It is a bit unfortunate that the BBC Music magazine's cover story is a 70th Birthday Interview with John Tavener. I have never quite understood why a magazine dated for next month should be available quite so early but when Tavener's birthday wasn't going to be until the end of January then they were getting ahead of themselves. However, the CD is a live performance of The Protecting Veil by Steven Isserlis from 1994 and so I could hardly leave this collector's item on Sainsbury's shelf.
The disc is actually well presented for such a budget purchase and has 70 minutes of music. In her note, Joanne Talbot says that,
...Tavener.. sidestepped modernism. As such, he sharply divided opinions, ranging from outright hostility, with charges of sentimental extremism and being interminably sanctimonious...
and, indeed, not everyone I spoke to about him today was an unconditional admirer. I suppose I had my own doubts about anybody quite so engrossed in the spiritual but you can take from it what you will and don't have to go the whole way with him. Even if sincerity is not the essential quality we look for in art these days it isn't either something to be disregarded. The opening of this disc is immensely powerful and the sound quality is superb.
It will be worth checking what they put on these from month to month as I've never bought it before but there is clearly an unthinkably vast catalogue of BBC concert recordings that could be put on disc. I can't see any other broadcasting organization compiling quite such a back catalogue if the Murdochs and media free marketeers ever succeed in abolishing such a fine institution.
The magazine itself is a sort of Gramophone-lite and doesn't want to upset anybody too much. If one is going to get a publication like this, I'd rather have the real thing and risk some of it being beyond me rather than suspect all the time that these short reviews have stretched a few small points as far as they can go in order to make a magazine of glossy adverts and pictures of big name musicians look serious. I'm being a bit unfair perhaps but I don't mind feeling out of my depth as long as I think I'm reading the right thing. And Richard Morrison is given a column in here and we are not his biggest admirers. When asked by a telephone canvasser why I didn't read The Sunday Times I recently said because Jeremy Clarkson is in it and that was pretty much Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
But with Tavener, I've never understood the admiration that some music fans, or fans of any other genre, have for complexity. By all means, I'm sure it can be very satisfying but the lack of it doesn't automatically equate to 'easy' or something less worthy. This is highly impressive music, scintillating at times. To take Larkin's 'pleasure principle' point, I know I'm enjoying listening to it and will want to listen to it again and that is really all I need to know.
