Cheltenham Festival Preview 2013

It would appear that our annual search for the Cheltenham Festival Treble is over. Sprinter Sacre, Simonsig and Quevega are all such certainties that the treble will have been landed by the second race on day two and it will be job done. But current odds of 2/7, 8/15 and 4/6 only multiply up to 9/4 and one really ought to be looking for more than that and so we will have to look a bit harder.
Day One gives one a similar feeling with four very solid favourites in the first four proper races (we don't count the Cross Country here and don't like handicaps much either). But surely we've been through all this before and have seen that something usually happens to make such confidence look misplaced by the end of Tuesday.
So, is My Tent or Yours the genuine banker to get us off to a winning start. Not quite, despite McCoy's obvious enthusiasm and the way he destroyed a big handicap field at Newbury. Backing Hurricane Fly in the Champion Hurdle means blanking out his disappointing run last year and, at the prices, one can't help but notice that Cinders and Ashes might get the good ground he requires for the first time since winning here last year and 12/1 looks a fair each way chance. Nobody in their right mind will oppose Quevega in the Mares race but many will prefer an each way shout than taking 1/2. And so although Simonsig looks completely the business in the Arkle, you are going to be giving the bookies odds and so Tuesday might be a day of resisting too much temptation because better options will follow on subsequent days.
Weds at 2.05 is where we will want to get stuck into The New One (nap), pictured, who is not even favourite to repel the Irish invader and so we are still welcome to take 4/1 with Paddy Power, who I have found to be a most enterprising accountant since taking my business to him a few weeks ago. Being mugged by an inspired McCoy and At Fisher's Cross at the trials meeting was a rare example of defeat still enhancing a reputation in the best novice hurdle so far this season and with that rival likely to go for the longer distance race later, he still has enough promise to rate the nap of the week at a good price. And, next up, Dynaste, although thought to be too much a 'speed horse' for the novice chase slog of the RSA, he is also surely so much a class apart that 9/4 looks like worth having.
On Thursday, the World Hurdle is an open race for the first time in years with Big Bucks absent and Reve de Sivola has been pencilled in to beat Oscar Whisky, whose stamina might not be quite as proven, for a long time now. I'm not convinced of exactly what will run in the Ryanair and so only tentatively wonder if First Lieutenant could be the answer..
On Friday, Our Conor's win in Ireland looked impressive enough while Far West's win at Sandown was reduced to farce and a three furlong sprint but Far West remains the choice in the Triumph Hurdle, a race that doesn't seem to be quite the old pin-sticking job that it once was.
The Albert Bartlett is where we will stay with At Fisher's Cross to contiunue his progress through the season.
The Gold Cup might not be a race to get heavily involved in. I don't think the Irish challenge is as good as it thinks it is and I will just side with Silvianiaco Conti while wishing Bobs Worth all the best.
I wonder if Katkeau will finally deliver the goods in the race named after his stable but I am starting to lose patience with him.
And so, at this time of hope and intrepid expectation, I am still sitting on a little goldmine with my yankee of The New One, Reve de Sivola and Far West, who are the Cheltenham treble, all at 7/1, which will all go on to Join Together at 16/1 in the National. Let's see if it doesn't.

Jeffrey Turner - Ghosts

Jeffrey Turner, Ghosts (Gruffyground Press)

The only item not detailed in the specification at the back of this limited edition is exactly what make of mauve cotton was used to bind the pages into their cover. Otherwise, we know we are holding papers that were mouldmade near Wookey Hole in handmade card from Montreal. The booklet is designed and printed in handset Univers Light with Univers Medium in Stonehouse for the Gruffyground Press. And those are some of the reasons why you only get three poems for your twelve pounds. It is best if you appreciate that what you are buying is not simply the poems but the choicest method of their presentation.
But, thankfully, the poems do justify the occasion. It would be awful if such a job were ruined by typographical errors or simply bad poems but in the title poem especially, Jeff Turner turns in one of his finest, well-crafted meditative performances in which,

       I'd say I don't believe in ghosts
But perhaps that's saying I've no belief

In pain or warmth.

Those of us who know a few Turner poems are accustomed to the keenly observed small details of quiet moments and the equanimity of the conclusions taken from them. Ghosts is one of those rare poems that I come across that I immediately look back on and wish I'd written it myself (even if it's highly unlikely that I could have).
The other two poems, Benches and November, reflect on more violent scenes before ending equally quietly and both are fine poems. But what you are buying from Gruffyground here is a collaboration between poet and press, a symbiotic relationship through which each has enhanced the contribution of the other in a rare and select artefact.

Edward Thomas Walk

Over the years of this website, there hasn't been as much about Edward Thomas as one might have expected, so here are some pictures of the walk near Steep which we did yesterday.

BSO Beethoven/Haydn

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Stephen Isserlis/Karabits, Portsmouth Guildhall, Feb 21

On a cold, cold night the warmth of the cello's tone in Haydn's Concerto in D was welcome. Haydn is here as unperturbed as usual as well as adding some dazzle, at which Isserlis excels, especially through the happy last movement.
At first I thought the Isserlis manner was a practiced smile on another routine evening but by the end, and especially in his encore, a piece of pizzicato Pablo Casals, I was convinced that he was enjoying it as much as us.
beethoven's Seventh Symphony was called by Wagner, 'the apotheosis of the dance' which, if he had been able to wait for Stravinsky, he might have saved for The Rite of Spring. But this, with its four various movements of rhythmic adventure, is plenty for me and, in this performance especilally, exhilarating. As the final movement races towards its finish at full tilt, you hear it shift up a further two gears. While in the slow, 'Dance of the Catacombs' movement, it is the longing in the violins that is so moving above the sinister tread of the bass. I thought how right I was to have had Beethoven as my favourite composer when I was 14 or 15 and what a shame it is I can't still do now.
If Prokofiev had given himself the day off rather than writing the Sinfonietta then it wouldn't have worried me. It passed the first twenty minutes without stirring me very much but, given what was to follow, that didn't matter at all.
Excellent, as ever.

Pop 100

Well, it turned out to be 103 in the end.
Since November, I added one piece each night to my short list. Something that had been thought about, looked at from all angles and judged worthy of a Top 100 place.
Having reached 100 I thought I had better continue for a while but only made it to 106 until I thought that I had the main favourites in the Top 60 or so and after that it does become more and more open to various options. So, then I put them all onto an Excel spreadsheet and gave them all an estimated position in the Top 100, with The Turtles being given number 100 because I wanted them in. Then they were sorted into ascending order, with another column added to separate those on the same mark.
I have just played around with the placings at the bottom but could not eventually eliminate Hey Jude or Yazoo completely and so we go with 102.
(And then, much later, George Michael was re-instated from a previous list).
Beast Of Burden by the Stones crashes out from a one-time no. 5 position, if I remember rightly. And it probably is hard luck on Led Zeppelin as much as anybody but great favourites of the past, including Chic, Public Image Limited, Medicine Head, Hurricane Smith and many others don't quite make this elite list at the moment. But this looks about right to me. As right as it is ever likely to look.

PAPA WAS A RODEO        THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

WALK AWAY RENEE        THE FOUR TOPS

THE TRACKS OF MY TEARS        SMOKEY ROBINSON AND THE MIRACLES

ALL MY LITTLE WORDS  THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

JUST MY IMAGINATION  THE TEMPTATIONS

ONE STEP AHEAD  ARETHA FRANKLIN

I WANT YOU BACK           THE JACKSON FIVE

I DON'T REALLY LOVE YOU ANYMORE         THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

THE BOOK OF LOVE         THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

STOP ! IN THE NAME OF LOVE   DIANA ROSS AND THE SUPREMES

I'M STILL WAITING           DIANA ROSS 

GET IT ON     T.REX

ONE APRIL DAY     STEPHIN MERRITT

IT'LL NEVER BE OVER FOR ME TIMI YURO

RAVING TONIGHT GREGORY ISAACS

A WHITER SHADE OF PALE        PROCUL HARUM

COME SEE ABOUT ME      THE SUPREMES

WILD IS THE WIND            DAVID BOWIE

ALL THE UMBRELLAS IN LONDON      THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

A CHICKEN WITH ITS HEAD CUT OFF THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

MASSACHUCHETS THE BEE GEES

THIS OLD HEART OF MINE         THE ISLEY BROTHERS

MARIA, MARIA, MARIA   STEPHIN MERRITT

BE MY BABY           THE RONETTES

ONE WOMAN          AL GREEN

I'LL NEVER FIND ANOTHER YOU         THE SEEKERS

I'M STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU   AL GREEN

DON'T TALK TO HIM         CLIFF RICHARD

SUNDAY MORNING          THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

LADY ELEANOR    LINDISFARNE

GOD ONLY KNOWS           THE BEACH BOYS

I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF   DUSTY SPRINGFIELD

I'M GONNA MAKE YOU LOVE ME        DIANA ROSS AND THE SUPREMES AND THE TEMPTATIONS

YOU TRIP ME UP    THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN

A CASE OF YOU     JONI MITCHELL

BIRD GIRL   ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS

I'D RATHER GO BLIND     CHICKEN SHACK

CARRICKFERGUS  BRYAN FERRY

LEAVING NEW YORK       R.E.M.

MAGGIE MAY         ROD STEWART AND THE FACES
JESUS TO A CHILD     GEORGE MICHAEL

IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A WAY OUT           ODYSSEY

I DON'T NEED YOUR LOVE         BOB MARLEY AND THE WAILERS

OVERJOYED            MATCHBOX 20

REBEL REBEL         DAVID BOWIE

THE NEXT TIME      CLIFF RICHARD

THAT'S HOW HEARTACHES ARE MADE          BABY WASHINGTON

WORD ON A WING            DAVID BOWIE

I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR     THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

I DON'T WANT TO GET OVER YOU       THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

IF I FELL       THE BEATLES

SO. CENTRAL RAIN           R.E.M.

WILLOW TREE        GREGORY ISAACS

ROGUES IN A NATION     STEELEYE SPAN

HOT LOVE    T.REX

LAST BEAUTIFUL GIRL    MATCHBOX 20

THE ONLY ONE      ROY ORBISON

DAYDREAM BELIEVER   THE MONKEES

WHEN YOU WERE MY BABY     THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

I WILL           BILLY FURY

IF I DON'T HAVE YOU      GREGORY ISAACS

SMOOTH .     SANTANA FT. ROB THOMAS

OLIVER'S ARMY     ELVIS COSTELLO

;911     WYCLEF JEAN FT. MARY J. BLIGE

TUMBLING DICE    THE ROLLING STONES

LEAVING TO ZION            BLACK UHURU

MY NUMBER ONE  GREGORY ISAACS

LET OFF SUP'M        GREGORY ISAACS AND DENNIS BROWN

HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE       THE BEATLES

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD          BOB DYLAN

LOFTY SKIES           TYRANNOSAURUS REX

I CAN'T MAKE IT ALONE DUSTY SPRINGFIELD

SI TU DOIS PARTIR            FAIRPORT CONVENTION

GREEN GROW THE RUSHES O   R.E.M.

SWEET LOVIN' MAN          THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

COME BACK FROM SAN FRANCISCO  THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

IT'S RAINING           DARTS

REFUGEES   THE TEARS

YOU WEAR IT WELL         ROD STEWART AND THE FACES

DO YOU WANNA DANCE            THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS

I'M A BELIEVER     THE MONKEES

WE SHALL NOT BE LOVERS       THE WATERBOYS

JEEPSTER      T.REX

LEAVE           MATCHBOX 20

I'M STILL WAITING           BOB MARLEY AND THE WAILERS

SOWING SEEDS      THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN

LIKE SISTER AND BROTHER      THE DRIFTERS

I HEAR A SYMPHONY      THE SU[PREMES

DANCING AT WHITSUN   TIM HART

PRIVATE NUMBER            WILLIAM BELL AND JUDY CLAY

DANCING SHOES   BOB MARLEY AND THE WAILERS

I'LL TAKE YOU THERE     THE STAPLE SINGERS

FRIDAY I'M IN LOVE        THE CURE

I DIDN'T KNOW      AL GREEN

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE RAIN        ROD STEWART 

BABY I NEED YOUR LOVING    THE FOUR TOPS

ALL THE YOUNG DUDES MOTT THE HOOPLE

THE GIRL ALL THE BAD GUYS WANT BOWLING FOR SOUP

NOWHERE TO RUN            MARTHA REEVES AND THE VANDELLAS

GOODTIME GIRL    STONE THE CROWS

SHE'D RATHER BE WITH ME       THE TURTLES

HEY JUDE     THE BEATLES

TOO PIECES YAZOO

Maxim Vengerov

Maxim Vengerov, Bach/Beethoven (Wigmore Hall Live)

Was it really last April. I heard this concert on the radio but didn't realize that it was already that long ago. Maxim Vengerov took a four year sabbatical from playing the violin, apparently 'due to injury', and studied conducting and then did some before returning at the Wigmore Hall to play the second Bach Partita and the Beethoven Kreutzer Sonata. Now the concert is issued on a very reasonably priced disc and you don't want them staying piled up on the shelves in Amazon's warehouse and so I thought I'd better relieve them of one. It doesn't sound as if he lost much in those four years.
It doesn't matter that it seems strange to know it is a 'live' recording when there is no extraneous noise on it and no applause at the end either. I suppose they have been removed so that a certain kind of purist can concentrate on the pure performance but I don't mind at all at least the first bit of the audience reaction to a radio concert.
For such a momentous return, which some apparently doubted would live up to the hype, he could hardly have started anywhere else but with Bach. I'm not going to say that I prefer this mixing desk download of Bach to what I saw Tasmin Little do in Portsmouth a couple of years ago and I wonder if Vengerov is more imperious and technically perfect than Tasmin's spirited launch into a piece that she prefers to academic perfection. Which is not to say that Vengerov isn't spirited. I know that Bach can be likened to jazz and Glenn Gould certainly made the point but it isn't improvised, is it. It is written down and the reason why Bach is the very biggest name among composers is that mathematical shape can be passionate and, somehow, more passionate than unbridled passion as a result of and not in spite of the discipline.
The fifth part, the Ciaccona, is as long as the other four movements put together and leads us through some spectacularly deft touches. The whole thing is, of course, immaculate and far beyond any reservation I would have except that it still wouldn't be the recording I'd keep of a Bach partita if I could have only one.
And so, somewhat surprisingly for me, it is the Beethoven here that I am more interested in if only, or mainly, because I am less familiar with it.
Beethoven is passionate in a different way to anything in Bach, being a more tormented soul but there isn't too much torment here with it being, as he said himself, 'written in a very concertante manner' which for me suggests more of Mozart's lightness of touch than Beethoven's own sometimes more muscular attitude.
Itamar Golan accompanies on piano but it is more than accompaniment as the interplay between the two instruments, noticeably in the Andante, seems to be just as much the point as the opportunity for virtuoso violin playing. The most lasting impression of the piece on me is that I'm not sure I've ever heard Beethoven in quite such a good mood.
We also get the two encores from the concert on the disc- flashy pieces that it's not for me to call 'lollipops' - and I think we could have had some applause to fade out at the end of the disc if it didn't sound too incongruous to stick on there having not had any before. Perhaps there wasn't room. If a CD can only take 80 minutes of music, this is timed in at 79.52.
At the price, that is as much value as one is ever likely to get.

Green on Gunn

Get there early as you can if you are coming to the Portsmouth Poetry Society evening on Thom Gunn tomorrow night (see below), introduced by me, as I'm sure places will be more in demand than they were for the Led Zeppelin re-union concert.
Certainly, I'll be hoping for more of a turnout than the Johnstone's Paint Trophy first leg match between Accrington Thursday and Bridlington Sputnik.
There will be a selection of artefacts from my Gunn collection to look at.
But, if you can't make it, here is my introductory piece-

Thom Gunn (1929-2004)

 

Two of the English poets who first made their reputations in the 1950’s could hardly seem more different in personality although their work might have had more in common than is generally thought.

Thom Gunn wrote of Philip Larkin that he was ‘a poet of minute ambitions but carried them out exquisitely’, which is a compliment of sorts, whereas Larkin said of Gunn, although only in a letter, ‘what a genius that man has for making an ass of himself’, which isn’t. It might not be over-simplifying the difference between them too much to say that Gunn was ‘cool’, adventurous and ‘open-minded’ (to say the least) while Larkin was a self-styled curmudgeonly old fogey.

Gunn moved to America in the 1950’s to be with his boyfriend. Larkin made his home in Hull and struggled to keep his two or three girlfriends from invading his privacy.

Several  of the English poets that emerged in the 50’s were labelled together as ‘The Movement’, a grouping that recognized a common sense, empirical attitude that brought poetry back to earth after the war and the previous fashions of Dylan Thomas’ fine-sounding but blustery rhetoric, the political engagement of the Auden group of the 30’s and the high church intellectualism of Pound, Eliot and ‘Modernism’. But, honestly, there was no ‘Movement’. Those poets hardly knew each other at the time and didn’t have very much in common beyond the avoidance of those perceived bad habits.

What I like about Thom Gunn’s poems is the way that so many of the usual battlegrounds that poetry arguments are fought over are transcended. His early poems are written in strict metre and usually rhymed but he moved towards a free verse via the ‘syllabic’ forms used by William Carlos Williams and did all three brilliantly at his best, and so he isn’t categorized as either a ‘formal’ or free verse poet and returned to rhymed, metrical poems later, too.

And while he wrote poems related to contemporary pop culture, about Elvis Presley, motorbikers or the 60’s drug culture, he was more than that a poet that was a part of the much longer tradition of English poetry that goes back to the Elizabethans, John Donne and Ben Jonson. He identified with Shakespeare as a hero just as much as he embraced Beat Poets like Robert Duncan or Gary Snyder.

From his first book, Fighting Terms, published in 1952, to his last, Boss Cupid, 2000, his work developed from a strictly disciplined, somewhat intellectual (some might say), cold outsiderism, through the discovery of Touch, in 1967, to a very inclusive involvement with others and the world. Some of that, it has to be said, was achieved through the use of drugs like LSD. But, tragically, having come to a realization of the ‘pulsing’ community of humanity, it was then ripped apart by the AIDS virus and perhaps his most highly-acclaimed book, The Man with Night Sweats, published in 1993, recorded the epidemic from San Francisco, in what is mainly a series of laments and in memoriams for lost friends.

In the 1960’s there was a joint Selected Poems with Ted Hughes which only served to encourage the misconception that those two poets were concerned with violence. Again, they really didn’t have much in common. Hughes’ animal poems certainly seemed to celebrate nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ but Gunn’s pre-occupation at that time with leather gear, machismo and posing was really a part of the then fashionable existentialist philosophy of Sartre and an expression of the futility of trying to impose meaning on a meaningless world. Hughes himself recognized that Gunn was in fact a ‘poet of gentleness’ and Gunn’s poetry did eventually find ‘meaning’ and that meaning was in others.