Appearance at Music in Portsmouth

 I was honoured by an invitation to do a guest spot at the excellent, very useful, Music in Portsmouth website and there's no point being shy about it. Maybe that's what I do these days, rather than poetry, so there was nothing to lose and I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Interview at Music in Portsmouth

What an interesting, knowledgeable bloke. I'd love to meet him.

 

Odd

The advantages in shelf space-saving, not to mention cost-cutting, in supporting the wonderful but neglected service provided by local libraries, continue to be very persuasive. You couldn't think of a better idea if you tried unless you thought of a way of giving Greta Thunberg the job that useless article, Boris, always wanted, 'World King'. 

The Odd Couple by Richard Bradford, concerning the relationship between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin had never looked like a book I needed to have. He's written biographies of both of them and surely he's milking it by then doing one of them both together. 

Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't. The detail it goes into in examining these two lives is thorough to say the least and often possibly more than one wants or needs to know. It's possibly disrespectful to intrude into anybody's life quite so deeply even if they had advertised it quite so openly in their novels and poems themselves. And yet, because it's there, because it's been done, one reads it. One just doesn't pay to do so, so that must be alright, then.

Amis and Larkin were the 'odd couple' because while being such close friends at first, they were very different personalities. The book is less about literature than it is about sexual dysfunction. The problem Amis had, that he couldn't leave it alone, was probably more serious than Larkin's, that he never thought he was getting enough, although for such an unprepossessing and selfish character who just happened to write the best poems of his generation, he didn't do so bad for himself.

In some accounts, Larkin can be construed as a fogey-ish but common sense administrator who was better than he thought he was in company but it's harder to make a case for Kingsley Amis as a person, poet, or perhaps even novelist although he got first run on his mate in the race to celebrity status.

It can't have been pretty work for Bradford, wading through the letters and re-constructing the miseries of not only the two protagonists of his story but also those who came into their orbit. You either pity him the academic's role in cataloguing it all or you admire him for what it eventually becomes. 

It's odd, more than anything, though, and one wonders whether we should all have the same rubber stamp made that Larkin had to apply to unsolicited poems that he was sent that said, 'Why should I care'. 

But Bradford is better than I thought. A book only needs a few brilliant passages to make it worthwhile. I don't need to be electrified by every sentence. He does the best job in a short paragraph or two of nailing the old debate about An Arundel Tomb that anybody's ever done. Yes, of course,

Many commentators upon the poem have failed to recognise that its speaker is robustly unpersuaded by everything that he apprehends,

and

Such misreadings testify to the brilliance of Larkin's counterpointing of the respectful, deferential manner of the poem against what it actually says.

Well, thank heavens for that but it the misreadings were always less due to Larkin's brilliance than to some of his more sentimental readers not being able to read properly. It would be great if that was finally Q.E.D. on that subject.

The centre of the book is really how two such ill-matched best mates fell out, which might have been more about how the reluctant Larkin resented the success of the more exuberant Amis. If only he had been able to wait for posterity he might have seen some shift in what their subsequent reputations looked like. But Bradford is able to incorporate a wider realm of a very incidental supporting cast, like Shakespeare does with Autolycus, the Apothecary, the Nurse, Osric or Bagot. 

'Bummer' Scott 'appeared at least three decades older' than Nicky de Peche Craddock, daughter-in-law of the legendary chef, Fanny, who was the 'long-term admirer' of Nicky who occupied some of the living space of the Amis accommodation in Cambridge in 1961. He was dissolute but still recommended by Amis,

to his sons as an exemplar of good English, even when drunk, which he seemed to be for most of his waking existence.

And that's the sort of thing one reads books for. It's not for self-improvement, moral messages or even education or laughs. It's for great sentences or passages.

Bradford on Amis and Larkin could easily be mistaken for a miserable book but one only has to read it the other way and it's hilarious.

Portsmouth Choral Union - Fauré Requiem

 Portsmouth Choral Union, Fauré Requiem, St. Mary's Fratton, Nov 6 

Portsmouth Choral Union and David Gostick were so pleased to be back performing live that they began by applauding the audience. They deservedly got that back with interest at the end. They had packed a lot into an hour, beginning on familiar territory with Mozart's gentle Ave Verum Corpus swelling towards its top note and setting the tone for a kindly programme of choral music which is one thing I so far hadn't had this week with five pianists, a trombone player and a singer.

Viadana and his Exsultate Justi is somewhat less familiar. Roughly a contemporary of Monteverdi, it was brief, bright and spritely before Geistliches Lied, 'sacred song', by Brahms returned to something like the mood of the Mozart with its gentle waves of voices over the ever gorgeous Southern Pro Musica who here were a string sextet augmented by Ian Richardson's organ.

More shimmering violin in Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine was possibly a little preview of the main feature before Jack Comerford sang Schlummert Ein from the Bach Cantata BWV 82 in his sympathetic bass with another fine baroque walking part on the double bass. 

But the Fauré Requiem was the headline despite the iconic names on the undercard. It's a glowing, sensual view of the beyond that possibly prettifies the idea of dying as a comfort to those capable of suspending disbelief. It was a teenage favourite on a Music for Pleasure cassette in the 70's but nothing compares to hearing it for real and I'm not sure if I have before.

The Sanctus goes from almost a whisper to its dramatic burst; Faye Eldret was pure and clear in the Pie Jesu which may or may not have been source material for Andrew Lloyd Webber once and the organ was again powerful in the Agnus Dei before the glimpse of heaven in In Paradisum which was sumptuous here, as the whole piece and the whole concert was.

This was possibly the most moving of the week's concerts which were all tremendous in their own ways. Portsmouth and its surrounding area are currently being well provided for with some fine music and the fact that the events are being so well attended suggests it's not just the PCU and me that are glad to be back. Fingers crossed, then.

I'm having a week off next week, I think, but there's still a couple of dates at Chichester and a Christmas Oratorio to go before there'll be the menu for the New Year to choose from. I hope those that enjoy putting these events on know how grateful some of us are for their efforts.

Musicians from Portsmouth Grammar School at Lunchtime Live!

Musicians from Portsmouth Grammar School, Portsmouth Cathedral, Nov 4

 In a late change to the advertised programme, it turned out not to be our local piano superstar, Angelina Kopyrina with her fiery Rachmanninov that I and my select entourage saw today but Angelina can be saved for another time and, by happy accident, we had a different sort of treat.

Karen Kingsley, Head of Keyboard at PGS and surely a profound influence on these young musicians, did the honourable thing by going on first, possibly so that nobody else had to. Peter Copley's Aubade seemed to begin before sunrise in a disarmingly bleak opening but splinters of light from the top end of the keyboard broke through in what was an adventurous, modernist choice. Good Grief, when the composer's date of birth shows them to be younger than me, it must be either me that's old or them that's young and Copley's 59. It must be me, then.

That was surprise enough until the 'kids' came on. I thought Thomas Luke yesterday in Havant was amazingly accomplished not only as a musician (obviously and astonishingly so) but as a person for someone of 18. The three musicians here are a few years behind the likes of him but it was heartwarming, if not heartbreaking to see and hear the results of all the hours of hard practice.

Bach's Ave Maria uses that uplifting riff most famous from Handel's Zadok the Priest and then Daisy Sissons looks unassuming until filling the acoustic of the St. Thomas Chapel with her soaring voice. Equally impressive was her enunciation of the Italian in Gluck's O del mio dolce ardor from Paride ed Elena, not something I knew but I'm always ready to make the case for Gluck, who only died two years before Mozart but would represent the 'classical' period gorgeously had he not been overshadowed by such a superstar name.

Erik Hillman played Jan Sandström's Sang till Lotta on the trombone and, not being word perfect in Swedish, I would have liked a translation of the title. Thinking that it might be about blood, given the French, I was entirely down a blind alley trying to make more of the resonant brass sound and moving piano part from Karen than was necessary. It just means Song to Lotta and makes much more sense as such as a love song so sensitively done.

Jason Shui completed the programme with his own show within a show. There's nothing much more sensible in the piano repertoire than a Scarlatti sonata and he began with no.29, having been spoilt for choice, I'm sure, and brought it to life with what is often the part to listen to in baroque music, the walking left hand, while the right hand thinks it's doing the star turn. That lead, very naturally, into Mozart who, unlike Shakespeare, never blotted a line, is as close to a glimpse of heaven as we can realistically expect even in a cathedral and in the Adagio, Jason brought out the logic and mannerisms of some choice Amadeus in what had the makings of a hymn tune while I was inspired enough to cast my theatrical friend, Graham, as Mozart opposite my sinister, diabolical Salieri. Very unfair it was of Peter Schaffer to give us that version of Salieri in his play. Salieri wasn't Mozart but neither was anybody else. The merry Allegretto completed a fluent exposition of 'classicism' before first a swerve into to two C20th miniatures from Prokofiev's Visions Fugitives, which were fragments from a later world that perhaps didn't seem to hold together so well, as by now we are well aware, and then, as any programme is well advised to, you finish on an upbeat with the jazzy, syncopated, slightly Scott Joplin, maybe even 'stride' piano of Fats Waller, with Sweet William by Billy Mayerl.

We couldn't have gone over the road to the pub much happier than with that, with or without having seen the glamorous pianist from Moscow. It's not obvious where hope comes from in a climate catastrophe with the most hapless vanity project in charge of our little bit of it but here was some.

Thank you very much for being there, Daisy, Erik, Jason and Karen.    

Reasons to be Disenchanted, part 1

 It seems a great shame, or even bad form, to be immediately following up yet another celebration of music with grizzly comment on poetry but I'm always glad when someone far better than a grisly low-voltage ne'er-do well like me finally puts into words what I've been thinking for a long time.

Matthew Stewart at Rogue Strands is to be thanked for highlighting this frank summation of the poetry industry, such as it is, by Rory Waterman from Poetry London,

Rory Waterman in Poetry London.

So it wasn't just me who was thinking such things, then. I can call myself Disenchanted because I have been enchanted by poetry, not all of it but plenty of it, ever since I can remember. That was why I wanted to do it. Like football, cricket, cycling and pop music, one saw something one admired and wanted to have a go at it oneself and so did, with varying degrees of success. 

But what Rory diagnoses is what it's like now, increasingly so or maybe it was always thus but one was too enthralled to notice. It's precious, it seems to go unquestioned that the poet, who is self-appointed, is something of importance and must be treated as such. It's possible that nobody is prepared to point out that it's the king's new clothes all over again in case they seem disrespectful or somebody somewhere might decide that their efforts are no good, either.

A sceptic friend once estimated that 90%, I think it was, it might have been 95%, of poetry was 'no good'. And a much-admired, now sadly departed, eminent poet once told me I was a harsh critic. I wasn't entirely surprised by that but consoled myself later with my own reasons.

10/10 needs to be reserved for those very few almost life-changing things if it's ever awarded at all.

9/10  is sensational.

8/10  is great and needs to be on one's shelves.

7/10 is also likely to be on one's shelves because it's good.

6/10 is nothing to be ashamed of.

There's plenty of 5/10 it's not a waste of time reading.

But there's a lot of 4/10 out there, and worse.

If you pretend everything is at least 9/10, it makes a nonsense of 'critical judgement'. It denies there is such a vast gap between The Spice Girls, perfectly okay at what they did, and Diana Ross & the Supremes, whose name was on some of the best pop records ever made, by a consummately expert hit factory.

 

I always wondered what it would be like to find one's life's work had come to nothing. Luckily poetry wasn't my life's work and there's plenty I still like about what I did. But I do feel a bit like an evangelist who eventually realized there is no god, a devoted football supporter who realizes that their club was not really their club but a business of which they were a paying customer or a comedian whose jokes are found by subsequent generations to be unacceptable when once they had them rolling in the aisles with stories about mothers-in-law or demographic minorities.

There's still a chance paradise might be regained but it can only be regained by deleting out even more of the things I don't want to do. It's long been a process of trying to avoid bad practice. Whether there's anything left once one's done that remains to be seen.   

Thomas Luke in Havant

 Thomas Luke, St. Faith's, Havant, Nov 3

Havant has joined the local lunchtime concert circuit, wisely doing Wednesdays, and is most welcome. We are especially lucky to have the piano section winner from this year's delayed Young Musician of the Year in the area and St. Faith's were lucky to get such a high profile talent.

 

Bach's Toccata in G major, BMV 916 was begun with relish and at a speed that made it flashy and emphasizing more the shift to dreamier restfulness in the middle section. Bach is never less than a joy (except perhaps, some might say, in The Art of Fugue) and Thomas brought out the difference of the fast-slow-fast to great effect before the cascade of notes that unwrapped the well-organized mind of the composer like a kid opening a Christmas present.

By way of further contrast, Ravel is a very different composer and, I think, a bit of a speciality for Thomas. He played the Miroirs with spell-binding assurance. Ravel doesn't these days find a very high place in my list of favourite composers but in a performance of his 'impressionistic', descriptive or even programmatic piece like this was, it's easy to be convinced. 

The Noctuelles are fluttery, light-strewn moths caught in a fractured melody. The Oiseuax tristes was played by Ben Socrates recently in Chichester and it was equally hypnotic here except I wrote 'desolate' in my notes this time rather than focussing on the repeated note it ends on as I did then. I'm sure the same piece of music can have a different effect at different times, some of which might depend on what else is on the programme and thus given a different context. Une barque sur l'ocean was restless melancholy and the sense of fluency and flow that made this performance so coherent was becoming apparent. The Alborada del gracioso is perhaps most often heard in isolation with its disjointed rhythms maybe evoking the distress behind the jester's act and it was the one section that had a crescendo for an ending rather than a softer, less determinate one. In La vallee des cloches, the bells are tolling for someone and Ravel is sinister as well as flirting with lyricism.

An encore of a setting of Clair de Lune offered some release from the mild torment with its gentle and airy atmosphere accompanied by something more rhapsodic.

Thomas was entirely assured at what he was doing and I thought how much more enjoyable it must be to play for pleasure, for the sake of the music, rather than for some career-defining moment in competition. He will be around for a long time and it will be interesting to see which further repertoire he gathers. 18 is an impossibly young age to be quite so mature about music like this but it already isn't a matter of his fulfilling potential, he's there already. Isata Kanneh-Mason didn't even win the piano section in 2014 and look where she is now. Competition surely isn't the point.

It's already been a great week and there's still Angelina tomorrow and the Faure on Saturday to come. I'm very glad music isn't really a sport and one doesn't have to choose a 'best'. There is no reason to pick one when you can have them all.

Robert and Linda Stoodley

 Robert and Linda Stoodley, Chichester Cathedral, Nov 2

Performers in Chichester Cathedral at present have an imposing Moon to play under, Luke Jerram's Museum of the Moon, which the likes of Pink Floyd might have envied. One might have thought it fitting to gaze at such a thing during dreamy or slow passages but there turned out to be no such thing in the Stoodleys set and those astute enough to have found a seat with a view of the keyboard would have to save the Moon for later and be more enthralled with what was going on there.

Beethoven's Sonata op.6 is pretty, twinkling and might plausibly have been attributed to Mozart, being early Beethoven and not the larger themed and more troubled or compelling later work. Nonetheless, the four hands shared the work as one unit as they were increasingly to do and, like Mozart was the other week, the star name did the job of support act for once.

 

Mendelssohn, Richard explained, 'suffered nothing' until the death of his sister, Fanny, after which he died soon after. Perhaps his lack of suffering is why he's always such amenable listening and rarely dark but thus maybe not rated quite as highly as a few other major, major names. Richard and Linda changed places for this, with Richard taking the top end of the scale and both contributing to the torrent of notes that comes from their exchanges.

That was a fine thing but turned out to be something of a warm up for a thrilling Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 by Liszt. From an ominous beginning, the programme seemed to be taking us chronologically to more shadowy Romantic thoughts, not immediately all that rhapsodic but for some yearning implications until the fast-paced circus with Linda in the engine room and Robert embellishing over the top, the Chichester Yamaha being turned into a jangle box of energy and enormous good fun. That wasn't just the highlight of the show, it will be among the highlights of the season and remain in the memory for a long time. It will be worth watching for the next disc from the duo because Robert told me this piece will be on it. 

For many, I'm sure their arrangement of Gershwin's An American in Paris was as good if not better, moving into the Jazz Age. Sadly, I'm not a Gershwin man, just not 'getting it' but at least having him ahead of Korngold, Bruckner and most of Wagner. That didn't prevent me from appreciating an equally well done, and choreographed, performance and the intimate understanding they have of each other.  

It's a busy week with Young Musician of the Year, Piano Section, winner tomorrow in Havant and the great Angelina Kopyrina in Portsmouth on Thursday before a Faure Requiem on Saturday. Those of us who want to be spoilt for music in the Portsmouth area currently are being. If any of those forthcoming events provide anything nearly as good as today, we'll be well provided for.