Sean O'Brien, The Long Glass

 Sean O'Brien, The Long Glass (Red Squirrel)

Sean O'Brien provides an Afterword to his latest, third, book of short stories as he did in his limited edition poem Hammersmith and the Maigret poems in Impasse. The background provided is welcome but takes away some of what a commentator or reviewer might have said like when a musician at a recital introduces a piece with the homework or prior knowledge one had prepared to say about it or even described the music in adjectives one wanted to find for oneself. 

Such notes to the primary text become part of the performance under consideration like territory annexed by the artist that the 'critic' might have had as their own.

Thus one is already thinking of matters of literary theory more than only storytelling. Sean is intertextual enough before we start wondering where his text starts and finishes. In these dozen bi-annual stories written for now twenty years' worth of readings in Newcastle, one hears likely echoes of Adlestrop and 'non serviam' from Paradise Lost twice each and Tennyson's In Memoriam once alongside Juniper that crept into, or out of, his poems as the title Once Again Assembled Here from a previous collection went on to be the title of a novel. References to Auden, Walter de la Mare, Hardy and Ecclesiastes are characteristically literary, and O'Brien, reference points and we may or may not find the relationship between James Mallon and Clara Stafford in Juniper, poets and partners where the female is the more gifted and dies young, like Jane Jarmain was in the novel Afterlife, reminding us of a  legendary real-life C20th poetry marriage.

And yet, given so much literary marinade, there is a realism and credibility to the worlds Sean's characters inhabit, safely nostalgic in a disappeared past with period detail and provincial buildings in decline. Except we are never allowed to be comfortable with them because story by story, with two previous books to be taken into consideration, we know there's 'something nasty in the woodshed'. Look, I'm doing it now. We soon get the idea in Ovid's Metamorphoses that the protagonist, or plural of them, will be transformed into a constellation, river or other part of nature. And we don't tune in to Uncanny to hear Danny Robins interview several people who lived in the same house and none of them saw a ghost. 

I'm not sure how frightened we can expect to be when we are expecting to be frightened in the same way that those who insist that poetry should surprise us or make us see the world anew can still be being surprised and refreshed by the last page of a full-length collection. It must be very tiring for them. 

Time is amorphous, the past is a foreign country, or dimension and, even for a rationalist sceptic, there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy but quite how many of them are external demons and how many are internal is another matter. It can be traced back to the early 90's signature masterpiece poem, Thrillers and Cheese if not further. One only knows that a mirror in an O'Brien story should be immediately suspected of being potentially dangerous. 

Most realistically, Old School is set in such a place where the food is bad and insufficient but an elite dining club serving very fine sausages is discovered and one of the more substantially-built boys has mysteriously gone missing. One finishes the final sentence and then, Oh, I see.

Juniper also convinces with less of the paranormal, it approaching the question from the poem Completists,

That art is all there is and might not be enough.

That ultimately poetry is impossible and reduces to nothing. That it is finite, runs out and there is nowhere else to go. 

It is certainly true that,

the very effort to explain misses the point, because the attraction of such stories lies in encounters whose power lies in their refusal not only of clemency but at times of interpretation itself.

and that where the last story, But That's Another Story, leaves us with only the screaming.

While these stories are for the most part a genre project that might only be a sideline for Sean, as with Eleanor Grant's stories,

after a time, having read a good many of the stories, she began to wonder, with a trace of unease, whether the writing was really a voluntary undertaking, or more like something given or imposed.

Writers can hardly help, either deliberately or unconsciously, writing themselves into their own work, like Eleanor Grant and thus like Sean O'Brien. And a lawyer called Lightbourn dealing with Eleanor's estate wouldn't be named as such in the work of anybody as well-read as Sean without him knowing that for some readers at least he'll be triggering subliminal thoughts of the murderer in Marlowe's Edward II. 

So we aren't quite sure where we stand except we are at least disconcerted in this literary, uncanny territory of insecurities that we know from the cover, because it says so, are only stories. But even sceptical Lisa Simpson held her mother's hand a bit tighter once when it looked like the end of the world even though she knew it couldn't be. I'm sure The Long Glass is twelve more well-made entertainments that provided two days off from my more dutiful reading of 'realist' George Gissing but the more realistic it was the more it confirmed what one thought. The screaming it ends with might be one's final answer.  

The Memory Man

 I reckon I read New Grub Street to the end first time around, a few years ago, but it took me until the climactic last chapters to realize I had. Before that, I once read a Sebastian Faulks novel to page 87 before it became familiar and I went upstairs and found an identical hardback on the shelves.

I like to think I have a tremendous memory for certain things but some things one is certain about can be proved to be otherwise. But not books recently read, they disappear within days of reading them, compared to The Woodlanders, for example, read at 15, and remembered in plenty of detail.

Perhaps one becomes an impressionist, with a captivating but blurred idea of what's what rather than the fine detail of a Vermeer. Or a vaguely dreamy Einaudi rather than a precise composer like Bach.

New Grub Street is a realistic morality tale, in effect, with the publishing industry a small part of capitalism. Jasper Milvain adapts to the market and succeeeds whereas the more idealistic writers who want to do something of more worth suffer for their principles.

What I found on returning it to the shlf was a bookmark a little way into The Nether World so it was that that I once abandoned. But now the library has provided me with The Whirlpool, so that will be up next in tandem with the imminent arrival of Sean O'Brien's short stories in The Long Glass. I reminded myself of a few of his from The Silence Room yesterday and was suitably, and quietly, impressed.

--

Meanwhile, back at the ranch. I have a half-baked project under way. Having seen that Sheku has a new book out about music, it occurred to me to do the same, us being roughly equivalent celebrities in the music world. A sort of autobiography of how I found my way around Western Classical music, with a chapter on pop music to provide context. I thought it might be a way of collecting together all the things I always say about various composers in reviews. 

There's unlikely to be any audience for it, it would never see print beyond the possibility of being a pdf and it probably won't make anything like proper book length. The main interest in it will be how long I persevere before it is abandoned but in the meantime there is a project on the go to think about, the opportunity to exercise a few words. 

Memories of 1970's cassettes and Radio 3 have come flooding back with that first introductory catalogue of pieces I knew so well. I reckon my memory of what happened then might be better than what happened in recent months but, as I'm finding, I'm an unreliable witness. 

 

 

Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

Days like yesterday ought to come round more often. Never mind the imminent drought of water, I was suffering from a drought of new reading matter and a first survey of my shelves hadn't offered up much. But New Grub Street by George Gissing became the selection, a bit of an outside chance as it might have been a halfway abandonment first time out a few years ago. Well, maybe we all deserve a second chance.

It's great. It's as if Emile Zola had written Keep the Asipidistra Flying in the style of Maupassant and there's three writers worth having in your literary ancestry. The idea of 'glamour' of writing in the competitive world of publishing is severely undermined by the inverse logic of the market place in which,

it isn't only for the sake of reputation that one tries to do uncommon work. There's the shrinking from conscious insincerity of workmanship - which most writers nowadays don't seem to feel. "It's good enough for the market"; that satisfies them.

Published in 1891, this is 130+ years before the advent of AI and the belief in some places that the human writer will become obsolete in the production of some sorts of writing, and soon.

While Jasper Milvain readily adapts to the demands of writing for a living, Edwin Reardon is more compromised by ideals and hates producing cheap novels that might sell. After Jasper has outlined a busily productive day in his breezy, upbeat way, he is sked,

'And what is the value of it all?'

'Probably from ten to twelve guineas, if I calculated.'

'I meant, what is the literary value of it," said his sister, with a smile.

Obviously, but she's somehow missing the point of being a 'professional' writer.

 

How privileged one is to write what one feels like, to not to have to and for it not to have to be any good. It's an excellent book and the library catalogue has a few more Gissings on it and one or two of them will be coming my way to carry on from where New Grub Street leaves me. You could trust a Victorian to write a novel.

I read it yesterday to the accompaniment of another wonderful pick from my shelves, the Bach Cello Sonatas. Very happy as I am to attend concerts of Ravel, Debussy and Chopin on the piano and write warmly about them, we are always betting without Bach. From its first phrases, the disc by Mischa Maisky and Martha Argerich is in a different class. I played it three times yesterday, once again this morning and am left to ponder the deep riches there are on those 'classical' shelves, not to mention the 'pop' spread about elsewhere.  

I thought I might resurrect an old essay with a view to the Larkin Society journal. I wasn't entirely happy with it three years ago but rather than have to re-do it, I found a few bits of adjustment made it quite satisfactory to me in its discursive associations and so I hope it passes muster with the editor. I do so like being in their magazine. It feels like the only place appropriate for me to be by now.

And then I got around to reading a lecture on Gerard Manley Hopkins I'd been, very kindly, sent. That also restored some faith that there are still people about who are not Ocean Vuong and are capable of sense and rigour.

So sometimes the planets align in one's favour and what seem like unredeemable bad times turn into unarguably happy days. Perhaps one only needs to know where to look. And then look there.

Not Going Out

Not Going Out is back, single-handedly, as far as I'm concerned, keeping the sitcom genre going. I made a tentative step into the C21st by engaging with i-player and watched all six of the new series  rather than record them or try to remember what night it's on. Although I hold out against many of these conveniences, sometimes eventually one submits to them because needs must.

I'm not saying it's quite in the same elite category as Fawlty Towers, Dad's Army, Blackadder and The Office but it makes its case for belonging somewhere near The Royle Family, Early Doors, Steptoe, the Likely Lads and Fools and Horses. Three out of the six are brilliant. By now Lee Mack and his mate have their template, their way of writing them and plot themes, and situations recur, but they have now reduced it by losing Hugh Dennis and his wife next door who served a purpose and I don't know if it's clear where the children have gone but we are better off without them.

I don't 'lol' much, me, outright laughter doesn't come easily but there were several occasions in this series. 

Good. Very good. But I ate the whole box of chocolates too quickly. They must take a long time to write and then they're gone but I'll see them again and think, blimey, there's still such a thing a classic television. 

 

From the Archives

Once in a while it's time here it's time to report I'm out of new books to read. There have been a few good new ones recently but it's been time to go back to the shelves to find a re-reading option. William Trevor's The News from Ireland proved well worth a revisit.

There are a number of old newspapers in the archives saved for various reasons, the most common of them being because I had my name in them. So I had a look at them. What I hadn't realized was that over 50 years ago, in April 1975, not much happened in Gloucester without me being involved. I'm in 25/4/75's edition twice.

I was pleased to see that, aged 15 and a half, I came second in Glos City Cycling Club's Speed Judging event on the same page as the Sunday League football tables in which FC Spartak are doomed to relegation to the bottom division with one game to go. I dare say we lost to the G.P.O two days later, that being the last match of the season as evidenced by the team listings later, on page 15.

  

 I didn't remember it thus. I thought my first season with them was in the bottom division but here's the hard evidence that we were relegated to it before an equally dire season but then being promoted back before I decided on retirement at, I thought, 17 but maybe it was 18. And that is why it's essential to keep such ephemera for 50 years - so that one knows.  

It might not only be me that wants to know. It's unlikely, of course, but maybe one day, my poems having been recognized for the consummate artworks they are, a professor in search of a further angle on my life and work might find this item and make from it a piece of research for the journal of the David Green Society, set up to promote the public knowledge and appreciation of my works.  

It's possible that Philip Larkin would have been quietly very satisfied that such a thing was set up to honour him and, you never know, perhaps I would, too, although I'll manage very well, thank you, without being included in the honours list. 

Eva Doroszkowska at the Menuhin Room

Eva Doroszkowska, Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, June 14

Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads. Well, after a brief season of Romantic rhapsody and rapture, they are back and this week in Portsmouth it's been Bach and now Mozart. I might even be in a minority these days but 'classical' and 'baroque' still seem like home fixtures while later C19th music is an adventure with all the risks and/or  rewards that might bring. 

Eva Doroszkowska demonstrated a wide-range of piano technique in her programme of 'moods'. This being a translation, I wondered if 'tempers' might be another word for them. Mozart's Sonata, K.310, in a minor key, is not one of his most delicate confections but it still involves a sparkling onrush in its first movement and halting ornamentation in its second before its enervated finale. He had already 'covered' at least three tempers, there often being more than one shade to anything he does.

Grieg's Moods, op.73, marked his birthday, due tomorrow when he would have been 182. Six short pieces started by contrasting brooding portents with a mercurial Scherzo impromptu and continued to ebb and flow through a possibly perilous Night Journey, flowing melodic pastiche of Chopin before the evocation of distance and echo in Mountaineer's Call. One big advantage in Romantic music is how they like to tell you what you are listening to in their titles.

But, really, the main interest for me was Lūcija Garūta, to add a further uncompromising Russian or Eastern European woman to the pantheon I'm accruing. Her Etudes for a Steinway with a Sostenuto Pedal is a great rarity in specifying such a thing and it wouldn't be advisable to attempt to play it without that third pedal. It's what Eva came to play. She's not all drama and she's not all introspection but here she deliberately went into an uncommon dimension. A Serious Melody made great use of both ends of the keyboard, too. A Fairytale began to luxuriate in the sustain and Bells insistently chimed over restlessness. But it was the final piece in which the notes lingered long after, and still will be doing for many of us. Over more agitation, except now in the top register, the sostenuto pedal cast a rare spell to make for a long 'finish', as in the aftertaste of a fine wine. It's not compulsory to end on climax and crescendo as the Likely Lads usually saw fit. This was an ending not quite as long as A Day in the Life by The Beatles on which the last piano chord went into a loop suggesting forever but it faded gradually.

Andrew McVittie's fine Menuhin Room series continues in good health, building up a strong cast of fine musicians, like Eva, who are glad to return to play the Steinway. Any doubts there might have been about its future are safely in abeyance well into next year with a great variety of music, not even all piano, lined up. It's a friendly place and more seats could be fitted in, I'm sure, without offending the Health & Safety regulations. Something for everybody, one might say, but all of it for some of them is probably more like it.

Pilgrim Cello at Lunchtime Live !

Pilgrim Cello, Portsmouth Cathedral, June 12

Kenneth Wilson is cycling round the 42 English cathedrals and playing his cello at nearly all of them, having carried it on the bike. The ride from Chichester, which was yesterday's appointment, would have been one of the least demanding which is not to say it comes easy. He is cellist, cyclist and poet, probably in that order but certainly multi-talented in such contrasting disciplines.

Having once upon a time been a long-distance cyclist myself, I'm aware that it affords the opportunity for some meditation, not necessarily on the theme of the Seven Last Words from the Cross but I thirst can have some profound resonance.

The sonorous fluency of the Prelude from Bach's Suite no. 2 led into the programme as explored by Haydn in various versions, James MacMillan most spectacularly and others before Kenneth whose way was to read the Biblical texts followed by his poems expanding from those lines and then with the Sarabandes from the Bach in between. Those are the slow movements with the gravitas of no. 3, the pared down desolation of no. 5 highlights, taking the least danceable parts of Bach's set of dance pieces for other purposes. Gillian Lever's paintings to accompany each piece were also on display to provide any amount of stimuli to meditate upon while I was further distracted by the tiny front chainring on the outrageous bike built for practicality rather than time trial speed.

As the poem on My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? says, it is,

Bleak, bleak. 

But, as in the Haydn, the MacMillan and the Bach not originally written with such themes in mind, as far as we know, it's not all so inconsolable. Bach, for one, is at least that artist who offers us the consolations of his sense and art above all, and anybody, else.

Kenneth's instrument is modern, carbon fibre and black and so visually different from traditional wooden cellos. It made a wonderful sound in Portsmouth's intimate St. Thomas Chapel, sometimes not immediately sounding to me like those I've heard before played by Yo-Yo Ma, Stephen Isserlis or Natalie Clein, to shamelessly namedrop a few favourite musicians. He assured me it is no different but I've not heard some of the effects he conjured from it in his Amazing Grace finale, both in the top register and the ground bass.

That finale was the masterstroke after the the last of the last words, going back to where Bach begins in the Prelude to Suite no. 1 by way of deliverance, salvation and what some of us might consider the only paradise there might be, the realm of 'art'.

I'd been looking forward to that date for a long time, an extraordinary undertaking and an act of devotion to many things - the cello, the bike, the poems and their profound meaning. Expectation puts a high tariff on an event like that and so to come away so impressed - mostly by the musicianship but obviously the cycling, too - made it something special we Lunchtime Live! faithful won't be forgetting. 

How did that happen

Meeting up with Jeff Turner yesterday, one never goes away without feeling the wiser for what he's said about poems. Thus it was very good to hear him saying positive things about Romanticism. It's one thing if I'm happy with what I've done- and enough- but a tremendous bonus if someone one respects thinks so, too.

This morning, then, I had another look. Line 6 of the book. How did that happen? How many times have I read that. But, of course, an author reading one's own work knows what it's supposed to say and so sometimes that's what they see. And not every proof reader would know the genitive case of the Latin for Swan, as per the constellation.

It says, 

The name that Alpha Cyngi's better known by,  

when it should say 'Alpha Cygni'. It's taken me six months to find that having thought missing the accent off 'cortege' once while remembering it another time was my only erratum. D'oh.

But, hold on, that poem first appeared in About Larkin. Did nobody notice it then. 

No, it was fine then in issue no. 53, three years ago. So when and how did it get amended from being correct into a typo. There's only me that could have done it and I wouldn't have typed it out again, I'd have cut and pasted the text into the book from the original typescript.

I don't know. But I'm aware of instances in books by much more respected and renowned authors than me that went into print with similar mistakes in them and maybe in the same way that one's not a proper cyclist until one's fallen off a few times, one isn't a proper writer -or editor, for that matter - until that's happened.

I did once do a book in which no errors have been found yet. I think, quite fittingly, it was The Perfect Book.

--

I was taken by surprise by the death of Sly Stone yesterday, 82. He was very much in the category of those I didn't think could have still been alive.

The hit parade in 1971/72 abounded with seemingly significant masterpieces, Family Affair being a paragon example, and somehow fittingly today's weekly match v. Heardle 90's, 80's, 70's, 60's was won 3-1, beginning with a tremendous opening goal on the opening bar of Everyday People by Arrested Development, a cover of Sly Stone from those far-off days when hip-hop was any good

 

WCW and other stories

 William Carlos Williams is the subject of the last Portsmouth Poetry Society meeting of the current programme. Weds 2 July, St. Mark's Church, North End, PO2 8HR, 7.30, introduced by Kevin Rogers.

It's a chance to get more of an idea about a poet who has eluded me a bit over the years. Yes, the wheelbarrow and the plums. The much later Brueghel poems develop out of those. But what of Paterson. Heaven knows I've tried. The fact that some homework has only produced 500 words on WCW suggests that I'm not entirely on his wavelength but, important as he certainly is, one needs must try.

--

Somewhat easier to do was a contribution to About Larkin 59. The Life of Larkin purporting to be in the style of Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets. I wish it were funnier but, having done it a couple of years ago, I sent it to see if such an idea was likely to be the sort of thing they'd use and a very slightly edited proof came back in short order, I just got in under the wire and it was in print within a couple of weeks. Not yet available on the Larkin Society website resource of back numbers but I can e-mail you the proof for the asking.

A writer who ceases to publish anything becomes as much of a non-sequitur or oxymoron as William Carlos Williams's 'variable foot', compared by one critic to the 'elastic inch', so it's good to have that to add to the bibliography, the ongoing internet music writing notwithstanding.

--

Recent telly stored up on the recordings has included the 1952 film of The Importance of Being Earnest with Michael Redgrave, Edith Evans, Margaret Rutherford and, for the keen-eyed, a young Richard Wattis before he became Eric Sykes's next door neighbour. But, if that masterpiece of Oscar's is not the most perfect composition, packed with so many of his quotable lines, then really I'd like to know what is. Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, yes, but such things are rare. 

Also, the heartbreak of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, 2017, with Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle. Possibly the most convincing of McEwan's consistently good but not always hors catégorie output translating most movingly to screen. We don't all end up with the lives we might have had.

Sceptred Isle

Helen Carr, Sceptred Isle (Hutchinson-Heinemann) 

I shouldn't have done History at school. Certainly not for 'A' level. It was amorphous and didn't know when to stop. At least Hamlet finished with, Go, bid the soldiers shoot. The full story isn't available, we are taught from a certain point of view, reputations shift and what was once thought turns out not to be. Perhaps that's the beauty of it, though. I enjoy the fact that Hamlet is endlessly open to re-reading. Perhaps I tired of the succession of lords, dukes and princes maneouvring and for the most part getting murdered. History as we were taught it was an interminable game of chess about who ruled who and politics always has been such while the people have somewhere to get to and sail on as calmly as they are allowed.

Helen Carr does well to feature the Wheel of Fortune from the Holkham Bible, c. 1320-30, among her illustrations reflecting the recurrent motif of the kings who come to reighn and are subsequent beset with difficulties. Edwards I, II and III, and Richard II, set up a strong/weak, strong weak succession in which 'strong' means successful in war in other lands and 'weak' means unfitted for such a role and soon beleaguered. The away defeat at Bannockburn thus represents a low point in Englan's C14th adventures and Crecy a great triumph.

As reported by Marlowe and Shakespeare in their matching plays, Edward II and Richard II, are prone to favouritism, Edward to the extent that the two coats of arms displayed at his wedding are his own and those of Piers Gaveston rather than his wife, Isabella's. Helen Carr does her best to play down suggestions of carnal relations between Edward and Gaveston and blames that all on Marlowe but after rival aristocracy have dispatched Gaveston, Edward finds a replacement in Hugh Despenser the Younger. Isabella is a long way ahead of Diana Spencer in finding that there are three people in her marriage and for some time provides a formidable challenge with her own, chosen third party, Roger Mortimer. While there are few ostensible reasons to take sides in these unseemly campaigns for crowns, land and riches, I felt some sympathy and admiration for Isabella but later felt John of Gaunt always seemed like a baddie. Robert Bruce played well for Scotland and provided England with an unwelcome challenge to the north while it remains hard to believe that Aquitaine and some small part of North East France came under English rule. Many years ago now, I attended the opening of the refurbished Hampden Park to see world champions, France, put Scotland away 2-0 without breaking sweat, the famously devoted Scottish supports more concerned with singing Flower of Scotland and a less traditional composition, to the tune of Daydream Believer, about 'poor, old Kevin Keegan' while regularly inviting each other to stand up if they hated England. 1314 remained highly relevant news to them.

Of more pressing concern to ost of the population beyond the sport of the war lords was the Black Death, which is what Covid could have become if left to the laissez-faire bravado of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Piers Corbyn. One of the better arguments for the study of History is that we can learn from it but the fact that what goes round comes round suggests that that has a limited effect. What History mostly provides is wondrous tales of sinister plotting and gore with a bleak insight into the downside of human nature. It's easier to make heroes of the artists who reported from their times, like William Langland in Piers Plowman or perhaps the Pearl poet, not so long ago translated by Simon Armitage, which is where this book leads me next. 

I'm regularly disconcerted by journalists, on my choice of Times Radio, saying that it will be 'fascinating' to see what Trump or Putin does next or what happens in Ukraine, Gaza and all the other wars we hear less about. But it isn't chess or a computer game, it is horror of a kind not visited upon a radio sation's studio. We are 700 years on from the C14th's particular episode of ambition, gratuitous abuse and atrocity and they by no means invented it, they were just part of a long tradition.

I've long suspected that Economics wasn't a proper academic subject because its laws only amount to those that apply at a dog track and Portsmouth's rackety stadium closed some years ago now because it eventually proved unviable. It's tempting to apply the same verdict to History. It repeats itself. There can be few dafter pronouncements than that of Fukuyama when he said it was 'over', if that's what he meant. I'm with the poets, or at least the best of them, like Louis MacNeice,

The Sunlight on the Garden 

Idlir Shyti & Mateusz Rettner in Chichester

 Idlir Shyti & Mateusz Rettner, Chichester Cathedral, June 3

Debussy and Chopin went head to head in the discipline of Cello Sonata today in Chichester. I made Chopin a slight favourite given his very good recent form but he was on less familiar territory moving way from solo piano music. It was always going to be a good match.

Mateusz introduced the Debussy as a 'kaleidoscope of emotions' and it began with Idlir immediately reminding me why the cello is my favourite instrument, its mature reasonableness perfectly fitting the cathedral's acoustic, as heard from row 3 at least. The first movement began in consolatory fashion before becoming more activated. In the second, serenade, part, the uncertain dance was fragmentary with plenty of pizzicato and sounded very modern for 1915. The finale was rapid and energized. I was genuinely impressed by that and must remember to be less surprised by how good Debussy so often is in future.

Chopin's Sonata, op. 65, is longer, its opening Allegro moderato melodic, involved and involving with some swirling piano from Mateusz who displayed throughout the deftest of left hands turning his own pages. The Scherzo featured a song-like sway in the cello part over more pacy piano accompaniment before the Largo, by way of contrast and maybe a highlight, was mellow. Tumbling motifs in the piano right hand came back in the Allegro finale while Idlir's left was as impressively agile as that of Mateusz had been earlier. That's either a very fine, modern instrument he has or he's developed a great, creative relationship with it. It's probably both of them.

One would somehow rather that music, literature and painting were beyond the competitive ways of the world but we can't help ourselves. We compare, contrast and make our choices. For me, today, Debussy shaded it.