Completing Bach and other stories

 It was July 8th last year when I found the Complete Works of Bach, 172 discs in a pristine, unopened box, in the Chichester Oxfam shop last year. £49.99, the bargain of the year.

I have seven discs left to play and so should finish the project in a year. Listening to them, or letting them play is one thing, writing it all is entirely another. I'm suspicious of the Hockney types from who art pours out and I like the frugality of Elizabeth Bishop but Bach had the recipe right. It's the cantatas that keep on coming and where there were pieces not knowingly heard before to be discovered. It was mainly the organ music that got left until last but even in among that, some of which sounded like doodling, there were memorable things to be had, like the inventive Passacaglia BWV 582 and the very taking setting of a Vivaldi Concerto, BWV 594.

The discs of Chorale Settings are not his fault, nor that the Well-Tempered Klavier was shared between organ and harpsichord. Bach was not in a position to write for the pianoforte but I think he would have if he had been. Thus, overall, it's not 172 discs of uninterrupted wonder but it's difficult to think of anybody else whose output contained quite so much or whose Top 6 needs to leave quite so much out, whose next six would be far ahead of anybody else's first. I hope I'm not overstating the case.

The piano Well-Tempered Klavier, Tatiana Nikoloyeva, must be in the Bach Top 6. Having had that, it might be hard to justify the partitas as well in the interests of variety. The solo Violin Partitas have to be in there. Possibly Rachel Podger. The Double Violin Concerto, Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh. The Brandenburg Concertos with Harnoncourt. Which already only leaves us two remaining places for choral work. But, idiosyncratically and abandoning any attempt at a representative half dozen, I will have the keyboard Partitas, ahead of the Goldberg Variations, not by Glenn Gould, the Cello Suites where it could be Yo-Yo Ma.

--

Sliding down in my estimation after such a good start is Henry James now that I'm into the titles that got him his reputation. The recent heat hasn't helped when even reading seemed like an effort but especially an effort when one is less concerned about what happens to the people in The Ambassadors than one had been in the previous one. Henry James might have got unlucky by my overloading myself with his books too eagerly and too soon and then running into a heatwave but all I ever understood and his elaborate prose has become evident and if I can battle on stoically through the words of this book, I'll need to give him a rest before going back to him.

Keir Starmer

This is one way a worthwhile poem can get itself written. I'm sure there are others.

I have a lot of time for Keir Starmer. You shouldn't need to be charismatic to be Prime Minister. Attlee was the best ever and Boris the worst until they somehow found Liz Truss but that needs us to redefine 'charisma' as 'see-through vanity project with no concept of the truth'. Churchill said that an empty taxi drew up and Clement Attlee got out of it. A possible near miss of an insult although not as accurate as saying, 'a better Prime Minister than me got out'.

It was when R.E.M. The Great Beyond came up on Spotify that the first impulse to write something in tribute to Keir Starmer was joined by a way of doing it. It's useful for more than one thing to be going on in a poem. While it might be true to say 'the sky is blue', it doesn't make a poem. Once one's done something to explain how or why, there begins the possibility of a poem. It turned out that Keir was,

 pushing an elephant up the stairs,

  tossing up punch lines that were never there

Over my shoulder a piano falls

Crashing to the ground 

 

I liked Keir Starmer while always aware that he was a politician and thus, almost by definition, not entirely to be trusted. He had the right iconic hero among his reference points in Harold Wilson and, thanks to the disasters of the obviously outgoing Conservative administration, had the same sort of gimme landslide General Election win that Blair had, once he'd reformed the Labour Party from its inward, Corbynite paradoxes. 

I remember Tony Benn, decades ago, claiming that Labour only won General Elections on 'left-wing' manifestos. But, no, the presumed natural Labour constituency in the lower-paid and under-privileged aren't interested in political correctness, gender identity and Palestine. They haven't read Karl Marx and are more interested in a better world for themselves than one for everyone and so express their rebellion by voting for Farage and his ramshackle band of under-vetted, makeshift chancers.

 

Our electoral system provided Starmer with the most unlikely majority in the House of Commons, so overwhelming in seats but so unjustified by the popular vote and, more crucially, so unsupported by the rank and file of those seats once he had shifted from the 'leftist' attitudes he had espoused in order to get there to the Blue Labour attempts that he and Rachel Reeves undertook to actually balance the books.

Anybody in any sort of business is aware that one can't sustain a loss for long. A country is no different once it's so overly borrowed that its interest payments are taking all the money it would prefer to spend on- defence, NHS, Police, potholes and every other crisis one hears about to which the answer the expert advises is 'more government spending'.

Despite inheriting the 'years of Tory misrule', Keir ran into the 'headwinds' of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the unreliability of a gimcrack President of the USA who had so enthusiastically endorsed Boris but subsequently failed to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours as promised. But as much as anything he ran into his own backbenchers who hadn't thought they'd been elected to cut benefits and maybe the fatal flaw in the Starmer tragedy was that he got there under false pretences and so wasn't in a position to balance the books once it was his job to.

He might well feel aggrieved, though, having achieved a certain amount on NHS waiting lists, migration and a steady if not expansive economy. He was a vast improvement on his predecessors and got little credit for it.  

 

Tianyang Han in Chichester

 Tianyang Han, Chichester Cathedral, June 23

In the bleak midsummer, the heat might make some moan. Reluctant to though I am, I am not alone. Thus an hour in the relative cool of the Chichester nave is as welcome as those precious moments standing under a Tesco air-conditioning unit, even more so given a soundtrack much preferable to what they usually play. 

A significant part of the greatness of Brahms is tucked away in the late chamber music like the op. 118 Klavierstücke. It's not often that a programme begins with its highlight but the second of the six immediately provided the best tune, judiciously played, in all its teneramente consolation. 

The third and fourth are an excursion into quicker tempi before a return to contemplation in a possibly night-time Romanze and the luminous light-touch in the final Andante. 

More deliberately 'poetic' and descriptive, as explained in its title, one of the 24 Debussy Preludes evoked how The sounds and fragrances swirl through the evening air where it might have benefitted from leaving interpretation to the listener and I'd have found in it an unsettled but not restless subconscious. Then another of them, Minstrels, was rhythmically more various, more modern and short.

Three of the Six Rachmaninov Moments Musicaux then made me wonder if the Brahms was such a shoo-in for top billing. Not for the first time, Rachmaninov excels in live performance in the right hands, some way above where I'd rate him as a composer.

The No. 2 Allegretto burst into a swelling downpour of notes and suddenly revealed an entirely other side of Tianyang's virtuosity after the earlier subtleties. No. 3 was a solemn Andante cantabile before the Presto No. 4 was driven by a powerful left hand with torrents and drama in the right. Two people sitting next to me- who possibly knew her- lured me into a standing ovation almost by osmosis but I was easily persuaded after the programme had grown so impressively in its 45 minutes or so.

What I do on a regular basis at these events is report on them. It's journalism. Some generous types call it reviewing but I do it to celebrate rather than judge and I'd draw the line well before being raised to the level of critic. There have been one or two occasions when I'd prefer not to say anything and so haven't but I'm regularly made uncharacteristically Panglossian in the manner of Candide by the majority of music events. Almost optimistic enough to want to read Leibniz. But, as far as these frail critical faculties allow, I'm prepared to estimate that Tianyang was above the customary high standard of technique and musicianship and is one to follow.

And that makes for a good place to rest from jabbing at my own keyboard for a while. If the concerts aren't quite over before the dog days of summer, the reviewing probably is. We can but look forward to September when Autumn is ycumen in.  

Danny Driver at the Menuhin Room

 Danny Driver, Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, June 20

Danny Driver is a regular performer at Wigmore Hall so his return to the Menuhin Room, Portsmouth's answer to it, must have made him feel reasonably at home. 

Medtner's Second Improvisation, op. 47, is fifteen variations on a theme that come usefully with titles that both help the listener navigate their way through and provide clues as to what is being depicted. Thus, the haunting stillness of the Song of the Water-nymph was followed by flighty Winged Dances, the reveries of Enchantment, the reverberations of the Roar of the Crowd and the mysterious In the Forest. Comparisons might be made with his contemporary compatriot, Rachmaninov, but he's not so lush or self-indulgent. In an gripping realization of the final movements, Danny sustained the last note of the Storm into the conclusion where one could hardly help but hear what was surely a pointed inversion of Beethoven's 'fate motif' left wide open to one's choice of interpretation, if such it is.

Alert to all aspects of performance, Danny commented on how the intimacy of the venue made for a shared experience as he was aware of the audience involvement, something that was confirmed by some rare standing ovation at the end. The discerning clientele there don't give away such accolades lightly.

Beethoven's Sonata, op.111, was the last of his 32. The abrupt fortes of the Maestoso were followed by dash and dazzle although my approximate timing suggested Danny took nothing off the 26 minutes of the Stephen Kovacevich recording and might have been a fraction longer. The Adagio was in part slow dance and had passages of sustained exuberance but is dominated by a feeling of transcendence, of last words that were intended as the culmination of the vast cycle even if he was nowhere near the end of his life. Alfred Brendel said, 'what is to be expressed here is distilled experience' and one has a sense of being refined beyond existence, a profoundness that perhaps nobody does like Beethoven did in a handful of mostly 'later' works. Portsmouth is unlikely to witness it played with any more gentle authority and not many other places will either.

If that was Beethoven's farewell to the piano sonata after such a great and ground-breaking contribution then we might use the hyperbole of a comparison with the occasion of Andrew McVittie's similar farewell to the Menuhin Room Series in the hope and belief that it is not quite as final as Beethoven's was. It was noted that it is taking a committee of three to succeed him. While he will be missed, he won't be gone entirely and the Series resumes in the Autumn on the fourth Saturday of each month.

  

Rebecca Hepplewhite & Caroline Tyler in Chichester

 Rebecca Hepplewhite & Caroline Tyler, Chichester Cathedral, June 16

The Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007, is one of the pieces I've heard most often in live performance. Rebecca Hepplewhite was today the latest addition to the list of Natalie Clein, Pavlos Carvalho et al and a very fine one, relatively subdued and introspective compared to some, her relaxed sound rich and lonely in the big acoustic. 

Never heard before, though, was the Bach Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007, arranged for piano by Caroline Tyler and played by her. It could almost have been a different piece, all dreamy and C19th Romantic and hardly Bach at all. Sacrilege, some might say, but one is accustomed to what one is accustomed to and after much of a lifetime with this music as cello music- once hearing it arranged for bass guitar, one needs more than one chance to appreciate it as anything else. Beautifully done, fascinating if not alarming to hear, I'm sure my initial reservations would be overcome in due course but leopards might need to learn to change their spots.

It was by way of a bridge to Rebecca and Caroline joining forces for the Rachmaninov Sonata, op.19, which by some inverse symmetry had the famous piano man writing for cello. While all four movements mixed their moods between melancholy and bursts of rhapsodic melody, the mournful opening gave way to misty distances before some restlessness in the Allegro second.

Caroline's sumptuous piano in the highlight Andante seemed to fade in sympathy with Rebecca's sorrowful cello, each climax receding like dimming light. Whatever mysteries it was evoking have only been enhanced by the illegible scrawl of the note I made about the finale before it ended more in celebration, redemption or sweetness and light. 

Not only impressive but making one think about esoteric questions. A long time ago, knowing no better, I bought a secondhand recording of a disc of Monteverdi arranged and conducted by Karajan. It was entirely inappropriate and I threw it away rather than keep it in the house. Bach arr. Tyler was still gorgeous music. He would have been interested not only to hear the pianoforte but what lushness Caroline made of his austere Prelude. He might even have wished he'd had the chance to do it that way.

Sounds of the 70's

 Shaun Keavney's doing a fine job, filling up Radio 2's Sunday afternoons so knowledgeably and so my Spotify playlist series will end with no. 5 soon. Shaun made a bit of a racket a few times this afternoon but he's more or less 'cool' and sound and can work a studio better than I'd ever do.

There was a makeshift manager once during some difficult times in a job I was in who kept saying he had 'the best job in the department' but he was transparently trying to spread a feel good factor across a fractious workforce. He had a dreadful, if well paid, job but couldn't be heard to say so.

It's not so with Sounds of the 70's and never would be with 60's either. One almost can't miss. Although, of course, many would. 

So, instead of overloading the front page here with too much 'Also appearing at...', here, in all their glory are the playlists from one who once did a live DJ set, aged 13 or 14, in a suburb of Gloucester, for the Girl Guides and Brownies with, so dangerously, cubs, scouts and other boys allowed in.

You wouldn't believe how easy- and how dispiriting- the dance DJ's job is. They responded very well to All Because of You by Geordie, hey, hey, hey, and so that got played 4 or 5 times. Not the worst record ever but one never went poor by underestimating what one's audience wants. However, 

 Pilot episode

2  3  4

 

The World Cup and other stories

 If I press the 'info' button on the TV remote control to get details on the Radio 5 coverage of the (Men's Football) World Cup, it says,

Several teams from around the world compete against each other in a prestigious tournament in order to emerge victorious and win the title. 

Strangely it assumes we know it concerns men's football. There might be an octogenarian don at Oxford, expert in Xenophon or Tacitus who was unaware, or maybe those heroic people in the Andaman Islands who murdered an intruder because they wisely don't want to know about the rest of the world but otherwise most people with cable TV would be aware of the above. So it's tempting to suspect an ironist at work at Virgin Media.

I once found a dictionary that defined 'kangaroo' as (something like), two-legged marsupial that progresses in a succession of flying bounds. It was Dr. Johnson but it should have been.

 

An idea I had to provide my empty turf account with some easy cash was to lay heavily into an odds-on dead cert in the early stages. Brazil were 8/13 to beat Morocco but I did some research. Brazil have been a bit of a mess recently, it said, and Morocco are no pushover. So I kept my powder dry, turned on the match half an hour in and found Morocco 1-0. And it's as good as winning the bet as it is not to do it when it loses. Better, in fact, at the odds.

Sadly my allegiance to Baby Doc Duvalier and Wyclef Jean's Haiti went unrewarded last night so my low level of interest in this capitalist rip-off has already waned from its low starting point. I read a preview that convinced me the final will be between Spain and Argentina, once we get anywhere near a stage that can be called the 'finals'. Perhaps I'll check in the newspaper in a few weeks' time to see if it transpires as such.

--

Meanwhile, still some fallout from the recent Evening with Philip Larkin, I dip randomly into the James Booth biography at bedtime and have just read Michaelmas Term at St. Bride's from his anthology of early fiction. If anybody said at the time - and I might have- that such a book was scraping the Larkin barrel then it was worth the scraping. I will be back into the sophistication of Henry James all too soon but, for enjoyment, would gladly stick with Brunette Coleman, Larkin's female alter ego and nom de plume in these just slightly suspect fictions of teenage girls that young Larkin clearly spent a lot of time on and made a good job of.

Like Jill, it is an Oxford novel about an ingenue in the rarefied atmosphere of class-ridden dreaming spires. Also autobiographical are the details of some jazz records, literary citations including mention of Edward Thomas's book on Oxford, and -using an Oxford comma there, more horse racing following the interest in the Oaks from the previous episodes about Mary's time at Willow Gables. Although Larkin was a cricket man more than one of the turf.

What appeals about the world of Larkin, beyond all the obvious things about one of one's favourite writers, is the refreshing austerity of his time. If austerity as a government policy has a bad name, one can look back on it as a bracing, healthy way of life unencumbered by 'doom-scrolling' and the like. There were books and there was music and they somehow got by in what might seem like a grey world but it was more subtly shaded than the overblown gaudiness of what we are offered now.

And the ubiquitous evidence of failing standards in education when journalists at respectable institutions like the BBC and Times Radio can report such things as 'South Korea coming from behind to win 2-0'. Presumably they had been 0-0 down. You can't take anything on trust from such reports. You have to work it out for yourself. They must have won 2-1.  

--

At long last, I've taken to using the machine that has the capacity to play cassettes to play cassettes. It's taken so long that its capacity to play CD's failed quite a while ago. But the first of the drawerful of elderly cassettes have so far come up tremendously well after decades of disuse. I collected all sorts of things from the radio, thinking that the medium would be there always and not be supplanted by CD, mini disc, download, streaming and all.

The Poetry Prom with Betjeman introducing the very rare occasion when Larkin read The Whitsun Weddings to a live audience; Sean O'Brien visiting Auden's northern mining landscape, that sort of thing. Now I only have to wait for the tapes of August Kleinzahler, possibly Paul Muldoon and I think there's Auden himself, to resurface. It's like archaeology up there but, like laying down a wine and forgetting about it, it's treasure worth finding.