English Song is alive and well

Susan Bicklery and Iain Burnside's recital at the Wigmore Hall on 2nd May proved English Song is alive and well. 
 
"Everyone’s heard Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, even if they don’t realize it. He wrote the music for the films Four Weddings and a Funeral, Far from the Madding Crowd and Murder On the Orient Express. He embraces jazz, cabaret and show tunes enthusiastically, yet he studied with Pierre Boulez for two years. The four Dream Songs (1986) are to poems by Walter de la Mare, catching the poet’s delicate magic. “Elf-light, bat-light, touchwood-light…in a dream beguiling in a dream of wonders in a world far away”......

Bennett, though, isn’t by any means the only English composer writing art song. There are many others less well known but very good indeed. Bickley and Burnside chose a small sample from the iconic NMC Songbook. NMC is an innovative, independent company, dedicated to promoting the best in modern British song. The NMC Songbook won the 2009 Gramophone award for Best Contemporary Recording. It’s a window on what’s happening in British music.Such a range of composers and styles! Diverse as the scene is, it’s definitely creative.

John White’s Houses and Gardens in the Heart of England sets the text of a tourist brochure. It’s hilarious, playing with the self consciously stunted Officialese. Bickley sings with mock solemnity, Burnside brings out the free flowing liveliness in the piano part. This song is so good it should be standard repertoire. Jeremy Dale Roberts (b 1934) Spoken to a Bronze Head is an elegiac contemplation of the passage of time, well paced and elegant. Julian Grant’s Know thy Kings and Queens is an exercise in downbeat humour, while in Brian Elias’s Meet me in the Green Glen, plangent lines recall plainchant. Richard Baker’s Lullaby pits jerky staccato piano against voice in brittle irony. Not a typical soothing lullaby : this baby fights back!"
 See the full review in Opera Today.
The English Song Weekend in Ludlow starts soon. BEST place for English Song! Above: Susan Bickley [Photo: Samantha Ovens]

Wake - opera about the Enschede disaster

On 13th May, the tenth anniversary of the Vuurwerkramp (fireworks disaster) that flattened part of the Dutch town of Enschede, the Nationale Reiseopera is presenting a new opera, Wake. The composer is Klaas de Vries (b 1944), and the libretto is by David Mitchell. Read more about it here on the Reiseopera site.  Great photos and synopsis. There is a longer clip on youtube, in Dutch, where the composer speaks.

"On a completely ordinary evening, somewhere high in a block of flats, nine disparate but interrelated stories of passion, reconciliation, humour, TV football, the pain of adolescence and infirmity of old age, are suddenly interrupted by an unspecified catastrophe that changes the lives of eighteen people forever. Are there words to bridge the gap between us, the survivors, and those we have lost? When we give a voice to memory and emotion, what comfort will they bring?"

It's fascinating because the opera deals with events so recent that lots of people are still traumatized. In his article, the librettist David Mitchell mentions a man who protested about the very idea of fact being turned into art. It's a genuine concern, which Mitchell and de Vries took seriously. "Every single line was weighed and weighted with care", says Mitchell.

Can any art reproduce trauma with dignity? Probably there's no way except though fact-based documentary, and even that can't get to grips with individual human grief.  No opera, or any work of art, can ever be "history". Even historians don't do "history". They're only accumulating data and assessing it, they're not producing facsimile. So any opera dealing with real events is its creators' response, and perfectly valid. Even an opera dealing with specifics isn't trapped in history because art is universal, and human.

Indeed, I sometimes think art is a therapeutic way of dealing with tragedy. When Primo Levi wrote about his experiences in the Holocaust, there was controversy.  More recently I watched Lu Chuan's Nanking : City of Love and Death (2009) currently in cinemas but available on DVD. It's about the Rape of Nanking in which 300,000 were killed in a smallish town in the space of a few weeks (millions more died in the rest of the war).  For many, it's catharsis, which is a good thing because it's important to face such things. But real knowledge is also traumatic.

Iris Chang, who wrote a popular book about Nanking, committed suicide. I understand. I spent years in the archives, talking to people, finding out things I wish i didn 't know.The film for me was depressing because it's so clean. No smells, no noise, no chaos, "not" reality. Most people are dispatched with a single bullet, dropping dead neatly. In any case, bullets cost money. Most people were killed cheaply, ie being crudely disembowelled. The scene where soldiers are seen being forced into the sea to drown happens in an orderly fashion. Yet  it wasn't soldiers who were killed this way but 3,000 terrified old folk and children. It wasn't quiet or orderly. Sometimes reality has to be sanitized so it can be made bearable.

Seat to street in 2.5 seconds

Alan Gilbert takes up at the New York Phil soon.  Although his parents played and play there, and he's well respected by musicians, the audience, who know better, reportedly ran out in droves when he conducted Martinu and Dvorak.  A very similar concert was welcomed in Berlin, but what do Germans know about music, as a certain famous blogger says. So to protect the public, the NY Phil has installed a special "Listener Speedy Exit Ramp" so patrons can exit the auditorium, seat to street in 2.5 seconds.

"The new ramp, which resembles an extremely fast escalator, will run from the middle of the hall, between Rows M and N, and ascend to an exit door at the loge level. Patrons will now be able to find themselves on Broadway and West 65th Street in record time. “They should be able to exit the building in a matter of seconds, outta there even before the first idiot yells “brava,” said a Philharmonic spokesperson."

“This ramp .......is connected to a state-of-the-art computerized ‘Schenker Sensor’, which collects all the pitch data in previous passages, collates it and then can accurately identify the arrival of the true tonic. It then sends an electric impulse that throws a switch—on goes the escalator and, presto-change-o—out goes your patron.”

Read more about this on John Adams's site, complete with technical diagrams

Monteverdi L'Orfeo Milan full broadcast

Full broadcast (no cuts, no intervals) of Monteverdi L'Orfeo on BBC Radio 3 online and on demand until Thursday afternoon UK time.  This is the production from Milan's Teatro La Scala in September 2009. Rinaldo Alessandrini conducts, but it's La Scala, so not quite the typical baroque ambience Monteverdi would have recognized. Still, it's visually stunning, elegant and classical in the true sense of the word (Robert Wilson).  Lots of still photos on the BBC site and two clips here. Singing a little uneven but some very beautiful momemts. Sara Mingardo and  Roberta Invernizzi lovely, Georg Nigl could be a bit higher toned.  I like the way Alessandrini gets the La Scala orchestra to sound vigorous and unpolished. It's still Verdi Monteverdi but enjoyable nonetheless. I don't know why the BBC gives a link to Naxos, very shallow work there. I've been so busy this week, but finally made the time to listen and enjoy.

Villazon's voice broken - Canning in the Sunday Times

It's sad to me when a singer blows it, even if it's one I didn't rave about in the first place. Read Hugh Canning in the Sunday Times on why Villazon's Voice is Broken.Yow. Enjoy reading before Rupert Murdoch cuts off his nose to spite his face and makes you pay to read his newspapers online.

As someone said to me the other night "David Cameron has balls, Gordon Brown has Ed Balls". Not that I necessarily agree but some people have more spark than others. .

Plenty more on this site about singers, composers, analytical and forthright views.. Search, and look at the labels and lists of posts on right.  This isn't "classical iconoclast" for nothing. I don't toe no party line. Keep coming back and subscribe, if you can handle different and genuinely sharp.

Szymanowski Focus Anderszewski Wigmore Hall 2

Piotr Anderszewski could hardly have chosen a better place for his Szymanowski Focus than the Wigmore Hall.  Szymanowski's never been "unknown". That's him seated in the middle with Arnold Bax on the right and Albert Roussel on the left.  Standing are Gregor Fitelberg, Fritz Reiner and Josef Szigeti. Several of them visited the Wigmore Hall in times past (the archives there must be a treasure trove)

Szymanowski's Metopes op 29 (1915). explores the same territory as his slightly later Myths, heard previously.  It's colourful mood music, recreating in abstract sound the composer's response to the Odyssey.  This is one of Szymanowski's best loved pieces. I learned it from Dennis Lee's good recording, but Anderszewski's more recent  CD was a vigorous  new approach. Szymanowski's still in post-Debussy dreams. Anderszewski's sense of structure makes one feel Szymanowski's reveries have purposeful direction.

Anderszewski emphasized the point by following Métopes with Robert Schumann's Märchenbilder,  with Henning Kraggerud as violinist.  These "fairy tale pictures" aren't literal: Schumann's creating impressions, long before Debussy, though of course in a different way.

Hearing Szymanowski's Songs of a Fairy Princess op 31 (1915) in this context shows how Szymanowski's fascination with fantasy was far more than lush reverie.  The texts are by the composer's sister Zofia, but the music is bizarrely alien. Arabia seen through imagined hashish dreams?  There's nothing tame about this ulullating legato, these strange leaps up and down scales.  Think Delibes' Lakmé condensed into six short songs.

In the first song, The Lonely Moon, the phrases cry out like imams calling the faithful to prayer, designed to carry over vast distances.  Perhaps this is intentional. These songs want to burst out of piano-song mode, though I like them this way because they're so unusual. For once, the Wigmore Hall seemed too small to hold them in.  In 1933, Szymanowski transcribed some of them for singer and orchestra.

Iwona Sobotka sings Songs of a Fairy Tale Princess like a force of nature. She has, and needs, strong breath control. Sobotka's vibrato is carefully modulated,  so her lines shimmer, as if infused with light and air.  Most of these texts refer to escape. In The Nightingale, for example, the poet wants a bird in her chest, not a heart, because birds can fly away and be free. Sobotka decorates the words with exquisite melismas and trills, but she knows that their spirit is deeper. In The Song of the Wave, Szymanowski catches the idea of surging movement, sparkling arpeggiatos dancing over rolling rhythm. The ocean is beautiful, but the sailor might drown.  Whether the singer is lover or Nereid, we don't know. But Sobotka sings ukołysałabym cię na wieczny sen with such feeling, you don't need to understand a word of Polish to sense what she means.

After the First World War and the upheavals that followed, fantasy became associated with escapist retrogression. But it's a mistake to assume that all fantasy music is backward-looking..On the contrary, artists have often used dreams, myths and fantasy to stimulate ideas the literal cannot grasp. That's one of the reasons the Greeks used myth in the first place. For Debussy, Wagner, Ravel and many others, exotic dreams open up new worlds.  Szymanowski's heady perfumes are progressive.  He's thinking forward, even when he's looking back.


This photo shows Szymanowski at the piano . It's the late 1920's - look at the modernist lampshade and the dapper cut of his suit. He understood that good art should be original, even when building on the past.  "Our aim is not yesterday but today and tomorrow", he said in 1927.

Ten years separate Szymanowski's String Quartet no 2 op 56 from his first, but he's advanced into new territory.  Polish motives invigorate this, particularly the second movement vivace scherzando. Yet this certainly isn't cliché folksiness, but far more sophisticated. Like Stravinsky (with whom Szymanowski has a lot in common), Szymanowski connects to a primeval spirit of folk culture, using it to generate new ideas. This duality of old and new sparks creative tension. A lively performance by the Belcea Quartet, making the image of "vibration" come to life. Please see my report on the first Anderszewski concert at the Wigmore Hall HERE) PLease also see lots more on Szymaowski onn this site incl the wonderful Boulez recording of the First Violin Concerto, the Third Symphony and Krol Roger,

Britten, Billy and Glyndebourne

Glyndebourne is staging its first Billy Budd, sixty years after it was written. Thereiin lies a story.  Here are two different articles on the background. More detailed, but an extremely good read: Richard Fairman in the Financial Times.  Shorter: The Guardian 

And then there's the wonderful quote Diane McVeagh found in Gerald Finzi's papers. "Britten is the Meyerbeer of our age", Finzi wrote, after the premiere of Billy Budd. He wasn't too comfortable with all those gay men.

(please see some of the things I've wriiten about Billy Budd HERE)
And also my reviwew of thew Glyndebourne production HERE

Glyndebourne Falstaff free download this weekend

Plush Opera are streaming the 2009 Glyndebourne production of Verdi Falstaff this weekend, 8th and 9th May. in full and for FREE if you sign up. Christopher Purves sings Falstaff, with Dina Kuznetsova, Tassis Christoyannis, etc with Vladimir Jurowski conducting.  It's the humorous Richard Jones production. HERE is the link.

It's part of  European Opera Days,  where companies all over Europe are mounting events to bring people to the opera who might not otherwise participate.  Quite interesting reading if you're into outreach and community projects.

Anderszewski Szymanowski Focus Wigmore Hall (1)

In the 1990's, by sheer chance, I walked in on the TV. Wonderful music, playing to an image of wheatfields, swaying endlessly in a breeze. It was the famous documentary about Karol Szymanowski that cemented the composer's reputation in this country. Until then, his name was associated with virtuoso piano works, compared unfavourably to Liszt or Chopin. The documentary made a case for the composer on a much grander scale, with a complex individual personality of his own.

Szymanowski was an urbane cosmopolitan semi-aristocrat who owned a huge estate in Tymoszowka in the Polish part of the Ukraine (hence the wheatfields). Like many aesthetes from Goethe to Debussy and Ravel, he was fascinated by exotic places, and travelled in the Near East, imbibing the opulent Romanticism that Edward Said analyses in Orientalism (a key work for understanding modern art and music).  After 1917, his world collapsed. Decades of war and Communism didn't favour his reputation, but now he can  be assessed anew.

Piotr Anderszewski is curating a special Szymanowski Focus over two days at the Wigmore Hall, London.  If you missed the first, get to the second, on Friday 7th May where the programme is even better.

In the first concert, Anderszewski bracketed Szymanowski with his contemporaries, Janáček and Bartòk. Szymanowski's String Quartet no 1 in C op 37 bears the hallmarks of the composer's distinctive style - extremely high tessitura floating over rhythmic repetitions, quirky summations ending abruptly, held in silence.  It's a relatively mature work, from 1917, and the Belcea Quartet performed it with real panache, a great opener for the first great Szymanowski fest in years. If Bartòk's op 1 String Quartet (1908) sounded surprisngly pedestrian in  this performance, it was perhaps because the Belcea had put so much into perfecting Szymanowski, which is at it should be.

A better comparison was Janáček's In the Mists (1912), which Anderszewski paced elegantly, catching the underlying tension, often overlooked. Janáček's nostalgia is laced with frustration., a yearning to go forwards while being held back.  It was a good choice to precede Szymanowski's Myths op 30 (1915), when Henning Kraggerud joined Andreszewski.  Their interplay intensified the double edged flow in these pieces where balance keeps shifting. The Fountains of Arethusa refers to a myth about a woman who turns into a spring to escape a man who then turns into a river. Fluid interchanges, not firm lines: gradually, though, violin and piano flow together . The other two parts of this piece, Narcisscus and Dryads and Pan extend the shimmering harmonic ideas, the feeling of double entities vibrating beside each other. For a moment, Kraggerud plays alone, so high and pure he almost goes off the scale. He even moves away from the piano. He's drawn back, however because the essence of these pieces is duality.

Like Debussy and Scriabin, the exotic appealed to Szymanowski because it favoured impressionistic colour. He turned, too, to Polish idioms, which for a man of his class was a significant statement. Słopiewnie (Word Songs) op 46b (1921), uses texts by Julian Tuwim, but they're idiosyncrasic, "invented" language, experimenting with words as sounds, flowing impressionistically.  No straightforward literal "folksiness", but rather an experiment with rhythms and intervals, as they flow in speech, combined with a completely unspeechlike legato which explodes with expressive freedom. Iwona Sobotka's coloratura dynamic lifts the songs onto a higher plane.  Szymanowski's soaring violins, again, the concept adapted to voice. She wasn't as note perfect as she can be, but she's very experienced in this repertoire. Her Songs of a Fairy Tale Princess, is wonderful, I can hardly wait to hear it on Friday.Here's the link to my review.  Please see also Jim Samson "Chasing Beauty".

Hanging us out to dry?

In this country, voter turn-out is low. Shame!  People don't know how fortunate they are to be able to vote at all.  A vote may not mean much in a flawed system but at least it's a chance for an individual to make a stand. We'll be hung out to dry, whatever happens, but at least in some small way we can make a mark.

Big majorities make governments cocky. At the last election a van covered in one party's flags was parked across the entrance of the polling station, in contravention of electoral rules. I protested and was threatened by the party members. "We are going to win anyway, whatever you do". And worse! When I approached the electoral officer, he looked so cowed that I couldn't bear to put him in a spot.. I protested direct to the party and got no reply. Being a coward, but also knowing the people involved, I didn't dare take it further. Some comfort, though, the seat, previously unshakeable, was lost.

Parties become arrogant and corrupt when they think they can get away with it. That's why votes matter even if they don't change a result. Being unsafe keeps parties on their toes. That's why they try to scare the rest of us into voting like sheep.  In theory, uncertainty makes them think through their policies more carefully. Though that didn't stop the invasion of Iraq.  That said, tomorrow I might change my principles and vote for the man who beat the last lot last time round. It turned out that he's a genuinely uncorrupt, hard-working man.  No expenses claims, good voting and attendance record, even asked a Question for me and did the homework. He is a sign that decent people still exist. Maybe it's irrational to think good individuals can change things, but I'll take a chance..Not many people have this kind of MP, or this kind of choice.

Tomorrow a friend is standing for election in a nearby seat. She's a good person, too, and conscientious. Besides, she listens to Szymanowski.  And of course the election has to be in the middle of the big Szymanowski fest at the Wigmore Hall.  Good Luck, anyway, J!

The Orphan 1929 - bilingual movie download

Many important Chinese movies are impenetrable to non-Chinese viewers, which is a pity, because some of these films are seriously good, and should be part of world film heritage.   Very unusually, especially for 1929, this silent, The Orphan was made with both Chinese and English subtitles. It's rollicking good fun, especially the final scene where the hero rescues the heroine from a dungeon, singlehandedly rounding up a gang of crooks with a rope, leaping from parapets. Bad guy gets trapped with the iguanas. Douglas Fairbanks Jr eat your heart out.

What's even more interesting is that the film is a historical record in itself.  Look at the opening sequence which shows  a traditional Chinese wedding in an upper-class household, complete with musicians, some of them children. The bride arrives in an elaborate palanquin, carried by retainers, and steps out, in a beautifully embroidered costume.  Since the film was obviously low budget, the film makers were using real, authentic costumes and sets. These would have been impressive enough at the time - today they would be treasured museum pieces. The wedding ritual is shown in detail.  It's realistic because the audience knew about Chinese weddings, and about wedding nights where bride and bridegroom have never met before. Though this is a movie, it's useful as an authentic resource on traditional customs. Notice how many of the people aren't actors, but ordinary folk.

Eventually mistreated bride runs away and attempts suicide by lying on railway tracks, but is rescued by  hero, a modern young dude with slicked-back hair, plaid tie, plus fours and a motorcar with four-digit license plate. He's the Young Master, whose family live in a "western" villa, with marble columns and staircases, with western wallpaper, though their furniture is mostly Chinese (and very posh). You can tell how modern they are, they have a wind-up gramophone and listen to jazz. Watch the sequence where mother and daughter "discuss" the music through visual images projected onto the gramophone horn. The singer isn't Al Jolson but a blacked-up Chinese !

The hero's family have status - Dad cleans his western trophies on the mantelpiece (too precious for the servants)  but they observe The Chinese New Year. Sis is seen eating dried lotus root candy (looks like a cookie but isn't.) They're playing Chinese chess. In an amazing scene, they go out and play at farming, with hoes and water carried in buckets by maids. Real Petit Trianon stuff which would have had the 1929  audience cackling with  laughter because they would have known what real farming was.A reminder that being rich and westernized doesn't stop you being stupid.

Houses like this were pretty common at the time, in fact a few survive today, like Sun Yat-sen's villa in Macau, where his daughter lived until she died only a few years ago, which is now a museum. Again, because this was a low-cost movie, they probably used a real house or modelled it on a typical villa of the period.  So study the detail. Look at the women's clothing and hairdos. The cut of their sleeves and the length of their skirts are typical of the period, you can date Chinese dress just like you can date western. The women wear their hair bobbed and crimped, just like western women of the time. The heroine's hair is authentically untamed, like a real woman, not a processed actress.

"Assistant Director" is White Rose Woo, the actress who plays the heroine Chun Mei. Evidently a "modern woman" despite the wimpy character.  People watching this movie knew about arranged marriages and the tragedies they caused. This film was an object lesson, told as entertainment, its real message not lost on its audience. Brides really did commit suicide. Chun Mei is rescued by the hero but at least she shows initiative and runs away. The movies were a medium in which liberated women could make a mark. Most were actresses, of course, but there were several other female directors. By her body language, White Rose Woo seems Chinese, not overseas Chinese, so it would be interesting to find out who she was. (In fact film is the only way to preserve body language, which really does vary between cultures and periods. Another reason why this film is a study resource)

Significantly, too, the English titles show that the film makers wanted to reach a wider audience, outside China itself.  The "Orator" is John Chow who also "storied" the text. That's a historical archive, too, a very rare example of China Coast English, which was a curious hybrid of Victorian formality filtered through Missionary school, but "Chinese" too, because it follows Chinese grammar which doesn't use as many non essentials as English. When Chun Mei rues her fate, her words could come straight out of a Bible tract.  People really did use to talk like that, but little is preserved except in private letters. Yesterday was May Fourth. On May 4th 1919, the "real" Chinese revolution was launched, a movement dedicated to modernizing China through literature, art and persuasion. Movies were an essential part of this concept that art and entertainment could serve a social function. The Orphan continues to serve a social function because it's a snapshot of its time.


Please see The Chinese Mirror, where there's a detailed biography of White Rose Woo and her times.
Please see other full movie downloads on this site - both Chinese and European. Street Angel, Kuhle Wampe, Berlin Symphony, Dvorak Ufa, Faust, Caligari,  White Haired Girl etc. plus lots of shorts

Albert Coates conducts Hanns Eisler Pagliacci

Albert Coates conducts the Boyd Neel Orchestra playing  Hanns Eisler? No, not Kampflieder or the German Symphony but Eisler's version of Pagliacci. A few weeks ago I attended the first ever UK Conference on Hanns Eisler. One of the papers was Peter Schweinhardt's "My work was nil": An attempt to Rescue Eisler's Peculiar Pagliacci"

This interesting venture came from Trafalgar Studios in 1936. It's in English, with words by John Drinkwater, the poet.. English text, Boyd Neel, Trafalgar, London, Albert Coates, the epitome of Establishment Britishism? In  fact the studio was fronted by a German émigré called  Max Schach, directed by Karl Grune, and employed Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler.

The idea was, I think, to turn the opera into an extravagant star vehicle for Richard Tauber, who sings all the parts and dances, too. There's extra dialogue, new scenarios and state of the art colour processing. The studio collapsed soon after, having made only three films, putting its employees out of work, and owing creditors big money. Crafty Brecht had already been paid, enough for him to buy a house in Denmark, though his work wasn't used and he's not credited.  Eisler said "My work was nil", but Schweinhardt shows how Eisler rearranged some of the music and added some completely original passages.

Schweinhardt showed clips from the film, and others are available on youtube. Now here are some quotes too good to miss. Opera Quarterly 1986/4, :"Indigestible, yet wierdly tempting....Tauber appears as a rotund, benevolent Big Daddy..... a W C Fields snowstorm...final catastrophe before an audience of hundreds in Cremona"  Now I want to see the whole. .

Christoph Eschenbach Mahler - FULL streaming cycle

At last, a truly superb tribute to Gustav Mahler! Christoph Eschenbach is presenting a cycle of the symphonies for free video and audio download on his site HERE.  "Each symphony was recorded with the Orchestre de Paris under the direction of Christoph Eschenbach and filmed by the director François Goetghebeur. By October 15th, 2010 the complete symphonies will be online for streaming and remain accessible until at least July 2011"

This series was developed over many years. I've been to several Eschenbach Mahler performances (not necessarily the same as the ones in these downloads)  It's a very mature, thoughtful cycle that genuinely makes a contribution to a deeper understanding of Mahler's music.  Throughout Mahler's work, there's a powerful sense of trajectory.  Eschenbach's Mahler is intelligent, stressing the architecture of each symphony and its place in the panorama of the whole. With Eschenbach, you feel that you're engaged on a journey, intellectually as well as musically.  Listen to the Second Symphony, already online. It's wonderful, structurally very clearly defined, yet with powerful emotional kick that's hard to put into words. This year there'll be much flash-in-the-pan Mahler, but this Eschenbach/Paris series is outstanding. When these are released for sale, they'll be collectors' items. For now, Eschenbach's making them available for free.
photo credit: Eric Brissaud 

Hoho! I've got excellent tickets to the Proms Mahler 8!

The joy of singing

The Soprano from Rahul Singh on Vimeo.
Non-singers often can't imagine the dedication and hard work it takes to make a career as a singer. Singers give so much, so the least we can do is appreciate what they do. Here is Sarah Minns, a young singer I've got a lot of respect for. You''ll hear her in the chorus in Carmen at Opera Holland Park next month. In the past you may remember her from the Royal Academy of Music productions, and in the chorus at the First Night of the Proms (Ivan the Terrible). She's also in the chorus in Richard Hickox's recording of RVW's The Poisoned Kiss.  Opera Now has said of her "Sarah Minns as Dido conveyed her gravitas and depth of her reined-in passion most effectively... What we heard was not mere elegiac beauty but heartfelt grief". Here she is, enjoying last week's sunshine.

Barenboim, Berlin Phil, Elgar, Sheldonian, Oxford

This morning, at 10am, Daniel Barenboim conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. Barenboim and the Berliners playing in a theatre seating fewer than 1000? And at ten in the morning?

It was a historic occasion. German press and TV in attendance: this was being filmed for international broadcast and DVD. Barenboim and the Berliners played the same concert at the Philharmonie on 27th April. It can be heard (and watched) in full on the Berliner-Philharmoniker site.http://dch.berliner-philharmoniker.de

Obviously, the Sheldonian is an important historic site, but there are plenty of historic sites elsewhere. The significance is that Barenboim was conducting Elgar's Cello Concerto,  so closely associated with Jacqueline du Pré. Indeed, Barenboim played with Jackie and Pinchas Zuckerman in Oxford (at the Town Hall) forty years ago. Maybe I shouldn't upstage this morning's soloist, Alisa Weilerstein, but the fact is that Jackie is forever associated with Elgar, Barenboim and with Oxford.


And why May Morning? It's an Oxford tradition. May Balls are the biggest social occasion in the year. Colleges hold elaborate balls. Students party like crazy and get blind drunk, the way you do when you are 18 and it's the first time away from your parents! Then they roam the town (which is very small) in their evening clothes, drinking, falling in the river, etc. Part of the tradition is staying up all night and then sobering up in the dawn to music. Walpurgisnacht, Anglo-style. Berlin and Oxford traditions converge.

Walpurgisnacht witchery might have bedevilled last night's rehearsal. Nearly an hour delayed, because part of the orchestra were held up at some airport. Then when they landed there was a crash on the road into Oxford. Then suddenly a rush and they came in and the rehearsal started immediately.

The Prelude to Meistersinger Act 3 was a wash out, very slow tempi, but in the circumstances definitely the right way to do it, if they'd all been rushing and tense beforehand. Nothing calms and centres a musician better than playing something familiar. No such problems in the "real" concert as they've had a night to settle down. The last-minute rush might have helped Barenboim, too. It must have been very emotional for him to come back to Oxford ((he hasn't played theatres this small for years) with its memories of  Jackie. But he's a consummate professional, and had a job to do.  In the Elgar Cello Concerto, the orchestra was fully engaged, energetic. It must have been intimidating for Alisa Weilerstein too, given the inescapable Jackie presence, but she acquitted herself very well. (there can be no comparison)
Here is  where I broke this story in JANUARY, but which is now elsewhere. Proof that there is no difference between print and online journalism. Quality isn't dependent on status. But maybe quality doesn't count.

Paul Rah was at the Berlin rehearsal and concert, and caught this morning's broadcast. His report will follow. Watch this space ! (and catch the concert online and on TV) A friend sent this :"Today at www.medici.tv (registering is required but free) you can watch BPO/Barenboim with Alisa Weilerstein (cello)

Wagner Meistersinger Act III Prelude
Elgar Cello Concerto
Brahms 1st Symphony

"I THINK the web-videocast is at 3pm GMT, i.e. 4pm British Summer time, 5pm Paris time, and 11am EST. " Check Medici TV site, it's a treasure. Video on demand of the concert is available for an unspecified time. See under Europa Konzert 2010.

photo credit