Musical America Blogs

By Keith Clarke

The 117th season of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts gets underway tomorrow with Jiří Bĕlohlávek conducting the BBC Singers, Chorus and Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of a BBC-commissioned work by Judith Weir, a Brahms overture, Liszt’s second piano concerto with the Proms’ youngest ever soloist—19-year-old Benjamin Grosvenor—and Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass.

The first night of the Proms is always a hot ticket, and one that the BBC is kindly proffering in my direction, so I had better line up my excuses for absenting myself from the Royal Albert Hall. Can I ever hold my head up in cultured society if I admit that I’m going to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part Two instead?

Is this old music hack finally losing his marbles? Not entirely. Truth to tell, my 14-year-old son is playing the part of the Young Snape in this final outing for Harry Potter and chums, and since I haven’t been able to get into any of the preview screenings for the cast (good boy—he took his sister instead), wild horses will not stop me seeing my boy on screen come the official opening night.

Strangely, he won’t be with me, Warner Bros having flown him to Florida for the week to take part in a massive Harry Potter fan convention and to try out the spooky rides at the HP theme park. At last week’s London premiere, as I watched a live stream of him signing autographs in London’s Trafalgar Square, I couldn’t help thinking that a few nights’ camping in a wet field in Cornwall would no longer cut the mustard as a vacation excitement.

Young Snape signs autographs at the premiere with co-star Ellie Dalden (Click for animation)

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It is a brave thing to commit “Jiří Bĕlohlávek” to cyberspace in the hope that it comes out with a full set of accents, and we’re all displaying the same amount of courage in welcoming the arrival of Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård as principal conductor designate of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

While we still live in fear that it will all come out looking like gobbledygook, getting computers to trade in left-field character sets used to be a whole lot more difficult. Microsoft ruled the world of software, but it had a bland disregard for the fact that much of its market indulged in a whole range of wild and wacky accents. In the early days of computerized typesetting, we sometimes had to resort to adding the more obscure accents to the artwork by hand, which was a precarious process, especially after a few drinks.

In 1987, when Libor Pešek was made music director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, I found myself sitting next to him at an awards dinner, and said that while I welcomed his appointment, in some respects it was a complete pain in the butt, since one of the many things Bill Gates & Co did not offer at that time was a letter “s” sporting a háček. The maestro considered this at some length before replying: “Mr Clarke, I admire your sense of humor.”

by Keith Clarke

It is good to see that Opera North’s controversial community opera Beached is to go ahead regardless of the huffing and puffing that has surrounded some gay content. The whole fuss generated more heat than light, and highlighted the fact that homophobia is always waiting in the wings. The episode put Opera North’s Richard Mantle in an impossible position, and he seems to have done a brilliant job of behind-the-scenes negotiations to reach a sensible conclusion.

The story brings up memories of the furor surrounding the notorious Clause 28, a piece of legislation that dictated that local authorities should “not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.

One result, back in 1988, was that Glyndebourne Touring Opera canceled performances of Britten’s Death in Venice at a schools festival, and everywhere, local authorities were on the look-out for any artistic endeavor that seemed a little light on its feet.

After a vigorous campaign, the clause was dropped, but if left a bad taste.

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Summoned by a friend to hear her choral society dishing up the Brahms Requiem I found myself in Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, in London’s Chelsea. It’s a terribly posh venue, yet for all the choir’s very considerable efforts, the event might as well have taken place in the local swimming baths.

The Brahms was prefaced by the world premiere of a new piece, Genesis, by Peter Foggitt, one of the young men playing the two pianos for the Requiem. It is probably fair to say that it contains some beautiful music, but that was virtually impossible to judge, since nearly all the sound careered off into the lofty vaulted roof of the church, leaving behind just an aural sludge. It didn’t help that the choir’s helpers thought that a useful accompaniment to the piece would be some enthusiastic bottle opening and glass chinking a few yards from the audience.

It’s a pity that so often, it is the details that let down amateur performances. Here is a choir that can make a great sound and has the inclination and wherewithal to commission new work. It no doubt put tremendous energy into planning the Big Event. Yet in the end, the result could only have been satisfying to the choir itself and its hangers-on.

by Keith Clarke

London’s auction rooms have been hitting the headlines this week. Hot on the pricey heels of the Lady Blunt Strad that raised a cool $15.9 million for the Northeastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund, a more modest record was broken on Tuesday when an 17th-century fiddle by Giacinto Ruggieri of Cremona sold at Brompton’s for $201,400 to a California-based musician.

As it happened, I was sitting in the saleroom myself, partly for business and partly because there was a family viola in the catalog. Trying hard not to scratch my cheek or raise an eyebrow, I sat in the hopes that great fortunes would fall upon us. Truth to tell, our instrument was not at the stratospheric end of the scale, and we won’t be booking the world cruise just yet. We might dine out on the experience, but it’s more likely to be Big Mac than Lobster Thermidor at the Ritz.

It is certainly interesting to sit in an auction of fine instruments. While our stockbrokers and bankers have long since given up any pretense of being gentlemen, auctioneers still retain the old-world charm, the Savile Row suits and Oxbridge accents. It would be unfair to suggest that when it comes down to it, they are glorified pawnbrokers, one remove from costermongers.

Which prompts the old gag about the difference between a street trader and a daschund: the former bawls his wares on the pavement, while the latter…………

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The Master of the Queen’s Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davis, wants people whose cell phones go off during concerts to face stiff fines. Naturally enough, the suggestion has played well in those sections of the press that align themselves with the ‘”Hanging’s not good enough for them” lobby.

There is little doubt that I get as irritated by Mad Max when audiences don’t play the game and sit still and shut up, but let’s face it, the game is lost. Go to a movie now and kids not only keep their cell phones switched on but use them enthusiastically throughout the show. West End theatre performances are frequently a battle between the long-suffering cast and some ignorant clods in the stalls. Why would music escape this sorry decline in manners and basic courtesy?

By Keith Clarke

Tenor Alfie Boe dropped a brick into the placid waters of the opera world on a recent radio show. Desert Island Discs is a show where celebrities get to choose the records they would take if they were stranded on a desert island, with a bit of chat in between choices. It was the chat rather than the choices that got Alfie into hot water. He blithely said that while he happily graces the operatic stage, wild horses wouldn’t get him into the audience – he finds it just too boring. “I go there and I feel very uncomfy,” he told listeners. “I just feel like it’s not my world.”

He said that during his training he was required to sit through performances at the Royal Opera House and armed himself with a pillow to snooze through endless hours of Wagner. This was all too much for the sensitive souls of Covent Garden. A spokesman indignantly told the Independent: “Our productions entertain thousands of people every year, in the auditorium, in cinemas and on DVDs.”  By the time the fuss dies down, Alfie probably wished the desert island was for real.

It’s not the first time Boe has been in the headlines. A former car mechanic, he is considered pretty fit, with a physique of particular interest to female operagoers. For a Welsh National Opera Traviata a few years ago, he was required to strip off, but during open rehearsals this attracted such fruity comments from women in the audience (they’re a feisty lot in Cardiff) that he was told to keep his pants on for the performances.

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Nothing new under the sun: “Opera to take place on surface of Lake Constance” screamed the Guardian this week, heading up a piece on the Bregenz Festival’s forthcoming Andre Chénier. True enough, but the floating stage was installed 62 years ago, which hardly makes it news.

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As recession tightens its grip and the music business prepares to go to hell in a hardcart, some cheery news from the BBC Proms. Clearly director Roger Wright is doing something right: when the box office opened for this year’s season (July 15 – September 10), it sold 376 tickets every minute, clocking up 86,000 sales within the first 12 hours. Two concerts – the Simón Bolivar Symphony with The Dude and the Verdi Requiem – sold out within three hours.

Or at least, all seats were sold. One of the glories of the Proms is that 1,000-plus standing places are available each day, for a mere $8. And come rain or shine, queues snake away from the Royal Albert Hall on a daily basis.

by Keith Clarke

When Graham Sheffield got on a plane to Hong Kong to become chief executive of the mulitimillion-dollar West Kowloon Cultural District, he blithely dubbed it “the job of a lifetime.” He had enjoyed a good innings as music director at London’s Southbank Center, formed a dream team with Sir John Tusa to revolutionize the Barbican Center, and was widely tipped for Tusa’s top job. When that went instead to Sir Nicholas Kenyon, he licked his wounds for a while, then along came Hong Kong. But within months, he was retracing his steps. The job of a lifetime was undoable, as it turned out. He was not the first to think so.

Now the Kowlooners have found another brave soul to take on the challenge. Step forward Michael Lynch, former chief executive at the Southbank Center. Poisoned chalice it might be, but if anyone knows how to grasp it, Lynch is the man. Before arriving in London, he had run the Sydney Opera House, bringing it through some difficult years. The Southbank Center, struggling with an on-off redevelopment program that had been dragging on for years, was also seen as a tricky job. At his first meet-the-press session, Lynch got some advice from a reporter from The Australian: “Blimey, mate – if you can pull this off they’ll have you running the railways!”

But pull it off he did, with a combination of gritty determination and easy charm. At the press session he was disarmingly direct. He acknowledged that there had been industrial unrest and job losses at Sydney Opera House, but said that staff relations had been left cordial. Then came the clever bit: he offered to give us the phone number of the union chief so we could check it out for ourselves.

How well the no-nonsense approach will go down in Hong Kong remains to be seen. Sparks may fly when Chinese Whispers meets Cut the Crap.

by Cathy Barbash

Just back from China jaunt as one of several “foreign experts” imported by the Ministry of Culture of the PRC as both window-dressing and lecturer for the International Conference on Promotion of Chinese Cultural Products. This marathon gathering began in Shenzhen, where we foreigners were herded onto the stage for the official opening ceremony, testimony to the importance of the event, but without the courtesy of meeting the presiding Chinese officials beforehand. We were then whisked away to inspect the cavernous exhibit halls, a chaotic and deafening mix of cultural products of all kinds. An afternoon visit to a satellite location (the local Poly Theatre) housing the performing arts exhibits found many unattended, and/or without materials in any language but Chinese.

Second stop was Luoyang, in Henan Province, where the foreigners lectured on their assigned topics to a group of almost 300 Chinese arts administrators and entrepreneurs from throughout the country. Most were young and enthusiastic, outgoing and, at the closing banquet, even boisterous. Last stop Beijing, with the same speeches given to a much more sedate crowd drawn from Ministry of Culture officials and administrators from the national level and Beijing arts organizations. A reserved group, mentally looking over their shoulders.

Now comes word that a high level Chinese delegation has arrived in the U.S. to study public diplomacy, in theory and in practice, and perhaps to engage in a private listening tour of what Americans really do think of the Chinese, unfiltered by the media.

Apologies, but much more on all this later, I’m off again to visit my daughter in the Peace Corps…..

by Keith Clarke

When Noël Coward told us that mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, he had sunnier climes than England in mind. Proof positive of the national madness is the sheer number of al fresco events taking place in a country where you don’t know from one day to the next whether you will be needing a sun shade or galoshes and a sou’wester.

When Garsington Opera first set up shop in an eccentric banker’s back garden, there was a covering of sorts for the audience, though those at the sides were in the firing line for any passing showers, and the performers were completely at the mercy of the elements. Now that the banker has passed away – victim of a heart attack at the wheel of his car as he drove back from Glyndebourne –  and his widow has claimed her garden back, the company has moved to the Getty family’s Wormsley Estate in Buckinghamshire, where tonight it will unveil its first ever production in the new home, The Magic Flute.

That production will be reviewed at the front end of this fine site in due course, but let me just add a little more background on the madness.

The new Opera Pavilion has all the appearance of a permanent structure, yet it will only be gracing the estate’s deer park for the length of Garsington’s short season. It takes 12-15 workers four weeks to construct the thing, and another four weeks to knock it down again. With a national minimum wage of getting on for $10 an hour, that begins to look a bit pricey, before taking into account the eye-watering rent the Getty estate is charging.

Is that mad? Of course it is. Gloriously so. And come rain or shine I for one will be cheering loudly for those who dare to think outside the box and do something completely crazy in the pursuit of first-class music-making.

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The ever entertaining Michael White writes in the Daily Telegraph of the ”appalling news” that sales of ukuleles have risen faster in the past 12 months than purchases of any other instrument, outstripping keyboards and acoustic guitars. “Very depressing,” says Michael, who goes on to point the finger for this state of affairs:

J’accuse:

1. The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain, which rose inexplicably to prominence a couple of years ago plink-plonking its way through arrangements of Beethoven’s 9th.

2. The Proms, which encouraged the UOGB in its assaults on Beethoven and (worse still) organised online tutorials so that thousands of others – innocent and harmless people, most of them – could share this evil practice.

Poor Michael, he’s clearly jealous that he can’t get his podgy fingers round this charming little instrument. For let it be revealed, I was one of those innocent and harmless people who shared the evil practice, and went on BBC Television News to share my enthusiasm. Why, I even blogged my hesitant progress.

The old uke has been neglected of late, but I feel encouraged by Michael’s assault to dust it off and give it another twang.