Massive fuss in LA after Krystian Zimerman used his recital debut at the Walt Disney Hall to criticise America's foreign policy and to declare that he will never play in the USA again.
About 30 or 40 people in the audience walked out, some shouting obscenities. “Yes,” he answered, “some people when they hear the word military start marching.”
Others remained but booed or yelled for him to shut up and play the piano. But many more cheered. Zimerman responded by saying that America has far finer things to export than the military, and he thanked those who support democracy.
There will always be those who tell musicians to shut up and play their music, including, sometimes, other musicians. Including even Opera Chic, who surprises me by doing so.
Also a lot of people don't have much clue about why America's effect on Poland should be an issue right now. I suggest reading up here (summary: Poland rushes into Iraq on America's exhortation when Germany said no way Jose) - and there's the small matter of America's plans to install a missile defence shield on Polish soil, which many Poles regard as effectively a military occupation and a potential provocation to Russia. Not to mention the economic fallout from America in Poland, for which please refer to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine...
It sounds as if Krystian had plenty of support. If the world's leading musicians don't make a stand, then who will? I applaud his actions wholeheartedly, and only wish he'd done it a few years earlier.
UPDATE, Tuesday 2.20pm: Responses to Zimerman in the press are starting to filter through, so I will update this post as and when, rather than adding extra posts. Here is the first: excellent piece by Tom Service, the Guardian's classical music blogger, saying Zimerman did The Right Thing.
Wednesday: Shirin Sadeghi in The Huffington Post: "In this age of vapid celebrity personalities who gurgle amidst a significant burgeoning of global political consciousness, too few of the high profile artists of our world offer anything in the way of honest political awareness. Krystian Zimerman is an exception to be admired. "
And an editorial in The Guardian (the one British newspaper whose editor is an accomplished pianist himself): "Poland has a heritage of patriotic and political pianists that stretches from Chopin himself through the nation's virtuoso post-first-world-war prime minister Jan Paderewski. To that tradition, now add Krystian Zimerman, an exceptional musician - and more."
UPDATE: Fellow piano glory Stephen Hough in the Telegraph blogs on moral decisions re concerts, from Sars to swine flu to this.
It's Sunday, I am still coughing fit to bust and I still feel c**p. Meanwhile every PR in town is on at me about Please Blog About Our Concert. All right already. Not that I'm behind on paid work after my flu, not that I feel comfortable about coughing my head off through the whole damn lot, but there is certainly plenty good stuff going on this week and if I were superhuman I would go to absolutely everything, but as things are I am just going to cheer on my friends and carry out my pre-concert talk engagement for as long as my olbas pastilles hold out.
(UPDATE, Monday afternoon: well, Grynyuk didn't make the final. Tom came back from rehearsal today reporting that the standard is astronomical this time; he's hugely impressed with the Latvian candidate, Andrejs Osokins, who's playing Liszt 1. Other 2 finalists are Alessandro Taverna (Italian with cheekbones, Chopin 1) and Behzod Abduraimov (about 18, from Uzbekistan, Prok 3).
THURSDAY Cadogan Hall: Tasmin Little plays the rare and precious Karlowicz violin concerto for Polish dignitaries to launch a festival of Polish culture entitled POLSKA! Not a public event, though.
RESTRUCTURED. Oh yes, it's not dead, it's just being restructured.
Effectively, there's not much of it left, though it will have a good London figurehead in the form of none other than our friend Paul Moseley, proud owner of Onyx (which he will continue to own). Gramophone has the full story, explaining that Decca is essentially ceasing to be a British-based entity since the backroom stuff is all being merged with DG's operations in Hamburg. The Decca staff as such are being reduced from 20 to 6.
It also points out a certain gentle irony in Paul's appointment: "Moseley is a former Decca executive, though in 2005 founded Onyx Classics, which offers greater flexibility to artists in their relationship with the label – including the artist being able to retain the rights to the recording. Since its launch, it has provided something of a welcome refuge for artists who have found themselves without contracts with the majors (including a few from Decca itself!)."
Furthermore: "The Universal Classics and Jazz label, which focuses on cross-over repertoire, will now also be called Decca, but with different styling – employing the old black logo, as opposed to Decca's newer blue and red. Crossover activities are described as being “organisationally separate” from Decca’s core classical output."
Last but not least, Matthew Cosgrove is going to run Onyx for Paul. Matthew used to be top dog at Warner Classics, then went to Hamburg to run, er, DG.
I'm fond of these guys - they are bright, clever, musical and knowledgeable and they've all done excellent work. Yet, staring out into the spring sunshine, I can see Solti (the cat) in the garden chasing his own tail, and I wonder why it feels like an appropriate comment on the state of the record industry at large...?
If you missed it last time, here's your chance: the estimable Omniscient Mussel is running another #operaplot competition via Twitter, this time with prizes in the form of tickets donated by some 20 of the world's best opera houses, and with Danielle de Niese as star judge.
All you need to do is tweet an opera plot in 140 characters with the tag #operaplot between 9am on 27 April and midnight on 3 May. Rules & regs here.
"Opera is drama, so it seemed only right that the contest be re-imagined on a more epic scale," Miss Mussel comments. "Tickets felt like the right prize because while DVDs and CDs are great, opera is all about the live theatre experience."
The original would have made your hair stand on end, then curl laughing. The lawyers weren't having it, though. It was all true, nonetheless - I mean, you just couldn't make this stuff up.
Let me tell it like it is: most music competitions *suck*. The outrage they cause among the hapless people they manipulate is phenomenal. The barefaced cheek of certain individuals' behaviour leaves me gasping for adequate words. The psychological damage to gifted young competitors is immeasurable. The public is being cheated - they think that the finest young musicians in the world are being found for them - oh, if only. Yes, a lot of the stories are very funny (the funniest having, of course, been excised from print). And I would laugh harder if they didn't also make me cry.
Nobody has been able to do anything serious to remedy corruption in competitions, for fear of lawsuits. Even if the accusations are true. We have all been rendered toothless.
The various stylistic infelicities in the piece, by the way, are the result of the lawyers' red pen and do not appear in my original. Besides, I never put in the line saying that competitions are one of the best arenas for star-spotting available to whoeveritis. Indeed, I think my actual words were 'please excuse me while I slip out the back way'. As for "Further, there is a juror who adjudicates at contests all over the world and some successful candidates among his students apparently go home wondering what has become of their prize money" - no, they don't. They know exactly where it is, they just pretend, when people ask them, that they don't. My words were that they go home 'slightly cagey about' what has happened to it...
As the line goes in Shakespeare in Love: "It'll be all right." "How?" "I don't know, it's a mystery." After a day of fully expecting that I would a) lose my voice completely, b) faint, c) both, the concert went wonderfully and a voice came along from somewhere, though I'm not sure it was actually mine. ?! An actress friend informs me that 'adrenalin kills all known germs'. She's right. How? It's a mystery.
Left, the London team after the show - Tom, me, Philippe & Claire in the foyer at Kings Place.
Huge, huge thanks to everybody involved in this delicious treat of a project, to the Folkworks team for making it happen at all, to The Sage Gateshead and Kings Place London, to everyone who turned out and cheered us on, and to both my beloved teams of musicians!
Thanks to Daniel Finkelstein in The Times for discovering this little gem on Youtube. He asks 'Is this the most ridiculous political video ever?'
Of course, other American politicians have played the joanna too. A few years back, Tom's orchestra was booked for a recording that was marked Top Secret. OMG. Nobody was allowed to know what it was, so very special was it to be... Some opportunists in the band decided to have some fun and put it about that this recording was to be none other than Condoleeza Rice in Mozart piano concertos. Blood pressure levels instantly soared, there were whispers and growls in the ranks and it was only when protest delegations to the directorate and the Musicians' Union were being planned that the perpetrators said: 'Only kidding!'
The recording was actually a nice opera singer singing nice operatic arias very beautifully, so goodness knows what all the fuss was about.
Kings Place concert is tonight, and I'm still coughing. Please excuse me while I go back to my steam bowl.
I was planning to catch up with everything I've missed writing about today - the Proms in particular - but I've come down with flu, so it'll have to wait. I am in any case so underwhelmed by what I've seen of this year's programme that you're probably not missing much.
Been here, doing this...the most fun I've ever had with anything I've ever written, this blog included - honest, guv. The pictures are from the rehearsals yesterday morning, plus a final one in, er, Pizza Express...
Bradley Creswick's electrifying Gypsy style absolutely brought the house down! You've never seen a Monti Csardas like this one, not even in Budapest... Margaret Fingerhut and our own Tomcat commensurately gave their all on the piano and second violin for the Bartok Duos, and I did my best with the reading (I'm usually happy on stage as long as I don't have to play the piano, but next week I must remember to sit beside, rather than behind, my music stand...). Coloured lighting enhanced the mood, especially blood red for 1956 plus Tzigane. The place was gratifyingly packed and - this being Saturday night in Newcastle-Gateshead, that most characterful and happening of cities, and The Sage being, imho, the finest arts centre in the UK - we had a high old time. Hope everyone enjoyed it as much as we did!
Bob Jones of Classic FM's Arts Daily podcasts recorded an interview with me about the Hungarian Dances projects a couple of weeks ago. It went up on the Classic FM website yesterday and I've now uploaded it to the sidebar podcast box in case anyone wants to listen.
So now we'll catch our breath and prepare for next Saturday's Kings Place concert with the London team, Philippe and Claire.
So yesterday we get together for the first rehearsal of the Gateshead team Hungarian Dances concert and I meet the marvellous Bradley Creswick at last. Bradley is the leader of the Northern Sinfonia. Philippe is away in Taiwan from today and therefore couldn't do The Sage concert on Saturday, so their inspired admin decided to undertake a little judicious musical match-making; and sure enough, Bradley has such a way with Gypsy music that my idea of running the programme without applause until the end will happily be a non-starter. Monti's Csardas is the third number...
Then Bradley presents me with a little gift: his well-thumbed copy of my book - which has been signed for me by Roby Lakatos.
It took a few moments for this to sink in. The Northern Sinfonia was on tour in South Korea last week, and who should turn up in the same place at the same time?! Bradley got talking to Roby, and this was the result. It's yet another case of coincidences gone crazy. As is often the way with Hungarian Dances.
If you want to come to the Gateshead gig, please book fast because the only seats still available are on the third level up. Online booking here.
For the 18 April London gig, Kings Place seating is unreserved - online booking here. There's more availability for this one, perhaps because we clash with nothing less than the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela and Dudamel over at the RFH. owch.
I knew it was going to be a good night when I arrived at the artists' entrance of the RFH only to find my route blocked by a CHOCOLATE FESTIVAL. A row of tentlets had sprouted along Belvedere Road in the blazing spring sun, buzzing with stall-holders making, selling and eating all things chocolaty - and someone was giving a talk about why chocolate is good for you...
This was followed by the most astonishing performance of the Brahms German Requiem that it has been my pleasure to hear. It was preceded, to my surprise, by the reconstructed Mendelssohn Third Piano Concerto - see my Mendelssohn blog in a day or two for more on that. But the Brahms was one of those performances where the hair rises on the back of the neck and you can't explain it.
The LPO were playing their socks off for their principal guest conductor, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, with the London Philharmonic Choir and last-minute replacement soloists, including the marvellous Elizabeth Watts. The tempi were slow. Extremely slow. Yet everything shone. An extreme 'innigkeit', an inner fervour, the power of transformation again and again from darkness to light, despair to hope, with harps and cellos and flashes of upturned horns, and the searing certainty that Brahms is just the best. And at the end - a silence that lasted at least 25 seconds. The whole thing was absolutely astonishing. The microphones were up, so hopefully it will be preserved on the LPO record label.
I'm still on cloud 99, and this is not because of the chocolate.
In an acceptance speech to the Incorporated Society of Musicians, which presented him with its Distinguished Musician Award yesterday, the conductor Mark Elder made some pertinent remarks. Musicians, he said, must be ready to stand together and mount a passionate defence of their art as the credit crunch bites, not to mention the blasted Olympics [that's my adjective, not his]. Below is some of his text. The full text can be read here.
(Please bear in mind that I wasn't there, I've met him only a couple of times and I didn't choose his taxi driver!)
‘Our debt to the next generation is supremely important in these coming years. Before the credit squeeze jumped on us, we were all nervous and apprehensive that the wonderful ‘Olympic dream’ would drain the resources that might otherwise have gone to the arts. Now that the credit squeeze has joined that pressure, it is all the more important to stand together and be prepared to speak out. Not as ‘whinging luvvies’ (as the scribbling profession would have us be called), but as people who stand up for something that they passionately believe in.
‘Thank you all very much for your belief in me and what I do. I will end with a memory that I have of how important it is realise how far into the different corners of the world music can go.
‘One November night in the pouring rain in New York, I eventually managed to get a taxi. I threw myself into it – the traffic was crawling down the Avenue – and I found myself in the company of an enormous Afro-American taxi driver. He was listening on the radio to the BBC Philharmonic playing Korngold’s Sinfonietta. I said to him, “do you like this classical stuff? Do you listen to this often?”
‘“Man,” he said, “it’s the only thing that keeps me sane. If I listened to my music, with all the crap driving I have to witness, I’d go out of my mind and there’d be more road rage than ever.”
‘Isn’t that great? Music can reach into people’s lives in ways that we can’t imagine. All of us here believe in music. We believe in the power that music can give people to change lives, to change our hearts, and we must go on saying that and not be ashamed of it.
‘Who says the English are cold? Who says that they don’t understand musical things? Who says this is the “Land without Music”? They used to in the 19th century, but they sure can’t now.’
I've never seen any film of Efrem Zimbalist before. Here he is playing the variations from Beethoven's Kreutzer sonata, filmed in 1926. Like Heifetz and Seidel, he was a Russian-born student of Leopold Auer; like them, his sound inhabits a world that is entirely its own, and the tone here comes through with astonishing power, beauty and sensuality, despite having been recorded 84 years ago. Glorious. Hope you love it as much as I do!
There's now so much amazing old-school violin stuff on Youtube that it could keep us happy on JDCMB for a year at least!
The music of Maurice Jarre, who has died aged 84: Lawrence of Arabia, which was among his iconic collaborations with David Lean. It's rather extraordinary, to put it mildly, as the opening titles begin with four and a half minutes of pure music - see above. He composed Dr Zhivago, A Passage to India, Dead Poets Society and many more. It's perhaps a signal of how the status of film music has changed in the past half-century that Jarre's death was reported on BBC TV's Breakfast news yesterday (normally they only talk about such matters as the latest red tape around school dinners).
Full obituaries are appearing around the world. Here is one from the Los Angeles Times, which includes a quote from John Williams: 'According to composer John Williams, Jarre "is to be well remembered for his lasting contribution to film music. His collaboration with director David Lean produced truly enduring music that is beloved by millions, and we all have been enriched by his legacy."'
And here is a full obit from The Guardian. "Music is how I will be remembered," said Jarre. "When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head and that only I can hear."
That was Kirill Gerstein in Rach 3 with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra and the delectable Dudamel.
Gerstein is my next 'victim'...I mean, my next interviewee... for the International Piano Series. Tomorrow night, he makes his debut in this fabulous sequence of recitals at Southbank Centre, and I'll be doing the pre-concert interview with him, starting at 6.15pm. Do come and hear him: his programme is exciting, dramatic and unusual.
Johann Sebastian Bach: English Suite No.2 in A minor, BWV.807 Sergey Rachmaninov: Variations on a theme of Corelli, Op.42 Interval Fryderyk Chopin: Fantasia in F minor, Op.49 Arnold Schoenberg: 3 Pieces for piano, Op.11 Ferruccio Busoni: Sonatina No.2 for piano Franz Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No.1
He has a fabulous track record that includes having been a Carnegie Hall Rising Star in 2005-6, projects with Andras Schiff and Steven Isserlis and a piano trio with Kolja Blacher and Clemens Hagen. He became the youngest student ever to enrol at Berklee, aged 14, after a faculty member was amazed by his jazz playing (yes) in Poland. But the classical style seems to have won in the end, with a triumph at the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in 2001. So he's come a long way from his native Voronezh, where he was born in 1979, and looks set to go much further.
I haven't quite 'got' it with Twitter as yet (though am pathetically Facebook-addicted). But right now there's a hilarious game going on. Summarise an opera plot in 140 characters and tweet it with the tag #operaplot. I've traced it all back to the brilliant Miss Mussel, who got the ball rolling 2 days ago. Here are a few of the best so far:
Priestess has secret kids. Lover unfaithful. Kill kids? Kill him? Confess to the tribe. Penalty's death. Lover joins her.
Naive geisha carries a tune, carries a torch, carries a child. Can't carry on. Hari-kiris herself.
I'd kill to be Tsar. It's good to be the Tsar. Wait, is D really dead? This is driving me nuts. My son can take over. Dosvedanya.
You ruined my life. Hey, let's drink this. We're in love. Ecstasy! Shit, we're busted. OK, let's just die.
More where those came from. I'm trying to think of something myself...
OK, how about this?: Here's my castle. Are you afraid? No, I'm going to open all those damn doors. Are you afraid? No, let me in! Who's that? Oh shit.
Update(I know you're waiting for this one...): #operaplot Marie's dead. Marietta's alive. Paul thinks Marietta is Marie. Paul has dream. Paul doesn't murder anyone really. Bye-bye Bruges.
Villazon apparently has laryngitis. Opera Chic thinks our Angela maybe knew what she was talking about. Actually it was a little longer ago than 2 weeks - the interview took place in the last week of January. OC says RV is out of 31 March and 4 April, planning to return to the production from 8 April.
It is only five years ago that I heard Villazon for the first time - he was an unknown, singing Rodolfo at Glyndebourne. I was admittedly so busy ogling the gergeurs Nathan Gunn that I didn't pay as much attention to the new Mexican tenor as he deserved. Other than thinking he was a heck of a good actor and that...well, that really is quite a voice. Six months or so later, everything caught fire. It is way, way too soon to have to consider saying goodbye to a sound like that.
So what happened? We can only hazard sensible guesses. Vocal problems can hit any singer, any time. But you need to be very, very resilient emotionally to survive certain things that the music business lands you with. How manufactured was that partnership with Netrebko? I had the impression from talking to her in 2006 that it was jolly real (I checked back in the out-takes from that interview in case there was illumination to be found, but there wasn't, beyond the printed version - this particular conversation was less scintillating than the one with Angela, except, of course, for the diamonds.) But voices are voices, human blood and guts, not steel strings. Muck them about at your peril.
Here is a radio interview with him from America in 1944, given during a recital of his music by his wife. He sounds quite ill; by this time he was already suffering from advanced leukaemia and he died about a year and two months later.
Now here he is playing his own Suite Op.14, recorded 1929.
"Somehow I felt now, after a long time of no work, like a man who lies in bed over a long, long period, and finally tries to use his arms and legs, gets on his feet and takes one or two steps. A man like this cannot just suddenly walk up a hill. I, too, gradually grew accustomed to movement: and so in this manner I only produced piano pieces. But even this was something. Because, to be frank, recently I have felt so stupid, so dazed, so empty-headed that I have truly doubted whether I am able to write anything new at all anymore. All the tangled chaos that the musical periodicals vomit thick and fast about the music of today has come to weigh heavily on me: the watchwords linear, horizontal, vertical, objective, impersonal, polyphonic, homophonic, tonal, polytonal, atonal, and the rest; even if one does not concern one’s self with all of it, one still becomes quite dazed when they shout it on our ears so much. ... But now things are all right; you can imagine how pleased I am that at last there will be something new, and something I myself can play, on my own, instead of the eternal Allegro barbaro, A Bit Tipsy and Rumanian Dance."
This amazing film footage of Prokofiev plopped into my in-box from Marc-Andre Hamelin, who tells me it's been doing the rounds of pianists' emails for a while. He has also kindly forwarded this translation of the Russian, which was sent to him by Dmitry Rachmanov:
Prokofiev is being asked: "Sergei Sergeevich, maybe you will tell our viewers about your work?"
He replies: "Well, right now I am working on a symphonic suite of waltzes, which will include three waltzes from Cinderella, two waltzes from the War and Peace, and one waltz from the movie score "Lermontov." [The War and Peace] has just been brilliantly produced in Leningrad, where the composer Cheshko (?) made an especially noteworthy appearance as a tenor, giving a superb performance in the role of Pierre Bezukhoff. Besides this suite, I am working on a sonata for violin and piano [no.1 in f minor], upon completion of which I will resume work on the sixth symphony, which I had started last year. I have just completed three suites from the Cinderella ballet and I am now turning the score over to copyists for writing the parts, so that most likely the suites will already be performed at the beginning of the fall season."
Fascinating debate in The Observer yesterday, springing from a live one at the Royal Geographical Society as to whether Britain has become indifferent to beauty.
I have a few things to add and invite you to do the same...
First, I reckon people in general love beauty. But today's decision-makers and creators in art, architecture, music and more have a narrow idea of what popular beauty constitutes and they don't like it: it is out-dated, being associated with the 18th and 19th centuries. An attitude derived from Socialist Realism has dominated everything from TV to concert-hall design for the last 50 years or more. If and when a semblance of beauty exists, it often seems suspect because it's associated with the wrong kind of politics: those of the first half of the 20th century. Thought process: beauty=conservatism=evil.
This, though, confuses beauty with prettiness. Beauty, genuine beauty, has nothing to do with politics, isn't skin deep and on the surface may not be pretty in the slightest. Personally, I think that beauty is what results when a work of art spirals into more than the sum of its parts, telling us a startling truth about the human condition, mainly through compassion and empathy. I found the film The Lives of Others beautiful, because it carried a powerful message about feeling, suffering and sacrifice. Even Apocalypse Now has a strange and terrifying beauty to it. There's nothing pretty about either film; nor about Salman Rushdie's overwhelming novel Midnight's Children, full of beauty that springs from the power and gleeful originality of the man's virtuoso imagination.
The performing musicians I most admire share qualities that make their playing beautiful: attention to the detail of tone, shape, colour, but most of all to the soul beneath the music. Bashing the hell out of a piano has nothing to do with this (unless a composer has specifically requested it); nor does playing a violin in strict metronomic time with banned vibrato just because it is deemed 'correct'. It's about empathy, intuition, humanity. It's about understanding the composer, the work and and the instrument, about knowing how to bring out the best in all of them.
As for new music, beauty exists, but it is certainly undervalued and bizarrely feared. It was the profound and very unexpected beauty of Gorecki's Third Symphony that made it so popular; of course it was criticised for that. Yet it does contain beauty, wrought by digging deep and opening up a ravine of intense humanity. And James MacMillan's opera The Sacrifice, the little of it I heard, struck me as incredibly beautiful, but certainly not pretty.
Meanwhile we had to have The Minotaur on primetime TV, which probably put a bunch of people off modern opera for life. It wasn't either pretty or beautiful. It was powerful in its way, but noisy, upsetting, and, overall, a jolly nasty experience. Just because something sounds hideous, that doesn't mean it automatically contains beauty; but equally just because The Phantom of the Opera is gentler on the ears, that doesn't make it beautiful either.
It can seem as if everyone is terrified of beauty, but actually what they're frightened of is prettiness, or the version commonly termed "mawkish sentimentality". Even that idea needs to be gently prodded: is there perhaps a danger of going too far the other way, denying any semblance of human feeling for fear of - well, of what? Feeling something? Being thought uncool? Being bullied in the playground for wearing a baseball cap with the peak at the front instead of the back?
So in terror of one potentially twisted emotion, we run a mile from another and desperately espouse its reverse. But the reverse isn't appealing either, so everyone scarpers from that too and the result is...empty chairs.
There's a problem with real beauty: there isn't much because creating it is too damn difficult. Nothing gratuitous is ever really beautiful; nothing that sets out to copy beauty is likely to succeed in reaching us at the gut level on which beauty works its magic. It's an opening of the channels, a freeing of the circulation from specific to universal to mystical. When, with infinite care and compassion, a great artist shows us the humane inner essence of the image or the sound, and we stand back and gasp - that's beauty.
Of course the American arts scene faces a harder, faster crumbling under the current economic woes than its European counterpart, being almost wholly dependent on the whims of sponsors and the health of the stock market. Whether Obama's package will help is uncertain. But isn't it the case that the better the management, the better the chance of any organisation, of any kind, to weather the blast? If, as Charlotte says, this orchestra has no music director, no chair of trustees and no executive director, that doesn't appear to put it in a particularly good spot right now. How is it possible for a world-class orchestra like this one to land up rudderless? Better no music director than a bad one (we in London know all about that from the last recession...), but it sounds as if the great Philadelphia Orchestra, Fantasia or none, has more to worry about even than world economics.
Her website has some super audio clips - try the gorgeously tragic Chausson Chanson Perpetuelle. When I looked Kate up on YouTube I found two clips, one featuring a ghastly Donizetti duet with an even ghastlier tenor, the other featuring decent music (Benvenuto Cellini) but one of the weirdest productions I've ever seen. She is absolutely terrific in both, but...well, you just have to see this thing. Fasten your seatbelts.
I have an article about Faryl Smith and prodigy syndrome in today's Independent. For those of you fortunate enough not to have come across her before, she is 13 and has been snapped up by Universal Classics to be the new Charlotte Church/Katharine Jenkins. Yes, her voice is nice enough and sounds more mature than she is. No, it is not a good idea to do what she is doing.
FARYL SMITH AND THE PRODIGY SYNDROME Jessica Duchen
It’s sad when the first thought that strikes one upon encountering a young girl with a beautiful voice is: ‘Oh God, another one’. The girl in question is Faryl Smith, 13, the latest discovery of Britain’s Got Talent. She led the singing at the England-France rugby match in front of more than 82,000 people, and her first CD, Faryl, sold 20,000 copies in its first four days, becoming the fastest-selling ‘classical’ debut album ever.
A confident girl from Kettering, she has a strong mezzo-soprano voice, the personal support of Katherine Jenkins, a recording contract with Universal, and the hearts of the TV-addicted nation desperate for a new pseudo-classical child star; the others keep growing up. The fact that most singers don’t generally find their ‘true’ voice until they are nearly twenty seems negligible: what commands the country’s fickle affections is a kid creating the illusion of, so to speak, premature maturity.
There’s always a buzz when a prodigy emerges and Faryl is no exception. Singing ‘Ave Maria’ on Britain’s Got Talent last year, she stunned everyone with the purity and assurance of her voice. Judge Simon Cowell said that she had sung ‘the best audition I’ve heard in years’. She then caused a sensation by not winning – first prize went to a breakdancer. Universal gave her a contract anyway, reportedly worth £2.3m. In Classic FM Magazine, Faryl commented: “People think when you sign a contract you’re automatically given a barrel of money, but that’s not how it happens. I just let my mum and dad get on with it.”
She’s already being called an ‘opera singer’, though of course she isn’t one – she’s way too young and the tracks on her debut album include Amazing Grace, Danny Boy and Annie’s Song, but no opera whatsoever. Populist interviews proudly declare that she doesn’t listen to classical music. They also report that Faryl’s parents, a health and safety inspector and a hairdresser, were reluctant to let her enter the TV competition in case it would ‘ruin her childhood’.
By now we should be used to stories that begin this way. Youngster emerges, catches attention with youthful appeal, achieves massive success. Half-baked ‘classical’ pretentions are quickly abandoned in favour of mass-market pop, the real classical music world being small, lacking in money and too quality-driven. Sooner or later, the pressures tell in drugs, alcohol, mental problems or family feuds. Some genuine sensations bounce back. Some don’t. History tells us that child prodigies pay for their successes with their souls.
Researching prodigies for my novels Alicia’s Gift and Hungarian Dances, I met numerous youthful performers and read about five times as many. Throughout, there were sorry tales and few happy endings. In my books – Alicia’s Gift concerning a prodigy pianist in the Peak District, and Hungarian Dances tracing the personal cost at which a Gypsy violinist rejects her heritage – I tried to give a compassionate picture of the human dilemmas involved in developing exceptional talent. The reality, though, is often less compassionate than one would like.
Plenty of great classical musicians started out as prodigies, the obvious examples being Mozart and Mendelssohn. The latter, though, seems to be the only prodigy in history whose family had nothing to gain from his status. Mozart’s father was more typical: desperately ambitious, not just for musical glory, but for money. Through the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, prodigies frequently appeared in deprived or persecuted communities in which musical success was viewed as an escape route to a better, safer and wealthier life. The legendary violinist Jascha Heifetz came from the Vilna ghetto; the pianist Cziffra, like my Hungarian Dances heroine Mimi Rácz, from grinding poverty among the Hungarian Gypsies.
Today it’s not necessity that drives the push, but it is sometimes greed. Every prodigy denies having pushy parents. Every parent of a prodigy denies pushing them. Encouraging, yes, they all say; supporting, yes; pushy, no. Nobody likes to think of themselves as pushy, and children are usually inclined to trust their parents. But the fact remains that behind every child basking prematurely in the limelight there is an adult who has put them there. Children cannot and do not do such things all by themselves.
There’s a line – sometimes fine, sometimes less so – between a supportive family and a controlling one, between permitting opportunities and grabbing them, between encouraging talent and exploiting it. Who knows how many equally talented youngsters may be biding their time in ordinary schools? Or how many potential musical marvels never even find their talent, for lack of encouragement or attention? The difference in public prodigydom occurs when someone realises that they can make money. That person is unlikely to be the child.
Over many successful young musicians, especially the girls, there looms an ever-watchful parent – cellist Ofra Harnoy, and violinists Sarah Chang and Hilary Hahn are just three examples. Sometimes the parent takes control of management and even recording production. Pop violinist Vanessa-Mae’s mother founded a record label for her daughter’s recordings when the little violinist was barely ten. In certain cases, terrible family rifts ensue when a girl musician grows up and wants either to take control of things herself, or to hand them over to an experienced music professional.
Boys can seem more resilient than girls, perhaps because they aren’t generally exploited for their looks. Nobody took Daniel Barenboim’s photograph walking out of the sea in a wet t-shirt when he was 14, unlike Vanessa-Mae, nor draped him suggestively over a couch, unlike Harnoy. Today one of Britain’s most exciting talents, the teenaged pianist Benjamin Grosvenor (who won the piano section of the BBC Young Musician of the Year aged 11), is building a serious career slowly and steadily; ditto the clarinettist Julian Bliss, now 19.
But overexposed young men sometimes respond to prodigy childhoods by suffering injury, disillusionment or mental illness just when they should be at the peak of their powers. Maxim Vengerov’s recent defection from the violin is a relatively mild example. Worse was the case of Josef Hassid (1923-1950), a phenomenal violin prodigy who suffered a breakdown at 18 and died after a lobotomy aged 26; and the pianist Terence Judd, winner of the 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition, who leapt to his death at Beachy Head.
It’s not only childhood that is destroyed by the pressures of premature celebrity; a soul is maimed for life. For every prodigy you hear of, there are ten that you don’t, because everything has gone horribly wrong. I’ve met former prodigies who dropped out of their careers after intense psychological misery because they had been shoehorned into music by ambitious parents; fine talents who dried up through inability to cope with adult competition after cosseted childhoods; and some who had encountered sexual demands from those wielding power. Eating disorders, substance abuse, breakdowns and suicide attempts are legion. Look out for the scars on the wrists.
The survivors are brave, often admirable. The Japanese violinist Midori, who was internationally celebrated by 11, now devotes much of her time to education and community work, bringing music to underprivileged children. Barenboim is one of today’s greatest musicians and thinkers. Even Charlotte Church seems to have settled down for now.
One could argue that there is no guarantee of happiness or success for anybody, prodigy or otherwise; that in a tough world, you have to grab the chances while you can; that failing to push a special talent would deny it its opportunities and the world its beauties. Prodigy parents might do well to reflect before accepting the record contract, though. Nobody can emerge wholly unscathed from such a childhood. It isn’t humanly possible.
CHARLOTTE CHURCH Launching with ‘Voice of an Angel’, Church started off as a sub-classical babydoll. Moved on to pop music, was then reported as binge-drinking in 2005. Gave up alcohol when she was pregnant with her first child. Now 23 and hosts her own TV show.
DANIEL BARENBOIM The Argentinian-born Barenboim was giving concerts by 11 and quickly became an international star as both pianist and conductor. His dedication to the quality and power of top-notch classical music-making has never faltered. One of today’s most inspirational performers and influential thinkers.
VANESSA-MAE Started off as a classical violinist, promoted by her mother’s record label. Signed by EMI aged 14; notorious publicity shot in wet t-shirt. Turned quickly towards mainstream pop, adding vocals to her albums from 2001. Her website currently lists one upcoming gig, at Westonbirt Arboretum in July.
DAVID HELFGOTT The Australian child prodigy pianist was much pushed by his ambitious father, but showed signs of mental illness while a student. After first marriage broke down he was institutionalised and underwent treatment for a decade. His story was immortalised in the film Shine.
So I am at a music festival, staying in a chintzy Victorian b&b, preparing to play the clarinet in a concert. I have not played the clarinet in a while (btw, in real life *never*), but this doesn't appear to worry me too much. The big problem is that my clarinet has vanished. I can't find it anywhere and hesitate between needing my friends' help and not wanting to confess that the darn thing is missing. And my friends aren't inclined to listen, being too busy singing to each other. Then the clarinet turns up in the laundry basket. I am now bothered by the possibility that on stage it will smell of dirty washing. At last I examine the instrument and try to remember how to finger the notes, but...and we are about to walk on stage to give the concert and... time to wake up, gasping with relief.
I popped something about this onto Facebook. So many people started writing back with their own versions of it that I thought we should go public. There's even a Far Side cartoon version, 'The Elephant's Dream', in which the creature sits at a piano on a stage thinking 'What am I doing here? I'm a flautist!' Why do we suffer performance-anxiety dreams? Does anyone ever have a happy performance dream? Is performing so tied up with terror that the two things can't be separated in our unconscious selves?
A very different kind of diva: Annie Lennox, who incidentally is a very keen and excellent blogger (the link takes you to her website - there, click on BLOG). She has a voice I really adore when I don't have my strictly-classical hat on (music is music, as someone once said) and besides, she's someone I particularly admire since she is putting her voice, her fame and her energy into supporting areas that desperately need such support, notably HIV/AIDS research. Please explore her site for more details.
I've discovered she has several major qualities in common with the heroine of my next novel, Songs of Triumphant Love...but that can wait until the book comes out...
This is EMI's promotional video for the new Gheorghiu/Kaufmann/Pappano Madama Butterfly. The CD has gone straight to no.1 in the classical charts, according to latest press release. As YouTube is about to pull most of its most popular music videos, I thought we could have a quick look at it first.
Now, here are a few bits of my interview with her that didn't make it into the article. The transcript is pretty much as-was (though I've attempted to correct my typos, abbreviations et al). If you read this AND the published feature, you get the complete picture.
(On crying on stage, segueing from the Boheme story in the piece) "For the applause, it was a standing ovation, but it gives me...because I really put myself there. That’s why. You can say with time you become used to it, you can manage everything in your life. No. I am more sensitive! And open! It can happen. And if you cannot really judge your feelings and everything to know what to do, because you cannot sing when you are crying, even if you are the most perfect actor, you must act, and that’s all! (JD: What about a role like Violetta?) Oh my God! The second act! If I am not controlling myself I can cry all the way from the second act on to the third."
(JD: Tell me about the recording – it’s rare to make a complete studio recording now) "Yes, in the last years I saw nobody. But I’m the lucky one, if I may say! But the project was almost made 3-4 years ago, and maybe before I record all arias by Puccini, and in the meantime it was of course planned to do it with Tony Pappano because in every recording session, wow, the relationship between us is like a love affair, it’s something perfect, we understand just perfection without speaking – no speaking, just with gesture, looking, and I feel in his eyes and my eyes an awareness of everything ...it’s very good between us this way."
(The unedited version of the Jonas Kaufmann bit) "We thought to have Alberto because we record a lot of operas with him, but Roberto in that period left EMI and in the same period I needed for a Traviata in the Met a tenor, maybe a new tenor, and my manager gives me a tape of Cecilia Bartoli singing with a tenor, and said he’s singing in Zurich but nobody knows him, just listen. I listened and I said OK – and my manager said trust your instinct. And I said OK, he will be my Alfredo at the Met. So they trust me at the Met to have a nobody...in the meantime I needed here at Covent Garden a tenor for La Rondine because we’d had Roberto and we needed another one, and I said why not this tenor to see how it goes, a smaller role than Traviata. So this happened, I asked him here for La Rondine, they said yes, then they said yes at the Met, here it was very good and at the Met it was a huge successs, and there I said to EMI let’s have Jonas for Butterfly – and everyone said oh my God are you sure, he never recorded. And I said: trust me. It’s like for Roberto, and Tony Pappano – when somebody has an unusual talent I never made a mistake! I have a talent to discover and finally I was right! And I’m happy. And in the meantime he started to record by himself – but it’s not easy to have someone to sing in the studio with someone who never recorded before, it’s a huge challenge for everybody. (JD: I remember hearing his first Strauss Lieder disc and this amazing voice came soaring out...) Yes! So he started his career very late, it’s not a big [age] difference between us, he chose to stay in Zurich & I advised him all the time, basta, finish in Zurich and fly, but it’s your town...and in the end, he listened! (JD: Will you do more performances together?) We have a production here in Covent Garden of Adriana Lecouvreur."
(On how she started and progressed her career, from the Covent Garden Boheme) "I sang just one Boheme before, for my graduation, but to go from singing one Boheme to singing in Covent Garden, and it’s your international debut - ! But I wanted. And I was very determined. And everything - atmosphere, people around me, I always feel it, I will arrive. Nothing is for me, wow, I am surprised. I was all the time sure because everyone around me was telling me [had complete confidence in me] and they were always making laudation for me – it was all importance, and because I start to sing so early, I sang at 18 my first important concert, Butterfly etc, and so everybody looked at me in a very serious way. I never thought in Covent Garden it would be different from Bucharest, where I had this – wow - my luckiest moment is to have this idea, and my teacher said 'wait a little and your entrance must be in the front door, the most important'. In Covent Garden in was 1991, 92 Vienna, 93 at the Met and the day after an important debut everybody knows you. But I sang then in Covent Garden other roles, but as we see promotion and mass media and everyone knows you, everyone sees you and everybody is speaking about you, and that happened when I made my debut in La Boheme and Georg Solti came to my performance. There he persuaded me to sing Traviata, and because of the story with the BBC, they dropped everything to make live transmission, and all this real story helped me in a way that the day after everybody knows me. So from that moment I try not to disappoint anybody. And it’s not easy. I had a career, I made a lot of things and I think it’s rather important to stay and to stay for many years is very hard, even if people, journalists, critics, they have the right to have another opinion, but for anything in this world the result is what counts, and this is the result!"
(JD: What is your pre-performance ritual?) "I am doing all the time the make-up. Nobody is working on the maquillage, they are free with me. The only time I work with someone on the maquillage is for photo session or film or television – otherwise, for performances on stage I do my own no matter the style, because I did some maquillage at the conservatory so I know how to do my make-up. It’s very good before the performance, I am not doing the vocalising, I come to the opera house completely prepared, I just put on my costume and go on stage. It’s not necessarily that this is the way – it’s that it’s Angela’s way."
(JD: Since Roberto left EMI, are you still working together so regularly?) Less, less. The last CD he did Sicialian songs, and we record something together, we record L’amico Fritz for DG, it will be released this year – we did this at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. And we finished out La Rondine at the Met, the premiere was for new year’s day, it was on HD in cinemas all over the world, it was a huge success, but I was suffering because I was very ill! Oh, I was suffering, I was completely kaput! And I took some medicines and everybody around me they helped me, mostly Peter Gelb the director, he said 'whatever happens on stage, there are thousands of people they bought their tickets to see you in Rondine, oh, it’s a disaster, and if something happens I will come immediately and saying to everybody you are the best and we must be with you and you must come again and again and do everything you want, but COME HERE and put on your wig and your costume!' And with all this support I was willing and I said OK, but it was very hard. If you do something badly for an audience at the Met & it’s not just at the Met it’s all over the world...Finally we are human beings. But it was a hard moment for me."
(JD: What will be your highlights for 2009?) You remind me about highlights, because I spent two weeks recording Butterfly, Jonas came for the last day, and I said to Tony, let’s start with the highlights, and he laughed – 'all the opera is highlights!' And all my work is highlights! So I go to the Met, I have La Rondine, I have a concert in Spain, I have operas in Berlin, I have L’elisir d’amore at the Met, I sing with Rolando I hope everything goes fine [crosses self], I have a new production of Carmen at the Met, I need to finish my new solo recording of Romanian music – you will not recognise me! It’s very interesting."
(JD: So is that of traditional Romanian songs?) Yes, but I sing them in my way. (JD: We don't know enough Romanian music here in the 'west'...). This is another problem for me, another unfair for culture and politics, because if you’re in my country, and I don’t know about east countries because of the Communists of course, but the world was also in different cultures, because in our culture we learn about your culture, about English and German and French culture, but you – do you think we don’t have the same type of interesting people? We have our poets, our writers, our musicians, our everything. (JD: Enescu...) Of course, but people know him because he decided to live in Paris, but that doesn’t mean he was better than another one who decided to live in Romania! It’s another unfair position. Because people are thinking ah, he’s Romanian, but Romanians, because of the communists, decided to live in another country. But another artist who could not leave the country because of thousands of reasons or because he didn’t want to, he is less interesting, because you don’t know him that means he’s not interesting, he has no value, and this is very unfair! Because of the politics and because of the kind of school training, because it’s very important in school to have general culture, maybe from India and China and Arabic countries, Argentinian, United States, because culture, here is the unfair point, people make the confusion between politics and culture. This is not right – because all of us have the right to discover a genius person, no? We have in Romania geniuses, but we have no reason to discover, so the conclusion is I feel it’s my moment to make a discovery, of my music and my country’s music. I have a Romanian guy who helped me with three musicians from the USA who are doing the orchestration for me, and it sounds modern but also with a completely other type of harmony, because this is the originality, but also because I sing and I hope to make you interested!"
(More about Romania...) "You know, Russia, Bulgaria and Poland are brothers and sisters, Hungary is related to Finland, and Romania is the only Latin country among them, related to Italy and Spain – we are very different cultures in the same part of Europe, it’s fascinating. (JD [with Hungarian hat on]: I heard Romanians and Hungarians don’t get along...) It’s more legend – more political, not between people and people. And for years Transylvania was this disputed territory, no it’s mine, no it’s ours, so they played ping-pong with it. (JD: Dracula...) No! Dracula is ENGLISH! And because I am Romanian, because of Dracula, someone, some journalist somewhere, of course, didn’t know anything else but Dracula from Romania, so he gave me a nickname, Draculette! And this year I came to the opera house and at the stage door of the Metropolitan Opera House, an American composer, he really goes in a serious way: 'I have the score of an opera for Angela Gheorghiu, named Draculette!' He was serious. And to take the good part of it, we have another composer who starts to write another opera thanks to an English person who gives us our first nickname 'Bonnie and Clyde' – Vladimir Cosma, who wrote for us Marius et Fanny, now he starts to compose for us Bonnie and Clyde! So, you want to play, let’s play! It was sort of funny, so let’s make friends with it! Thank you for the idea! In the meantime I need to be an opera singer. A serious one."
(JD: How did you get along with Marius et Fanny?) "Perfect – oh, perfect. Vladimir Cosma is originally a Jewish Romanian, all his family are all important musicians – and when I heard he is doing – Roberto told me about Marius et Fanny and he proposed and they got the world speaking – when I spoke to Vladimir I said, Vladimir, wow, you are working on your first opera? And he said yes, but are you interested to sing an opera...Wow, of course! ‘But you never said a modern opera’ – but of course I wanted! It’s a very beautiful opera! First I record Marius et Fanny, then I sang on stage – we recorded in Switzerland – thinking back in that production everyone was French, minus me and the composer, who were Romanian. Marius et Fanny for the French is like a Bible – Marcel Pagnol wrote something, wow, untouchable – well, we dared to touch Marcel Pagnol and the performance and everything related with Marius et Fanny was wow, oh, my emotions, oh, my poor heart, with Roberto and the mondiale premiere to do Marius et Fanny in Marseilles, where they’re like Milano... And they filmed and recorded everything, I was very proud. And I appreciate with Vladimir, he show us everything and we discuss and we give advices relating to an opera singer, because it’s not the same writing music for instruments as for opera singers. For opera singers you need a special culture and a special knowledge because there are some things you cannot do because of the rhythms. So he showed us and we’d say this is good, or make a pause on this note or these words, and the three of us we made a successful opera, voila! And now it was on TV and I start now to try to make other people interested in this opera. It sounds ain the beginning a bit like Bernstein, but in, no offence, a better way; in the second part it is more operatic – wow, it is very dramatic and tragic, and you need a powerful voice to sing it – big emotions, big range, big orchestra. The aria is like Michaela’s aria in Carmen, very big, and hard to sing."
(On Covent Garden and London) "You know my story with the porters from Covent Garden? One day I finished my performances, I was supposed to sing 5 performances of Pagliacci and there was one performance with another singer, and then the other singer she was ill and they asked me to sing also the last performance. From the opera house we said bye-bye, ciao, see you next year, but then when they saw me again all the porters were so happy that they put money all together and they buy a present for me, I swear. I love them! And it’s very important. I tell to everyone this story – because in an opera house it’s very important that the atmosphere comes from when you open the door. Another story from Covent Garden – I said to one of the machinists, wow, trousers with ‘Royal Opera House’ on you, wow wow! And the day after he brought me trousers with ROH on for me - they made them for me. I swear. I really like the atmosphere in this house. I really like it. And also all the important things for my private life and my profession happens here. Everything is related. And Ioana is here, my daughter, she is English. I like the sound of British accents and I like the sound of English!"
The interview coincides with the release of her new CD of Madama Butterfly, complete - rare these days to find a complete new studio recording of any opera, of course, but with Gherghiu and Kaufmann in the leading roles and Pappano wielding the baton, EMI must be pretty confident that this one will sell by the gallon. In The Sunday Times Hugh Canning, who heard the sessions, wrote a feature about the recording and the 'making of'. My piece is a portrait of the lady herself. There isn't a JDCMB 'director's cut' version of the article - they printed it in its entirety - but there may be a few choice selections to add, which I will do as soon as I've unpacked. (Update: DONE...)
I like her. I really do. Because what you see IS what you get. There is no sense that she's pretending to be something she's not. Some artists switch off the charm when you switch off the voice recorder. Angela is A1 consistent. I can't say whether or not she really is 'the last diva' since we don't yet know what today's desperately spoiled teenagers will be capable of if they take the stage, but I don't need to tell you that she's the ultimate out there at present.
As for the Butterfly, it is basically gorgeous. Angela seems to get under the skin of Cio-Cio San, first decorous and enunciating delicately as the young girl, then letting rip as the tragedy develops. The utterly fabulous Kaufmann, though, rather overshadows her in the love duet...
We're clearing up now, washing the glasses, keeping Solti out of the last slice of Sachertorte (it isn't good for cats), and it's time to hand out the party bag. (With special thanks to the Verbier Festival...) Enjoy!
JDCMB is 5 years old today! The cake is in the oven and at the cyberposhplace they are chilling the champagne. Meanwhile here's a little retrospective of a few...
Which brings us to Handel. You might get a surprise if you tune into the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow.
UPDATE: Huge thanks to all of you who've come to JDCMB's biggest-ever blogoparty! And special thanks to Opera Chic for setting up my date for the evening (in the absence of my husband, who's otherwise occupied at the Lincoln Center). :-)
There are still several places available for my workshop KICK-START YOUR WRITING this Saturday, 28 February. If you'd like to attend, please get in touch PDQ! Links et al are in the relevant bit of the sidebar! The next one will be in late March.
I am very glad to report, somewhat smugly, that the inaugural workshop seems to have helped to spark one attendee into creating one of the best new blogs I've seen in quite a while, LondonJazz...
UPDATE: It appears that Sundays may generally be preferred to Saturdays. If anyone would like to come along in March but would find Sunday 29th better than Saturday 28th, please let me know - this one is still movable!
It's official, as reported by Slipped Disc, Opera Chic and Classical Music Magazine: Danielle de Niese is going to marry Gus Christie, hereditary head honcho of Glyndebourne and until a few days ago almost certainly the most eligible divorcee in Sussex. We are shedding a sentimental tear over this; they looked the picture of happiness last summer, draped over the picnic rugs together in what there was of the sunshine. Bless. And congratulations!
To celebrate, here is Danni as Cleopatra tying the knot with Giulio Cesare (sung here by Sarah Connolly) on stage at Glyndebourne...
Thanks to my beloved Hungarians for alerting me to this with a congratulatory email. I hadn't read the ST today because I've spent most of the morning, er, blogging. About Russian pianists.
A very happy JD is now looking forward to JDCMB'S 5TH BIRTHDAY coming up NEXT SUNDAY, 1 March. But I can't decide what to do to celebrate... Any ideas, folks?
The other day I promised some less good news about another Russian pianist, and here it is: Grigory Sokolov, who was to have played at the Royal Festival Hall on 29 April, has cancelled his appearance due to visa trouble. The hoops that the British government is demanding artists jump through in order to perform here have now been set so high and made so unpleasant that it appears he has better things to do with his time than bother with them. He just won't come here.
It's OUTRAGEOUS that such bureaucratic claptrap should keep one of the greatest pianists on the planet away from the musical capital of the world! And please don't start writing in to JDCMB with sanctimonious comments about keeping out terrorists - we've had plenty growing up right here in Blighty, and they tend not to be concert pianists, let alone ones of Sokolov's stature.
Consolation prize: Sokolov is to be replaced by Angela Hewitt, who will perform the Bach Goldberg Variations. I'll be interviewing her on stage before the show.
I've been wondering for a couple of days how best to describe Double Dream, the glorious evening of two-piano bedazzlement from the Russian classical virtuoso Mikhail Rudy and the jazz supremo from Ukraine/Norway Misha Alperin.
The project started life about seven years ago and launched with a beautiful CD, which gives you the idea - take a range of classical works, pass them back and forth at high heat, watch them grow and transform like chemical crystals under waterglass. The concert caught on and the pair have travelled the world with it (most recently Sydney); now, after years of working together, they're at their peak both individually and as a duo. Each maintains his own identity, but together they are more than the sum of their parts. And Double Dream is more than just a concert.
Kings Place was its ideal London home: it has the perfect acoustic of the Wigmore, the space, high-tech capabilities and delicious new-wood aroma of The Sage, the intimacy of, if not quite Ronnie Scotts, then almost. Double Dream is enhanced by creative lighting, opening in darkness (Schumann's Prophet Bird, its feathers in textures you've never encountered before), later blazing into floor-level red for a Prokofiev Toccata adaptation that could have had the startled composer on his feet, cheering, wondering why he hadn't thought of all that himself.
Throughout, a giant screen is poised above the pianists, split in two - one half for each Misha - showing close-ups of hands or faces, Alperin's extraordinary plastic features morphing through vocal ad-libs as he plays and Rudy smiling quietly to himself, his partner and us. The pianists face each other across the Steinways, but the video reverses this: when the images meet in the middle of the screens, a peculiar creature appears apparently with one back, four feet and four very busy arms.
Each pianist has a solo spot: Alperin improvised his way to a tremendous pitch of excitement that somehow drew in an unexpected extract of Rodeo, among other things; Rudy took Petroushka's fairground scene, one of his great party pieces, and, while playing it as written, managed to make it sound improvised. Many pieces are Alperin's own - catchy, irresistibly rhythmic, deliciously virtuoso. And in their far-flung net the pianists trap the shadows of a Chopin mazurka, fleeting moments of Janacek, the silvery gleam of a Haydn adagio. What playing. What creativity. What magic.
On Thursday, the second night of his Piano Dialogues days at KP, Mikhail Rudy joined forces with the actor Peter Guinness, with whom he collaborated a couple of years ago for the British version of The Pianist, his play for actor and pianist based on Wladislaw Szpilman's memoirs. This time it was Janacek and Kafka: the latter's beautiful, quirky Letters to Milena, warm and touching and painful by turns, in which the author traces his love affair with his much younger, married translator.
Kafka and Janacek, the two great and not very bouncy Czechs, never met, but proved a perfect match nonetheless, to the point that from time to time it was almost difficult to remember that it wasn't Janacek who wrote the letters (which half-suggest, like a slightly distorting mirror, Janacek's passion for Kamila Stosslova). Micha paired music and words with inspired sensitivity, grasping the subtlest shades of emotion to match and amplify in the most heart-wrenching moments of In the Mists, the Piano Sonata and extracts from On an Overgrown Path. Again, masterly and unforgettable.
As a finishing touch, each evening the St Pancras Room hosted a screening of a new documentary about Micha, entitled Mikhail Rudy: Portrait of a Pianist, directed by Andy Sommer and narrated (English version) again by Peter Guinness. It's a moving and at times harrowing account of his journey from Soviet Russia to Western triumph and makes all too clear the immense personal cost of such a move - alienation from one's family, a reunion almost too late.
Rudy and Guinness will be doing a two-week run of The Pianist in the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester in June. Meanwhile I am trying to learn as much as possible from their presentation so that we can attempt to make the Hungarian Dances event - similar in format, if not content - perhaps half as beautiful.
