Musical America Blogs

by Keith Clarke

If you’re in the classical music business and say you don’t much care for musicals, everyone just assumes you’re a musical snob. So I shall be turning up at London’s Barbican Theater tonight for the Lincoln Center production of South Pacific wearing as much of a smile as I can muster. But truth to tell, when it comes to musicals, a little goes an awfully long way for me.

True, I took to Showboat, and always include a few numbers from it in my let’s-scare-the-neighbors soirées, but Jerome Kern’s great (though overlong) score is an honorable exception.

I blame my lack of enthusiasm for musicals on a traumatic childhood. In my vulnerable early teens, we lived in a bungalow built on a former hop field in the county of Kent. Hop fields are jolly useful, because they produce the wherewithal for producing the fine ale that the Brits are famous for drinking warm. Bungalows have their uses, too, of course, but the problem with ours was that the design of the new housing estate meant that each pair of dwellings had bathrooms facing each other.

That need not have been a problem but for Ken Tripp. He was our neighbor, a salesman for a local floor tile company, and an enthusiastic member of LAMPS (the Local Amateur Musical Players – still going strong after all these years, and currently preparing a production of The Producers). They always seemed to have a new show in production – Carousel, White Horse Inn, you name it – and Ken’s favorite rehearsal venue was the bath tub.

So I would be minding my own business, enjoying a peaceful soak, when this awful whine would start up, like a troubled bison approaching at speed through the woods: “Ooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaak! Lahoma where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain.” And so on and so on.

What was worse, I didn’t just have to suffer the rehearsals. My parents were good, neighbor-supporting folk, who thought we ought to book tickets at the local town hall for every production and sit through the whole damned show.

No doubt this South Pacific will be my moment of epiphany. Certainly the editor of this site suggests that I should stop only at murder to get tickets. And we’re making up a party for a family birthday, the birthday boy in question being a dyed-in-the-wool South Pacific fan, so expectation is running high. Wish me luck.

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The hi-jacking of the Israel Philharmonic Prom last week by protesters got all the column inches they may have wished, though rather less support. The UK communications minister Ed Vaizey, who was in the audience, tweeted: “Demonstrators seem to have turned entire audience pro-Israel.”

It was the biggest such rumpus in the Royal Albert Hall since Rostropovich played the Dvořák cello concerto with the USSR State Symphony Orchestra in 1968 on the very day that Russia’s tanks rolled into Prague. I was in the audience for that, and have never heard such a highly charged performance, the Russian cellist playing through tears.

The Palestinian protest has at least served to get some issues debated, and as is usual when the placards come out in the UK, it was not without its moments of humor. I particularly enjoyed the vision of one lady of a certain age mounting her own personal counter-campaign against the protesters, cuffing one of them round his neck with her walking stick.

by Keith Clarke

A few years ago, in a spirit of experiment, BBC Radio’s classical and music network, Radio 3, made available for free download all of the Beethoven symphonies – a different one each day, with a limited time period in which they could be nabbed.

Since it had never been done before, the good sorts of Radio 3 had no idea whether the idea would only stir interest in a few switched-on souls and the producer’s friend Julian. Little did they know. The clamor for free Beethoven was astounding, stretching internet servers to breaking point and causing a great stink among record companies (understandably, since they only stay in business by selling the stuff).

The BBC made some half-hearted defense, saying how it had usefully tested the market for the record companies, which were then dipping their toes in the download waters, but the corporation never did it again.

These days, anything that goes out on Radio 3 is available in the UK on a listen-again basis for a week after transmission, and if you’re tech-savvy and have a disregard for copyright legislation, you can record it for posterity, which must also upset the record companies.

These random thoughts occurred last night when, returning from a fortnight of staring at the sea and trying not to do anything at all, I bestirred myself to go and hear David Robertson conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the Choral Symphony. I don’t know whether anyone was illicitly recording it at home, but I doubt they would want to replay it too many times, for it was one of those off-night performances, a special disappointment as it followed hard on the heels of an entirely wonderful performance of the world premiere of Graham Fitkin’s cello concerto with Yo-Yo Ma (a review will appear on the sharp end of this site in due course).

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I can forgive David Robertson many things, but I remain envious of the immensely elegant Panama hat he was sporting when I turned up to interview him in California a few years ago. I had travelled from London bringing in my suitcase an item of headwear that was advertised as a “crushable Panama,” which was literally true, since you could certainly crush it. Getting it back into shape afterwards was a whole other thing, and as I admired Robertson’s titfer (Cockney rhyming slang – tit for tat = hat, geddit?), I couldn’t help drawing a comparison with what had taken on the appearance of a sad omelette, discarded in my hotel room.

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The summer vacation is hardly a music-free zone, since we now get music on tap from all sources, but what makes a holiday special for me is hitting the off switch and getting down to the real thing. Never mind “Practice, practice, practice” to get to Carnegie Hall – what about “Play, play, play” for the sheer hell of it?

Little in life yields such instant joy as making music with friends just for fun. It happens all the time at home, and the only difference when friends and family visit for vacation is that the instrumentation changes a bit. The resident ensemble is violin and piano and, ok, most violin sonatas were not written with an obbligato part for mouth organ, but whenever there is live music everyone wants to join in. So it is that a motley crew, variously kitted up with washboard, tambourine, saucepan lids etc., forms a lively combo that throws itself into the most unlikely music and has the neighbors shouting for more. Well, it has them shouting, anyway.

by Keith Clarke

It was with a mixture of admiration and pity that I discovered many years ago that those who toil on the western side of the Atlantic do so virtually every day of the year. In the UK we like to take weeks and weeks of vacation, plus there are all the public holidays (quaintly called bank holidays), a day off here to watch the royal wedding, a day off there to celebrate May Day, etc. From what I can make out, on your side of the pond you like to take off one Thursday in November to roast turkeys, but you work for most of the other 364 days.

So at the risk of offending the prevailing work ethic, I confess that I am packing my soft shoes, swimming shorts and crushable Panama and heading for the sea, and it is most unlikely that I shall be staring at the laptop this time next week in an effort to add to the sum total of this blogspot.

This will naturally come as a grave disappointment to my three readers (four if you count the editor), but try and contain your sorrow and I’ll do my best to summon up the energy to bounce back in due course.

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Before setting off, I feel obliged to draw attention to the plight of British flute player Carla Rees. For anyone who didn’t catch the story at the front of this site (August 15), she lost a lifetime collection of ten or more flutes when her home was burnt to the ground in the recent riots. Also lost were 600 pieces of unpublished music written for her and her ensemble.

Given the way the riots escalated, she may feel lucky to be alive. But rebuilding a career from such a devastating loss is going to take a whole lot more than courage and pluck. Anyone in a position to help is greatly encouraged to visit a special website.

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You might think that learning music at school is not something that you would have to explain to anyone as being desirable, useful and a basic human right, come to that. Yet the UK’s politicians beg to differ. Music is not included as a subject in the new “English baccalaureate” (Ebacc). Schools are to be assessed on the basis of how many students manage to get a C grade in English, math, two sciences, history or geography and a modern or ancient language. But music? Forget about it, along with arts, drama and any other creative subject.

This has caused a predictable stink among musicians’ organizations, which are campaigning for the importance of learning music to be recognized. Leading the fight are the Incorporated Society of Musicians and Music Teacher magazine, whose editor Chris Walters says: “Essentially a performance measure, the EBacc will inevitably have negative consequences for any subjects that are excluded from it. Music Teacher is therefore delighted to be part of a campaign not only to include music but to introduce an entire sixth pillar of creative subjects, which we believe would greatly improve the impact of the EBacc in our schools.”

You can read more about it here.

by Keith Clarke

As the UK sweeps up after its traditional summer round of rioting, looting and pillaging, it will probably be a whole lot easier to find a London hotel room, for anyone with a brave spirit and maybe a tin hat. After due consideration, the tourist board decided to take down online ads reading “Great Britain: You’re invited” that were running side by side with footage of buildings on fire, cars being wrecked, bricks hurling through the air and shop windows being smashed. Among visitors during the riots were members of the International Olympic Committee, who must have been wishing they had given the 2012 Games to somewhere quieter, like Iraq.

In Scotland, so far untroubled by petrol bombs, comics at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe have been gifted with new material. Irish comedian Andrew Maxwell said: “The person I feel most sorry for is [2012 Games chief] Seb Coe. He must be lying on the floor in the fetal position, worrying they won’t know which gunshot to start the 100 meters on.”

Most of London pulled down the shutters early on Tuesday for fear of what was to come. On my stretch of road, the only shop remaining open was the local glazing store, where they must be thinking Christmas has come early.

Among casualties of the crisis was the launch of a key London 2012 Cultural Olympiad project. Ironically, it was an initiative aimed at getting young people involved in sport, culture and the arts, rather than getting hoodied up and making off down the street with as many looted TVs as they can carry.

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Stepping aside from all the mayhem, I’m looking forward to a bit of escapism with a night at the movies tomorrow, courtesy of the BBC Proms. An evening of film music has works by Ennio Morricone (who will be further celebrated with a late-night Prom by the Spaghetti Western Orchestra), William Walton, John Williams, Jonny Greenwood, Richard Rodney Bennett and John Barry, but kicks off with classic scores from Bernard Hermann, including Citizen Kane, Psycho and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Hermann was clearly The Man Who Knew Just Enough. He broke every rule in the book, with results that still sound as fresh today as when they went on the manuscript paper.

by Keith Clarke

What do dancers do when they break free from the corps de ballet? Carlos Acosta was a permanent member of the Royal Ballet for five years before becoming principal guest artist, leaving him free to do his own thing. Last year tickets were selling like hot cakes for his Premieres programme. This year’s version, Premieres Plus, has more empty seats, and has not fared too well with London’s dance critics.

An evening of nine short pieces, one on film, has some fine moments, but taken as a whole is curiously uninspiring. Far be it from me to suggest why – I’m no dance critic – but one thing I did find interesting was that the programme was a tale of two dancers – Acosta and his fellow Royal Ballet dancer Zenaida Yanowsky. It took a while for this to become apparent. There seemed a lot of people on stage, but after a while you begin to wonder why they’re just strolling about, rather than dancing. And don’t some of them look, just a little, not quite the right shape for dancers?

Come the last piece, O Magnum Mysterium, all becomes clear, for the dance troupe that isn’t pulls off a coup de theatre by turning out to be the Pegasus Choir all along, advancing slowly upstage singing Morten Lauridsen’s eponymous piece. It is the only live music in the evening, and falls on the ears like water on a parched throat.

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Looking for the interesting thing can be a challenge in many performances, and hands up, I did struggle a bit at Glyndebourne’s new production of Handel’s Rinaldo (reviewed on Tuesday), despite some fabulous singing. But the interesting thing there was the experience of going to a production into its run, rather than on the first night. There is no doubt that they are two very different experiences. Why should this be so? Is it that the performers are more wound up for the first performance, that the audience has come along with higher expectations, that the auditorium is liberally scattered with hard-nosed London critics?

It would probably take a sociologist to provide any kind of answer, but every critic should probably be required to do the test from time to time. It ought to be a humbling experience to sit, inwardly groaning, as every cliché in the book is wrapped in a warm glow of audience approval. But on the whole I have to say it isn’t.

by Keith Clarke

The Master of the Queen’s Music is at it again. Republican-turned monarchist Sir Peter Maxwell Davies likes nothing more than upsetting the apple cart with his views on life and the universe, and now he has shared with Daily Telegraph readers his thoughts on the British national anthem. “Booooooring,” he says. Nothing controversial about that, you might think, and it would take a Daily Telegraph reader to disagree. The paper’s Tim Walker gets into the spirit of things, referring to “comments which some may regard as tantamount to treason.”

It’s not the first time Mad Max has been fingered for treason. Six years ago he was visited by the constabulary after he took home a dead swan to make a terrine. By law, British swans all belong to Her Majesty the Queen, so when police with a search warrant raided the composer’s Orkney home and seized the swan carcass as evidence, he told the Times: “I was cautioned and told that anything I said could be given in evidence. Naturally I’ve informed Buckingham Palace. Now I’m just hoping I’ll not be locked up in the Tower of London.”

Maybe his views on the national anthem are fuelled by a desire to write a better one. It probably rankled that despite his courtly duties he was not asked to write so much as a bar of music for this year’s royal wedding.

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It’s not the only pasting the national anthem has taken this week. Formula 1 racing driver Lewis Hamilton was asking for a longer one – not for musical reasons, but because he felt he should have been given a longer opportunity to savour his moment of glory at the German Grand Prix last Sunday.

The longer drivers are kept from all that idiotic champagne spraying the better, but a new anthem is not the only answer. The Telegraph’s Ivan Hewett pointed out that God Save the Queen could be doubled in length by including the second verse. It is not much sung nowadays, perhaps because even the most bulging-eyed, red-faced, stiff-upper-lipped patriotic of Britishers would struggle to reconcile the jingoism with these multicultural times.

All together now:

Lord, our God, arise
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall.
Confound their politics
Frustrate their knavish tricks
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all.

by Keith Clarke

News that three visitors and two members of staff at the Royal Northern College of Music were hospitalized last week after eating dodgy salad only serves to confirm my suspicion that eating salad, like exercising, is a risky activity. A catering worker has been suspended after it came to light that the salad dressing, instead of boasting balsamic vinegar and fresh-pressed olive oil, contained that little used culinary ingredient, dishwasher liquid.

As the five stared at the ceiling of the Manchester Royal Infirmary, they may have contemplated the wisdom of salad-shunning musicians, like celebrated chanteuse Edit Piaf. After all, she was known worldwide for her great hit, Non, Je Ne Vinaigrette Rien.

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It must have been a happy moment in Birmingham city council’s music library when hundreds of silent-movie scores were uncovered in a dusty corner. They include a theme tune used in early Charlie Chaplin films. It was written by Cyril Thorne, but of course Chaplin himself provided the music for many of his films, an aspect of the filmmaker that gets little attention. At the Ojai Festival three years ago, Modern Times was shown, with the Ojai Festival Orchestra playing Chaplin’s score live, and jolly good it was too.

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It seems to be high season for artistic punch-ups. First we have Claudio Abbado and Hélène Grimaud displaying “artistic differences,” with the pianist walking out of this year’s Lucerne
Festival, then Gidon Kremer lets fly at the Verbier Festival for suggesting that he was pulling out for health reasons, rather than a dislike for self-aggrandizing artists looking to boost their careers through hype.

I like Kremer’s tell-it-like-it-is approach. In a business larded with PR spin, it is great to see someone stepping out of line from time to time. After all, despite all the platform smiles, working in music provokes strong feelings. It is usually conductors that create the most heat, as explained by one orchestral player outlining the difference between a bull and an orchestra: “A bull has the horns at the front and the asshole at the back…..”