Shostakovich in Ambleside

 

Part of the summer I miss so much (I can't remember a more oppressive, wetter autumn), my weekend as guest speaker at the Lake District Summer Music festival seems so long ago now. But I remember the people and the place with such affection. If you can love Ambleside in peak season, packed with holidaymakers - though mostly of the more active, walking and sporty sort - then it must have something special going for it. For a start, I was given the nicest, quietest accommodation imaginable, above Stock Ghyll, with a table and chairs on a little terrace below the cottage where I managed to do a bit of work. But most of the time I was out, not least from 10am to 10pm on Saturday, taking part in the big Shostakovich day down at the Ambleside Parish Centre, opposite the handsome Victorian church,

which has not one but two lecture rooms (one doubling as a recital hall, the other kindly ceded by the Methodist Church, both with state of the art equipment and a technician, Tony Wilcock, who did more than anyone I've ever met to help with the smooth running of the talks, even uploading between the sound tracks I'd already recorded the two film clips I was using (from Kozintsev's superlative films of Hamlet - the graveside scene pictured below - and King Lear; there are correspondences between Shostakovich's film music and his quartets).

My morning lecture was an introduction to Shostakovich's changing and evolving style, though very different from the one I'd given in Bromsgrove where the aim was to parallel the 15 quartets to come. The possibilities of illustrations are always rich, though it's good to start and end with "Immortality", the song which concludes the Suite on Verses by Michelangelo - presenting the simple tune which was one of DDS's first inspirations as a child, then having reached the end, conclude with the words of the second quatrain - as Elizabeth Wilson does in her peerless Shostakovich Remembered - which in the music is followed only by the triads, and not the tune, melting into infinity:

I am as though dead, but as a comfort to the world,
With its thousands, I live on in the hearts
Of all loving people, and that means I am not dust;
Mortal decay cannot touch me.

Youth was very much the theme of the ensuing recital across in the larger room. The original baritone, Liam McNally, had gone down with laryngitis, and recommended another recent music college graduate, Belfast-born Malachy Frame, accompanied by the superb Duncan Glenday - who'd partnered Garfield Jackson in Friday morning's Shostakovich Viola Sonata (sorry that I arrived just too late for that - it had clearly left a very deep impression). Glenday looked a bit like the late, great Dmitri Hvorostovsky, but I wasn't expecting him to sound like him - which he did, instantly, in an immediately moving performance of Yeletsky's aria from Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades. Which you take me to mean that there's fabulous, cello-like quality to the sound, accompanied by obvious intelligence. That Frame has the capacity to go further was richly proved when he encored the last of Schumann's Op. 39 Liederkreis, and it soared even further. Apologies that these aren't the best shots; there wasn't a regular festival photographer on hand.

There was just enough time for lunch back in town before returning to the smaller room for a screening of The New Babylon, the masterpiece by Kozintsev and Trauberg for which Shostakovich wrote his first film score (originally to be performed live, as I've heard it done once, but the soundtrack here, conducted by Frank Strobel, couldn't have sounded better).  What endless pleasure there is to be gained from watching the magnificent performances, mostly by troupers from the Factory of the Eccentric Actor (FEKS). This is Sophie Magarill, so hilarious in Faintzimmer's 1933 film Lieutenant Kije (with music by Prokofiev, of course).

Had hoped I could grab a swim between the end of the film and the afternoon talk, but there was too much work to do (I got my bathe in Lake Windermere the following morning, as I've already reported). There was a big bonus, though, before the next event - sitting on the wall outside the Parish Centre was John Hiley, ex of our great friend Ruthie, with whom we'd spent a very jolly weekend when he was living in North Berwick. He's now happily married and hails from close by - he invited me back after the evening concert to meet his wife and have a meal with them, but it had been an exhausting day so we settled for a jolly gathering outside Fellini's Cinema (what a place, Ambleside - there's also Zeffirelli's Cinema and another near by).

But before that there was work to do and a very demanding concert to attend. I thought it would be powerful to begin the talk on the quartets - the Brodsky Quartet were to play the Third and the Eleventh - with a scene from King Lear, the last film for which Shostakovich wrote the music: directed by Kozintsev, as before, and culminating in apocalyptic scenes to a wordless choral lament Shostakovich used to frame his Thirteenth Quartet.

I also talked about quotations in the other quartets, and featured the Gravedigger's Scene from Hamlet. What especially touched me was that the splendid Artistic Director of LDSM, Renna Kellaway, former head of the School of Keyboard Studies at Manchester's Royal Northern College of Music, felt moved to give a speech of thanks before the talk, having enjoyed the morning event ('she doesn't do this often', I was assured). I'd very much enjoyed her company when she drove me back from the previous evening's Leonardo concert from I Fagiolini and the inspirational Robert Hollingsworth in Kendal.

That had been a very splendid bonus, something of a known quantity to me from the beautifully produced CD, but there's nothing quite like witnessing a total work of art like this live, and Hollingsworth's conversations with Professor Martin Kemp in between the carefully-chosen choral pieces were fascinating. And I had excellent fish and chips by the river Kent, prefaced by an interesting conversation with the lady in the fish shop. I told her a bit about Shostakovich and she said, very perceptively, that it all sounded rather manic-depressive. They're shrewd, the people of Cumbria.

To conclude, the Brodskys thought big with their programme, with the Shostakovich quartets as outer panels framing Beethoven's Grosse Fuge - I've now heard it three times this year, and it's always a knockout - and a  beautiful arrangement by the quartet's viola player Paul Cassidy of the Adagio and Fugue from Bach's Third Violin Sonata. Isn't Bach always of the essence? But Shostakovich's Third is also one of the great quartets, and with the peerless Gina McCormack having recently joined the quartet, it was shatteringly fine. Thanks to LDSM for at least one record of the event, though clearly it's no more professional than my shots above.

Incidentally, full marks to LDSM General Manager Kim Sargeant for writing such detailed and excellent notes in the programme, and proofing them so immaculately.

The only drawback of the flying visit was that I didn't see enough of Ambleside's glorious surroundings, though I did walk down to the remains of the Roman fort of Galava the next morning before my swim. Just before I left, and the humidity finally broke with heavy rain, I picked up Paul Renouf's Ambleside - the Gruff Guide, which confirmed my hunch that there's a very vibrant community core in this special place. I can't wait to return.

Next talk on Russian music: a study afternoon (they call it 'workshop') on Soviet music in the 1920s arranged in conjunction with Pushkin House on Saturday 7 December. They even filmed me talking about it by way of promotion. Excellent folk there - my opera course runs so smoothly thanks to their vigilance and help.

Summer bathing places

It has become a point of honour that I must immerse myself in sea or lake if either is available on a summer trip. Hardest was the North Sea off Crail, Fife, last year, in a haar that made the outside cold too. My pal Kari Dickson, who shared the dip and came out equally sharpish, claimed it was colder than the Firth of Forth on New Year's Day, so I do get a brownie point for that one. The five ventures this summer so far have been relatively simple, though I do bear battle scars from one. Despite that, it's rather boring how everyone now goes on about 'wild bathing', with encouragement from the media. There's nothing to it once you make up your mind.

Norfolk (1) I've already covered in a post on a very full day. Most pleasant of all were the daily plunges very close to the idyllic wooden house I had to myself (and an unaffectionate cat called Sebbe) by the water at Vattnäs in Sweden's lake district of Dalarna (pictured up top with the sauna, which I didn't use).  Here's my wonderful host Gun-Britt by the shore, from the window. The lupins, by the way, are beauties, but the locals are in two minds about them - they're invasive, nothing can grow around them. But so long as they can be controlled, I'd be happy to have hosts of them around me. You just need to cut off the heads once the flowering is over to stop the seeds spreading.

I felt immediately welcomed into the bosom of the Andersson family on the evening I arrived, when folk music was being played with a friend who knows all about these things, Lars Thalén, his wife Ingela on the zither, grandson Victor as second fiddle and Victor's girlfriend Anna on saxophone.

The young 'uns were involved in Anna Larsson and Göran Eliasson's latest project in the nearby barn-theatre, a uniformly well cast and superbly played Das Rheingold; for more on that, see the Arts Desk coverage.

Weather was changeable, but that made for many magical lights on the lake - like this one, when I woke up at 5am and snapped before going back to sleep,

and this one after the rains.

Two more, one from above when we went to pick up a fellow writer from his accommodation

and the other from close up again, near to sunset (around 11.30pm, I think).

A blog entry on excursions to the wonderful Anders Zorn Gallery and House in Mora and the rift valley of Styggforsen will have to wait. A full report on my fifth Pärnu Music Festival is, on the other hand, imminent.

How I love Estonia's summer capital; even knowing that the permanent residents have a nasty habit of supporting the country's newly emergent far right, with its links to Marine Le Pen, I feel comfortable among the summer visitors who know how to have fun without the excesses of British holidaymakers. Bathing here requires a considerable wade out in the shallow waters of the eight-mile sandy bay, but it's worth it - especially at midnight, encouraged by doyenne Lucy and several other companions. The disco on the beach throbbed and twinkled boisterously, but there was also a blood-red moon rising. None of this documented, of course, but I have the usual beach pics, most dramatic on the day when I went for a knee-deep paddle and the third of the day's storms threatened beyond the dunes.

It looked so impossibly calm out at sea, despite the cumulo-nimbus forms on the horizon

that I didn't make much haste heading back in the heat - until I saw a spectacular forked lightning display up the river. And the cloud formations over the wetlands looked almost cyclonic.

So I ran through the woodland and into the Villa Katariina where we'd stayed last year, for a drink and a snack, just as the heavens opened. It was over in 20 minutes, so I just had time to dash back to the hotel and on to the evening's concert. All was calmer by the time J arrived - four days of uninterrupted sunshine. I rely on him to offer proof that I did bathe,

eventually swimming out towards the masts of the annual yacht race around the Estonian coast, and then we just water-waded along the coastline

to a river mouth this time without a hint of threat, solitary tansy in the dunes a magnet for bees,

and the shoreline cattle doing their thing as luxury yachts incongruously sailed past them.

More of our bovine friends at the water's edge were to be seen by Lake Windermere nearly two weeks later.

I had a totally wonderful time in Ambleside and Kendal, giving two talks on Shostakovich as part of Lake District Summer Music's day of events which I'll outline anon. I only had the morning of my departure free, and could have gone up to the fells, but wanted the swim so headed for the lake out of town. The National Trust is responsible for fair meadows at Waterhead

and English Heritage looks after the remains of Galava Roman Fort. Not much to see here since most of the stones were carried off for building in Ambleside, but it's an attractive setting, especially with no-one else around.

Clearly bathing where the Romans would have done so wasn't ideal, so I found a rocky outcrop in nearby Borrans Park.

A warning about a rather nasty blue-green algae in the lake made me wary, but the damage actually came from a rock which left me with a black toe - amazing how quickly the bruising went down with Arnica cream. Didn't much like the oozy weeds twisting around my legs either, but otherwise managed to keep swimming towards the boats and back. It was a sticky but mostly rain-free weekend; the bad weather only set in when I was sitting on Windermere Station for the train to Oxenholme and thence back, uneventfully, to London. A week later, and there would have been trouble.

We were very much on the fringes of that while staying in North Norfolk with our friend Jill for the Southrepps Music Festival - the best yet, that I've experienced, at any rate, with unsurpassable performances from, among others, Ben Baker (best Bach Chaconne either I or David Parry have ever heard live), festival doyen Ben Johnson (peerless in Britten's Serenade, with the equally magnificent Martin Owen and Parry conducting a first-rate string group led by Ben), guitarist Sean Shibe creating his usual hold-your-breath magic, Jonathan Bloxham on a flying visit as cellist in breathtaking Mendelssohn Second Piano Trio - ah, that chorale moment! - and two young pianists, Martin James Bartlett and Daniel Lebhardt who both dazzled in two different concerts on the same day and who, I kid you not, cast an erratic Martha Argerich at the Proms last night in the shade, for fine tuning with colleagues, at any rate.

But there are also the swims, walks and crab/lobster lunches at the Overstrand shack to be accommodated. We managed two of the three on Saturday afternoon, but high winds and sea swells meant friend Cally and I didn't take the plunge then. You can see the white horses here,

and just over this cliff with the last of the Alexander there had been a big collapse in June.

Anyway, we got our bathe on Sunday lunchtime between Bach/Mendelssohn and an excellent lunch at the Vernon Arms back in Southrepps. Thus the beach

and the view from above on the walk back.

In about a month we return for our annual churches walk. The gifts of these wonderful retreats just keep on giving - but I hope, in terms of fundraising for the Norfolk Churches Trust, we give back a bit too.