Wednesday 6 February 2013

24 hours in Glasgow



I've always loved Scotland's rainy city, though I know we students were in danger of romanticising it as a livelier alternative to our more outwardly beautiful stronghold of Edinburgh in the 1980s. Now my beloved godson Alexander is studying at Glasgow University, so a trip like this, to give another talk before one of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's thoughtfully planned programmes in the beautifully restored City Halls, is also an excellent opportunity to catch up with him in person.

Everything, for once, went smoothly, not least the train journeys either end through hillier territory than the East Coast line (and in my view far more beautiful). A rainbow hovered over one of the city's remaining giant tower blocks as we drew near Central Station.


Then I made straight up the hill for the ABode Hotel on Bath Street, which I've come to welcome for its quiet and comfort as well as for its fairly stylish adaptation of the original building constructed in 1829 by Sir James Campbell. Most of the remaining fittings must belong to the time when it became the family home of British Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, including, I'm guessing, this stained-glass panel in my room.


Just as good was a new discovery as I walked around the streets of the Merchant Quarter where the City Halls are situated, looking for a restaurant to have a pre-talk-and-concert supper with Alexander. I settled on the Italian Caffè because its list of Italian tapas-size dishes looked unusual and authentic. We had two dishes each - pasta, chicken livers in marsala, sea-bass in a mussel sauce, superb Italian grilled vegetables - and, most important, a great talk about Glasgow and family life. How times have changed since the two-year-old Alexander used to make a daily early morning visit to our room at Edinburgh when we were there for a seasonal stay, sit on the chair and ask "shall we have a chat about Christmas?" Here he is now, with his permission because even he agrees it's not a bad photo of him, at the end of the concert.


I very much like the room where the talks take place - huge contrast to the Barbican's Fountain Room with its low ceiling and poor lighting. While the City Halls bar is too pink, the pretty colours across the hallway are kept to an acceptable level.  Here it is before the punters arrived.


The theme I'd decided on with the BBCSSO's Andrew Trinick and Douglas Templeton was on the legacy of Beethoven's Fifth, part of an extraordinary Viennese programme to be conducted by the great Donald Runnicles. I started with the strangeness of its opening gesture, harking back to a BBC Symphony Orchestra/Robertson concert which had connected Wagner's Tristan Prelude and Schoenberg's Erwartung - a much tougher work to talk about - in its first half. I found that there was a reason for putting those three works together. Look at it carefully, and the world's most famous musical gesture has a lot more to it than meets the ear. I'm only summing up here, so no more on that for now.

The middle section was on composers who'd taken the gesture, and how differently they'd interpreted it. Rachmaninov in his 1900 song 'Fate' (Sudba) for Chaliapin clearly followed the romantic cue of Beethoven's secretary Anton Schindler who claims the composer declared "Thus Fate knocks at the door!" (though I prefer Carl Czerny's notion that it's a joke amplification of a yellowhammer's song in the Prater). I had Boris Christoff and Alexander Labinsky to demonstrate the first stanza; I'm guessing, though a different CD set is suggested, that this is much-missed Elisabeth Söderström with Vladimir Ashkenazy. Especially valuable since Apukhtin's poem is given in English translation:


At the other end of interpreting the "knock" is ever-kooky Charles Ives, who heard in Beethoven's theme "the Soul of humanity knocking at the door of the Divine mysteries, radiant in the faith that it will be opened - and the human becomes the Divine". Here's that amazing third movement of his Concord Sonata (1909-15) which Alexander liked so much. The rhythm's beautiful transformation at the start commemorates the Alcott family, most famous of whom, to us at least, is Louisa May. Of it Ives wrote: "And there sits the little old spinet piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth played the old Scotch airs, and played at the Fifth Symphony." On Thursday I chose a pianist I adore, Jeremy Denk, but the Hamelin performance below comes with the score, always a welcome YouTube touch:


Mahler, who conducted Beethoven's Fifth quite a bit in his earlier days, gave up because he lost confidence in how to conduct the fermatas in the phrase. He thought the 'tremendous meaning' of it could more fittingly be summed up as 'Here I am!' ("Das bin ich!"). Which cued me on to symphonies which follow the symphony's trajectory of darkness to light in very different ways - Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Mahler's Fifth (progressive tonality, of course, C sharp minor to D major), Shostakovich's Fifth and all the rhetoric of Beethoven's Sovietization, and finally, richest and rarest in my view, Martinu's Third of 1944. But needless to say 25 minutes proved all too short and I had to cut out quite a few of those examples.

As for the concert, it made excellent sense of its extreme Viennese contrasts, and the afterconcert bonus, a Schubert Violin Sonata from the soloist in the Berg Violin Concerto, Julian Rachlin, with Runnicles at the piano, was such a wonderful way to end that I wish the London orchestras would adopt the practice where appropriate. All about that in my Arts Desk review.

Morning-after plans went slightly but not unpleasantly awry, as usual. I always plan to head back to my favourite gallery, the Kelvingrove, or make another expedition out to Helensburgh to find the Mackintosh house open (as it wasn't when I went before). But time and rain interfered, so I was happy to go and see Alexander's student flat further up Bath Street, with a dozen or so pairs of trainers in the hall seemingly multiplying but good coffee from an espresso machine his dad had given him for Christmas.

Then I headed for a nearish retreat, the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art in the 18th century building touched up by David Hamilton in the late 1830s. It took up less time than I'd expected on my second visit, because the whole point of the ground floor space - to show off new works in neoclassical surroundings - was obscured by the installation of two large screens in a darkened room. Anyway, in the gift shop I found gifts for our evening hosts back in London and noted for the first time the way Carlo Marochetti's 1844 statue of the Duke of Wellington outside is adorned by Glasgow's celebrated sense of humour, a long-standing tradition:



The mosaic on the architrave is by Niki de Saint Phalle, who has an object in the otherwise not very colourful GoMA collection currently on display in Gallery Two.

A quick look inside the grandiose late 19th century City Chambers was enough to see the Carrara marble and alabaster staircase.


It seemed too soon for lunch, so I wandered to the southern bit of the shopping zone I've never walked around before. Rather surprised by the Victorian Argyll Arcade full of jewellers



and delighted by the earthy pipes and drums of a very hairy street band, Big Peat, which seemed to be very much for local shoppers, though - equally surprisingly -  there were quite a few tourists around.


Then along Argyle Street with its fine ironwork


where I passed the Atlantes pictured up top, sculpted by the firm of William Vickers on one doorway of Horatio Kelson Bromhead's vast Stewart and MacDonald Warehouse. Glaswegian wit quickly named the figures Stewart and MacDonald, while the handsome extension of Central Station under which Argyle Street continues to run on its way to the West End - I'm assuming that's the bit added by James Miller in 1901-5 - and which you can see in the distance is known as the Hielenman's Umbrella.

After re-acquainting myself with the famed Glesca friendliness* in a couple of shops and an eatery, I headed back for the train and an utterly restful journey finishing a very gruesome Icelandic thriller and relishing the sharpness of the late afternoon light on the hills that fringe the Lake District (a slightly out of focus shot, this, from the carriage window, but we need a bit of sunshine after all that typical Glaswegian rain).


Two cheers today, anyway, for the passing of the law in the House of Commons to enshrine gay marriage as an equal right. I don't want it for myself - being civilly partnered since that institution first arrived in the UK is good enough for us - but I think it should be there for those who do. The two cheers, of course, are for the fact that 175 voted against, but is that surprising? And anything that splits the already fractured Tory party still further has to be a good thing.

*which can just as easily be replaced by an equally entertaining rudeness, as I discovered from the programme seller in the City Halls...

20 comments:

Dolly said...

Heehaw, Alexander, heehaw.

David said...

Greetings, Dolly! How's life in Hotel Djenne Djenno? Not many tiresome tourists to tug around town, I'm guessing.

Dolly said...

Tous les petits enfants chantent pour moi:

Mon âne, mon âne
A bien mal à la têt',
Madam' lui a fait faire
Un bonnet pour sa fêt',
Un bonnet pour sa fêt',
Et des souliers oui-da, da, da
Et des souliers oui-da.*

Mon âne, mon âne
A bien mal aux oreill',
Madam' lui a fait fair'
Un' pair' de boucl's d'oreill'.
Un' pair' de boucl's d'oreill',
Un bonnet pour sa fêt',
Et des souliers oui-da, da, da
Et des souliers oui-da.

Mon âne, mon âne
A bien mal à ses yeux,
Madam' lui a fait fair'
Un' pair' de lunett's bleues.
Un' pair' de lunett's bleues,
Un' pair' de boucl's d'oreill',
Un bonnet pour sa fêt',
Et des souliers oui-da, da, da
Et des souliers oui-da.

Mon âne, mon âne
A bien mal à son nez,
Madam' lui a fait fair'
Un joli cache-nez.
Un joli cache-nez
Un' pair' de lunett's bleues,
Un' pair' de boucl's d'oreill',
Un bonnet pour sa fêt',
Et des souliers oui-da, da, da
Et des souliers oui-da.

Mon âne, mon âne
A bien mal à sa gorg',
Madam' lui a fait fair'
Un bâton d' sucre d'org'.
Un bâton d' sucre d'org,
Un joli ptit cach'-nez ,
Un' pair' de lunett's bleues:
Un' pair' de boucl's d'oreill',
Un bonnet pour sa fêt',
Et des souliers oui-da, da, da
Et des souliers oui-da.

Mon âne, mon âne
A mal à l'estomac,
Madam' lui a fait fair'
Un' tass' de chocolat.
Un' tass' de chocolat,
Un bâton d'sucre d'org',
Un joli cache-nez-
Un' pair' de lunett's bleues:
Un' pair' de boucl's d'oreill',
Un bonnet pour sa fêt',
Et des souliers oui-da, da, da
Et des souliers oui-da.

David said...

Little donkey, little donkey, now you go on your way and don't be a cuckoo in Davy's nest.

Colin Dunn said...

Thank you for giving such a good impression of Glasgow. Having lived there until I was thirty, I am always keen that people get to know Glasgow now rather than reflect on what it was in the very late industrial period where The Tongs and other gangs stalked, and some streets were no-go areas. Glasgow is a fine city. But, like you, I went to Edinburgh to do my degree and so I feel, as they say, conflicted.
One of the problems of coming from a city is that one never stays in a hotel there. So for that reason I can never recommend any but the most expensive establishments (eg: Malmaison and One Devonshire Gardens) which are outwith (to use a good Scottish construction) my friends’ pockets. Thank you for recommending the ABode Hotel on Bath Street. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was a pupil at my school (the High School of Glasgow) and one of the houses is named after him. We were taught about General Sir John Moore’s activity at Corunna (that’s how it was: Corunna , not La Coruña) and whatever it was that Bonar Law and Lord Clyde did, but never about where in the city Campbell-Bannerman lived. Such a personal touch might have been good for us to know. When the time comes for me to stay in a hotel in Glasgow, my head may come to rest at the ABode.

The collection of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists at Kelvingrove is sadly little known outside Scotland. There is a splendid Monet of the coast of Antibes, and two very fine Van Goghs (one of the windmill in Paris, the other a portrait of his art dealer friend, Alexander Reid). And the Glasgow Boys and Colourists do not disappoint. My late grandmother was painted often by one of the Colourists, and I’m always half expecting to see her visage on the wall there.

Time for me to listen to Erwartung, and the Rachmaninov song.

David said...

Thanks, Colin, for filling out the portrait of a great city. The Kelvingrove is now making much of its Glasgow Boys and Colourists. I don't know how many of the French works went to the Burrell, though of course I went there too a couple of times, but I do rather miss my favourite, Degas's portrait of Duranty in his library.

Student-era visits used to be on a Saturday, when there was always an organ recital there and the Glaswegians gathered round in the benches of the gallery. I love the pride the citizens take in all their museums, especially of course the People's Palace.

Susan Scheid said...

There is so much in this post I don't even know where to begin! I've been out of commission most of the week (two weeks, if truth be told) with the terrors of transferring from a PC to Mac, the biggest challenge of which was getting my music library transferred intact. The technicians with whom I spent hours of "quality time" were all amazed at how large it is (and all classical, how could that be, you could just see the quizzical bubble of thought above their heads . . . ) and now I'm eager to jump on putting together a playlist of the pieces you note that follow the "trajectory of darkness to light!"

And speaking of light, Glasgow should be pleased with the lovely light in which you've put it--I've only been there once, and what I remember is a warren of streets and a pub. Clearly there is so much more to take in than that!

To celebrate what I hope is the end of the tech-heavy transition--not to mention a snow day for the Edu-Mate today--we had our first meal from the Moro cookbook (a little improv was necessary, but then J is prone to do that, anyway): Pollo al ajillo (with no skimping on the garlic), and it was sumptuous. Remarkable how the oil, garlic, and (in our case) wine, made such a creamy, delectable sauce. We're very glad to have a little left for lunch tomorrow.

So, off to create a "darkness to light" playlist, and thank you, as always, for all.

David Damant said...

One could say that the right in politics is correct on economic matters and the left correct on moral matters, such as equality, social policies etc. The trouble is that many and perhaps most people are much more interested in the moral side of things. So that the left get elected with terrible economic results - most recently the Blair/Brown overspending, encouragment of risk etc. The economy is the sine qua non, even if questions like gay equality or the NHS are the raison d'etre. One has to get the economy right first, even if one does not like the politicians on that side of things

Julie said...

Lovely to read about your experiences with our boy in the West.
We had a fab time with Bernstein, Gershwin and Adams' Harmonielehre last night. LOVE Peter Oundjian - and Jon Kimura Parker did a fabulous encore of The Simpsons theme tune after a thrilling performance of the Gershwin piano concerto. x x x

David said...

Sue - I wonder where the warreny bit of Glasgow might be. I love the mix of its very American grid plan and the variety of hills which make that interesting. So pleased Moro yielded good results - check out Bruce's comment on one of the earlier posts about its best puddings. And I wanted to listen to all the music you put up of your latest young composer before I commented over on Prufrock's Dilemms.

Sir David - you know I don't buy your 'just wait' theory about various moral claims. Anyway, I'm delighted that the vote on gay marriage has found the Tories in disarray - the public, of course, is left wondering what the hell's the problem. After all, as the gay MP put it, 'we're not asking for special rights, just equal rights'.

Julie - I'd love to have heard that concert. I was thrilled when Alexander told me Harmonielehre was on the programme as I was babbling on about Adams as our greatest living composer, and have of course sent him a copy of that indispensible tome on the 20th century musical crisis, Hallelujah Junction. It should arrive tomorrow if it hasn't already.

I love the Gershwin Concerto. I wonder if it isn't the only piece I was sure I went through bar by bar in a dream. Never caught Peter Oundjian in action - can't wait. Another live wire in place.

Howard Lane said...

I would say the political right fail to allow for the wider social and ecological costs of their economic policies. Now they are struggling to cap the accumulated psycho-social costs of healthcare and unemployment from the industrial devastation of 30 years ago, and are still relying on an economic "growth" model fuelling rampant climate change rather than sustainability.

The (im)prudent Mr Brown relied on equally unsustainable market-driven PFI fuelled economics propped up by the house of cards of hyper-inflated property assets that was the bankers' credit boom, which they happily sold to us all while they took their vast bonuses.

Whether sustainable economic polices can be adopted by governments that serve people rather than themselves and their business cronies (unlike all the ones I have known in my lifetime) is an argument not for me to pursue on this friendly arts forum however, as I listen to Marc-André Hamelin play Gershwin's piano concerto and muse on whether Oscar Levant ever performed it. What great tunes (and orchestration and percussion), if not so familiar as An American in Paris or Rhapsody in Blue, which I once considered to be my very favourite piece of music. Many years later I had an epiphany of sorts when I found how much the innovations of Parker, Gillespie and Monk's be-bop were based on Gershwin songs. The seam of the Blues runs deep from the African deserts to Carnegie Hall and to my local free jazz improv club. Even Miles Davis in his high-tech jazz rock days was still paying homage to Gershwin, and one of his last recordings was a Porgy and Bess medley from the Montreux Jazz Festival (introduced by the late Claude Nobs).

Great to see Danny Elfman's music getting a concert hall appearance too!

David Damant said...

AS Howard Lane indicates, this is not the best place for socio-economic debate, but the points he raises are completely against the facts. As for 30 years ago, Mrs T over her term as PM increased the wealth of the country by a quarter in real terms and spending on social benefits and the NHS by a third. She left the country in a super position for economic success and the potential for good things for society. The IMF reports show this. How can anyone disagree? Most odd. The present problems are the result of careless and economically foolish polices by Blair/Brown, and Greenspan, who has at least admitted his mistakes

David said...

People can disagree, oddly enough, Sir David. The social costs of Thatcherism were catastrophic. But we've been here several times before.

Besides, much as I like comments to take on a spontaneous life of their own, neither of you has a word to say about any of the points I raised in the post itself. Somebody please like the amazing movement from Ives's Concord Sonata!

Susan Scheid said...

David: Well, as for the warren-y part of Glasgow, the Edu-Mate tells me she has no recollection, and as she has a far better recall for such things than I, it's possible I'm not even thinking of Glasgow! We did go through Glasgow on our long ago Scotland trip, that she confirms, but doesn't think we stopped. Ah well!

Now, I have a question related to an earlier post: I have finally sat down to a good read of your liner notes for The Sleeping Beauty--just tremendous! I am eager for the opportunity to sit quietly with them in hand as I listen again to the CD, which I hope will happen soon.

I'd also like to get a DVD of The Sleeping Beauty. The Bourne isn't available here, nor can I find the one you reviewed most positively at BBC Magazine. I do find two Royal Ballet versions: the 2006 Opus Arte BBC Royal Opera House production about which you had some concerns (Valeriy Ovsyanikov/Petipa/Alina Cojocaru/Federico Bonelli/Marianela Nunez) and a 1994 Kultur Video, (directed by Colin Nears, choreography by MacMillan/Ashton, Viviana Durante as Aurora). There are a few others, but these looked most promising of what I could find.

Any thoughts?

Howard Lane said...

Ah the wonderful Charles Ives, somehow I skipped right over him to Gershwin. Hamelin is just great in this as well as the Gershwin (although a new name to me). I was surprised to recognise the opening bars of the sonata's 3rd movement from a Bruce Hornsby song, and then suddenly Ives was quoting Beethoven's 5th. I listened to all 4 movements which seem to bring in the sound of many 20th Century European composers as well as traditional American tunes, and Beethoven's 5th again. (I'm sure the opening chords are from Bartok).

It's so hard to tell with Ives, but nonetheless his style is unmistakenly him, and as I've only heard his orchestral music before this is a real find. I love the way he meanders into arhythmic and atonal areas and slyly drops in something almost recognisable. And some lovely lyricism too. Is it fair to say Ives was ahead of his time? Although as Charles Heyward says "nothing is ever ahead of its time, we're all at the cutting edge of now". Zappa uses the same technique of quoting well known popular tunes, although with less subtlety and a heavier irony.

Incidentally The Unanswered Question is up for a grammy on the Music For A Time Of War album along with Adams' The Wound Dresser, and Adams is also nominated for Harmonielehre & Short Ride In A Fast Machine.





David said...

Sue - the incomparable earlier Royal Ballet Beauty, with those wacky designs by Maria Bjornson which caused such consternation in the conservative ballet world, IS available on Amazon UK (all regions) here. There are still cuts to the score, of course, but rather more of the Act 3 divertissement than in later (which in the case of the Messel revival was, woefully, earlier) productions.

Howard - so glad you liked the Concord. Yes, Ives was way ahead of his time and one of several precursors of Cage. I love the mix of tenderness and acidity, levity and seriousness. Adams wowed us in his last LSO concert the other week by starting with the Circus Band March: everyone in the audience was smiling, if not laughing out loud.

David Damant said...

With Mr Nice's permission, I return to the political fray because I find it difficult to stand back when economic
comments are made so far from reality that some marker has to be put down.

The catastrophic results of Mrs T's policies were due to the horrible consequences of the terrible and inefficient post war consensus which she brilliantly destroyed. And the people who suffered from thatchange also benefited from the great increase in the wealth of the country which I mentioned. Maybe not in some parts of the country but that is a demographic point no one knows how to solve

I am not in making these economic comments alone, but I have a Damantesque addition which I have not seen elsewhere. In the 60s we saw a revolution in morals, especially but not only sexual.At last, people felt, we have left behind that dreadful old fashioned stiff upper lip, no sex outside marriage etc etc.

And then - here come Mrs T. Her clothes!! Her voice !!! Her dreadful middle class world view!!!!!!!! How awful. But she put the economy right, and that is the sine qua non for doing the nice things.

This is not only a theoretical matter, as soon she will join the Morning Stars. In principle she should have a State Funeral. But so many people still cannot see her achievement correctly that if I were the PM I would not know what to do.

Gavin Plumley said...

It's not just you... I've always preferred Glasgow to Edinburgh (finding the latter a little pretentious). We had a glorious experience in Glasgow about 6 or 7 years ago when we were taken to a pub by a mate working at the Uni of Strathclyde. It was a very plain but pleasant pub, without muzak. We sat, drank and he and some friends starting playing the fiddle and pipe. Then, after a period of appreciation and subsequent silence a man stood at the bar, pint in hand and sang 'Follow the Heron Home'. It was sublime. Not posed at all. Really cracking stuff.

Elizabeth Holt said...

Hello David. I am coming back to your blog after ages away and am fascinated at its liveliness. Did you know that my entire family is from Glasgow? In a strange way I know the city much better than Edinburgh. I love it and am pleased that you do too. I have so many memories of being there. I was inoculated against yellow fever in the City Chambers in 1958. I got stuck on a Glasgow tram without my mother in 1954. My father was born in a tenement flat in Shawlands. My mother's father was a GP in Clarkston. My nan grew strawberries in her garden near the Titwood Road. I wish I could comment on the music as you suggest but I don't know enough. We were fine and as one on Alvin Ailey and Otis Redding and I'm sure I will love the new Matthew Bourne. Must get over to see it. It is fabulous to hear you / read you firing on all cylinders. I don't agree with David (Damant) on Mrs. Thatcher. If you start thinking that the end justified the means you go down a very dangerous road. On gay marriage, well, I can't agree that it's a good thing. How right you are to stick with the civil partnership. Civil being the key word. There is nothing civil or polite about marriage. If gay couples want a stable and long-term relationship, for Pete's sake (whoever Peter was) don't get married. Remember, I know. To David Damant: if you ever need a wife on your arm, remember I was there first, even if fleetingly. That'll get them talking.

But above all David (Nice), great to have you back where you belong. Please invite me to share you company soon.

Elizabeth (enough of this Liz stuff - I'm retired now)
Still in Brussels for the moment.....

David said...

Gavin - that does sound sublime. We had a similar experience in a pub in Galway which may have had a few other tourists like us in it, but where the music flowed freely anyway.

I must stress again that I've loved both cities equally on recent visits, though Edinburgh inevitably has more happy memories. As a BoBo - Bohemian bourgeois, don't tell me you aren't too - I'd prefer actually to live in Edinburgh (it rains too much in Glasgow, for a start).

Dame Elizabeth - as I realised I must call you before putting 'lovely Liz' - how lovely to hear from you again, and what charming little vignettes of your Glasgow past. The Bourne Beauty is now touring all over the place - I saw a poster for it in Glasgow at the theatre where I once saw our dear friend Lottie as Carmen.

As for gay marriage, let them that wants it have it. Some marriages will last, others won't, same as in the hetero world (and if I were straight, and had wanted to settle down with a nice girl, I don't think I'd have had a wedding ceremony either). But let it be equal.

Do we dine together in London or Edinburgh any time soon?