Posted: Monday 14 February 2011
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
The heading is from the 'Overgrown Path' blog, http://www.overgrownpath.com/2011/02/does-classical-music-need-wide-or-deep.html?spref=tw - and the post is worth reading. Briefly, it's to do with radio audience figures, and shows that although Radio 3 listeners seem to have increased in number, they are actually listening for fewer hours. Hmm...
|
Posted: Friday 24 December 2010
-
5 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
In a recent interview, Stephen Cleobury, who will direct his twenty-ninth Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College Cambridge soon today, spoke of the psychological aspect of the occasion. The music has been learnt and rehearsed; his job is to bring everything to the boil at the right time. As he does that musically at 3pm , many of us will be doing it for real in our darkening kitchens as the final countdown to Christmas begins. As a cherubic choirboy sings 'Once in Royal David's City', and as the conductors, organists and choristers amongst us breeze in and out to services, I juggle the culinary demands of preparing traditional Christmas fare with the culinary challenges of feeding : a) someone who doesn't eat carbs - no bread, potatoes, pasta, pastry b) someone who is into hummus, plus garlic and onion dip c) the elderly whose digestion is very poor, d) the young who think that a mince pie for breakfast is enough, and one of their 5-a-day. The timelessness and beauty of the King's service is an anchor in the busyness . My hope is that Stephen Cleobury gets his side of Christmas to the boil at the right time, and that I get mine. Happy Christmas, everyone :)
|
Posted: Monday 29 November 2010
-
4 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
Alex Ross poses that question here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/nov/28/alex-ross-modern-classical-music and it's worth a read. Here's a trailer: The mildest 20th-century fare can cause audible gnashing of teeth. Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings is a more or less fully tonal score, yet in 2009 at Lincoln Centre, it failed to please a gentleman sitting behind me. When someone let out a "Bravo!" elsewhere in the hall, he growled: "I bet that was a plant." I resisted the temptation to swat him with my pocket score. :)
|
Posted: Tuesday 28 September 2010
-
1 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
 E flat major. Thoughts, anyone? Three flats, yes, and that's about it. But it is the key of two titanic works composed by two Titans - Beethoven's Symphony no 3, the 'Eroica', and the Vorspiel of Wagner's Das Rheingold , which opens the Ring cycle. How differently the composers treat their choice; Beethoven opens with two crashing tonic chords, demanding our attention and thereafter wrenching the path of nineteenth century symphonic writing out of its comfort zone and into a new dimension. Wagner starts his opera in darkness, with a single quiet, sustained low note. One by one, notes of the tonic triad ascend above it in the brass, and, as other instruments enter, the notes are folded back upon themselves in ever multiplying layers. Strings next, adding passing notes in between the structural pillar notes of the chord. Range and dynamics grow, the wind section is in by now, note values shorten, scales rush up again and again from the lowest depths to the higher peaks until - well, that's enough from me, the music says it better than I can. It's obvious where I'm going with this - to the new production of the Ring at the Met, with its spectacular new staging. But first, some diary entries: 'R says it is only the machinery they are all interested in... R is ill with grief about Das Rheingold... HR announces his decision not to conduct... L asks whether his conductor can take over...P is demanding it...the staging of the work is so abominable that the machinist is demanding three months to put it right...News - the singer B has left so as not to have to sing Wotan in such circumstances...the theatre director gives the bass singer's role to a tenor., some musician or other will conduct, and so everything is all right... the singer who rehearsed Loge will sing Mime, the orchestra has been reduced, the theatre director is bribing newspapers and now everyone is happily spreading lies. The members of the orchestra are much put out by all this and by the fact that they have to be directed by the most incapable of all conductors... ' It sounds so contemporary, doesn't it? Yet these are comments extracted from the diary of Cosima Von Bülow, who became Wagner's wife in 1870. She is writing about the first production of Das Rheingold in Munich on 22 September, 1869. On September 24 Cosima wrote, 'The A.A.Z reports a succès d'estime for Das Rheingold; the work is quite happily sacrificed, but the honour of the machinists, costume designer, director, etc, is saved - on paper, at any rate.' It's good to know that the 'machinists' got an accolade, as indeed has Robert Lepage for the extraordinary machine forming the set in the current production. Machinery caused interest even in the 1869 performance, and judging from this year's publicity, 'R' - Richard Wagner - may well again have thought in 2010, 'It is only the machinery they are all interested in' . Not so, but reading the accounts of the production in various reviews, it seems that the use of this extraordinary structure enhances the music in a spectacular way. Not got a ticket? No problem; the Met's Das Rheingold is coming to cinemas on October 9 - and it will be available online. I, for one, will be watching. |
Posted: Monday 16 August 2010
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
 It's intriguing to read that Bayreuth is now presenting Wagner operas aimed at children; this year it was ten performances of a 70 minute abridged version of Tannhäuser in a large rehearsal space, advertised online and snapped up by families. Scottish Opera goes one further, and does opera for babies - and it tours. So how do you introduce children to opera? They could see Britten's 'Let's make an opera'. They could be the animals and birds in Britten's Noye's Fludde. There are DVDs, and YouTube. Or, try taking them to the real thing. Here are a few ideas, based on anecdotes from friends... Puccini is a winner. I am told that La Bohème is a good choice for adolescents, but remember to take some Kleenex. A production of Puccini's Il Trittico in English worked well for one family - three short one-act operas, with a funny Gianni Schicchi to finish. Kobbé's synopses were very helpful in advance, once the 'Mum, what's a whore?' moment was dealt with. A group trip to the ROH Schools' Matinée performance of Rigoletto was a roaring success, with the Act I on-stage party/orgy not too embarrassing, and chocolates distributed to the departing audience. The tenor's face was shining with delight as he took his bow to a house packed full of enthusiastic kids. Someone else took his brood to a family workshop on Carmen, not realising it was one of those Join In occasions. I think he's now recovered from having to dance the Habanera with some random woman. The children can still sing every word of the 'Toreador' song. The Carmen video, alas, never gets watched. Painful memories. But - Wagner? Isn't it a bit too grown-up: what about the adult themes. Bayreuth makes sure that the settings and characters are child-friendly; Tannhäuser wears jeans, Venus gets around on a skateboard - bet they don't teach that in Opera School - and Elisabeth is cast as a sensible sort who works in a computer lab. It amazes me that Bayreuth is doing this at all - with a 10-year waiting list for tickets there, and Wagner performances sold out around the globe, is there really a need to introduce Wagner to children, or is this a general introduce-children-to-opera exercise... One final account of a family who took their musical daughter to see Wagner's Valkyrie in Edinburgh. For a generation brought up reading about magic wands, Hagrid and broomsticks in Harry Potter books, an enchanted ring, Fafner and airborne Valkyries are surprisingly accessible. With a child's observant eye, she scanned the crowd during the interval, and spotted someone whom none of the adults seemed to have recognised. She beetled up, and got a smile, a chat and an autograph. There can't be too many other girls in the UK who have a Die Walküre programme signed by J.K.Rowling.
|
Posted: Wednesday 11 August 2010
-
8 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
 I can't imagine learning online, as I didn't learn that way. I don't teach that way, but others do, and it deserves some thought. Many of us on this site will have been taught by going to a teacher's studio, having them come to our home, or learning at school. Some of us will have crossed the world or moved abroad for a while to learn from a person who was so special that our entire existence was uprooted, and the direction of our life changed, by going to study with them. And perhaps for certain branches of professional music tuition at a certain level, that will always be the way. But increasingly there is a growing number of musicians offering online tuition, including here on MusBook, often 'advertising' on YouTube as a taster to a paid series of lessons, or even freely sharing their particular knowledge. This is, in part, a digital, real time extension of past methods such as sending a cassette tape/mini-disc/CD to a far-off and rarely seen teacher for comment. My mind is open on this. Here is a random selection of a few links for interest; your comments on online tuition would be welcome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dar4C8-74Ow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tebAH0UjC-U&feature=fvw http://allpiano.wordpress.com/classes/
|
Posted: Monday 5 July 2010
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
 The first night of the Proms opened with the National Anthem: 'God Save the Queen' - Queen Victoria that is, and the date was August 10 1895. That was the very, very first night of the Proms, ever - and the programme seems rather a bitty compilation of music by today's standards. Here it is in the newly available Proms Archive, which contains programmes of all 7168 Proms since then: http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/archive/search/event.shtml?id=1&tab=search&sub_tab=season As Tom Service writes, "There's a serious side to the archive. It's a historical cross-section of how tastes have changed over more than a century of Proms-going, and how concert formats have transformed out of all recognition from what they were at the end of the 19th century." The man behind the original Proms idea, Robert Newman, who appointed Henry Wood to conduct the Proms, had a mission: "I am going to run nightly concerts," he promised himself and the world, "and train the public by easy stages - popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music." I wonder how he would approach the task now.
|
Posted: Monday 21 June 2010
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
 Scales. Even saying the word invites a yawn - until now, when they can be played by feet on a staircase. Stockholm, Milan and Melbourne have piano stairs - and it seems to be a more entertaining way of ascending and descending than by escalator. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJMOI5_FKwg Imagine a chromatic; or a melodic minor ascending and descending with different formats. Whole-tone? Pentatonic? Two people in chromatic thirds - staccato. Contrary motion - for two. Wide-stepped arpeggios, back and forth broken chords. Diminished triads if your stride is smaller, but do be careful going down. Chord sequences, in strict time with four or more people, and no random pedestrians. Cadences - try the interrupted. Or random pedestrians, in aleatoric style. No matter how it's done, that must be the most fun anyone can have with F# minor.
|
Posted: Wednesday 2 June 2010
-
4 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
Guys, you're pulling my leg. April 1st was weeks ago. Are you seriously saying that Mozart's music is being used to speed up the decomposition of sewage in a water treatment plant near Berlin?! Apparently so. Words fail me, but I am still suspicious... how was this discovered? Did the samples in the lab where a Mozart CD was playing all day decompose faster than those in the lab where there was silence, or where the German equivalent of Radio 1 was blaring away? The mind boggles as to how this was scientifically proven... . The official 'Mozart Effect' - ie heightened IQ after listening - may have been officially debunked, but it's no bad thing for children to grow up listening to the perfection of his music. As a pianist, I have a long and happy relationship with Mozart, starting with a First Prize at a festival playing the D minor Fantasie as a child; then a potentially disastrous memory lapse in a Sonata in another festival - a left hand chord was momentarily elusive, so I skipped four bars and continued to the end. In her summing up, the adjudicator mentioned 'two pianists who dealt with memory lapses with such aplomb' - and awarded us both a 'Highly Commended'. I bless that lady to this day. On a visit to Mozart's Birth House in Salzburg a few years ago, the first thing that struck me was the sight of his tiny, child-size violin - a beautifully crafted instrument, a reminder that stringed instruments were part of the personal sound world he brought to piano composition, as were voice/opera and orchestra. The transparent textures and colours of his keyboard music, and its inherent drama, sometimes need to be viewed through those lenses. Various uses of Mozart's music, from school detentions to crime deterrents, have been mentioned in the press and in the MusBook forum discussions; and who can forget the film 'Amadeus', or the scene in ' The Shawshank Redemption' where Mozart is played over the prison loudspeakers. But I will post again this link to the buskers in Covent Garden, and the two children who succumbed to the effervescent joy of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Is that the Mozart Effect? Bring it on...
|
Posted: Tuesday 25 May 2010
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
 Nigel Kennedy is hosting a Polish Weekend of music at the Southbank Centre from May 29-31 - looks like fun! His favourite Polish composer is Chopin - an unusual choice for a violinist - but then, his mother was a fine Chopin pianist, and as a baby he was parked in a carry-cot under the grand piano while she taught, and I imagine, while she practised. Once, as we sat with our very small daughter amidst a sea of adults in the third row of the stalls at a Kennedy concert, he spotted her , gave her a big grin and a wave, and said 'Hi!' from the stage. That's what I call communicating with the next generation of concert-goers. Nigel Kennedy jams with the Pole Cats
|
Posted: Friday 14 May 2010
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
Grayson Perry's speech at the RPS Awards is worth a read - links are here - and an extract - Speaking at the 21st Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards in London Grayson Perry gave a heart-felt, and very funny, plea for musicians to avoid trying to be 'cool' and for people to recognise the importance of difficulty in the arts. "Cool is a word that often crops up in describing art and artists, and it’s always been a bit of a term that’s bugged me. The minute something is described as cool, my instincts tell me it’s on the wane. For me, being creative as an artist, it’s all about being unselfconscious and being prepared to make a bit of a fool of myself. That’s a very important thing. And cool, in a nutshell, is the opposite of that. In my experience, embarrassment is not fatal. Coolness somehow implies that there is a ‘right thing to do’, whereas creativity is making mistakes...
...When I listen to a piece of classical music, what makes me well-up is not just the melody, the sublime melody of a sensitive interpretation by the musicians, it is the thought of the thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of practice. The philosopher Richard Sennett – himself a musician – puts it at 10,000 hours, to become good at something. 10,000 hours. That’s four years of full time study. I find that moving in itself: that there are people dedicated to that. I’m in awe of the rigour, and a bit jealous actually of musicians; you seem to have a much clearer vision of what you’re aiming at. In art nowadays there’s that terrible thing that anything can go, and it does make me a bit sad sometimes. So, please keep doing insanely difficult things. Please continue to make difficult music that I will aspire to understand, and please do it for the love of it. For here in the arts, we have to set a good example." |
Posted: Sunday 25 April 2010
-
1 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
 'I remember the first time I saw him. I was a late-duty reporter alone in the reporters' room at midnight, when the door opened at the far end of the room. This white-haired figure walked in, whipped off this black cloak with scarlet lining and sat down - and it was Neville Cardus. I sat back in the shadows and watched him. And he typed just a single word, pulled out the piece of paper and started again. Before long, he was surrounded by about 200 single sheets of paper on the floor. Suddenly he started typing furiously and didn't stop for 20 minutes, then ripped out the paper, took it straight to the sub-editors, and that was the review, which was a review of Barbirolli conducting the Halle. I picked up all the discarded pieces of paper, and he'd written only one word on each of them: Cardus. Isn't that extraordinary? All of us have a way of triggering a piece, and that was his. The most extraordinary process.' Michael Parkinson, interviewed in the current RCM 'Upbeat' magazine, tells that story about music critic Neville Cardus. with whom he worked on the Guardian in the late 1950s. It's interesting that the physical act of typing got the words flowing eventually. Now I know what to do when writer's block strikes. Louise... Louise... Louise...
|
Posted: Monday 12 April 2010
-
2 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
We have the cautionary tale this week of Leonard Slatkin, who, when faced with conducting La Traviata at the Met for the first time, had the honesty to admit to himself that he had to get to know it, the sense not to tell the orchestra it was new to him - and then he blogged about the learning process. The critics pounced on the first night, and he is not conducting future performances. Ouch. Fellow bloggers, let us beware. Beginner that I am, the pitfalls of posting are obvious - a sense of isolation, writing in a vacuum with no editor to caution against naivety or to check for the cringe factor, no feedback to measure reader response. You're on your own. Our profession is littered with trip hazards as it is, without us manufacturing them ourselves. Maybe we all need a trusted friend, brave enough to suggest a second look at a post, sometimes. Anything that we write may be used as evidence against us. So drop me a line, dear reader, if I overstep the mark. Thank you.
|
Posted: Sunday 11 April 2010
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knW-yv6i6z4 Photograph - a man lowers the Polish national flag outside the Polish Embassy in London
|
Posted: Thursday 18 March 2010
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is coming to Oxford this year - but it's sold out. It's coming to London next year - but it's sold out. However , for a limited period you can visit it for a free concert in its Digital Concert Hall by following this link and registering - try it, it's terrific! http://www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/en/ The quote in the blog title was spoken by, err, me, when, as a pig-tailed, wide-eyed second-study violinist, I was asked by my violin teacher what I wanted to do musically in the distant future. He didn't laugh, smirk, smile indulgently, pooh-pooh the idea or point out the obstacles. He simply went over to his bookshelves, selected two slim volumes, handed them to me and told me to go away and read them. They were books on conducting - by Henry Wood, and John Barbirolli. As it happens, I did end up doing some choral conducting at one point, although, so far, the Berlin Phil has managed to get along without me. I mention this only as a tribute to a wonderful teacher, musician and born animateur, who took a serious answer at face value and used it as an opportunity for learning. If Daniel Barenboim is indisposed in Oxford, just give me a call. :)
|
Posted: Monday 15 March 2010
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
..'to animate, to bring to life, to enliven, to spark, to create, to produce.' I picked up a leaflet yesterday which gives that list as a job description for a musical Animateur, plus a definition as one who 'gives ...the chance to connect to the music in new and usually creative ways'. It struck me that we are all called to be Animateurs in our chosen musical fields whether or not that is our job title. Next thought - what am I doing about it. Final thought - who in my musical life are/were the natural Animateurs, and how do/did they spark, enliven etc. They are too numerous to mention, and their methods as diverse as their personalities. But one illuminating force used to give me a weekly listening list - not of piano music, but of sumptuous orchestral/operatic/choral/vocal music, which introduced a new range of colours to enrich all that I played, opening musical doors into new and exotic fields. Today , a quick sprint through YouTube revisited many of those inspiring musical memories. I'll gradually upload some as videos but here are two links. If you enjoy them - please - pass them on :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck9geoxCGkc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl6Zw9iqlrk
|
Posted: Tuesday 19 January 2010
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
Friday evenings in the UK are currently enlivened by 'Popstar to Operastar' on ITV, where unlikely participants are trained to sing repertoire from outside their comfort zone, competing for votes from the viewing public. It follows the usual formula of transformation from raw beginnings to a more polished rendition in glitzy, show-style glamour. There are clips of singing lessons with mentors Katherine Jenkins and Rolando Villazon, and, after each performance, comments which aim to entertain as well as to edify from a panel of four. Presenters are Classic FM's Myleene Klass, and the affable Alan Titchmarsh, to whom the British public would more instinctively turn for advice on a recalcitrant clematis than for an opinion on a classical aria. With snatches of the Dies Irae from Verdi's Requiem as the theme tune (we'll let that pass), I listened last week to just three of the so-called operatic excerpts, and will someone please remind me which opera 'O Sole Mio' comes from . Finesse may have been lacking, but presentation and sequins were on hand to compensate. Then came the advertisements: the first for a classical CD 'Forever Vienna'. soon followed by remedies for constipation and heartburn, and the tempting allure of a new sofa, a new bed, a new bank...you get the picture. So, what message does a programme like this send out? Is it a dumbing down of a major art form, or an accessible way in for the uninitiated? Probably both, depending on your perspective. But the online back-up is interesting, with 1599 Facebook fans, 4490 Twitter followers, and a website, linked to CDs and aria downloads on Amazon. Great - if it gets people listening, and even singing - why not. Alex James was voted off last week; I seem to remember he lasted longer as a conductor on 'Maestro'. And if last week's show did not appeal, BBC4 was offering Bizet's Carmen, instead. Roll on, Friday?
|
Posted: Sunday 10 January 2010
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEfKEzX9QLE Maureen Lipman says it all - 'You get an ology you're a scientist!' Well, I have no ologies, but wanted to make sense of the latest ology buzzword applied to music - Ontology. Here's a way in - it's visual, brilliantly simple and simply brilliant. Just keep clicking. (For those of us without ologies.)
|
Posted: Wednesday 10 June 2009
-
0 comment(s)
[ Comment ]
-
0 trackback(s)
[ Trackback ]
Here is musician Elaine Fine blogging about blogging in the 'classical' music world. Read on to the comments - Michael Monroe , whose MMmusing blog is a must-read, speaks of why we tend not to comment - ' I ... almost didn' t because I figured I didn't have time to craft something that said what I really wanted to say' - true also of discussions. He goes on to speak of Twitter's greater capacity for 'back and forth' conversations. So - should MusBook discussions take place on Twitter as well?? I'll post this in the Forum and see if anyone has time to craft a reply... :)
|
|
|
