A beautiful goodbye to my mother

Today would have been my mum's 94th birthday. She so nearly made it, had a mostly splendid final year at the best of care homes, Greenacres in Banstead (run by the not-for-profit Anchor company), visiting which was always a joy, and seemed to be recovering from a chest infection when she died suddenly on 30 December. I've stated it already: no regrets, because she never declined in to a miserable last few months, and was adored by her carers who still tell me they miss her so much.

I was delighted that one of them, the lovely Myrna Ward, spoke so beautifully at the funeral alongside the physiotherapist I got in to see her every week, Bhawna Brijwani. The idea was to get people from various periods of mum's life to follow my eulogy (which I managed to get through without succumbing to tears, or at least only briefly towards the end. I'm used to speaking without a script, but the words just flowed when I wrote). So my childhood friend Gail, whom I haven't see for years, spoke about the friendship between her mum Marie and mine, which ran from aged two to the ends of their lives - birthdays and departures were astonishingly close. In the photos below (you can always click to enlarge), on the inside front cover of the order of service: mum as a baby with her parents, as a little girl prancing on the b, as a glamorous teenager not long before her beloved mum's untimely death; with my dad; with the children who loved them as their second set of parents before I came along, cousins Diana and Michael with her and mother Edith, Sara and elder sister Sue with mum and dad. 

Liz Grover from what started out as the Young Wives' Drama Group gave a vivacious tribute, and goddaughter Sara, who gave mum so much pleasure by visiting Greenacres regularly with daughter Hanna and baby grandson Lenny, read the bit from the Bible I'd requested, the famous Corinthians passage about faith, hope and love. Inside back cover: son in the picture, born eight years after they got married, with parents at Eastbourne and in the back garden, dressed in the costume mum made for me as Sir Joseph Porter in our junior school production of HMS Pinafore, with dad holding adored Zsabo; with stepfather Ron, his dog Jinty and mum at graduation; mum and Ron at another wedding; mum with friends - Marie in Sorrento, Margaret in Cambridge and Joy, who died in 2024. That's on a boat somewhere (the only one of the two of them I could find that was any good).

Of the hymns, I had no choice but to give in to mum and her friends with 'Make me a channel of your peace' - at least the words, by St Francis, are good - but got my way with 'Lord of all hopefulness' and 'Guide me, o thou great redeemer'. And of course I organised the music, knowing that mum would have loved it, though I'm still not sure what her own personal choices would have been (I'd asked, but never got very far). I am sure that she would have loved the major participation of violinist Benjamin Baker, whom she always remembered as a brilliant young violinist of the Yehudi Menuhin School, where she and Joy ushered. Even in her last year, when I mentioned him, she cited the YMS immediately. This is Ben in rehearsal with Tom Pope, one of my oldest friends, from university days.

Tom also accompanied Ben and my other half, Jeremy, in an aria from Bach's St John Passion, and Ben in the most perfect performance of the 'Meditation' from Massenet's Thais you'll ever hear. That came after George Harcourt-Vernon led the prayers. Vicar Kate had just left on holiday, but it was a blessing that lay minister George was available, as unlike Kate he'd known both my mother and myself, when I sang in the choir during the 1970s. 

He did a wonderful job and the big worry, that the service would run over and make him late in accompanying the coffin to North East Surrey Crematorium to give a valediction, didn't materialise; he, Jeremy and Liz got there in good time, while I hosted the rather jolly tea laid on by the Mothers' Union in the Open Door cafe just down from the church. Biggest joy here was to see adorable 'Auntie' Betty Reavley, who hadn't changed at all in her sweetness even at 97, and her daughter Jill, family of my youth, and Margaret Carter's eldest daughter Marese, another playmate along with her sister Katie in early days (I now realise that though an only child, I was never without surrogate brothers and sisters). Here are Marese and Betty.

 I felt so supported, too, by four friends from Dublin who didn't know mum but came out of solidarity, and a cluster of my great university pals, pictured below (from left to right Tom, Simon - who played Debussy's Syrinx so beautifully in the service - Jo, Catherine and Mary, whose dad the Rev (later Canon) Thomas New had been such a presence (he died last year, and Mary was back in her old stamping-ground for the first time in years).

I don't mind at all if people want to watch the whole service,  filmed with excellent sound by All Saints and placed on their YouTube site. The formal part starts at 11m30s, Ben playing as the coffin is brought in with more Bach (the Andante from the Sonata for violin in A minor). If you just want to witness the musical side, the Bach aria is at 38m20s, Syrinx at 46m45s and the Massenet 'Meditation' at 1hr6m7s. The playout is also worth catching - Julie Andrews singing mum's party-piece, 'Burlington Bertie from Bow'.

The splendid floral bouquet for the coffin - I wanted purple, yellow and white - should have been collected from the church by Greenacres, wasn't and actually seemed just fine on the lawn by the porch; it lasted three weeks.

The final gesture is to get mum's ashes placed as near as possible to dad's beneath the west tower of the church, and to have a small headstone made. There will be one more little ceremony for that. Meanwhile, warmest thanks to everyone who came, participated or just watched live or later. Finally, here's a repeat of mum still looking elegant on her 93rd birthday, the photo I used for the back cover of the order of service.

Happy 94th, mum - we won't forget you. 

À la joie/To Joy/An die Freude

Update (10/5) - the Europe Day concert preview had to be temporarily removed yesterday, but here it is again, with a footnote to the effect that the quality of last night's playing, singing and the music itself - including the stunning new work by Matt Kaner - went deeper and higher than I could possibly have imagined. Everyone I spoke to was profoundly moved, and absolutely everything worked. More on that anon. Now, back to the original post.

For me, the moment when a tear came to the eye: Macron took to the podium to the strains of the European anthem, Beethoven's setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy in his Ninth Symphony. Tomorrow at the Europe Day concert in St John's Smith Square, we'll be standing for it with a special emotion. Happy to repeat this rather unusual arrangement by Andrew Manze when Rachel Podger led the European Union Baroque Orchestra - leaving its UK base thanks to Brexit - at last year's concert.

And I think the programme will please: on a theme of islands, since Malta holds the presidency at the moment. As well as a movement from the Malta Suite of Charles Camilleri, we'll be hearing island music from Mendelssohn (Overture The Hebrides), Mozart (two arias from Idomeneo), Nielsen (two songs from Springtime on Funen), Sibelius (five pieces from his incidental music to The Tempest), Bizet (the Act 2 Love Duet from The Pearl Fishers), Martinů (the final monologue from Ariane), Respighi ('The Birth of Venus' from the Trittico Botticelliano) and a new piece by composer Matt Kaner for violin and orchestra, Stranded. A truly European menu.

There are four splendid soloists - soprano Jennifer Davis and tenor Thomas Atkins from the Royal Opera's Jette Parker Young Artists Programme, Maltese soprano Nicola Said to reprise the Callas-alike Ariane she sang at the Guildhall last year (pictured above with Josep-Ramon Olivé as Thesée by Clive Barda) and the supremely cultured violinist Benjamin Baker. Jonathan Bloxham, currently assistant to Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducts his Northern Chords Festival Orchestra. What can I add except to say that I'm very excited at the prospect. And in the meanwhile, it's Springtime for France (and thankfully not for Hitler, though Madame will still be causing trouble in the years to come). How better to mark it than with the beautiful paulownia tree outside La Cité metro a couple of weeks back?

Meanwhile the stranded monsters gaping lie, but still capable of great harm. Their provenance is wittily suggested by this juxtaposition - by whom, I know not, but it attracted quite a bit of attention when I put it up on LinkedIn. Well done, whoever.

Andsnes, Astrup and other Norwegians

Had my Arts Desk say on the first of two programmes given by Leif Ove Andsnes (pictured above overlooked by Gainsborough ladies) and two young Norwegian musicians at the Dulwich Picture Gallery; handed over to Gavin Dixon for the second, and he did an excellent job (which means I agree with him). But I couldn't resist going back for the daytime recital, partly because I'd fallen in love with that amazing gallery again and wanted to sit with Soane's provision for natural light from above having its full effect.

On the first evening, I sat myself right alongside Van Dyck's Samson and Delilah, one of my favourite pictures in the gallery along with the three Rembrandts and a Claude.

Tuesday lunchtime was a chance to sit on the other side, so not looking towards the male nudes as in this photo of violinist Guro Kleven Hagen,

but in the opposite direction, with a whole other clutch of pictures around me. Hearing both programmes gave the opportunity to appreciate the perfect symmetries of the programming, made by Andsnes in conjunction with the cultural wing of the Savings Bank Foundation DNB - a very enlightened collaboration responsible for both the majority of the Nikolai Astrup paintings in the current exhibition and the valuable instruments on loan to Hagen and viola player Eiving Holtsmark Ringstad.

The highlight of the second concert, for me, was Ringstad's performance with Andsnes of Sinding's Suite in the Old Style: the first movement a virtual moto perpetuo in which Ringstad dropped no stitch and made musical sense of virtuosity, the second a chance to return to the dark brooding to which the viola is so suited. Diffident in person, Ringstad comes alive as a performer, a good foil to the more reserved musicianship of Hagen. As for Andsnes' inclusion of four of Grieg's many Lyric Pieces, I ordered up the disc of his performances recorded on Grieg's Steinway in the house at Troldhaugen (a pairing of man and piano which, of course, I was uniquely privileged to experience for myself in the realms of Kurtág and Liszt during last summer's trip to Bergen).

Delighted as I was to receive these photos from Dulwich Picture Gallery's press department a week after the event, I felt just a bit miffed that they hadn't taken up my suggestion to photograph the three musicians in the Astrup exhibition's final room of midsummer bonfires. The best I can do is an illicit picture of the crowds in that room - like the Norwegians, I was amazed to see so many of Astrup's flaming canvases gathered together in one space, and there were no postcards of this splendid group.

Many of these pictures I saw for the first time last summer in one of Bergen's superb KODE galleries, in a new wing specially devoted to the master; mostly denuded in the cause of the Dulwich exhibition, the biggest of Astrup's work to be shown anywhere in the world, it currently has a special display devoted to the artist's early works.

What most struck me then and, in much more detail now, was the special quality of Astrup's woodcuts. Like Munch, who bought several of his early works, Astrup proved something of a pioneer here - in fact, more so. He not only painted on his wood blocks, but also on the finished prints. He writes almost self-reproachfully about his 'experimentation', continuing:

I work in my own way, and several of my impressions can appear to be more paintings than woodcuts and this is, of course, really a fault - that is also why I have not considered exhibiting them. Some of them also require a lot of work to print, as I use 5-6 blocks for each impression.

He chose his paper carefully, linking it to his environment - he liked the Kazo of inspirational Japanese example, long-fibred stuff from the paper mulberry tree - and alder was the preferred tree for his blocks, though he also used pear and pinewood.

The Dulwich exhibition gives in some instances four different versions of the same scene, infinitely sensitive to the tones and changing seasons of the small area above Bergen where Astrup worked and lived for most of his life. In a rare move to please a patron fond of the marsh marigolds which feature in some of his most famous images, he reworked Night Ploughing, c.1905

to include the plant in 1927 where the water had been.

An assemblage of no less than four woodcuts of The Moon in May, 1908, which I can only suggest in their entirety from two pages of the excellent catalogue

range from an idyllic scene with two people working in the garden

to what looks like a snowy landscape with a very thick application of paint.

As for the joyous midsummer bonfire images, one famous oil with lovers, dancers and fiddler

exists both as colour woodcut in several versions

and in black-and-white, making the fiddler look like Old Nick - after all, Astrup's pastor father thought these rituals were the work of the devil.

You can see why these images are a source of no small fascination, and I'll certainly return to Dulwich before the exhibition ends on 15 May (if you want to see it after that you'll have to travel to Norway or Germany).

What ought to be more than a footnote but which finds itself squeezed in here by virtue of its link to an unusual concert in a special place has to be the second of the Waterloo Warehouse concerts organised and conducted by the ever-enterprising Jonathan Bloxham (all donations, as before to MOAS, Migrant Offshore Aid Station - and as I promised I gave all savings on Christmas cards and stamps to them as well, though a little miffed not to have had the barest acknowledgment. Anyway the transfer went through). I'm being totally honest when I say that Ben Baker's interpretation of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the orchestra of students and young professionals was the most arresting I've ever heard. Here he is with Jonathan after the performance.

Told an exhausted J he might be able to doze at some point during the Beethoven - I often do, if only mentally - but he had cause to reproach me jovially for never at any point being able to do so. Jonathan paced the central movement just right - more a stately dance than a bland wallow - and Ben, peerless in musicianship and intonation as ever, chose the fiendish cadenzas adapted by Christian Tetzlaff from the version Beethoven made for piano and orchestra, celebrated for having timps to dialogue with the soloist at one point.

The Brahms One which followed was way too big for the modest surroundings, but a flexible and impassioned interpretation with real extra dynamism in the finale, where you noticed all the more how the themes just keep pouring out of Brahms in highest inspiration. This was just as fascinating an approach in its way as Ticciati's with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.  Jonathan tells me he is up for the post of assistant conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and he deserves to get it.