Sunday 11 October 2015

A puzzled room with an angry Stew



For once in my theatrical experience, I don’t quite know what to think. Being told that the brilliant, quick-reacting and baroque-writing Stewart Lee habitually harangues his audience and pulls the rug from under stand-up expectations was no help. He really did seem to think that he’d never had an audience as crap as we were at Wednesday's 9.30pm slot in the Leicester Square Theatre. The fact that he seemed to be genuinely cracking up in bewilderment at how awful we were made it seem real. He really wanted us to believe him that he’d gone off piste in the second half to give some good material (it was) to the worst of audiences.

Or have I been hoodwinked by the Chinese boxes, the smoke and mirrors? In drama, one would get signposts in amid the confusion to let one know, in one of Henry James’s favourite phrase ‘where we are’. A comic who really falters and blames his audience deserves no mercy, but enough people knew the ropes to respond kindly. So was every bit of it a game? Lee got his embarrassed silences from a crowd who seemed to be lapping it up at the start. The two guys behind me roared, I laughed a lot, just-21-year-old goddaughter Rosie somewhat less so. She wasn’t the right target when he slagged off apathetic, screen-fixated youth; I know no-one more politically active. 


The first routine in what he told us were try-outs for 30 minute TV slots was about being pipped to the post at the BAFTA Awards by Graham Norton, who didn’t do much more than say ‘Hello x, I hear you’ve got a film out’; x: ‘Oh yes, it’s awfully good’. The running gag was ‘not jealous, really, but…’ Bout Two seemed to aim more at uneasy silences than building a scenario, with the ghosts of dead comics at his shoulders who'd committed suicide because of shit audiences like us. Definite discomfort when he reeled off names of other comedians he’d shared a Montreal stage with who were no more. Slow fade, and a sense of irritation on my part that a comic should get away with blaming the audience, however jestingly; while there are bad nights, the performing essence is to work your magic on the crowd, and this worked in the other direction after a while.


Last half-hour, much funnier and including the apparently spontaneous detour I've mentioned, about Daryl Hannah showing interest in a script of his for Hollywood and his catching a glimpse of Matthew Broderick looking less than thrilled about press interviews (good exaggerated impersonation, but one needed to suspend disbelief about loserville: Broderick had a good run and on-screen success in The Producers. He's pictured above at that time. So much for downhill all the way after Ferris Bueller’s Great Day Out). The running gag knotted together these three ingredients:




Can’t spoil any of the jokes: when this was originally destined for The Arts Desk, the comedy ‘hub’ gave me some rules which revealed why reviews in that genre aren’t funny in themselves. Wednesday evening had me thinking that a responsible reviewer should go to see every comedian's show twice, just to disentangle truth from play; if I went again, I'd find out, wouldn't I? As for the overall impression, I suppose I was disappointed that no sequence rose to the heights of two stints I'd seen on YouTube: his Ukip attack ('bloody foreigners, coming over 'ere...') and his wicked play on Top Gear's 'only joking'. You can find a link to the first and an embedded second on this blog post.

The next morning I caught the train for a wonderful 24 hours in Edinburgh, with Robin Ticciati launching his Scottish Chamber Orchestra Brahms series in the kind of style I’d hoped, and more: one with wings which helped me pinpoint what was so awfully wrong with the lumpy Barenboim/Dudamel Piano Concertos I discussed with Sarah Walker and Andrew McGregor live on BBC Radio 3’s CD Review yesterday morning (it's on the iPlayer for the next month - we're on around the 1h15m mark, but I liked what I heard of Hannah French's Building a Library choice of Haydn Trumpet Concertos, so maybe catch that too). More on the rep anon.

Ticciati's Brahms One fired up in media res with crack timpani playing, silvery strings and wind, all inner parts clear but nothing unnaturally light about it. Right at the start, in the Academic Festival Overture, the detail made me realise that lines which I thought were the main events actually only served as counterpoint to thematic development one doesn't usually hear. Supernatural sounds in the symphony's dewy but never over-sentimental slow movement and crucially flowing intermezzo-like third echoed the tone quality ‘from the other side’ we’d got in the last few minutes of the Berg Violin Concerto.


Isabelle Faust (pictured above by Detlev Schneider), maybe the Berg Concerto's best living interpreter, was the perfect colleague there, making true chamber music with some of the world’s most charismatic orchestral principals, and also a voice from another world in the Bach encore (it could only ever be Bach after Berg). The best of the Brahms had to come last, with perfectly-gauged vollies of volatile excitement after Alec Frank-Gemmill’s perfect horn call bearing out the quality of the SCO's new hybrid horns (mixing valves with the sound of the natural instrument). How he got that quality was revealed to me by Robin T in what I can only call a Brahms One masterclass plus the next morning, and will have to wait until the interview appears.

Congratulations coincided with the launch of the series: RT takes up a new post in 2017-18 at the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (formerly the Berlin RIAS Orchestra made so great by Ferenc Fricsay, an imaginative, focused temperament not unlike Ticciati’s). Their first and only previous collaboration  – a Berlin concert featuring Britten’s Cello Symphony with Steven Isserlis and Bruckner Four – was love at first sight. Much fascinating work still to be done in the meantime – and hopefully beyond – both in Scotland and at Glyndebourne.


The (almost) 24 hours were not wasted. Installed myself in the amiable, quiet and comfortable Parliament House Hotel on Calton Hill and then walked through Princes Street Gardens via Oktoberfest strains coming out of a big tent and passing a lot of young people in Lederhosen to have a quick snack with Debra Boraston opposite the Usher Hall. On to the concert with godson Alexander, who drummed his enthusiasm for the electrifying end of the symphony, his dad Christopher - who'll write up his thoughts on the concert along with the second in the series for The Arts Desk - and the delightful Vina Oberlander. Afterwards we crossed the road to Bar Italia which has changed hands since I last went there and now does superb dishes of home-made pasta with many original variations.


After the interview with Robin in the splendid Balmoral Hotel by Waverley Station, I wandered via the Fruitmarket Gallery to the inevitable National Gallery of Scotland, where I spent time on a Tintoretto I’d never really studied before – an unusual Entombment – wondered at how ‘real’ Rembrandt’s self-portrait from a year of terrible crisis seemed compared to its neighbours and went downstairs to the print display. The Renaissance works in question showed mostly scenes of immortals torturing mortals in horrible ways, including two ‘Flayings of Marsyas’; this one, by Melchior Meier operative in Tuscany between 1572 and 1580, incorporates Midas’s ass’s-ears punishment too. The flayed body is especially horrid.


A boy was going round the exhibition with his dad looking intently at each print: ‘Poppa, that swan and that lady seem to like each other. Poppa, that swan and that lady are kissing’. I’m not sure how much detail Poppa gave Oscar about the state of Prometheus’s liver or the the skin of poor old Marsyas.

Upstairs between the French 19th century paintings and 18th century treasures – another 'real' picture, a typically quirkily composed Stubbs, knocked spots off the rest - there was a half gallery of loans from the Lunde Collection in New York, mostly of powerful landscapes led by Norwegians Johan Christian Dahl and Thomas Fearnley (a nice complement, Sue's comment below prompted me to remember, to the later landscapes of Nikolai Astrup I wrote about in my Bergen blog entry). This Bernese Oberland view from above Lauterbrunnen to the Jungfrau massif by Alexandre Calarne isn’t that special, but it triggered off a great Sehnsucht to rediscover that very special part of Switzerland I didn’t really appreciate as a schoolboy.


Quick lunch - excellent boudin – at Chez Jules on Hanover Street, then just time to pop into the Scottish National Portrait Gallery where I got no further than the first room to the left – a brilliantly juxtaposed selection of portrait sculpture mixing old and new (the deconstructed head below is by Jonathan Owen).


Loved most of the captions, the Sultan Ahmet medallion, the several Epsteins and these three: John Duncan Fergusson’s bust of the Anglo-Saxon Eastre subtitled ‘Hymn to the Sun’, possibly a portrait of his wife Margaret Morris;


Kenny Hunter’s down-to-earth red fibreglass bust of Trade Unionist Jimmy Reid, which sits on a plain low table; 


and Glenys Barton's ceramic bust of Jean Muir, instantly recognisable but totally original.


Then to pick up bag from the Parliament House Hotel and catch the 3.30pm back to London, beguiled all the way by the latest in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead series, the simply beautiful Lila. When I've finished it, I'll have to go back and re-read the first in the sequence to be published (you could actually read them in any order). A day, then, that ticked many of the boxes needed to make it a good one.

25 comments:

Susan Scheid said...

Well, the comedian may not have got his laughs, but I certainly did at your dead-pan understatement: "The (almost) 24 hours were not wasted." At first I didn't realize you'd got all this in in one day, and no wonder, when I went down the list again. I was curious particularly about the Lunde Collection. There is a painting from a later generation of Norwegians, Harald Sohlberg, called Flower Meadow of the North, that captured my imagination sometime back. It would be interesting to see what Norwegian painters of generations before him were doing. It doesn't appear the exhibit is going to be shown over here, which is a shame.

David said...

I was going to say you could go and see the pics when they return to New York, but then I saw that the Lunde Collection is private. Still, it might open on request.

On Norwegian artists, you may remembet that I waxed half-lyrical about the work of Nikolai Astrup in Bergen; I wonder if the big exhibition due to come to the UK in 2016 will also make it the States.

Roger Neill said...

Interesting to read about Fergusson and Morris, David. Have you been to the Fergusson gallery in Perth? Small but perfectly formed and very good on Morris too. Worth the detour. Did you know IIRC he was best-man at DH Lawrence's wedding?

David said...

Over a year since I heard a peek out of you, Roger, and you catch me on someone (indeed, an interesting couple) I know next to nothing about. Though I did indeed walk past that gallery in Perth when I had too short a time before catching a train to Edinburgh, and liked the look of it.

The artist featured in the National Gallery of Scotland's new exhibition, Arthur Melville, looks interesting, too - more for being ahead of his time in Bakstian-coloured oriental watercolours and certain abstract novelties in the 1890s than as being a great artist per se.

Susan Scheid said...

David: I went back to take a further look, and I'm confident Astrup would be right in my line. I hope that big exhibit comes to the US.

Roger Neill said...

I've had my head down over the past year writing a book on Mathilde Marchesi and her pupils. She produced front-line divas steadily from around 1860 to 1910. Austro-Hungarians, Germans, French, Russians, Scandinavians, Americans and Australians. Hardly any British, the wonderful Miriam Licette a rare exception. Marchesi thought posh English vowel sounds inimical to good singing.

Will discover next week if the University of New South Wales Press really plans to publish it!

Roger Neill said...

David, there was a major Fearnley exhibition at the Barber Institute in Birmingham a couple of years ago. I didn't think he really merited it!

David said...

If Astrup doesn't come to you, Sue, you'll just have to go to Bergen. Plenty to see and do in and around the town.

Excellent news, Roger. Happy progress with it. I should be getting back to Vol 2 now that certain things are in place, but life & work get in the way. I've promised I shall, though.

Can't imagine Fearnley would hold up, and there was way too much Dahl in the early rooms of Bergen's KODE 2. Liljefors is a nature painter I think would hold up well in a big exhibition. His 'Winter Hare' (or one of them) stares out at me from just above the desk.

David Damant said...

Mathilde Marchesi taught Melba ( " I have a star at last") and told her that neither Mitchell nor Armstrong would do ( What would she have said about Eva Turner?)......so....

Melbourne
Melbourna
Melba

She ( Melba) visited Verdi in his old age - that " wonderful Indian summer of his life which gave us Othello and that strange swan song Falstaff"

Roger Neill said...

David Damant, Melba's French language skills when she auditioned for Marchesi in Paris were rather limited. What she heard as 'Salvatore, enfin j'ai trouve une etoile' (sorry about lack of accents), would more likely have been, 'Salvatore, viens...'

By 1886, when Melba appeared, Marchesi had already brought to the world a dozen or more 'etoiles', including Gabrielle Krauss, Ilma di Murska, Antoinette Sterling, Etelka Gerster, Emma Abbott, Katharina Klafsky, Emma Nevada, Blanche Arral, Nina de Friede, Rosa Papier, Gisela Staudigl, Emma Calve, Yevgeniya Mravina, Ellen Gulbranson...

David said...

Roger, I blush to admit that out of that list of 'etoiles', I know only the names of Calve (famous Carmen) and Mravina. But I never was much of a diva worshipper.

Did you get to Vlad's Mahler 7? One of the best in the cycle so far.

Roger Neill said...

Most of them were pre-recording era, so little known now. As a taster: Gerster became a serious competitor for Patti - lots of diva disputes in America in Mapleson's company; Klafsky, Gulbranson and Staudigl were prominent Wagnerians - Gulbranson as the leading Brunnhilde of her generation at Bayreuth and Staudigl as the creator of Brangane; Papier was a star in Vienna, close friend and sponsor of Mahler.

The Marchesi pupils after Melba are generally better remembered because they were recorded.

Roger Neill said...

And no, I've not seen Vlad since I don't know when. We go more often to Brum or Oxford than to London of an evening these days.

Any whispers as successor to Nelsons for CBSO?

David said...

If anyone would have an idea outside the organisation it would be Richard Bratby, who of course used to be in it and now writes occasionally - I'm so delighted to say - for The Arts Desk. He's seen several also-runs but warmed to Philadelphia-based Cristian Măcelaru. Let's face it, anyone would be second-best to Andris, but they have to choose some time.

David Damant said...

I would certainly agree that Melba's memoirs ( my source) are written through a certain prism. She describes reaching a crossroads in her life. Some see a sign post "To Failure" Others "To Success" but ' for me it was "To Triumph"'

I thought that her remark that Falstaff was a " strange swan song" rather interesting. Do you think that this was a general view at that time?

David said...

I must have been listening to the wrong Melba recordings (Faust) because it's all a bit one dynamic and out of tune. Perhaps Roger could point me in the right direction.

Some folk do still find Falstaff 'strange', at least in comparison to the arias-Verdi they know. I adore it to distraction, of course, and the final scene usually brings tears to my eyes (try Freni as Nannetta as Queen of the Fairies). I've got a huge book on Falstaff which would probably tell you how views were at the time, but no time at the moment to go and check it out.

This is fun, but a bit cuckoo-ed. Of course it would be nice to have views on S Lee, R Ticciati et al - though the nature paintings were how we got here.

Roger Neill said...

David, I think that Melba's September 1905 recording in London of the Jewel Song is quite dazzling, but there are really poor transfers of it on Youtube. Including it in forthcoming From Melba to Sutherland: Australian Singers on Record...

David Damant said...

David, I suggest that you should like your blog being cuckoo-ed......all sorts of interesting sidelines appear

David said...

I do when it's 'and' rather than 'instead of'. Not a word here about Stewart Lee or Robin Ticciati, but that's the way it sometimes goes. Anyway, no point in commenting if you don't have anything to say about the subjects in question.

David Damant said...

So I should never cuckoo? O dear........I fear that that cuts me out in most cases

David said...

That wasn't what I meant to say - I can see I'd be open to misinterpretation. I didn't mean don't comment at all, but that there's no point in just commenting for the sake of it on the subjects to hand. But what kicks off a cuckoo-streak is always connected, and then anyone's free to respond to the cuckoo.

David Damant said...

I think you will find that there are several entries recently with no response from me. Your non - responders cannot keep on saying that we are amazed at your erudition

Prince Lampedusa - author of The Leopard - and you will soon meet his heir - held strongly that the Italian operatic repertoire had a deleterious effect on the Italian character. Chicken and egg, one feels

David said...

Lampedusa's adopted son - whom, I must rather grandly remind you, you know through me, and I still reel at the serendipity which led us to Via Butera 28 - would not, as former intendant of Naples' Teatro San Carlo, agree. The great man might, of course, have seen Gioacchino as deracinated, but I doubt it.

David Damant said...

The author was right.....those operas are melodramas to a high degree. They reflect the human predicament but seldom analyse it. I will question the Duke on the matter,,,,,carefully, of course

David said...

I'm not sure that 'analysis' of the human predicament is the rightful sphere of opera. It's about reflecting character and emotion. Whenever there's analysis, it can get a little dull musically, as (heresy) I find parts of Boris Godunov to be.