic' element, but anytime anyone talks about changing it there's an outcry (...long topic, will save it up for another time). The Proms were founded by the conductor Henry Wood 110 years ago and the Beeb took over in 1927.

Last night's Prom was a concert performance of Die Walkure with the team from the current Royal Opera House production: Antonio Pappano conducting, Waltraud Meier and Placido Domingo as Sieglinde and Siegmund, Lisa Gasteen as Brunnhilde and Bryn Terfel as Wotan. It doesn't get better than that and you could get in for £4. I regret to say I didn't hear it - because I was backstage, interviewing Domingo during Act III once his role was over!!!! :-)))

He's LOVELY...

Here's what The Indy has to say this morning.

The great news for me is that each Prom is now available to listen to online for 7 days after it takes place! Further details of how to do it here!

We'll do Desert Island Discs next time, Andrea. A British phenomenon, by the way, dating back to 1942 and originating on BBC Radio 4, and here they do 8 records, not 2.

Women writing wonderfully

OK, I know I'm with the Indy, but there are two very special pieces in The Guardian today.

Here's Charlotte Higgins on the wonders of ballet - something about which I couldn't agree more! I used to go to the ballet all the time when I was younger...actually, I used to dance too.....and I MISS IT.

And here is my very old friend Anna Swan writing about the mother she never knew - a trail for her book Statues Without Shadows, which is being published by Hodder & Stoughton today (having not met up for a couple of years, we've only just discovered we are with the same publisher!). It's a brave book and a powerful history. Bravo, Anna - and encore!

I am a newcomer to...

...TANGO.

We've been to three classes and have learned, kind of, to do a total of 8 beats. Between us, we seem to have 8 left feet. While the other 'beginners' have been in the class for several months, look relatively graceful and have the most fabulous shoes (! tango shoes are gorgeous!), we've been lumping about at the side of the room, trying to get the hold right, the stance and the attitude. The latter is the most difficult for me, because the secret of the whole thing seems to be that the man has to lead and must indicate clearly exactly what you, the woman, are supposed to do. I'm not used to this. In day to day life, I go and do my own thing and Tom joins in if/when he can. In tango, this is the biggest of all big no-nos! I reckon Tom absolutely loves this deep down and is trying not to admit it. For me, it's come as a big shock...but the music and the shoes, when I get some, are going to be worth it.

Have been listening to recordings of Piazzolla's own band from the 1940s and they are AMAZING (I can't find the CD I have on Amazon, but a quick search there on Piazzolla's name produces plenty to choose from). I don't know many dances that are that atmospheric by their very nature.

Anyway, we are absolute, absolute beginners. We have to ditch our classical tendency to do things by counting, not feeling; I have to ditch my long-buried classical ballet reflexes (20 years on, they still come back on a dance floor); we have to learn a softer, smoother method of crossing a floor, and somehow we have to learn to trust each other in a whole new way, which is very bizarre.

But it's like learning anything new: if you really want to do it, you persevere. You get inspired, not intimidated, by people who can do it already. You apply effort and commitment and time and take some lessons. And having a goal is no bad thing. We are going to Buenos Aires in January; my goal is that by the time we get there, I want to be able to hit the dance floor for an evening and not feel like a total idiot. I think Tom feels the same (hope so, anyway). It's not a crime for other people to have spent half their lives doing this, nor do I resent the fact that they have and I haven't. I just want the chance to learn now to the best of my ability, even if I'm abysmal.

The ultimate consoling music

...is Schubert.

I may go on about Faure,Elgar, Korngold and the rest, but in truth, for me there is nobody to touch Schubert. He has a profound empathy with humanity's greatest conundrum - mortality - without having to hammer us on the head with it the way Mahler does. Schubert spent what few mature years he had (he died at 31) suffering from syphilis, knowing that his time would be short, knowing that he could never enjoy love without passing on a deadly disease. Read his letters and you feel the pain: a vast love for the wonders of life on earth and, at the same time, complete revulsion at the ugly side of humanity and, indeed, himself. Christopher Nupen's documentary about him is called 'The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow' - a title that couldn't be more perfect.

The music? Divine. Nothing less. There can be nothing that carries one as he does into heightened awareness of life in the moment; nothing that furrows the brain more incisively; nothing else that taps to that extent into the endless longing that is both life's torment and possibly its meaning, without ever becoming remotely self-important or pretentious.

Schubert leaves extremely vivid images behind when you hear him. I remember my mother in tears over the G flat impromptu (I used to play it a lot), myself aged 13 encountering the String Quintet and being off school for two days afterwards, Andras Schiff playing the complete cycle in the Wigmore a few years ago and snow falling outside, Uchida playing the G major Piano Sonata in the Festival Hall, hearing the Notturno for piano trio at midnight in a Norwegian cathedral; the list is endless and the effects magical beyond description.

A few days ago a friend came round to play a concerto to us and a handful of other friends. The weather was glorious and we were all happy to be together after last week's tragedies. Our friend played exquisitely; afterwards I cooked what even I felt was a reasonably sumptuous dinner; and we sat around until after midnight listening to music and getting through a fair bit of Beaujolais. Finding the right music didn't seem to be easy, though; we experimented with Eddy Duchin (my famous relation!), Kapustin, Strauss, Debussy...and finally someone found the Schubert B flat Piano Trio in the recording by Thibaud, Cortot and Casals. This piece has a thousand and one associations for me already, but I doubt I'll ever hear it again without seeing my own lounge by lamplight, the doors wide open into the dark garden, golden reflections in the glass, the closeness of people I love, the awareness of loss lingering unseen amid all the sweetness.

I think that one reason I want to write is to preserve something of such experience.

Friday night

I'd like to tell you all about the spirit of London's music-lovers on Friday night when my friends of the Razumovsky Ensemble were unlucky enough to have their Wigmore Hall concert. The concert the night before - the day of the bombings - had been cancelled, but Oleg and the hall decided to go ahead as planned, although the audience was half of what it should have been, understandably enough.

I went along with a friend who feels, as I do, that we must defy terrorism and not let our daily lives be disrupted. We drove in, but I took the train home and had to get on the tube to return to Waterloo. If I couldn't do it that day, I might never have done it again. And, bolstered by the extraordinary music-making I'd been witnessing, it wasn't so difficult after all.

When the evening's total of four musicians took the stage for the Faure C minor Piano Quartet at the start of the second half (the first having been string players without pianist), Philippe turned to the audience and declared, "We'd like to thank you for coming to this concert tonight." Before he could say anything else, someone called back from the stalls, "Thank you for playing for us!!" Hugely appreciative round of applause followed; and then a transcendental account of the Faure, filled with elan, refinement, sensitivity, poetry and sensuality in perfect balance.

Life is very short, and often shorter than we could have imagined. Music is one of the best things we can experience during it. If we can clock in to that depth of beauty, that intensity of poetic vision, then something about life will have been worth living, despite the horrors around us. It's not just diversion, entertainment, escapism or something to do after work. Oscar Wilde wrote: "It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection." It is enrichment, defiance, assertion, power, but, above all, a form of love - a universal love that enters, draws out and re-expresses a deep-seated spirit shared, in some obscure corner of the soul, by most people on earth. We are, and in the modern world must struggle to remain, more than animals who go about daily life eating and sleeping and surviving and buying things. I feel it is our ability to appreciate and create art, in whatever form, that raises us to the apex of all that humanity at its best can be.

A thought from Faure

"The work of the imaginatiion consists in attempting to formulate all that one wants that is best, everything that goes beyond reality... To my mind, art, and above all music, consists in lifting us as far as possible above what is."
(Gabriel Faure in a letter to his son, Philippe Faure-Fremiet, August 1908)

This morning

Things are working once again around London, but in a low-key manner. The count from the attacks yesterday is 38 dead, 700 injured and a whole city traumatised.

My friends of the Razumovsky Ensemble are not going to find it easy to recruit an audience for their Wigmore Hall concert tonight, wonderful though they and their programme are. I am determined to get there. I am not going to be afraid. At 7.30pm I shall be in that hall and if I have to get on the tube, then get on it I shall. I refuse to let a bunch of thugs stop me.

And so to some recordings to recommend, as promised yesterday.

What can one do but reach for the Elgar? The obvious thing, I suppose, is Jacqueline du Pre playing the Cello Concerto - her first recording of it, with John Barbirolli conducting. But the Violin Concerto is more consoling, more reflective, and, to my ears, more beautiful. Try the classic recording by the teenaged Yehudi Menuhin, conducted by Elgar himself.

Alternatively, this next one is extremely good value: Hugh Bean plays the concerto and the violin sonata, and you also get the Piano Quintet, the Serenade, the String Quartet and the Concert Allegro with John Ogdon. Hugh Bean's tone is incredible. I once heard him performing the Brahms Horn Trio at the Wigmore Hall and when he began the tune, his violin sounded like the horn.

While talking British violin performances, I mustn't leave Tasmin out. Her recording of the Delius Violin Sonatas with pianist Piers Lane is fabulous. I'm a secret Delius fan. It doesn't always do to admit this, mysteriously enough, but I think he's GREAT. The Walk to the Paradise Garden is one of the most exquisite pieces ever written by someone who was technically British. Here's The Halle Orchestra with John Barbirolli.

A close-run second is Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending, recorded here by our Tazza.

All of this is, however, very English although London is today a tremendously multicultural place - one of the things that we're proudest of here. Multicultural celebrations are rare in early 20th-century British music, and for a recording that celebrates the little that there was, turn to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Violin Concerto which is both stirring and gorgeous in this recording by Philippe Graffin. Philippe is playing it at the Proms on 9 August and I find it absolutely extraordinary that it should be buried in a programme of British Light Music - since it is neither particularly light nor typically British. Classical music gets a lot of stick for consisting mainly of music by dead white men. The one time we're treated to some extremely good music by a dead half-black man, however, it has to be presented either as a rarity (by Hyperion, who recorded it with Anthony Marwood) or a trifle (by whoever plans the Proms these days)! Ouch. This recording takes it as seriously as it deserves and, as I've said before, is more than the sum of its parts, since it's the first commercial recording made in South Africa since the fall of Apartheid and features the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra which struggles valiantly day to day for its very existence.

Ultimately, though, for songs of love and fun and quality and British creativity at its best, there has to be the Beatles... and Revolver is my favourite album.

today

After the best day ever in London yesterday, today we have the worst.

We are all in shock, but there are a few positive things to say:

1. We will NOT be cowed by terrorists. London is, and will remain, the great capital city that it truly is.

2. The casualties are appalling, but we must be grateful that it wasn't worse than it is.

3. The emergency services have been marvellous.

My thanks to everyone who has phoned and written today - your concern is a signal of the solidarity we all feel in the face of such horrific and cowardly attacks on innocent civilians.

Chocolate heaven?

A couple of e-mails resulting from my comments about male & female rival visions of heaven raise a few questions. One lady in Lithuania is a tad confused because she loves Vilnius and dislikes chocolate. A friend from New York writes that his idea of heaven would be Bruges populated by leggy blondes, which sounds to me like trying to have your cake and eat it (or at least your chocolate)! But I suspect that Korngold would have agreed. His opera Die tote Stadt is based on a book named Bruges-la-Morte by the Belgian symbolist writer Georges Rodenbach - and there's no greater chocaholic in music history than dear old Erich Wolfgang K.

I'm wondering whether to change the heading on this blog to 'music, writing and food in London, UK'....

OH MY GOD

We got the 2012 Olympics!! This is ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE!!!

It could just be the best thing that has ever happened to London - this city is going to have to get its transport & infrastructure act together within seven years, and being obliged to do so is probably the only way it ever will.

It's wonderful to hear people on TV declaring that London's going to be the greatest city on the planet. As a kid, I was always convinced that that was the case; but through the 1980s, watching the place grow run-down, demoralised and neglected, it was depressing to feel that we were being relegated to what one well-known writer described during the John Major years as 'the bargain basement of Europe'. That's no longer true. Things have been on the up for some years now, speaking on average (there are, of course, still parts of the city which are horrendously deprived, including the eastern districts where the Olympics are to take place), but if this can't complete the transformation then nothing can.

The London bid seems to have succeeded not least because it talked about inspiring young people. The arts need to inspire young people with a similar world-class example - and in music, as well as in sport, it's only the combination of the finest practitioners, accessibility (not least physical accessibility) and solid media coverage that can provide it strongly and widely enough. Arts and music movers and shakers need to start thinking NOW about how we can join in most effectively.

Yum

One of the most interesting effects of performing is what it does to one's eating habits. Since we finished our little run of recitals, my chocolate consumption has reduced by 500%. Miraculous, but true. Does the chocolate produce the highs & lows associated with giving concerts, or does one eat it to forestall those dips in energy? (If the latter, afraid it doesn't work.)

I'm enjoying having my life back, as well as the healthier diet. Am cooking dinner for friends today, via my current favourite recipe book: Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer. It's a special treat to be confined to the kitchen late on Saturday afternoon because BBC Radio Three has jazz 4-6.30pm and I love Geoff Smith's Jazz Record Requests - there's always something wonderful or fascinating or rare, if not several of all three. So any guests who come over on a Saturday are more or less guaranteed a more elaborate meal than they'd get here during the rest of the week! ...oh well, so much for that healthy diet...

Speaking of which, here's a recent revelation about the nature of masculine & feminine alternative heavens. Apparently, for most man, the best alternative to heaven would be a place with an endless supply of leggy blondes (maybe this place?). Us girls think differently. Our alternative heaven has got to be Bruges: the town, I believe, that has the highest concentration of Belgian chocolate shops per square metre!

The Pagan Serenity Prayer

I love this. An unfamiliar version of a familiar yet perennial plea..

PAGAN SERENITY PRAYER
God & Goddess grant me:
The power of water, to accept with ease & grace what I cannot change
The power of fire, for the energy & courage to change the things I can.
The power of Air, for the ability to know the difference.
And the power of Earth, for the strength to continue my path.

On Friday 8 July...

...the place to be is the Wigmore Hall, where a concert is taking place that's rather special to me. If you introduce a violinist to a cellist over dinner one day and suddenly they're playing your favourite piece of music together at the Wigmore Hall, you can't help feeling a little responsible! Anyway, this performance by the Razumovsky Ensemble is the result. Online booking here via the Wigmore website, or phone the box office on 020 935 2141.

The Razumovsky Ensemble is Oleg Kogan's baby. He's hit on a most unusual but highly creative modus vivendi for it, drafting in top-notch musicians who don't often have the chance to get together and play chamber music, but give everything when they do. The line-up is never exactly the same, but the combinations are always intensely combustible - every one of their Wigmore gigs that I have heard has absolutely raised the roof. For this concert, Philippe and Asdis are joining the line-up for the first time. And I am so thrilled that they are playing my beloved Faure C minor Piano Quartet that I'm ready to turn somersaults.

Here's what The Times said about the Razumovskys a few concerts ago: "They open up a world of music-making fabulously rich in tone colours, ensemble precision and lyrical sweep of a kind rarely met this side of paradise. Each Razumovsky member may be king of their chosen instrument, but they scale the heavens as a team."

Need I say more? Except: BE THERE!

Oyyyyyyyyyyy

I reckon it's the beginning of the end.

I've been reading what I initially thought was a wonderful book, published in a serious literary imprint, with an exotic setting and a nice arty photo on the cover. I was riveted from the first page. But a little way in, the brakes screeched: I was reading - and I'm not making this up - the words "he was stood". The hero was standing in a doorway. In a literary novel he should not have "been stood" anywhere. In NO novel purporting to be written in halfway decent English should one see the expression "he was stood" - or anything similar. Nor was this a one-off accident. Later, I found a reference to a bunch of characters who "were sat" in a bar. It's not as if this writer was trying to create a colloquial local voice (the novel's hero is supposedly a writer himself and would probably rather have died than use this moronic construction). And the author's biog suggests he's someone who should have known better.

No doubt there'll be plenty wrong with my own book - but at least not that...

I would like to excise from the current use of English the following turns of phrase"

"was sat/stood" - in every permutation;

"concertize" - you don't concertize. You give a concert. Please note that I use 'z' here and not 's' for a reason;

"I'm, like,....and she's, like,....and then I'm, like,...." as a way of explaining who said what;

"Buy your CD's here" - note incorrect use of apostrophe. Not long ago I had an email from a youngster working for a reputable music agency who didn't have a CLUE where to put his apostrophes. If I were the artist he's working for, I'd be worried about my chances.

Oh heck, there has got to be a better way than this to spend a Saturday evening...

Return to the old country

Oldest church
Originally uploaded by Duchenj.

It's a little like meeting people: it can take two encounters to make the penny drop, a double dose to take in the full measure of somebody special. So it was with Vilnius.

Above, the oldest church in Vilnius, or so it says inside. You can see from this picture the kind of loving care that has been lavished on its restoration. There are around 130 churches in Vilnius and they are all architectural gems (though I can do without the Russian orthodox one that contains a glass casket of three pickled 14th-century saints in white stockings!).

Only one synagogue is left. And it's closed. It appears that the old divide between the mystics and the intellectuals has resurfaced in a rather unexpected way. All very complicated... I hear, however, that there is a long-term project to restore the old Jewish sites of the city and a very long-term hope that perhaps one day the Great Synagogue, destroyed by the Nazis, could be reconstructed. At the moment there is an open basketball court where it once stood.

I'm very, very glad that I went back to Vilnius to re-order my impressions after the vaguely surreal experiences I had there during my first visit last year (see archive for June 04). It was an incredible trip, full of extraordinary music and wonderful people. I met most of my friends from last year and made some new ones too. Tom came with me and was bowled over by the whole experience; we both feel that this place, in one way or another, gets under one's skin. You can't escape the horrors of the past, however much you try to look forward rather than back; but maybe this is why the place has such a sense of soul.

It was once a melting pot; and perhaps it will be again, since during two days we encountered Indian classical music (the incredible Wahajat Khan in collaboration with the Ciurlionis Quartet), a travelling Norwegian choir, a free concert of Lithuanian premieres and Mischa Maisky performing Bruch's Kol Nidrei looking extraordinarily like the Vilna Gaon himself. Whatever the programme notes had managed to dredge up about the lack of Jewishness in this piece of music, I can think of little that would be more moving than listening to it being performed in "Vilne". Several members of the audience around us were in tears too.

The language seems impenetrable at first - it's like nothing you've heard anywhere before (unless you happen to know Latvian). I've managed to remember Labas (hello), Aciu (thank you - sounds like you're sneezing) and I svekata (cheers - memorable not only through quantity of use but because it sounds like "is the cat here?"). As for the food, I'm still not keen on the potato pancakes, but can heartily recommend my favourite soup EVER: Saltibarsciai. Essentially it's cold borscht with hot potatoes. Here's a recipe, which I'll be trying at home shortly...

Vilnius is, in one word, extraordinary. Don't ask how or why, but something tells me that this won't be my last visit.

A thought

Have just leaned via BBC Breakfast news that tickets to the Glastonbury Festival this year cost £125 each. Thunderstorms forecast for today. So much for that old argument that opera houses are elitist because of the price - though that's often less than this pop bonanza in the English countryside. If people are willing to pay £125 to go and listen to loud noise in the middle of a field of mud, why should they be told they're elitist if they pay the same money to hear quality stuff in beautiful surroundings? OK, it rains at Glyndebourne too, but the mud factor is considerably diminished...

Just back from Vilnius. Will report fully when I have put my brain back together.

Notorious?

I'm amused to see that one of the music sites I visit most often, The Classical Source, is running a banner ad for pet food deliveries. Are we music lovers also such notorious animal lovers? It certainly made Solti's day (though he has been comatose in the heat under a rose bush for most of it). I regret to say that I've come across a cat nicknamed Clawed DePussy and one answering to Milhaud - and the possibilities of Faure and Furry don't really bear thinking about. At this rate it will all unRavel...

Anyway, I am off to Lithuania tomorrow, where the weather's going to be slightly cooler. I've just been sent an advance copy of the CD of the concert I went there to hear last year, Vytautas Barkauskas's Duo Concertante - it will be released by Avie Records on 27 June. Very excited to be going there again to straighten out and consolidate last year's impressions. At least it will stop me sitting at my desk blogging lousy puns after getting tipsy on ginger beer and too much sun.

Also, NB, final tonight of Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. I've managed to miss the run-up to it - I look at my Freeview box so infrequently that I've actually forgotten how it works - but am looking forward to hearing the English contestant Andrew Kennedy, whom I heard on the radio the other day by accident without knowing who he was and found exceptionally impressive. Lovely, open-toned lyric tenor, selected by some of the UK's best young artists schemes and evidently going places. The Lithuanian candidate, incidentally, looks seriously gorgeous, but I haven't heard him and don't know whether he has reached the final.