Top 6 - Douglas Dunn

The loss of Douglas Dunn further reduces my list of living poets to follow. I'm not saying there aren't any young talents out there worth having but I don't know who they are and I'm not sure that they 'do' poetry like they used to when there was plenty to be had, like in the 1990's.

For one as highly respected as Dunn, it came as a bit of a surprise that my little recap of his books revealed an obvious standout poem for me when one might expect several to be difficult to pick between. The People Before is among the most admirable poems by anybody of his generation, atmospheric, evocative and genuinely doing things with the language. If Terry Street, his first book, and Elegies, his best known, are given more attention, it is in Northlight, in 1988, that he was at his best. Terry Street must have been a striking debut but I can't help but find in it some traces of Larkin's attitude towards a 'cut-price crowd'. If the Young Women in Rollers mock his taste for Mozart and the third programme they are only giving as good as they get.

Love-making by Candlelight is another that puts domesticity and emotional attachment into a longer, historical perspective quite beautifully. The River Through the City is a sinister impression of dark implications that would also belong in any anthology of its period. 

After which one remembers how much Re-reading Katherine Mansfield's 'Bliss and Other Stories' was to be admired at the time, or when I first saw it not very much later, and it has retained its disarming charm. Quite why that didn't make it into the Selected Poems 1964-1983 would be for that book's editors to explain.

Reading Pascal in the Lowlands, which did, is full of undisclosed empathy for a stranger's similar but different loss to that that is central to Elegies. 

It became almost a convention in this Top 6 feature that, when faced with any number of candidates for the last available place, I'd choose a sort of 'wild card' that might not be a more obvious choice. Sandra's Mobile is no frivolous encore piece, though. It's in for its last line which I'm sure was published before I tried the same formula that I'd seen Simon Armitage use. Whether Douglas took the idea from anyone before him, I don't know. 

Six is a demanding limit for a list of anything of any depth and it's unlikely that many readers would have the same half dozen as me. It was always a rule- sometimes broken- that only six things should be mentioned and near misses couldn't be smuggled in by devious means or legerdemain.

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By all means, let's open it all up again- it's never been closed- and ask if anybody else would like to contribute a Top 6. Of absolutely anything. Places, sports people, television, maybe scientists. But tracks by Queen, golfers, meat or wars might struggle to gain acceptance. If you don't know me by now, you will never, never, never know me.  

Wittgenstein 3 and other stories

 Education doesn't stop when one finishes school or university. By now I almost think that's when it starts and one can spend the rest of one's life undoing the damage of what one's been taught. I'm not being all Marxist or independent in thinking that. The Marxists and free-thinkers at my low grade university were as hidebound, restricted and formulaic in their thinking as were the royalists, Tories and traditionalists at my grammar school.

I got to the end of Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein last week. A paragon example of the genre with what seems exactly the right amount of detail, of balance between the life and the work and vividly conveying all their difficulties. The portrait on the cover is of a disturbed man, possibly on the brink of madness, whose intellect was apparently so far beyond that of the next best that it made no sense to them.

The book changed my view of Wittgenstein from that of a potential hero whose philosophy had realized that philosophy reduced everything to word games because language is something we are trapped in to someone who thought there must be something beyond all that fiddle and, throughout it all, relied on God and religion.

All the long, transient years of discussion and writing and forever revising that writing, coming from the mathematics of Frege, logic, Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore, led him only to despair - being already from a family of suicides- and while his life is a gripping story and he clearly could be an engaging personality in the right company, he's nothing like a hero to me any more.   

Sartre had his moments but got it wrong. I will always want to think that Derrida's demolition of almost everything we ever thought had possibilities. I'd say Camus was my preferred philosopher except that was about his fourth job and I'd rather have him among my very favourite novelists.

Philosophy is bad for you. Endlessly endless. The glimpses I've had of it make me think the chimera of glamour that can be caused by music, poetry and painting at their best is the best we can do.

I could have proceeded to the biography of Proust I found in Chichester Oxfam but maybe I've learnt from Joe Bugner's example and don't want to go in with top class heavyweights one after the other. So I returned to Rose Tremain and Music & Silence, different again from the others of hers I've read but just as equally a beautiful thing. One can enjoy the writing without knowing where the various threads are going to lead us but one has reason to hope it might be a better place than where Wittgenstein's intensity led him to.

In four of her books now, Rose Tremain has been a pleasure to read, just for the sake of reading. They are four apparently quite different books but similar in the way the get inside 'love' and the way it consumes those who find it in a high-grade iteration. There are also the obstacles to it which are either circumstances or other people and it often needs to be clandestine or something apart from conventionally recognized relationships.

Set in 1619-20, in the reign of Christian IV of Denmark, one needs some idea of how much is true and how much fiction in historical novels. It is a bit unsatisfactory, at least in theory, but when it makes for such good writing that reservation diminishes to almost nothing. There's a whole lot more Tremain to go and I will be back in the market for some of it because it looks as if she belongs in the top echelon of contemporary novelists and, so far so good, she's done nothing but impress so far.

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.