The Complete Works of Bach

And so there it is, then. Just within the year of having bought the 172 discs, all of them have been played, if not quite every note heard as I left the room for a few minutes. I finished this morning with some most enjoyable flute sonatas with dogged bassoon keeping up the bass line, and then keyboard arrangements of concertos by other composers. I think halfway through the year it was announced that some further fragment attributed to Bach had been discovered but the definite list of the complete works, lost and/or found will forever be beyond us and so one can't worry about that.

Perhaps it's inevitable that there's a feeling of, is that it, then, like there would be if one read all literature, knew all there was to know or witnessed the whole universe. It wasn't infinite after all even if at times it implies eternity. And, in such a reductive, begrudging mood, one might have to say Bach is reduced rather than increased by the idea one has 'heard it all'. Of course, it's not been inwardly digested. I never did get to the end of John Eliot Gardiner's Music in the Castle of Heaven which becomes a survey of the cantatas more than anything else. One lifetime wouldn't be enough to grasp it all so thinking that one has in any way covered Bach would be a silly mistake. 

But perhaps some of the mystery has been taken away. One was familiar with most of the best bits. As with reading 'all of literature', one would find great things one didn't know about but one does know Hamlet, John Donne, Anna Karenina, Dr. Johnson. One would become accustomed to the mannerisms and ways of doing things of anybody and Bach benefits from a sense of impersonality more than most. The more convincingly one can slip the surly bonds of personality, the 'greater' and more eternal one can appear to be, if indeed escaping them is desirable.

So, other composers will now get more of a look in again and I can check back through these postings for BWV numbers noted along the way for things to play again. 

Racetrack Wiseguy on the World Cup

 Horrific exploitation of readily-duped supporters who have been conditioned into a state of bad faith passionate engagement it clearly is but I'm torn between how much of a critic of the once-much-loved World Cup I'm prepared to be and how much a dissenter from the once-almost-unassailable orthodoxy of Marxist analysis. One wants to be both but the usual liberal dilemmas apply and it's a bit of each.

It's an absolute piece of cake, though, to re-invigorate the turf account. Not on the horse racing turf but on the football turf of the Americas in summer. I was on the lookout for an obvious group game win to pile into at odds on to generate some ammunition. I'm glad I did enough research into Brazil to find that Pele & Co have retired by now and it isn't proper Brazil anymore. While a few 'dead certs' went in, other good things did not and one wants to be risk averse when one false move puts one in the minus for the year and I'm not used to that.

But, working through the draw and how it all pans out after it began to look like some other old, much-vaunted old names weren't much good, it seemed that there wasn't a lot in Argentina's way to the final and only Spain were a danger to France. Patriotism, 'the last refuge of a scoundrel' according to Dr. Johnson, does one no favours and I'm glad I don't suffer from it. 

France to beat Argentina in the final paid 22/1 only a few days ago and the other way round it was 25/1. Nothing but the entirely expected has happened to either of them in the meantime but those prices have collapsed and I can already take a modest profit from having invested.

But you'd think there was more to be had, that we can wait until just before the semi-finals and then cash out one or both bets or maybe even field against Spain.

So far, it feels like taking candy from a baby but I haven't snatched it off them yet. I'm waiting for my moment. One mustn't leave it too late in case they suddenly swallow the lot but one doesn't want to go too soon because there could be odds of more than 20/1 to be landed.

It's not that that keeps me awake at night, it's other things and I don't mind being awake at night. I'm enjoying being in this advantageous position. I've just got to make sure I don't blow it.

Library Discovery

My reading of Henry James ground to a halt halfway through The Ambassadors. I felt I needed to borrow the rubber stamp Larkin had made that he used on unsolicited poems he was sent, 'Why should I care?'

Sitting in my upstairs room, the second half of the alphabet of prose fiction is on my right hand side. Closest to hand is Dylan Thomas, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, very good to return to and maybe I approve of him more in prose fiction than in poems. But Treasure Island was worth picking up and I'm enjoying it very much. I knew how old it was but hadn't realized it was a Christmas present from 1967. It is inscribed to me from Aunty Joan and Uncle Andy, who do not appear on the family tree but were next door neighbours.

A 235 page novel is a big ask for an 8yo and I don't think I ever got further than its first two or three pages, which were a bit scary. I'd like to think Uncle Andy, and Joan who I don't remember now, would be glad to know I'm grateful, 59 years later. It's not my oldest possession but comes in not far behind my dog, Jock, who arrived at my first Christmas in 1959, and is roughly contemporaneous with my Astronomy books that tell me that Jupiter has 16 moons and Saturn 9. At least they were ahead of Galileo who thought Jupiter had 4.  

Jeffrey Turner - A House Called Paradise

 Jeffrey Turner, A House Called Paradise (Chestnut Press)

I am the privileged and grateful recipient of a copy of this limited edition produced 'for private distribution'. If it hadn't dawned on me years ago, when it should have, I'm beginning to grasp now that in the poetry world much depends on who you know. Now that I'm glad to benefit from sometimes knowing such people.

The Chestnut Press take special pleasure in producing these editions on fine paper, elegantly typeset and Jeff Turner is a poet they rightly regard as one whose poems are worthy of such presentation.

Flumen est Arar, Julius Caesar begins a passage in De Bello Gallico, before going on to explain that there is a river Arar that flows so incredibly slowly that it is impossible to tell with the naked eye in which direction it is flowing. Not all of that rote learning done to achieve 'O' level Latin fifty years ago was wasted. That line comes to mind now as almost appropriate to how Jeff's poetry works. It is luxuriantly slow-moving. It doesn't demand anything beyond patience but it certainly rewards close reading. It can't possibly have been poured out in a rush of inspiration. It must have been thought over, finessed and allowed to mature in a way that I'm sure those who enjoy fine wines or whisky would understand.

It is contingent, feeling as if it might be somehow formal or metrical but not being, exploring what might be only to find that the exploration was all there was, like,

                a track that stumbles on, uncertain

whether to find or lose itself. 

That is both a theme and the way the theme is expressed and, as such, a paragon example of how poetry at its best can extend beyond the shackles of the language it needs to escape from. Before too long, this pathway and the house called Paradise that it leads to are both the poem and an extended metaphor for life itself and,

We must take them at their word

And take our chance that this is paradise:

 

One is even impressed with four judicious semi-colons in a 45-line poem. A couple more might have made Jeff look like a campaigner for the preservation of a threatened species of punctuation but they become necessary, if not quietly radiant, in such considered writing.

But, reading as closely as I have, I've gone back several times to find how the mice evoked in the final stanza can be called 'they' when such a pronoun must surely refer to some entity previously mentioned. I go back to those that 'we take at their word', who before that 'meant to stay' and before that were 'whoever built it' and either Jeff has performed some syntactical legerdemain, it's poetry taking a bit of a chance or the poem has been loosed from its moorings. But,

There is no more, they are saying.

No further on to find

Beyond the memory of what never was.

 

Which leaves us none the wiser, then, but with some sense of having been somewhere and seen something. I told you it was about 'life'.  

Sara Deborah Timossi & Valentina Seferinova: Songs of Summer

 Sara Deborah Timossi & Valentina Seferinova, St. Peter's, Petersfield, June 27

Once upon a time I went all the way to the Handel House in Mayfair to hear the few minutes of the Biber Passacaglia in real life so it's not too much to go to Petersfield to hear some choice Ysaÿe. Such opportunities are rare. It's like being an ornithologist going off in search of a not-often-seen species of bird.

The magnum opus was really Mozart's Sonata KV. 454, though, first up and an ideal piece in which to witness the fine balance and understanding achieved by these two friends. I understand on no lesser authority than that of Alfred Brendel that Mozart is difficult because there's 'no hiding place'. As it happens, Sara and Valentina don't need such a thing. My first encounters with Valentina involved her explosive Romantic repertoire, like Joachim Raff, and so it's been hard to shift those first impressions of her but that little local difficulty is surely resolved now after the delicate opening Largo and the frolic of the Allegro with Sara's courtly etiquette embroidered in. The Andante was poignant as perhaps only Mozart can be, the gorgeousness completed with the sweetness and light Allegretto. People sometimes discuss which composers they'd most like to have met. I'm sure Mozart would have been memorable but he might have been a pain in the neck at times. As is often the case, it's the work we treasure irrespective of who wrote it.

The Danse Rustique from Ysaÿe's Sonata for Solo Violin, op. 27, no. 5, was as spectacular as could have been hoped. Surely not to be undertaken lightly as an example of the supreme virtuoso's masterpiece. Quite how the pizzicato notes were fitted in during the tour de force of bowing remained on the outskirts of understanding. Like the Bach Partitas that this music is surely related to, one wonders that the violinist does it with only the standard issue two hands. But Sara is a calm presence, doing it without the extravagant gestures that some either feel the need of or put in for dramatic effect.

Following our latest heatwave, conditions were perfect with the church doors left open and ultimate levels of comfort made for the ambience we might remember as being right for Songs of Summer and Romance. It was quite recently that some 'small-scale' Tchaikovsky was available in Chichester, not that he is ever knowingly small in scope. Valentina opened the second half with more such in a luxurious June from The Seasons, op. 37a, all en plein air and verdant before melting way. Lushness continued in the Three Romances, op. 22, by Clara Schumann, culminating in the rolling lyricism of the Leidenschaftlich schnell, the translation of which belies my interpretation of it.

Manuel de Falla's miniatures in Suite Populaire Espagnole expanded the variety of music further with some rich atmospherics. From the piano dance rhythms of El Pan Moruno, Sara's mute strings in Nana and into the dark heart of Polo, we were left to contemplate the possibilities of things not quite as civilized as Mozart but we also left contemplating consummate musicianship presented for the sheer pleasure of it.

Completing Bach and other stories

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

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

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

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

--

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

Keir Starmer

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

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

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

 pushing an elephant up the stairs,

  tossing up punch lines that were never there

Over my shoulder a piano falls

Crashing to the ground 

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

Tianyang Han in Chichester

 Tianyang Han, Chichester Cathedral, June 23

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Danny Driver at the Menuhin Room

 Danny Driver, Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, June 20

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

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

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

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

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

  

Rebecca Hepplewhite & Caroline Tyler in Chichester

 Rebecca Hepplewhite & Caroline Tyler, Chichester Cathedral, June 16

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

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

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

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

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

Sounds of the 70's

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

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

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

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

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

 Pilot episode

2  3  4

 

The World Cup and other stories

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

--

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

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

And truly, I say unto thee

And truly, I say unto thee, if there's a better book than A.N. Wilson's Jesus, then I haven't read it. Absolutely scintillating. I even considered acquiring The Apocryphal Gospels and The Dead Sea Scrolls, in paperback editions, to investigate further but without Andrew's insights and commentary it might not be so enlightening.

He makes the comparison with another thrilling area of biographical mystery and speculation, 

The feelings of the historian about Jesus must be analogous to his feelings about Shakespeare, who managed to achieve fame and wealth and notoriety in Elizabethan London, and who left behind him a body of literary work without parallel, but whose 'personality' remains almost invisible.

Perhaps it's the not knowing that make these two's lives - two of the most famous people that ever lived- so compelling but it's equally potentially irksome that so many myths are put in place to fill the gaps that are allowed to pass as general knowledge. I'm grateful to Andrew for the introduction to the word 'midrash', which is a Jewish term for 'filling in the gaps'. He cites a number of examples pertaining to Jesus that might appear to accommodate Old Testament prophecies after the fact but the job he does in unravelling the likely and the possible from the imaginative is brilliant.

Mary Magdalene and her friends found the tomb empty because other friends had moved the body to a preferred burial place. Subsequent sightings of Jesus, often shrouded in doubt, were of his brother, James, who took up the work that was to prove to be shortlived. Jesus preached only to make Jews better Jews, not to set up a new church. It was Paul that did that.

Another of Wilson's subjects, Tolstoy, is found to be less contradictory in his teachings. Jesus is portrayed as quarrelsome, difficult and unsuccessful in his lifetime despite the vast, misunderstood legacy he left. 

I've known plenty of sane, intelligent, well-intentioned people that genuinely believed, 'had faith in' the virgin birth, miracles and the resurrection who sincerely thought that those impossibilities happened. Even circa 1972/3, in our traditionally Christian school, such things as walking on water and the feeding of the five thousand had been rationally explained away but, as ever, people will believe what they want to believe and there ain't nothing one can do about it. I'm sure we all enjoy a bit of mysticism, a ghost story and the way the best poetry conjures something extra from the language but we all know, don't we, that there's no such thing as magic.

Wilson's book maybe ought to be regarded as the truest gospel. 

Madeleine Mitchell & Elektra Schmidt in Chichester

 Madeleine Mitchell & Elektra Schmidt, Chichester Cathedral, June 9

Beethoven was the main feature of Madeleine Mitchell and Elektra Schmidt's show of violin and piano. He could have afforded to give away his violin sonatas without much noticeable lessening of his reputation whereas the recipient would have benefitted greatly.

No. 10 in G, op. 96, opens with a cheery, classical Allegro moderato. Written in 1812, only three years after Haydn died, his spirit was not far away. But the profound, consolatory Adagio was the day's most memorable passage, its steady light penetrating some semi-darkness. The merriment of the Scherzo was carried forward to the variations of the fourth movement. Elektra's mazy piano was as prominent as Madeleine's violin that piled in all the notes before Beethoven put in an unusual- for him- succinct ending.

Before that, the undercard had begun with the sparkling piano and uplift in the Mélodie of  Frank Bridge, Ravel's Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré was gently hypnotic and the familiar strains of Elgar's Chanson de Matin were demure and perhaps more silky than velvety and with maybe some inflection in the violin that I'm not sure I'm accustomed to.

But today's question is 'what is an encore?' The players left the stage during the applause for the Beethoven and returned to play another piece that was listed on the programme. Is that an encore or not, I wonder.

One of the many reasons I've not appeared on Mastermind to answer questions on music is that I didn't know Tailleferre was female, part of that long tradition that goes from Hildegaard of Bingen to Taylor Swift. I'm not sure how much it matters, musically. Her Berceuse, written early in her long life was distant and/or misty, a fine choice for an encore if that's what it was. I'll be looking to find out a bit more about Germaine Tailleferre in due course. 

I'm beginning to forget to say about Chichester lunchtime concerts that it was brilliant. 

Jesus !!!

The Portrait of a Lady emerged from the weight of its own prose and immense detail to be quite a success but not so much that, after four Henry James novels in a row, I wanted to get involved in another long one straight away.

It might be as much about Gilbert, the baddie husband, or the manipulative Madame Merle and the emergent secret they shared. If it was not for Isabel to know, she still might have exercised more judgement in her choice of first husband and so my sympathy for her is limited. Thus, although the happier ending is only strongly hinted at, it looks like it will have one. And like an episode of Midsomer Murders, the answer turns out to be not one of the frontrunners but one who, until the design of the plot is revealed, might only have appeared to be making up the numbers.

So, while Henry James takes fairly high order among novelists, one does not want to live by him alone and a change of scenery, and writing, makes for the latest costume drama.

 

I was nudged back, by something, to one of the recent shortlist of Best Books in the House, which as far as I can tell is the same as Best Book Ever, for me. And I'm as impressed as ever with A.N. Wilson's Jesus, for its scholarship where 'scholarship' means learning applied as best it can be; lucidity and open-mindedness in an area so clouded by faith, belief, tradition and irrationality that one would otherwise struggle to know what to think.

Andrew doesn't assume that Jesus wasn't married just because the gospels don't say he was. They don't say he wasn't, either. He had no idea about setting up a new church. He was a charismatic, firebrand Jewish preacher with radical ideas at a time when the Roman Empire was troubled by sectarian monotheists. It was Paul, as per another book by the same author, that made the Christian church perhaps the most significant and powerful movement of the subsequent two thousand years.

It's a hot, dusty story of both fishermen and bookish types rather than carpenters, of much unlikeliness explained in terms that make it plausible, some mysticism notwithstanding, that depends on the same human frailties that Wilson, and Jesus, have an understanding of. Their world of sectarianism, tyranny and violence was in essence not so different from how it was before or has been since.

Jesus never said he was the son of God, the second part of the Trinity, and rejected all entreaties to be king of a new Israel. It is astonishing how he became sentimentalized into 'gentle Jesus, meek and mild', born in a stable attended by three wise men from the East who came bearing gifts. Embellishment upon embellishment in what was only ever literature has made something ludicrous out of reportage written decades after whatever he said and did were said and done. But he was more real than Robin Hood and Andrew Wilson did a tremendous job in finding what there might be of him in amongst the accumulated rubble of outlandish fiction, all the architecture and music built upon one very successful preacher.

Do I like him, no, I don't. Hot-headed, difficult, troublesome from childhood until his early death, he is the template for all those pop stars that burnt out, for Faust, Icarus and that useless article, Che Guevara, whose revolutionary image adorned so many student bedroom walls in the 1960's and 70's. His legacy lasted longer than Che's did, though, even if it descended into horrors that he never intended and the gaudy ceremonies that he never meant.

But maybe A.N. Wilson, high C of E Tory as I think he would identify, wrote the best book I've ever read as an eventual part of that legacy. And it's remarkable to think that one of my other six favourite books is Ungentle Shakespeare by Katherine Duncan-Jones, to who he was married for some years.

It must have been compelling. One inappropriate syllogism, a non-sequitur or a contemporary usage that couldn't be translated into Latin. That's what life should be like. I wonder who they think will win the World Cup. 

Kate Burrows & Helen Morris at the Menuhin Room

Kate Burrows & Helen Morris, Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, June 6 

You may know how some of Shakespeare's plays are called 'problem plays' on account of their mixture of comedy and darker themes. Measure for Measure is one of them. Schubert was not a problem for me at all until finding out that he was widely regarded as melancholy. The latest episode in the ongoing enquiry into this came up first in Kate Burrows and Helen Morris's programme with their performance of the Fantasie in F minor, D. 940, its minor key and late catalogue number immediately offering hints that it might not be his happiest work.

Helen's poignant top line and then early hints of unrest were realized in some proper sturm, if not drang, but the boisterous, assertive passage that came before a recapitulation that aspired to the condition of Bach and a grandstand finish didn't sound sorrowful to me. Notwithstanding that Kate and Helen have never appeared to be melancholy people. I think it's time I got over that question and concerned myself with others.

In two solo spots, Kate's Fauré Nocturne, op. 37, went from halting serenity to some flow and surge worthy of Chopin which dovetailed neatly into Helen's Ballade no.4 by him, wistful before its own serenity was disturbed by something. Helen had explained that it had a story but Chopin never said what stories he had in mind so we were free to make up our own. But music is mostly an abstract thing for me. I don't think it was about next door's kids making a racket outside of a summer evening.

These pieces were not dissimilar to each other and Rachmaninov's Vocalise and its stately mood of acceptance before taking a look at some more characteristic Rach-like wider panoramas maintained the mood. That was Helen's choice but Kate took over on the upper end of the keyboard for hers, Ravel's Introduction and Allegro, immediately more modern while still lush and 'Romantic'. Time had flown by, as it does when one is absorbed in what's going on.

There has grown a great feeling of friendship and community in the few years while Andrew McVittie has built this series, with the invaluable help of Helen and others. Thus, they made a presentation to him as he prepares to pass on the role pro tem while, he promises, not disappearing from the scene completely. Several years ago Nile Rodgers and Chic invited as many as could be accommodated onto the stage at Glastonbury and a comparable thing happened here with a photo opportunity to mark the occasion with musicians, master of ceremonies and audience all together in front of the celebrated Steinway, the other essential stalwart of this continuing success.

Adrian Green and Gillian Thompson at Lunchtime Live !

 Adrian Green and Gillian Thompson, Portsmouth Cathedral, June 4

Portsmouth Cathedral Choir went off on tour to France leaving lay clerk, Adrian Green, at home to provide Lunchtime Live! His programme entitled Fly swift, ye hours was made up with no more of a theme than it was things he enjoyed singing. There can hardly be a better principle to work on than that. The title came from one of three songs by Purcell that he began with in which his light tenor performed some baroque acrobatics over Gillian Thompson's stylish accompaniment.

It was great to have some popular Handel, who is nowhere near popular enough on lunchtime menus for my liking. The evergreen charm of Where'er you walk led to Adrian's downtime in which Gillian had the piano lid opened to give full voice to the Bosendorfer in The Harmonious Blacksmith amid the rest of a highly Handelian Suite, HWV 430. Whether it was due to unaccustomed seating position, something in the air or simply the music, the piano sounded very healthy indeed. It must have been largely due to Gillian's playing, though.

Schubert's Nachtstücke was characteristically dark and melodic. Orpheus with his lute was takingly atmospheric and entirely convinced me, who is not always persuaded by all Vaughan-Williams. 

This second half of the song programme was twentieth century and English with Michael Head, John Ireland and Roger Quilter pieces all, my internet research finds, available on Adrian's English Songbook album. And then the joyful and triumphant ending was the latter's Non nobis, Domine. Not having been sure I was going to be at this recital, recent events have been turning out for the best and I was glad the trend continued.  

More Bach, More James

 I understand that marathon runners 'hit the wall' at about 22 miles and struggle on to the end from there. It happened to me once in a 12 Hour bike race, at maybe 10 hours, but it was only about refuelling with whatever food was to be found and I toddled on happily enough. Now that I know the marathon can be done in under two hours, maybe I'll have a go.

I wasn't expecting the same thing in the Complete Bach, though. Not until I arrived at the first disc of A Book of Chorale Settings for Johann Sebastian. It's not awful but, coming after the big oratorios and passions, it was underwhelming, a bit dull and there are a few discs of it. With a number of organ music discs still to go, I'm not going to make a priority of listening to all 172 discs within a year of acquiring them. 

I took refuge in a brilliant set of violin concertos that were vivaldistic- to coin a phrase that I hope will not enter general usage. But then the Brandenburg's were disappointing although if one is familiar with Concentus Musicus Wien/Harnoncourt then most accounts are likely to come across as less charismatic. I will soon be left with a sweeping up job in pursuit of the

complete Bach, not that it is entirely definitive, and it is not going to be onerous but the Uchida Mozart Piano Sonatas arrived today, all impudent and gregarious from the first note, and that sounds like being irresistible. Unless, there being 18 of them, one reaches that stage of enough being enough however good it is.

All the poems that Elizabeth Bishop wrote don't amount to many and if you take out all those that Larkin didn't see into print in his lifetime, he is similarly frugal. They set a fine example. One that I like to think I've tried to follow while readily acknowledging that plenty of mine went into print that wouldn't make the cut into a properly considered, much more selective Collected.

--

Meanwhile, back at The Portrait of a Lady, the way into it finally seemed to be to differentiate between the queue of Isabel's hope suitors and realizing that it was hardly likely to be a novel if she chose correctly. 'Highly Eligible Girl Marries Happily' doesn't make for 600 pages, even in Henry James. And it's equally unlikely that her choice is going to be her only imperfection.

We can take it that Lord Warburton represents money, class and England. Ralph looks like the good guy out of his depth like Giles Winterbourne in The Woodlanders, Mitch in Streetcar or even Horatio, who Ophelia might have been better off with than the self-indulgent, bookish type she found herself involved with. But, no, she marries Gilbert Osmond who, I admit, had seemed okay to me at first.

Until it's too late, of course,

He always had an eye to effect, and his effects were deeply calculated. They were produced by no vulgar means, but the motive was as vulgar as the art was great.

One is not only grateful for prose like that but an old-fashioned, omniscient narrator who tells you as much. Deeply impressive is the insight into the superficially successful man - let's say it was mostly men in those days, that,

Far from being [the world's] master as he pretended to be, he was its very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of success.

Henry James is seriously gaining my utmost respect with all this and then, 

His ambition was not to please the world, but to please himself by exciting the world's attention and then declining to satisfy it.

and I'm in sympathy with Gilbert, in his Larkin-like plan, except it's not really an admirable thing. It's art, it's vanity and it is what's wrong with Gilbert Osmond.

Once Isabel is on the way to realizing she is unhappily married, the secondary plot of who is going to marry Osmond's daughter, Pansy, gets underway, with Lord Warburton turning out again to have another go. It recalls how Laertes wants to take revenge on Hamlet in the backwash of Hamlet bungling his own revenge on his uncle.

Henry James has got me right back onside in the second half of Portrait. Maybe it's as good as I'd hoped.   

The Henry James Update and other stories

In due course, one's preconceptions are confirmed. The Aspern Papers, The Turn of the Screw and, not quite so much, Washington Square, were all great. I like short books. I don't mind long books but sometimes 600 pages don't seem altogether necessary. Except The Portrait of a Lady wouldn't be Henry James if he didn't bury you under the thick eiderdown of his all-enveloping prose.

It's luxurious and, yes, I do have all day to enjoy the luxury but, as I've found in my unsuccessful ventures into Jane Austen, I'm not particularly bothered which of her ardent suitors the heroine is going to marry, if any. Which is not to say one can't enjoy the chapters as they flow ever onwards almost as vignettes full of wit, observation and style. It's just that even life itself is surely not quite as nuanced as Henry James's fiction. Not even Proust, Ulysses or Tolstoy. I don't know yet, I'm only halfway.

There's enough to like, like the,

stone bench...useful as a lounging place to one or two persons wearing more or less of that air of undervalued merit which in Italy, for some reason or other, always gracefully invests anyone who confidently assumes a perfectly passive attitude

or,

'She was born- I always forget where you were born.'

'It's hardly worth while then I should tell you.'

'On the contrary,' said Mrs. Touchett, who rarely missed a logical point; 'if I remembered your telling me would be quite superfluous.'

So perhaps it's this almost Wildean wit that provides the entertainment rather than the stakes race between the varied contenders for the apparently immaculate Isabel Archer's affections.

There surely must be some irony to be had in her ultimate fate, nobody being perfect, because she must either choose one, presumably wrongly, or remain somehow unhumanly above it all.

We will see but, once having seen, it will be time for a break from Henry James.

 

I take breaks from the Complete Works of Bach regularly while still in with a chance of listening to all 172 discs within a year of acquiring them. Due imminently are the Mozart Piano Sonatas played by Mitsuko Uchida. I have to check the shelves before buying anything these days because I can't remember. For years I never knew in what formats I had The Velvet Underground & Nico but now that I do know, I never play it. It's on Spotify, You Tube and generally ubiquitous.

But this morning, the unseasonable Christmas Oratorio showed how irrelevant the time of year is for gloriousness. And hang on, we've had this echo of 'ja, ja' before, in the Cantata BWV 231. I thought it was Handel that plagiarised from himself when needing a good tune in an emergency but Bach did it as well, if not as often.

One notes such highlights as Erbarme Dich in the Matthew Passion, always wondering what advantage music one knows already has over pieces one hasn't. Even if coming to something for the first time has a never-to-be-repeated opportunity to freshly impress. I'm sure Hamlet improves for seeing it a few more times after the first, all other things being equal. 

I press on with the Bach, not realistically expecting to be able to say I played it all in a year. I think it's early July that's the deadline. It's no kind of hardship like in a marathon there needs must be some suffering to achieve the worthwhile aim but there might be times when it's a bit like other bits of it and certainly some of the organ doodling is routine background music to reading. But if listening to Bach ever became dutiful then the point of anything has finally been lost.

I don't know what ultimate reason we were born for but if one reaches a stage where that is unsatisfactory then it is all over. 

Chess- England 0 Hungary 1

This was the scene this afternoon on Southsea seafront where Zoltan was taking on allcomers.

Quick game, five minutes, I said. 

Is okay. I play quicker than you, he said, giving away the advantage by playing with black. Fair do's to him.

His d6 reply to my customary d4 was unusual, as was his subsequent row of five pawns on his third rank. It was real rapid-fire gun-slinging stuff and he made the first blunder.

I was in cruise control, or at least carrying the tray of drinks across the slippery floor.

I'm not sure how I gave back the advantage. Twice I, very sportingly, stuck with moving a piece I'd touched when he might have let me off but if I'm going to win I want to win proper.

It would have been insulting to ask for the draw in an endgame where he still had a bishop to my one pawn advantage.

We shook hands after maybe five minutes under the unforgiving sun.

Are you here next week?

If it's a nice day, I'm here next week.

You're Hungarian.

How you know I am Hungarian?

Because you're called Zoltan.

 

So, first game across the board in many, many years. I very nearly had him, too, but having missed him once I might not get the same chance again. He's probably any good. 

 

An Evening with Philip Larkin

An Evening with Philip Larkin, Goat Star Books, The Century Club, Shaftesbury Avenue, May 26th

A somewhat eventful day yesterday. This is by no means a review of the main event. That might appear elsewhere in due course. But it won't undermine the eventual appearance of that, if and when it does, to praise the presentation by Goat Star Books with guest reader Daniel Wain and the revelation, not mentioned in the published letters or any of the three biographies, that Larkin kept up a correspondance with Kenneth Williams which at first sounds an unlikely prospect but, then again, T.S. Eliot wrote to Groucho Marx.

The journey from Portsmouth wasn't easy with rail delays following soon upon the replacement bus service and, having had well over an hour in hand in the plan, arriving at Piccadilly Circus with only twenty five minutes to go before kick-off. Except the Century Club is not easy to find, being unmarked. One needs to know. I went well beyond it and while retracing my steps, began to ask people with increasing desperation. A bouncer in charge of a theatre queue didn't know. You'd think a taxi driver might but he didn't but someone smoking outside the Century Club overheard, came and helped and told me I was right in front of it. Well, I never. I might be traipsing up and down Shaftesbury Avenue still without such a kindness.

Maybe more another time about the excellent show where I unknowingly met and shook hands with the nephew of Rosemary Tonks. That alone was worth the heat and hardship and paying possibly about £20 for a pint of lager. Three bottles at £7.88 each but it is only money and they were essential supplies. 

But the almost supernatural occurences had only just begun. The 22.30 out of Waterloo was initially packed but across the aisle, a lady had put what looked to me like a violin case on the luggage rack. I obviously wanted to know all about that while not wanting to be reported to the guard and thrown off the train for a misunderstood, inappropriate advance. However, the crowds thinned out and I soon heard myself asking, is that a violin, have you been playing in London and, if so, what.  

Yes, yes and the Bach B minor Mass, were the answers.

The conversation rapidly took off and it transpired that I had reviewed her only a few weeks ago, most enthusiastically, of course. So, do you know him and her and them.  

Yes, yes. 

Bach's B minor Mass is mostly in D major.

Good Heavens.

 

And then she spotted a memory stick on the floor and established whose it was from the label on it and some internet detective work and undertook to return it through the available channels to the musician whose score of the Bach it had on it. By which time I was beginning to wonder if it we were in an episode of The Uncanny.  

It all seemed like a far-fetched concatenation of events.

The replacement bus stopped at Hilsea at about 00.15 so I walked from there. Not a soul to be seen all the way down the Copnor Road which was gorgeous for one unaccustomed to the dizziness and busy-ness of Soho of an evening. I made some connection with the poet who lived at the end of the line, away from cosmopolitan London and made a virtue out of being provincial. I've long sympathized with that. I don't know how much I could withstand of that hectic way of life. I'd rather by now be thinking of high windows, the sun-comprehending glass and things like that. 

Sounds of the 70's.

 Bob Harris is clearly still not well and we all wish him the best. Meanwhile, Shaun Keaveny, with a bit of help from Mark Radcliffe, has been making Sounds of the 70's sound much more like the decade I took part in. I was in Gloucester and then Lancaster, not hanging out in Nashville or California.

One gets the impression that Andy Burnham wants to be Prime Minister and feels no shame saying as much and so, on that basis, I want to do Radio 2's Sounds of the 70's. Equally blatantly, I've never made any secret of it.

My calling card sample show, put together this afternoon, is at Spotify now.

Sounds of the 70's

 

If only there could be a pop wireless show as good as that.

And yet, there could be and Version 1.0 is there already.  

 

Best Pianist Ever

 The Times yesterday, in marking 125 years of Wigmore Hall, published the 'ten greatest classical pianists', as chosen by an invited list of some current acknowledged stars. My contribution is not worth having but, as Portsmouth's answer to the musical question that nobody asked, I must pass a Sunday afternoon by putting in my tuppence worth. Me commenting on pianists is somewhat less appropriate than having an American tell me about cricket or a bricklayer advising me on poetry but one never can tell and one mustn't stereotype these people.

The Times panel surprised me somewhat by making Sergei Rachmaninov no. 1. He came with the sort of physical advantages that put him already ahead of most others, all other things being equal. There's no way I could have won a Tour de France up against the heart rates, lung capacity and other attributes of the likes of Miguel Indurain. And, a perennial second in the sports day sprint races at school, I wasn't Usain Bolt either.

Rach had such big hands he wrote music that was beyond others. Claudio Abbado had to help out Yuja Wang with a note she couldn't reach with her lesser spread. But he was a force of nature, too. The Times list goes 2. Richter, 3. Horowitz, 4. Radu Lupu, with Martha Argerich at 8 the only one still living. No Gilels, Gould, Arrau, Brendel, Ogden, etc, etc. but one could presumably make a list of fifty and still miss some.

On the basis of her Bach and Shostakovich, going in with my preferred repertoire, I'd be voting for Tatiana Nikolayeva. I spent formative years with two Mozart concertos played by Barenboim. I've always liked Mitsuko Uchida and hearing a Mozart Sonata, no. 5, the other day means her set of those will be ordered soon. In the flesh I've seen Steven Kovacevich, Emmanuel Ax, Isata Kanneh-Mason and local stars Angelina Kopyrina, who never fails to take the roof off, and Béla Hartmann. I'd have to have Angelina in any top 10 of mine.

I wouldn't be having Glenn Gould. While technical perfection would never be an important consideration for me, I'm not sure how far I'd go with innovative interpretation either. I'm listening more to the composer than what the performer does with their music so I will be all across Tatiana  whose 40-disc box-set has all the right pieces in it and, come a suitable windfall, all £100's worth of it will be given a home here.  

As ever, with such list-making, it's an unhealthy obsession and yet insists on being done from time to time as soon as one concedes that one thing is better than another. If Bach is a better composer than Piazolla then it figures that they can all be put in order of superiority. But aged maybe 13 or 14 and applying devoutly communist principles to anything I could think of, I took all the teams out of my football league ladder because none should be put above any other. Teams should play nicely, pass to each other and socialize pleasantly at half time and afterwards.

Which is, of course, even more ridiculous because it would abnegate the whole point of football. By now, I'd gladly accept that but not the abnegation of music because if we did that it would follow that I'd be just as likely to appear at the Menuhin Room, singing pop songs out of tune, as any proper musician doing something they are good at and all the great work that has gone into building the series would be demolished at a stroke.