Olive Murray at Portsmouth Lunchtime Live!

 Olive Murray, soprano, Portsmouth Cathedral, Sept 22

Finding your way through Portsmouth City Centre in Freshers Week is like level 10 on some fiddly computer game but at least the hordes of people handing out flyers advertising their bars, cafes and night clubs realized I wasn't part of their target audience. I'm sure it wasn't like that in my day but without students, it seems, the whole economy of some cities would surely collapse.

Programming is everything sometimes. Beginning with Scarlatti and Mozart, Olive Murray was agile and resonant but I wasn't tuned in properly. Three Schubert songs included Nacht und Traume which was crepuscular, almost velvety in Christopher Foreman's accompaniment, and although it's not explicit in the translated text, Olive brought a suggestion of grief to it.

S'il est un charmant gazon by Liszt saw the programme gather momentum and his Oh! Quand je dors was not so sleepy but Cäcilie by Richard Stauss took off into an extra dimension, bringing the piano into a more eloquent role and giving Olive licence to extend into a more ambitious range,

If you but knew, sweet,
the anguish of waking thro' nights long and lonely
 and rocked by the storm when no-one is near
to soothe and comfort the strife weary spirit.

She is an opera singer, and at her very best in Romantic arias, the greater the vocal challenge the more in her element she is.

Three contrasting songs by Poulenc were a dramatic Voyage a Paris, a more reflective setting of a poem by Louis Aragon which, looking up the words, is every bit as nostalgic as Olive made it sound and Les Chemins de L'Amour which was more Edith Piaf perhaps. Two songs by Robert Schumann, who does well in lunchtime concerts, included Er Ist's (Spring is here) about which I noted 'playful', taking a short cut from it being from Lieder-Album fur die Jugend.

But if one suspected the finale might be big, and having seen it was Verdi, one wasn't going to be disapponted. Ah, fors' è lui che l'anima and Sempre libera from La Traviata unleashed further levels of passion and range in a scintillating ending. For once I simply abdicate from the hapless role of the reviewer trying to find words adequate to the performance, which are often not good enough anyway, and just say, 'Wow'. Maybe I'll look up Maria Callas and Theresa Stratas another time but I'm not going to let them influence my memory of Olive Murray yet. The applause, it has to be said, sounded like it came from many more hands than the desperately few who were rewarded for making the effort of attending. Portsmouth can only apologize to artists of such quality for not providing bigger audiences but that doesn't mean they're not very appreciative.

Performers are advised to 'leave them wanting more'. I very much wanted the Queen of the Night as an encore. Maybe next time. I hope there is a next time. 

Goodwood Today

 

Royal Fleet, in blue, comes to claim the big race in workmanlike fashion to land the odds and help defray the expenses.

Once I saw the way the betting was going, I changed my mind from last night.

Goodwood Preview

It's a different kind of week this week, desperately sad to miss Pavlos Carvalho in Chichester cathedral today but with some compensation in a rare day out at flat racing tomorrow.

Goodwood is flat racing's answer to Cheltenham, the main difference being you look down on the scenery rather than up at it. It's less easy to convince oneself of winners with any confidence, though, with the fine margins of short distance flat races, it being a fast, downhill track unlike most and, for the likes of me at least, it being flat racing, of which I'm no more of a student than I was of 'A' level History.

But, having landed the double at Warwick today with the very last scrapings in my account, the heroic rearguard action has got me into the autumn when I generally fancy myself to do some business and I'm suddenly the man in form.

Nearly 1m2f is a long way for 2 year olds in the 1.50 but Galactic Jack's run over 1m here last time had him 'staying on' dourly so he might last longest. Early indications that he'll be odds-on don't make him an attractive proposition but it does make you think he'll win.

One can't help but notice Substantial being chalked up as favourite, well ahead of his betting forecast status, in the 2.25. But it's not as if you can't make cases for a few others. One could do a mad thing for small change stakes and put him in a tri-cast with Red Mirage and Alazwar but this sort of closely handicapped race is a good example of why flat racing is a day out and not an exercise in applying some sort of science in the hope of showing a profit.

In that spirit, I won't even bother with any science in the 3.10 and support the outsider Batchelor Boy, by Cliff Richard out of Pure Sentiment, but not necessarily with money.

The 3.35 is the big race but might not be the biggest race for the highest-rated horses. Royal Fleet last ran in February in Meydan where he had a good winter and one can't help wondering if his main target is his next race. Cadillac keeps moving stables and one wonders why. This ought to be the most straight-forward race to sort out but it's got more traps in it than a greyhound race. It would be a race to see what the betting suggests.

Wickywickywheels in the 4.10 is 'one for the teenagers', a long distant echo of 1980's handicapper Wiki Wiki Wheels and looking for his fifth win a row. Not everybody will want to take him on but I will. I'm initially more taken by the recent form of Roger Varian's horses but realize that William Buick doesn't go anywhere without expecting to win. I'll think about a dual forecast, doing all these 'day out' sort of bets for fun, coupling Strawberri and Secret Shadow.

But having thought the two non-handicaps would be where any proper bet might be, I will take Tommy G (nap) in the 4.45. Re-appearing quickly after a win, preferring to carry a 4lb penalty rather than be re-assessed is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It is at least a clue even if it sounds a bit desperate to point out that the draw advantage is low and he's drawn 1. That is what nap material looks like at a meeting like this. It's not like knowing that Allaho and Honeysuckle will win at Cheltenham all season long.

I don't even want to guess in the last. We could say Glamorous Breeze and, for a laugh, couple it with Mr. Beaufort, him having been the inventor of the way that breezes are quantified.

I feel about as qualified as a tipster for tomorrow as the crowd of over-monied young men in their tweed and Burberry that got on the train to Ascot at Twickenham a few years, throwing the names of horses they intended to back around the carriage like confetti.

I wanted to lay them any price they wanted because I knew they were guessing. And I wouldn't have had to pay out any of them.

One must go circumspectly in such matters and have reasons for doing what one does.

I'll hope for Tommy G, see what price we can get about Galactic Jack, have a day out and look forward to Chepstow over some obstacles in October when one tries to get more business-like.

Westminster Abbey

 Some years ago here I had a go at deciding on some favourite architecture. It might be a better idea, if one hasn't really got a favourite, not to invent one. I decided on some of those flamboyant wavy lines, not really Gaudi and not really Frank Gehry, that are probably 'inspired by' orchids. But, no it's surely far too showy, garish and trying too hard. It's like selecting the dress sense of Leigh Bowery over Giorgio Armani.

Westminster Abbey put in a great performance today. I don't know why I didn't stick with English cathedrals in the first place. Of course they have to try quite hard, they are art, they need to impose themselves on their surroundings and the little country churches gain plenty of credit for their less assuming demeanour but one needs to be impressed.

Once you get into the splendours of Italy one can be put off by the Catholic showiness, the gold on St. Mark's Basilica. If I had to be Christian, I'd be Lutheran. For all its gloriousness, it does it in a measured way. St. Paul's is 'baroque' whereas the Abbey is 'gothic' with, I would have thought, some 'perpendicular' but whereas baroque is a good thing in music, not all these terms translate across genres.

There is a way of being stunning in art without going flat out to be so and Westminster Abbey achieves it by including the necessary sense of decorum in its magnificence. In their ways, Salisbury, Gloucester and

the litany of great English cathedrals all have their claims but I'm nowhere near ready to make any Top 6 out of them and would want to extend beyond religious buildings but whatever our reservations about religion might be, it can be credited with bringing about some of the most brilliant architecture and music.

It's hardly for me to find anything to add to the millions of words of tributes to Queen Elizabeth II. I was an admirer, of course. I saw her three times, always in cars. Once coming out of Dock Gate 4, Southampton; once coming out of Westminster, possibly having opened Parliament, and once while playing pool in the Dorchester Arms, Portsmouth, one lunchtime when we noticed some out-riders going by, in the direction of the dockyard, and waited a minute for the limousine to follow.

We saw the future King Charles III after a concert in Fairford Church, the big selling point of 'Music in Country Churches' being that he was a patron and attended some. Afterwards, some sleek Daimler or Jag was waiting by the side door and I said, 'we might hang round here for a minute' and then there he was, acknowledging the few that had cottoned on with a wave and a brief word.

Simon Armitage had an unenviable job finding an angle from which to say anything remotely original but that's the job he was glad enough to accept. I heard somebody finding fault with it on the wireless but that turned out to be Giles Coren so nobody need worry about that. Simon's Floral Tribute is possibly a B+ in the circumstances, 6 or perhaps 7 out of 10 as a poem but an 8 or more as a Laureate poem when compared with some of Ted's, so it would have been unrealistic to expect anything better.

I spent some time wondering at the minor roles, the vastness of the legions of those with roles to play and tried to spot my old mate, Princess Alexandra, who presented the degrees at Lancaster University in 1981. But the role played by Westminster Abbey was essential and for the most part taken for granted. 

Say what you will. I'm no fervent monarchist. I'm the equivalent of those who would say they believe in God if pushed to say whether they did or not (and I'm not that, either). But you've got to be impressed. Even if it's not the sort of thing you like, and my main objection would be the tendency towards guns, swords and the military, it was immaculate. The ritual, ceremony, fine-sounding words and music might be an elaborate brocade disguising the point that we just don't know anything, do we.

And that, Lds & Gnlmn, is what art does.    

Iestyn Davies, Bach Cantatas

 Iestyn Davies with Arcangelo, Bach Cantatas 36 and 169 (Hyperion)

This isn't exactly a 'new release' but it's 2022 so it's not old either, it's just that I'm not as quick off the mark with it as I like to be.

As in the pop music days, one hears a record on the wireless and then buys it. That was for one item out of the four here but you are unlikely to be disappointed with Bach Cantatas and Schütz which constitute the other three.

BWV169 opens with the busily investigative organ nimbly weaving its way through a bright Sinfonia under the hands of the excellent Tom Foster. Organ music isn't my favourite genre but this is a sparkling beginning before the unreal purity of Iestyn Davies in the Gott soll allein mein Hertz haben which soars in the aria. One of the very greatest Bach cantata records is that of Nathalie Stutzmann whose contralto is an entirely different thing but this is contrastingly equally thrilling. The flowing ornaments in Stirb in me,

Die in me,

Earth, and all your empty pleasure,

are the high point it reaches before the short choral prayer it ends on.

 

Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott is a setting taken from Psalm 51 by Schütz, the same text as Allegri's Miserere, but its downbeat torments accompanied by dark violins and violas don't glimpse the same eternal light.

It was Klag-Lied, the elegy for his father by Buxtehude who it is thought wrote his own grieving text, that sold me the record, though. One recording of such a piece isn't enough when a further version like this turns up, fluid, floating and unearthly. The undertstated viola da gamba accompaniment sets a mood for Iestyn to sorrow gorgeously over, explaining and bereft. It is one of the short list of Buxtehude masterpieces and one can only wonder at what the old maestro would have thought of such a perforrmance.

Back with Bach, Tom Foster again gallops through the Sinfonia of BWV35, headlong towards towards,

I marvel;

For everything that one sees 

Must fill us with amazement.

The oboes are a big feature in the 'joyous alleluia' of deliverance and hope of the aria it ends on and one has to envy those who could believe their prayers would be answered in,

From this sorrow-laden yoke of pain,

...let me soon in your arms

End my life so full of torment.

 

We are blessed enough with countertenors on earth, as we are with cellists, not to want to end this life of torment just yet and Iestyn Davies is on unbeatable form here. I haven't bought many new discs this year but this must be a certainty for any Critic's Choice top few.    

Dmitri and Philip

 

It puts it all in perspective is what we are often told when something enormous happens and our everyday concerns are belittled. It was hardly Philip Larkin's fault, just taking him as an example, that all he had to worry about was his library, three girlfriends and timorous mother. He made fine poems out of his relatively humdrum life, compared to that of Shostakovich and the rest of his story as told in Testimony.

It's a stunning book and whether or not Solomon Volkov adjusted or augmented it in places, it does more than enough to convince that the impression we are left with is not a false one. Shostakovich had strongly held views about his compatriots, fellow composers and his country, as did Larkin, but he had infinitely more justification, one might think, for holding them.

There's 'big' art and art that is perceived as being of less stature even if it is equally well made. In recent years, the general consensus has raised Larkin from 'good, minor' poet to that of one of the finest of the C20th in England but however much one can admire his craftsmanship, memorability and the ironic nuance that diminished over the years, he didn't do what he did in such hellish circumstances. One can only do what one can do and perhaps Shostakovich would have traded his life under Stalin, Beria and Zhdanov for that of a fogey English librarian bicycling round countryside churches on Sunday afternoons. I know I would have, in his position, but he didn't have the option and wouldn't have been the monumental composer he became as a result if he had.

There is an idea that great art is forged in the crucible of difficult periods. Shakespeare lived in volatile times, we are offered the English poets of World War 1 or Wordsworth and the poets associated with him as Romantic taking their inspiration from the revolution in France but Bach poured out his cantatas as a professional musician relatively undisturbed in safe employment and Handel was an impresario, concerned mainly to outdo his rivals in the London opera houses with as much favour from the king as Bach enjoyed from the church. Their lives were a walk in the park compared to what Shostakovich lived through but he still found the time to emulate the Preludes and Fugues as well as reading literature, performing, having an acute appreciation of his contemporaries in music and, as yurodivy (as below in Whose Testimony Is It Anyway) composer. 

It's hardly surprising he takes a dim view of some of his less talented, or more compliant, contemporaries. It's remarkable how he maintained such clear-sighted detachment, which might be one thing he suspects Solzhenitsyn didn't, but it makes some of Larkin's off-hand dismissal of the likes of Edmund Spenser's poetry, The Bible and Ted Hughes look shrivelled in comparison.

 

Testimony is gripping throughout but one passage that I paid particular attention to said that,

The quality of Jewish folk music is close to my idea of what music should be. There should always be two layers in music. Jews were tormented for so long that they learned to hide their despair. They express despair in dance music.

He knows what he's doing. Without wanting to find myself in Pseud's Corner, yes, of course, worthwhile art needs more than one layer. They work off each other to produce the effects that can be appreciated on more than one reading and, possibly, inexhaustibly.

She Loves You by The Beatles sounds celebratory but uses Em and Bm chords that hint at the sadness that the singer wishes she loved him instead. I also understand that the Human League traded on downbeat words weitten over upbeat chords. There's not many new tricks left to reveal, surely, by now and so we just keep on finding new ways to use those that there are. And that's what 'art' is whether it is achieved under impossible conditions, 'for the glory of God' (as well as making a living), while administerating in a senior way at a university library or just waiting for an idea to present itself, knocking off a few lines and then having a lie down.

I don't know if Testimony would make the Top 6 Books I've ever read but in the red hot frenzy of having not long put it down, I'd like to think so.

It made me finally get around to ordering Apricot Jam, the posthumously published short stories of my other 1970's Soviet dissident hero, Solzhenitsyn, but Ian McEwan's Lessons, telling us as much as he could be expected to know, might arrive first. 

There's only so much grim, grey Stalinism one can take at once if one doesn't have to. It's the fact that we don't have to and only have to resent how 'quarterly', money 'reproaches' us, that should make us only pretend to be curmudgeonly for a joke.     

Christopher Johnston in Chichester

Christopher Johnston, Chichester Cathedral, Sept 13

I usually prefer to have whole story - the complete symphony if not the Complete Symphonies or the Collected Poems rather than the Selected. Christopher Johnston's programme in Chichester today was made of 'excerpts from' sets of pieces but the benefit of that was that we got three composers and, to be fair, each piece was self-contained and complete in itself. One can always follow up the rest of these suites later.

Debussy, Liszt and, probably, Nikolai Kapustin (1937-2020) wouldn't always be bracketed together but, as the lady sitting next to me usefully remarked, they sounded similar in these selections. Thank you kindly, madam, I'll have that.

From Debussy's Estampes (Postcards), Pagodes set the right hand floating over the keys, sprinkling light. It increasingly seemed to me that Christopher's hands contribute a great deal to his innate musicianship with fingers unlikely to restrict him to jabbing out Crocodile Rock as Elton John's did.

Liszt's Venezia e Napoli began with Gondoliera relaxed and melodic, moving into the dazzle of trilling ornamentation. Canzone had the left hand rumbling in the lower register before Christopher brought off a range of effects and Tarantella grew towards the more signature Lizst big finish that some of us expect of him. As a latecomer to the joys of Lizst, I was very glad of it and it was for me the stand-out item.

Kapustin's Eight Concert Etudes owed much to jazz, as I think Christopher explained but even from near the front one couldn't pick up all he said. One very much wants to hear what performers have to say by way of introduction to their playing and Chichester do usually give them a microphone with which to do so. Maybe it was at the repair shop and of course the top priority is the music. I never tire of, or apologize for, advertising the high standard of Chichester's lunchtime musicians and Christopher was every bit as good. Some of us regulars there could be excused for taking all that for granted but we don't and we keep on going back.

Kapustin's Raillery was an exuberant boogie-woogie, Pastorale acknowledged ragtime, Reverie suggested a suitably autumnal atmosphere and continued with the torrential outpouring of notes and finally Toccatina was as busy as ever, dashing about in the lower register.

Some people might read these reviews regularly at DGBooks or Music in Portsmouth, for which I'm very grateful, and they will be well used by now to the things I regularly say but some might be here for the first time and so, once more with feeling, our area is spoilt by the opportunities to hear these lunchtime concerts, for those of us lucky enough to have the time to. Chichester is surely the 'jewel in the crown', not only for its wonderful venue but for the great musicians it brings to us. Get there if you can.