JDCMB

Friday Historical: Szymanowski plays Szymanowski

2012-02-17T09:09:00.000Z

Tomorrow evening I am doing a pre-concert talk about Szymanowski at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, where the doughty CBSO, Ed Gardner and friends are performing the elusive Polish composer's Stabat Mater (more info on their site here). The talk will be along the lines of "Introducing Karol" - though I'm a tad aware that people in Birmingham are probably among the UK's most Szymanowski-aware, following Simon Rattle's championship of him and the magnificent recordings that resulted in the 1990s.

Do come along and say hi if you're in the area. Meanwhile, here is a Friday Historical of Szymanowski playing one of his own Mazurkas.

Jonas Kaufmann, wrapped in Viennese gold

2012-02-16T10:08:00.006Z

If you were wondering where I'd got to... Been here, hearing this. Above: Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut Deutsch take a curtain call in the Vienna Musikverein after what I think was the third of five encores.

Song recitals in the golden hall are not plentiful - mostly they are given in the smaller Brahmsaal - and this was Kaufmann's first "Liederabend" therein, following a highly successful run as Faust at the Staatsoper. This was also the first date of his new tour with Deutsch, involving a programme of Liszt, Mahler, Duparc and Strauss which they introduced in Munich last summer (schedule here - Berlin tomorrow, Paris on Monday; London Wigmore Hall not until June, though). And if you think Vienna is not a place that can go nuts, think again. By the time the encores had rounded off with Strauss's 'Zueignung' and a rendering of 'Dein ist mein ganzes Herz' that could have turned even Tauber green with envy, your blogger and her companion were sobbing for joy along with the rest of the city.

Here is the full programme. And here is a video on Kaufmann's website introducing it.

I won't keep you sitting here reading this blogpost all day, but a few highlights follow. First of all, Deutsch needs a credit all his own: the glowing, streamlined sounds that emerged from that piano would have wrapped Kaufmann's voice in pure gold even if the hall had not already done so. Deutsch has been Kaufmann's mentor in many ways and their partnership remains exceptional: they shine not merely as singer and accompanist individually, but as a duo even greater than the already phenomenal sum of their parts.

The Liszt's high spots included hushed raptness in 'Glocken von Marling', an engagingly narrative 'Drei Zigeuner' and an emotional roller-coaster of 'Freudvoll und Leidvoll'. Kaufmann's dark-hued tone is ideally suited to the Mahler Rückertlieder, and his ability to capture haunted, mystical atmospheres drew 'Am Mitternacht' towards undreamed-of inward realms.

If any moment of the recital was any less convincing, it was the Duparc: a French group, even such a heady and sensual one, seemed to sit comparatively oddly against the rest of the programme, something brought into focus when Kaufmann launched into his home heartland with the Strauss Lieder immediately afterwards. Duparc is more Wagnerian than Faure or Debussy, yet it could be that these exceptional, kaleidoscopic songs, which feel like musical incarnations of Odilon Redon's late pastels, still need to settle to reach the same level of assumption that Kaufmann has achieved in Strauss. It was the Strauss that stayed with us: laughter for 'Schlechtes Wetter' (it was snowy, well below freezing and very windy out, and we'd have liked to sample whatever cake Kaufmann and Deutsch decided to bake); tears for a 'Befreit' almost too pain-filled to listen to (many pairs of spectacles were removed around us in the hall).

Dein war unser ganzes Herz.. It's not the first time I've felt that Kaufmann is an artist who thrives on encores. This was when he seemed to relax the most and, frankly, let rip. Like most excellent artists, he seems fed by the audience's energy, which is as it should be. There's something about the creation of atmosphere in a performance that has less to do with the individual technical details than with the relationship between the performers, the degree they can communicate their mastery and passion for music to the audience, and much to do with... well, if anyone could articulate exactly what that "X factor" is, we wouldn't need daft TV programmes named after it.

It's when artists start to fly and take us up to 33,000 feet with them. It's when you can't believe the beauty in your own ears, and you can't hold onto it, either, but you're trying to in any case, and you know you are hearing something you'll never forget for the rest of your life. And you know it when you hear it, and you don't hear it very often. Perhaps 19th century commentators could have recognised its necessity by their very nature and expressed it in terms of touching something divine, which is what "high art" aspired to do. Such terminology is somewhat frowned on today. In a world that's terrified of "elitism", anything that sounds too good will be bashed. But when you get down to it, that is what's happening and that is what great artistry is all about, and that is what all the other very good but less "great" artists wish to do, and that is why we become musicians, because music can do this and that's why it exists. And when it reaches that rare level, you feel lucky to be alive to hear it. It's real. It's true. So just get over it, accept it and open your ears.

And as if this wasn't enough...the day after, we attended Mitsuko Uchida playing the last three Schubert sonatas - Schubert in Vienna in the snow, with the B flat Sonata a crowning, aching, lonely wonder. Add to this a visual feast at the recently renovated Albertina gallery - two floors of an Impressionist exhibition (yes, with plenty of Redon pastels), one floor of the permanent collection and a top floor of a huge, jaw-dropping and revelatory exploration of Magritte. To say nothing of lunch at the Cafe Central, a romanesque-arched temple to kaffee und kuche once frequented by Trotsky, Freud and many, many more. We had their berry strudel, packed with kilos of purple fruit, and their trademark cake: chocolate, orange and marzipan with the lightest texture and finest flavours...

...look, as the Beatles would say, it's been a long, cold, lonely winter, so please forgive a few of the superlatives above. Right now, I think we deserved to enjoy them a little. All together now: "Wien, Wien, ach, du allein..."

In search of the spirit of Hoffmann

2012-02-10T08:32:00.008Z

It's a fantasy world here in London this morning. Everything has turned white. A suitable setting for a fabulously fantastical evening courtesy of Offenbach, ENO, director Richard Jones and a cast headed by the doughty Barry Banks as ETA Hoffmann. But why do so many of the musical creations based on this seminal German Romantic author have so little to do with what he actually wrote? Is he just...too damn scary? I have a piece about this in today's Independent. But below, please find the director's cut, in which Schumann comes to the fore rather more than Offenbach.

First, here's the trailer for tonight - it's a co-production with the Bavarian State Opera. I just hope the transport system holds up under our massive and alarming 2cm of snow.

Where would we be without the stories and novels of ETA Hoffmann? The German author’s dazzling imagination underpins some of the world’s most popular and enduring operas, ballets, and even piano music. Yet there’s a real disconnect between Hoffmann’s influence and the adaptations we see on stage. Few of them bear much resemblance to his originals. Indeed, the writer’s absence from his own legacy is so striking that Richard Jones, the director of English National Opera’s new production of The Tales of Hoffmann, has apparently recommended to his lead tenor, Barry Banks, that he need not read the tales by Hoffmann on which the opera is based.

That could seem surprising – after all, the hero of Jacques Offenbach’s opera is loosely modelled on the real Hoffmann. But perhaps it is a practical matter: so vivid and terrifying are these seminal works of German Romanticism that our star singer would risk having nightmares for weeks.

The opera – about to open at the Coliseum in a co-production with the Bavarian State Opera, Munich – features Hoffmann as a dissolute, drunken poet looking back over his thwarted love affairs and finally finding redemption in his art alone. Three stories are involved, each concerning one of three women, Olympia, Antonia and Giulietta, each with an ‘evil genius’ figure who puts Hoffmann through a series of supernatural tribulations. Olympia is an automaton, made to appear real when Hoffmann dons magic spectacles. Antonia dies in his arms after her mother’s ghost persuades her to sing, against medical advice. Giulietta, a Venetian courtesan, steals his reflection, and implicitly his soul. Every tale is based on a Hoffmann original. Yet Hoffmann’s actual writing is so disturbing that the operatic version, despite its gripping narrative and unforgettable music, can barely scratch the surface.

We seem little concerned with the real ETA Hoffmann today, beyond specialised academic studies, but his significance was multifarious and profound. His life – contemporaneous with Beethoven – was short, difficult and tragic. Born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann in Königsberg in 1776, he adored music obsessively, to the point that he changed his ‘Wilhelm’ to ‘Amadeus’ in tribute to Mozart. His family background appears to have been unstable, rife with mental problems; perhaps his imagination was predisposed to become fevered. He lived a turbulent existence, moving between Germany and Poland, working variously as a clerk, a jurist and a music critic, writing and composing prolifically the while. He became “dissolute” and syphilis killed him when he was only 46. The writer George Sand said of him: “Never in the history of the human spirit has anyone entered more freely and more purely into the world of dream.”

So why do the popular adaptations of his works veer so far from the originals? The Nutcracker, that ubiquitous Christmas ballet, is a case in point. It presents a supremely simplified version of a tale in which the “world of dream” is deeply entangled with that of reality. For balletic purposes, the most potent and horrific elements of Hoffmann’s Nutcracker and Mouse King are stripped away; in their place the audience sees infinite sugar. Hoffmann himself had dreamed up, among other things, a seven-headed mouse king that sets gruesome traps for its own offspring. Not so great for family viewing, perhaps.

Then there’s Coppelia, second only to The Nutcracker in popularity: a sweet, frothy story about a youth who becomes infatuated with a doll, inducing his girlfriend to take good-natured revenge. Set to irresistible music by Léo Delibes, it is based on the same Hoffmann tale as the Olympia episode in Offenbach’s opera. Yet the original story – The Sandman – couldn’t be less sweet and frothy if it tried. It involves murder, madness, blinding and the manufacture of eyes, as well as the recognition of the darkest and most destructive side of the human psyche, all of it conjured with imagery so potent that it impacts upon our subconscious at an almost primal level. It can be no coincidence that Sigmund Freud made considerable reference to this story in his essay The Uncanny, describing Hoffmann as “the unrivalled master of the uncanny in literature”. Incidentally, Freud associated the terror of losing sight with the fear of castration.

The composer most faithful to the underlying spirit of ETA Hoffmann was Schumann, who did not use the actual stories at all – though this arch-romantic’s tragic life, with its descent into syphilitic madness, reads almost like one in itself. He frequently took inspiration from the author: Fantasiestücke, Nachtstücke and Kreisleriana are all titles used by both creators. The turbulent, mercurial atmosphere of Schumann’s piano cycle Kreisleriana catches the tone of Hoffmann to perfection, although there is no programmatic link.

Hoffmann had given the name ‘Johannes Kreisler’ to a sort of alter-ego that finally became a character in his last novel Lebensansichten des KatersMurr (The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr) – in which the autobiography of a savvy feline is accidentally mingled with that of a temperamental and introverted musician. The young Johannes Brahms, another passionate Hoffmann aficionado, sometimes signed himself ‘Joh. Kreisler Jun.’ (Johannes Kreisler Junior), including on his official Op.1, the Piano Sonata in C major.

Offenbach’s choice of Hoffmann as the basis for his last opera was a less personal matter, but no less telling. Towards the end of his life, though celebrated for his riotous and risqué Parisian operettas, he yearned for recognition as a serious composer. These stories provided the ideal medium. Perhaps, too, he was able to identify with a different aspect of the anguished hero; as a German Jewish immigrant in 19^th-century Paris, he had perforce remained rather an outsider himself.

The opera involves a feast of musical joys – among them the brilliant coloratura aria of Olympia the doll, the hero’s duet with the doomed Antonia, and Giulietta’s seductive Barcarolle. Hoffmann’s various loves are sung by the same soprano (for ENO, it is Georgia Jarman), while the three “evil genius” figures are likewise portrayed by one bass (Clive Bayley). Barry Banks, as Hoffmann, takes on a notoriously demanding yet rewarding role.

Sweetened for palatability, simplified for stage presentation and all but forgotten in the shadow of the great music they inspired, Hoffmann’s stories and their profound psychological truths remain immortal in their own way. At least Offenbach gave him the credit he deserved. It is high time that we did so as well.

The Tales of Hoffmann opens at English National Opera on 10 February. Box office: 0871 911 0200

In Memoriam Devy Erlih

2012-02-09T17:10:00.001Z

I was horrified to learn last night of the death of Devy Erlih, the violinist and professor whom I was lucky enough to interview in 2008, when he was about to turn 80. We hear that he was hit by a car on his way home from teaching at the Ecole normale de musique. After a life involving an extraordinary tale of survival, this seems a desperately cruel twist of fate. It was a joy and a privilege to meet him.

My feature about him for The Strad is now online in my website archive and you can read it here.

Having evaded the Gestapo in occupied Paris as a young boy, while his father somehow survived the notorious Vel d'Hiver incarceration, Erlih went on to defy the conventions of the day in terms of musical taste. He developed a passion for Bartok and Prokofiev - which saw him labelled "un mauvais caractere" by one of his professors - and devoted much of his life thereafter to championing contemporary French composers, at least when he wasn't attempting to revolutionise the style deemed appropriate for the performance of Bach. He married the daughter of the composer Jolivet and made some celebrated recordings of his father-in-law's works. He had many pupils and according to one of them - Philippe Graffin, who kindly served as interpreter for this interview, having alerted me to Erlih's work in the first place - he was an inspirational and devoted professor.

When we visited him, he was wondering how it might be possible to have some of his old LPs re-released on CD. Some record company somewhere is missing a trick.

"Klinghoffer" looms

2012-02-09T08:24:00.000Z

Later this month ENO's new production of The Death of Klinghoffer, John Adams's opera about a Palestinian hijacking at sea that took place in 1985, will bring this extremely controversial work to a full staging in the capital for the first time. It's taken 20 years for any opera house in London to dare to produce what's probably Adams's most important opera to date. Here are my thoughts on the matter from today's Independent, as well as chats with librettist Alice Goodman, conductor Baldur Bronnimann - who has worked in both Israel and the West Bank - and ENO's artistic director John Berry. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/fear-and-loathing-in-london-the-death-of-klinghoffer-is-staged-in-the-capital-for-the-first-time-6671388.html

What the Dickens?

2012-02-08T09:32:00.002Z

Yesterday was Charles Dickens's 200th birthday. At last the UK has seen fit to celebrate one of its own great writers - normally it has to be sports, royalty or pop culture over here - and there's been some great material to read in various papers, plus talks and essays by Dickens's latest and possibly best biographer, Claire Tomalin - such as this, in which she wonders what he'd have made of 21st-century London.

But what about the music? Why isn't there more music inspired by the works of Dickens? Oliver!, of course, is one of the most popular of all British musicals, which shows it can work [PS - glad to say that my old school friend's youngest son is about to take on the title role in the West End!] - and this year's other big anniversary boy, Claude Debussy, wrote a completely enchanting prelude entitled 'Hommage a S. Pickwick Esq.' Here's Pollini playing it:

Now, there are a few Dickens-based operas kicking around, with varying degrees of obscurity. But why aren't there more?

I suspect many and varied reasons for this. First of all, to create a good opera you have to strip a story down to its bare bones and use as few words as possible - not least because it takes such a long time to sing them. Dickens is all about words. And all about complexity, with layer upon layer of character and cause and effect. It would be difficult to leave things out because sometimes even the smallest incident can prove a vital cog in the whole great wheel of Dickensian fortune - much as it can in life. Next, Dickens is frequently satirical - and opera is not often very big on satire, unless it is Gilbert & Sullivan or Offenbach, in which case it's dismissed as "light". Thirdly, and very crucially, Dickens is true to life in the sense that his finest characters are multifaceted and well-rounded: he does create some of the best literary villains of all time, but even then you can see why they are as they are, where they come from, what has shaped the attitudes that turns them into villains.

Still, none of this is a reason not to try. There is still time for the Great Dickens Opera

My fantasy Dickens opera would be A Tale of Two Cities by Poulenc. (No doubt Solticat's would be A Tale of Two Kitties by Milhaud...) What's yours?

Music writing masterclass: Bernard Levin and the Wexford lemon juice

2012-02-06T10:31:00.003Z

You want to learn how to write beautifully, with erudition and elegance, about a performance you have attended? This little number by the great Bernard Levin has gone down in history as perhaps the best - and the funniest - ever to hit the page. Admittedly, he had an exceptional subject on this occasion. You can find it in the Levin collection Conducted Tour (1982, Sceptre) and I reproduce it here as a gratis advertisement, in the hope that you will buy the book if you like it (it's out of print, but still findable second-hand. Come on, Sceptre - reprint, please!)

Fasten your seatbelts.

On a memorable performance of Spontini's La Vestale, by Bernard Levin

1979 was The Year of the Missing Lemon Juice. The Theatre Royal in Wexford holds 440; it was completely full that night, so there are, allowing for a few who have already died (it is not true, though it might well have been, that some died of laughter at the time), hardly more than four hundred people who now share, to the end of their lives, an experience from which the rest of the world, now and for ever, is excluded. When the last of us dies, the experience will die with us, for although it is already enshrined in legend, no one who was not an eye witness will ever really understand what we felt. Certainly I am aware that these words cannot convey more than the facts, and the facts, as so often and most particularly in this case, are only part, and a small part, too, of the whole truth. But I must try...

The set for Act I of the opera consisted of a platform laid over the stage, raised about a foot at the back and sloping evenly to the footlights. This was meant to represent the interior of the Temple where burned the sacred flame, and had therefore to look like marble; the designer had achieved a convincing alternative by covering the raised stage in Formica. But the Formica was slippery; to avoid the risk of a performer taking a tumble, designer and stage manager had between them discovered that an ample sprinkling of lemon juice would make the surface sufficiently sticky to provide a secure foothold. The story now forks; down one road, there lies the belief that the member of the stage staff whose duty it was to sprinkle the lifesaving liquid, and who had done so without fail at rehearsal and at the earlier performances (this was the last one of the Festival), had simply forgotten. Down the other branch in the road is a much more attractive rumour: that the theatre charlady, inspecting the premises in the afternoon, had seen to her horror and indignation that the stage was covered in the remains of some spilt liquid, and, inspired by professional pride, had thereupon set to and given it a good scrub and polish all over. The roads now join again, for apart from the superior charm of the second version, it makes no difference what the explanation was. What matters is what happened.

What happened began to happen very early. The hero of the opera strides on to the stage immediately after the curtain has gone up. The hero strode; and instantly fell flat on his back. There was a murmur of sympathy and concern from the audience for his embarrassment and for the possibility that he might have been hurt; it was the last such sound that was to be heard that night, and it was very soon to be replaced by sounds of a very different nature.

The hero got to his feet, with considerable difficulty, and, having slid some way down the stage in falling, proceeded to stride up-stage to where he should have been in the first place; he had, of course, gone on singing throughout, for the music had not stopped. Striding up-stage, however, was plainly more difficult than he had reckoned on, for every time he took a step and tried to follow it with another, the foot with which he had taken the first proceeded to slide down-stage again, swiftly followed by its companion; he may not have known it, but he was giving a perfect demonstration of what is called marcher sur place, a graceful manoeuvre normally used in mime, and seen at its best in the work of Marcel Marceau.

Finding progress uphill difficult, indeed impossible, the hero wisely decided to abandon the attempt and stay where he was, singing bravely on, no doubt calculating that, since the stage was brightly lit, the next character to enter would notice him and adjust his own movements accordingly. So it proved, in a sense at least, for the next character to enter was the hero's trusted friend and confidant, who, seeing his hero further down-stage than he was supposed to be, loyally decided to join him there. Truth to tell, he had little choice, for from the moment he had stepped on to the stage he had begun to slide downhill, arms semaphoring, like Scrooge's clerk on the way home to his Christmas dinner. His downhill progress was arrested by his fetching up against his friend with a thud; this, as it happened, was not altogether inappropriate, as the opera called for them to embrace in friendly greeting at that point. It did not, however, call for them, locked in each other's arms and propelled by the impetus of the friend's descent, to careen helplessly further down-stage with the evident intention of going straight into the orchestra pit with vocal accompaniment - for the hero's aria had, on the arrival of his companion, been transformed into a duet.

On the brink of ultimate disaster they managed to arrest their joint progress to destruction and, working their way along the edge of the stage like mountaineers seeking a route round an unbridgeable crevasse, most gallantly began, with infinite pain and by a form of progress most aptly described in the title of Lenin's famous pamphlet, Four Steps Forward, Three Steps Back, to climb up the terrible hill. It speedily became clear that this hazardous ascent was not being made simply from a desire to retain dramatic credibility; it had a much more practical object. The only structure breaking the otherwise all too smooth surface of the stage was a marble pillar, a yard or so high, on which there burned the sacred flame of the rite. This pillar was embedded firmly in the stage, and it had obviously occurred to both mountaineers at once that if they could only reach it it would provide a secure base for their subsequent operations, since if they held on to it for dear life they would at any rate be safe from any further danger of sliding downhill and/or breaking their necks. It was soon borne in upon them that they had undertaken a labour of truly Sisyphean proportions, and would have been most heartily pardoned by the audience if they had abandoned the librettist's words at this point, and fitted to the music instead the old moral verse: The heights by great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight; But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upwards in the night.

By this time the audience - all 440 of us - were in a state of such abandon with laughter that several of us felt that if this were to continue a moment longer we would be in danger of doing ourselves a serious internal mischief, little did we know that the fun was just beginning, for shortly after Mallory and Irvine reached their longed-for goal, the chorus entered, and instantly flung themselves en masse into a very freely choreographed version of Les Patineurs, albeit to the wrong music. The heroine herself, the priestess Giulia, with a survival instinct strong enough to suggest that she would be the one to get close to should any reader of these lines happen to be shipwrecked along with the Wexford opera company, skated into the wings and kicked her shoes off and then, finding on her return that this had hardly improved matters, skated back to the wings and removed her tights as well.

Now, however, the singing never having stopped for a moment, the chorus had come to the same conclusion as had the hero and his friend, namely that holding on to the holy pillar was the only way to remain upright and more or less immobile. The trouble with this conclusion was that there was only one such pillar on the stage, and it was a small one; as the cast crowded round it, it seemed that there would be some very unseemly brawling among those seeking a hand-hold, a foothold, even a bare finger-hold, on this tiny island of security in the terrible sea of impermanence. By an instinctive understanding of the principles of co-operation, however, they decided the matter without bloodshed; those nearest the pillar clutched it, those next nearest clutched the clutchers, those farther away still clutched those, and so on until, in a kind of daisy- chain that snaked across the stage, everybody was accommodated.

The condition of the audience was now one of fully extended hysteria, which was having the most extraordinary effect - itself intensifying the audience's condition - on the orchestra. At Wexford, the orchestra pit runs under the stage; only a single row of players - those at the edge of the pit nearest the audience, together, of course, with the conductor -could see what was happening on the stage. The rest realized that something out of the ordinary was going on up there, and would have been singularly dull of wit if they had not, for many members of the audience were now slumped on the floor weeping helplessly in the agony of their mirth, and although the orchestra at Wexford cannot see the stage, it can certainly see the auditorium.

Theologians tell us that the delights of the next world are eternal. Perhaps; but what is certain is that all earthly ones, alas, are temporary, and duly, after giving us a glimpse of the more enduring joy of Heaven that must have strengthened the devout in their faith and caused instant conversion among many of the unbelievers, the entertainment came to an end when the first act of the opera did so, amid such cheering as I had never before heard in an opera house, and can never hope to hear again. In the interval before Act II, a member of the production staff walked back and forth across the stage, sprinkling it with the precious nectar, and we knew that our happiness was at an end. But he who, after such happiness, would have demanded more, would be greedy indeed, and most of us were content to know that, for one crowded half-hour, we on honeydew had fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise.

Bernard Levin

Friday Historical: Rubinstein meets an old friend...

2012-02-03T09:38:00.003Z

A real "look what turned up on Youtube" moment: this wonderful footage, from 1966, shows Arthur Rubinstein visiting the Steinway factory in Hamburg to test out his favourite piano after it has been repaired. He plays extracts of Szymanowski, some Chopin Etudes and Ballades, Ravel Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, and the Schubert B flat Sonata, among other things. The swathes of fascinating interview material include a story about the manuscript of the Chopin Fantasie-Impromptu, which he found inside the album of the Baroness d'Este after buying it at an auction - Rubinstein was a passionate collector...

The film, about 27 mins long, is in German, but if you want subtitles you can find them by clicking the 'cc' box in the video box's bottom menu bar.

Violin birthdays for astrological doubters?

2012-02-02T10:47:00.000Z

Happy Heifetz's Birthday! Happy Kreisler's Birthday, too! What chance that the two greatest violinists of the 20th century shared a birthday? But that's life, so let's celebrate.

Here is some amazing film of Heifetz: at home, practising, playing ping-pong and - good heavens, smiling?

And now Kreisler...a radio broadcast from his 80th birthday with congratulations spoken by his colleagues, including Mischa Elman, Yehudi Menuhin, Nathan Milstein and many more, followed by an interview with Kreisler himself (in two parts).

Robert Maycock

2012-02-01T07:36:00.000Z

We are all devastated to hear of the death last week in a car crash of the arts journalist Robert Maycock, a treasured colleague and former editor of Classical Music Magazine. A great supporter of contemporary and world music, he worked for The Independent for many years and was also the biographer of Philip Glass. He was 63. More information from Classical Music Magazine, here.

Gold stars for this silver rose

2012-01-30T14:18:00.007Z

If you only do one thing in London over the next few weeks, make it this: go and see Der Rosenkavalier at ENO.

The opening night on Saturday...where to start? The dream-team cast? OK, Amanda Roocroft is The Marschallin for the first time - not that you would guess for a moment she had not been born singing this music. Roocroft is one of the finest actresses in British opera right now - look at her awards for all that Janacek. She can effortlessly evoke the charming, open-hearted aristocrat on the one hand, and, lurking just beneath the surface, a self-destructive woman whose fear of losing her beloved young lover leads her to chase him away; act I's conclusion leaves her cradling a cushion in despair. Sarah Connolly is everyone's perfect Octavian: glowing, dashing, her voice as silvery as her armour (and those of us who follow her updates on Facebook were extra-pleased to see her as she'd been stuck on a motionless train with points failure for half the afternoon).

But perhaps most stunning of all was the debut of Sophie Bevan as Sophie (above, pic by Clive Barda). A star is born? You can't argue with the goose-bumps: you can't always explain them, but you know them when they happen. The moment Sophie opened her mouth, it was clear that she is no common-or-garden girl soprano, but one with potential to reach some very special places indeed. At no point while she sang did one have to glance at the surtitles; every word was clear as the proverbial bell, and every twist of character projected with relish. The voice - pure, flexible, snowy and effortlessly voluminous when required - never faltered; and the magical moments following the presentation of the rose as Sophie and Octavian fall in love made us all fall in love too. The audience went mad for her. I can't wait to hear what she does next.

Nor can you argue with John Tomlinson as the odious Ochs. Some of us feel that the opera contains too much Ochs and too little outrage over his ghastliness (the programme notes said that Strauss makes us like Ochs, but actually no, he doesn't) - but 'John Tom' is so convincing that what one remembers is a) the 18th-century setting would have condemned him to the guillotine had Strauss and Hofmannsthal not shifted the action to Vienna instead of Paris, and b) the world premiere, in 1911, took place only six years before the Russian revolution. Rosenkavalier as social commentary for its own time and maybe for ours too... Meanwhile, so involved was the singer with his role that in the scene with the attorney he turned physically scarlet with anger.

David McVicar's direction of a production as opulently golden as its music is typically astute and detailed - probing, questioning and poetic. For instance, why doesn't Octavian dressed as Mariandel slip out of the boudoir to escape Ochs's attentions? Because the mystery doors in the wall are so mysterious that he can't work out how to get them open. And the last gesture of Octavian towards the departing Marie-Therese before turning back to Sophie sparks an idea that we may not have seen the last of that affair after all...while young Mohamed the page boy has a crush of his own to pursue after curtain-down.

Down t'pit, Ed Gardner was working a magic of his own. This was a shimmering, generous, expansive Rosenkavalier - running to 4 hrs 10 mins, it was 25 mins longer than the theatre's estimate - but not a second of it was excessive. The music had room to breathe, grow and smoulder. Super violin solos from leader Janice Graham and some very lovely woodwind playing.

I have only two complaints. First of all, fine though the diction of the singers was, this opera's entire musical world is so bound up with flow of the German language that in English it just sounds all wrong. That's nobody's fault. I imagine the translation could have been more inspiring, but perhaps it would be a losing battle in any case. The other issue is that the set scarcely changes from scene to scene - without differentiation between the Marschallin's olde-worlde palace and the Faninal's new-build house, half the matter of class distinction, which is such an overriding theme, can't help but be somewhat submerged. Still, sets cost money; and, quite honestly, this cast could have performed in concert alone and still convinced us every step of the way.

Runs to 27 February. I wanna go again!

Photos here: http://www.flickr.com//photos/eno-baylis/sets/72157629055732903/show/

Friday Historical for Mozart's Birthday, plus some news

2012-01-27T16:19:00.000Z

First of all, I'm delighted to announce that I have "a new gig", contributing to The Spectator Arts Blog. My first piece is out today and it's a look at six of the best young opera singers I've come across in the last year or so. First up is Sophie Bevan, who will be singing her namesake in Der Rosenkavalier for ENO from Saturday. And five more budding superstars... Read it here.

And it's Mozart's birthday, and it's Friday, so here is some Friday Historical Mozart: the first movement of the Concerto for Three Pianos, with Sir Georg Solti (conducting and playing), Daniel Barenboim and Andras Schiff, and the English Chamber Orchestra. Happy 256th birthday to our darling Wolferl!

PAAVO BERGLUND, April 14 1929 - January 25 2012

2012-01-26T13:26:00.003Z

Sad news today that the Finnish conductor Paavo Berglund has died at the age of 82. I heard him many times and will long remember his strange, elf-like figure presiding over intense and alert Tchaikovsky and especially revelatory accounts of Sibelius symphonies.

Below is his official biography. And [UPDATE] an obituary from The Telegraph here.

Paavo Berglund has over a long time been associated with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in his native Finland. He has been Principal Conductor of the Stockholm Philharmonic (1987 - 1991) and of the Royal Orchestra in Copenhagen (1993 - 1996).

In England where he was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from 1972 - 1979 he works closely with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and toured Europe with the BBC Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic and the Philharmonia Orchestra.

He conducted many of Europeans most renowned orchestras including Berlin Philharmonic, Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre National de France. He closely works with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe; with the latter he performed all symphonies of Sibelius at the Helsinki Festival.

In North America he worked with the Minnesota, Baltimore and St. Louis Orchestras, Boston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra Washington and Cleveland Orchestra.

Paavo Berglund repeatedly recorded the complete Sibelius symphonies: for EMI with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and a third time with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe for Finlandia/Warner Bros. With the Royal Danish Orchestra he recorded all symphonies of Nielsen for BMG/RCA Victor Red Seal and, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 and the Overture “1812” for BMG/Classic FM.

Among the many honours his recordings received is a "Grammy" award nomination for his EMI world premiere recording of Sibelius' Kullervo symphony; the recording of the Nielsen symphonies was awarded the "Diapason d'Or". His distinguished discography also includes works of Shostakovich, Smetana and Dvorák.

UPDATE: The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra's PR has sent through this tribute from the players:

“Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is sad to hear of the loss of its Conductor Emeritus Paavo Berglund, its Principal Conductor from 1972-1979. Berglund’s performances and recordings of Sibelius with the BSO are legendary and his death was announced as the Orchestra played Sibelius Symphony No.5 with Kirill Karabits, who himself worked with Paavo in Budapest. The music parts used by the Orchestra are the ones used by Paavo himself, and the Orchestra dedicated its concert last night in Cheltenham, and its concert tonight at Portsmouth Guildhall (27 January 2012), to his memory.
"Roger Preston, Co Principal Cello, who worked with Paavo on many occasions, said ‘Anyone who played with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in Kerimäki Church, Finland, as part of the BSO’s 1981 tour will tell that it was a truly unforgettable experience. On this tour we played all the Sibelius Symphonies, with Paavo on spectacular form. Many of Paavo’s comments, criticisms and demands are as fresh in my mind as though it were only yesterday. He remains, for me, one of the best, if not the best conductor that I have ever played for, and I am so grateful to have caught the latter days of Paavo’s extraordinarily fruitful relationship with the BSO.’”

Sergei Polunin jumps ship

2012-01-24T18:38:00.003Z

And just as we were wondering if men in ballet are upwardly mobile... the Royal Ballet puts out a statement saying that Sergei Polunin has resigned with immediate effect. I interviewed him in the autumn for The Independent and sensed he was champing at the bit, so I'm not wholly surprised - though hadn't expected him to jump ship quite this soon, given the prominence the company was according him. Well, he's off. No reasons have been stated for his resignation, thus far (and I hope it's nothing to do with the tattoos).

The news is causing quite some shock in the dance-loving Twitterverse, and the words "with immediate effect" are startling and somewhat dramatic. He is, of course, in that programme at Sadler's Wells, as I reported this morning, and speculation is rife as to where he will go from here. A number of performances will have to be recast, including a worldwide cinema relay of Romeo and Juliet scheduled for March.

Here's the statement from Monica Mason just issued by the ROH:

This has obviously come as a huge shock, Sergei is a wonderful dancer and I have enjoyed watching him tremendously, both on stage and in the studio, over the past few years. I wish him every success in the future.

Marvellous men?

2012-01-24T08:01:00.003Z

They're upwardly mobile, this lot. Get down to Sadler's Wells from Friday and see some seriously amazing dancers - Men in Motion, starring Ivan Putrov (who's put the evening together), Sergei Polunin and balletic friends from the Bolshoi, the Mariinsky, ENB and more. My article about the show is in today's Independent.

I also have a little e-interview with Ivan Putrov himself...

JD: Do you think that male dancers are starting to eclipse female ones when it comes to international stardom? If so, why might that be happening?

IP: The word "Eclipse" sounds very much utopian. I wouldn't say eclipse, the male and female are always present and it is down to personality not gender how a dancer is perceived by the audiences and the media. I believe in the last century the man has gained a different status in the Ballet Theatre- equal to the female. We can say that Nijinsky is the first superstar 'celebrity' male dancer in our late post romantic world of dance. Because of that 'novelty' at the time, it has attracted more attention and so it might seem at first that the male was going to eclipse the female.

JD: It seems to me that the range of emotional expression that choreographers explore with male dancers has vastly increased over the past two or three decades. Do you agree? If so, how would you account for it?

IP: JJ Noverre comes to my mind. He has talked in his time not only of the state of the dance theatre at that time and before, but he could foresee what is to come. He said that dance will catch her sister arts in a dramatic development. That's what is happening. He knew. But what's next?!

JD: How did you choose the ballets for this programme? Were you perhaps seeking to reflect that range of possibility, as well as a century of choreography for men?

IP: I dreamt of them.

Debussy's bustin' out all over

2012-01-20T08:38:00.003Z

Here we go...it's the Debussy anniversary! A grand 150 years since the birth of (almost) everyone's favourite French composer, a figure without whom the entire face of 20th-century music would have been utterly different. I've written two relevant pieces which are both out today.

First, here's my interview with Michael Tilson Thomas from this week's JC. The American conductor is presiding over the LSO's Debussy series which starts next week. His family background is truly fascinating, though: the American Yiddish theatre proved a rich and radical field for artistic development of many kinds, including his.

And here, from The Independent, is an interview with the lovely Noriko Ogawa, who is doing a Debussy festival in Manchester with the BBC Philharmonic, opening tonight. The influence of Japanese culture - 'Japanoiserie', at any rate - on Debussy was vital; and in return, his music has made a major impact on the Japanese composers of today. The piece has been somewhat chopped, though, so below is the director's cut. Plus a video interview with Noriko from Cardiff, recorded last summer.

NORIKO OGAWA & REFLECTIONS ON DEBUSSY

Jessica Duchen

In 1862 Claude Debussy was born in Paris: the biggest musical celebrations of 2012 will mark his 150^th anniversary. ‘Reflections on Debussy’, a major new festival based at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, promises to be one of the most unusual takes on this seminal French composer and his legacy. It unites past and present, Europe and Asia, and a pianist and orchestra who, having been caught up in Japan’s devastating earthquake, are lucky to be here at all.

On 11 March 2011 the Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa was waiting for a train in Tokyo when the platform began to shake under her feet. At the same moment, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, on tour in Japan, was travelling in a bus, which was crossing a bridge. Miraculously, they all escaped unscathed. Now they are working together, exploring the links between Debussy and Japanese culture.

The links are more serendipitous than one might imagine. “It was in the year of Debussy’s birth, 1862, that a group of 30-40 Japanese diplomats came to Europe for the first time,” Ogawa points out. “They would have been wearing full traditional regalia, complete with swords, and they must have looked incredibly exotic to the populations of Paris and London.” In those days, Japan was still “closed”, mysterious to the outside world, more distant even than India and China. And as the century progressed, a vogue for Japanese culture swept through France, carrying Debussy with it.

Ogawa suggests that Debussy had a natural affinity with deep underlying qualities in Japanese art, especially the ukiyo-e “Floating World” woodblock prints by artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige. They likewise made a profound impact on western artists of successive generations – first Manet and Monet, later Gauguin, Lautrec and Matisse.

“Japanese art then used a very deformed perspective,” Ogawa points out. “Artists picked out the aspects they wanted to emphasise. For instance, if a man is looking furious in one Floating World picture, his face is much bigger than the rest of his body – just to reinforce the sense that he is angry.” It is not a vast step from there to the fantastical perspectives of Symbolism, a movement absorbed in subjective, dreamlike and suggestive atmospheres rather than literal images. Debussy associated himself with this artistic movement more than any other.

The cover picture on the first printed copies of his orchestral work La Mer – effectively a kind of sea symphony – is Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanegawa. “It brings out the strength of the sea, exaggerating this rather than being perfect like a photograph,” says Ogawa. “That deliberate deformation of perspective creates a stronger impression. Debussy does this, too, in his music. He broke all the rules!”

Other pieces by Debussy seem to share the formality, restraint and concision of Japanese art.

“You need a strong sense of control on the keyboard to play Debussy,” says Ogawa. “You can’t be overemotional or drown yourself in it; you have to be objective and keep searching for the right quality and beauty of sound. It’s the opposite of Brahms and Beethoven’s rock-solid Germanic music. After the incredibly emotional Romantic era, Debussy opens the window to let the fresh air in.”

The most Japanese of his works, she suggests, is ‘Poissons d’or’, the final piano piece from Images, Book II – directly inspired by exquisitely wrought images on a Japanese lacquer cabinet depicting koi carp.

Debussy’s fondness for Japanese culture was first sparked at the Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) in Paris in 1889; there, too, he encountered the music of the Indonesian gamelan, which also made a deep impression on him. He never travelled to the Far East, but his entire personality predisposed him to the absorption of influences rich and strange. Debussy, whom some considered Bohemian and non-conformist and whose personal life encompassed some very public scandals, was sensitive to a remarkable degree. His unceasingly enquiring mind allowed him to draw on innumerable sources for his music: everything was fair game, from the poems of Baudelaire to the novels of Dickens, from the drawings of Arthur Rackham to circus performances by acrobats. Perhaps his affinity for Japanese art was innate, or perhaps there was even more to it: “It’s almost as if he was able to tune in to its wavelength, like a radio,” says Ogawa.

Highlights she has devised for ‘Reflections on Debussy’ include a traditional Japanese tea ceremony before she performs the composer’s Etudes for piano, and a flower ceremony before the Préludes; and the series also features works by the late Toru Takemitsu and a younger Japanese composer, Yoshihiro Kanno, who were both profoundly influenced by Debussy’s musical language.

Ogawa has commissioned a set of three piano pieces from Kanno, each of which involves a different traditional Japanese percussion instrument. For instance, A Particle of Water employs Myochin Hibashi chopsticks: these are manufactured by a craftsman from the 54^th generation of a family that once made swords for Samurai warriors and are constructed from the same metal as those legendary weapons. Ogawa couldn’t resist adding Chopsticks itself to the programme, though.

Joking aside, though, the festival is part of her post-earthquake therapy. Born and brought up in Japan, she thought she was used to earthquakes, but this one was different: “The horizontal movement told us that this was something much stronger,” she recalls. “It went on for 90 seconds, which is really long. After that the electricity went off, everything shut down and in the north of the country the tsunami arrived very quickly. People there lost everything – homes, businesses, livelihoods – in just half an hour.”

Dazed, confused, and convinced that Japan was facing apocalypse, she lost interest in playing the piano until she decided to go to America and give a fundraising concert to help the victims. So far, she has raised more than £21,000 for the British Red Cross’s aid to Japan; and additionally she has organised the design of some greeting cards – involving black cats, pianos and Debussy, who used to frequent a club named Le Chat Noir – which she sells at her concerts to benefit the Japan Society.

“There are still aftershocks even now,” she says. “But I don’t want to talk about disastrous things too much, because people are trying to be positive. I’d just like to offer something that people will enjoy, feeling at the same time they’re doing something to help.”

The intuitive Debussy could well have approved.

Reflections on Debussy begins on 20 January at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. Box Office: 0161 907 9000

Tragedy of the musician hero on Costa Concordia

2012-01-19T08:18:00.004Z

A Hungarian violinist, Sandor Féher (38), was among those who lost their lives on the cruise ship Costa Concordia, which ran aground on rocks off the Tuscan shore on Friday. The Guardian reports:

"One of the bodies found on the vessel was identified on Wednesday as Sandor Feher, 38, a Hungarian violinist who worked on board and was last seen helping crying children into life jackets before returning to his cabin to get his violin."

I think I have found him on Youtube. Sandor Féher, from Budapest, was looking for a teaching job out of Hungary. He posted a short film about himself and his work to assist with his quest. Here is the video, by way of tribute to his bravery and selflessness. It features Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen. Further tributes are already being posted on the Youtube page.

According to the same report, the death toll from the disaster stands at 11, with 21 people still unaccounted for.

If you have not already heard that phone call between the coastguard and the captain, it is available on The Guardian's website, here. The coastguard orders the captain to get back on board the ship to provide correct information and to help people. Interesting thoughts on the topic here.

Schubert to the Max

2012-01-17T07:51:00.002Z

The ace violist Maxim Rysanov sent me this after the Schubert post went up yesterday. In his project 'Looking for Schubert' he's setting out to find the right piece of new music to complete a Schubert album. He invites composers to send in a work 6-8 minutes long for viola and string orchestra, inspired by our beloved Franz. Quite a novel way to go about things, this. Here he is to explain further.

Why Schubert?

2012-01-16T11:57:00.004Z

There are a few pieces of music that I try not to hear too often, since they are so powerful they keep me up at night. Most of them are by Schubert. I went to hear one of them yesterday: the E flat piano trio. If you want to be awake and haunted at 3am, look no further than its second movement.

Why Schubert?
Because...

...Schubert, as you know, is most famous for his songs. His musical language is completely intermingled with the flow of language, poetry and ideas. This comes through his instrumental works as well as his Lieder, perhaps contributing to their sense of ultra-communication in the soul-to-soul sense. He appeals not only to our sonic imagination but our linguistic and literary one too, yet by-passing words to give only the impact of their unwritten message. The E flat trio's second movement feels at times like a fugitive from Winterreise, but its grand-scale structure is not shackled by strophic verse. The emotional content is there, but free to grow and develop at "heavenly length" (Schumann's term, originally describing the Ninth Symphony).

...The myth goes that from the age of about 25 Schubert, diagnosed with syphilis, knew that he was going to die young, and that this awareness fed the tortured side of his works. It's dubious. He made it to 31, but did not in fact die from that horrible, degenerative illness, but something else, possibly contracted from eating some bad fish. In his last letter to his brother, he asked for a copy of a James Fenimore Cooper novel. He thought he was going to be in bed for a while, reading, recovering - not imminently pushing up the Viennese daisies. And yet the speed at which he dashed off searing, visionary, humane masterpieces such as this trio, the String Quintet, the last three piano sonatas, the great string quartets like the D minor 'Death and the Maiden' and the ahead-of-its-time G major, the Ninth Symphony, Schwanengesang, Winterreise - it positively beggars belief, enhancing the impression that Schubert, like Keats, had fears that he might "cease to be, Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain..."

It may well be true that the long walks he was prescribed - apparently to build up his strength in resistance to the syphilis - could account for the walking rhythms he chose so often, as in this trio, Winterreise's 'Gute nacht', the C minor Impromptu, the Ninth Symphony's second movement. Whether or not he could predict his own death, he could certainly see a future blighted by a then-incurable venereal disease: this passionate and sensitive young man, who loved life so intensely and was both compelled and disgusted by its seamy, venal side, would never be able to have a loving relationship without passing on that illness to his partner (let's avoid the "was Schubert gay?" question for the moment, because the end result is the same where syphilis is concerned). Known to his friends as "Little Mushroom", he was not in any case hunk of the century: short, plump, bespectacled. You can still see his glasses in a case in the birthplace museum in Vienna. They are tiny with round lenses, one of which is cracked. It's an oddly heartbreaking exhibit.

...In Schubert, the major tonality is more tragic than the minor. It is the way he switches between them that rips at our innards. What is he doing? What is he saying? Recognition of darkness turns to acceptance of it, maybe. Or to seeing the beauty beyond it. Or to welcoming it. Or to extending compassion to everyone for it, with a wry smile through the tears. I believe that in the change from minor to major he is not only recognising the darkness and transforming it, but empathising with both sides of it, and with us all: in that switch, for Schubert, lies the essence of the human condition.

...Schubert is a matter of pure emotion, introverted but also universal. Against today's backdrop we need his message more than ever. As you'll have noticed, we're in a time of extremism and mass hysteria: a time of whipped-up, maliciously manipulated finger-pointing, witch-hunts, pointless and irrational victimisation (the real nasties mostly get away with blue murder while our attention is diverted by trivia). Against such a dim, dumb background, Schubert remains the voice of balanced humanity at its most sensitive, facing up to its own nature with supreme honesty. After the 7/7 bomb attacks in London in 2005, someone asked me to suggest consoling music; I picked Schubert as the ultimate. I think at that point it was the slow movement of his other piano trio, the B flat. Now, though, we need the E flat.

...I know I've pointed out before the way that Schubert could pack more emotional truth into a four-minute song that certain composers of very expensive symphonies manage to say in an hour and a quarter. But when he does do "heavenly length" there is a point to it. Did you know that if you count the bars of the first movement of the Sonata in B flat D960, including the repeat and its first-time linking passage, there are the same number in the exposition up to the double bar as there are in the rest of the movement? Whatever this may or may not tell us, it says that he knew what he was doing; he was not wielding out-of-control, sprawling structures, something of which he's sometimes been accused. There was self-awareness in that length; it was deliberate.

...I love the fact that we owe Schubert to Schumann, Liszt, Mendelssohn and Brahms. Schumann went to Schubert's brother's house and unearthed manuscripts including the Ninth Symphony. Mendelssohn conducted it. Brahms edited some of the piano music for publication, refusing to take a credit for his work. Liszt transcribed some of the songs and made them well known by performing them in his recitals. Their own music is full of his influence. And of course, without Schubert's influence we wouldn't have had Mahler (though to me, Schubert is worth ten of him. Don't shoot.).

...Schubert brings us back to purity, truth and tenderness. Amid the mayhem, don't forget to listen.

(UPDATE: Entartetemusik is somewhat exercised about my last line. Try the beginning of my piece as well as the end? The bit about how this music keeps you awake and haunted at 3am?)

Friday Historical: Messiaen talks about Debussy

2012-01-13T13:26:00.000Z

This is a special treat for anyone who came to the showcase evening for our Messiaen project The End of Time on Monday (and for everyone else too). Footage from Olivier Messiaen's analysis class at the Paris Conservatoire. The great composer talks to his students about the work that he often referred to as the most profound influence upon his own music: Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande.

Monday, by the way, went really rather well. We had the most fabulous evening. My profound and profuse thanks to our hosts, Bob and Elizabeth Boas; the six expert performers, actors and musicians alike; and the indomitable Yvonne Evans, who made it all happen. It may have been the first 'real' London performance of my play, but I hope it won't be the last.

Hannibal hits the high notes... plus the Monty Python of music, a mountaineering composer and a brand-new piece by Brahms

2012-01-13T08:38:00.001Z

"I thought I'd end up in the steelworks in Port Talbot for the rest of my life," says Sir Anthony Hopkins. Is he the most open and straightforward person I've ever interviewed? Certainly one of them. And it was rather touching to hear that familiar voice speaking to me from Los Angeles, and to realise that his own, natural accent remains distinctly Welsh. As you'll know by now, Classic FM is bringing out an album of music by Hopkins. Today my interview with him about it is in The Independent. Read it here.

More light reading for Friday morning: I have an interview with the fantabulous and very funny pianist Jonathan Biss in the JC this week, which is here.

And back at the Indy, we meet the young Italian composer who went up a mountain to create a tune with a view...

That should hopefully entertain you over your coffee. And here's a bonus: a "new" Brahms piano piece has turned up in America and is to have its world premiere on BBC Radio 3 on Music Matters, 21 January, played by Andras Schiff. Christopher Hogwood apparently stumbled upon the work which looking through a collection of manuscripts in the US that had once belonged to the director of music at Göttingen University. The piece, a complete Albumblatt about two minutes long, was written in 1853 when our Johannes was all of 20 - the year he met Schumann and Clara for the first time. Perhaps it would have been amongst the pieces he performed to them on that first visit in Dusseldorf. It is apparently an early version of what became the trio section of the scherzo in Brahms's Horn Trio. The Guardian has more on this, here.

Paranoid androids?

2012-01-11T16:02:00.006Z

I spent a fascinating morning today at the Royal College of Music talking to postgraduate students, together with inspirational and entrepreneurial academic David Bahanovich and the one and only Gabriel Prokofiev. We covered topics ranging from Gabriel's innovative Non-Classical club nights to what the greatest musicians have in common - energy? dedication? more?; and from why "person gives concert" is not a story, to why you really need to understand, in today's music business, how digital media and social networking function or else risk being torpedoed. And much more.

It's wonderful, in 2012, to walk into the RCM and see devoted and brilliant young people who are on fire with the love of music and ready to spend their lives in its service. But also very worrying, because I don't know what in the world is going to happen to the RCM - or the other British music colleges - after the government removes all their support. Or am I being a paranoid android? After all, British music students can still hop on a plane to Denmark and study there free of charge (though they may need a different range of vocabulary from that of The Killing and Borgen). But I want to see top-notch, open-minded, free-spirited music colleges here in the Big Smoke, a city buzzing with creativity and diverse music-making every moment of every day, where young musicians could be nurtured without having to burden themselves with impossible debt. A college education should be free to those talented enough to pursue it. When we stop investing in education, we smother the future. It's that simple.

Speaking of creativity, David told me, en passant, about the pianist Christopher O'Riley's runaway success in the US with piano transcriptions of Radiohead, which apparently help to attract people to his recitals who might be under the age of 50 and sometimes sport interesting haircuts. Christopher's programmes might have a first half of, for instance, Janacek and Bartok, and a second half of Radiohead song covers. I hadn't heard the transcriptions before, so thought I'd check them out. Here's Paranoid Android: in this context, not so very far away from mainstream American minimalism, perhaps. Contemporary music: a convergence?

Hooray for Haydn

2012-01-07T08:58:00.000Z

In case you missed listings site Bachtrack's latest set of annual statistics yesterday, here they are: http://www.bachtrack.com/concert-opera-league-tables-2011

So, we learn that Handel's Messiah is still the most often performed work (no, really?), and - golly gosh - Liszt entered the top ten of most performed composers in his bicentenary year, while Chopin and Schumann were virtually semi-retired by comparison, perhaps after everyone overdosed on them in 2010. But the biggest eyebrow-raise goes to the Busiest Conductor list, which puts The Dude in top spot with Ivan Fischer at no.2 - and Valery Gergiev, formerly no.1, not even up there. Intriguing.

But here is something that really caught my eye: Haydn is consistently amongst the top ten most often performed composers, hovering around no.6-8 - for 2011 it's 8. It often seems to me that this great-hearted, pure-spirited and tirelessly original composer tends to get short shrift from the concert-going public, compared to his friend Mozart and his pupil Beethoven. But perhaps that isn't the case after all: quietly and decisively, 'Papa Haydn' is getting his just desserts after all, and they may contain chocolate.

Here is one of his piano masterpieces to enjoy this weekend: the Andante and Variations in F minor, played by none other than Paderewski.

Accolade for Alan

2012-01-06T08:51:00.003Z

Dr Alan Walker, whose three-volume biography of Franz Liszt is now the definitive text on last year's bicentenary supremo, has been awarded a top honour by the Government of the Republic of Hungary: the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit. It was announced, we hear, before the end of Liszt year (and before the new constitution in Hungary, which came into force the other day, dropped the word 'Republic'). Walker, professor emeritus of music at McMaster University, is also the biographer of Hans von Bulow, the conductor and Liszt's pre-Wagner son-in-law, and The Death of Liszt, based on the diary of Liszt's pupil Lina Schmalhausen. He will be bestowed with his award on 17 January at the Hungarian Embassy in Ottawa.

Accolades for books of this excellence are few and far between and goodness knows it is well deserved. But I imagine it won't be long before someone says he ought to consider refusing the award in protest at the current turn of political events in Hungary. This brings home the point that we ought to have more recognition for excellence in musical scholarship from cultural and governmental bodies a bit closer to home.

Ivan Fischer on the future of the symphony orchestra

2012-01-05T08:34:00.000Z

I just found Ivan Fischer's video blog on the Budapest Festival Orchestra's website. Here he talks about the future of the symphony orchestra - and reveals in a few succinct sentences exactly what he thinks of 'crossover' and why.

While Hungary's political and economic situation goes through what looks increasingly like hell and high water don't forget why it matters everywhere else. Let's hope that this towering musical tradition, with its purity, clear-sightedness and intensity of purpose, won't be subsumed by yet another destructive ideological steamroller. The riches of that tradition are exemplified today by Fischer and his brother Adam, Andras Schiff, Gabor Takacs-Nagy and many, many more.

A year ago Andras Schiff alerted everyone to the Hungarian political situation with a letter to the Washington Post. But of course a lot of people said what they usually say when musicians talk about politics, to the effect of "shut up and play the piano", and now he doubts he will ever return to his native land. This is extremely unfortunate, because he was right and he should have been listened to - but the opportunity to make a bigger stand early enough was effectively lost. The truth in the overview of such situations can often be astutely commented upon by those who are outside it - people who care, but whose interests are not vested - and as great musicians tend to be intelligent, passionate people whose gifts have earned them a world stage, sometimes we really ought to take some notice of what they say.

In Senegal, another world-renowned musician, Youssou N'Dour, is running for president.

Inspiration? Try the shower

2012-01-03T09:15:00.000Z

The Guardian has a fantastic spread at the moment in which some leading creative artists - writers, artists, musicians, choreographers, etc - talk about how and where they find the inspiration that drives them. I particularly like the very concise concluding section by Wayne McGregor. Read the whole thing here.

A couple of late additions from JDCMB:

* Hot water. I get my best ideas in the shower. No explanation.

* Read lots of history and biography. The past is full of stories so outlandish that you couldn't make them up. So is the present, of course...

Any more tips, anyone?

Cracking the O2 Nut

2012-01-02T08:32:00.002Z

Rewind to Millennium year. Tony Blair's government has decided to leave us as its legacy the most magnificent flexible performance space in Europe. Audiences of many thousands can flock to the east London riverside to see rock concerts, ballets, operas, superstar lectures and big-screen spectaculars, to name but a few possibilities. The Proms consider relocating in order to treble the audience size and improve the sound quality. The seats are comfortable, the acoustics state-of-the-art and adaptable to any occasion, the sightlines carefully considered at all levels. The foyers are warm, pleasantly designed, friendly and welcoming, the food outlets offer - besides pizza, or fish and chips - falafel and organic salads, home-made chocolate cake and fresh juices. Soon no visit to London would be complete without a trip to the People's Palace of the Arts.

Instead...they built the Millennium Dome. A great spawling shell containing...emptiness. Think of the length of time it took to decide what to do with the damn thing. Think of the cost, dear readers. Think of the waste. Then think how different it could have been if only they'd decided to build it as a proper venue in the first place.

I trotted off to the Dome last week. It's now comfortable enough in its adopted skin as the O2, but still - what a missed opportunity it is. It doesn't feel only 12 years old: it has all the atmosphere of a miserable 1960s relic, with stairs that look as if they've been exported from the old Swiss Cottage swimming baths, and an all-pervasive smell of beer and burgers.

But the Birmingham Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker was of course the purpose of the visit. And whoosh - two bars of Tchaikovsky and the entire O2 was transported to dreamland in one swoop. It was absolute magic from start to finish. If this Nutcracker can transcend that venue, then it can do anything.

Here's my review, for The Independent. (Not sure if it has already appeared in the paper - it isn't online yet.)

Balletic bravura, dazzling transformation scenes, a giant flying goose – Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker has become a national favourite. Still, with so many different Nutcracker stagings grinding away this Christmas, especially in London, bringing it to the gaping spaces of the O2 had to be something of a gamble, and not only because of the challenge of selling enough seats. Can its dream magic survive the transition from traditional theatre to an outsize arena with popcorn and eat-in-your-seat pizza?

It also had to survive an unfortunate late addition to the line-up: Joe McElderry crooning three Christmas carols in hideous, sickly arrangements. Goodness knows why he was there. But as soon as the show got underway, the spell created by Tchaikovsky and BRB’s expertise spun its joys unhindered on the sizeable stage.

Moving this complex showpiece to a space that neither it nor the company had inhabited before must have been a gargantuan task, yet glitches were few and far between – just a little over-enthusiasm with the dry ice for the battle of the rats, perhaps. A large screen brought us the welcome option of close-ups, the amplification of the orchestra was unintrusive, and best of all, the superb cast seemed to rise to the evening’s demands by bringing out any extra percentage of energy they might conceivably keep in reserve.

In Peter Wright’s Nutcracker – his own choreography rubbing shoulders with Lev Ivanov’s and some by Vincent Redmon – the momentum of demanding dance scarcely lets up. The party scene brings us three generations of a family happily taking turns on the ballroom floor, from the excellent children to some lovely vignettes for David Morse and the great Marion Tait as the grandparents. Our heroine, Clara, is barely off stage in either act, although when she is finally transformed into the Sugar Plum Fairy for the great pas de deux, it’s another dancer who takes over. Rather like bringing out Wayne Rooney for the penalty shootouts.

Still, Clara has plenty to do already, and Laëtitia Lo Sardo joyously captured the adolescent girl’s voyage of discovery as she balances on the cusp of womanhood. Her Nutcracker Prince was the dashing César Morales, Robert Parker conjured a flamboyant magician-uncle Drosselmeyer, and the unshakeable Nao Sakuma as the Sugar Plum Fairy offered a tranche of ideal classical control.

Did it work? The ultimate verdict must come from the many children in the audience – for in the interval, through those soulless, stadium-style foyers, virtually every little girl was dancing. That’ll be a ‘yes’.

WELCOME TO 2012, FROM LONDON

2012-01-01T09:14:00.002Z

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Greetings from here:

Let's hope that 2012 will be a sane, peaceful, successful, smooth, kind and reasonable year - rather than anything resembling the past one. Don't forget to listen to the New Year's Day Concert from Vienna. This year it is conducted by the mighty Mariss Jansons. For UK listeners, it's on BBC Radio 3 at 10.15am and BBC2 at 11.15, with another showing on BBC4 this evening.

Song of the Year

2011-12-31T08:48:00.003Z

So it's goodbye to 2011, with the good news that Tony Pappano has been knighted in the New Year Honours, the prospect of hearing a heap of Debussy and Delius in the next 12 months, a "so long and thanks for all the fish" to Mahler and Liszt, and a gentle reminder that in April it'll be 100 years since the Titanic sank.

The Song of the Year? It is 'Ombra di Nube' by Refice - we heard it a couple of weeks ago on JDCMB sung by the diva for whom it was created, the great Claudia Muzio. If you were lucky enough to catch Anna Caterina Antonacci's lunchtime recital from the Wigmore Hall earlier in December, you will have experienced her magnificent performance of it there. Lincinio Refice (1885-1954) was a priest and taught at the Scuola Pontifica for sacred music in Rome across some 40 years. Apparently he died on the rostrum while conducting his own opera, Cecilia, inspired by the life of music's patron saint. He sought a singer "with God in their throat" and found one in Muzio. The words of 'Ombra di Nube' are a prayer, a plea and a reminder of the eternal beauty that remains when the pain goes.

Here is is again from a man whose voice is gradually becoming, for many of us, a soundtrack to the highest and lowest moments of our days: the times to celebrate, times to remember, times to look forward to and times when we need the comfort, spirituality and inspiration that great art brings. He has helped to bring this exquisite sliver of beauty to a wider audience this year, including it on his Verismo Arias CD and in many recitals around the world; in London it was his final encore. He's becoming both the thinking woman's Bocelli and the living person's Caruso: he is, of course, Jonas Kaufmann.

Happy New Year to all our readers. May 2012 bring to everyone peace, happiness, hope and justice.

And as a post-Christmas bonus, a little something I just stumbled across - an entire concert from Moscow in 2008 by Kaufmann and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

Glyndebourne powerhouse passes on

2011-12-27T15:39:00.002Z

Brian Dickie of the Chicago Opera Theater has reported on his blog the death of the pianist Martin Isepp, who for some 40 years was an absolute stalwart of the Glyndebourne music staff. He was head of music at the National Opera Studio from 1978 to 1995. And much, much more besides. I well remember meeting him at Glyndebourne some 10-12 years ago. His jolly, unaffected, unassuming character with an unmistakeable twinkle and a ready smile was a front for a powerhouse of operatic understanding and pianistic knowhow. He died on Christmas Day.

Above, Martin coaching tenor Ryan MacPherson in 2001.

Here is his biography from the National Opera Studio's website:

Martin Isepp ARCM, was born in Vienna and came to England in 1938. He studied piano mainly with Professor Leonie Gombrich, pupil and assistant of Leschetitsky, before reading Music at Oxford University and studying further at the Royal College of Music, London. He began his career in the vocal studio of his mother Helene Isepp, and went on to partner such singers as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth Söderström, Dame Janet Baker, Jessye Norman, Hughes Cuenod and John Shirley-Quirk in recitals throughout Europe and the USA. In 1965 he was awarded the Carroll Donner Stuchell Medal for Accompanying by the Harriet Cohen International Musical Foundation.

At the same time he has pursued a parallel career in the operatic field, first with Benjamin Britten’s English Opera Group (where he created the piano part in The Turn of the Screw), and then at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, which he joined as a member of the Music Staff in 1957, where he was Head of Music Staff from 1978-93, and for which he is a visiting Guest Chief Coach. From 1973-77 he was Head of Opera Training at the Juilliard School, New York before returning to London to become Head of Music at the newly-formed National Opera Studio from 1978-1995.

He travels widely to give Master Classes in Lieder and Opera and to conduct young singers in performance. He has been invited to the Central Opera and Conservatory in Beijing to work on Mozart roles and to the Pacific Music Festival in Japan. He has been Head of the Academy of Singing at the School of the Arts at the Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada for many years and has given many master classes at the Britten-Pears School, Aldeburgh. He visits the Metropolitan Opera annually, often as Assistant Conductor. Five years ago, he took over two performances of Così from the indisposed James Levine to critical acclaim. He has conducted productions for the Canadian Opera Company, Washington Opera, and Glyndebourne Touring Opera, and has featured as Continuo Harpsichordist on a number of recordings. He has also adjudicated for such competitions as the Met Final Auditions, the Naumburg Awards and the Kathleen Ferrier Competition in London.

Martin Isepp recently conducted the Orchestre de Picardie, France in Performances ofAriadne auf Naxos and the students of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Baltimore in a production of Così fan tutte, as well as giving Master Classes at l’Atelier Lyrique de l’Opera de Montreal, the Ensemble of the Canadian Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Northwestern University School of Music, RAM, The Paris Conservatoire, and the Merola Program of San Francisco Opera. He is the first recipient of the Stratton Distinguished Visitor Medal given by the University of Toronto Music Department. He was recently awarded the Honorary Doctorate of Music by Wake Forest University, North Carolina.

Top tweets for Tosca

2011-12-25T10:17:00.001Z

In case you missed the fun, Tosca trended on Twitter yesterday when the Royal Opera House's production by Jonathan Kent hit BBC2, starring Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel, with Tony Pappano conducting. Experience the power and the glory of this singular Christmas treat by reading a selection of the verdicts, commentaries, quips, observations and much more that spurred the stars on their way, from living rooms up and down the country... (BTW, this timeline goes backwards, so we start at the end.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS A TUTTI!

@richardwjones As good as Angela Gheorgiu was as Tosca, nobody will ever be quite as good as Maria Callas. #greatdivas #tosca #puccini

@talopine Being made VERY jealous by all the people in my timeline who are raving over #Tosca on the BBC with Kaufman and Terfel. #VERYjealous #sob

@Random_Opera After brilliance of #Tosca earlier, why are we being given repeats of f***ing Morecambe & Wise on BBC2 (and equal shit on other channels...)

@jonathanclinch Sooo true.... RT @Maroodiva #tosca is trending, c'mon #bbc don't just put decent opera on the tele at Xmas, people WANT to watch it!!!!!

@sanathaash1993#Tosca was awesome!

@Operazzi “@Gert: Is this really suitable viewing for a Saturday afternoon - torture, attempted rape, murder, execution, suicide? #tosca” ALWAYS!

@itsmao #tosca and now #E.T when am I going to stop crying?

@DanJamesWins #Tosca is trending, OPERA ISN'T DEAD!!

@DrPiffle It was amazing, wasn't it? Sublime leads, spec JK. Orchestra in fine form too. #tosca #stillsobbing

@BlueBaby #BrynTerfel was frightening enough from the amphitheatre.On TV he was terrifying #Tosca #don'thavenightmares

@stu_melling Tosca over: tears dried and the excitement of my first visit to@RoyalOperaHouse on Feb 11th kicks in now. #shakingwithexcitement #tosca

@amzenon It was amazing.. stunning.. captivating.. even on television.. I hope you can hear and see it sometime... #Tosca

@kittywhately Overwhelmed by #tosca at @RoyalOperaHouse. Terrifyingly good and incredibly moving. And Kaufmann and @Bryn_Terfel made it a total hunk fest!

@MelJD46 #Tosca an excellent production thank you @BBC2More please

@marcodemag Mario Cavaradossi's quite hot shirtless #Tosca

@Gert Shabby little shocker #tosca

@theviciouspixie Dear Santa, in my stocking I would like Jonas Kaufmann please. #tosca

@redragwork Wow - that #Tosca was heart-stopping

@SaraMohrPietsch: Ah Jonas, that was quite some Christmas treat. #swoon #tosca

@Popher Thank you BBC. #tosca was brilliant, a delightful change from the normal Xmas tv

@leboyfriend For me that was entirely satisfying and fulfilling. Bravi tutti!! #tosca

@Mark_Pullinger Ah, a Spoletta who milks the final moments! Excellent performance of #Tosca - so sorry I didn't get a ticket, but thanks Beeb for the relay.

@glittrgirl Gosh I feel knackered after watching that #tosca

@Irma0316 Magnificent! Fantastic! Stunning! Amazing! *stands up and applauds* #Tosca @RoyalOperaHouse

@David_CAA That #tosca bloke can sing a bit, but I couldn't understand a word he said

@amzenon #Tosca.. Grandiose !!! above all Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel.. Pappano & Orch. fantastic.. tremendous broadcast..@RoyalOperaHouse #BBC2

@hannahmmay pahaha, just watched Puccini's #Tosca from the Royal Opera House on BBC2! #FeelingCultured

@ivisbohlen Horrible, but great acting! RT @cazponty: It's horrible that we know that he knows......#Tosca

@glittrgirl I had goosepimples through nearly all of that #tosca *blows noes* *dabs eyes*

@tonyhatfield tears- end of #tosca #worththelicencefeealone

@John_Denny Anyone else think Scarpia looks like Ed Balls? #tosca

@clavdivs1 That was SUPERB! We need more opera on the telly! #Tosca

@_Joliffe FINALLY. Needn't of jumped, I'd happily of pushed. #tosca

@danny_blue2004 I've always had this image of her popping back up again #Tosca

@MahlerMad I HAVE NO MORE TEARS #TOSCA

@goldenavenger1 Only slight downside of watching opera on the telly is I can see Cavaradossi breathing when he's meant to be dead. #tosca

@MahlerMad SCARPIA! AVANTI A DIO! #TOSCA

@railtonrailton Don't worry, he's still breathing #tosca

@RuthElleson Yikes, I never like watching this bit... #Tosca...

@MahlerMad Presto, su. Mario! Mario! MARIO!!!! AAAAAAAH! #Tosca

@glittrgirl The good thing about watching opera at home is being able to bawl audibly. #tosca

@flumpmistress If he'd done that lip curl, I'd have probably fainted! #Tosca

@MahlerMad WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH #TOSCA

@greeboblackcat Humans yowling on tellybox. Staff bawling her eyes out. *nuzzles staff* #wlf #tosca

@MahlerMad *hugs cushion* #Tosca

@TimSim85 I'll call you by a thousand loving names. #Tosca

@Irma0316 I'm in absolute BITS. God, how I love Puccini :) #Tosca

@MelJD46 'Together in harmony our souls fly to the ecstasy of love' #Tosca

@lynnmb25 #tosca ..everything that's beautiful will find its voice in you...breaking my heart!

@findo I am in awe of JK right now #tosca

@millymelon Angela Gheorgiu's nipples: I can't understand why I can't see them in that dress #tosca

@chiller Guys, just get in the carriage and go. If you hang about like this it's not going to end well. #tosca

@Clavdivs1 No good plan starts with the line "You will be shot" #Tosca

@brendadada Jonas Kauffman's e lucevan is the most emotional I've ever heard. Domingo would be proud. #tosca

@AngharadLee 'I die in despair and I have never loved life so much' - Jonas Kauffman u have brought me 2 tears. Stunning performance #Tosca

@Cairnspolitics if you only watch 1 opera in your life then it should be Tosca. Terrific performances on BBC Two now #tosca

@EmilyOnsloe @angelagheorghiu just... WOW #Tosca

@leboyfriend e lucevan was exquisite #tosca

@amzenon Oh...Jonas... 'E lucevan le stelle' ..sigh... sigh... sigh... #Tosca

@Erastes #tosca - typical man, going to be shot and all he can talk about is shagging. # lucevanlestelle :D

@manx_maid Beautiful diminuendi - Jonas' trademark #Tosca

@dmartw Gibbering wreck after that #Tosca #goosebumps

@HorizonVA Jonas Kaufmann *sigh* #Tosca

@AngharadLee My 4yr old is loving #Tosca on #bbc2 Not sure I can cope with anymore 'why' or 'what's he doing' questions mind. She's transfixed #opera

@Gert You go girl! Kill the nasty bastard Scarpia #tosca #teamange

@brenbaritone @RoyalOperaHouse #Tosca being taped fr me at home.I saw the cast after queuing 16 hours over night.looking forward to reliving it:-)

@Becky_Todd We approve of #BrynTerfel. Blooming brilliant on the beeb in #Toscaas he is in everything. Loved my auditorium shifts when he was on.

@RachelWolseley Oh I do love you Ange, despite everything... #Tosca

@flumpmistress I'm not getting anything done, too enthralled! #Tosca

@brianbg OMG That @Bryn_Terfel really can play a bad bastard. #Tosca

@Clavdivs1 Don't trust the man you daft girl, he's spent the last act lip curling maliciously and squeezing your boyfriend's head in a vice! #Tosca

@DiveSciDiva Even though I'm female even I'm finding Angela Gheorghiu's low cut dress distracting #Tosca

@rob_f_1 @bbc2 never ever seen an opera before but current showing of #tosca is absolutely fantastic. Amazed. Thank you!

@raethepain Visi D'arte time! Unfortunate boob slippage there though. #tosca

@AngharadLeeThank God 4 #Tosca #bbc2.Relief fromXmas 4 a wee while.Terfel just head butted him @Bryn_Terfel Not classified as a fair fight in th valleys

@_widdershins Headbutt in an opera! Nicely done Bryn. #Tosca #BBC

@sensisuperstar It's all kicking off on BBC2, Bryn Terfel has just butted some bloke... #tosca

@malatrope Doesn't Bryn Terfel look like Meatloaf #Tosca #BBC2

@Paul_Anater There's hope! RT @jolocktov: RT @MahlerMad: #Tosca is trending :D This restores my faith in humanity

@cazponty For all the ladies drooling at Jonas...good....all the more Bryn for me!#Tosca

@CharlSkidmore Watching the same production of #tosca I camped outside the@RoyalOperaHouse for. SO EXCITED. BBC 2 you've made my day.

@patrickxwest Can't help wondering if Meatloaf wouldn't make a good Scarpia #tosca

@Gert Take your dirty hands off Jonas, you brutes! #tosca

@JackSullivan2 Right that's it I'm going to write an opera so I can marry Jonas Kaufmann #Tosca

@leboyfriend I'm a wreck already - and I have seen this more than any other opera so it's not like it's full of surprises. #tosca

@yourPollyanna Mother's just come into the room and asked if she's "chucked herself off the turrets yet?" #Tosca

@billybothwell68 #Tosca is even trending lol wow is this what happens when the x-factor finishes ? BBC HD folks its even better :)

@SophieBellaWiz Current trending topics are ridiculous. What is this fuckery? The only decent one is #tosca, which I hope is in referrence to Meerkat Manor.

@lucy_arch LOVELOVELOVE #tosca

@sbuttsoprano no queueing for interval g&t! Shuddering at @Bryn_terfel 's evil Scarpia.#Tosca

@quentinrayner Opera singers must go deaf, bellowing at such close range into each others faces #tosca #roh #bbb2

@ivisbohlen I'll keep an ear out for this. RT @Edward_George_: Here comes one of his best bits: diminuendo through the key change in same breath #Tosca

@bubblesmoloney I wonder if 33 is too old to become an Opera singer? I have the 'lungs'. #tosca

@manx_maid Lady tweeps who don't think they're into opera may like to look at Mr Jonas Kaufmann on BBC2 NOW. That is all. #Tosca

@thestorti I wish my life was narrated by the lead singer in #tosca would mean making toast would be so epic.

@RuthElleson Only #JonasKaufmann could wear THAT waistcoat and look hot. #Tosca

@JackyTarlton Watching Antonio Pappano's #Tosca on #bbc2 now. Thrilling start to Christmas. Great to have opera on tv:)

@Edward-George_ #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca #Tosca

5 Top Things to Do/See/Hear Over Christmas

2011-12-24T09:45:00.000Z

1. Tosca is on BBC2 this afternoon, recorded in July at the Royal Opera House with Angela Gheorghiu as Tosca, Jonas Kaufmann as Cavaradossi and Bryn Terfel as Scarpia. Previously cinecast, now coming to a TV near you...

Tony Pappano conducts, and he will introduce the work in a documentary an hour before, at 1.35pm. Details here.

2. Medici TV is offering a free day of viewing for all on Boxing Day. Don't miss the chance to sample the startling array of wonderful performances on this digital online channel, devoted to music, opera and ballet, which normally requires a subscription (which can be rather good value). If you need a last-minute gift for a music-lover, btw, they have special gift subscription packages. Start here.

3. Go to see The Nutcracker, if you haven't already. On 27 December the classic Birmingham Royal Ballet production is coming to the O2, which is the proud possessor of a five-figure number of seats and an array of affordable tickets. Building on the smash-hit of the Royal Ballet's Romeo and Juliet last summer, which was the O2's first venture into such territory, this Nutcracker promises much and the cast is led by the BRB's top principal dancers, including Nao Sakuma, Cesar Morales and Robert Parker.

4. Pop over to The Guardian for a week from Boxing Day to see a free streaming of Glyndebourne's production of Hansel und Gretel - a slightly close-to-the-bone staging by Laurent Pelly of the Humperdinck classic. It's energetic, painfully funny, gloriously sung and at times jolly scary too. Jennifer Holloway and Adriana Kucerova are in the title roles. And the witch's house set is one of the cleverest, and most sinister, that you could hope for. Tom Service introduces the opera here: "Fatten kid. Cook. Then eat..."

5. Make a resolution about music for the new year and start on it right now. Here's mine: practise more.

Friday Festivities: Argerich and Freire play the Sugar Plum Fairy

2011-12-23T17:15:00.000Z

MERRY EVERYTHING, EVERYONE! Enjoy this sliver of seasonal magic played by Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire.

Love & hugs from JDCMB

Buon natale, girls and boys

2011-12-23T09:03:00.000Z

The other day someone at the paper rang up and asked if I'd write a short commentary about something called Il Volo. I thought at first that that meant "the thief", but it doesn't. Apparently it means "Flight". So I checked 'em out. And here's what I wrote. See if you agree? Note: if you are a hardline classical devotee, you might find that the video below is best viewed in the bathroom.

JDCMB INGEFAER STRIBENDE PRISEN 2011

2011-12-21T07:43:00.005Z

That's JDCMB Ginger Stripe Awards 2011 in Danish, or sort of. This year we have abandoned the usual Cyberposhplace - too many people around there to whom we don't wish to be polite - and booked instead a very special CyberScandinavian venue: a Virtual version of the Sjette Frederiks Kro, tucked away in the beech woods by the sea in Aarhus. Please come in and thaw out by the log fire. And don't miss the hot chocolate. It's the best in the whole world - even better than the Cafe Europejska in Krakow - and they bring you a goloptious full-up pot of it... Prepare to sing, too. The Danes always sing at parties.

This has been the year in which the Sleeping Beauty woke up (see choreographer Matthew Bourne's project for Christmas 2012) - and didn't much like what she saw. This year it was revealed, loud and clear, just how intensely, insidiously and pervasively big money rules the world and the music world with it, trampling on all and sundry that are left behind. This year, too, we've seen - on our own doorsteps - the danger of all ideologies that put the imposition of their dogma and the crushing of dissent before any notion of basic humanity. Heaven alone knows what 2012 will bring, but my words to you today, on the Winter Solstice 2011, are these.

Beware of anything that threatens the democratic nature of the places, societies and organisations in which you function. Never sign away your rights - someone will try to convince you it's in your own best interests, but it never is. Remember that constitutions exist for a reason, and if anyone wants to change yours, take a good, hard look at who, how, why, and who gains (case study: Hungary). To quote this article from Spiegel Online about culture in Hungary - where journalists this week have been on hunger strike against press manipulation - "to gain complete control over a country, one has to control what people think." This doesn't only apply to countries. Now that you're awake, keep your eyes wide open.

In a skewed and shaky world, it's more difficult, yet also more important, to keep up the celebration of the Ginger Stripes. Solti is back on his silken cushion today, and I've promised him a lot of fresh Danish fish.

This year's awards are taking a slightly different format from the usual. Instead of specific categories, we've just chosen specific people. Through 2011, more than ever, my interviewees have been a source of great joy and inspiration. I've been lucky enough to come into contact with an astonishing succession of individuals; with each of them there is much to learn, nuggets to nurture, jewels to treasure. I've also attended some unforgettable performances. And writing a little more about dance - which was my first love, you know - has brought a welcome new dimension and a different type of challenge. You think it's difficult to write about music? That's a piece of cake by comparison...

Now, to business! A round of applause, please, for our special guests: some of this year's top interviewees. As they approach the silken cushion to stroke the ginger stripes and claim their prize purrs from Solti, plus a VirtualSarahLundSweater, meet them, love them and thank them.

Anna Caterina Antonacci - the Italian mezzo/and/or soprano whose artistry stands out in today's operatic scene like a George Eliot novel surrounded by chicklit. Is she the nearest thing we have to Pauline Viardot? I believe so. Article from Opera News. Below: as Cassandre in Les Troyens - which she will be singing in London next summer.

Martha Argerich. Interviewing her was a challenge I never imagined I'd meet, but...somehow...did. In the words of Yannick Nezet-Seguin, who conducted the concert in Rome that I attended: "...is she still playing as well as ever? Of course she is. Why wouldn’t she? To me she is not 70, or 60, or 20. She is just Martha.”

Gustavo Dudamel. Cometh the hour, cometh the Dude. Again, it was all touch and go, but in the end we touched. What energy. What charisma. Go, Gustavo, go: be the next Bernstein. We need one. Better still, be the first Dude.

Valery Gergiev. Speaking of energy...

Andras Schiff. A great man as well as a great musician: speaking out about the rise of the racist far-right in his native Hungary has landed him with a backlash that's made him wonder if he can ever return - though that does rather prove the veracity of what he said. Meanwhile, Beethoven is eternal...

Benjamin Grosvenor. This has been his year. Let's put aside the many landmark events he's experienced - we've marked them amply on JDCMB - and simply consider this: Benjamin's playing leaves me wondering why not every pianist plays like that, and why anyone would think, for a moment, that anything less will do. Here he is having some fun with an encore at the Prom...

Eva-Maria Westbroek. Interviewed her, loved her, loved her singing. I heard her in three astounding performances. First, Anna Nicole, which threw her into a spotlight the size of the Millennium Dome but with rather more substance within - and not only silicone. Then Sieglinde in the Met's cinecast of Die Walkure, singing opposite Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmind. And finally Il Tabarro at Covent Garden, part of Richard Jones's magnificent production of Il Trittico, which I didn't actually write up, but which was a major highlight of this year's opera-going. Here she is in one of her favourite roles, Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

Sergei Polunin. The 21-year-old Royal Ballet star really does want to open a tattoo parlour. The day after the cinecast of The Sleeping Beauty last week, JDCMB was carpet-bombed by Google searches for this dark-lord-in-waiting of British ballet. In this clip, Lauren Cuthbertson as Aurora is equally poetic.

Zofia Posmysz. The author of The Passenger, a novel based on her own experiences in Auschwitz, could not be more radiant or less embittered if she tried. She came to London for the UK premiere of the opera by Weinberg based on her book. Talking to this remarkable woman was a very humbling experience. Film below in Polish with German subtitles, except the bits in English from David Pountney, and provides a taste of the opera's furious, devastating music. (It got panned in London, but I couldn't care less.)

Rolando Villazon. First I heard his marvellous Werther at Covent Garden; then, at the crucial moment in September, I went to Paris to meet him. He gave me a red foam nose. It is now on my desk lamp, where it has helped to keep me sane these past months. This song from last week's Royal Variety Performance sums it all up. Thank you, Dr Rollo.

And performances? It's a golden age. It really is Joseph Calleja at close quarters at a Decca launch in the ROH Crush Bar; Jonas Kaufmann in recital at the Royal Festival Hall. The Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer at the RFH (the best Beethoven Pastoral Symphony ever) and the Proms (Mahler 1 and the fun, engaging, wonderfully played Audience Choice event). The cinecast from the Met of Die Walkure, where the cast - Eva-Maria Westbroek as Sieglinde, Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund, Bryn Terfel as Wotan and Deborah Voigt as Brunnhilde - had us all pinching ourselves to make sure it was true. Despite my reservations about the detail of cinecasting, it's a great new medium that's transforming our experience of opera, theatre and ballet; and through this medium the Met also brought us Rossini's fabulous Le Comte Ory, with Juan Diego Florez, Diana Damrau and Joyce DiDonato. At the ballet, Osipova and Vasiliev rawked Ashton's Romeo and Juliet; and, as I couldn't interview Tchaikovsky about The Nutcracker, Joby Talbot was a fascinating alternative as he told me about his new score for Alice. Another major highlight: revisiting the Dartington Summer School of Music. It's always strange going back to a place that meant so much to you so long ago - but the old magic is still alive and well.

Huge treats, too, in performances of my own stuff, some on the other side of the globe. Roxanna Panufnik's beautiful choral work Let Me In, for which I scribbled the words, was premiered by Chanticleer in San Francisco in the spring and is now out on CD. In July, Piers Lane's Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville gave the first performance of Sins of the Fathers, my words-and-music project about Liszt, Wagner and Cosima (it's not quite Lisztomania, but hey...). Hungarian Dances with Bradley Creswick and Margaret Fingerhut at Potton Hall and Old Swinford Hospital School, was huge fun - and I'm happy to say we're taking it to the Buxton Festival next year.

A reading of A Walk Through the End of Time - my Messiaen play - at East Sheen Library bore fruit: an enthusiastic impresaria was present, liked it and is currently arranging a new lease of life for it, featuring two superb actors - Susan Porrett and Patrick Drury - as well as the considerable massed talents of Viv McLean (piano), Tamsin Waley-Cohen (violin), Matthew Hunt (clarinet) and Gemma Rosefield (cello), starting with a showcase concert at Bob Boas's central London salon on 9 January. More news soon, I hope.

And in case you wondered - yes, I am writing another novel. Slowly. It's different. It's historical. It's unbelievable. And it's all true.

Dear readers, we live in interesting times. I hope that we can make them turn out for the best. Please raise a glass as our stars of stage and page step forward and lead us in a rousing, celebratory Danish Xmas song. Now, come on, everyone - we have to dance round the tree. Did I mention that? No? Well, we do...

Not Messiah

2011-12-19T16:31:00.001Z

It's not Handel's Messiah. It's a playlist from a very naughty music-lover.

I've been listening to the thing again - it's hard to avoid it at this time of year - and OK, yes, it does have that certain je ne sais quoi. It's a great piece. He wrote a good old tune or several. But just every so often, wouldn't you like to hear something else instead, or even as well? Leave aside obvious substitutes like Bach’s Christmas Cantata, Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols and much nice music by John Rutter; as for The Nutcracker or The Four Seasons – Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi are great, but enough’s enough. My list features some seasonal music that rarely gets a look in, having been shouldered aside by wall-to-wall Hallelujah Choruses.

Elizabethan Christmas music

If ideal Christmas music is decorative, celebratory and sumptuous on one hand, and intimate, domestic and fun on the other, then the Elizabethan era had it all. Families with space and cash tended to be musically literate in those days, and they might have gathered on winter evenings to sing madrigals or play music for viol consort. Red Byrd and the Rose Consort of Viols recorded their selection of Elizabethan Christmas Music in 1989, complete with a quirky attempt at ‘authentic’ pronunciation. Composers include William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Tomkins and more.

Recommended recording: Elizabethan Christmas Anthems, Red Byrd, Rose Consort of Viols, AMON RA CD-SAR46

Praetorius: Renaissance Christmas Music

Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) was a Lutheran from North Germany. His works are characterised by rich and sympathetic choral writing, similar at times to his greatest contemporary, Claudio Monteverdi – but Praetorius’s music remains rooted in Lutheran chorales, so the effect is gentler, simpler and more streamlined than that of the musical lion of Venice. His most often-performed work is probably the gorgeous carol ‘Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen’, but I’ve picked a recording of some Christmas-friendly choral pieces that doesn’t include it.

Recommended recording: Viva Voce, BIS, BISCD1035

Bach transcriptions for piano

The term ‘Baroque’ was originally coined to evoke something extravagant, irregular, complex and extraordinary. If you enjoy musical pearls at their most baroque in every sense, then try transcriptions for solo piano of movements from Bach’s cantatas, violin works and concertos, made by some of the finest virtuoso composer-pianists of the 19^th and early 20th centuries. There are hundreds, and Hyperion has been releasing a substantial series of CDs of them. The latest disc features transcriptions by Saint-Saëns and Isidor Philipp: life-enhancing, high-spirited triumphs of virtuosity that would spice up any Christmas.

Recommended recording: Bach transcriptions, Vol 10: Saint-Saëns and Isidor Philipp, Nadejda Vlaeva (piano), Hyperion CDA76873.

Liszt: Weinachtsbaum (Christmas Tree Suite)

Franz Liszt’s bicentenary is nearly over, but not quite. It’s a good excuse to seek out his Christmas Tree Suite, a set of 12 short piano pieces based on carols and lullabies, including ‘In dulci jubilo’ and ‘Adeste Fideles’. Written in 1866, they are tender, charming and lyrical, far indeed from the barnstorming heft of the Hungarian Rhapsodies and the romantic tumult of his B minor Sonata. Instead, this is Liszt as besotted grandfather: he dedicated the suite to his five-year-old granddaughter, Daniela. Coincidentally, her mother – Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, who later eloped with Wagner – had been born on Christmas Eve in 1837.

Recommended recording: Alfred Brendel (piano), Regis RRC1378

Saint-Saëns: Christmas Oratorio

This is a real buried treasure. Possessing extraordinary gifts himself, maybe the 23-year-old Saint-Saëns, writing in 1858, also expected much from his performers: the solo parts are extremely demanding to sing, which might be why the ten-movement work doesn’t pop up often enough. Involving chorus, five soloists, organ and a small orchestra with prominent role for the harp, it strikes a lovely balance between Bach-inspired churchliness and the boulevardier charm that came so easily to Saint-Saëns. Christmas with the French bourgeoisie at its tasty best.

Recommended recording: Noël, French Romantic Music for Christmas – Bachchor Mainz, L’Arpa Festante München/Ralf Otto, Deutsche HM 88697366582

Honegger: Une cantate de Noël

The Swiss-born Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) was among Gabriel Fauré’s last pupils at the Paris Conservatoire. This short Christmas cantata was his final composition and has proved one of his most popular – not that that is saying much, since his works remain shamefully neglected. Written in 1953, it captured something of the spirit of the times. The opening section, on the words ‘De profundis clamavi’, seems a postwar evocation of an existential ‘dark night of the soul’. But from there the music opens out, as if candlelit by the succession of carol fragments that flicker through the musical fabric, weaving a spell of increasing enchantment. Combining texts in French and German, it’s perhaps a message of hope for lasting peace.

Recommended recording: James Rutherford (baritone), Robert Court (organ), Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum, Dean Close School Chamber Choir, BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales/Thierry Fischer, Hyperion CDA67688

Messiaen Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus

Messiaen’s most famous piano work – 20 ‘regards’, or meditations, on the image of Baby Jesus – includes a movement entitled ‘Noël’, but there is far more to this pianistic tour-de-force than that; more, too, than the vivid colours, crunchy textures and dizzying intricacies of the French composer’s unmistakeable style. Messiaen, a devout Catholic, wrote these astonishing pieces for Yvonne Loriod, whom he later married: she was a virtuoso pianist whose abilities inspired him to new heights of invention. His passion for her, for God and for music unite in a kind of mystical celebration that has rarely been matched. Super-demanding yet also super-rewarding, Messiaen’s music can cast Christmas in a whole new light.

Recommended recording: Steven Osborne (piano), Hyperion CDA67351/2

Piazzolla: Cuarto Estaciones Portenas (Four Seasons of Buenos Aires)

Who needs Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons when you can have Astor Piazzolla’s? The Argentinian composer, who would have been 90 this year, studied in Paris with the eminent professor Nadia Boulanger. He aspired to haut-classical grandeur, but Boulanger spotted that his heart lay in the music of his homeland and advised him to go home to Buenos Aires and explore it. His personal sound-cocktail mingles sophisticated classical expertise with the sultry flavour of the tango. His Four Seasons were inspired by Vivaldi’s; the ‘Winter’ Tango is a wonderful example of vintage Piazzolla.

Recommended recording: Tianwa Yang (violin), Nashville Symphony Orchestra/Giancarlo Guerrero, Naxos 8572271

Elgar: A Christmas Greeting

A gentle parlour song accompanied by a piano and two violins, this is the most intimate of all these Christmas suggestions: a setting by Elgar of a poem by his wife, Alice. It seems to conjure a cosy and very British type of Christmas in its domestic, hearthside greeting from one partner to the other and back again. And it is heartrendingly Elgarian, with those wonderful arched melodic contours and sense of yearning characteristic of his finest music.

Recommended recording: Worcester Cathedral Choir, Donald Hunt (conductor), Jeremy Ballard (violin), Robin Thurlby (violin), Keith Swallow (piano), Hyperion CDA66271/2

MacMillan: Veni, veni, Emmanuel

James MacMillan’s percussion concerto, taking its title from the medieval plainchant for Advent on which it’s based, was written for Dame Evelyn Glennie in 1991-1992. It is possibly the celebrated Scottish composer’s biggest hit, clocking up hundreds of performances. Structured in one arch-shaped movement, it lasts some 25 minutes, fills with mesmerising rhythmic trickery and marvellously imagined noises, with percussion instruments both pitched and unpitched, from vibraphone to cowbells. Impress your Christmas guests with your contemporary music savviness by playing it full blast.

Recommended recording: Evelyn Glennie (percussion), Scottish Chamber Orchestra /James MacMillan, RCA 828766428520

Candide for Sunday afternoon

2011-12-18T14:19:00.002Z

Something to help cheer up anyone who is left on their own for reasons beyond their control on a cold winter afternoon just before Christmas: Bernstein's Candide, live on Broadway, from 2005. Complete, right here. Marin Alsop conducts, Thomas Allen is Dr Pangloss, Paul Groves is Candide, Kristen Chenoweth is Cunegonde, Patti LuPone is the Old Lady. Actually it'll probably cheer you up even if you haven't been left on your own for reasons beyond your control. Enjoy. Let's make our garden grow.

Farewell, Cesaria Evora

2011-12-18T08:38:00.000Z

And now it's the wonderful, wonderful Cesaria Evora's turn to move on to the great concert hall in the sky.... (What's going on? Why are so many great people so busy dying this week?) Read her obituary from The Guardian here.

This is her most famous number: 'Sodade', a live performance in Paris, 2004. It reminds me intensely of my sister, whose great favourite Evora was. Claire died of ovarian cancer in 2000, aged 45. Posting this today in memory of them both.

Friday Historical: Claudia Muzio sings 'Ombra di nube'

2011-12-16T08:40:00.001Z

Era il ciel un arco azzurro di fulgor;
Chiara luce si versava sul mio cuor.
Ombra di nube, non mi offuscare;
Della vita non velarmi la beltà.
Vola, o nube, vola via da me lontan;
Sia disperso questo mio tormento arcan.
Ancora luce, ancora azzurro!
Il sereno io vegga per l'eternità!

Please read this wonderful post by Aprile Millo about Claudia Muzio.