Please support A Year for JDCMB

I've been thinking about this for a while, so here goes.

I have launched a campaign on GOFUNDME to seek some financial support for JDCMB, because I reckon the only way I can do that without selling my soul is to ask you, my readers. Here is my page and below is the text you'll find there. https://www.gofundme.com/jdcmb

There's a link at the top of the sidebar on the right if you fancy donating at any point later, but it would of course be nice if you did it right away...

THANK YOU!


When I first started JDCMB back in 2004 I could never have envisaged that I’d still be writing it in 2017. It was a complete accident. What were these strange new things called “blogs” anyway? I set up my site to find out. Thirteen years on, JDCMB is attracting more readers than ever and, in the perhaps surprisingly polarised, occasionally vicious and hysterical world of classical music commentary, is often termed by its devotees “the voice of reason”. 

I would love to take JDCMB to the next level and I suspect that you, my readers, would appreciate that: there’d be more regular posts, more exclusive content, more interviews and reviews, perhaps a spot more multimedia. At the moment it’s ad hoc – and I know it could be improved tenfold if I just had enough time to put into it. And time, “in this day and age”, is £. 

Who benefits? You do! Thanks to you, I could write much more of the “content” that you enjoy reading.

Over the years JDCMB and I have weathered a few slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and come through still fighting for the values I, and you, believe in.


JDCMB wants to represent:

• A voice of reason

• Encouragement of the finest and most idealistic in music-making

• Writing about music, ballet, books and related topics in an informal, entertaining yet informative way

• Spreading the message of the unique power of music

• Rejecting trollishness

With your support, I could do a lot more than I can at the moment.

There’d be interviews... 



...reviews and travel reports…


…and even occasional moments of glory...



And the only way to seek financial support for JDCMB without actually selling my soul is to ask my readers for their backing. I know there are quite a lot of you out there and [coughs] you’ve been enjoying free content for many years. Please will you consider stepping up and supporting the site?

Here’s my plan. I’m seeking a total of £5,200 in order to fund writing JDCMB to the tune of £100 a week for one year. In that time I intend to build up the readership still further, post at least twice as often as I currently do, and make the site not just a diversion, but an essential read for those who feel they are “my” audience. If this goes according to plan and has the desired result, we can then think about where to go next. 

The sooner we get started, the better, so please make your pledge now!

To say that I would be grateful to you forever and a day is not saying enough. I shall post a list of JDCMB Patrons at the end of 2017 and again at the end of this first year of funding to thank you officially and publicly. And if all this goes well, I’m hoping to build up a supporters network for which we can develop special offers, get-togethers, concerts and more. 

Meanwhile, if JDCMB speaks to you, that makes me very happy. 

Thank you a thousand times.

Jessica

An election on Schumann's birthday

It's Schumann's birthday. Here is Steven Isserlis, one of today's greatest Schumannians, in his Cello Concerto. The composer finished its proofreading six days before he threw himself into the Rhine.

There's a bitter irony that this Brexit-focused general election is on Schumann's birthday. It's hard to know what to do when it is so clear that our country, like Schumann, is on the point of cracking up, in many, many ways. Unless some kind of miracle takes place, it may not recover in our lifetimes.

Please go and vote today. Think of Mrs Pankhurst etc. Voting with brains intact is all we can actually do to try to better our own future.

Incidentally, I stumbled over a fascinating documentary that Steven made about Schumann back in the 1990s. Here's part 1. There's more.

The clinching image of Ghost Variations is the tipping from glory days to terminal struggle (Jelly d'Arányi), sanity to madness (Schumann), freedom to fascism and war (the world) - converging into the same cliff-edge moment. Yet the tipping point is not so easy to find: things happen so slowly, and we are so eager to think the best - the "don't worry, it'll be fine" mindset - that we don't realise what's really going on until it's too late... Schumann's Violin Concerto was the last orchestral work he completed before his suicide attempt and confinement in a mental hospital. It's a story for today and has become so tenfold since I began working on it six years ago.

Silver Birch: We are all connected

"One chance to do something brave..."

It's all happening. On Saturday I went along to High Wycombe to see a rehearsal of Silver Birch for the first time. The Garsington Youth Company and some of the Adult Community Chorus were in extremely fine fettle and working their socks off, together with the Garsington music staff, the repetiteur, our director Karen Gillingham, the designer Rhiannon Newman Brown, the Foley team from Shepperton Studios, our producer Kate Laughton and many more. I came back reeling a bit.

I'm a novice librettist. OK, I've put together other words to be sung or acted, but this is the first time I've been involved in a complete, fully staged, top-notch, bells-and-whistles creation of a whole brand-new opera. And of course if you've been going to operas for more than 40 years and writing about them and reviewing them for half of that, you think you know what it takes. Or...er...maybe you don't.

Here's a little of what it's really taking to make this opera, after it's been written. This is leaving aside the devising process, the research, the writing, the composing - more of that another time.

Suzy and Patrick working with the youth company

The singers have to learn their roles. That may sound obvious, but it includes, for Silver Birch, a lot of young people and amateurs, and they have been rehearsing every week since the new year. They've all been auditioned. They had to prepare for those auditions and some who prepared for the auditions would have been rejected and would have been disappointed, and people had to audition them and make those decisions and tell them who was in and who wasn't.

The soloists - whom I haven't yet seen in action - have to get to grips with brand-new roles while also being busy with whatever else they're singing at the moment - for instance, our leading lady, Victoria Simmonds, is currently singing Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni at Opera Holland Park. Our conductor, Garsington's music director Dougie Boyd, has his hands full conducting The Marriage of Figaro. And don't get me started on what language orchestral musicians use while practising, at home, a new work they've never seen or heard before.

The director, Karen, has to map out the drama and then rehearse it all. The choreographer, Natasha, is in charge of a small group of brilliant youngsters who suddenly launch into breakdancing in the middle of the drill scene. Rhiannon has to find a way to make the silver birch tree grow, among much else. During the course of the rehearsal, the adult community chorus members are summoned one by one for costume fittings - someone has to make those costumes.

The adult community chorus members are devoting lashings of time and effort to taking part. One of them happens to be Siegfried Sassoon's great-nephew (he was a great help to me in the background research for the opera) and for much of the time he is standing pretty much next to where Bradley Travis will be portraying Sassoon, or at least his ghostly presence.

The music staff are working flat out. Suzy Zumpe leads the music side of the rehearsal, teaching the youth company how to memorise the tricky details of Roxanna's score. "Nothing can grow in this soil" is a line that returns several times, the last note held a different number of beats on each occasion - she finds a trick to help them remember how many and when. And she sings all the female soloist roles herself when they need filling in, with her sidekick Patrick singing all the male ones and the repetiteur, James, bowling along through the piano score.

The stage manager and assistant stage managers are zipping around moving the post that represents the silver birch, adjusting markings, constructing and deconstructing things, and someone has already erected the substantial skeleton two-level set in this school hall. Cups of tea materialise, kindly brewed by one of the assistants. Someone has brought food for the staff's lunch, plus sustaining snacks. One person remarks that during the course of this week they've eaten their body weight in dried fruit.

Everyone has to get there and back. Rhiannon has been stuck on the M25 for hours. The team of three Foley artists (aka our sound-effects gurus) have come up from Shepperton, been to Wormsley to have a look around the theatre and now have come to High Wycombe to see how they will be integrated into the battle scene. And at this point Patrick absolutely excels himself as stand-in sound effects, doing fighter jets, machine guns, mortars and more with vocals alone.

The full score is spread out on a table, a giant publication that has had to be created, proof-read and printed. So has the piano score - the chorus members clutch copies printed with the magic name PANUFNIK in big letters on the front. Someone at Edition Peters had to organise all of that. Every rest, every semiquaver, every word has to be in the right place.

Natasha, who runs a small dance company that specialises in traditional folk dance as well as youth work, can see everyone is knackered and leads a cool-down session at the end of the afternoon. Now the kids' parents are presumably going to have to come and pick them up - indeed, a couple of proud mums have been watching the proceedings for a while. Meanwhile Kate has to organise absolutely every practical detail of absolutely everything, yet seems utterly unflappable and even finds time to drop me back to High Wycombe station.

Final scene. That post in the middle is the silver birch, growing tall and strong.

I do have to take notice and learn some lessons. It's too late to change anything in my text, but I've now twigged that it's really, seriously not a good idea for singers to have a word ending in "t" directly followed by one beginning with "d" and that a few unintended consequences can include the command: "Let's go from 'Driblet'". The kids are unfazed by this, but I quietly sink through the floor.

Over at Garsington, it will be all go, too. People have to work the booking mechanisms, send out the tickets, tell people about the trains, set out the picnic tents, stock the bar, direct the parking. The audience has to find its way to Wormsley. Will they come out at the end singing the Silver Birch Song? I think so - I can't get it out of my head.

We are all connected. All these people, hundreds and hundreds of them, are connected by the one purpose of making this new opera reality. Everyone is connected. Everyone could potentially have their life changed in some way by this thing. To say "we're all in it together" is not enough. This is not a "community opera": it's a community. To stage any opera would mean creating a community, even if the opera has existed for 400 years. This one happens to be new. And it happens to be ours.

I'm not sure I'll ever be quite the same again.

Silver Birch by Roxanna Panufnik is on at Garsington Opera on 28, 29 and 30 July. Get your tickets here.

Happy birthday to Sir Mark Elder!

Sir Mark Elder. Photo: (c) Chris Christodoulou

Sir Mark Elder, music director of the Hallé Orchestra, is 70 today.

Last night he conducted the Manchester 'We Stand Together' Concert, a massed-orchestra event that was pulled together at the Bridgewater Hall in less than a week to fundraise for the families of victims and the injured of the Manchester Arena terrorist attack. The Hallé, the Manchester Camerata and the BBC Philharmonic joined forces and among their soloists were mezzo-soprano Alice Coote, vocalist Clare Teal and Elbow front-man Guy Garvey. Tickets were free and the Manchester Evening News reports: "Elder and his orchestra looked visibly moved by the rapturous applause and cheers to the variety of musical works on the programme".

Time and again, Elder has taken a stand, taken a lead and been given the kudos his stirring, sterling music-making deserves. There's always room for more, too. Let's raise a glass to him today.

Good for Goode

Richard Goode. Photo: Steve Riskind

Richard Goode cast Beethoven and Chopin in a long shaft of light from Bach's most audacious and complex keyboard Partita, No.6 in E minor. I reviewed his recital in the Southbank's International Piano Series last night for The Arts Desk. Read it here. 

With Goode, a recital is all about the music (that might sound like stating the obvious, but one can’t guarantee it with every pianist these days). The veteran American has an unassuming stage presence, taking to the piano as if sitting down to demonstrate a musical point to friends in his own living room. There is nothing flamboyant in his manner, nor in his musical concepts: simply the sense that he has lived with this music for decades and is pleased to play it for us. He uses a well-thumbed score and a page-turner; no Lisztian feats of memory, and no iPad. The magic is in the tone itself...

PS: Goode turns 74 today. Happy birthday to a much-loved maestro of the piano.

A Brit at the Cliburn

I nearly went to the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition this year, but there were a few scheduling clashes. so I'm missing the fun, to say nothing of the Texas margaritas. There is, however, a splendid alternative: live streaming, plus watch-on-demand afterwards. And the finals are being relayed into cinemas on 10 June.

The sole British contestant, Martin James Bartlett (left) - the 20-year-old formerly a BBC Young Musician of the Year - is through to the quarter-finals and played yesterday. You can catch his performance and all the others thanks to brilliant Medici.tv at this link: http://cliburn2017.medici.tv/en/

For fellow pianophiles on Brexit Island wishing to follow Martin in particular, here's his performance yesterday: Scarlatti, Granados, Schumann/Liszt and Prokofiev 7th Sonata. http://cliburn2017.medici.tv/en/performance/-20

The quarter-finals continue today and tomorrow, with the semis scheduled for 1 June. Stay tuned.

A call from King Marke of Curtis

The Curtis Institute Orchestra comes to London on Friday

Fans of youth orchestras have a chance on Friday to hear one with quite a difference. It's the orchestra of the Curtis Institute from Philadelphia and, most unusually, they're on tour. Curtis is the Philadelphia music school celebrated for having trained what's often called the "crème de la crème" of young musicians. They're coming to London, playing at Cadogan Hall. The programme includes Strauss's Ein Heldenleben and Peter Serkin is the soloist in Brahms's Piano Concerto No.1 - this phenomenal American musician is another all-too-rare visitor to these shores. Osmo Vänskä conducts. Book here.

I was just wondering what to do about all this (I can't go as I'll be away seeing a person about a recording) when in popped a message from Matthew Rose, King Marke and Baron Ochs extraordinaire, himself a Curtis alumnus. Here's his call to attention:

Matthew Rose

On Friday May 26th, the Symphony Orchestra of the Curtis Institute takes to the stage at Cadogan Hall, London. It's an event I highly recommend you to attend. As in, this is one of the greatest concerts you could hear all year. 

"But what is this Curtis Institute?" I hear you cry. Well, it's probably the greatest music college on the planet. The place that probably trains more of the solo pianists, violinists, orchestral concert masters, principal clarinettists, Met Opera singers, composers, and conductors than any other institution in the world. From my time studying there alone, Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, and Jonathan Biss are at the forefront of pianists; the concert masters of Vienna Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, Met Opera Orchestra, Minneapolis Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony and soloists with every reputed orchestra. Juan Diego Florez is the most famous of the swaths of singers who have trained there; Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, Lukas Foss, Jennifer Higdon some of the most adorned composers etc.

It is an amazing place.

Founded by Mary Louise Curtis Bok in 1924, on the advise of Leopold Stokowski, Curtis was formed to train the exceptional, exceptionally. A music school of 170 students, only enough instrumentalists for a full seating of a Symphony Orchestra, 25 singers, undergraduate and graduate, whom train and perform 5 fully staged operas a year and a handful of pianists, composers, organists and conductors. A place where tuition is aimed at people reaching their own (world leading) potential in technical ability through the best teaching and then having the chance to utilise that in limitless performance opportunities, be it individually, orchestrally with the world's best conductors or in chamber music and opera. 

"So why have I never heard of this Curtis then?" Well, Curtis has existed only to train the exceptional exceptionally and hasn't had, until recently, an agenda to do anything else but that. A recent gift of $55m from out-going chairman of the board Nina Von Maltzahn to specifically spread the word of Curtis and allow tours like this present one to happen has changed that. 

Curtis's Lenfest Hall. Photo: Tom Crane

Curtis was initially housed in adjoining mansions on Rittenhouse Square, the sparkling jewel of Philadelphia's urban spaces. In 2011 a new Lenfest Hall more than doubled the footprint of the school, housing a world class orchestral rehearsal space, teaching rooms and all the amenities needed for youngsters embarking on the most demanding of professions. 

Again, it is a remarkable place.

I had the extreme good fortune of attending Curtis from 1998 until 2003. I arrived as a complete novice with barely the ability to sing an octave and left ready enough to join the Young Artists Programme at The Royal Opera, feeling completely ready, through my amazing education, to at least stand in the shadows of the world's great singers on that most amazing stage. My education was as thorough and comprehensive as I could ever imagine; singing lessons every week in New York with the best teacher I could choose (no faculty for voice, just limitless options), language and musical coaching with top professionals on a daily basis, singing roles in 21 operas, weekly visits to the Met, Carnegie Hall, and best of all, a free ticket to hear the fabulous Philadelphia Orchestra every Saturday evening. 

I went from someone who had barley been to a symphony orchestra concert, to someone ready to sing with those orchestras in five years. I feel so privileged to have had all this, and do you know what, it was all for free. Mrs Curtis Bok's initial endowment has grown and been supplemented by time, enthusiasm and massively generous and deserving support and philanthropy. 

If you are free on Friday, try and get to Cadogan Hall. On stage will be 100 of the finest musicians you will ever hear, and the average age will probably be 20. 20 year olds playing with ability and commitment rarely heard. 

Curtis really is amazing. Go find out for yourself.

Matthew Rose

http://www.cadoganhall.com/event/curtis-symphony-orchestra-170526/

Meet Glyndebourne's new Violetta

Kristina Mkhitaryan
Photo: Emil Mateev

This summer at Glyndebourne is dominated by Tom Cairns' production of Verdi's La Traviata, which gets not one run but two, the second in August, the first starting this Sunday. The first of their Violettas is the Russian soprano Kristina Mkhitaryan. I was fortunate enough to attend the dress rehearsal yesterday, but One Does Not Write About Things Until They Open, so for the moment let's just say that you might like to hear her.

She is from Novorossyisk and is 30 this year. Above, she sings Gilda's aria 'Caro nome' from Rigoletto, fabulously airborne at the Bolshoi. Here's a little more about her.

A graduate of the Galina Vishnevskaya Theatre Studio, Moscow, Kristina went on to join the Young Artist Programme at the Bolshoi Theatre where she remains a studio artist. She has most recently won first prize at the Queen Sonja International Competition in Oslo (2013), 3rd prize at the Neue Stimmen Competition (2013) and the Viotti Competition in Vercelli (2014).

And more here from the Bolshoi.

Enjoy!

Top artists' manager speaks out against Brexit

It seems that the person who could have done best at running the STAY IN THE EU campaign is actually running the leading artists' management company Harrison Parrott. I've seen few words so eloquent and hard-hitting on the topic as those posted in this essay by the executive chairman Jasper Parrott himself, currently released on the company's website. We should all rally together with him.

UK Arts and Culture are a European legacy worth fighting for, he declares.

...We should remember that the wealth and power of the Great Britain that Brexiteers would so delusionally like to bring back was based substantially on wealth accumulated through slavery and the slave trade, exploitative colonialism, the cruel oppression of the poor and of children in the satanic mills of the Industrial Revolution, countless broken promises and a history of appalling leadership at many critical points of history including the lead into the two world wars and many other conflicts before and since in which we have been involved. 

To me however, our UK has been at its greatest as a major partner in the European project which has brought previously unimagined levels of freedom and prosperity to hundreds of millions of people since the Second World War, as the successful creator of a citizenship and homeland of rich cultural diversity and mutual tolerance, a haven of peace and opportunity, and a society where the arts, sciences, education and every aspect of culture can thrive as it has so successfully done, over the last 40 years. 

And how much greater our UK could have been if our leaders had wholeheartedly engaged with the challenges of leadership and reform from within the EU rather than using our power to carp, diminish, undermine and opt out...

Read the whole thing here.

If you build it, they will come

It's not dead. The City of London Corporation has stumped up money to continue the creation of a business plan for the mooted Centre for Music. They are now looking for the right architects, engineers and acousticians to design the great concert hall that London doesn't have. This report in The Guardian explains the latest developments, which include a revising down of the estimated cost to around £200-250m.

Frankly, they could do worse than call in the team that built the auditorium of the NOSPR in Katowice, which opened in 2014. Photo gallery here. Friends in the LSO came back absolutely raving about it (as did Bachtrack's reporter, here). Katowice is a smallish mining town in southern Poland, part of a larger metropolitan area of Silesia that extends to a population of about 5.3m, and it has a hall, home to the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, that many performers consider acoustically superior to any orchestral venue in the UK's capital.

The firm to call is the Japanese acoustical engineering company Nagata Acoustics.

NOSPR, Katowice
Photo: Daniel Rumiancew

Nagata Acoustics has also created the auditoriums in the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Paris Philharmonie, the Helsinki Music Centre, Shanghai Symphony Hall, the New World Center Concert Hall Miami, the Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall in St Petersburg, the Danish Radio Concert Hall Copenhagen, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and halls all over Japan... Full list and more info here. 

I've had mixed feelings about the super-hall idea. First I loved it: why should London not have a great concert hall to match the finest in the world? Our musical life is still among the planet's best and we deserve a venue that fits the bill. Then I got worried. How will it be run? In particular, how will it be funded? What knock-on effect will it have on the capital's musical life in an environment already threadbare on the funding front (and likely to get worse if the companies whose incumbents provide sponsorship have to move abroad post Brexit)? Would it risk leaching the funding, public and private alike, away from its competition? And can the organisation of it be trusted not to get it totally wrong yet again?

And yet, and yet...get it right and...and the possibilities are endless. The magnificent Hamburg Elbphilharmonie is sold out right through this season, despite hefty ticket prices. It's now announced its 17-18 season of delectable musical delights and seems likely to sell out again. While one hopes that the London hall won't end up costing quite the same eye-watering sums, and that it can be designed so that you can get out at the end to catch your train in under 15 minutes seat-to-door, there's still a lesson here: if you build it, they will come. If the place is good enough, if the experience of being inside it to listen to great music is attractive enough, it will fill up with people and they will love it. And they will love what they hear if it sounds lovable. If we're proud of our music, if we celebrate it and promote it and encourage children to come in and experience it, perhaps the regeneration it brings the spirit can spread.

Detractors say that the sums of money involved would be better spent on music education - and they would indeed, but the fact remains that they won't be, not by the government currently in charge, and the hall's money would come from different budgets, and probably different organisations, in any case. And perhaps it would benefit music education directly if a place like this were to set a high-profile example and lead from the front.

We've had decades of multi-purpose, hall-plus-conference-centre design - but one size does not fit all. Flexible acoustics seem something of a technological miracle and of course it's good to be able to adjust the sound according to different music's different needs. Yet now we would all love a hall that is made for music and its audience, and that has the additional facilities to accommodate rehearsal, community projects, education work and a decent cafe or several. A hall that is designed to celebrate the great art it holds, a hall that is a joy to spend time in inside and out, a hall that welcomes everybody, a hall that draws the crowds and the artists and that doesn't send you home with a headache - that would be worth the wait. At least, it could be, if it's done well enough. (Oh, and it would be nice if there were enough ladies' loos. The Elbphilharmonie in that respect is disgraceful!)

So please, City, if you're going ahead with this, get it right. And if you haven't already done so, please put in a call to Nagata.

Fauré on eternal love

Painting of Fauré by John Singer Sargent (photo from wikipedia.com)

It's Gabriel Fauré's birthday today: 172. This means, happily, that in three years' time he will be 175, which is a good excuse for a few celebrations. Start planning now, chaps.



For today's anniversary, here are three of his songs, or mélodies. The first, 'Notre Amour', a particular favourite of mine as it is about eternal love, yet as many light years away from Tristan und Isolde as it's possible to be. It is followed by 'Le Secret', its sibling in Fauré's Op.23, and 'En Sourdine', a Verlaine setting from the Cinq mélodies de Venise. The singer is Elly Ameling with pianist Dalton Baldwin, recorded back in 1974. (The Seventies had certain things going for them, incidentally.)

Incidentally, the second volume in a brand-new, splendid, intimate, varied and warm-hearted recording of all the Fauré songs has just been released on Signum Records, spearheaded by pianist Malcolm Martineau. More about that here.
http://signumrecords.com/product/the-complete-songs-of-faure-vol-1/SIGCD427/
http://signumrecords.com/product/the-complete-songs-of-faure-vol-2/SIGCD472/

Right Royal Philharmonic Awards Celebration

The stupendous Finnish soprano Karita Mattila with her prize

Tuesday night: the lights are low and the music's high on the agenda. The Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards are the annual UK jamboree that celebrates the best and brightest of music-making here on Brexit Island. Last night's was filled with warm welcomes, joyous encounters and plenty of good food and wine at The Brewery, round the corner from the Barbican. Andrew MacGregor and Sarah Walker of BBC Radio 3 served as hosts, there were enthusiastic words from RPS chairman John Gilhooly ("Live music is...priceless; live music is...sparkling...") and winners received their silver lyres from no less distinguished hands than Stephen Hough's.

In the bad old days when there was plenty of (or at least a bit more) money in the industry, we used to sit at this celebration through long speeches that would say how dreadful everything was and what a scandal it was that there wasn't more music on TV, and so forth. Now that the whole business is in mortal peril with the prospect of the economic and practical disruption likely to result from Brexit, paradoxically an atmosphere of celebration prevailed, with Stephen Hough declaring in his speech that we should embrace challenging music, stop apologising, not expect classical music to be for absolutely everybody, stop patronising the young ("we offer them Primrose Hill when they're ready to climb Ben Nevis") and appreciate the upside of the museums model which is, as I've often remarked too, not something to be disparaged on autopilot, but actually encourages great care, good display and creative communication with the audience. I hope he'll publish this speech somewhere.

A video message was also beamed in from the great Thomas Quasthoff, remarking that we have enjoyed 70 years of peace in Europe thanks in large part to the existence of the EU and that he would like there to be a similarly bright future for his 18-year-old stepdaughter's generation. Many of us cheered - not that there's much we can do about it, faced with a government apparently determined to drive our economy and our society alike over the Brexit cliff no matter how much damage it will do, and an opposition that seemingly won't oppose.

And the awards? It was quite a crop. Honorary membership of the RPS was presented to filmmaker Barrie Gavin, who has documented splendid quantities of 20th-century composers from Korngold to Boulez. The ceremony cited "the care and attention to detail which he invests in each and every subject, and his ability to demonstrate insightful authority and profound understanding".

The shortlisted conductors: Richard Farnes, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla and Donald Runnicles.
Photo montage from classical-music.com

Along the way there were treats aplenty: the news that Classic FM is commissioning new pieces from seven young composers; an award for the Lammermuir Music Festival - which is a relatively new organisation, having only launched in 2010; and the rare treat of seeing the only-two-ever Takács Quartet leaders together, the violinist-turned-conductor Gabor Takács-Nagy collecting the well-deserved prize for the Manchester Camerata, which he's leading to brilliant things, and Edward Dusinberre modestly accepting the Creative Communication prize for his wonderful book about playing the Beethoven Quartets, Beethoven for a Later Age (published by Faber & Faber). The Manchester Camerata's award was essentially for its Hacienda Classical strand, with which apparently it's going to open Glastonbury this year. But I don't think it hurt that they also played Beethoven with Martha Argerich.

The Learning and Participation award was won by the UK's first disabled-led youth orchestra, the South-West Open Youth Orchestra, their achievements attested to by a moving video. The Young Artist award went to pianist and Lieder specialist Joseph Middleton, the two composition awards went respectively to Rebecca Saunders for Skin and Philip Venables for 4.48 Psychosis, and the Audience Engagement prize to the East Neuk Festival - it was indeed a good night for Scottish festivals. Fretwork won Chamber Music and Song, violinist James Ehnes was awarded the Instrumentalist prize and Karita Mattila swept to victory in the Singer award.

It was probably Richard Farnes's night first and foremost, though. The British maestro scooped the Conductor award for his Ring cycle with Opera North, and the company and that production also won the Opera award outright. You can see the whole thing on the BBC iPlayer, and please do take a look/listen, because it is simply a knockout. Priceless. Sparkling. And more.

I managed to squeeze into a dress I haven't worn for two years, hug four former interviewees, catch up with the whole Garsington team (they were shortlisted for Idomeneo), apologise for a non-attendance at something to entirely the wrong PR person, and win the best dessert of the evening as my annoying dietary condition meant that instead of whatever everyone else ate, I was given some utterly glorious chocolate goo. A fine time was had by one and all.

Building the future in Birmingham

Lloyd Webber with a young musician from In Harmony, Liverpool

It’s all go at Birmingham Conservatoire. There's a new £57m building nearly ready for next academic year, state-of-the-art technologies to open up music education to the world – and a launch in the form of a Royal Gala concert on 11 March 2018, which the conservatoire has announced will be conducted by the CBSO’s own music director, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. The college's new home includes a 500-seat concert hall and a 150-seat recital room, an experimental projects room, a jazz club, an organ studio and 100 practice rooms, as well as some remarkable digital developments. 

I caught up with the conservatoire’s head, Julian Lloyd Webber, who assumed the post in 2015 after having to bring his cello career to a close, to ask him about the challenges facing an institution on the brink of what should be a historic breakthrough, yet at a time of enormous national uncertainty. But the main challenge is not Brexit, says Lloyd Webber: instead, it is a national education system that fails the creative side of life...

JD: Julian, how’s the progress on the new building?

 JLW: It’s manic at the moment. From the outside it almost looks complete now. There’s still a lot of work to do inside, but we’re promised it’s all on schedule. We’re a little bit nervous because we know we’re going to have a great, great building and we have to go in there and make sure everything is working properly. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be here.

JD: The, er, Walk of the Valkyries preview on Youtube is most impressive. The new facilities look state-of-the-art.

JLW: It really is. The whole place is built around a “digital core”. In practice what it means is that any room in the conservatoire can be linked with any other room. So if you’re giving a class it can be relayed to someone in a practice room five floors up. Everything is interconnected.

A lot of it is about being able to do live classes outside, to relay and receive streaming live. Already we have a Soweto project Arco, run by our head of strings, Louise Lansdowne, who comes from South Africa and has created this programme, which is just growing and growing. We had Sheku Kanneh-Mason come in to do a recital which was shown live to our students in Soweto, so already we’re starting – but in the new building you’ll be able to do that anywhere and at any time.

JD: It’s great that Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla is going to conduct the conservatoire orchestra's royal gala. Does this represent a strengthening link between the institution and the CBSO?

JLW: The conservatoire opens to students on 25 September and we’ll be doing quite regular concerts from soon after that, with quite a lot of broadcasts. We open officially with our royal patron, Prince Edward, at a gala concert in the main hall with our orchestra and Mirga has agreed to conduct it. It’s good for the city and I think it’ll be wonderful for the students. And it shows her interest in music education – she’s pretty keen on working with the conservatoire. 

We already have a very strong link with the CBSO – possibly a closer link than any other conservatoire with any symphony orchestra. A lot of their principal players teach in the conservatoire; we have an arrangement where sometimes our students can play along with the CBSO in rehearsal; and also we have showcases where our students play at Symphony Hall just before their concerts, twice a year with the orchestra and twice a year with our pianists. Many of our students are in the CBSO Youth Orchestra. I think the links are closer than anywhere else. It’s a great opportunity for the students to be playing alongside people of that level.

An envisioning of the new-look Adrian Boult Hall

 JD: What other ‘USPs’ do you want to develop further?

JLW: When I first came in I was expecting to have to make changes, but I’ve been really impressed with the heads of department. The piano standard is extremely high – for instance, one student has just been accepted for the Van Cliburn Competition, which is difficult to get into. Some of them are so good, really good, but what this brings me to, which I think is a USP for the conservatoire, is this: they are friendly, they collaborate and they try to help each other. I think that’s an atmosphere we have which is very special. Colleges can be very competitive. We’re competitive, but some institutions encourage that competitiveness and sometimes almost encourage students to compete against each other. We don’t. We try to encourage them to help each other, which is quite a different ethos.

We have had a pretty hard time at the end of the old building’s life – it felt unloved and uncared for in the middle of a building site. It hasn’t been easy. We lost our main concert hall, so this season we’ve been going out into the city to play, which in many ways has been a good thing and a real learning curve for students. Because we haven’t had a hall to give orchestral concerts in, we’ve been going to lots of different venues around Birmingham, including the Town Hall and Symphony Hall. I think there really is a spirit here of pulling together and getting down to the job of making music as best we all can, and I want to carry that spirit into the new place. It’s a completely different kind of building – bigger, more open, state of the art – but I want to keep that community spirit.

JD: One hears that you’re an extremely hands-on principal, always there and interested in everything…

JLW: For me it’s a natural extension to what I’ve always done. I didn’t particularly want to go into conducting when I had to stop playing the cello. I’ve always been involved in music education with Sistema, In Harmony, etc. My father taught at the Royal College of Music for many years and became director of the London College of Music, so that side of it feels very much in the blood. 

I can’t get to as many concerts as I’d like because there’s so much going on here! We have a great jazz department – we offer degree courses in jazz, which is quite unusual – and the standard is very, very high, with people coming from all over the world for them. We had a whole string of concerts at the end of last term and a concert at BirminghamTown Hall where they launched the conservatoire's Ellington Orchestra. I had so much on that I nearly didn’t go, but I was extremely glad that I did because they were so superb. It was really one of the best things I’ve heard.  

I try to be hands-on and I try to care for the students, because the music profession is tough, it costs a lot of money now for students to go to conservatoire and I feel a hundred per cent on their side. I want to help them as much as I can.

Julian Lloyd Webber in Birmingham

JD: So all these wonderful possibilities are opening up, there’s this fantastic new building…and then along comes Brexit. What do you think the main challenges are going to be, specifically for the conservatoire but also for music education in this country generally?

JLW: You said Brexit?

JD: Yep…

JLW: There was a sudden bleep on the line.

JD: Maybe someone’s censoring us!

JLW: Well, Brexit…It’s kind of impossible to know what exactly is going to happen. I’ve tried not to be pessimistic and decide the whole world has ended. The Erasmus exchange programmes we’ve had have been brilliant and I would hope and pray that they continue. But we have a huge number of students from China and we’re developing the relationships with Japan and Korea – we have a lot of far-eastern students. To be honest, I’m more concerned about the state of the UK’s music education system than about Brexit. 

That’s because we can only reflect, in conservatoires all over the country, the students that are coming through. Of all those countries in the Far East, I can’t name one in which music education isn’t absolutely the norm. Children learning music is a normal thing; in families that’s what children do. That’s increasingly reflected in the standard of what they’re producing. But here, with the EBacc and taking arts subjects out of the curriculum, we will pay the price for that. I think we already are.

That concerns me more than anything else at all, because it’s so hard to bring these things back. There’s a knock-on effect through the whole profession, with peripatetic teachers deciding not to do that for a job because there’s no work. That is the thing that really, really concerns me. We’ve been around a while, this country; we can deal with Brexit and I cannot believe that we will not be working with students and people in Europe, so I haven’t been as pessimistic as everyone else. That doesn’t mean I think it’s a great idea, and the whole situation with visas could be a nightmare. But I think we will survive it and I think ways will continue for us to do a lot of business in Europe.

JD: How much can the Conservatoire do to encourage music education at grassroots level?

JLW: We’re trying to do that. Richard Shrewsbury came in at the same time as me, July 2015, as learning and participation manager, which we didn’t have before. He’s full of ideas and now we’re working with over 3,000 school students. These things cost money, of course, and we don’t have as much as we would like, but he’s doing an absolutely brilliant job. 

Now we’re trying to work with the music hubs, we’re going into schools and we’ve just had a competition for Shakespeare Week among schools all over the region, composing a piece based on Shakespeare works. We need to do this, we need to be filling the gap the government has created – and I think that applies to all conservatoires. I think we have a duty to do it. By definition it’s only a drop in the water, though it still is a drop. But I think the core responsibility for music education has to lie in the national curriculum. Why should the whole state school sector be deprived of music?

JD: Last but by no means least, what’s your long-term plan for the Birmingham Conservatoire?

JLW: We’re going to have the best building and the best facilities and we already have a stream of great visiting artists, so it’s not a question of making huge changes; it’s adding to what’s already there. We’re making judicious appointments – for instance, we’ve brought in James Galway as international chair of flute, we’ve got Catrin Finch as international chair of harp, we’ve got people coming in now who are the top and I want to continue that. I said the first time I came in to all the visiting teachers that the standard is really good already, so nobody needs to be worried – but I want to make sure it goes on and that we bring in the best that we can and therefore attract the best students that we can. We want to make it the best.