The first concert of the Sarasota Orchestra 2018-2019 season included a performance of the Tschaikovsky Violin Concerto. Much to our surprise, the audience insisted on sustained clapping and cheering at the end of the first movement before the piece had actually finished.
Why was this? It was difficult for the more knowledgeable of us to remain silent, as the playing and conducting had been so brilliant. Perhaps the form of the movement has something to do with it?
Briefly put, in a first movement, a composer first plays you his stuff. He then mutilates it, sometimes beyond recognition, so he has to bring his original stuff back before getting to the end. However, we only reach the end after a brilliant section played by the soloist and a very exciting climax. No wonder we want to clap!
On the other hand, many last moments hit the ground running with a composer’s theme rather like an express trains heading somewhere but stopping now and then to observe musical vistas on either side of the tracks. Of course, we hear very exciting stuff from the orchestra and soloist before hitting the buffers at the end.
If we need to do something to persuade Sarasota audiences NOT to clap the first movement of a concerto, it looks as though we have a few choices.
The first choice might be to play the last movement first and finish with the first movement. Historians would object to this choice.
The second choice might be to persuade the orchestra to become quieter towards the end of the first movement, ending with a whimper of a final sound. The brass section would probably object to this choice.
So it looks to me that we have only one choice. We must persuade the Music Police to give a special dispensation to Sarasota audiences to clap first movements whoever they feel like it. We in Sarasota are a special case.
Clap without guilt! Clap without that particular look of slight annoyance from the conductor and that nice smile from the soloist. And of course, the orchestra can have another tuning session. Everybody will be happy!
Just a phone call announces the arrival of an important visitor accompanied by our very own secret service! He has not a single minder in sight. Why is he here? I entertain the notion that he has come to meet our very own private coven of Leninists whom I prefer to call Bolsheviks.
I am left in the dark. The secret service people just tell me, “Whatever you do, don’t ask him about Rostropovich” Then they disappear pointing down the stairs.
Walking up the stairs – perhaps he doesn’t trust elevators – comes the great man. He stares into space but greets me with a gentle smile and says nothing.
I don’t feel like asking him why he is here. He’s a very senior icon in the Russian establishment – lucky to survive the purges and criticism of the Stalin years.
I’d heard a number of really bad performances of the Manfred symphony during the past year so I managed to frame a question without mentioning the current political situation.
“Do you think only a Russian can conduct the Manfred?” In fact I mention a particular Russian who was particularly partial to the music of Shostakovitch.
Slowly turning to me and showing a more serious face, he answers in a very assertive fashion.
“Yes!”
Rather obviously I now sympathetically say to him, “I’m very sorry to hear about Rostropovich”.
Contrary to my warning from the very secret service people, he contemplates my question and eventually shrugs his shoulders and says, “And I sent extra coal to his dacha”.
We reach my study and I sit him down on the chair next to my bike. He looks a little weary after all those stairs.
“Our staff and student composers would like to play you some of their compositions”.
He must have known the extent of the ordeal he was about to undergo but still he maintains a philosophical approach saying, “That will be good”.
Among our coterie of staff and student composers, only two – one staff member and one graduate student – composes notes that are related to any more than themselves. (Interestingly this particular graduate student obtained more commissions than the rest of the staff put together).
During the session, some of the students mentioned one composer who seemed to be writing fairly progressive music. The great man simply said, “Oh, he is restricted to the limits of his home town so you will not be hearing much from him in the future”.
It isn’t the substance of this statement which shocks the group. It’s the way it’s spoken. We have the impression that is what naturally happens when anybody tries to compose anything new. We don’t even discover exactly who has exacted this edict. The great man for a time had himself been banished to the regions for a similar approach to music.
At the end of the session, one of the more provocative students asked him, “Could our music be performed in Moscow?”
“Yes. It could be performed but I don’t think they would like it”
Having recently endured a five hour ballet gala in Vienna, I approached the recent Seattle Opera Gala with no lack of trepidation. The Vienna ballet gala, held at the end of the season, did not just include favourites of the audience but also the favourites of the individual artists. In particular, the piece danced by the boss of the outfit, who had recently been the star of the Paris ballet, was the hit of the evening.
The Seattle gala was not to celebrate anything like the end of a season. This gala celebrated the activities of an extraordinary man who had headed the Seattle Opera since 1982. Like most small opera companies, they are crazy about Wagner.
But I LIKE crazy so I am sympathetic to the aims of this brave person who stages the Ring and somehow gets away with it!! But I suppose that Seattle is definitely a Nordic outpost so it’s OK to celebrate the fact.
The evening was a sort of “love in” for the departing General Director Speight Jenkins. The artists had all given their services free for the evening. This was remarkable as Seattle is in the extreme North West of the USA and they must have made sacrifices of some of their gigs along the line to get here.
The only problem about the evening was just getting there. The traffic around the McCaw Hall car park is impossible. It takes about 45 minutes waiting on the roads around the place before you get in. Thankfully the performance started immediately we reached our places on the very first row of the theatre.
And it started with – you’ve guessed it – something from our favourite Wagner opera ’Valküre’ – Act 2 Scene 1.
I was expecting a wizened venerable personage to lead the Speight adulation from the stage, Thank goodness we had a real live opera singer Joyce Castle inebriated with love for Speight in the first half and with what seemed like some other stuff in the later second half. She was funny, fresh and Texan!!! What more can you ask for? She popped out on to the stage from time to time reminding us of the achievements of a Director who had managed to lure her and her colleagues all the way out to the rain washed northwest.
The came one of my favourite singers of the evening, Stephanie Blythe – a big woman with an enormous voice who gives us everything she’s got. Wow!!! She had fun singing part of Offenbach’s ‘La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein’ with the male chorus. It looked to me as though she could have the whole lot for breakfast! Here she is singing at the Met’.
Train travel has it’s poets. For me, it also has its composers. In one of my favourite films, ’Sun Valley Serenade’ with the actual Glenn Miller band performing, we hear them rehearsing my favourite railway song “Chattanooga Choo Choo”.
One of the first musique concrete pieces I ever heard was Pierre Schaeffer’s “Etude aux Chemins de Fer” based on railways sounds.
A very popular piece by a train addict and composer Arthur Honegger, who was heard to say, “”I have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses”, wrote a piece which sounded so much like a train that he changed the title to ‘Pacific 231’. That title helped the piece attain considerable popularity
Music in a different genre describes this journey on Canadian Pacific
And this describes a journey from Vancouver to Whistler.
Judging from these songs, people seem to like Canadian trains. Looking at the scenery in this video makes me want to travel to Canada immediately!
There are many folk songs about the railways and the people who built them, for example, ‘Paddy Works on the Railway’.
This is Cumbrian folksong about the Settle To Carlisle Railway. Many people died building those great railways.
I have it on excellent authority that this is an Indian Independence Day song dedicated to Indian Railways.
Many great authors and poets have written about the railways. Here’s Walt Whitman’s “To a Locomotive in Winter”
and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “From a Railway Carriage”
Even T S Elliot – Yes, the chap who wrote “Four Quartets” and “The Wasteland” !!! – has contributed some of his verse to railways in the form of -“Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat”
They even have poetry competitions about the railways. Here’s a very young poet.
Here’s an older competition winner – if you can hear her above the railway noise!!
But here is a poem in words and pictures from East Lancashire.
One of the earliest innovative use of poetry, music and film was produced by the British GPO (General Post Office) in 1936. It’s interesting that the Post Office felt the need to employ film directors, poets, composers and actors to inform the public about the night mail from London to Scotland. The poet is W H Auden and the music was written by Benjamin Britten.
“Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong”
It is difficult to visualise a world where the only modes of travel were trains, water transport and horse drawn vehicles. Railway travel was by far the most comfortable means of travel until the advent of the modern design of car.
One of the greatest British contemporary poets of the railways was John Betjeman. Some of his observations about the habits and demeanours of the English can be seen in this BBC documentary which is based on his poetry. (Only the BBC dare make a film like this!!!)
He was largely responsible for preventing the demolition of St Pancras railway station. Until he began speaking of its beauty, we all thought that all those Victorian monstrosities should be pulled down. But he touched on one aspect of travel which affected me personally.
The London “tube” trains did not just run underground in the centre of London. They ran out into the suburbs and beyond to the green countryside North of London. For example, here’s the line from Rickmansworth to Amersham.
We lived in Sudbury, part of Wembley town, where the 1948 “Austerity Olympics” were held. The other side of our road was green where we used to catch newts which flourished in the numerous bomb craters. When we wanted to travel further into the countryside, we would take the Piccadilly, Bakerloo or Metropolitan Line “tube trains”.
This idea of building a “tube” line into the open countryside entranced John Betjeman. Of course, this invited people to move out into settlements near the line as this ‘Metropolitan Line’ ran directly through London into the city of London where bankers and stockbrokers worked. So Betjaman wrote about ‘Metroland’ – Ruislip, where we used to catch the train for Ruislip Lido – Rayners Lane and all stations North in a Middlesex which was mainly countryside when he wrote this poetry. “London Wall” and “Farringdon” are in the city of London and “Oxford Street” is in the City of Westminster, renowned for the post Christmas sales. Here they meet at “Bakers Street Station” – not mentioned in this section of the poem – and catch the Met’ Line whose first stop is “Willesden” and a subsequent stop at “Rayners Lane” in the county of “Middlesex”. He buys a dozen plants for their Ruislip home before meeting that “evening at six-fifteen” under the platform indicator.
And all that day in murky London Wall
The thought of Ruislip kept him warm inside
At Farringdon that lunch hour at a stall
He bought a dozen plants of London Pride;
While she, in arc-lit Oxford Street adrift,
Soared through the sales by safe hydraulic lift.
Early Electric! Maybe even here
They met that evening at six-fifteen
Beneath the hearts of this electrolier
And caught the first non-stop to Willesden Green,
Then out and on, through rural Rayner’s Lane
To autumn-scented Middlesex again.
Below he describes a journey INTO London from the “leafy lanes of Pinner”, wherein is “Your parents’ homestead set in murmuring pines”. The train passes “Harrow” and “Preston” stations where green fields can still be seen but “Neasden” is where the metropolis of London really makes itself evident.
Early Electric! With what radiant hope
Men formed this many-branched electrolier,
Twisted the flex around the iron rope
And let the dazzling vacuum globes hang clear,
And then with hearts the rich contrivance fill’d
Of copper, beaten by the Bromsgrove Guild.
Early Electric! Sit you down and see,
‘Mid this fine woodwork and a smell of dinner,
A stained-glass windmill and a pot of tea,
And sepia views of leafy lanes in Pinner –
Then visualize, far down the shining lines,
Your parents’ homestead set in murmuring pines.
Smoothly from Harrow, passing Preston Road,
They saw the last green fields and misty sky,
At Neasden watched a workmen’s train unload,
And, with the morning villas sliding by,
They felt so sure on their electric trip
That Youth and Progress were in partnership.
I must admit that it is pleasing to read poetry about my home town of Wembley even though it is now largely a Hindu settlement with probably the funniest show on television “The Kumars at No. 42”
(Cliff Richard)
(Elis Costello mentions the song he wrote about the Hoover factory in Hangar Lane, Perivale)
(Alan Alda)
(Jennifer Saunders)
and a magnificent temple in Alperton, on the site of one of my sister’s high school, which would be on everybody’s “bucket list” if it were in India.
I used to love walking around the old stadium built for the 1924 Exhibition. There were various amazing buildings with great statues which had been converted for use by various companies. But apparently they have all now been destroyed. Here is the last building, the Palace of Industry, biting the dust.
The Met’ Line station for Wembley Stadium is “Wembley Park” and other ’stopping’ trains also serve the same station.
WHEN melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley
And electric trains are lighted after tea
The poplars near the Stadium are trembly
With their tap and tap and whispering to me,
Like the sound of little breakers
Spreading out along the surf-line
When the estuary’s filling
With the sea.
The next section of poetry mentions “Harrow-on-the-Hill”, another favourite walk of mine. The “constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing” talks about the trolley bus route which started in Sudbury and ran into the town at Paddington. They had very large tyres and the power supply cables made the sounds he describes. He mentions other localities such as “Wealdstone” and “Perivale” where the old Hoover Factory stood.
(I can remember doing a New Year’s gig at the old Hoover factory. Elvis Costello even wrote a song about it)
Benjemann is probably comparing the sea off his favourite Cornwall coast with the suburbs of London, about which he was writing at that moment. (By the way, there is a school on top of Harrow Hill!)
Then Harrow-on-the-Hill’s a rocky island
And Harrow churchyard full of sailors’ graves
And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing
Is the level to the Wealdstone turned to waves
And the rumble of the railway
Is the thunder of the rollers
As they gather up for plunging
Into caves.
There’s a storm cloud to the westward over Kenton,
There’s a line of harbour lights at Perivale,
Is it rounding rough Pentire in a flood of sunset fire
The little fleet of trawlers under sail?
Can those boats be only roof tops
As they stream along the skyline
In a race for port and Padstow
With the gale?
Here we see a commuter arriving home by train to her house in Ruislip. “With a thousand Ta’s and Pardon’s”. English people are usually extremely polite. If someone steps on your foot, it is ‘de rigour’ to say “Sorry” or “Pardon”. A polite reply might invite a “Ta” or “Thank you!”. But this area really WAS “our lost Elysium – rural Middlesex again”, a delight to come home to! A small suburban house with a garden was a dream realised by many people at that time. And television was improving enough to occupy people for much of the evening.
Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
Runs the red electric train,
With a thousand Ta’s and Pardon’s
Daintily alights Elaine;
Hurries down the concrete station
With a frown of concentration,
Out into the outskirt’s edges
Where a few surviving hedges
Keep alive our lost Elysium – rural Middlesex again.
Well cut Windsmoor flapping lightly,
Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green
Hiding hair which, Friday nightly,
Delicately drowns in Drene;
Fair Elaine the bobby-soxer,
Fresh-complexioned with Innoxa,
Gains the garden – father’s hobby –
Hangs her Windsmoor in the lobby,
Settles down to sandwich supper and the television screen.
It’s SO nice to read Betjeman waxing lyrical about Wembley and the River Brent. Here he talks about many other areas around the Metropolitan Line. I once saw an aircraft sitting on top of a house in Northolt. He compares the city places like “Kensal Green and Highgate”, where Karl Marx in buried, “silent under soot and stone” with Perivale, “Parish of enormous hayfields” and “Greenford scent of mayfields”. This is how it was. But times have changed. We have some beautiful parks in this area of London but Middlesex is no longer the county that Betjeman knew.
Gentle Brent, I used to know you
Wandering Wembley-wards at will,
Now what change your waters show you
In the meadowlands you fill!
Recollect the elm-trees misty
And the footpaths climbing twisty
Under cedar-shaded palings,
Low laburnum-leaned-on railings
Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.
Parish of enormous hayfields
Perivale stood all alone,
And from Greenford scent of mayfields
Most enticingly was blown
Over market gardens tidy,
Taverns for the bona fide,
Cockney singers, cockney shooters,
Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters,
Long in Kensal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone
Although he seemed to love a “tube” line, which still runs from the London Stock Exchange into the countryside North of London, he chose to be buried in his beloved Cornwall. (‘Port Isaac’ shown in part of this video is the setting for our favourite TV series “Doc Martin”)
It was during one Summer long ago that I first attended the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. I attended the conducting course run by Sergiu Celibidache and actually took the Italian course run by Siena University.
The conducting course was held in the town theatre.
Celibidache had been conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic before Karajan. Incidentally, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic after Karajan was Claudio Abbado, who had attended Celibidache’s class in Siena.Other people who had been in Siena included Zubin Mehta and Daniel Barenboim.
Celibidache was into Zen Buddhism and would rise early each morning to meditate before classes. He believed that hearing music live can induce a transcendental experience in those present – something I also believe. He therefore reckoned that recordings that did not induce this experience were worthless.
Later, I was present at one of the first rehearsals he did with the London Symphony Orchestra. At the time, the wind section of the LSO was the finest in the world, including Barry Tuckwell on the horn, Gervese de Peyer on clarinet, Anthony Camden on oboe. In one section where the wind section was playing on its own as a group, he stopped conducting. The orchestra played on then stopped looking very puzzled. Anthony Camden asked, “Why did you stop conducting?” The maestro replied, “You were playing so well – you didn’t need me to conduct you”. This reminded me that the best instrumental performers are usually the best listeners. He seemed to get on well with the LSO.
The Accademia Musicale Chigiana was set up by Count Chigi of Saracini. The story went that Count Chigi had no heirs and was devoting his fortune to music. There were scholarships and the fees were tiny. I also believe that the fees for the hostel room in which we stayed were also subsidised by the Count. The teachers were great performers like Segovia on guitar, Fernando Germani on organ, Nicanor Zabaleta on harp plus many others.
Arriving at the hostel was interesting as pianos were being hauled up the stairs for students to use during the course. I was amazed that one man would carry a piano all on his own up the stairs to the room.
Coming from uncultured Britain, we needed a little tutoring in Italian manners. The first lesson in manners was in the student mensa. We were each given a serviette (table napkin or tovagliolo) with a ring and assigned a pigeon hole in which to keep it. They were changed each day. “Only barbarians eat without cloth serviettes!”, said our server. Amongst other useful skills, I learned the correct way to approach a plate of pasta lunga!!! We found out that we could have a really nice shower in a petrol station at the bottom of the hill on which Siena is built. We also learned that the real Italian, as promoted originally by Dante, has only ever been spoken in Siena. (They sure don’t speak it in Firenze!!!)
If the days were stimulating with very individual views on music from Celibidache, the evenings were amazing treats. Count Chigi brought in some of the finest performers in the world who gave concerts in his palace. One interesting feature of the performances was that, at the end of each piece, they would bow to the Count before acknowledging our applause. We had no worries about that. We were so grateful to be able to hear these great players. The only slight annoyance was that the flunky on the door insisted that we were “dressed appropriately” which could be hot in the rather warm Siena Summer evenings.
The funniest feature of living in the hostel was the “eight o’clock chord”. Students were allowed to practice their instruments in the rooms but only after eight o’clock in the morning. So, at exactly eight o’clock, every instrumentalist in the hostel would play an enormous chord or note and we would rush out to buy fresh rolls for breakfast.
We were in a room next to a student learning the Shostakovitch first cello concerto. So, every morning at eight o’clock, we heard those four notes which begin that piece. And we heard the rest again and again more often that we wanted! When we attended a concert recently with Pieter Wispelwey playing this Shostakovitch concerto, I realised that the solo part was still engraved in my memory!!
Life in Siena back then was a dream. There were hardly any hotels around the city at that time, in fact there were none that I knew of, so any buses which pulled into the campo at lunch would leave before the end of the day. The only time that the city became busy was during the ‘Palio’ times.
Here is a better view of the actual race.
There were many distinguished teachers around. I ‘hung around’ Alfred Cortot’s class one day. This must have been almost his last utterance and I didn’t understand a word but it was Alfred Cortot!!! We heard talk of Pablo Casals still arguing with Gaspar Cassadó despite Yehudi Menuhin persuading Casals to “forgive” Cassadó some years earlier. John Williams, a student in the Guitar class around that time, has recently been very critical of Segovia’s approach to teaching so all was not smooth in the interaction between students and tutors.
The composition course was run by Vito Frazzi whose “scala alternate” represented a considerable musical mountain to scale before students could compose much music. But the film music course was run by Angelo Lavagnino, a much more colourful composer, to say the least.
One day Lavagnino announced to students that the next meeting would be in Cinecittá Studios in Rome where he had a gig in two days time. I immediately changed from the Conducting Course and travelled down to Rome on the back of my friend’s motorbike to the studios where we saw music being added to what seemed to be a slightly risqué film. We also took the opportunity to go down to Casino. Caserta, Amalfi, Cumae, Sperlonga and other places on the way back to Siena.
Cumae was a great experience because of the acropolis under which the famous Sibyl was said to have resided. Virgil describes the place where the Sibyl prophesied the future and it is possible to work out, from book 6 of the Aenied, where she sat.
Riding away from Cumae, the most strange thing happened. As we rounded a corner, there was a car facing us travelling quite fast. To avoid collision, we went to one side – the LEFT side!! Much to our amazement, the approaching car ALSO went to their left side. The people in the car were also British so had instinctively gone to the left. The sibyl was obviously looking after us all!
Palio week was very busy and it was said that the Count produced sufficiently large bribes to enable our contrada to win the horse race. This meant that there was loud ringing from a huge bell just outside our hostel window for a couple of days.
When the course finished, I sat and watched Celibidache rehearse a single symphony for almost a whole week. He knew exactly what he wanted and the orchestra loved him despite the frequent very direct comments. I do remember one piece of ‘tongue in the cheek’advice to students. “If you stop the orchestra and do not know what to say, just say the second oboe is flat – the second oboe is ALWAYS flat”
“I’d like you to go over to the Albert Hall. There’s a party on this evening for Stokovsky, who’s in town at the moment. We have a problem there.”
This sounded curious as I had no idea exactly what the problem was. As far as I was concerned, the Albert hall was privately owned and could not therefore receive public money unless it turned itself into a charity.
It turned out that the party was also concerned with the acoustics of the hall which possessed a rather prominent echo and a long reverberation time. I gathered second-hand at the party that Stokovsky had proposed hanging up the flags of all nations from the front of the gallery to defeat the notorious echo and promote world peace.. I also learned a lot about the hall including the fact that even the rooms under the arena were designed along the lines of the colosseum in Rome.
The volume of a hall is one of the main parameters which determine the reverberation time. Simply put, that’s the time taken for the sound to die away. The other main London concert venue was the Festival Hall which – again simply put – had a volume which was too small. The solution to that hall was to provide assisted resonance using a series of amplifiers and speakers which each treated a tiny range of frequencies.
The problem in the Albert Hall was that the volume was very large and there was an echo mainly due to the dome which enabled certain sections of the audience to hear each note twice!
But there was hope. A young acoustician who lived in a basement flat near the Victoria and Albert Museum appeared with a simple solution. When I asked him what he had been doing recently, he told me he had been working on “Acoustic Perfume” for cabins in ships using bands of noise to mask the background engine sounds.
But when he explained his ideas, they were beautiful in their simplicity. He would hang a number of “flying saucers” from the dome which would provide reflection on the undersides and absorption on any reflected sound from the dome on their topsides.
This blew me away – it was SO simple! It takes a certain type of genius to come up with a truly simple solution to a complex problem. Later, when explaining his plan back at the ranch, I described it as a “half ceiling” to the hall cutting off half the sound from reaching the dome. We couldn’t build a whole ceiling – that would not have pleased English Heritage! – but we might get away with a half ceiling in the form of a number of flying saucers.
The private ownership was a problem but, as the hall was used for a number of BBC broadcasts including the Proms, it seemed to be in the public interest to provide public money to help pay for any improvement which resulted in acoustic benefits to the public.
Of course we sent a sample to the Government Building Research people and they came back with a result which said that the saucers would reduce the reflection by 3dB – a result not understood by any of the big cheeses. But the comment from the Director sealed the project when he said he wished he had come up with this solution, making his admiration for that young acoustician very clear.
So the flying saucers were hung and the measurements showed that there was a definite improvement in the reverberation frequency response but curiously there was an increase in the low frequency reverberation time – an improvement very desirable for Stokovsky. It turned out that this improvement was due to work which had been done on the floor of the hall for boxing matches. But Stokovsky would be pleased anyway. In fact, he said at the time “The echo – which is different from the reverberation period – is much less intense than it used to be, and the reverberation period is definitely shorter but I think there is more that could be done.”
I don’t think musicians ever really trust scientists’ tests on halls. So the hall had to tested by a real orchestra. I remember very clearly sitting with that heroic acoustician listening to the LSO playing the Bruckner Eighth and saying, “They’re playing this just for us!!!”
We were the only people in that huge old hall.
Four years later, Stokovsky gave his last concert in the Albert Hall.
Keith!!!! Keith!!! Keith!!! I hear across the street one Summer evening. Looking over the road I see Wendy with whom I had done a scratch orchestral tour of the Côte d’Azur a few years earlier.
I cross the road to confront a a slightly distraught Wendy.
“Would you mind page turning for me . . . Please?”
“OK. when?”, I reply.
“Now!”, says Wendy as she drags me into the stage door of the Wigmore Hall.
With only the slightest pause, we make our way on to the stage of the Wigmore Hall. Imagine my amazement when I see an audience almost filling the hall!! I make myself as invisible as possible as we set off through a sonata whose piano part looks like wallpaper. Somehow Wendy nods me through each page turn and the performance seems to be successful judging by the applause at the end and the subsequent encores.
The only event I remember about that Côte d’Azur tour – if “remembering” is the correct word! – is the reception given to the orchestra by the Mayor of Nice. H seemed very keen to get us to drink as much champagne as possible and then produced orange juice plus other additives to encourage us to drink even more. Inevitably everybody became drunk and we had a problem – how to sober up.
In my travels, I had often used the Nice USO as a place to have a free afternoon snack and coffee. Strangely, the people running it included a number of very elegant English ladies who spoke French with a very ‘English’ accent.
“I know somewhere we can sober up!”, I announced to the orchestra.
It must have been a strange vision to onlookers as a whole orchestra wended its way to the USO. The nice ladies assessed the situation correctly and produced mugs of coffee for us all to drink, almost saving the evening concert. I don’t remember much about the concert except that we ditched the Mendelssohn Violin Concert for the Telemann Concerto performed by a rugby-playing viola man who could consume vast quantities of alcohol with no apparent ill effects, unlike the rest of us.
Ah, back to page turning!
I suppose the first requirement of a page turner is the ability to read music. This is only really necessary because you need to know when to nonchalantly rise and lean forward to turn the page. As the pianist approaches the end of the page of music you receive a deep nod and the page must then be turned. You do not usually have to wait until the end of the page. There’s something a little creepy about a person hiding next to a pianist and only emerging every now and then to turn the page. There’s even an excellent film called “The Page Turner . . . . . .
Here you can see Martha Argerich using a page turner . . . .
All in all, the presence of a page turner on the stage is a necessary evil which visually distracts us from the music. I have always tried my best to avoid being a page turner.
However I remember one ocassion when I had booked a seat on the front row of one of the few concert halls where I can stretch my feet out. It was a programme of violin sonatas.
The two performers walked on to the stage, bowed to acknowledge applause, said a few words to each other, then , to the astonishment of the audience, mysteriously walked off the stage. Shortly after this, the Stage Manager appeared and approached me.
“The performers would like to speak with you”, he whispered.
I followed him backstage where I was asked whether I would turn pages for the pianist. I reluctantly agreed and we all trooped back on to the stage and did the concert.
But I really lucked out with this duo. Many musicians are excellent gourmet cooks and these two were no exception. They insisted that I come back to their apartment where they cooked me an amazing meal! So page turning can sometimes be a rewarding experience!!
Have you ever booed a stage production or walked out of the performance altogether? Here in Seattle, I am told that audiences award each performance a standing ovation then quickly scuttle home. (Fair play to them, most people who rush out are trying to catch a late night ferry home.) I myself tend towards a binary approach – I either enjoy it or not then scuttle home.
But there are stirrings amongst opera audiences. Are they becoming as demonstrative as football supporters? Or are they still politely applauding opera stage production they simply do not enjoy?
My limit was reached when I saw a hideous production of Götterdämmerung in Florence some time ago.
Anticipating an awful production, I had booked a box seat above the orchestra from which I could hear that great sound and see Zubin Mehta leaning back against the pit wall conducting his orchestra in his inimitable way. But I was puzzled by the fact that there was a video monitor hanging at my level. All was revealed when three enormous glass tanks appeared suspended above the stage at my level containing the Rheintöchtern. They looked at us from under the water and rose above the surface to sing their parts!
At the time I was more concerned at the cruelty inflicted on these young singers than the quality of the production. I’m OK with naked Rheintöchtern or Rheintöchtern flying on wires behind a gauze but underwater goes too far in my opinion. But when Siegfried appeared walking along the top of the set, I was concerned about the safety of the whole cast. If animals were required to do anything like this, the show would be immediately banned.
When the performance ended with all sorts of antics including a sort of cirque de soleil and segways running around everywhere I threw up my hands and shut my eyes. I did open them to applaud a great Brünnhilde who had put up with being carted around on a forklift truck during the performance.
Then there are those slightly weird productions. The ‘Lohengrin I heard some time ago in Munich probably qualifies as one of those. But with Kent Nagano at the helm and local Jonas Kaufmann singing Lohengrin, the audience was very happy. It was the first time I had heard Kaufmann so I was also very happy!! This production is actually on Youtube so we can all make a judgement about the extent of the weirdness and the magic of the performance. Here they are busy building a house in the first act 29 minutes into this video . . . .
. . . . . . and here is the finished half house. Lohengrin is dressed Amish-style but this probably indicates the quality of his character . . . .
Magic as the music may be, I could not help wondering why they began building with hebel blocks and ended with a wooden Halbhaus.
I have tended to block out from my memory the most awful productions I have seen in recent years. I have tried to enjoy the great music alone. However, I have to admit that production does affect my feelings at the end of an opera evening. I feel particularly sorry for critics who have to attend these performances. Having paid off a mortgage by moonlighting as a music critic, I have always felt a need to support musicians and singers, many of whom have trained for up to twenty years before getting their first appointment.
I can easily sympathise with a particular critic who neglected to mention in his review three years ago that performances of the L.A. “Ring”, particularly the final “Götterdämmerung”, had been booed. In fact one other critic had written . . . . . .
“I have never heard anything close to the amount, volume, and ferocity of the booing following the April 3 premiere of Los Angeles Opera’s production of Richard Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung,”
This sort of observation was justified by my own editor who suggested that critics are journalists who should “say something about the whole performance”. Surely, the audience reaction is part of the “whole performance”?
Another observation by a critic in L.A. . . . . .
The director “jauntily jogged right to the front of the stage, smiling, as if to challenge both booers and the rising rival chorus of bravos . . . . . . The boo’s won.”
It is sad to read that Zeffirelli is recorded as saying “I belong to a generation where being faithful to the authors was the automatic rule. Now you have to be unfaithful to be interesting.”
One argument that favours the “weird” is the televising of operas which often gives a more favourable view of an “unfaithful” approach. The audience, on the other hand is looking at a wide stage. Even the ‘Lohengrin’ mentioned above looks rather scruffy during “In fernem Land”. The few shots of the whole stage in the video actually show this, although I obviously did not worry about it at the time!
Even a short search on the internet will reveal many occasions where audiences have become more intolerant of extremely “unfaithful” productions. For example, it is not surprising that the Met audience did not appreciate a scene in the 2009 production of ’Tosca’ “where the villain tries to become intimate with a statue of the Virgin Mary.”
There were many reactions from the press ranging from Bloomberg’s “How did this dopey show get on the stage?” to The New Yorker’s “Fiasco!!” The director was subsequently effectively sacked and his proposed production of Rigoletto was rejected in favour of a new director whose . . . . .
“ transformation of Verdi’s tragic opera from the ducal palace in Mantua, circa 1600, to a Las Vegas casino, circa 1960, is no less spectacular (or eye-rolling, depending on one’s tolerance for the unorthodox) . . . . . but once one adjusts to the myriad flashing neon signs in the opening act, including a bare-bottomed stripper and a bubbling champagne glass, the music of one of Verdi’s most popular operas takes over.”
Once again, faithfulness, the musicians and singers have won the day!
Last year, a Covent Garden audience felt their evening watching ‘Rusalka’ had been ruined by the fact that director had set the opera in a brothel. They booed the director and felt that perhaps, like the Met’, the management should notice their reaction?
So what has happened as a reaction to this booing?
Let’s look at the good stuff first. Two months ago, I read about the Pittsburgh Opera where . . . . .
“The Triumphal Scene featured many extra elements, including two horses ridden by members of the Allegheny Country Police Mounted Patrol, a python, a hawk, and four greyhounds with their handlers.”
But they also brought figures from the USA’s iconic sport which must help to bring opera to the people without any unfaithfulness or cruelty to sopranos. I personally love this!!
“Former Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch was the “Champion of Champions” on Saturday. He comported himself with dignity and exchanged salutes with Radames. Bob Friend, Franco Harris and Phil Bourge will take this silent role at subsequent performances.”
However this year in Bayreuth, known for its imaginative productions, ‘Götterdämmerung’ was booed for 15 minutes. Maybe Shirley Apthorp’s description explains why . . .
“This is Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, where two giant crocodiles lumber past overflowing rubbish bins during Siegfried’s love duet with Brünnhilde. One of them swallows the Waldvogel – her high heels can be seen kicking feebly between its teeth as the two sing on. Earlier, when Siegfried blasted Mime full of holes with a machine gun, a member of the public collapsed. Hagen and Günter run a kebab stand in a forgotten corner of East Berlin. . . . . . . For these and a thousand other petty provocations, the Bayreuth audience rewarded the stage director with more than 15 minutes of solid booing when he appeared for his curtain call”.
This was the bicentenary performance of the ‘Ring’, no less!! It was noted that
“The director seemed determined to stick it out, standing on stage for a good 10 minutes, bowing graciously and making thumbs-up gestures. He even returned for a second helping and appeared to be revelling in the scandal, pointing at his watch to suggest he had time to listen to it.”
But there’s even more distasteful stuff. The “thousand other petty provocations” included. the scene where
“Two disheveled gods, Wotan and Erda, eat pasta and tomato sauce and indulge in joyless” indescribable acts . . . and . . . “Brünnhilde goes to sleep in Baku, Azerbaijan, and awakes in a socialist utopia Mount Rushmore with the faces of Stalin, Lenin, Marx and Mao carved into the rock.”
Two months ago in Paris, audiences booed the production of ‘Aida’. How on earth can anyone boo ‘Aida’? Perhaps the appearance of gypsies, military police, tanks and Gestapo officers with machine guns in the Italian Risorgimento had something to do with it?
What next?
Having just witnessed the Seahawks defeat the Giants away from home 23 to zip in New Jersey – poetry in motion, especially slow motion!! (I was watching in a bar eating an enormous prime rib sandwich and drinking a pint of Guiness), I would suggest that opera companies go even further than Pittsburgh and hire Pete Caroll to direct their next productions.
Keith of Ninewells 