h100 Awards: pride among peers

Having been one of the four judges for the Hospital Club's Young Influencer of the Year Award - courtesy of The Arts Desk as 'media partner' - I was looking forward to the annual event. All the more so since last year gave me insights into corners of creative innovation I knew little about (the star indisputably being Lady Leshurr; I always meant to write about her, and the event, but never did).

The good news was that Stuart Goldsmith (pictured above), a stand-up comedian who's genuinely funny all the time and would be excellent at impro, so quickly does he react to the immediate situation, returned to compere. While it was a shame that we didn't get the likes of John Simpson this time round, the keynote speaker and his speech could hardly have been more impressive. Must catch up with James Graham's dramas - The House, having started at the National Theatre, has been on a successful UK tour and I can't wait for his forthcoming TV drama about Brexit starring Benedict Cumberbatch - on the strength of his golden, and very sincere words.

You can read the whole speech on The Arts Desk. Most attractive personality, too, genuinely nervous about speaking but propped up by the beauty of his text. A person could develop a crush...

Our own Hanna Weibye, the only dance writer who could possibly have followed the classiest act of Ismene Brown on  TAD, gave a lovely speech, too. With most of the awards, we only got to know about the contenders in the beautifully-produced booklet handed out afterwards, but our Young Influencers all had context.

Marina Gerner, pictured with Hanna above, was an eloquent winner, but having spent more time on James Bingham's blog, Sense of Pitch, I'm more than ever sure that he's the most original thinker among our group. Doer too, and he's off to the fabulously promising new Irish National Opera, having been given carte blanche to develop its education programme without imposition from the usual suspects. Excellent company over good food, too.

Of the acceptance speeches, Bradford Literature Festival Director Syima Aslam's was the most thought-provoking. She spoke about the majority of lower-income groups,and of her pride in the English language, which she didn't begin to learn until the age of 8 (her mother still doesn't speak it). Here she is with our own TAD literary and musical doyen Boyd Tonkin.

Others provoked curiosity and lines to pursue. The Arts Desk has long been singing the praises of Keeping Faith, a TV thriller made in both Welsh and English, so I didn't need much persuasion to catch up with Eve Myles, protagonist and winner of the Broadcast category. Her character is so compelling from the start, all over the place in a way that you take for granted, as you do the normality of the town set-up even though you know it's quickly going to go awry. I've only seen the first episode and I'm hooked. So I was throughout Bodyguard, but it followed a more conventional pattern and the last episode was rather sowhatish.

My one sticking-point about the awards - that the Hospital Club doesn't place classical music and opera in the same fashionable mainstream as its featured arts - was partly appeased by that already great cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason winning the impossibly broad Music category (among the nine other candidates, Gillian Moore was the only other one with 'classical' credentials). Let's hope that as a member, I can influence 'our' presence there by setting up an event or two. Our own TAD treasure Thomas H Green was there to announce the winner and Sheku, as unshakably modest and diffident as ever, had filmed a little speech.

TAD sails on, with as little prospect of payment as ever, but I think we do the best possible job and I'm very proud of our extensive Proms coverage. Now we're in the middle of the Royal Opera Ring cycle, with one reviewer per each instalment. I get to see Siegfried, the only one I didn't get to see first time around. Didn't think much of any of them; let's see if this marks a change of opinion.

Cleo from 7 to 8.30

I've made my homage to Friday's special event on The Arts Desk, and I don't have many more words to add; I just want the excuse to add a couple more photos taken at Friday evening's astonishing event by Patrick Anderson. J and I, reeling out stunned by the high level of the 90-year-old's delivery in four songs - that's technique and soul for you - and by her obvious Menschian qualities, recalled that La Laine was always in the background as we grew up - her jazz and scat-singing, endlessly impersonated, at a more sophisticated level than that of a torchsong belter like Shirley Bassey (often watched at home with the sound down, my parents' idea of fun). Yet she is undeniably one of the greats.

I see I've already told how when I shared a flat in No. 32 Dundas Street in my second year at Edinburgh University, we wore out a budget-price reissue of Cleo singing in the 1950s. And in the review I mention the sensation, at her appearance in Michael Tilson Thomas's LSO series The Gershwin Years, of feeling as if she was singing to me alone, so direct was her communication. Those flashing eyes roving round the audience and fixing on individuals were still at work on Friday. Kudos to Jude Kelly, again, for choosing so well in the Southbank's (B)Old - as in 'Be Old', creatively - festival. Sorry to have missed Julie 'Going to the Zoo' Felix in the Clore Ballroom earlier.

Feeling dizzy from ten days of spectacular events. This would have to be the greatest, but the reminder of what peerless ensemble acting is all about in the Maly Theatre of St Petersburg's meticulously observed double whammy was wondrous and has sent me back to Grossman's Life and Fate to try again (this time I'll stay the course).  Cédric Tiberghien's exquisite and encyclopedic Chopin playing redeemed Paul Kildea's narrative in the spectacular setting of Brighton Pavilion's Music Room (more on that little excursion anon). The accompaniment to the 1926 silent film all too loosely based on the operatic Der Rosenkavalier in the carefully renovated Queen Elizabeth Hall was a treat - the first real sugar rush of the week.

The second was the opera itself, on Sunday at Glyndebourne. I've written up my second visit to the Richard Jones production, with a very different revival cast, here on The Arts Desk. But I ought to add here the interesting perspectives given by my companion, artist friend (and mother of our youngest goddaughter Mirabel) Edwina and her friend Christine. Here's Edsy before our picnic in blissful seclusion.

They found the opera spooky, weird and unsettling - the Jones effect, but it's definitely there in the music's queasy gearchanges and timeleaps. As Bill Knight took a special batch of photos for The Arts Desk, it's a pleasure to have the excuse of using more than the original four over there. Here are Rachel Willis-Sørensen, a redhead taking very well to the raven-haired look of original Marschallin Kate Royal, and Kate Lindsay, the most lustrous of Octavians (Tara Erraught first time round was funnier in the cross-dressing comedy, but not quite on the same level vocally).

No question about this Leopold, bastard son of Ochs and acted once again by Joseph Badar  as a crucial component of the drama, presenting the silver rose.  Here he is flanked by Brindley Sherratt as his feckless dad and Willis-Sørensen.

Erraught's and Lars Woldt's were the faces made for comedy last time: on Sunday the winning mug belonged to Elizabeth Sutphen as a feisty Sophie.

Rose-presentation: again unforgettable the slight swaying, prefaced by raised heels from all which get a laugh, but the seriousness kicks in again very quickly.

Time for Sherratt to step forward fully in his visual transformation (gammon make-up and hideous wig). Ochs and Annina (Stephanie Lauricella, classy casting),

delight in the letter as the retinue unfold girlie cards to parallel the fashion pictures for the Marschallin's levée in Act One

and payup time in Act Three (oddly Bill doesn't have any pics of the big stuff thereafter).

After that claustrophobia it was good to get out into the gardens in a blissful evening light overlooking the fields and downs.

I don't always make the first Glyndebourne weekend, so I'd forgotten what flourishes in the garden at this time. Irises everywhere, of course

complemented by alliums

and the yellow variety by the lake.

Wisteria still flourishing by the house

and the first roses along the wall.

Dicksonia antarctica springing up from its winter sleep

and one final shot of picnickers with the mulberry in the foreground. What a lush time of year.

Lovely weather for the wedding, too, the previous day. Yes, I watched the service live, switching off rapidly as the coach hit Windsor town and the blether of the BBC commentators became too much (only Kirsty Young kept it real). Loved the contrast between Tallis's 'If Ye Love Me' and the Gospel choir. Both performances were excellent, but I'm glad that cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason had the limelight. He'll stay calm and centred now that he's a megastar, and no-one deserved the success more; he's a natural.

Decca issued this photo (uncredited) to celebrate big sales for his debut album, also far from the usual bits and pieces (it includes a complete performance of his signature Shostakovich First Cello Concerto with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by the superb Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla - her CD debut too, I think I'm right in saying).

We're a long way now from Cleo. Or perhaps not... The title, by the way, homages one of my favourite films, which I wrote about here.

Sheku's Shostakovich

Finally caught up with the BBC Young Musician 2016 finale on the iPlayer, watching in segments after evenings out on Thursday and Friday, and it was blindingly obvious: 17-year-old Sheku Kanneh-Mason's performance of Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto with Mark Wigglesworth conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra was one which would go straight to top of any year's best list, regardless of the circumstances. All Young Musician 2016 images by Mark Allen/BBC.

It baffles me how this sweet, seemingly diffident teenager becomes a channel for everything I've ever thought the music was about the minute he applies bow to cello. He can change colour as well as dynamic on a note. Above all the big cadenza just spoke to us like the great Shakespearean soliloquy it is (have never forgotten Oistrakh's characterisation of the solo role in the First Violin Concerto as Hamlet-like). Spellbound by all this, and seeing it all in SKM's face, it was easy to overlook how he had the best partners in the world. The wind in the first movement were uniquely bouncy and spiky, the Wigglesworth touch as we know from his Shostakovich symphonies cycle, and as Julian Lloyd-Webber pointed out, the crucial horn solos can never have been better played (kudos to the fabulous Nicholas - not David, Clemency, please - Korth).  Here's the whole thing on YouTube, courtesy of the justifiably proud father. Two minutes from the official BBC site is not enough.

No less communicative was the delightful saxophonist Jess Gillam. Only two problems about the final here, for me, at any rate - the shortage of great saxophone-and-orchestra pieces, which meant we got the quickly numbing Nyman Where the Bee Dances; and the amount of time you can listen with pleasure to the soprano sax (for me, at least given the score, not very long). Below: Gillam on the left, with wise mentor and former winner Nicola Benedetti second from right).

As for fine horn-player Ben Goldscheider (above on the right), the only face on the screen who spoke truth was Wigglesworth, in declaring that it was the most difficult of all instruments - and I would add, the most difficult to play smoothly when you're nervous. And why wouldn't our finalist be nervous? It seemed as if the splendid Sarah Willis, horn-player with the Berlin Phil and a presenter so good I've already asked if we could see her on the BBC, had been gagged into singing only praise, so I did a double take when she said how supremely relaxed he was. Not so. Surely an expert can make critical points without undermining the essential fabulousness of it all?

Anyway, Barenboim has taken Goldscheider under his wing, so he'll be fine. As will the other two - and I want to see more of the incredible Kanneh-Mason von Trapps, instrumentalists all (the parents are pianists). Here they are playing the most famous of the Brahms Hungarian Dances.

There's going to have to be an hour-long doc on the Kanneh-Masons. But on BBCs One or Two, please; it's a disgrace that this antidote to Eurovision appeared on ghetto BBC Four. Apparently the family did get to the semi-finals of Britain's Got Talent, but I wouldn't know about that, would I? And semi-finals only? Please.

Saw all too much of Eurovision on the TV in our Prague apartment - all I have to say is that Jamala, the winner for Ukraine with 1944, was worthy not so much because of her origins as Crimean Tatar but because she was the only one to connect with what she was singing about in a risible show of artifice and overkill.

To conclude, an outcry and a celebration. It's right that there has been horror at EU withdrawal of suuport for the European Union Youth Orchestra (pictured above). They shouldn't have to compete with other organisations for funding; they ARE the musical flagship of the Union (and a great orchestra by any standards, as their stunning 2014 Prom showed). True, other organisations like the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra raise their own money. But - repeat - it's fundamentally wrong that this most splendid of ensembles should have to go through the bureaucratic hoops for their survival (or, in this case, their demise). In the meantime, you can sign several petitions: try this one on Avaaz.

Congratulations, finally, to the ENO Chorus; having garnered one trophy at the Olivier Awards, they sealed their worldwide credentials by winning at the International Opera Awards. And this time the right people were there to claim the trophy. Deborah Davison of the Chorus (in the centre with the award in the above picture) gave a superb speech, putting much of the credit where it was due here:

The ENO chorus is an extraordinary and passionate group of artists who form the essential lifeblood of our ensemble company. Through good or challenging times, our desire to be the very best we can never wavers and we are thrilled and immensely proud that our work has been recognised in this way.

On behalf of the Chorus, I'd like to thank four people who have been instrumental in our recent work. Our indefatigable Chorus Manager, David Dyer, a man who embodies everything that is great about ENO. Our brilliant and inspiring Chorus Master, Stephen Harris, and superb Assistant Chorus Master, James Henshaw, who have lifted the musical excellence of the Chorus to an all time high. And finally our much loved and respected Director of Music, Mark Wigglesworth, a man of immense integrity and unparalleled musicianship. We have been honoured and privileged to make joyous music with him.

Amen to that. Got a little moist-eyed transcribing it. Fingers crossed that this relationship proves too strong to be thrown away permanently.