Liberaaaaagh!
The analgesic boy choir Libera, latest addition to the writer's 'crossover creatures'.
According to their website boy choir Libera’s music is a ‘sound for a new time’ and contains ’shimmering, mystical chords and ecstatic harmonies’. Yeah, whatever! I saw them today on the TV clad in their white robes and talking about their latest album Peace (Luxury Edition) like some kind of celestial boy band. There’s no doubting that these lads can sing a bit but the anodyne strings and synthesiser schmaltz that totters precariously over a pseudo-disco drum loop doesn’t do it for me. In fact the thing that bothers me most is not the music but the identity of the sevengali behind them. Admittedly the group is a ‘not for profit’ organisation so I suppose their operators can’t easily be accused of manipulation but I add them to my ever-growing list of ‘crossover creatures’ who inhabit those dark and dangerous lands between popular and classical music.
I wonder what kind of people buy Peace (Luxury Edition)? I suppose if analgesic, innocuous ersatz choral music is your thing you might, but perhaps I’m being unfair. Perhaps it’s me! Perhaps there are some people with taste who buy such albums, but surely if you want a decent choir at Christmas (or indeed at any other time) aren’t you better off buying an album by the choir of King’s College Cambridge or even avoiding the kids entirely and going for something by The Sixteen. Better still, get hold of a copy of William Mathias’s Ave Rex - that’s real Christmas music.
After reading this you’ve probably already condemned me as as nothing more than a musical grumpy git. Maybe I am but I’ve finished my rant now. I rest my case.
The Secret Life of Eric
Maria Callas - one of Eric's thunderbolts
Eric is my father-in-law. He is nearly eighty years old now and still fairly ebullient and good-humoured mostly, but at times rather cantankerous. There are bits of his life that I do know about – his career in the Royal Navy, service during Suez and later tracking Russian trawlers in British water – and other bits that he’s kept quiet, not because he doesn’t want anybody to know about them but because he’s just a quiet bloke.
I get the impression that, although he spent 32 years in the navy, the sea isn’t really in his blood. He is a man of the arts. Other than Eric’s study I can’t remember where I’ve seen as many art books in one place. His collection of art slides, reproductions of painting from galleries he’s visitied all over the world, total about four thousand in number. He has lectured on art history too and his mind is nothing less than a mental archive of art facts. But what I have only just found out about him is his love of music.
I know he likes music of course, but on the occasions when I see him we tend to talk about other things, practical matters, family stuff and the like; music doesn’t really figure. Only in the last couple of months have I discovered another facet of his character. He mentioned in passing something about opera and his favourite singers – top of the list is, and always has been, Maria Callas. But almost as an afterthought he talked about a whole series of concerts that he’d been to featuring top-notch singers, conductors and soloists: Jussi Bjorling, Gigli, Kathleen Ferrier and Nicolai Gedda. I wanted to know everything about those concerts and I questioned him until until he was sick of talking to me.
I’m too young to have seen those singers, but what an experience it must have been! If you’ve got older relatives who are in any way keen on the arts, find out what they’ve done and who they’ve seen. You might be surprised.
Critical Mass
Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. Browsing through reviews of Paul Lewis’s cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas I came across these little gems:
Lewis has a marvelous gift for sweet lucidity and joy, and above all for melody: the most demanding passages quite simply sing (which is actually no simple thing since it is so rare) and are never merely notes achieved, no matter how brilliantly. I feel as though Lewis has given us a glimpse into Beethoven’s heart and we find something hitherto hidden but which he reveals with such grace. I wish I could do Paul Lewis as much justice in my description as he has done the composer by his playing.
And there followed further generous outpourings of adulation and veneration. Then came this…
This is a disappointment, especially in the light of its enthusiastic critical reception on both sides of the pond. It is cautious, careful, circumspect, earnest, responsible and dull. There is no sign here that Beethoven is dealing out bold strokes. Instead the composer comes off as plain and palatable. And that we know he was not. Fine sound of an exceptional instrument: wasted.
So who do you believe and what should I do? The latter reviewer dismisses the recordings as aphoristic and featureless yet to the first it seems the sun shines out of Mr Lewis’s piano lid. Do I use my Gramophone Classical Guide as my vade-mecum or use it in place of lavatory paper when the soft stuff runs out? Because a conclusion is impossible to reach, I become irritable, snap at my wife and torment the cat. (I am ashamed to say that in a fit of sudden irascibility that stemmed from reading reviews I once attempted to superglue milk bottle tops to the bottoms of its paws.) But is my first mistake to consult anyone else at all? If you subscribe to Spotify your problems are solved; just spend a few blissful hours listening to the relevant versions of the works you’re planning to buy and Robert, as they say, is your proverbial parents’ brother. If you haven’t got the aforementioned software, it really doesn’t matter that much does it?
What is a bad recording? These days there are very few of them. I mean, of course, a recording that is badly balanced or sounds as though it was recorded in a sports hall, or underwater, or your downstairs toilet. The rest is down to taste and I’m not sure that we should let the critics have the monopoly on that. Because a pianist is a little too light with his sforzando chords or the tempo of an orchestral tutti isn’t fast enough should we dismiss the work entirely? And some critics do. By all means dust off your metronomes and follow the score if you want to check precision but almost all of the classical music buffs I know are collectors of recorded music and very few of them also have a library of sheet music to rival their CDs. I doubt also whether many of us, unless we are professional musicians, have the time to scrutinise a work in that much detail, fascinating though it is to do. If you know what you like then it’s worth searching for, I suppose. Spotify comes into its own here; being able to listen to different versions of a work is a boon, although they don’t have them all.
Too often in the past I have discarded CDs of works I know well because they don’t compare with the one I’m used to regardless of whether it’s ‘good’ or not. I have always used my 1975 LSO/Previn version of Orff’s Carmina Burana as a benchmark by which to judge all other versions of that monastic romp. Recently my son played me some of the version he has (by someone forgettable on the budget label Naxos). There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, except that it was different to mine. The emphases and tempi were different but the playing was decent and the recording was okay. What the music was attempting to get past was my own prejudice: that the Previn version was, in my opinion, the best and therefore anything else should be dismissed.
Are we, dear reader, too attached to readings of works that are, say, similar to those we have grown up with? Are we wary of holding out the olive branch to versions that are a little bit different? An advertising campaign for a well-known UK supermarket chain uses the phrase ‘try something different today’. I going to swallow my own prejudice, along with that rare breeds pork pie, and do just that.
The (Too) Serious Business of Classical Music
These days I pick up music magazines and newspaper articles on classical music with trepidation because I know what’s coming: serious reviews and analysis of newly released recordings, interviews with musical celebrities who bang on about their latest tour, features about obscure composers written in a language laced with German and Italian jargon like so much verbal durchfall. (See, I’m doing it now). There’s nothing wrong with those kinds of articles of course, but what about printing a few that don’t take themselves too seriously? Here are a few clips to remind us that even classical musicians, and the people that listen to them, can have a laugh at themselves from time to time.
And Jim Tavare with double bass:
And the legendary Victor Borge:
And who could forget this?:
Everybody Digs Bill Evans
On September 15th it will be exactly 30 years since the death of jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans. Arguably no other jazz musician has influenced the course of modern music quite as much. The freshness of his tone and melodic line, and the individuality of his voicings made him unmistakeable. Even the hundreds of jazz-pianist-clones who have tried to play like Evans never quite manage to sound like him.
Bill Evans was born in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1929 and, like many jazz musicians, was classically trained. He was awarded a music scholarship and attended Southeastern Louisiana college, graduating with a degree in piano performance and teaching. After a spell in the army Evans took postgraduate studies in composition at Manne’s School of music and worked mainly in New York alongside such notables as Charlie Mingus, Art Farmer and George Russell. His debut album New Jazz Conceptions, featuring the track ‘Waltz for Debby’, probably his most famous composition, was a financial flop but it led to greater recognition and in 1958 Evans joined the Miles Davis sextet. Although he stayed with the group for only eight months his influence was great. He left to focus on his own career but returned in 1959 to record the seminal album Kind of Blue.
In the early sixties Evans formed, with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, what many consider to be the best trio of his career. The death of LaFaro, aged twenty-five, in a car accident cut short one of the most fruitful partnerships in jazz history. Evans was particularly affected by it and did not work for several months afterwards. In the early 70s came a brief period of musical and personal stability with a trio consisting of Puerto Rican bassist Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell which lasted until the latter’s retirement in 1975. Towards the end of the decade Evans’s long battle with drug addiction began to take its toll - he had been a heroine addict since his spell with the Miles Davis band and although he had kicked this drug his addiction to cocaine was the one that finally killed him.
Classical musicians, even the ones that have little interest in jazz, will have heard of Evans, in fact, once heard his playing is never forgotten. The fusion of startlingly voiced jazz chords and classical Debussy-esque harmony over a floating melodic line is a combination that is instantly recognisable. His ability to reharmonise the chords of jazz standards and come up with something infinitely more stunning is evident in his recordings of tunes such as ‘How About You?’ and ‘My Romance’ (both from the album Waltz for Debby). Check out this clip of Evans performing ‘My Foolish Heart’.
Evans’s jazz has a logic about it that makes it easy to understand. As classically trained musician I spent more time trying to understand Schoenberg, Charles Ives and Richard Strauss’s harmony than I did Bill Evans’s ; there’s an inevitability about the structure, the changes and the voicings but there are also many surprises – juxtapositions of chords, unusual vaguenesses or rootless passages underneath little turns of melody that make you smile. The image of Evans, hair slicked back and geekily bespectacled, hunched over the piano concentrating intently is one that contradicts the openness and tansparency of his music. Its sense and rationality is drawn from elements of jazz, classical and ethic music and melds them into something of immeasurable beauty and sensitivity. If by some chance you aren’t familiar with his music you really ought to do something about it. In fact, Evans’s second album Everyone Digs Bill Evans is aptly titled, because everyone does.
Select discography
New Jazz Conceptions (1956 Riverside) The first of Evans’s albums featuring Teddy Kotick (bass) and Paul Motian (drums)
Everybody Digs Bill Evans (1958 Riverside) Already it’s clear the direction that Evans is taking with his music. Block chords are beginning to be replaced in places by a more fluid line supported by Sam Jones (bass) and Philly Joe Jones (drums).
Portrait in Jazz (1959 Riverside) The first album to feature Scott LaFaro on bass. Motian plays drums once again. The rapport between these musicians is a almost tangible.
Kind of Blue (1959 Columbia) Evans is the pianist on four out of the five tracks on this seminal album. The chords for the track ‘So What’ are to the jazz pianist what the ‘Tristan Chord’ is to the classical musician.
Waltz for Debby (1961 Riverside) A classic album again featuring LaFaro and Motian arguably contains some of Evans’s best playing. Includes the tracks ‘My Foolish Heart’, ‘Waltz for Debby’, ‘Detour Ahead’ and ‘My Romance’.
How My Heart Sings (1962 Riverside) Chuck Israels plays bass on this trio session. Motian remains on drums.
Conversations With Myself (1963 Verve) A solo album with Evans using several channels of overdubbing on each track with interesting results.
A Simple Matter of Conviction (1966 Verve) Excellent trio album with Eddie Gomez (bass) and Shelley Manne (drums)
The Bill Evans Album (1971 Columbia) Grammy award winner. Evans uses a Fender Rhodes electric piano on some songs but check out the incredible track ‘Twelve Tone Tune’ – serial jazz composition (of sorts!). Has Gomez on bass and Morell on drums.
You Must Believe in Spring (1977 Warner Bros) Gomez on bass again but with Eliot Zigmund on drums. The wonderful ‘B Minor Waltz (for Elaine)’ shows that even though Evans’s health was waining his musical intelligence was not.
Hands off my Sackbuts!
Should this be the fate of all fortepianos?
I wonder whether the seeds of my obvious uncultivated crassness (I’m sure some readers will see this blog post as nothing less than that) were sown during my primary school years. Perhaps it was because I was pressganged into joining, aged seven, the school ‘orchestra’, forced to dress like a pillock and play ’Ode to Joy’ in the recorder ensemble. But the apogee of my primary school musical career came with a performance of Schubert’s ‘Die Forelle’ transcribed for zithers and kazoos. Perhaps it is this that has blunted the edge of my enthusiasm for musical accuracy. My induction into classical music was based, at least when I was very young, on my mother’s modest record collection. Discs of Dinu Lipatti, Solomon and Wilhelm Kempff (see my previous blog Dr Who and the Piano Titans) rubbed shoulders with Klemperer, Furtwangler, Katherine Ferrier and Maria Callas. I had no idea about whether or not these versions were authentic, historically informed or played on period instruments. I wasn’t bothered about it then and I’m still not that bothered now.
For some listeners the search for authenticity is of paramount importance. If the orchestral forces used aren’t exactly of the type and number that Beethoven or Haydn or Bach intended, or the banjos are overdone in the Verdi Te Deum they will dismiss the performance out of hand. An argument has been raging for some time about whether or not Sir Roger Norrington is correct to ban his orchestra from using vibrato in works composed even as late as the twentieth century and, following on from that, an interesting discussion took place on Twitter last week on whether you could play Mahler and Elgar works without violin portamenti. Unthinkable in my opinion, but an even more fallacious case is made by those who dismiss the modern grand piano sound as inauthentic for performances of music written before about 1840.
Authentic though it is, the fortepianos on which Beethoven and Mozart composed their works sounds as though they belong in the saloon of a western film than in the concert hall. I have never been able to come to terms with the early piano’s thin tone and twangy bass notes that are more suggestive of Dodge City than nineteenth-century Vienna. So why should we even bother with these relics? As historical curios they are interesting but can’t compare with the modern Steinway. In his essay ‘Notes on a Complete Recording of Beethoven’s Piano Works’ Alfred Brendel states that ‘whenever we hear Beethoven on a present-day instrument we are listening to a sort of transcription’ and goes on to say that he believes a modern concert grand ‘does better justice to most of Beethoven’s piano works than the Hammerklavier: it’s tone is far more colourful, orchestral and rich in contrast, and these qualities do matter in Beethoven, as can be seen from his orchestral and chamber music… It’s sound, dynamics and action have surprisingly little in common with the pianos of today.’ Our modern day ears are attuned to the sound of the concert grand and even if the purists don’t find it completely pukka, the beauty of its tone and the ability of that sound to carry, even in the biggest concert halls, make it much more preferable than the honky-tonk instruments that the musical sophists seem so keen on.
The battle continues to rage about whether classical music should be played on period instruments and as long as there is classical music I don’t think it will ever be resolved. I can take any amount of period strings, lutes, viols, crumhorns, sackbuts, shawms and ophecleides and the rest, in fact I actually prefer baroque keyboard music to be played on the harpsichord rather than a modern piano. The UK alone boasts some astoundingly good PIPEs (Period Instrument Performance Ensembles): The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Fretwork, The English Baroque Soloists, The Rose Consort, The New London Consort, The Taverner Consort, Collegium Musicum 90, The Academy of Ancient Music, The Frolick, The English Concert and The Hilliard Ensemble to name but a few. But fortepianos? Why bother with them? I suggest they all be broken up and distributed as a practical contribution to the pensioner’s Winter Fuel Allowance.
Chopin and the Sins I had not Committed
The only known photograph of Chopin
I wonder if the originality of Chopin’s music is overlooked these days. Glenn Gould famously denounced Chopin’s music as ornamental and trivial and other critics have dismissed his salon-based oeuvre as nothing more than ‘music for the ladies’ but actually, there’s more to it than just a pretty tune. The inherent melodic nature of a Chopin piece belies a harmony more complex than meets the ear and even the humble mazurka, like some peasant wench newly brought to polite society, its characteristic Polish Lydian fourth beautifed and given an exotic glamour, can stand up to scrutiny of the drawing-rooms of Paris. In the words of a nineteenth-century critic from La France Musicale: ‘Chopin is unique as a pianist – he should not and cannot be compared to anyone.’ He might even be able to make you cry.
The Bolshoi: Drop-kicks and Demi-plie
This week I was privileged enough to see the Bolshoi Ballet perform at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. I have to say I’m no ballet expert but I don’t think I’d be upsetting anyone by suggesting that, generally speaking, the form tends to be the preferred by the ladies.
I’m not suggesting for a moment that men don’t and cannot appreciate it; I thoroughly enjoyed the performance and marvelled at the skill and beauty of the dancers as much as anyone but I still don’t understand it. To a sixteen-stone ex-rugby player like me, girls skittering along daintily on their toes and men doing impossible leaps (and making it look as easy as reaching up to change a light bulb) is more arcane and mysterious than any other athletic or musical endeavour. For me, learning to pole-vault whilst playing the trombone would probably be easier than attempting an entrechat, or even, if it comes to that, trying to understand or describe what one is. As a musician the bulk of my enjoyment in ballet comes from the music.
Ludwig Minkus (1826-1917)
The performance was of Don Quixote with music by Minkus; you’d be forgiven for not knowing his name - I hadn’t heard of him before either. Ludwig Minkus, born in 1826, was an Austrian who made his name as a violinist, in fact he was something of a child prodigy and became principal violinist at the Vienna Court Opera. In 1853 he emigrated to Russia to take up the post of conductor of the orchestra of Prince Nikolai Yusupov; in 1856 the principal violinist of the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theatre and, by 1864, was Inspector of the Imperial Theatre Orchestras and until about 1886 he was one of the most sought-after composers for the ballet in Russia. How come hardly anyone has heard of him these days? When I listened to his music I understood why.
I think I must have expected music as sophisticated as Tchaikovsky’s or Glazunov’s; passages that evoke the darkest of emotions or the fleeting lightness of a sprite, instead Minkus’s offering seemed to be little more than a series of supercharged waltzes and polkas in traditional Viennese style. My subsequent research on Minkus revealed that he was replaced by a certain Mr Tchaikovsky mainly because audiences, and choreographers, were demanding a more intricate, innovative and expressive kind of music, something more theatrical and dramatic - music that would unify the whole ballet experience in much the same way that Wagner had done with opera. I sat in my ROH seat wanting the same musical sophistication as Richard Strauss’s titular tone poem but, I have to say, was a little disappointed.
But whatever I thought about the music, it was still a thrilling and spectacular evening. I’ve put my rugby boots in the bin for good. I’m just off to practice my demi-pliè.
Why I’m a big fan of Lulu
When I say Lulu I don’t mean the diminutive Scot with the whining voice who belted out ‘Shout’ in 1964, I mean the opera by Alban Berg. It’s a work that has haunted me for decades and I keep coming back to it like a hopeless junkie.
I first came across the opera while investigating serial composition techniques and heard Berg’s violin concerto. It was twelve-tone music, but twelve-tone music wasn’t supposed to sound like this. It was lush and romantic, nothing like the harsh discordant stuff I’d heard before. It was strangely fascinating and I had to hear more. I found recordings of the Piano Sonata, the String Quartet and the Lyric Suite. I was astounded by the opera Wozzeck and then, a few weeks later, I heard Lulu. It was like a slap in the face. I had heard nothing like it before.
It’s not a comfortable opera by any means. It’s not a work you can put on in the evening while you relax with a glass of wine; it makes great demands of the listener and it makes you think. The subject isn’t attractive either – it’s forbidding and tragic, and the role of Lulu herself is at once both a victim and a parasite. The highly individual music parodies classical forms, dovetailing freely composed episodes with serialism and the result is haunting, captivating and shocking all at the same time. The plot is preposterously complicated: Lulu, an ex-prostitute is having her portrait painted. Her husband, Dr. Goll walks in while she is having sex with the painter and collapses in shock and dies of a heart attack. Lulu later marries the painter but is dogged by admirers and hangers-on, one of whom is Dr. Schon a newspaper editor. The painter commits suicide after finding out that his success is due to Dr. Schon’s secret patronage and about Schon’s previous affair with Lulu. Later still Lulu finds success as a dancer but Dr Schon realises that he cannot live without her, despite his engagement to another woman. After marrying Schon who is jealous of her other admirers, they argue and Lulu shoots him. She is arrested and convicted but escapes from prison assisted by the Countess Geschwitz and makes her way to Paris with Alwa, Dr Schon’s son. Wanted for the murder of Dr Schon, Lulu is blackmailed by an acrobat and a Marquis but is betrayed and manages to flee with Alwa before the police arrive to recapture her. The scene moves to London where Lulu, now working as a prostitute, is living in poverty with Alwa and the mysterious tramp Schigolch (who may be Lulu’s father). The Countess arrives before Lulu returns with a client who refuses to pay in advance for sex and kills Alwa in a struggle. Lulu, unmoved by the killing, goes out and returns with yet another client, who is actually Jack the Ripper, murders Lulu and the Countess as well. Ridiculous? Of course, but then so are many other opera synopses, but listened to within the context of the music the plot makes sense; the music, listened to in the context of the plot, makes more sense. If you’ve never heard it before I can only urge you to listen. Clicking on the clip below will give you a little taster!
The astounding Deutsche Grammophon set of Lulu with Teresa Stratas in the title role.
Doctor Who and the Piano Titans
Dinu Lipatti
My lifelong love of the music of Wagner and its inextricable links with an ex-girlfriend that I described in my last blog post seems to have caused some amusement to readers. But isn’t it true that our fondest musical memories tend to be those that are bound up with personal relations?
Radio 4′s Desert Island Discs is based on that very idea. And, even though I may not have liked them at the time, I still have a fondness for the pieces I studied at school; the arias from La Traviata my mother played to me as a child still make me smile, and the Four Last Songs will be forever linked to a teenage holiday to Switzerland even though Richard Strauss was German and lived in Bavaria!
I can’t play the piano very well but my mother was a decent player and I suppose it is for that reason that I have a fondness for the instrument. My childhood years were full of recordings of Dinu Lipatti, Solomon and Wilhelm Kempff on discs played repeatedly on the living room stereogram that was the size of a small wardrobe. At secondary school I fell under the influence of my music teacher, one Chris Holmes, mostly because he was a fabulous pianist – he had his own jazz trio and played in various clubs and pubs in the Manchester area. At school he would spice up dreary assemblies by adding jazzy chords and little syncopated riffs to the hymns and, even more impressively, he could play the Rick Wakeman accompaniment to ‘Morning Has Broken’ exactly as it is on the Cat Stevens single. I was crestfallen when he informed me and my classmates that he was moving to another school and we even tried to bribe him to stay. Needless to say he wasn’t tempted by the results of our whip-round which totalled £3.26.
Mr Holmes was replaced by Mr Phil Smith, a middle-aged Bohemian with long hair and who wore cravats and pastel-coloured jackets. The ‘A’-Level music class comprised four students, including myself, and those heady days of study were greatly boosted by two things: 1) Mr Smith looked a lot like Jon Pertwee, the actor who played Doctor Who in the 1970s, and 2) The music stock room bore more than a passing resemblance to the exterior of the TARDIS. Needless to say our tour de force, when Smithy disappeared into the cupboard to get records or scores, was to hum the Doctor Who theme tune in four part harmony, a ditty which we continued to perfect throughout the year. Silly maybe, but it did increase our scores in aural tests. Mr Smith did have his good points, though. He, like Holmes, was an excellent pianist and we spent our lunchtimes hanging around the music room while he played Beethoven sonatas and pieces by Brahms and Schumann, lapping up his playing like a bunch of desperate winos.
Since then my musical taste has broadened, as has my knowledge of the great players, but this week I attempted to put my pianistic luminaries into some kind of order of merit and it proved to be a ticklish task. In a recent poll in BBC Music Magazine 100 concert pianists voted for who they thought were their top three piano greats. This was interesting on two counts, firstly because of who figured, and secondly because of who didn’t, but I’m pretty sure the pollsters must have had as difficult a time as I had trying to order them according to merit. Top of the ivory-ticklers was Sergei Rachmaninov, closely followed by Arthur Rubinstein, but notable by their absence were Maurizio Pollini and John Ogden, both favourites of mine.
The problem with a poll like this is that picking just three pianists is impossibly hard. I wouldn’t necessarily choose Murray Perahia to play Debussy, nor would I opt for Walter Gieseking to play Mozart. Lipatti’s Chopin is, for me, supreme, but I wouldn’t neccessarily book him to do a concert of Bartok or Prokofiev – I’d get Martha Argerich to play those. (I know, I know! I wouldn’t be able to book Lipatti at all now because he’s dead, but I’m speaking hypothetically, you understand). So my list of piano titans would have to include at least six different pianists to cover the various eras of classical music. And who do you get to play your Beethoven sonatas? One of the progressive young Turks - Stephen Kovacevich? Paul Lewis? James Rhodes? All fine pianists in their own right, particularly when interpreting Beethoven, and for me just as convincing as Brendel, Arrau, and Barenboim.
In my fantasy piano concerts I’d want Walter Gieseking to play Debussy, Dinu Lipatti to play Chopin, Murray Perahia to play Mozart, Edwin Fischer to play Bach. Richter to play Shostakovich. And the Beethoven? It has to be the prodigiously talented James Rhodes. But have all these pianistic comets had as much influence on my musical upbringing as Chris Holmes, Phil Smith or my mother? I think not. Those titans from my school days held more sway over my subsequent musical development than any amount of listening to records or concert going.
Wagner, Me and Sex with Brunnhilde
My discovery of the work of Richard Wagner when I was a teenager was a revelation that was as momentous as losing my virginity. My first sexual encounter was with a girl who I will call Brünnhilde, and after that event my view of the female sex was transformed for good. In a similar way, after hearing Wagner for the first time my whole outlook on music changed just as dramatically.
My music lessons at school were fairly traditional. This, I hasten to add, was thirty years ago and pretty much all of my study was comprised of lessons in harmony, counterpoint, practical performance and analyses of a composer’s works. There were no diversions to look at popular genres or projects to be completed on Elvis Presley or The Beatles. But like the diligent student I was, I happily worked my way through some of Debussy’s pieces – (the string quartet, Fêtes and Prélude à l’aprés midi d’un Faune) and chamber works by Brahms (the op.115 clarinet quintet, a piano trio and one of the string sextets). When I heard, by chance, some of Wagner’s music on the radio it was like being hit by a juggernaut.
Until then I knew nothing by Wagner except the Ride of the Valkyries of course like almost everybody, but the first significant piece I heard was the prelude from Parsifal and at the time I thought it was the most sublimely beautiful thing I had ever heard. Brünnhilde and I played it often during our sessions of horizontal pleasure, savouring its delicious intensity until we collapsed exhausted amid the record covers and vinyl discs. My sexual peregrinations with Brünnhilde mirrored my discovery of Richard Wagner’s oeuvre and during the subsequent months I blithely investigated the world of the music-drama: Lohengrin, Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhauser, Tristan und Isolde and the Ring cycle. I became as obsessed with these operas as I was with the gorgeous Brünnhilde. Wagner’s music was deeper and more magnificent than anything I had heard before; its subject matter was exciting and fascinating and seemed to say more about human nature than any other art form. It was both visceral and intellectual, sybaritic and ethereal all at the same time; there was always the feeling that whenever you listened to it there were glimpses of some emotion that was just beyond reach, a spiritual plane that we humans were not quite able to attain and I couldn’t understand why some people were so ambivalent about my musical ‘thunderbolt’.
Whilst raiding the cultural larder for Wagner goodies I had been blissfully unaware of the thing that so many people find objectionable about Wagner and his music. Perhaps it was because I was more interested in music than history; I knew about the half-diminished ‘Tristan’ chord, about leitmotivs, about orchestration, about chromatic harmony, but knew nothing of the anti-Semitic-Nazi-Hitler thing. And when I did find out I didn’t think it mattered. I still don’t; the music is more important than mere worldly concerns, but I realise, of course, that people will point the finger and say ‘ah, yes, but you’re not Jewish’. That’s true, I’m not, but does all music have to be tainted by the baggage we humans ascribe to it? Do we shun the music of Pfitzner or Chopin who were also anti-Semitic? Do we ignore Schumann and Hugo Wolf and Berlioz because they were a bit nuts? Do we spurn the works of Tchaikovsky and Samuel Barber and Benjamin Britten because they were gay? (Camille Saint-Saens made regular trips to North Africa to pick up rent-boys; how many people consider that when they listen to Carnival of the Animals?) Surely, no music deserves to be tainted by our own neuroses and prejudices.
I did watch the recent documentary by Stephen Fry as he travelled to Bayreuth (lucky bugger!) detailing his love of Wagner. It was interesting and personal in the same way that many people’s discoveries of the composer are, but one thing Mr Fry said stuck in my mind: ‘Wagner’s music is bigger and better than Hitler ever imagined it to be’. That is true indeed. It’s certainly bigger than my infatuation for Brünnhilde ever was. Is it better than sex? Now, there’s a question!
The Frolick: The Queen of Baroque
Members of The Frolick: Natasha Kraemer (cello), Emma Curtis (contralto), Andrew Maginley (baroque guitar). Photo by Phil Taylor.
One of the great things about music is that you never stop discovering new things, whether it’s a composer you don’t know, a piece you’ve never heard before or a new band or singer; music has many seams studded with undiscovered gems. I made just such a find this week when I saw The Frolick - a group of musicians performing baroque music live as it would have been heard in the eighteenth century. And what a revelation it was! Here at last was an ensemble overturning our traditional experience of listening to live classical music and, in trying to recreate an atmosphere of eighteenth-century culture, giving us something fresh, distinctive and liberating.
The musicians arrived on stage like rock stars. Actually I was reminded of Queen - they had the same kind of stage presence and air of self-assurance, and in fact, lutenist and co-director Andrew Maginley has a touch of the Brian May about him – the same curly locks (though perhaps not as long) and the leather trousers. Emma Curtis (contralto and co-director), tall, attractive and sexily corseted has the same gift of playing to and working an audience as the late Freddie Mercury. Maginley and violinist James O’Toole often take centre stage in ‘instrumental breaks’ flourishing guitars, lutes and fiddles like Stratocasters, moving around the stage and playing off each other while Miss Curtis, according to the demands of the lyrics, flirts with them, teasing, flicking locks of hair, massaging and stroking, switching her persona in the space of a few bars; at first demure and shy, next loud and brash, then sexy and coquettish. Even after the first few songs I knew that I was watching a group who were intent on grabbing baroque music by the scruff of its neglected neck and dragging it into the twenty-first century.
Members of The Frolick: James O'Toole (violin), Natasha Kraemer (cello and percussion), Emma Curtis (contralto), Andrew Maginley (lute and guitars). Photo by Phil Taylor.
With a group like this, though, it is easy to get caught up in the theatricals of the performance and forget just how good these musicians really are. Emma Curtis has a beautifully rich voice with a convincingly deep emotional range and an agility that makes singing seem effortless. She is one of those rare virtuosos who can sing a trill and make every note of it sound as a separate entity; so many other singers, some far more famous than Miss Curtis, have no real talent for baroque singing and end up sounding like some kind of Jimmy Saville impersonator. Maginley is not only a brilliant soloist in his own right (you only have to listen to him playing Falckenhagen sonatas to realise that), but also a sensitive and lyrical accompanist. These musicians also pursue careers as early music specialists elsewhere, with celebrated bands such as Trevor Pinnock’s English Concert, The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Opera North and the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Violinist James O’Toole has recorded Vivaldi concertos, played with the Classical Opera Company and the Irish Baroque Orchestra. Cellist Natasha Kraemer and harpist Frances Kelly have both played with distinguished early music ensembles – the Gabrieli Consort and Players, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the English Baroque Soloists, the Hanover Band and Saraband Consort. These musicians are real specialists in their field, and it shows.
In my previous blog I banged on at great length about applause and audience involvement and The Frolick are certainly doing their bit to change how classical music concerts are experienced, at least as far as the baroque period is concerned. But what’s the point of it all? Such performances could be dismissed as little more than spectacle for its own sake. But underpinning each performance is a wealth of musical, social and historical research. The players are immersed in their period, each song is meticulously researched and played on authentic period instruments and that knowledge is passed on to the audience without the usual supercilious Naughtie-like condescension. In a music world that strives for authenticity, where Mozart played on a fortepiano is uber-cool and period-instrument ensembles are formed every week or so it seems, The Frolick stand out as a far superior group. If you haven’t had chance to see them play live yet, click on the video clips below or log onto their website at www.thefrolick.com Several of the videos featured on this blog were recorded at the excellent Buckingham Summer Festival 2010. Their website is at www.buckinghamsummerfestival.org
Recordings by The Frolick
Calliope: Beautiful Voice Emma Curtis and The Frolick. INKLING AV2102
Recordings by Andrew Maginley
The Baroque Lute: by Andrew Maginley. INK001 AV2115
Applause: A dose of the clap!
I know! I can hear you groaning already. A blog on yet another topic that has received so much attention in recent months: the question of whether we’re too stuffy about applause during classical concerts and how we ought react during performances? But how many times have you taken your place in an auditorium and found yourself sitting next to some Pithicanthropic moron, who insists on showing his appreciation during any pause longer than a quaver rest, in a way that would make the drummer from the Muppets look like a slummocking vegetable. Or, two minutes into the symphony’s slow movement, you find that the guy is also some kind of chronic consumptive as he hawks and barks his way through your favourite bit in a phlegm-lubricated fit of coughing. That kind of thing makes me see red because, for me, classical music demands a respect during performance that most other forms of music don’t require. (I can see the jazz, folk and rock fans hyperventilating about that remark already but don’t worry, I’m not suggesting that they are lesser forms in any way.) In the concert hall much classical music has an intensity that demands to be appreciated fully and needs to be listened to fully. The complex texture of a symphony for instance can easily wash over the casual listener and, again, I’m not saying that such a work can’t be listened to in that way but in the rarified atmosphere of the concert hall live music requires a heightened state of attention.
Breaking conventions and unwritten rules
Whether or not you should clap between movements of a piece is a question that seems to preoccupy most classical music listeners. But again it boils down to respect for the music, doesn’t it? Breaking the rapt spell of silence at the end of an intense slow movement with applause and whoops of delight isn’t perhaps appropriate but showing your appreciation after, say, a brilliantly realised and performed scherzo is okay. I certainly wouldn’t worry about the tutting from the stuffed shirt in evening dress sitting next to you. And talking of dress, here are the kinds of instructions that put people off going to classical concerts: “Although you don’t need to dress as if you were attending a state dinner at the White House or a royal wedding, you will probably feel more comfortable at a classical concert if you dress in a respectful manner. Different audience members will interpret this in different ways, but you should generally avoid clothing with holes, rips, or tears; very casual shorts, skirts, or jeans; and very casual t-shirts or tank tops. A safe outfit for a female would be a nice dress or suit, and for a male, nice pants and a jacket and tie. Less formal dress may be acceptable, as may more formal dress, but a good rule of thumb might be to dress as if you were going to attend your church, synagogue, or other house of worship, visit the bank for a loan, or make an appearance to defend yourself in court” (extract from a web page of on classical music concert etiqette from essortment.com). Nice pants and a tie! Claptrap! Wear what the hell you like!
As far as showing your appreciation is concerned – go with the flow. Respect the music and performers of course, but there’s nothing wrong with showing your enjoyment and appreciation in the time-honoured way – with a dose of the clap, ignoring those benighted cretins who look at you as though that’s just what you’ve given them!
Tweeting: The Dawn of a New Chorus
Okay, I confess that I am an inveterate tweeter! I have been sucked into the technological hoover without even getting stuck in the tube on the way. The thought of facing a day without my iPhone to tweet the world and let it know how I feel about things would be as unthinkable as turning up for an interview naked. I admit I did go through a brief period of scepticism that was a bit like looking through a cake-shop window with everyone else inside helping themselves to all the delicious things while I stood outside jealously grumbling that it didn’t matter because eating cakes really wasn’t good for you anyway. And a week or so of playing with Twitter, scrolling through tweets, scoffing and jeering at the stream of meaningless scatological trash almost put me off for good. It appeared that broadcasting your ruminations and opinions about the world was catching on even though the people that did so seemed to be garrulous, narcisstic schleppers who seemed to think you’d be interested in the fact that they’d just nipped out to buy a book of stamps. My intial reaction to this new phenomenon of airing your thoughts to thousands of people who didn’t know me from Adam (though he’s probably on Twitter somewhere; @AdamfromEden or @Figleafboy maybe?) was one of repugnance.
Eventually I did become more familiar with the conventions of Twitter. I found out from somewhere that by adding a hashtag to a subject meant searching for a particular topic became easier. I typed in #beethoven and was pleasantly surprised to see a list of messages by people who had tweeted about one of my musical thunderbolts or had been listening his music. By following a few of them I began to interact with like-minded individuals and the whole Twitter thing suddenly became much more meaningful and personal. There were others out there who were interested in the same stuff as me. Musicians – some of them professional, composers, conductors, reviewers, writers, bloggers and plain music lovers became personal, if only virtual, friends. Okay, so maybe I’ve never met them but these people have introduced another aspect into my listening life that has made it that little bit more rewarding.
I’m still dubious when I see the words ‘Follow me on Twitter’. It still seems to be the shibboleth of technological anoraks and entertainment wannabes. But there are still some interesting and decent people to follow. If you use Twitter and like classical music you might want to check out these people:
@thefrolick – Tweets from Emma Curtis who, with Andrew Maginley, co-directs the baroque theatre and music group The Frolick. Check out their superb album Calliope, Beautiful Voice. <<For Vivaldi’s Ospedale I am definitely a bass, but have never felt lack of a beard!>>
@musikFabrik - Twitter feed from Lukas Hellerman of musikFabrik, one of the leading contemporary music ensembles. Based in Koln, Germany. Their recording of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Secret Theatre is powerful and meticulous. Tweets about their musical preparations, concerts and insights into the life of a modern ensemble. <<We spent more than 12 hours this week preparing/discussing/analysing/planning our Autumn world premiere of Claude Vivier: Hierophanie>>
@JRhodesPianist – The tweets of a very talented pianist who is bringing classical music to new audiences. (See my previous blog post). <<5 hours sleep last night and now off to be filmed playing piano for 8 hours. Hmmm. Red Bull triple espresso anyone?>>
@ClassicalReview – Tweets, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, about classical music. If you want to tweet someone knowledgeable about what you’re listening to HK is your man. His website classicalreview.co.uk is a mine of information. <<Perhaps a sombre choice to start my day, but it’s with Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy Of St John Chrysostom that I’m kicking off>> <<And now that I tweet that, I realise ‘kicking off’ is probably not the expression I was going for. #violenceinchurch>>
@jessicaduchen – Journalist, blogger and novelist (author of the excellent Hungarian Dances). Her blog appears in Standpoint magazine. Have a butcher’s at her website jessicaduchen.co.uk <<Spotted on an opera house orchestra noticeboard: World Cup sweepstake draw results. The conductor got Brazil. Pencilled beside this: ‘FIX!’>>
@kennethwoods – Conductor, cellist and blogger (kennethwoods.net). Tweets about the life and demands of a concert conductor. <<Completely sold out. Even got cludy weather for the Manfred. Should be a hot night at the Electric Theatre, even with new air con system>>
@DaleTrumbore – The tweets of a young composer living in California. The music is modern and dynamic and deserves recognition. Check it out at DaleTrumbore.com <<Prepping for a conducting final tomorrow, but you can only take so much of the Fidelio Overture #burntoutonbeethoven>> <<Kicked butt on my conducting final: Dale 1, Beethoven: 0>>
And there are many others who I haven’t mentioned, of course. Leave a comment if there are worthy others who you think deserve to be followed!
The Proms Season: A Musical Ambush?
The Proms season is about to start. The BBC have chosen to open the series of concerts with Mahler’s monster Symphony No.8, the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. I wonder at the wisdom of such a decision. To me the proms are about bringing music to a wider audience and I’m not sure that a colossal work, and a relatively unknown one at that, sets the right tone for an opening night. I dare say there will be a few listeners who might be nudged into a voyage of discovery of Mahler’s wonderful music by listening to it, but how many others will be put off by its size. In a case like this the work’s immensity makes it that much more inaccessible. Similarly, an evening devoted to the equally vast 3rd symphony is timetabled for Wednesday 4th August.
There are a few other ‘oddities’ scheduled for performance this season too. Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna for example, a sublimely beautiful work that shows off Ligeti’s use of micropolyphony - slowly shifting clusters of dissonant chords that are incredibly haunting. But it’s not to everyone’s taste and it needs a lot of listening to before you can appreciate its subtleties and I’m not sure the Proms is the place to bring it to a wider audience. An intriguing concert takes place on Wednesday 28th July and consists of a programme of works by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Colin Matthews and Bernd Zimmerman placed, rather bizarrely in this case, alongside a Schumann symphony. I wonder what the listeners of this one will think when they tune in to hear a few nice classical tunes? At least the Ligeti works (11th August) are concealed among works by Tchaikovsky and Sibelius like little musical ambushes. That for me is the way to bring these modernist works to the masses – by inserting them into concerts of well-known and popular music they may spur a few people to investigate the music further. But I wonder how many people will look at the calendar of concerts this season and be disappointed by the slim pickings of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert et al; the true greats usurped in favour of Dallapiccola, Part, Schreker, Kaipainen, Ligeti and Stockhausen. Are these concerts really in the spirit of the proms which were intended to bring new audiences to classical music?
