Chichester Symphony Orchestra in Chichester

 Chichester Symphony Orchestra with Tim Rumsey, Chichester Cathedral, October 27

So, where would we place Camille Saint-Saëns in the great panoply of Western Classical Music, should we ever feel the need? Perhaps not quite in the Premiership alongside Bach, Mozart and Beethoven but playing attractively in the next division with his Carnival of the Animals, Danse Macabre and the distinction of being one of those composers who found himself recycled into a pop song in the hit parade- If I Had Words by Scott Fitzgerald and Yvonne Keeley that plundered the Organ Symphony.

Tuneful, then, and possibly more like somebody from a generation earlier than his closer contemporaries because, living until 1921, music had moved on a bit by then if not always for the better. 

The CSO and Tim Rumsey have appeared separately and together in the cathedral's lunchtime series and it's good to see the partnership continue. The Piano Concerto no. 5, op. 103, began by mixing twinkling piano with lushness on both the keys and from the orchestra before the Allegro Animato became more involved and emotional. The grand gestures that opened the Andante second movement went via a smoother melodic line that was passed from the strings, through the piano to oboe before some more unsettling, disquieting feelings that might have been wintry but could equally have described the shifting sands that make the concerto 'Egyptian'. Like the first, though, it was to thaw, melt and resolve itself into a dew. But the Allegro finale did nothing of the sort.

 

My homework beforehand had found Saint-Saëns compared with Liszt which was a comparison I wouldn't have made. But I can hear it now. Tim had only been warming up with various bits of dazzle, it transpired. Let loose on the spectacular ending, the overflowing, powerful surge with the fullness of sound from a CSO that turned up with reinforcements, approached the thrilling, diabolic excess that is properly Lisztian. All vim and blitz, it brought some of the audience to their feet and left me surprised and somewhat the wiser that the composer of that serenely gliding swan music could also do that.

Few would dispute Schubert's Premiership status, who once had Radio 3 devote a week to playing all his music. The portentous brass and timpani that opened the Rosamunde Overture gave way to some of his signature lightness of touch in the strings and woodwind but an overture is a sort of wake-up call anticipating a story to come. Thus the orchestra raised some rousing tempi before the long, built-up sort of climax that Beethoven wouldn't have been ashamed of.

It's always a bonus when you're not told what an encore is because you can have a quiz. If Tim's jazzy extra hadn't been Gershwin I'd have eaten my hat. It was called Let's Kiss and Make Up and I'm not due at the trilby shop tomorrow.

Melanie White in the Menuhin Room

 Melanie White, Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, Oct 24

While we all know what a flute is and what it does, how many pieces for it can some of us non-flautists think of? L'après-midi d'un faune, another chance to mention Everyone's a Fruit and Nutcase and some Suites by Bach. I must try harder. Gladly, Melanie White had some pieces to introduce us to. We shall not live by piano and violin alone.

I had been betting without Annie's Song, not having been aware the programme was in celebration of James Galway but not thinking of John Denver as part of the 'classical' canon either. Karen Kingsley's immense contribution to local music continued with her rippling piano accompaniment to a tune that seemed to be everywhere in the 1970's. After that the show mixed in further 'easier' listening with more technically challenging pieces.

The Concertino by Chaminade included soaring heights in its mercurial changes with some post cadenza lyricism leading to a flamboyant finish.

Gluck's Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Orfeo ed Euridice was one I should have thought of and was a welcome reminder of a great composer not often heard in lunchtime affairs because they are not usually opera but its pacific classicism provided a prompt to put his music on the CD machine again soon.

The 'big ticket' item was Reinecke's Undine Sonata, a highly involved drama with an onrush of emotion in its third movement and Karen very much an equal partner rather than a supporting role. Again, there was counterpoint to be had between the two instruments in the traditional Spanish Love Song in which the love was mostly a solitary longing.

But, having thought the Gluck would stand as my highlight, along came Il pastore svizzero by Francesco Morlacchi, a theme and variations of open air gaiety and circus acrobatics in both woodwind and piano parts. You can never quite tell which bits will turn out most successfully but this stole in and stole the show at the same time.

Referring back to James Galway - and how many other musicians played both in the Berlin Philharmonic and on Top of the Pops, the finale had to be Danny Boy. If I'm not sure how much I like Annie's Song, the unadorned, moving simplicity of that fine composer, Trad's, eternal composition is one that never fails to convince.

Melanie said she had received any number of suggestions from fellow flautists when wondering what she might play. Those that she selected provided a rich and varied insight into what her instrument is capable of. It is still necessarily best at doing its floaty, lightsome thing but there is more to it than that.  

For One Night Only

Good Evening, Bedhampton. 

 

This evening I report from the joint reading of poets from the Chichester and Portsmouth groups that took place in the elegant surroundings of the Waterloo Room in the Elms.

Well organized and timed to perfection, there was as much rain in the poems indoors as there was in the weather outdoors and plenty of memorials to relations, some accomplished readings, music, cake, hot drinks and wine. 

No wine for me, of course- not while I'm on duty. There's enough can go awry trying to remember what to say to an audience without confusing the issue with Merlot.

Being on last either means one is the last hope, like a no. 11 batter, or top of the bill like Ken Dodd on The Good Old Days or Oasis at Glastonbury. It's hard to tell and it's even harder to tell if one was any good. The set list was - Piccadilly Dusk, Fiction, Windy Miller, Rainyday Woman. The audience were kind and not as fearsome and unreceptive as one's worst imaginings had anticipated. I got on, one or two of the attempted funny bits got a bit of reaction, Windy Miller made me feel emotional when really one objective of art is to make that happen to those listening and I got off in one piece. I didn't mess up and that was the height of my ambition and now the sense of relief is almost glorious.

I don't have to do it again. Any further performances can stay on the page.

An afternoon of Romantic Russian chamber music in Petersfield

Valentina Seferinova, Anna and Mikhail Lezdkan, St. Peter's, Petersfield, Oct 18 

This week's family affair concerts were completed by father and daughter Mikhail and Anna Lezdkan, cello and violin, with Valentina Seferinova, piano, playing C19th and C20th Russian music from Tchaikovsky to Shostakovich.

The first half was Valentina and Mikhail with a solemn Andante Cantabile by Tchaikovsky, two pieces by Glazunov including the lithe Spanish Serenade, the exotic Orientale by Cui but most memorably the two fastest cello parts I've ever heard, from Mikhail. Seeing Rimsky-Korsakov's famous Flight of the Bumblebee on the programme I'd assumed it would be Valentina providing the fireworks but I've been wrong before and she provided the convivial romp of his Serenade op. 37 after Mikhail's dazzling performance made his cello do things I've not heard any other do. I know John Adams wrote something called A Short Ride in a Fast Machine but that was made to look like a Model T Ford in comparison. 

The first half ended with more Tchaikovsky, the Pezzo Capricciosio, which became capricious when changing from sonorous to dizzy but I don't think the speed record set by the bumblebee was quite equalled.

Valentina opened the second half with Rachmaninov's Barcarolle, op. 10, which, if you wanted it to, could have conjured a night éclaboussé des étoiles, a memorable phrase from Gide at 'A' level that has finally come in useful, meaning 'bespangled with stars'. And then Anna made her belated appearance and made it worth our wait, joining Mikhail for what was for me the find of the day in Glière's 8 Pieces for violin and cello, op. 39. From the sepulchral Prelude, through the retro baroque of the Gavotte, the enchanting Berceuse through to the rapid Etude, it proved that Glière must be a composer I need to know more about and that, not having seen Anna before, it is to be hoped she is available for more appearances in the area to bring us more of her poise, confidence and great talent.

But all that having been said, Shostakovich - for me- could pick up all those composers and carry them. That he wrote his op. 8 Piano Trio aged 16 is hard to fathom. Written not long after The Waste Land, it does all that Eliot's desiccated literariness might have wanted to achieve but, with the obvious advantage of music being better than poetry, does it infinitely more convincingly. Its barren beauty with the St. Peter's piano standing up well to Valentina's immense power and drama was both emotionally and aesthetically enthralling. I'm sure I've not heard either Valentina or Mikhail to such great effect before and then you multiply them by Anna and they are suddenly in danger of having provided the best performance I've seen this year.

It's been tremendous to see two events in two days so well supported in Petersfield. It shouldn't be surprising given the high quality of the musicians that have appeared but music is in the best of health there. We should all be glad and I'm sure all those who went on either day or both will be.

Duo Timossi in Petersfield

 Duo Timossi, St. Peter's, Petersfield, October 17

It being nearly two hundred years since Beethoven died and exactly a plentiful number of years since I was born, Sara Deborah and Alessandro Timossi's first instalment of their Violin Sonata cycle began to mark the first while inadvertently contributing to the happy occasion of the second. Petersfield has major Beethoven things lined up for 2027 and thus need to bring this part of them forward by way of a prelude to fit it all in.

The reason for beginning the series with nos. 4 and 5 is possibly that nos. 1-3 are no good. Not 'no good' by most terrestrial standards, of course, but some say not quite as good as Beethoven usually is, those being early work. It's a bit like saying some late Vermeer is only relatively 'workmanlike' when it can give most paintings and head start and still leave them behind. 

Op. 23's Presto is impetuous with Alessandro's piano on the verge of becoming stormy. The Andante is daintier and good humoured, maybe owing something to Haydn, and the Allegro featured an industrious piano part with Sara's violin aspiring to more rarefied air before they combined in a bravura climax. All of which was hugely to be enjoyed until, after an interval, op. 24 was something else again.

The optimism of the Allegro seemed to have an affinity with Sara's natural way of playing, the carefree melody leading into dance-like passages. Her excellent programme notes provide more than enough material for me to just lift parts out them out and give myself a day off so I will make use of how the Adagio hovers 'between Sehnsucht and hope' and be grateful to have learned the German for 'longing'. In the Scherzo, her violin was a fraction of a beat behind the piano, making for some engaging effect. I'm guessing that's not as easy to do as playing in strict unison, almost like getting it wrong deliberately, but it was only one more part of the technique of one of the top echelon of musicians in the catchment area I regard as my own. The gaiety of the Rondo finale was a joyous thing. The Spring Sonata, as it is known, is one of the many not given its name by Beethoven. While I'm sure it is meant to refer to the coming alive of the Spring season, an alternative interpretation could be that it's a reference to the energetic uncoiling of a spring, for those of us who enjoy artworks that can mean more than one thing at a time, and the whole concert was a great advertisement for the rest of the series in which I intend to collect the whole set.

Piano à Deux (Robert Stoodley & Linda Ang Stoodley) at Chichester

 Robert Stoodley & Linda Ang Stoodley, Chichester Cathedral, October 13

Autumn has properly arrived and with it comes three concerts in the diary this week, all family affairs which is a rare alignment.

The Stoodleys come with a complete show including shared commentary and even some choreography. First, though were two Brahms Hungarian Dances - no.5 rollicking and, I'd say, jokey and no.6 with further mood swings.

Some pieces are by now hard to separate from the uses they were put to long after their composers left them to us. Frank Muir made The Nutcracker Suite into Everyone's a Fruit and Nutcase and Bach found himself the author of an advert for cigars after the Berceuse from Fauré's Dolly Suite became, for some of a certain vintage, the comforting memory of Listen with Mother on the Home Service. Robert and Linda perhaps carried forward some of their Hungarian energy into their tempo which could have been dreamier because they didn't slumber through it. Mi-a-ou, as was explained, was not as feline as one might have anticipated because that's not what it's about, and then the rhapsodic onrush of Le pas espagnol in some ways anticipated Rachmaninov.

Robert and Linda's arrangements of seven songs from his op. 21 were presented in three sections, the bigger canvas of Melody running into the enchantment of Loneliness after Linda got up, nipped round the back and took up the right-hand stool while Robert moved to his left while transposing into the second piece, a neat manoeuvre I'd not seen before but  saw more than once today. Then, Lilacs was a thing of some delicacy, The Ratcatcher had the merest suspicion of Scott Joplin and Spring Waters was a cascading downpour. Rachmaninov somehow always manages to convince either in spite of, or by doing something more than, the Romantic excess that he could otherwise be thought guilty of. To finish, the lushness of How Fair This Spot led up to the climax with What Wealth of Rapture, with a big clue in its title, and with Linda leaving Robert solo to the last few bars of a very amicable, impressive, well-rehearsed set.   

It's been a while since I did Chichester, the summer being such an inconvenience, so it's good to get back towards the old routine. 

Wittgenstein, 2

 There's not a great deal of point reading a book one doesn't understand and my copy of the Tractatus is purely decorative but, as hoped, Ray Monk's biography does a fine job of explaining as much of Wittgenstein as I'm ever likely to grasp. 

It brings with it some big surprises, not least the Christianity. For someone devoted to logic and equations, coming from an interest in mathematics, God seems like an unlikely conclusion to arrive at. For all his deep, deep thought and austerity, it is disappointing to find him relying on mysticism and using certain words to mean specifically what he wants them to mean, rather what is more widely understood by them, seems like a big abdication of responsibility if not a letdown from someone who, I had thought, was better than that.

Wittgenstein was an Idealist, where ideas come before things. I simply can't see how that can be. Plato was an Idealist, Aristotle a Realist. It seems to me an Idealist is the more likely to get locked into their own thinking. If reading this book results in Wittgenstein going down in my estimation, as a philosopher, I'm glad to find that Derrida was only mistakenly seen as an Idealist but,

In reality, Derrida meant that our access to the world is always mediated by systems of signs, traces, and differences, making a pure, unmediated "view from nowhere" impossible. 

I am indebted to Google's AI summary for that and am grateful. While a small part of my paltry B.A. (Hons) was in Philosophy, I'm not up to it.

But I am glad to be making some trivial sense of it all and the biography has edged out The Anatomy of Melancholy in this heavyweight contest for my attentions. To think of Wittgenstein teaching in primary schools in rural Austria is remarkable. He meets his one and only known girlfriend in his mid-thirties. He could have had access to great family wealth but disdained it for reasons that Ray Monk suggests come from his difficult upbringing. Three of his brothers commit suicide and it is an idea that recurs to him at regular intervals. Whether one is interested in Philosophy or not, it is a remarkable life to read but, as with so many 'genius' types, not a happy one.

Roughly halfway through the book, I'm keen to press on towards the ending, knowing that he changed his mind, like so many of us do. That bleak, haunted look says much about the downside of the sort of intellect that makes almost everybody else struggle and so I'm wondering if any change of mind brought him back from the brink of madness because if you are that clever and yet still have to rely on mysticism, your own definitions of words and if you look mad, act mad and even the finest minds can't understand you, that could be what you are. I don't want to think that. I want him to escape the prison of his tautologies and dubious ways of escaping meaninglessness. As such, it is quite an exciting book.