Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

 So there was no case to answer for Rachel Reeves in the oversight of her estate agents. As there wasn't, either, when Keir Starmer had a bottle of beer during a break from work during the election campaign. Okay, Angela Rayner maybe had to go because it was a bad look but none of them were sending a lackey out from 10 Downing Street to the off licence to fill a suitcase with booze during lockdown the night before the Queen's husband's funeral. One can't help being a bit partisan about it when your lot are trying to do a proper job in very testing circumstances after the other lot thought their own rules didn't apply to them and carried on with their charlatanry regardless.

But in the past I've been told by both Northern Irish and Portugese people that we are lucky to have the politicians we have. And we take a look around. At the USA, say, being run haphazardly by a felon that pardoned himself. At France where an ex-President is in prison. At large parts of Africa. Of course at Russia. And maybe we should be grateful for what we've got.

Caitlin Moran in The Times the other day did well to point out that some elements of the UK we think we miss so much are still, in fact, in evidence. Maybe she has a point. On balance, I have little to complain about that isn't largely self-inflicted.

--

It's a long road back from a very minor, self-inflicted problem- that this year has not kept pace with the steady profit-making on the turf of the last several years. February-ish was a disaster in which much of the brought forward ammunition was lost. But one sticks to the plan and the plan is not to put any cash into an account with a bookie. The plan is to periodically, as and when, take it from them and transfer it to an account of my own. Consistently, like one-way traffic, however gradually.

It's been like the Alamo for months, defending a precarious last stand position, but it's a game in itself. One big, bold false move and it's game over and, like Rachel, one has to break one's own fiscal rules.

One needs a string of winners without breaking stribe but three steps forward and one step back will do. Thus 4 out of 4 in the last three days, at necessarily short prices but all winning easily, provides the latest glimpse and an escape back to 'business as usual'. After which, of course, it will be nhecessary to keep on winning. It's like the football supporter looking at their team's upcoming fixtures and saying, 'we need to win most of those'. Well, yes, that's what sport is like. It makes no sense at all to be playing games that one doesn't want to win.

It reminds me of 1975, was it, when I first played in the Gloucester Sunday League for a team bottom of the division and winless. Each time we went out I wondered whether I'd take the draw if it was offered and thought not but generally found I should have. After being relegated and finding a bit more backbone, it turned around eventually.

We didn't have anybody 'world class' in Gloucester Sunday League Division 4. Nobody quite as classy as Precise (Del Mar, 23.05, tonight). How she picked them off at Newmarket last time looked as pretty as a picture. Drawn widest of all this time is not ideal but Soumillon is a dream substitute jockey and the ideal rider for the job. There's never a more dangerous time in horse racing than when one feels confident and so we still stick to the plan, only glad of our 6/5. If I'd stuck to the plan early in the year I wouldn't have to be dragging myself out of this quagmire now.   

 

Alison Weir, Queens at War

Alison Weir, Queens at War (Jonathan Cape) 

Tainted with suspicion and impeded by his own aloofness and arrogance, York found it increasingly difficult to win the support of his fellow magnates.

History might not repeat itself but it often rhymes. That was in 1449, not 2025.

And in 1456, 

a London apprentice was hanged, drawn and quartered for asserting that Prince Edward was not the Queen's son. 

So we can at least be glad that, at present, in 2025, speculation on who the fathers of Prince Andrew and Prince Harry really were doesn't bring with it the goriest death penalty.

But we might enjoy a bit more witchcraft. It was the pretext on which Joan of Navarre, wife of Henry IV, was sidelined in later life but only sidelined and not burnt at the stake which suggests that nobody actually believed it but it was a lurid, politically expedient charge to put her on.

If history rhymes then perhaps Henry V was the successful, war-winning hero, not unlike Margaret Thatcher was but he had his cruel downside, like some say she had, although there is no record of her having had any Scargillite miner buried alive.

But thus, public opinion had favoured the Alpha Male, front foot winner, the fifth Henry, more than it ever did the sixth, who was more pious and less of a warrior. Given to other-worldliness, 'simple', they said.

It's hard to take sides in what is the central story of the Wars of the Roses, with emphasis on the role of the female. The contrasting claims to the throne of England of the houses of Lancaster and York are medieval spin-doctoring at best but having the best claim doesn't mean you are best suited to the job. I gradually became Lancastrian although had pre-set prejudices towards that side anyway, not that the eventual 'readeption' of the bewildered Henry VI ever looked like a good idea.

But it's an entertaining, vast catalogue of tales of carnage, dodgy deals with France and Burgundy, turncoats, executions, monarchs dashing off to the north, Scotland or Wales, sometimes in disguise or onto ships. One eventually has to admire Margaret of Anjou ahead of Elizabeth Widville but both have plenty to like about them. Alison Weir's summary of all these episodes is necssarily fast-moving and one might want to stop at certain moments to consider the situation. Except we did that at school a few times in very dull fashion when given the versions by that terrible historian, William Shakespeare. Tremendous poet and dramatist he may have been but now I wonder where the sympathies of our 1970's grammar school teachers lay who seemed to be in thrall to royalty and his representation of 'history'. That the glorious history of this sceptred isle is one of sinister machinations and dark ambition comes as no surprise.   

Anne Neville, wife of Richard III, barely features in her own chapter. Alison Weir is in little doubt that Shakespeare got it right about Richard, the evidence overwhelmingly implicates him in the murders of the princes in the tower, plus being involved in murders of Clarence and, it is suggested, perhaps Anne, as he wanted to move on and marry his 18yo niece. If all political careers end in failure then the Plantagenets found the right man to end with, notwithstanding that he died bravely at Bosworth.

One can't help but notice that the life expectancy of English kings in those days was short. Edward IV avoided being dispatched by a rival but found an illness to do it for him instead. But the future Henry VIII comes into the picture in the last few pages of this action-packed roller-coaster of riches, desperation, glamour and suffering and so we know it's by no means finished yet.

Chichester Symphony Orchestra in Chichester

 Chichester Symphony Orchestra, Chichester Cathedral, Oct 28

An orchestra at lunchtime is a special treat and putting together the annual dates with organist Charles Harrison and the CSO was neat planning. Chichester Cathedral has a number of French connections, not least with the Poulenc Organ Concerto, and so we were French throughout.

The woodwind and harp made for a floating En Bateau and further movements in Debussy's Petite Suite with soft pizzicato strings, into the serene perambulations of the Cortège and supported by the horns in the airy, light-filled Menuet. The Ballet, though, changed up a gear as if possessed by Aaron Copland and a heavier rhythmic charge.

Next, Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte unfolded with beguiling solemnity under Simon Wilkins's calm direction. In the front few rows at least, the CSO always sound immaculately balanced and they achieved all the sensual dignity of this gorgeous lament.

But perhaps the Poulenc was the big story. Dark and imposing from the start with low strings and timpani underscoring Charles's arresting sound, the higher strings shivered at a quicker tempo. With distant echoes of Bach and Buxtehude, it was really more discontinuous than any such thing from the C17th or C18th with its never settled mood. It worried along through portents and their subdued aftermath, hinted at something more military before cool, austere reflection. And just when it seemed that was how it might be going to end, it ended with a bang. Sometimes it can be a benefit not to have done any homework and thus not know what to expect. One can only hear a piece for the first time once and 'live' is the best way to do it.

The concert was dedicated to the memory of Patricia Routledge, supporter and patron of both the orchestra and the cathedral. It made for a fine musical bouquet.

It's Trad, Dad

A hugely enjoyable diversion from the usual agenda here has been provided by Larkin's Jazz, four discs compiled by Trevor Tolley and John White, Larkin Studies academics who double as jazz conoisseurs. 

If Satchmo is the obvious 'big name' of all trad jazz, there's not many missing with Sidney Bechet, Larkin's nominated favourite, Billie Holliday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and, on first hearing, a brilliant One O'Clock Jump by Benny Goodman. Plus a host of other names not quite so familiar to me but, like Northern Soul, it's all good and there's never a dull moment. Gloriously inventive, often joyful romps but with mournful trombones as necessary, the wailing clarinets and ensemble effort are a baroque recipe all of its own making.

Having been a student reggae admirer- an enthusiasm I've maintained without playing it as much as I should- I can identify with English college boys like Larkin and Humphrey Lyttleton finding so much in the music of another culture. Humph did a marvellous job in reproducing the sound of these bands here after the fact. Conversely, it's how I know that Louis is doing it properly because he sounds like Humph..

One does not live by Bach, lunchtime classical concerts, Tamla Motown and Tony Blackburn's Sounds of the 60's alone. Or Nico.

The Library Service were prompt in providing the brand new Queens at War by Alison Weir. But because there's a waiting list for it, I can only have its 400 pages for two weeks. That's not a problem but it concentrates the mind. Reading books is what I mainly do. Whereas some people read a book if they have nothing else to, I do something else if and when no book is immediately pressing and there are half a dozen waiting so the overdue weeding of the patio is being attended to in the shortest of reluctant sharp shocks.

Chekhov and Nico

 An unlikely pairing, you might think, but there are always points of comparison to be found. Not that I'm going to look for them here.

There's a lot to dislike about The Shooting Party  - the characters. But plenty to admire in it otherwise. It works like an episode of Midsomer Murders except the murder comes later on than usual. None of the potential suspects are likeable and neither is the victim but Chekhov points up clues by way of footnotes to what is ostensibly the text of a novel framed within the novel itself. So, quite how much of a 'big reveal' it is at the end, I'm not sure, and we don't really need the Conclusion, or much of it. It is counted as Chekhov juvenilia and maybe isn't quite proper Chekhov. We might label as 'juvenilia' any work that isn't quite like that which the artist became known for rather than early work because there are those who begin with their best and fail to follow it up in which case a word is required for the later work to identify it as not the best stuff. Artists ought to be credited with a reputation based on their best work. We/they all have lesser items in the back catalogue that might have seemed good ideas at the time but don't last. The best are, of course, those that leave an oeuvre of some consistency with not much that we could do without.

---

I wouldn't say that one needs all of Nico's limited output. You don't want to listen to too much of it at once, anyway. In a rare excursion into the pop CD's, I dug out the Innocent & Vain compilation - and why isn't These Days on it- to accompany James Young's Songs They Never Play on the Radio. I had thought James might be one of those intrusive authors who makes themselves too much a part of the story they are telling but he has some right to do so because he was and he soon becomes an acceptable guide to the downbeat glamour of post-Velvets Nico, being clever and on the right side of a thin divide between someone to enjoy and one to be irritated by.

She must have been hard work in real life and those of us who admire her so much are best left to do so from this safe distance. But she genuinely doesn't seem to care, which is the heroin addict in her, it's easy to diagnose. If the Velvets didn't like her it was probably more because Lou and John were put out by Warhol putting her at the front but since he was providing their opportunities they weren't in any sort of bargaining position.

The outrageous glamour is as illusory as glamour usually is although Nico's way of doing it is the equal and opposite of Diana Ross's. She has no money, is in Manchester, ageing and not dyed blonde any more. That is the monochrome, monotone sort of glamour that might look 'cool' from the outside but the emptiness is less attractive if you are the one that has to live it. Those appear to be the terms on which Nico was 'glamorous' and it isn't so glamorous on closer inspection. Dismissive, bored and aloof, it makes one wonder what's so cool about 'cool'. I'll report back after the full 207 pages.

That shouldn't be long. It looks like being captivating and it might be short enough not to get on my nerves. Longer books about Lou tend to do that given time. As ever there is some disparity between the great art and the personality that made it.

Brighton Chamber Ensemble at Chichester

 Brighton Chamber Ensemble, Chichester Cathedral, October 21

Dvořák doesn't always first come to mind as a composer of chamber music but the wireless played the String Quartet no. 12, the 'American',  the other day and so one can be glad of Classic FM and realize there's a whole seam of music to be mined there. And then, most opportunely, the Brighton Chamber Ensemble arrive to play the Quintet for Piano and Strings in A major, op 81. 

One might have thought Stephen Carroll-Turner's piano was providing a C19th continuo part from the beginning of the opening Allegro but that was before the main melodic lines were shared around very democratically. If Rachel Ellis and Ellie Blackshaw weren't leading on violins with Stephen Giles, vla, and Siriol Hugh-Jones, clo, with bass lines or pizzicato support, it was the other way round and with the piano being given a fair share of the top line, it was a wholly quintet performance.

Legato viola led into the second movement before some bubbly plucking ran beneath the violin in an Andante of summery nostalgia. The ballroom gaiety of the Scherzo finally made me realize that Dvořák is one of the cheeriest souls in the 'classical' canon and I can't immediately think of anything one might call sadness, anguish or anxiety anywhere in his work. Good for him, lucky man. What on earth was wrong with him, I wonder. He remained spring-heeled through the Allegro finale, tuneful and upbeat to the last. Where happiness is said to 'write white', i.e. there's not so much of interest to be said about it, Dvořák finds plenty. 

The Brighton Chamber Ensemble delivered high quality teamwork and musicianship throughout, some gorgeous tones in the lower strings, agility in the violins and nimbleness in the piano foundations. They are always most welcome visitors, bringing repertoire that might be a bit under-represented in local lunchtime programmes. One is the more grateful for it on account of that.    

Un petit moan du Grand Meaulnes

Alain-Fournier turned it round and was worth a very respectable 7/10 in the end, I'd say.

The trouble is like if anybody went to see Hamlet, Messiah, The Magnetic Fields or Vermeer on my recommendation, not having seen them before, they would likely come way disappointed because I'd have said they are the best things ever and nothing can outdo that.

Perhaps Le Grand Mealunes lays the heartbreak on rather heavily but I don't hold that against Thomas Hardy. Ultimately, though, what makes it convincing for me is how it's better to travel than to arrive. That something one wants is necessarily a bigger thing than anything one has. Having secured that which he first so desperately sought, Meaulnes is immediately off on another venture as if the seeking is what he really enjoys,

'But how can a man who has strayed into Heaven ever hope to make terms with the earth! What passes for happiness with most people seemed contemptible to me. And when I tried, deliberately and sincerely, to live like the rest of them, I stored up enough remorse to last me a very long time...'

or, 

Augustin had at his side the girl he had thought lost to him forever......Why was le Grand Meaulnes at that moment like a stranger, like a man who has failed to find what he sought and for whom nothing else held any interest? ....Why then this present emptiness, this aloofness, this inability to be happy?

Of course, there are people who find deep fulfilment in achieving what they wanted but they don't make for such a story and, I reckon, the sort of people who write stories and poems are those who dwell on things, not those whose happiness obviates the necessity of brooding on it.  

It might have arrived at an opportune time to discourage me from wasting the winter in pursuit of the novel I'd be at least in some small way satisfied with. I know it's beyond me, not just the conception of it and the writing of the prose but the sheer hard work and dedication required. I'm a short order sort of writer, at best. But an idea is there, 50 thousand words about a dilettante who only wants to write a novel but can't. Don't tempt me.

--

Chekhov's The Shooting Party might be the inverse of Alain-Fournier's classic, an opposite story of less beautiful people. Chekhov is essential without him ever providing an all-time favourite for me. I've been more with Turgenev, George Moore, Gide et al, but we will see about this, his only novel which, at about one third of the way through, has only just kicked into the real action.

--

But, 44 years after the fact, it has only just dawned on me how little of my desultory Eng Lit degree depended on the novel. In Victorian Lit, Prof. Carroll set a compulsory essay on Vanity Fair which was very bad news for me and even writing some of it in Cambridge, none of the high scholarship going on there seeped into my work by osmosis. My other Victorian essay was on Mathhew Arnol's poems.

Elizabethan Lit was Richard II/Edward II and England's Helicon. C20th American was Eugene O'Neill/Tennessee Williams and Sylvia. C20th British (to 1939 as they had it then) was Dubliners and I'd have to look up what else. I can hardly believe I took on Eliot. C17th was the Marvell dissertation and I did my own thing on 'British Poetry since 1945' in Independent Studies. That was all the Lit. One novel essay that was, probably generously, given a third.

Perhaps it's taken me until now to realize it was never my medium. 

Angelina Kopyrina in Havant

 Angelina Kopyrina, St. Faith's, Havant, Oct 18

A lunchtime concert can be a substantial meal but a two-part evening recital is a banquet. Two Beethoven sonatas in the first half made one wonder where there was to go from there in the second. While having a printed programme is in many ways preferable, waiting and seeing builds some suspense. 

Sonata no. 18, op. 31 no.3, opening with its playful, Mozartian trilling might have been ahead of tempi we've had before and that suspicion was upheld by the Allegretto vivace and its entrancing left hand. It didn't make it sound hurried, it showed what can be done with such music in the unlikely event of the requisite dexterity. The Menuetto was necessarily more pensive before the rollicking romp of the Presto. Hearing, and seeing, the same artist five times in a year with some of the same repertoire doesn't have to be more of the same. Slightly different for however many reasons each time, it will take much longer than that to tire of Beethoven and Angelina Kopyrina.

The Appassionata is rightly famous, if not quite as famous as the Fifth Symphony with which it shares the 'fate motif'. Not one to underplay a good idea, it recurs throughout the Allegro in among the surges of power and tumbling scales. The sobriety of the Andante, as was a feature of all four of the evening's pieces, provided gorgeous contrast before the thrilling helter-skelter of further Presto. The point always needs to be made that if Angelina is most readily remembered for her exceptional bravura, it's not all full blast and the tenderness is an essential part of her art.

 

It's ever a good sign when you know you've had more than your money's worth by half-time. I remember Angelina saying (something like) she would happily play Liszt all the time. I'm glad she doesn't because we wouldn't get all the other things then but 'everything in moderation' doesn't sound right with reference to Liszt. Après une lecture du Dante is more fully entitled with Fantasia quasi sonata. The programmatic unleashing of the inferno is punctuated by passages of rare beauty, the stormiest moments of the evening ratcheted up each time in one of the high peaks of the Himalayan heights of Romanticism, flirting with madness as they did before the movement actually went mad in the person of his son-in-law.

One of the outstanding experiences of the concert-going year so far was Angelina's Prokofiev Sonata no. 7, op. 83, in Portsmouth Cathedral and there's nothing quite like the first time. I immediately availed myself of the Complete Piano Sonatas then and was grateful for the introduction. It's not just the relentless thrill of the drive to the finish, it's the unsettled, off-kilter first movement, the anticipation of Halloween and the urgent chiming in the second. It can't be expected to come with quite the same shock value when one has become familiar with what's going to happen but it was still great to witness it in the flesh again.

It's not all the time that a whole evening is one musician and their instrument and even when it is, it's not always at such a level of intensity. That was not only art and a performance of a deeply impressive calibre but an accomplishment of both physical and mental stamina. It's too easy to forget what it's like in between gigs and it could be too easy to in due course take it all for granted. That hasn't happened yet. I don't think it ever will.

--

Portsmouth Menuhin Room, Sat November 29, 12.30. You won't regret it. Let's see how many seats Andrew can fit in there. 

You Don't Wanna Be His

Some books just fly by, addictably readable, entirely sympathetically, only just putdownable and whereas 470 pages of academic consideration of the poetry of Ezra Pound could leave one none the wiser and not having enjoyed oneself, John Cooper Clarke's autobiography is pure entertainment. 

It is a grim story at times. Heroin addicts should keep themselves to each other because they are, as a demographic group, far more boring than accountants, golfers and Rod Liddle all multiplied by each other. But John is aware of that even while explaining the roller-coaster years of his career - the exhilarations and desperations- and whether you'd want such a clearly talented and erudite character as your closest companion for the long haul is entirely up to you. Several decided they'd rather not and I don't blame them but, on the other hand, anybody whose life included no encounter with him was the poorer for it.

He didn't have to provide 470 pages. If this had been the kind of book that just met the contractual requirements of a publisher who thought there was a market for it, he could have done 250. And he stops in the 1990's, with ever decreasing detail, because after that, I suppose, he was just famous and did what famous do to earn a living, not unlike Pam Ayers or Roger McGough who carved out comparable careers as 'professional' poets with less risk to life, limb or sanity.

Baudelaire's got a lot to answer for, big hero to Eliot, Rosemary Tonks, John and countless others.  

In its turn, that book led to deciding that James Young's Songs they never play on the radio would be the Nico book to have. We will see about that. The introduction looks a fraction over-written.

But before that I'll finish Le Grand Meaulnes which needs to save itself in its last sixty pages if it's going to justify its reputation. And then the library has provided The Shooting Party by Chekhov and library books jump the queue because they have a due back date.

A Very Short Introduction to Elizabeth Bishop by Johnathan F.S. Post also arrived today, not that I feel I need it having cleaned up 3/3 on the round of questions on her on this week's University Challenge. 

--

But, Happy Birthday for tomorrow to Rosemary Tonks, Johnny Haynes, Wyclef Jean and me. The bus pass and state pension make it feel more like a coming of age than 18 or 21 did. These days it seems to be called 'state' and not 'old age' pension but I'm ready to embrace 'old age'. It does sometimes feel like it and it seems to me a ready-made excuse, if and when one needs one, for any lack of enthusiasm for contemporary culture. 

We necessarily live in the past because all books and music were written in the past, it's just that some of it comes from further into the past than some other. 

Menuhin Room Piano Circle and Friends

 Menuhin Room Piano Circle and Friends, Portsmouth Menuhin Room, Oct 11

In the unlikely event that the wireless ever wants me as a presenter, I hope it's not for the Breakfast Show. Andrew McVittie's 11 a.m. start for his charity gala show was plenty early enough for me. 

Menuhin Room regular, Ashton Gray, set off with some ever cheery, even jocular, Haydn before we became pre-dominantly Romantic but continued with the more demanding Nocturne by Barber with its lyricism homage to John Field. Christine Limb to the left of Andrew next played Joplin's Bethena as recently heard in Gavin Stevens's solo piano performance in the cathedral. Strange to say, perhaps, but it struck me that Scott Joplin and Haydn could be very distantly related in their happy formulations.

Jacqueline Lopez immediately became my favourite El Salvadorean flautist, accompanied by the busy Liam Rowe, in Widor's Suite for Flute and Piano. Widor is one of classical music's 'one-hit wonders' with his famous Toccata and from that you'd never guess that this floating, sometimes soaring and intricate piece was also by him. Whereas the Toccata by Khachaturian in Christine's front-foot, imposing account might have been. Almost as forthright in places was the Chopin Polonaise, op. 26 no. 1, with Stephen Priestman in stalwart form to take us to what was only halfway.

Liam's transcription of Rach 2 was a whistle-stop tour of the evergreen favourite done with verve and fluidity but, given his workload in this event, Andrew stepped in with an evocative reading of Grieg's Nocturne before he was back to accompany Anne White's flute in the Andante from Mendelssohn's Trio for Flute, Piano & Cello (without cello) which was mellow in its oxymoronic 'subdued gaiety'.

Miriam Sampson's Schumann Arabesque shifted in mood beautifully before ending gently.

Liam's Rachmaninnov would have made for a grand finale, one might have thought, if Michael George's Chopin Ballade no. 1, op. 23, hadn't been waiting in ambush. His impassioned, bravura performance completed two hours of tremendous value that absolutely flew by, which is always an indication that time has been well spent and thoroughly involvingly.

Top marks to all involved, especially Andrew as both performer and debonair host, who did so mostly as 'amateurs' which means for the love of it as well as not getting paid. It wasn't so badly attended given the ungodly hour it began at. I didn't see Burlington Bertie there. I understand he only rises at 10.30. But it is to be hoped that the Music Fusion charity benefits from their efforts, the artistic success of the event notwithstanding. 

Maupassant, C18th Music, John Cooper-Clarke

Maupassant's not quite the writer I'd thought he was, for better and perhaps for worse. There is more variety in his stories than the 'shabby gentility' of lower middle classes struggling to appear respectable. The introduction to the Penguin Classics edition suggests the stories contain some misogyny but it's a society in which wives are legally the possessions of husbands, where mistresses are sundry appendages and Maupassant is worldly in dealing with it as such. 'Love' is like a market place and highly transactional at times.

Maupassant is the less deceived. Several stories are left open-ended if not always inconclusive. The reader is left with a fair idea of what the end would be if there was one. A Parisian Affair is a good choice to give the volume its title with its 'back-to-reality' theme that recurs time and again, as in Duchoux where the Baron de Mordiane feels stranded in,

the monotony of the same kind of evening....the same conversations on the same topics, the same badinage, the same jokes and same gibes about the same women

but his foray to find something more interesting seems to persuade him that the mundanity he knows is preferable to the world beyond it.

I had thought Maupassant quieter, like George Moore or William Trevor, but he can be more visceral. I'm sure he's a great writer but a longer look has shown him to be not exactly the one I had been led to believe.

 

Revisits are often enlightening, especially after a long hiatus. Buxtehude by Arrangement, the album of transcriptions for piano by August Stradal played by Meilin Ai, was at first underwhelming, it not being the real thing and the Preludes, Fugues and Chaconnes sounding somewhat reduced but it's wandered its way quite debonairly across the turntable a couple of times with expectations reduced and been the better for it. In many cases, it's not the work's fault how we approach it and arriving with the wrong preconceptions is our fault, not its. The Bach Cantatas in the Complete Works continue to throw up fine pieces from the depths of their vastness, the shimmering adagio strings, the lone violin or hautbois, the impressive vocal solos and the sweeping choruses. Of course one must not live by Bach alone and one wonders how limiting even such an inventive mind is until one of the real masterpieces, like the Piano or Violin Partitas, seem to provide inexhaustible richness on their own. Such is the paradox.  

 

Of Tuesday's acquisitions, the C18th English Violin Sonatas, headed by that Londoner, Geminiani, are state-of-the-art and fine company whereas Keith Jarrett's Handel Suites wander off a bit more harmlessly than one might like but, in the belief that Jarrett/Handel can't be an anodyne partnership, it will be given further chances. Béla Hartmann's Schubert disc was added to upcoming treats this afternoon.

But mainly, I'm glad to have plenty to put ahead of Eugene Onegin which was bought more out of a sense of dutiful required reading than its promise of undiluted pleasure. We will find out one day but not yet. Le Grand Meaulnes was there, waiting to be snapped up, in the Oxfam shop and so, having heard it recommended a while ago, I did. The Woman in White is a doorstop for the winter that has long floated about the less pressing reaches of intended reading lists. Humph's The Best of Jazz was picked up with my father in mind but he's a fine

writer and I might learn from it but John Cooper-Clarke's autobiography, I Wanna Be Yours, is joyfully engaged with straightaway before the library reservations arrive. Drollery from a remarkable man with a turn of phrase entirely his own, he is a class apart from other such 'pop' poets as Hegley, McGough and lesser names than them. I honestly don't think he's putting it on. He's telling it how it was, with an appreciation of all the absurdities, and he's apparently 'real'. He won't be entirely out of place on my Poetry Biography shelves.

 

Béla Hartmann at Lunchtime Live!

Béla Hartmann, Portsmouth Cathedral, October 9 

This wonderful Autumn continues to provide. My pre-concert gaze across the harbour was accompanied by a nearby radio. Such things can often be noise pollution but not when it's Al Green, still Tired of Being Alone after all these years. But the real business was a first go for Béla Hartmann on the Cathedral Bosendorfer.

Das wohltemperierte Klavier always makes for a special occasion. They are all too rare as if it's saved for Sunday best. Béla's C major, BWV 846, was contemplative, opening out like a flower in sunlight before his D major was contrastingly more forthcoming. It is 'desert island' music the like of which precious few have ever written on such a scale and one is ever grateful to hear it in the flesh.

Before that, to begin, Schubert's Impromptu, D. 935 no. 1, had the right-hand playing centre midfield like the engine room for the most part with the left switching either side and, in a highly coherent programme, four of Béla's own Pieces for the Right Hand Alone showed him to be a C19th composer in disguise whether in the almost lullaby Song of the Thief, the dancing Etude, the emotional impact of the Elegy or the drama of the Prelude.

But perhaps all these fed in some way into Chopin's Ballade no. 4, op. 52, which was gloriously expansive and deeply impressive with the piano rarely having sounded as good. It is to be hoped that Béla returns as part of another season without too much delay. I'll be devastated if he doesn't. 

Filippo di Bari in Chichester

 Filippo di Bari, Chichester Cathedral, Oct 7

 Filippo di Bari played Chichester Cathedral last year as half of a four-handed performance but this year was limited to two, not that 'limited' is the right word for either the music of Beethoven or his playing of it.

First up was Robert Schumann's Kinderszenen, op. 15, thirteen miniatures on memories of childhood, mostly gently nostalgic but with more boisterous parts, too. The atmospheric Träumerei lingered in Filippo's sensitive account and prefigured the resolution of the set in the elegiac Child Falling Asleep and the soft finale of The Poet Speaks. 

But Beethoven is in a different league. The Sonata, op. 110, is perhaps no more than mid division in the immense cycle of 32 of them and has not been given a distinguishing name either by Beethoven or any subsequent writer. However, had almost any other composer written it, it would surely be among their best pieces.

The Moderato cantabile opens serenely before floating and glinting onwards. The increasingly more challenging, both to play and interpret, Allegro molto, demanded subtle modulations that Filippo delivered gorgeously without any undue attempt to be 'flash'. But the Adagio beginning to the third movement sank to depths of melancholy with tenebrous left hand. The rapt attention of the audience did them great credit this week and Beethoven treated us to some retro Bach keyboard configurations before a radiant final passage left me reflecting that op. 110 might not have a name appended to it because there is no word, not even in German, perhaps, that would do it justice.

--

Lou Reed once wrote a song about a day like this. 

My bus pass arrived yesterday with a letter saying it could be used immediately - like I didn't have to wait until next week when I become officially a 'pensioner'. So, travel to Chichester today, to Portsmouth Cathedral on Thursday and the Menuhin Room on Saturday is already for nothing. Thank you, Portsmouth Council. Not that any such extra gain lasted long in the Oxfam Bookshop and then the Flapjack shop but, with time in hand, I sat in the benign Autumn sun in the Bishop's Palace Gardens among its delicate colours and quiet to consider my forthcoming reading and listening choices before the whole point of the excursion, the op. 110 Sonata. And also consider what it might have been that I ever did to deserve it.

A Further Crossword

 Perhaps we should have one every week. But let's be careful what we wish for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Across

1 and 4 Poet on the radio would be stimulus messin' about (6,6) 

8  Religions are divided thus, like small animals (7)

10 Battered Asian food, with no end to beginning we hear (5)

11 Fancy another that contains green and blue (4)

12 Drab yarn in which farm animals might be discovered (8)

14 Previously ordinary origins of extra dimension elucidated (9)

18 Hit repeatedly and seasoned (8)

20 Lazy sounding god (4)

22 Thought a lot of some tiara Ted wore (5)

23 Car accessory would ruin film (7)

24 An unknown heard extension (6)

25 Left most of seat in water between Africa and Asia (3,3)

 

Down

 

1 Pincer movement made for guitarist (6)

2 Poetry by Hopkins changed piscean (7)

3 Can I change South American (4)

5 No alibi with direction composed (8)

6 Bear is OK upsidedown, and likes Australia firstly (5)

7 Ian stood up before promotions for nymphs (6)

9 Sailors from afar surrounded by prophets (9)

13 It's something added but also can be removed (8)

16 Stephen in Portrait in sad, sad duel (7)

17 Viv's choral work thus passes on Monday? (6)

19 Autocrat inserted (5)

21 Poet in The Vatican? (4)

 

Susie Dent, Guilty by Definition

 Susie Dent, Guilty by Definition (Zaffre)

In the acknowledgements at the end of this book, Susie Dent tells how Zaffre, the publisher, approached her with the idea of her writing a novel. Considering the height of slush piles taking up space, or at least megabytes nowadays, in publishers' offices, that's a rare thing. But they saw in Susie the ideal celebrity novelist as the best-known dictionary editor in much the same way as advertisers saw Carol Vorderman's similarly established arithmetical credentials giving credence to financial products. 

At first, Susie's lexicography lays heavily on what reads more like a busman's holiday than a story. Set in 2023 among a set of Oxford dictionary professionals, I had to look up such words as 'doomscrolling' never mind appreciate all the welter burden of arcane derivations and extinct coinages. Rarely can an author have ever 'written about what they know' more than this.

Anonymous letters start to arrive in the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary, relating to the disappearance some years earlier of Charlotte Thornhill, a Ph. D. student with lots of 'rizz'. It's hard to say whether the clues they provide are more ingenious than the outrageous ingenuity shown by the CED staff in solving them but they are brilliant Oxford types so maybe it would be within their compass. I've not read Dan Brown but understand his books to be based on a lot of 'hokum'. I have seen a lot of Midsomer Murders, though. Susie's story is perhaps a confection made of elements of both but, as it develops, it becomes compelling in spite of oneself for one with an interest in the minutiae of Shakespeare biography. There seems no end to what might be invented to add, however fictionally, to the bare, substantiated evidence that there is.

The baddie turns out to be the baddie, unscrupulousness is the cause of all the trouble and vaulting ambition, both monetary and literary, is the motive. And there is a feminist sub-text which we might take as its real 'meaning'.

It's hardly literature itself but it's surely a cut above most celebrity novels if only for its showy erudition and the panoply of Oxford novels takes one more on board. I enjoyed it and raced to the end this morning even as I tried not to. As the co-author of some Shakespeare biography - that we don't regard as fiction- this could be a cautionary tale. It might be dangerous out there. We must tread carefully.