The Tuskegee airmen

On 20th January, the whole world celebrated when Barack Obama was sworn in as President. It’s a historic moment : whatever may happen in the next 4 or 8 years, its significance cannot dim.

Many years ago, in my father’s final illness, he was admitted to a nursing home, sharing a room with a tall old gentleman. The old man could no longer speak, but had dignity and presence, a real "officer type", his back held straight even though he needed full time help. My father was still able to talk a bit at this stage and whispered in admiration: “Tuskegee airman !”

The Tuskegee airmen were a group of black Americans who volunteered for the US Air Force in WW2. Since the military was rife with racism, they fought two battles, abroad and at home with the Air Force administration. Yet they didn’t buckle and served with honour. Read the book “322^nd Fighter Group” by Chris Bucholtz. Here’s a link to the abstracthttp://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&id=9WYFAQJbybkC&dq=tuskegee+airmen&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=5jsUmCt3pX&sig=yFWev1tDg7KNMa3OzBI4sNctysQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA6,M1

or go to books.google and search on “Tuskegee airmen bucholtz” the one with a picture. There‘s more, too, spread all over the net. Booklist :

http://www.tuskegeeairmen.org/uploads/booklist.pdf

The old airman had a wonderful wife, who came every day and stayed til the evening, looking after him and my father, too, out of the goodness of her heart. Even in her late 70’s she was still a beauty – they must have been a stunning couple. After the airman’s death, and my father’s, I decided to track down the old man’s story. It was even more remarkable than heroism in battle.

In 1945, there’d been a “mutiny” at Freeman Field airbase in Indiana. After serious harassment, the black officers stood up for their rights to enter the Officers’ Mess but were arrested and court martialled. It was a small enough protest but led to the desegregation of US forces, and contributed to the civil rights movement. So today Barack Obama sits in the White House, his place earned by the struggle of thousands before him. Read Lt Col James C Warren’s book, Tuskegee Airmen’s Mutiny at Freeman Field. http://www.tuskegee.com/ Amazon carries it now, but I bought my copy direct from Lt Col Warren who was so helpful and friendly to me, a total stranger.As I was writing this up, I discovered that Lt Col Warren is still around, and was invited to the Inauguration! So there is some good in this world. For more on the "Obama Effect" and black pride, read the other posts on this blog under "Africa" and "Ghana". ! Read the post "Ghana goes gay for Obama" - great music clips and a bit of background why it means so much to all of us, Ghanaian or not.

Hamlet unseen

So we think we "know" Shakespeare because we were force fed it at school and can quote phrase after phrase (Alas poor Yorick, get thee to a nunnery, etc etc etc). But it's not the same as really experiencing Shakespeare up close. On 18 January there was a very special production at the Questors Theatre in Ealing, west London – Hamlet performed in the way that actors in Shakespeare's own time would have presented it. It was completely different – raw, direct, vital.

In Shakespeare's time, printed texts were limited and few had access to complete scripts. Actors were given their lines with a 3-word cue before each of their speeches. They had no idea who would give their cue or how long the interval would be. They had a short Platt or plot, which gave some detail to stage action and the general direction of the narrative but apart from that they were on their own. In this performance, the cast were called together and sworn not to refresh their memories by reading the play or watching films. As in Shakespeare's time, they didn't rehearse together until an hour before the performance. The result ? Hamlet as a "new" experience, edgy, almost improvisational, but fresh.

What fascinated me was the way it threw focus not on illusion of narrative, but on the very process of acting. Since film, we have pseudo realism aplenty, and forget how much art there is in acting. How does a person enter into the spirit of a character who may be very different from himself ? How does he/she express deeper feelings that might not be in the script but can be intuited from how the part relates to the others ? This cast was alert. listening, thinking, feeling, relating what they were doing to what was happening around them. Some of the acting was so natural that the player seemed transformed into the role. For example, Claudius the King. He's a murderer, yet Simon Thomas, who isn't, makes him a rounded, compelling figure. This King has a history – what went on before the action happened ? He's won the queen's love , and he's crippled with anguish, so he's not a simple bad guy. You want to know him better, how he came to where he is. Similarly, Rachel Power as Queen Gertrude keeps us in suspense – just how much was she culpable ? Her love for her son shines through his "madness". As Hamlet himself, Mark Fitzgerald slipped back into "modern" accent but that was good - his Hamlet is all the more convincing as a contempprary figure. There are many real-life Hamlets around these days, and the dilemma is universal.

In the small theatre, audience and players are so close that there's an extra layer of intimacy. People may only be a metre from each other, but they inhabit different spheres. That's why doing the first three Acts of Hamlet was such an inspired idea : the play within a play reminds us life and artifice interact on many levels. Hamlet is using the troupe to force a reaction from the King and Queen. He's pretending to be mad to lull their suspicions. They don't know what game he's playing. We all read the script at school, but being up close and personal like this is completely different. In this kind of performance, anything can happen : we participate almost as much as the actors do. What a rewarding experience - I enjoyed it so much !

Stockhausen - Inori and Hymnen

A “formula composition”, said Stockhausen, was one where a basic idea generated ever expanding forms. Stockhausen’s Harmonien, for example, morphs through different instruments and ensembles. Inori is an extension of Mantra, a dialogue for two pianos. The same basic concept applies, where ideas are passed between performers, examined and passed on for further development. Perhaps all music stems from similar basics, but with Stockhausen, the process is drawn out, so it can actually be witnessed in operation. Inori is full of incident, descriptive and eventful. It’s music that begs for film – if only Stockhausen had written it for cinema! Here, two mime artists mount a platform and act out the “conversation”. Kathinka Pasveer was Stockhausen’s muse, so with Alain Louafi, we were getting as authentic an event as possible. Despite the crisp playing of the BBC Symphony Orchestra under David Robertson, who has a real affinity for Stockhausen, Inori is drawn out rather long, a conceptual experience rather than wholly musical.

Even more conceptual was Hymnen. Total darkness in the Barbican Hall, only a projected circle of light at the top of the stage. Was this a symbol of the moon or just a circle of light, like a spotlight without performer ? That’s why Hymnen works so well, for me, anyway. It is a game of illusion, provoking myriad different interpretations. There aren’t any performers as such. The music materializes invisibly, projected from electronic mixes at the sound desk. But what do these sounds signify? We hear snatches of anthems like Deutschland über Alles. Obviously, Stockhausen was no nazi. Perhaps he’s recreating very early memories, for the sound is distorted, fragmented, incomplete. We‘re confronted with our own assumptions by what this music “means”. We forget that the words were written in 1841 and the music is in fact by Haydn. When we listen, we’ve added our own modern connotations. Similarly, Stockhausen throws in snatches of what we recognise as “God Save the Queen”. That, too, has a past life of its own, disassociated from present meaning. Stockhausen then skewers that idea by throwing in the Internationale and The Star Spangled Banner for good measure. They are too well embedded in the music to be simple commentaries on politics and power.

Are they “music” at all ? The electronic fragmentation dominates the narrative, such as it is, so the hymns are heard through a filter of unreality. It’s like playing with the dial on a long wave radio, catching indistinct snatches of sound from distant radio stations. Somewhere, someone is listening to a “real” programme, but all you hear, fiddling around with the dials, is what floats around in space on sound waves. Two very different aspects of “listening”. And what are we actually listening to? Concrete music or particles of sound circulating through the ether like atoms, accidentally picked up in transmission?

For me, that’s why Hymnen works so well. It’s powerfully conceptual, turning the experience of listening on its head. What we “hear” comes from what we hear within our own minds as we filter what we “receive” and turn it into something we can make sense of. Or not, as the case may be. “We” are the performers, so to speak.

Yet again, Stockhausen, despite his reputation for being a control freak and autodictat, shows his subversive, humorous streak. The last part of Hymnen revolves around the sounds of someone snoring. It’s too regular to be anything but a mechanical reproduction, it’s not “real” snoring. Sometimes vast, somnolent chords crash in round the snoring, but it remains unchanged. Then snatches of Stockhausen’s voice are heard, cheerfully cajoling. Is he trying to wake the snorer ? No chance, this is tape loop, it can’t be changed that way.

Personally I loved Hymnen, and came out feeling refreshed. Not so most of the audience, many of whom left part way. But that, too, is the choice Stockhausen offers. Many of the anthems in this piece were played to captive audiences who had no chance to walk out.

see all the other Stockhausen posts on subject list at right - nearly every London concert this year. And if you really want provocation, look at the post on Bernd Alois Zimmermann';s Requiem for a Young Poet HERE Zimmermann did Hymnen years before Stockhausen and better.

See link below for the whole Stockhausen Day events and details of the BBC Broadcast on 31st Jan (online too)
http://www.musicalpointers.co.uk/reviews/liveevents09/StockhausenDay.html

Bruges-la-morte 2 Die tote Stadt

Hugues keeps locks of his first wife’s hair in a crystal box. It never changes, but Jane is getting older. She gets wrinkles, starts having new friends, goes shopping, doesn’t stay passive. So Hugues resolves to leave her. “You’re kidding” she mocks. She knows he can’t face “un second veuvage”. That night he goes home, filled with free floating anxiety. Death seems to have returned, “emmaillotée en linceul dans le brouillard.” The swans, so normally calm, are screaming. It’s a bad omen.

Soon it’s the Feast of the Holy Blood, when there’s a procession in the streets, Barbe, Hugues' pious old servant decorates the sombre mansion with masses of flowers, so it’s perfumed like a sacristry. Into the house pour sounds of bells from all round town. She’s exalted, as if in the presence of angels. Then Hugues rings, and says a lady is coming for dinner. Barbe is in shock, for she knows about her master’s secret “concubinage”. Then she leaves. Moments later Jane arrives. She wants to open the shutters but Hugues is afraid it will attract attention. Meanwhile, the procession draws close. People are singing, Hugues visualizes the ancient knights of Flanders, smells the incense, sees the massed crowd in the street, falling to their knees as the Reliquary approaches. Jane and Hugues sit together on the sofa. Then

La musique des serpents et des ophicléides monta plus grave,
charria la guirlande frêle,
intermittente, du chant des soprani.

Jane looks round the strange mansion with its portraits of Hugues' dead wife. Then she spots the crystal box with the dead woman’s hair, opens it and laughs. To Hugues, it’s a “profanation”. He’s never dared touch it, all these years. He goes berserk and strangles Jane with her own hair, wrapped around her neck. Jane’s cadaver turns pale, like his dead wife, long ago. Outside, the procession has passed, the streets are empty, silence descends once more.

Et Hugues continûment répétait: «Morte... morte... Bruges-la-Morte...» d'un air machinal, d'une voix détendue, essayant de s'accorder: «Morte... morte... Bruges-la-Morte...» avec la cadence des dernières cloches, lasses, lentes, petites vieilles exténuées qui avaient l'air--est-ce sur la ville, est-ce sur une tombe?--d'effeuiller languissamment des fleurs de fer!

This novel was the inspiration behind Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt, who used the pseudonym Paul Schott to write the libretto. I do wonder how Freudian it must have been to young Erich, utterly dominated by his father's personality. The tales differ, of course. But the original is worth reading because it’s so atmospheric and beautifully written. Long out of copyright, it can be read in full at

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14911/14911-8.txt

Interestingly, one of the features of the original novel is that it was illustrated by actual photographs, so the reality of the setting blends into the unreality of the narrative. Maybe there is a house on the quai du Rosaire. Maybe it’s still stuffed with 19th century furniture and dusty mirrors ? Maybe Hugues and Jane remain suspended in time and space in a different dimension ? After posting this I received a message from someone who knows Bruges well. There really is a Quai du rosaire and there really are ancient houses there. Uncanny! see
http://www.pbase.com/francist/image/2840795

Bruges-la-Morte 1 Die tote Stadt

C'était Bruges-la-Morte, elle-même mise au tombeau de ses quais de pierre, avec les artères froidies de ses canaux, quand avait cessé d'y battre la grande pulsation de la mer.

Bruges-the-dead, cut off from the sea, the waters in its canals turgid like the blood in dying arteries…a surreal city of silence. In the novel, by Georges Rodenbach, a man called Hugues Viane has lived in limbo since his wife died five years before. Nothing is changed, everything as she left it. He doesn’t even like to move the dust on the mirror. He wanders the empty streets, desolate, numb. Then one day he sees an apparition, a woman with the same hair, the same eyes…. Agitated, he follows her, losing her in the crowd, like clouds hiding the moon. Since his wife died, Hugues had feared music. Even the wheezing, asthmatic strains of a street accordion reduced him to tears. In this city of church bells and organs, Sundays were hell. At last he sees the woman again. She’s the exact image of his wife “Le miroir vit”.

Jane is a dancer, she lets him set her up in a silent apartment where he stares mutely at her, wanting her never to change. He dresses her up in his dead wife’s clothes. “I look like an old portrait” she says, innocently. In the novel the quasi-religious kinkiness is implicit. “En cette Bruges catholique surtout, où les moeurs sont sévères!..... À tous les coins de rue, dans des armoires de boiserie et de verre, s'érigent des Vierges en manteaux de velours, parmi des fleurs de papier qui se fanent,tenant en main une banderole avec un texte déroulé, qui de leur côté proclament: «Je suis l'Immaculée.» Chapter 6 is particularly evocative of the city and its mysteries. The prose flows like a journey through the streets, through the widower’s soul. He has “une âme grise, de la couleur de la ville”. Spring comes, and Easter, then winter descends once more. Read Chapters 10 and 11 too, like poetry. Hugues wants to become like the towers that stand immobile, frozen above the city, as if suspended in the time of Memling. He wanders in at the end of Mass where the priest is talking about death. Hugues is anguished, torn between his need for Jane and his fear of damnation. To be continued.....

Stephen Hough's blog

Stephen Hough has started a blog on the Telegraph :
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/stephen_hough

It's worth reading - he has a good mind and of course he can play piano, too. The print press doesn't know how to handle blogs. Readership is going online so naturally the dominance of print is declining. How to deal with this ? One way is to copy the idiotic "messageboard"style on online editions. Not long ago one of the big papers ran a poll on whether the Serbian secret service killed Jill Dando (a TV star). No evidence needed, anyone can vote. Once upon a time there were things like forensics, detective work and the judicial system. No more! And the paper wonders why its readership is rubbish?

Stephen Hough shows that smarting up may be the answer. Fundamentally there's no difference between a regular column and a blog. Online does not have to mean dumbed down ! Stephen Hough will be performing several times at the Proms 2009 so please follow further posts on him on this blog - click on "proms 2009" or "Stephen Hough" on the list oflabels on the right. Each year I listen to nearly every Prom and have been writing them up for years. Last year on this blog I covered 45 ! So please bookmark thgis blog, subscribe and keep coming back. Not too much dumbed down here, either.

Erich Korngold's goose feast

In 1919, Austria had just lost a war and an empire. Vienna was plunged into austerity. Then Erich Korngold was invited to a party at which was served a pre-war luxury – roast goose and goose liver paté! As a thank-you young Korngold left the room for a moment and returned with a complete song, with piano accompaniment, which he'd whizzed up in the ante-room. Not a fool, young Korngold (he wrote the poem, too).


Die Gansleber im Hause Duschnitz

"To celebrate this day with you and contribute a little song,
I appear quickly on the spot as a houseguest in the
Duschnitz' night hotel, and throw on my best clothes and shout:
"Long may they live, the happy married couple on their
fortieth anniversary!"

"And while I'm speaking of wishes, without hesitating at all
I'd like to mention a few of my own.
I don't want to offend anyone, but I wish that, speaking of
your heating system, you wouldn't be stingy with the coal.
Otherwise, there's a certain danger of catarrh...."

"But this sort of wish is very small compared to this one:
hope that sometime again in my life I'll encounter such
a goose liver, and such a roast goose along with it. Because
a goose liver like this is a wondrous thing and gives any
dinner party an entirely, entirely different sort of splendor!"

"When it's browned, when it's crisp and crackly --- anyone
whose heart doesn't laugh for joy deserves, for such
baseness, to be forced off to bed and made to stay awake
all night with chattering teeth!"

"Oh no, I don't want to be one of those people. So I promise
you ladies and gentlemen: while I'm waiting for the Golden
Wedding (fifty years' anniversary) I hope to eat many
thousands of such goose livers!"

Now you know why I'm off to Korngold's Die tote Stadt at Covent Garden next week.

Henze - Der junge Lord DVD

Just released - Hans Werner Henze's Der Junge Lord. It's the 1968 production that's been around on audio forever but now on DVD.

The visuals are good for setting context - small town, small minds, stiff cardboard scenery, characters strutting about presenting a public front.

Suddenly an English Lord materializes in this milieu where they're always slipping into French. Foreign means good unless it's "too" foreign". The Lord has black servants! The Lord does everything differently. The locals veer from hate to servility.

Then one day the Lord's nephew appears and there's an elaborate ball. The young lord is a boorish lout but the locals ape everything he does thinking it's fashion. Note verb. Local beauty is engaged to marry him, thanks to the machinations of her wealthy aunt. As they dance, the young lord gradually goes nuts, rips off his fancy clothes and reveals himself - an ape !

The visuals add a lot. The young lord, the Old Lord's secretary and the beauty's real boyfriend all have grotesque sideburns and hair dyed vile shades of apricot. A hint ? The glory of this opera though is the way Henze writes music in cross currents that cut diagonally across each other - not layers but disturbing, unsettling counterpoint. Yet it's so well woven it's not jagged until the end when pretence can no longer be sustained. The chorus are particularly well written, many voices blending, individuals lost in a mass, but not an organized mob. There's a lot of Henze himself in the English (old) Lord but he doesn't despise the townsfolk, despite their credulity.

It's a lovely mixture of ham and high drama. Edith Mathis glows as Luise, her Barbie doll helmet of a hairdo. Donald Grobe is Wilhelm, her worthy lover. They are so sweet, you could squeak ! This is Young Frankenstein long before Mel Brooks. And Frankenstein is perhaps the apt image. The ape sings divine high tenor, almost as angelic as a counter tenor. What has the English Lord been up to ? and for how long ? Libretto by Ingeborg Bachmann.

Brahms EXULTS, facing down death

Hugo Wolf, who eked a subsistence from music journalism, detested Johannes Brahms. "The true test of a composer", he told someone, "is this : Can he exult? Wagner can exult, Brahms cannot ".

The death of Clara Schumann, and his own impending final illness focussed Brahms's mind sharply. The result was one of the most moving cycles in the whole song repertoire, Vier ernste Gesänge, the Four Serious Songs.

For texts, the grumpy old atheist turned again to the Bible. But note how he doesn't revert to pious Biedermeier sentimentality. Death reduces all to nothing. "Mensch hat nichts mehr denn, das Vieh". Status and material possessions are vanity. Like beasts, we all wind up in the same place, as dust. The world is filled with the dispossessed, oppressed by those in power.

Then the first transition : O Tod, goes the baritone. Some singers sing this with such dark majesty, your heart stops for a moment, while the word resonates. But note, Brahms switches from sonority to brittle, lean "i" sounds that scuttle forward : "wie bitter bist du?". The piano becomes pensive, reflective. If existence is struggle, might the acceptance of death be release ? Listen to Alexander Kipnis, powerful and tender in turn :




Then, the next big transition. In this final song, Brahms again chooses texts that refer to oppression and suffering, but now making the connection back to the fundamental values that give life meaning. Being able to sing like an angel means no more than being a klingende Schelle (hollow tinkling cymbal). Even "charity" and material good works mean nothing.

Then, Brahms takes a sudden leap into another plane. "Wir sehen jetzt durch einen Spiegel in einem dunkeln Worte.... This is the breakthrough, the flash of transcendent insight. All that really has ever mattered is love. The English translation, Faith, Hope and Charity is pretty feeble, for this "love" is infinitely more profound - respect for self, for others, goodwill and dignity - the opposite of oppression, the antidote to the ills of the world). Brahms turns a pious homily into something defiantly radical, universal. At last, Brahms exults!

Brahms has penetrated the meaning of life that vanquishes death. The most profound performances of the last part of this final song positively glow. Goerne in particular has made this cycle his trademark, for he has the flexibility to loosen the register and colour his singing with a sense of heightened, almost unworldly exaltation. Quite a feat for a bass baritone, so forgive Kipnis if he doesn't quite lift off in this song :


Hanno Muller-Brachmann's concert at the Wigmore Hall. I suspect it wasn't his day and he can do better :

http://www.musicalpointers.co.uk/reviews/liveevents09/M%C3%BCller-BrachmannSchiff.html

Giacinto Scelsi alternative reality

Nice, sheltered Alice is sitting with her boring sister by a river when suddenly a rabbit runs past. But not any rabbit. This one wears clothes, walks and splutters "I'm late ! I'm late!" while looking at his watch. Suddenly reality ceases to mean anything. Alice seizes the moment and chases the rabbit down the tunnel......

That sums up how it feels to to discover Giacinto Scelsi. Of course Alice could simply have observed the rabbit's outward features and drawled "Odd bunny, eh ? neurotic, middle aged, urban" and stayed, cocooned and half asleep on the sunny riverbank. Instead she leaps out of "her" reality and enters a weird new dimension.

Until I realized I had to forget everything I thought I knew about singing, I couldn't get into Scelsi's Art song. Better to have approached him via some other route (as I later discovered). There are three "songs", Sauh, Taigarù and Hô. Say the words together like a chant and hear how they flow into one. Then imagine the chant stretched out, varied, over an hour. Just like Alice's rabbit, Scelsi's universe operates on completely different concepts of time and connection.


Scelsi was a mystery. Even though he died barely 20 years ago, there's little information available about him. He's managed to slip through the cracks of modern society where everything seems under surveillance. So here's a link to a very useful article by someone very much on the ball. Read it, this is good writing, no mental blinkers.

Also read the other posts on this blog - SOME NEW ! -one of the few places on the net where you can find out stuff about this composer and those he influenced. http://www.musicalcriticism.com/recordings/cd-scelsi-chukrum-1008.shtml

and Peter Graham Woolf's Scelsi obit from The Independent
http://musicalpointers.co.uk/reviews/cddvd08/Feldman&Scelsi.html


And here is a free download !

http://soundpedia.com/listen/Marianne+Schuppe/Art+Song+Of+Giacinto+Scelsi:+Incantations

Sleeping with Sibelius ?

I had another lucid dream. This time I remembered more. It was an extended song cycle which started out as recited narrative, gradually morphing into different forms, like piano/voice, voice with different types of accompaniment, songs without voice but solo instruments (predominantly cello, violin and clarinet) Each time the nature of the text changed, sometimes poems, sometimes prose. Very fluid. Next time I'll have to sleep with Sibelius (the software programme) and notate !

Vienna Boys Choir sing in Chinese

This will make you grateful for a good honest dose of Cantopop ! VBC sing Mou li Hua, The Jasmine Song. Aiya! as they'd say in the vernacular. This clip is better than the other one in circulation. There's also a clip of a big Chinese star singing before Viennese choir and orchestra in the Goldener Saal.

But at least they are trying, and recognize that most of the world isn't Austro-German. Which is a lot more to their credit than most in this increasingly anglophone monoculture.

Quasthoff and Paul Robeson

Not long ago, Thomas Quasthoff started a recital with a ramble about why he was singing Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death in German. Since that cycle is standard repertoire for bass baritone someone had better tell all the other guys who've been singing it in Russian for years! Specifically, TQ singled out Robert Holl who had sung it and the even more demanding Shostakovich Michelangelo songs the previous week. Holl doesn't speak Russian as far as I know, but he was apparently extremely good (as one would expect from a singer of his stature). So why the fuss ? So much for TQ's theory. Here is a clip of TQ singing in English.

And then a clip of Paul Robeson singing the same song. It's so deeply felt. "Ol' Man River...what does he care if the land ain't free...." This is visceral, powerful. It's much deeper than what's just in the words, a whole lot more than a cute tune.

"Let me go way from the Missisippi, let me go way from white man boss". That's what the song means : "Ol' Man River, he must know something but he don't say nothing". Robeson is the real article. Singing has a lot less to do with language than with conviction.



For more on Paul Robeson's remarkable achievements and troubled, persecuted life, see Roger Thomas's review of Martin Bauml Duberman's magnificent and definitive 804 page biography: Paul Robeson. First published in 1989, this was reissued as a paperback in 2007. See http://www.alcala.demon.co.uk/robeson.pdf

Beethoven lights up the New Year

The Leipzig Gewandhaus traditional New Year's Eve concert transferred to the Barbican, London, for New Year's Day. Major logistics, shifting a big orchestra, two big choirs, four soloists, choirmaster and conductor ! But it was well worth the effort. This was vivacious, punchy stuff, the perfect antidote to the scary forecasts for the coming year.

As Beethoven said, "O Freunde, nicht diese Töne ! Sondern lasst uns angeneherme anstimmen und freudenvollere". ie Let's do happy !

This being a New Year Gala, the mink coat brigade were out in force. It's cold between underground car park and cloakroom ! But it was also musically a cause for celebration. Some marriages work better than others, however nice the people involved may be. Chailly and the Leipzigers are a match made in heaven, each inspiring the best in the other, and they are getting better together as time goes by.

It's good to hear Beethoven's 9th as audacious and punchy as this. Once, this was shocking "new music" because it integrated song and symphony, using voices to clarify the meaning in the music. The message was so important to Beethoven that he made sure references to it pop up throughout the symphony even in the abstract voices of the instruments. No one who has heard the final movement can be in any doubt what Beethoven believes – he's saying it over and over. The loose translation in the Barbican booklet puts it well. "Let thy magic bring together all whom earth-born laws divide". It's as relevant today as it was in 1823.

Snippets of the melody in the finale bubble up irrepressibly throughout the symphony, even in the gloom of the first movement. By highlighting the instrumental detail, Chailly shows how Beethoven moves from solo to tutti, from individual to community. He puts the trumpets up on their own, even above the timpani. So two small instruments make sounds that soar out over the tumult, heralding change to come.

Also interesting is the way this approach brings out the character of the small instrumental groups – the double basses, the flutes, the winds. Each is distinctive, like a voice without words – a parallel to the way voices are used as instruments in the last, gorgeous movement. Even then, the trombones operate on their own, reminding us that even in large groups, individual liberty must never be lost. Fabulously muscular, assertive playing .

Outstanding was Hanno Müller-Brachmann, the baritone. Watch this guy, he really is good. I first heard him in Mahler's 8th in Berlin with Boulez, where I was seated so far from the male voices that his was the only one to stand out. Listen to the recording where the balance is good. He's still outstanding, and you hear the nuance in his voice. He's doing a Lieder recital on the 8th (Elvis's birthday) at the Wigmore Hall. Pianist is Andras Schiff which shows how well young Hanno is regarded. He is a hunk, too, with dimples even.

Zum neuen Jahre !

Mit herzlichen Gluckwünschen ! Here is a poem by Eduard Mörike :

Wie heimlicher Weise
ein Engelein leise
mit rosigen Füßen
die Erde betritt,
so nahte der Morgen.
Jauchzt ihm, ihr Frommen,
ein heilig Willkommen!
ein heilig Willkommen!
Herz, jauchze du mit!

Mörike 's poem was set by Hugo Wolf. It starts with sounds like droplets of ice, melting, or perhaps the twinkling of snowflakes. The descending patterns of triplets evoke the cherub descending from heaven to earth. The cherub's little feet are bare - he doesn't feel the cold, he's an angel ! He's bringing greetings from Heaven to Earth. I couldn't find a picture of cherubic trotters but did find a triplet of trotters. To 19th century people, they signified hope. Hams, bacon and sausages to come, they won't starve in the coming year.