Crisis at Janacek and Korngold's home opera

A distress call from Brno in the Czech Republic signals the latest cultural victim of the "financial crisis". The opera house in Brno is the country's second-largest, and has a long, distinguished history: not least, the city was the home of Janacek, composer of a raft of the early 20th century's finest operas, and it was also the birthplace of Korngold. According to our correspondent, the budget of Brno's cultural institutions has already been chopped by 20 per cent. The next step, it seems, is that the opera house's ensemble, chorus and orchestra are, allegedly, to be disbanded.

The email I've received suggests that the plan is that they will be taken back after seven months, but that there is no guarantee and the employees don't believe that that will happen. Besides, they have to eat, so they're not likely to sit about waiting, just in case, but will have to seek employment elsewhere.

One of the immediate casualties is the planned staging of Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane in the 2012-13 season, which would have been a co-production with Kaiserslautern.

There's a petition online to save the opera house's ensemble, and the affected performers would be mightily grateful if you'd like to sign it. It's in Czech. Click here.

Update: above right, a photo of the protests this situation has sparked. I've posted some Czech links in the comments box below, too.

Beware, friends. You don't know what you've got until it's gone. Institutions that have taken decades or centuries to establish can be swept away in one stroke of a pen. We live in a copycat world. Such precedents are much more dangerous than you might fondly imagine, of a Sunday morning.

Here's Lotte Lehmann - the first Heliane - singing the opera's most famous aria, 'Ich ging zu ihm'. JDCMB regulars will have heard it before, but that is no reason not to hear it again.

LISZTFEST!

No prizes for guessing whose bicentenary it is today. You should know by now, because this year has been all about LISZT FERENC in all his very many colours. And really, there's only one way to celebrate...

Please sit back, turn up the sound and welcome some of the greatest Lisztians of all time to play some of my personal favourites... I hope you enjoy this selection as much as I've enjoyed choosing it. It's the tip of a very, very hefty iceberg, needless to say. Responses and further links welcome.

GYÖRGY CZIFFRA: TRANSCENDENTAL ETUDE NO.11, 'HARMONIES DU SOIR'


LOUIS KENTNER: LA LEGGIEREZZA (footage from his last Liszt recital in London, 1985)


JOHN OGDON: DANTE SONATA (in two parts. Filmed 50 years ago...don't miss the introduction for a little insight into how TV presentation has changed over the intervening half century...)



DINU LIPATTI: SONETTO 104 DEL PETRARCA


GRIGORY GINZBURG: VALLEE D'OBERMANN (2 parts)



CLAUDIO ARRAU: FUNERAILLES (2 parts)



VLADIMIR HOROWITZ: HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY NO.6 (recorded 1947)


ERWIN NYIREGYHAZI: SONETTO 123 DEL PETRARCA

Friday Historical: Happy Birthday, Solti!

Today Sir Georg Solti would have been 99 years old. "My life is the clearest proof that if you have talent, determination and luck, you will make it in the end," he once said. "NEVER GIVE UP."

His life and musicianship remain impressive, idealistic and inspiring tributes to the blazing fires of his artistic conviction. Here's an extract from the beginning of his autobiography, Solti on Solti:

In February 1997, when these memoirs were nearing completion, I conducted Bela Bartok's Cantata profana with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Hungarian Radio Chorus, and while the performance was in progress a great realization came over me. I understood that my whole life, the whole journey I have made, is contained within the story of the Cantata. 

Bartok, one of my teachers at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, had translated the Cantata's text from Romanian into Hungarian. It tells the story of a father who brings up his nine sons to be stag-hunters, instead of farmers or merchants - 'average' men. As the sons grow, they press their hunt into ever more remote areas of the forest, until one day they cross a haunted bridge and are themselves transformed into beautiful, enchanted stags. The father, worried by his sons' prolonged absence, sets out to look for them; eventually, he crosses the bridge, reaches a wellspring and sees the nine stags. He aims his rifle at the biggest of them, but just as he is about to shoot he hears the stag speak. The stag tells him that he is the eldest of the sons - the father's favourite - and he warns the father that if he tries to shoot any of the stags their antlers will tear him to pieces.
"Come with me," the father begs his sons. "Your mother stands waiting, lonely, loving, grieving...The lanterns are lit, the table is set, the glasses are filled..."

"We shall never return," says the son, "because our antlers cannot pass through the doorway." 

The work ends with the man's heartbreaking realization that his sons have become alien to him and will never again be what they were before. 

I had always interpreted this story as an allegory of Bartok's life, but as I conducted the Cantata that day I realized that I, too, was the stag. I was born and trained to communicate music, just as the sons were born and trained to hunt, and I was lucky to have grown up in Hungary, a country that lives and breathes music - that has a passionate belief in the power of music as a celebration of life. But one day, while I was still young, I was parted from my family and left my native country. I hunted and searched for music, and destiny turned me into the object of my hunt. The circumstances of life became my "antlers" and prevented me from returning home. 

I do not mean to exaggerate my importance, but, like other internationally recognised musicians, I belong to everyone and share with the whole world all I have to offer. The musical and personal rewards of the life I have led have been great, but so have the sacrifices. And there were times when I felt that the rewards would elude me forever."

Solti conducted some of the most memorable concerts I was fortunate enough to attend - I still recall his Mahler 5 at the RFH in c1988, a rendition I long to hear again almost every time I witness any other conductor trying to bring off that piece. Then there was the evening that Decca celebrated his 80th birthday with a party in a big London hotel at which they presented him with the gift of a mountain bike. And of course I'll remain ever grateful to Lady Valerie Solti, who spoke at the Hungarian Cultural Centre launch party for my Hungarian Dances three years ago and described the resonances that its narrative held for the story, too, of Sir Georg.

After Sir Georg's death, Valerie and their daughters established the Solti Foundation, which gives grants to young musicians to aid them in the awkward transition from music school to entering the profession, helping with coaching, travel to competitions, hiring rehearsal facilities, etc. To date, they have received applications from 40 countries. More details here.

Medici TV has a special birthday tribute to him today, a film in which he conducts Wagner, Strauss and Beethoven: http://www.medici.tv/#!/georg-solti-wagner-strauss-beethoven

And here's a small extract from Mahler 5...

Meet The Olympianist

No, it's not another Beethoven cycle... Instead, British pianist Anthony Hewitt has come up with an exceptionally energetic way to stun several birds at one swoop. In the run-up to the London 2012 Olympic Games he will be cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats. Behind him follows his trusty Van Beethoven, containing a grand piano. Each evening he'll give a recital wherever he stops. And it's all in aid of excellent causes: pop some coins in the bucket, sponsor him or come to a concert and you're helping to raise funds for charities that aim to inspire children to take up music and/or sport, notably Big Noise, Musequality and Get Kids Going.

Right now he's busy training. And he promises to wear more clothes than the original Olympians...watch out for them in this video he's made to explain the hows, wheres and wherefores.

The whole tenor of Italy?

Just back this evening from a very lovely week in Puglia. Olive groves, wild waves, Greek ruins, red wine, visiting cat, heaps of sleep, absolutely crazy drivers, crooked car hire, last of the October sun and I read Wolf Hall in its entirety. Ended up dreaming nightly about Henry VIII.

Returned to find my interview with a certain rather popular Italian tenor was in today's Independent. And I'm glad to say that it made a mention in the Editor's Letter in the i as well.

The interview took place at David Bailey's studio; watching the photo session was quite an experience. (Left, in the studio with Veronica, Andrea and David... I'm lurking in the background.) The famously gruff photographer remarks that "opera singers are always good fun". And if you want to spend a four-figure sum without decimal points on a massive 'Opus' about Andrea Bocelli, now is your chance.

I put aside my own mixed feelings about Bocelli's recordings to try to meet him on his own terms and discover a little bit about what makes him tick. The article was somewhat truncated in the paper, so here, dear readers, is:

BOCELLI: THE DIRECTOR'S CUT

In his airy studio in Clerkenwell, David Bailey is hard at work photographing the most popular tenor on the planet. Andrea Bocelli poses quietly, reflectors and flashes creating a light-filled aura around him. His fiancée, Veronica Berti – 25 years his junior and pregnant with their first child (Bocelli’s third) – hovers with the observing entourage, helping to talk him through the session. Amid the fuss, Bocelli, smiling and soft-spoken, his sightless eyes closed, seems the still point of a hyperactive world.

The aim of all this is to produce a David Bailey portrait of the singer for The Official Andrea Bocelli Opus – a project of huge scope and dizzying cost all about his life and work, running to more than 800 pages. The book is designed as a luxury collector’s item and will retail for a four-figure sum. Other productions in the Opus series have been devoted to Vivienne Westwood, Michael Jackson, Ferrari and the Arsenal football team. Iconic names and brands, then, and Bocelli is one too: with over 70 million records sold to date, he is beyond the cosmos when it comes to popularity. His Sacred Arias entered the Guinness Book of Records as the highest-selling solo classical album of all time. Yet in the classical field, many are still trying to work out the secret of his success.

Bocelli’s fans don’t bother with operatic snobbery: ever since his first album went platinum in 1994, they have bought his discs and flocked to his performances, often in vast venues. Recently he sang in Central Park, New York; a DVD of the occasion will be on international release in November. During his visit to London, when I caught up with him, he also appeared in a special 50^th anniversary edition of Songs of Praise on BBC1.

But critics are not kind to him. He gave a recital at the Metropolitan Opera in New York back in February – a programme of songs with piano accompaniment by composers ranging from Handel to Fauré via Beethoven and Strauss, taken from his latest album, Notte Illuminata – but the New York Times slated his “bland homogeneity” and “dogged, unrelenting quality”. His voice offers occasional glimpses of great beauty and deep emotion; at other times its limitations can seem downright clunky. Fans rave over the melting quality of his tone, its gentleness, its directness. Detractors grumble about its lack of expressive range and its pinched, nasal patina.

Bocelli, who is now 53, seems unperturbed by the apparent divide between critical dismissal and popular embrace. “I think in the world of opera that’s the way things are,” he comments, via an interpreter (though his English is not bad). “There’s criticism for absolutely everybody. And in a way this makes it more interesting because, after all, discussion is life.”

Connecting with others through singing, he adds, is “just a question of being oneself. Nature has created us in such a way that it should be very easy to connect and communicate. What’s important is to have no masks, just to be oneself at any time. I think the secret could be that I’ve always taken an interest in other people. I have always felt a need to communicate, ever since I was a child.”

He doesn’t talk about his blindness. Having been partially sighted from the start due to congenital glaucoma, he was rendered completely blind by a football injury when he was 12 years old. His singing, too, goes back to his early years. “When I was a child, everywhere people asked me to sing – in school, in church, in my family, everywhere,” he says. “I understood that it was my destiny.”

Other performers might talk about hard graft, transformation, perseverance, good fortune; Bocelli talks about fate. It is, on the one hand, a very operatic attitude. On the other hand, he adds a pleasantly practical thought: “I am a fatalist, but I also believe very much in the Italian saying that you should help yourself, because God will help you.”

Italy, of course, was the birthplace of opera and traditionally is viewed as the birthplace of great singers to match. Since Pavarotti, though, “real Italian tenors” have been in relatively short supply. For those there are, expectations run high, maybe too high. Italy itself is not what it used to be in terms of opera; the country has been severely affected by the financial crisis and up and down the country theatres have been threatened with closure. Bocelli is from Tuscany – what does he make of the state of his country?

“Crises are complicated,” Bocelli remarks, “and therefore they can only be solved if there’s the good will of everybody. In Italy we’ve never had a government that has tried to decrease the government debt. I think it’s like a river that follows a predetermined path – you can’t really change the direction in which it’s moving. In terms of history I am very close to the thinking of Tolstoy: it is not history that makes men, but men that determine the course of history.” And operatic life? “I think we always see difficulties, but I think the idea behind opera will remain the same. Opera has always touched people’s hearts over the centuries and I think that won’t change.”

One question dogs Bocelli’s steps in the classical world: can he really be called an opera singer? Or should he be taken on board simply as ‘easy listening’? Purists tend to pigeon-hole him together with the likes of Katherine Jenkins and Russell Watson; it’s sad, if true, that he would be left at the starting line if you listened to him alongside today’s younger operatic luminaries such as Rolando Villazón, Jonas Kaufmann or Joseph Calleja.

Unlike certain other ‘crossover’ singers, though, Bocelli has indeed performed and recorded entire operas – he will appear in a production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette in Genoa next February (“I’m studying!” he laughs) and a recording of it will follow. And the more he talks, the clearer it is that his heart really is in opera. His inspirations were the great singers of the past, including his mentor, Franco Corelli, and his one-time champion, Luciano Pavarotti. He knew them both well – “Corelli was a very private, very reserved person; singing was everything to him,” he says. “Pavarotti was a man in love with life. I grew up listening to their records. I listened carefully to all of them because I wanted to capture everything I could possibly capture. They were two very different people, so the result of their singing was very different. Singing is like handwriting – it reflects your personality.”

Bocelli has recorded a great number of slickly produced albums, and sung in countless arenas and stadiums, much amplified – but he has a confession to make. He hates microphones. “Frankly, I’ve always hated them,” he says. “A microphone means I have to sing in a posture that’s not natural to me and it changes the voice, so overall I don’t feel comfortable with that. The best way to sing is the way that nature has provided.”

He admits that he suffers badly from stage-fright: “Always! I am very nervous every time,” he says. “But it’s my job and I deal with it by staying very calm. I don’t have any particular ritual – I just go for it. I am deeply convinced that I can do nothing else, so I have to do this.” 

He is convinced, too, that he is his own harshest critic. “Obviously I’ve grown up following a certain model or several models, and in particular I’ve always loved the recordings of the great singers of the past. So, unconsciously, I want to be like them – but this is not possible because we’re all different, we’re all individuals. Automatically we tend to criticise ourselves because of that. I’ve obviously done the utmost I could do, but when I look back now and listen to what I have done, I would like to change a lot of things, because one is never a hundred per cent happy with what one has achieved.”

As for those other great tenors of today, he’s not interested in competition. “I’ve never actually felt this sense of competing with other singers,” he declares. “My sense of competition is with myself, because I want to do better than what I’ve done in the past. One wants to improve at all times.” But to him, artistic satisfaction is not the be-all and end-all of life: “I’m very happy in general. I’ve always been very happy with my loved ones. It’s the love of those around you that makes you a happy person.”

What, then, is Bocelli’s secret? The appeal of his struggle against adversity? The sweetness and vulnerability of his voice? Clever marketing? All of these probably play a role. But here’s a thought: the quasi-superhuman gifts of a Domingo are glorious, yet it’s hard to identify ourselves with them. Bocelli’s is the voice of the rest of us: we dream, we battle on, we do the best we can with what we’ve got. His voice could have been great. His triumph is that it doesn’t matter that it is not. His success is our absolution.

Hungarian musical tradition alive and well and living in Cornwall

Speaking of Hungary...my piece in this month's issue of Standpoint Magazine is all about the International Musicians' Seminar, Prussia Cove, Cornwall, which was founded by the great Hungarian violinist Sandor Vegh (right) and is now under the artistic directorship of Steven Isserlis. It remains probably the best course of its type in the country and possibly for further afield too. Steven endeavours to keep the values of Vegh and his circle going strong, and the fact that a large number of the most serious and accomplished young musicians in the world have been through these doors at one time or another is testimony to this great tradition's ongoing vigour and value. Frequent maestri include Andras Schiff, Ferenc Rados, Gabor Takacs-Nagy and more - Hungarian and otherwise. Here's the link to Standpoint, where you can read all about how Mr Vegh once tipped a glass of beer over Steven's head (and you know what his hair is like, so, um...). And more edifying stuff too, natch.

Friday Historical: Rachmaninov from Goldenweiser & Ginzburg

This is a huge favourite of mine: Alexander Goldenweiser and Grigory Ginzburg play the Valse from Rachmaninov's Suite No.2 for two pianos. I love the laid-back tempo, the subtle rubati, the wealth of detail, the sultry tenor tone when the big tune comes through - and no histrionics or thumping. Just a perfectly-measured mix of musical haute couture with the poetry of partnership.

Goldenweiser, besides being a famous pedagogue and one of the central figures of the fabled 'Russian School' of pianism, was a great friend of Tolstoy's, played to him frequently and kept a notebook about his meetings with the great writer which was eventually published as Close to Tolstoy (if I can track down a copy of this by hook or crook, we'll come back to that later). More about Goldenweiser at the Toccata Classics site, here.

Roses are red, beards are blue...

...Bartok is brilliant, and so are you, Nick Hillel and Esa-Pekka Salonen. I was lucky enough to have a sneak peek at the visuals that Nick's studio, Yeast Culture, is creating for the Philharmonia's latest multi-media project: Bartok's opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle, the culmination of the orchestra and Salonen's intensive exploration of Bartok that has lasted most of 2011. The production tours in the UK and aboard from 21 October. My article is in The Independent today, and if you follow this link you'll also see a video from the orchestra showing how some of the film was made. Left, Bluebeard's roses appear to fill with blood.

Strong stuff from Andras Schiff

He's a great artist and a brave man... Given the content of this interview, in which he does not mince his words one bit, I can barely imagine what's going through his mind as (above) he plays Schubert's Hungarian Melody, his encore at the Proms earlier this year.

http://www.thejc.com/arts/music/55892/interview-andras-schiff

I'm writing a longer article about him for International Piano Magazine, which will go into more depth about the Schumann he's just recorded and will also look at why he's the only Hungarian pianist (as far as we both know) who just doesn't get along with Liszt.

Lost Brahms surfaces in...Ashburton

What a scoop for the Two Moors Festival. This plucky, determined organisation way out west between Exmoor and Dartmoor has had its share of rather impactful incidents. Back in 2007 they bought a Bosendorfer, for which they'd bust many guts to raise funds, and someone dropped it during delivery (no, it wasn't OK). Now, though, they've found something altogether more resilient, and it's by Brahms.

It is, to be precise, an arrangement for piano duet from 1864 by the great Johannes of his own Piano Concerto No.1. It's been sitting undiscovered in a California library since World War II. Here's what happened, according to the festival:

Brahms sends the score to his publisher, Rieter-Biedermann, and it somehow moves thence to the hands of Heinrich Schenker, the legendary musical analyst. After his death in 1935, his wife has the manuscript. But then Mrs Schenker tragically falls prey to the Nazis and is deported to a concentration camp, which she does not survive. Beforehand, she manages to give her husband's substantial collection to one of his pupils, Oswald Jonas, who spirits its contents out of Germany in a trunk. In America, Jonas bequeaths the Schenker collection to the University of California, Riverside. And finally, someone finds the duet there...

Ashley Wass and Christoph Berner are the two lucky pianists who will give the UK premiere in St Andrew's Church, Ashburton, on 13 October, with a script telling its tale written by Sarah Adie and narrated by Ian Price. The pianists will be playing on the festival's replacement Bosendorfer. The festival has 30 concerts this year and its theme, appropriately enough, is Arrangements and Transcriptions.

Around St Martin's Lane...

Before I hand you over to today's Independent for my piece about Fiona Shaw and The Marriage of Figaro, I have to tell you a little about last night.

I went along to Myra Hess Day at the National Gallery, where the Menuhin School Orchestra, Piers Lane, Andrew Tortise, The Fibonacci Sequence and Tasmin Little gave a strong, varied programme in tribute to Dame Myra Hess, in front of the Gainsboroughs and Goyas. A huge plaudit to Piers and Tasmin for playing Howard Ferguson's superb, gutsy and inspired Violin Sonata, which was written just after the war - before that, apparently, he'd been too busy organising the gallery concerts to compose anything much, and this was a sure statement of intent.

But first, Tasmin played the Bach Double with a student from the Menuhin School as her partner soloist. Louisa-Rose Staples is 11, but looks 9, and is blessed with real composure and aplomb. From the first note it was clear that she was utterly secure with the task in hand - you knew at once that she couldn't put a finger wrong. She played like a complete pro: musical, responsive, accurate... And of course, this is where Tasmin herself started. Louisa-Rose, like Tasmin, became a pupil at the Menuhin School when she was 8. An auspicious evening, perhaps.

Round the corner from the National Gallery sits ENO, and tonight its new Figaro opens, directed by the one and only Fiona Shaw. I interviewed her, Paul Daniel, Iain Paterson (Figaro) and the youthful American soprano Devon Guthrie (Susanna) about what they're doing with it. Read it all here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/figaro-a-marriage-made-in-heaven-2365484.html

It's Myra Hess Day

It's wonderful when they name a day after your musical heroine and make it an annual event. Today at the National Gallery it is Myra Hess Day, in tribute to the great pianist who, with the composer Howard Ferguson, started the now legendary series of lunchtime concerts there during the Blitz.

Three concerts are held during the course of the day in the same space that the musicians used in the 1940s - though now the paintings, which were removed somewhere safe at the time, are there too. The concerts are devised by Piers Lane, who's a sort of grand-pupil of Dame Myra via one of his mentors, the late Yonty Solomon. More about the history of the wartime series and its guiding lights on the National Gallery site, here.

Today kicks off at lunchtime with the Ionian Singers conducted by Timothy Salter in a programme of English music for choir. Afternoon brings a performance of Admission: One Shilling, by Nigel Hess (great-nephew) in which actress Patricia Routledge and pianist Piers Lane tell the story of the gallery concerts in Dame Myra's words and lots of music; and finally this evening Piers is joined by Tasmin Little (violin), Andrew Tortise (tenor), Fibonacci Sequence and the Menuhin School Orchestra to perform some Ferguson alongside Bach, Schubert and Mahler, plus a world premiere from composer Benjamin Wallfisch.

Afternoon and evening are sold out, but I think you can still get in at lunchtime.

Listen to Dame Myra playing her famous transcription of Bach's 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring', plus a spot of Scarlatti...

A writer's life...

It's an extraordinary, hot, sunny Sunday and it seems everyone wants to go and play outside - but for the few doughty souls (seen the ticket availability?) who are attending the Boulez marathon, plus those of us who have deadlines to meet, aided and abetted by our furry friends. For the latter, both writers and felines, here's some light but very true entertainment from Simon's Cat, which oddly captures my morning so far.

123sing!: A Big Bravo

This weekend, all over the UK, there's a chance to take part in a charity project called 123sing! to raise money for music therapy for vulnerable children. They're touting it as 'the biggest celebration of singing ever'. Whether or not it really is that, it's still a terrific idea that deserves every encouragement under the sun. It's being spearheaded by Classic FM in collaboration with Making Music, the UK's organisation that does what it says on the tin, which includes encouraging voluntary groups to get together and make as much noise as they can. Proceeds go to the Classic FM Foundation and thence to music therapy projects.

If you know anyone who has an autistic child, or someone who went to Bosnia and observed the work that used to be done at the Pavarotti Centre in Mostar to help youngsters traumatised by the war, or if you saw Tony Palmer's documentary about Carl Orff - the seemingly unlikely founder of a system of music as therapy for young children who have disabilities which prevent them communicating as others might - then you'll know already that music reaches parts of the spirit inaccessible to plain language.

Music therapy can change lives. Help support it: go somewhere today or tomorrow and SING. Visit the website, here, to find an event near you.

Bravo, Classic FM!

Saturday Bach: Richter plays Fantasia in C minor BWV906

This Saturday Bach thing is becoming a habit, but I could think of worse ones, so let's stick with it. Here is Richter. How do you like his performance?

Fatal Attraction, the opera?

Opera demonises and punishes its most passionate women so often that I can't help wondering when they'll bring on the boiled bunny-rabbit. In today's Independent I've been musing a bit about whether there was a musical Hays Code lurking in the opera world of the 19th century. Verdi's consumptive courtesan is back at the Covent Garden from Monday. Meanwhile, if anyone fancies collaborating on the creation of Fatal Attraction, The Opera, do give me a shout..

Meet "Max" next week at Kings Place

Kings Place from 7-9 October is hosting a festival entitled Notes and Letters, a super example of the type of event that has really put this doughty venue on the map. Music and words meet and mingle ina panoply of intriguing events - you can see the full programme here.

On Sunday 9 October at 12.30pm I will be in the interviewer's chair to talk to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, aka "Max", about the focus on myth and madness in his music. Come along and meet this astonishing composer (pictured above), whose output as listed on his website runs to a cool 54 pages and ranges through everything from Classic FM favourites such as Farewell to Stromness to the stunning inventions of Eight Songs for a Mad King, operas, masses, the series of Strathclyde Concertos, heaps of chamber music and a slew of symphonies, including an Antarctic Symphony that is still waiting to be recorded.

Here's an extract from Eight Songs for a Mad King...the sort of piece that can make you feel like a child with a clock, itching to take it apart and find out how it works and how it fitted together in the first place, without necessarily having a clue about how you might build it yourself.

Bach to basics

Saturday Bach time again, and here's a masterclass with Andras Schiff to show us how.

The Passenger speaks

In the JC this week I have an interview with Zofia Posmysz, author of the semi-autobiographical novel on which Weinberg's The Passenger is based. She is quite remarkable: poised, radiant, eloquent and forgiving. Read the piece here. I'm going to see the opera tomorrow.

The interview contained more interesting material than there was space, so here is one of the out-takes, which was not directly relevant to The Passenger, but will be of great interest to anyone who is preoccupied, as I often have been, by Alma Rose - Mahler's niece - and the Auschwitz women's orchestra that she conducted.

JD: Did you have any contact with the Auschwitz women's orchestra?


ZP (via interpreter): "Yes, I did. It was when Alma Rose started conducting the orchestra that it gained some sort of status and quality. She searched among the prisoners – they were very educated people, professors, artists, all sorts. She looked for prisoners who had a musical education – for instance, there were two excellent, wonderful singers, they were Hungarian Jewish. And since I was working in the kitchen and I had access to some of the products there, I would sometimes go to the orchestra block and take them something. 


"I had a friend who’d helped me along in the past, helped me survive through some of the hard labour outside the camp at first, helped me persevere another 15 minutes and then another 15 minutes; this friend was a violinist and I managed to persuade Alma Rose to consider taking her into the orchestra. She said: "Let her come, but I have to listen to her." And I told my friend: "Listen, I’ve found this fantastic thing for you. You can play in the orchestra and it will give you a chance to survive." She was so thin by then that she was on her last legs. And to my great surprise and regret, she said: "Am I to play here for those people?" To this day I don’t know what she was thinking about. What happened was that there was a ramp that led to the gas chambers and the crematorium, and the orchestra had to stand by the ramp and play these tunes for the transports so that people didn’t know what was happening at all - it was a deceit. I don’t know whether my friend didn't want to play for the people in this situation, or in the concerts for the SS men. Either way, she didn’t agree. A few months later she died."

Kafka at the ballet

Here's my piece from yesterday's Independent about Arthur Pita's new dance theatre work based on The Metamorphosis by Kafka. One day Edward Watson awoke to find that he had been transformed into a giant insect.... It's at ROH2 all this week.

The Metamorphosis is the book of the moment. I've been in Paris for a couple of days to do an interview and while there I also met up for tea and tarte aux framboises on the Place des Vosges with Mikhail Rudy (he of The Pianist and the animated Kandinsky Pictures at an Exhibition). His next collaborative project, due for premiere in Paris in March 2012, is based on...yes, The Metamorphosis, and will involve film projections by the Quay Brothers to a selection of Janacek piano music. Meanwhile he's bringing Pictures to the UK in November - performances in Southampton (17 Nov) and at the Wimbledon Festival (19 Nov). Well worth the train ride, imho.

Meanwhile, my interviewee - an intergalactic opera star - talked to me for two hours, then sent me home with a red nose. That is a first. I hasten to add that it's made of foam. It is now perching on my desk lamp, smiling at me (in a manner of speaking), while I think of his unforgettable performance as Werther earlier this year.

What Bach could do with two oboes

I've just found part of my favourite Bach cantata on Youtube conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, who seems to know exactly what to do with it. I first heard Cantata BWV 8, 'Liebster Gott, wann werd'ich sterben', when I was a student, ploughing through the complete catalogue on LPs in the university music library, and it was love at first toot. There's never been anyone else in the history of music, to the best of my knowledge, who could write for two oboes - oboe d'amores, here - as Bach could.

Finding a recording that really worked, though, wasn't easy: the only ones I ran to earth in the mid-80s were Harnoncourt, which featured some wince-worthy choirboys, and Karl Richter, whom I usually adored, but even I couldn't quite deal with the sluggishness of those tempi. I've clocked one or two others since which seemed relentlessly chirpy and schoolmarmish, hence not exactly reflecting the words...

Gardiner, though, captures the reflective, ineffable quality of this music and its text, wearing his learning lightly, packaging up a heart of compassionate tenderness within a streamlined 18th-century casing.

This cantata apparently was a great favourite of Brahms's too - and if you listen, I think you can hear why. Hope you love it as much as he did. Take it away, oboes...

Hottest ticket in town: Mieczyslaw Weinberg

Here's my piece from today's Independent about Weinberg's opera The Passenger, which opens at ENO on Monday. Interestingly, I've been hearing Weinberg's name for years from my various Russian musician friends who from time to time all let fly with minor rants about what a terrific composer he was and how ridiculous it is that we never hear his works. But if anything can put him on the map, where he should be, it is this: an opera evoking reminiscences of Auschwitz. David Pountney talks to me about why The Passenger can do this when others can't, and we trace the history of Weinberg and ask why he is the composer that time forgot.

Today I am going to meet Zofia Posmysz, author of the largely autobiographical novel on which the opera is based.... 

The trailer proves that we're in for quality music very much a la Shostakovich:

Eva-Maria Westbroek gets things off her chest

My interview with Eva-Maria Westbroek in today's Independent features some startling revelations about the effect of those fake breasts in Anna Nicole. She talks about taking on that role, what it was like to sing in the live cinecast of Die Walkure from the Met, and her forthcoming role in Il tabarro at Covent Garden (opening next week). Wonderful singer, wonderful woman.

The only bit that's missing is her beloved dog: she has a Cavalier King Charles spaniel called Ruby, who goes with her all over Europe. Anna Nicole might have approved.

Black magic in Budapest?

A Hungarian newspaper, Bors, has run a most bizarre story about strange goings-on in the Hungarian State Opera House. According to this report, mysterious accidents and illnesses allegedly blight the opera company and some rumours have been suggesting that this is being brought about by "black magic". Here's the original in Hungarian, if that's helpful.

The article goes on to cite (again, according to Google Translate) a case of epileptic seizures without previous history, while also suggesting that a young conductor suffered a nervous breakdown.

In Bors, the picture of the singer Ilona Tokody is captioned: "An elusive force pushed me into the depths"; according to their interview, she fell off a ladder and sustained a back injury. And that's just the start. The translation suggests she is saying that six other people have suffered accidents or illness, then adds: "I could not fight against it, but my guardian angel took care of me and saved me."

My Hungarian friends say the whole thing is complete nonsense...and actually it sounds to me much like business as usual in the theatrical world... Or perhaps a health & safety executive could look into the condition of the historic building, in which Mahler and Klemperer both conducted once upon a time.

Meanwhile the company's management is in a state of flux. The music director Adam Fischer resigned last year in protest over the Prime Minister Viktor Orban's media laws. Of which more shortly.

RIP Salvatore Licitra

Tragic news is through that the tenor Salvatore Licitra has died in Sicily, aged 43. He had been in a coma since an accident on his Vespa ten days ago.

Licitra was a late starter in the operatic world, beginning his career at 30, and making his Metropolitan Opera debut as a last-minute replacement for Pavarotti in Tosca. His voice and progress alike proved somewhat patchy and the comparison to Pavarotti was iniquitous, raising expectations of him too high, too soon; but at his finest, he was a performer of great charm, musicality and flair. The LA Times assesses his chequered career in more depth here.

It would be nice to think that the loss of Licitra might prove a strong enough blow to induce Italy - and other places - to introduce a legal requirement to wear a helmet when riding any type of motorbike. Probably it won't, but if it did, it would be a fitting memorial to a much-loved musician.

Henry Goodman reads from 'Hungarian Dances' at the Proms!

Tasmin Little's Proms Plus literary talk with Anne McElvoy was broadcast in the concert interval on BBC Radio 3 yesterday, with extracts from her four chosen books read by no less an actor than the utterly lovely and amazing Henry Goodman. Catch it on the BBC iPlayer until 10 September, here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01460bs/BBC_Proms_2011_Proms_Plus_Musicians_Literary_Passions_Tasmin_Little/


Tasmin talked about her passion for Hamlet, Hesse's Siddartha and the verses of Hillaire Belloc, as well as terming Hungarian Dances "gripping" and "very exciting", and telling a wonderful story about how she inadvertently made her debut in Budapest in a restaurant, playing Monti's Csardas with the resident folk band's cimbalom player after half a bottle of Bull's Blood... And she said some rather nice things about my writing about music that I am waaay too modest to repeat on my own blog, though you can hear them in the broadcast. What you won't hear, though, is Anne's priceless Freudian slip when, signing off at the end of the session, the wrong word emerged instead of "Belloc"! A fine time was had by one and all.

Triple Paprika! 'Hungarian Dances' is in Proms Lit Fest

Stop-press news: I'm reliably informed that my novel HUNGARIAN DANCES is to feature as one of Tasmin Little's chosen books in the Proms Literary Festival this afternoon. Tasmin will be discussing her literary favourites at the Royal College of Music at 5pm and the talk is broadcast the interval of tonight's Prom on BBC Radio 3. An extract will be read - I understand they've picked a passage about Gypsy music and the violin in particular. Catch it at the college, on the radio or later on the iPlayer (or catch the book here). That is Paprika part 1 - or chronologically speaking, part 3.

Paprika part 2: Today comes hot on the heels of a truly fabulous evening with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer last night. It's all true: Ivan Fischer did indeed become the first conductor at the Proms ever to throw a toy animal from the podium into the arena.

The BFO is unmistakeable for its characteristic mix of suave, smooth sound and absolutely direct, deeply engaged musicianship; as I said in the feature yesterday, when they play you feel the love. This was no exception: they made me fall in love with Mahler in earnest. After two years of head-bludgeoning Mahler-anniversary overkill, that takes some doing.

The first half was unusual for its mix of irony and magic: first, fizzing, demonic Liszt. Mephisto Waltz for once was convincing, seductive, genuinely sensual - and whatever did that harpist do towards the end? Whatever it was, she deserves a medal. Mahler's Blumine blossomed gently and suavely as the concert equivalent of a 'prequel'. And the Liszt Totentanz - usually a bit of a waste of space - proved a brilliant vehicle for the pianism of Dejan Lazic. He is a seriously classy player with a singing, certain touch and a terrific feel for Lisztian flair. He also brought along an unusual encore: a spoof fugue by an Italian composer, Giovanni Dettori, which would seem familiar to the younger members of the audience. It did. Fortunately I'd taken my niece with me; she kindly explained that this brilliantly-wrought Bach-style piece was based on a Lady Gaga song. (Now Neil Fisher of The Times has tweeted a link to the sheet music - so you can see it is real!)

And so, Mahler 1. Empathy, detail, brilliance, flow and energy: everything was there. Fischer's was a Mahler straight from the heart and guts, tempered by a sensible and incredibly perceptive brain. Shaping of narrative couldn't have been more convincing if it tried - especially the final movement, with its gradations of dynamic in the distantly approaching triumph. I'm a great fan of the orchestra configuration preferred by Fischer at this concert, with the double basses raised in a row along the back providing a solid, oaky depth across the board and the first and second violins opposite each other at the front of the stage. The tone produced is balanced, clear and homogeneous. And this Mahler symphony, for the first time, felt too short. I could happily have listened to it all night.

But that's where the third part of 'triple paprika' enters: the late-night Prom, complete with flying bunnyrabbit. The orchestra summoned us back from interval fun with one of the violinists playing some Transylvanian folk music while everyone settled down. The orchestra appeared in its everyday clothes and Fischer took up a microphone to explain how the event would work. We each had a raffle-ticket; the tuba player perambulated through arena and stalls asking punters to draw a number. Three numbers, three pieces, and sometimes a flying rabbit to catch, to choose another. Then the vote, which got everyone beautifully heated as we shouted for our favourites and hissed when someone tried to pick the Ravel Bolero.

Everything came off very slickly and rapidly - obviously the band, its conductor and its librarian are a dab hand at the logistics - and between numbers, while the parts were found and distributed there were chances for small groups of musicians to strut their solo stuff: a brass ensemble piece from the movie Eight and a Half, a Telemann piece for four string players, some Bartok violin duos, some more folk music, four percussionists doing a brilliant body-percussion turn and, last but not least, the tuba player with a didgeridoo.

So what did we end up with? Kodaly Dances of Galanta; Bartok Romanian Folk Dances; Strauss Music of the Spheres Waltz; Glinka Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila; and the Hungarian March from Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust. The idea is that the orchestra has no idea what it's going to play beforehand and has had no rehearsal, so anything can happen. Obviously, they knew certain of these numbers inside out and backwards. They gave the Hungarian pieces a terrific workout; the most challenging item seemed to be the Strauss waltz, involving sensual and well-calibrated ebb, flow and old-world rubato.

Two conclusions to draw: first, that this was an inspired format for orchestral display of the first water. The solo spots let the individuals shine as they can and should, and if the BFO plays like that unrehearsed....pas mal, hein? Ivan proved a great showman too: "Pass the tuba to somebody who thinks it's all a trick," he instructed. Secondly, the informality of the event made it terrific fun and the music and musicians shone all the brighter for that.

Once again, it was the usual Budapest Festival Orchestra achievement of sending you home walking on air, feeling glad to be alive. Could we do Audience Choice here? Well, whyever not?

No video available from last night, but here they are playing The Blue Danube in Heroes' Square, Budapest. The Danube, taken literally, is much bluer in Budapest than Vienna.

Friday Historical: Dame Myra Hess plays Beethoven's 'Appassionata'

Life goes on, it's Friday afternoon and it's high time we had a Friday Historical from one of my pianistic goddesses, Dame Myra Hess. Here is some all-too-rare film of her: this was recorded at one of her National Gallery Lunchtime Concerts during World War II. It will soon be time for the National Gallery's annual Myra Hess Day and I'll post more details nearer the time.

Tonight's Prom will be unlike any seen before...

The second unique event in 24 hours is about to hit the RAH, but it's going to be a little bit different from yesterday... Here comes the Budapest Festival Orchestra and its founder & conductor Ivan Fischer. And though the first part of the evening is a "normal" concert, the late-night one at 10pm asks the audience to choose the music on the spot, from a list of several hundred - all of which will have to be brought along on the van from Hungary, just in case. Please send that librarian some chocolate.

Here's my interview with Ivan from today's Independent, in which he explains why he came up with the idea and how it's going to work. Get ready to catch the flying rabbit.

Ivan (above) is on a roll. He just won the Royal Philharmonic Society's conductor prize, he is currently on the shortlist to be Gramophone Artist of the Year and in January he and the BFO gave one of the most wonderful concerts I've heard this year. 

Here they are in the Bartok Dance Suite.

Licitra is still fighting for his life

A few days ago the news reached us that the Swiss-Italian tenor Salvatore Licitra was in a serious condition after his Vespa hit a wall on Saturday night in Sicily. Now Opera Chic has more news - according to an Italian radio interview with Licitra's doctor, it seems he could well have had a cerebral haemmorhage just before the accident happened.

We're all thinking of this much-loved operatic figure in his hour of need. Here he is singing 'Recondita armonia' from Tosca. Send your preferred form of prayer/good vibes urgently towards him.

How desperate are YOU?

Or... A Little Black Humour for Tuesday Morning. To begin, here's some music.

It's a tough old life, being a musician. Many of us in this field are reared by doting parents who, along with our schools, convince us at the tender age of 0 that we are born to be stars and have a talent second only to that of Johann Sebastian Bach. By the time we're 20, we've usually begun to understand that this isn't the case, and to wonder how we can make ends meet in such a cut-throat field. By 40, some of us are still at it.

How desperate are you? What does your future hold? 

Take the JDCMB quiz to find out...

1. You can't get a recording contract, so you produce your own CD. Do you:

a. Send a well-presented package to an 'artist-led' label and invite the manager to lunch with you, your sponsor and a famous advisor like Ivor Chestikoff to discuss market gaps and interesting repertoire.

b. Do it all yourself, hiring a good PR and making sure your distributors are reputable and respected, but neglect your practising in order to organise everything. Then you give a concert to launch the disc...

c. Decide it's not worth doing at all: it's got to be DG or bust. You devote yourself instead to learning the 48 and writing about how your interpretation is the definitive one and that nobody else knows how to play Bach properly. Only at that point do you make a demo disc and send it out with your tracts to blind everyone with your expertise.

d. Do it all yourself, but decide that PR and advertising is a waste of money: only word of mouth counts. You always carry a supply of your CDs, so that if a music critic happens to turn up at your mum's 80th birthday party, you can talk to him for half an hour about your achievements and give him a copy to take home and write about. You know he wants it.

2. Your sponsor hires the Wigmore Hall for you. Do you:

a. Plan your programme carefully, featuring the works Ivor Chestikoff says you're best in, and tactfully try to avoid the concert being on a Monday evening or a major public holiday. You engage a good PR person at least six months in advance, organise a drinks reception after the gig to which you can invite more potential sponsors, critics and all the people to whom you 'owe one' for their support over the years. You practise like the blazes, give some trial runs at friendly private salons and make sure your concert outfit fits you snugly and elegantly. On stage, you forget about everything but the music.

b. You decide you're going to play Bach's 48: 24 in the first half, 24 in the second, everything by memory, even though so far you've only learned 12 of them. You love a challenge! And what an opportunity: this could make you a real splash. You're so busy memorising the fugues that you forget you need to publicise the gig until a week beforehand. Oh well, perhaps Facebook and Twitter can sort it - "Please RT".

c. You don't need to do PR - everyone will come to hear you anyway, because you're the best, even if nobody knows it yet. It's all down to luck in any case.

d. You splash out on a Vivienne Westwood outfit, have your photo taken in it and put it on your Facebook page and website. Then, to save money, you write your own press releases, though there's no time to have them checked or proofread, and you badger every publication and website with them, plus phone calls, sending emails four times if no reply comes within the first day to the first one. Finally, on the underused blog section of your website, you embed the tags "Vivienne Westwood", "Luciano Pavarotti" and "Katherine Jenkins" to ensure more hits. 

3. You've managed to get backstage to meet a famous conductor. Ivor Chestikoff introduces you and the maestro holds your hand, gazes into your eyes and says it's a great pleasure to meet you. Then he tells you to call his secretary to arrange an audition. You do so; the PA says you can go to play to him in Los Angeles, Berlin or Hong Kong. You can just afford Berlin if you go on a budget airline, but it's in the middle of your holiday. Do you:

a. Cancel the holiday and go to Berlin, taking the pieces that Chestikoff has suggested that you are good at and that he knows the maestro will respond to well. You arrive the night before and make sure you're well rested despite your nerves. You arrange to fly back on the last plane on the day of your audition to save the hotel bill. When the maestro asks you what you're doing later that night, you explain you have to get back home to prepare for your concert in three days' time.

b. You can't bear to miss your holiday. You decide to go to LA and you twist a sponsor/parent's arm into paying your fare and a cheap motel for two nights. You get there ready to audition the next day - but you're jet-lagged. Will you play your best? Will you notice the inference when the maestro asks you what you're doing later that evening?

c. You laugh and say you couldn't possibly afford to go to LA or Hong Kong and you can't miss your holiday, so what about looking further ahead? The PA checks the schedule and suggests October 2012 in Moscow or Sydney. 

d. You choose whichever is soonest - hang the air fare and the holiday. You play the most difficult piece you know. You wear sexy clothes and you smile a lot. When the maestro asks you what you're doing later, you're free. He invites you to dinner and you go; you get a bit starry-eyed that you are quaffing expensive champers with the maestro and he's flirting with you something chronic, even though he is decades older than you and you'd maybe hoped he'd be fatherly and caring. Then he suggests you go up to his room where he can give you some of his latest CDs. You don't have the contract or a promise of a concert yet, but you go. You will do anything for your art. 

Results:

Mostly a: Your feet are on the ground and you have a good chance of achieving a certain amount of recognition; with luck and talent you might have a breakthrough. Do you take enough risks to get the extra edge of danger that sets concert halls alight? 

Mostly b: You take risks, but you're erratic. If you hit the jackpot, it'll probably be by sheer fluke. You may have something special to offer; or you may find yourself passed over as a harmless eccentric. 

Mostly c: Take a teaching diploma or business course, or learn to touch-type. You may need a job.

Mostly d: You're desperate. Very desperate. Someone will notice. See 'Mostly c'. 

Shock news: good-looking violinist can really play

Dodging our diligent builders who work on bank holidays, I turned on BBC Breakfast to see what the hurricane news was from the US, only to find myself witnessing some pretty bloody amazing Paganini instead. The culprit: Charlie Siem, a young British violinist fresh out of Cambridge and, uh, the modelling world. When I read that he was the 'global face' of Dunhill, I thought that meant the cigarettes and I was all ready to write an Outraged Non-Smoker of Sheen piece about the iniquities of young musicians having to get ahead by modelling for a filthy habit that kills people. But it turns out that Dunhill is actually a James Bond-ish designer menswear label...I wouldn't know; my husband is, like, more of a Ralph Lauren man.

When a fresh-faced, square-jawed, youthful supermodel type emerges with violin in hand and one painted fingernail, the knee-jerk music-critic reaction is to yawn and switch off; the knee-jerk Gidon Kremer-style reaction could be to walk out of the festival. But this guy can really play. And not just because he has Menuhin's Guarneri del Gesu, nor just because he's related to Ole Bull (have tweeted him to ask how so, but am not currently convinced he does his own tweets), nor just because Lady Gaga likes him. Seems he can talk the talk, walk the walk and, best of all, play the Paganini.

Have we turned full circle? Now that almost every young musician who pops up does look good, they need more than ever to be differentiated by their playing. Rather than one photogenic fiddler standing out from the crowd of technically adept ones because of his or her appearance, do we have a case in which the really fine musicians will emerge from the crowd of photogenic ones because of their playing after all? Hmm. He's got a new album out (hence BBC Breakfast), so see what you think.

Here's Charlie in something a little different (?! pink shorts) - two years ago, in Cuba with the Royal Ballet...



...and some Wieniawski.

Watch Glyndebourne's The Turn of the Screw right here on JDCMB

Missed the webcast? Missed the show? I can't blog you a slice of Miles's birthday cake, but here is the complete performance of Britten's The Turn of the Screw as performed last Sunday at Glyndebourne. It will be online until 12 September. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. More resources, videoed interviews et al at the Glyndeboune website here.

Friday historical: Authentic Johann Strauss II

Here is Johann Strauss II conducting an extract from his own Voices of Spring. A dream for all Viennese schwung junkies.

I'm up to my eyeballs in noise & dust from domestic building works, internet connectivity problems and other stuff I could really, seriously do without, so it's over & out for the moment. Back when I can think straight, Enjoy the music.

Of football, webcasts, Britten and cake

Here's my review of The Turn of the Screw at Glyndebourne the other day. I think I once described the piece as dreary, weak and boring. Please scrub that. It's completely brilliant. Not as mad about this production as about David McVicar's for ENO, but it's striking, original and very clever. Chances are you've already seen the webcast via the Guardian site the other day. I had to treat that like the football results, when you're advised to 'look away now' if you don't want to know the outcome before you've watched the match ...

Toby Spence was singing Peter Quint. I once wrote a piece about him headed 'Toby Takes the Cake' - metaphorically speaking, of course. So on Tuesday I bumped into him on the train and this time he was taking a real cake. It was for Miles, who was turning 13 that day. A pleasing sequel.

Less pleasing was the return journey in which the train was diverted via Falmer and Brighton because of - yes, a football match. The London train from Lewes had to go off route to pick up the overcrowded footy fans, so we were late late late and arrived at to Clapham Junction aeons after my connection had departed. It was the Turn of the Screwed.

Meet Daniil Trifonov

Happy Monday, dear readers. We've got builders in from today (bathroom), my back is playing up and I'm ploughing through some deadlines, so blogsperation is flagging slightly. But I'm happy to tell you that I'll be writing a new monthly Letter from London for the Istanbul-based music magazine Andante, starting from its October issue. In the meantime I'm following one of the most fascinating musical trails I've yet discovered, if and when I can think straight...but here's some nice music to entertain you while I can't.

This is Daniil Trifonov, winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition's piano prize, a prizewinner at the Chopin Competition and seen here at the Arthur Rubinstein Competition earlier this year. He's been a very busy boy and I've just heard his new CD of Chopin, recorded before the Tchaikovsky win; it is jolly impressive. But this, as you'll see and hear, is Liszt. Trifonov will be coming to London in the autumn to take part in Gergiev's concert with the LSO featuring concertos with the Tchaikovsky Competition winners, so it looks as if we'll be hearing a lot more of him... Enjoy this spirited, lit-from-within performance.

Double Brahmsfest: Haitink and Abbado go head to head

Another Friday, another Brahms Piano Concerto No.1 given at a great music festival by legendary performers. Honest to goodness, it's quite something to hear it in Lucerne with Abbado at the helm one week and at the Proms under Haitink just seven days later. Last night's Prom was a Brahmsfest par excellence - and the first of two, since tonight the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Bernard Haitink and Emanuel Ax follow it up with the Piano Concerto No.2 and the Symphony No.4.

Yesterday opened with the Third Symphony (which steamed into first place as my favourite of the four while I was on tour with the LPO and Vladimir last December) - the most intimate of them, it's the one you can turn, while listening, into the middle-period piano sonata Brahms never wrote, or the finest of his chamber works. In Haitink's hands the solid centre radiated the orchestration's golden glow; the playing was faultless, the tempi spot-on-delicious, the beauty and reflectiveness balanced out with certain touch and vast affection. Brahms 3 doesn't get much better than that. It was so good that there's almost nothing to say.

As for the concerto, Manny Ax was everything that last week Radu Lupu unfortunately didn't manage to be. I don't know what happened to Lupu in Lucerne, but he wasn't on form - technically the concerto was all over the shop, and there were some alarming moments where he and the orchestra seemed to be on different planets - the passage in the final movement just before the fugue, where the piano duets with a French horn off the beat, was a case in point (one pitied the poor horn player). What remained was Lupu's characteristic sound, a palette like an Odilon Redon pastel, dusky, velvety and radiant all at once. Ax, by contrast, was rock solid, dynamic, shining, thoughtful, humane.

And Haitink v Abbado? Telling, dear friends. Very telling. Haitink is a conductor whose work I've revered for donkey's years. There's something pure about his approach, free of egomania and point-proving, setting out simply to convey the truth of the music as he feels it and thinks it through. In the past his Ring Cycle was what turned me on to Wagner, his Ravel Daphnis left me exhilarated and his Mahler Nine sent me home speechless. And this Brahms 3 was, as I said, pretty much perfect.

But last week Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra arrived riding a different variety of phoenix. Things went wrong - plenty wrong - if this was only Lupu's doing, I just couldn't say. Yet that opening orchestral exposition wasn't only strong, but revelatory. Abbado's detailed emphases lit the opening motif like a shaft of sidelight in a Caravaggio; the phrasing of the second theme's descending scale linked it at once in the mind to the melody of the slow movement. Risks were taken, all of them in the service of dear old Johannes, and when they paid off they did so spectacularly. Haitink and Ax took few risks: what resulted was the solidity of the ideal just about realised. Yet despite all its problems, it's the Abbado-Lupu performance that I suspect I'll still remember in 20 years' time, assuming my brain is still in reasonable working order by then.

One other little grumble involves the RAH acoustics. For me, Ax's performance fell foul of The Echo. Apparently this phenomenon is well known at the Proms. It's not something I normally encounter in the usual press seats around door H, but this time we were by door J, further round the circle, and each piano note seemed to sound twice in rapid succession. Others have tweeted that they too experienced this, one from the centre of the arena, another from the other side of the stalls, so it's clearly not specific to seat 52 in row 7. Some say it does not detract from their enjoyment of the music, but I found it immensely bothersome, especially in the fast passages where at times it felt like seeing double. Please could someone investigate whether anything can be done about it?

Meanwhile, read more about my trip to Lucerne in yesterday's Independent, here.

And here is a taster of the performance last night from BBC TV - accessible only to UK readers, I'm afraid (that's not my doing, folks).

A quick dart to Dartington

Revisiting the Dartington International Summer School of Music after more years than I'd like to admit, I've had an absolute ball. I was only there for a few days, but am now experiencing serious withdrawal symptoms, just as I used to when I was a starry-eyed piano student knocked sideways by proximity to such musicians as Schiff, Keller, Perlemuter, Imogen Cooper et al. But the biggest surprise was to find myself recognising the same people I saw there in 1982. I asked the familiar-looking gentleman opposite me at lunch whether he would indeed have been there 29 years ago. The reply? "Of course. I've been here every summer for 40 years." He was far from being the only one.

Some things are different, of course. The make-up of the masterclasses is unrecognisable: instead of Americans, Japanese and Canadians queuing up to audition in droves, everything's organised in advance and Stephen Kovacevich's class involved just five students, each of whom played to him most days. They came not from the US and Japan, but Poland, Lithuania, France and Russia-via-UK. The situation in the singing class with the irrepressible Della Jones seemed similar, and involved both eager amateurs and good students. Meanwhile keen attendees of all levels, including the basic, can take intensive classes with top-level pros like Helen Reid and Gemma Rosefield.

I'm promised by the new DISS artistic director, John Woolrich, and the Dartington head of arts, David Francis, that the summer school is secure, it's not moving, it's not closing, it has funding and access to more - being dropped by the ACE has given it a 10 per cent shortfall, but they regard this as manageable - and it will continue to delight its regulars and newcomers alike in the years ahead. Composition and contemporary music remain vital, but early music won't be banished. The mix is everything - and why shouldn't it be? That's what creates the magic.

One institution that's disappeared is the tradition of morning coffee and afternoon tea-break on the courtyard lawn - now you can get your beverages in paper cups anytime and take them into classes. It's a pity in a way, though presumably it frees up the schedule. The whole summer school is also much more integrated into the year-round Dartington activities, focused strongly on issues of social justice, sustainability, literature, poetry (the original Dartington was the brainchild of Rabindranath Tagore) and much more. And let's not forget the cider press. Powerful stuff, that home brew.

But what has not changed is the atmosphere. Partly it's the place - the medieval hall, which must be haunted up to the back teeth, never mind the back stairs - and the gardens with their gigantic, ancient trees and mysterious tiltyard. Still, what makes it so very special is that the audience at the concerts are all themselves performers, and vice-versa. Everyone is there to make music in whatever way they can. When we walked into Nick Daniel's oboe recital on Tuesday night, we bumped into a friend who's a retired cancer specialist and plays the clarinet. He greeted us in great joy. "I've just had the greatest day of my life!" he declared. "I played first clarinet in the Mozart Gran Partita."

The whole thing is completely infectious and life-enhancing. I took myself to the music shop (provided by good old Brian Jordan's, from Cambridge) and bought the Faure C minor Piano Quartet, which happens to be my favourite piece and is possibly the only thing that can tempt me back to some serious piano practice after a five-year hiatus (writing Alicia's Gift proved cathartic, but it got "the piano thing" out of my system that bit too thoroughly). Tom and I came back yesterday evening and the first thing we did was bash through the thing on violin and piano together. We haven't done anything like that in years. Somehow I don't think it will be another 20 years before I go back again.

Here are just a few of the musicians we've been hanging out with.

Celebrate Liszt! Win a piano with 44 keys!

I'd like to pass on to you verbatim, dear readers, an email that has arrived from the US branch of Universal Music, offering a distinctly 21st-century approach to marking the bicentenary of Franz Liszt.

The prize is AOK as long as you don't mind your piano having only 44 keys instead of 88, which will probably ditch the chance of you ever actually *playing* any Liszt on it (but clearly our friends over the pond don't consider that the point.)  

I should add that the compilation album you find when you follow the crazyliszt link is rather good, full of quality performances, and there's a lovely picture of Alice Sara Ott. Not sure about that wedding march... but you will find Liszt's paraphrase of Mendelssohn's one in the track listing.

Have some fun with this... 

"...[we]would like to share FIRST WITH YOUR SITE  a contest  that we are hosting that I feel that you and your audience would really enjoy.  The contest is FREE to enter and being held at www.crazyliszt.com – in which we are giving away a FREE RED BABY GRAND Piano in honor of 200 years of the music of Franz Liszt, known for composing the “Wedding March” piece heard at EVERY Wedding, along with many other popular pieces heard in movies, cartoons, and plays. The contest is very asy to enter. Basically since Franz Liszt was known for his incredible piano skills and crazy lifestyle, people simply post a short “list” of their craziest things they love.  The “liszt” with the most votes wins a trendy, fashion-forward 44 key Baby Grand Piano from Schoenhut (valued at over $2000).  Attached to this email is a photo of the piano if you would like to take a look.This contest offers your audience the opportunity to revisit classics from one of the greatest composers in history while possibly also winning a baby grand that would look great in any home – especially those with little space.  We would love for your site to featurewww.crazyliszt.com and getting your viewers not only the first chance on this great contest, but the opportunity to win an instrument that is both fun and trendy!  It really is a great way for mothers and kids to enjoy classical music with a really HIP LOOKING piano!Thanks again and I hope you would be interested in featuring the contest on your site.Any questions or request to have the contest featured on your site, please let me know! www.crazyliszt.com"

THE CRAZIEST THINGS JD LOVES

My husband

My cat

Sight-reading Faure by candlelight at about 1am

Tofu

Doing summery things in the UK, under an umbrella, shivering with cold

Trying to keep beautiful ideas alive in a mad, mad, mad, mad world