Trio Lalique in Chichester

 Trio Lalique, Chichester Cathedral, October 14

Trio Lalique's programme stood out as a likely highlight of Chichester's Autumn schedule. Heavyweight composers don't come much heavier than Beethoven and Shostakovich, here compared through their first Piano Trios. 

'Heavy' by way of reputation, though, not 'heavy going' like some one could mention. The Beethoven op. 1 no. 1 might not be quite his first work but genius comes ready-made if not yet fully formed. The Allegro sets the predominant tone which is eine kleine Mozartian and 'classical', extending its six-note rising motif through Ilya Kondratiev's tip-toeing piano. Julia Morneweg's cello led the melodic line in the Adagio before the full trio sound was something one could never expect from a disc, especially from the third row. The slow movements of Beethoven's Piano Trios are worthy of special attention, with the Archduke still some way ahead in both time and timelessness and Trio Lalique caught the young man in all his relative innocence. The Scherzo and Presto were flighty exhibitions of dexterity on all three instruments, quickening captivatingly in the violin of Yuri Kalnits to an exuberant ending.

The Shostakovich Trio no. 1, op. 8, is something different entirely. If shorter in length, it is larger in conception. The hero of Russian, if not all, C20th music was 16 when he wrote it but the foundations of his compelling later work are in place. Julia carried a romantic cello line in among the wintry shimmer but Shostakovich is nothing if not restless and there were passages of swarming, high tension before a grandiloquent tutti as the climax. I'm in less of a position to hope for more Shostakovich on our local concert circuit by now because we've had some this year but one can hope that a trend has been set and I'd like to draw the attention of the several fine pianists we have locally to the Preludes and Fugues.

That was truly memorable, not that anything that Chichester lunchtimes ever offer is forgettable, but it made great sense, was immacualtely delivered with Ilya demonstrating remarkable reflexes in turning over his sheet music at moments of high drama and there was nowhere I'd rather have been. That is what makes these event essential.

The Arden Hamlet and other stories

Chichester's Oxfam bookshop had a copy of the Arden Hamlet whereas I had no such free-standing edition of this play of all plays and so now I have.

Even William Empson, the great footnoter, would envy Harold Jenkins whose 574-page book devotes 260 to the play, where half of each is taken up with small print below, the Introduction being 160 pages and the Longer Notes amounting to 153. And for the most part it is 'more matter with less art'. I thought I knew plenty about Hamlet having once counted about 30 productions of it but some of the greatness of some great things lies in their bottomless quality.

The potential for scholarship is helped in no small part by the need to establish which text we are reading and why with the First Quarto being understood to be made of partially remembered parts taken from actors, the second from the 'foul papers' in which Shakespeare might have blotted lines but copyists, compositors and editors are more usually made culpable and the Folio being what those editors decided to go with. The murky world of the supernatural, the feigned madness, the nocturnal action and all the uncertainties of a 400-year old text are only made more elusive by not having an autograph manuscript certified by the author as his finalised version but in due course we have an artwork to scrutinize.

It had come to my notice already that the revenge theme is not only doubled by Laertes being set up to take revenge on Hamlet for the unwitting murder of his father, Polonius, but is trebled by the whole play being framed by the revenge of Fortinbras on Denmark for the defeat of his father by King Hamlet thirty years earlier. However, in a play constructed so much around 'doublings', Reynaldo is sent to France to spy on Laertes in the same way as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are employed to fathom what Hamlet is up to, which only augments the atmosphere of suspicion, paranoia and counter-espionage that government in any age is, perhaps necessarily, obsessed with.

That thirty year gap specifically puts Hamlet's age at thirty which is compatible with a dilettante prince with not much more to do than wile away time at university and read 'words, words, words'. That it doesn't seem entirely consistent with one referred to as 'young', Harold Jenkins links in any such possible inconsistencies with the early characterisation of Fortinbras as hot-headed compared to the dignified commander he is presented as in the end as,

a kind of consistency Shakespeare hadn't bothered to supply, 

which looks like the sort of thing one can be excused if you are Shakespeare but wouldn't be in most others.

Jenkins is persuasive in interpreting,

that it is Hamlet that rejects Ophelia's love and not she his,

which is entirely consistent with Hamlet's disgust at the ways of the world, the 'contagion', the 'sterile promontory' he sees it as and, in one of the more important-looking sources, the melancholy of Timothy Bright's Treatise of Melancholy (1586) in which the world, like Denmark, is perceived as a prison. The disgust at procreation, Gertrude's lustful 'incest' with Claudius and all the Get thee to a nunnery diatribe might even, for some biographers, be a clue to Shakespeare's own misogyny. It could be tempting to associate one who was so gifted with words to have a compensating downside in some sort of personality disorder, as could have been the case with Mozart's and Beethoven's inordinate capacities for music but social misfit tendencies. However, if Hamlet is seen as prevaricating, lacking purpose and prone to moodiness, 

the contrast with Laertes is not one by which Hamlet is disparaged,

mostly because,

both meet their deaths because Hamlet is too magnanimous to 'peruse the foils', Laertes mean enough to take advantage of it.

It is in the Murder of Gonzago that poison poured into the ear is where the unlikely murder method comes from but the real life precedent was rumoured to be the murder of the Duke of Urbino in 1538. 

If Shakespeare always found wonderful names for even such minor characters as Moth, Bushy, Bagot, Tybalt and Bottom, the various sources and significances of those in Hamlet are all covered here and most of what one needs to know for a much fuller appreciation than that most of us had to be awarded an 'Advanced Level' qualification many, many years ago. 

Maybe it's too big for 'A' level, as Ulysses or Ezra Pound might also be. Of all the essential lines learnt in order to cite in the exam, to show we'd read it, I don't remember 'Hyperion to a satyr' being one of them but that might be more pertinent to what Hamlet means, more than 'something is rotten in the state of Denmark'. By now it seems that humanity was still a bit too ready to flatter itself that it lay halfway between gods and animal instincts.

But, in the end, presented with so much chapter and verse, I feel retrospectively a bit robbed. It was possibly at my unsuccessful interview to do English at Exeter University that I was asked what Hamlet was about, then. 

Harold Jenkins, given the monumental responsibility of editing the Arden Hamlet, concludes that it is,

the intermingling of good and evil in all life.

That's not far from what I said but it wasn't good enough for Exeter and I had to take the long hike to Lancaster which wasn't at the time credited with the high achievement it has been in recent years. Week 1 was given over to 'how to write a sentence' or some such given thing, such were their doubts about their intake. But that train has long gone. I'd like to think that the Chichester Oxfam shop continues to fill in some bits I missed. 

They didn't have a Don Quixote last week but that is an Autumn project, now ordered from the Library in the hope I can do 800 pages before it needs renewing. And also, The Scapegoat by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, the story of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, Portsmouth's most eminent murder victim. It does begin to look as though one drawback of being privileged is that people will try to kill you and sometimes succeed.

Imma Setiadi & Nigel Clayton at Chichester

 Imma Setiadi & Nigel Clayton, Chichester Cathedral, October 1

Chichester Cathedral has been marking the 150th anniversary of Gustav Holst whose ashes are interred in the north transept, not least with this piano duet performance of The Planets in an arrangement by Vally Lasker, Nora Day and Holst himself. In those far off days when the record collection took up a lot less space, my cassette of Pictures at an Exhibition had Ravel's orchestration on one side and the original Mussorgsky piano version on the other and I gradually came to prefer the piano. So, how would such a Planets come across after a lifetime of familiarity with the sound of the full score. 

There is a danger with well-known music that we don't listen as closely because we know what's going to happen but a different arrangement makes it fresh. Nigel played the lower half of the keyboard with Imma on the high notes, the menace of Mars becoming thunderous with so many notes, many of which are the same one. Our perception of these planets has altered with more being discovered about them and to give Mars its due, it's almost certainly the most hospitable outside of our own.

Venus is all tranquil serenity without persuading me to take a holiday there and twinkled into the distance and Mercury was indeed quicksilver in Imma's graceful hands.

Jupiter is in many ways the big, show-stopping number shining forth with brilliant light before its magnificent tune benefits from being purely itself without add-on associations of patriotism or rugby union. Before that chimed in heartily I thought it was taken in quick tempo but it's been some years since I heard it.

The best of the 'poetry', for me, comes in the more remote, outer planets. Saturn is stooped, rheumatic and perhaps plagued with memories before Imma and Nigel make the final passage lilt with what must be restfulness. Uranus is the magician and his magic is performed with a similar energy to that heard in The Sorcerer's Apprentice and in what was a series of fast-slow or loud-quiet contrasts, Neptune was suitably aquatic while billed as 'mystic' but also mistier and mistier towards a beautifully handled long-lingering finish that, gladly, was respected with some moments of silence before the appreciative applause.

What we will never know is with what bleakness Holst might have gone further into the outskirts of the solar system with Pluto but that wild and lonely place, having only been found since was subsequently relegated from proper planetary status and so The Planets has been restored to completeness. 

The piano duet version certainly works and Imma and Nigel make a fine interpretation of it. In some ways the orchestration makes Neptune spookier but it's hard to say that Mars or Jupiter are any less strident played by four hands and I'm at pains not to say 'reduced to' four hands because there's nothing about it that sounds reduced. On a most rewarding day, we could visit Holst's last resting place and maybe reflect that if you are to be mostly remembered for one blockbuster popular classic, it's best that it's one of such imagination and variety. 

Inspiratio Ensemble - Beethoven

 Inspiratio Ensemble, An Afternoon with Beethoven, 

St. Mary's, Hayling Island, September 29

Bravely, I took on the vagaries of the Sunday afternoon bus timetable. To continue with what has been a great Beethoven year for me, a rare chance to hear some of his songs meant it was necessary and it was good to see that so many others took the opportunity, too.

Alex Poulton's programme was narrated by Piers Burton-Page in an epistolary biographical account of Beethoven's troubled life and with Valentina Seferinova and Mikhail Lezdkan as accompanists and additional instrumental pieces it made for an insightful as well as musically various show.

Beginning with three lieder, Alex's expressive dramatization was modulated through erudite diction and enunciation, ideal in the intimate acoustic of St. Mary's. For all of our stereotype image of Beethoven as the muscular Romantic bent on heroism, yes, he could do that, but the emphasis of what Piers read and these songs was on vulnerability and an openness to such feelings. Valentina might also be renowned for her high-octane performances of Rachmaninov and Joachim Raff but she can do decorous restraint, too.

In the finale of the Pathetique Sonata she was poignant but not unplayful before the song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte (To the distant beloved), Op. 98, was simpatico with nature until the last of them took off into a celebration of song itself as art provides some release from the torments it expresses.

It all seemed to fit when it transpired that Alex works in music therapy and suddenly it becomes obvious that that is what music is and does, whether as part of a programme designed to do so or whether one subconsciously puts on Josquin des Prez rather than Siouxsie and the Banshees.

It's not easy to think of a greater meeting of music and literature than Beethoven meeting Goethe but they did, not only by letter but in person, the poet reflecting later that,

His talent astounded me; nevertheless, he unfortunately has an utterly untamed personality, not completely wrong in thinking the world detestable, but hardly making it more pleasant for himself or others by his attitude. 

In the second half, Alex sang the rhythmic, Neue Liebe, neues Leben, op. 75, no.2, 'New Life, New Love', which in many ways was a recurring but unrequited theme and one of the 25   ( !!! ) Scottish Songs, op. 108. Not everybody knew that Beethoven might have been as well known for lieder as Schubert had he not done a mountain of other things as well. Like Für Elise, for example, that Valentina played so delicately to a rapt audience.

The 'big ticket' instrumentally, though, was Mikhail's Cello Sonata no. 4, op. 102, no. 1 with its plaintive, slow exchanging of trills with Valentina before a more unsettled Allegro Vivace and then, again, the deep, sonorous cello with lingering piano giving way to an impulsive, robust conclusion. 

It was for the most part about the songs this afternoon, though, and Sehnsucht, op. 83 no. 2, was a shadowy thing, translated as something like 'yearning' but, Wikipedia says, about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences.  And if that is what Beethoven is ultimately about, he made a very good job of it, not least in Busslied, op. 48, no.6, moving from minor to major, with Valentina providing something approximately akin to Bach organ music behind the celebratory anthem that, given his usual symphonic grand climaxes, Beethoven simply stopped. Valentina had to turn over her music because nobody thought it would do that and then came the applause. Clever trick, that. 

It was a brilliantly thought-out afternoon, pressing for a place to be short-listed on what is a long list of wonderful Events of the Year attended by me this year. Done with such care and attention and for art's sake, my one and only reservation would have to be that some sort of handout would come in useful, mainly for me admittedly, but for everybody else, too. It's not only something to guide you through but something to remember it by which we will surely want to do. 

Ensemble Concertante at Lunchtime Live!

Ensemble Concertante, Portsmouth Cathedral, September 26 

After last week's Lunchtime Live when Sachin's set brought the light from outside in, today Ensemble Concertante did the same for a breezy day with their four clarinets providing the wind indoors.

The Overture to The Marriage of Figaro lent itself well to its arrangement through Spencer Bundy's bass mixing sustained notes with ornament until the trilling finale. For the most part it is Rob Blanken in the lead part but 'ensemble' is the operative word and the combination glowed in the Allegro from Clare Grundman's Caprice. Clare was male, not female, it transpires and one must try not to take anything for granted.

That glow was maintained throughout the set which continued in jazzy style, making the case that the Mozart concerto notwithstanding, it is at least as much such an instrument as 'classical'.  Mack the Knife passed the tune around at a leisurely tempo with no need for Ella to improvise the words before the billowing Polly's Song with Jen Flatman, Naomi Rides and the bass man in an intricate trio in the middle and The Cannon Song by Kurt Weill which had more of the feel of the next whisky bar. 12th Street Rag was moved from its customary finale position before a Klezmer Triptych, arr. Mike Curtis, was yet more atmospheric in its traditional stylings of an age-old, somehow melancholy party until flying in Freylacher Bulgar.

Spencer's light-hearted commentary assumed that opera was forbidding and that everybody loved Gershwin but that's not how it is for me. His Walking the Dog swung loosely, however, to complete a brief survey of C20th jazz.

New to Concertante were three Songs of the British Isles, arr. Richards & Wood but not those of Rolling Stones fame. The Londonderry Air had Jen, Naomi and Spencer sighing beneath Rob's melody, Paddy Green Shamrock Shore had a variety of things going on in an unconventional arrangement and an ersatz Blaydon Races, if only 'ersatz' meant what I'd like it to mean which would suggest something off-kilter or fractionally askew. It was an interesting way to finish, not being the big send off or the lesser heard quiet ending but somewhat more arty than most renderings of it on Tyneside, I'd think.

What Concertante bring with them is no little sense of good fun. It's one of the things the clarinet does best.

Brush Strokes

 While it's diverting to do something out of one's comfort zone once in a while, it might be best if we don't do it too often. I undertook to finish the bathroom by painting it myself. It makes a change from stringing likely-sounding words into sentences. But whoever thought that academic work was somehow better than such artisan endeavour had it all wrong.

I've painted the bathroom once before and don't remember getting up into the top corners being quite such a challenge how ever many years ago that was. It's a young man's game on the top step at full stretch with one false move by someone so unused to such balancing acts offering a wide choices to bang one's head once and for all. This body, this vessel that I move about in, could once run or ride bikes for long distances, bowl eight overs at a time and do forward rolls at least into its thirties but aches and pains, not all of them psychosomatically, do their best to provide warnings. Early doors I was considering getting my favourite handyman to do it but I don't like to feel entirely useless just yet.

I can't do it all today. Maybe it's past halfway. I like the feeling of having done something useful, or tried, however badly. I have renewed admiration for those who can do such things, especially those one sees walking round on rooftops. They must know what they are doing.

There's probably a German word for 'the shame felt on realizing that what one does is of no intrinsic value'. What use have roofers for a theory that Shakespeare's kids weren't really all his own. What actual use is it to anybody compared to plumbing. What good is a write-up about a musical event or a book of poems compared to re-wiring the house. Is it the worst feeling one can have to end up thinking that one's life has been a waste of time.

Not entirely wasted, having enjoyed so much of it, but self-indulgent to say the least. And having enjoyed re-reading Benjamin Moser's The World Turned Upside-Down, I moved swiftly on to do the same with Laura Cumming's Thunderclap on very much the same subject and done in a similar way. Last year I think I preferred Laura but this time I'm more taken with Benjamin, notwithstanding his unnecessarily long coda, They are both fine writers and do much to enhance our appreciation of that exceptional period in painting but Benjamin demonstrates his Pulitzer credentials by finding more, possibly due to having spent twenty years on his book.

There. That feels a bit better already, back in the liberal arts and considering them of ultimate consequence whereas most people can manage without Carel Fabritius but there comes a time when bathrooms need some maintenance. There's painting and then there's painting. That could be the last time, I don't know.

Strange Fowl

Strange Fowl 

 

It is with some trepidation but no little rejoicing that Strange Fowl is released into the world after its extended period of gestation.

It is eight years since its appearance in the TLS letters page after some early mentions here but now it arrives in its fullest version which will be further augmented, edited or amended as we go.

It's hard to know how best to promote it, or how much we'd like to, but it is to be hoped that those with an interest in such things will find it in due course and it's there now, as ready as it will ever be to suffer the slings and arrows of the Shakespeare biography industry.

That's fine. It is a 'modest proposal' and not, we think, an outrageous one.

 

On behalf of the band, I hope we passed the audition.