Fabulous Fučik

Picture if you will the delightful Sarah Walker - the BBC Radio 3 presenter, not the veteran singer - doing a drum majorette routine in the studio with an invisible baton while the liveliest of marches goes out on air. I think - I hope - we all got infected by the glittering spirit of Julius Fučík (1872-1916) as conducted, con molto amore as is so obvious, by Neeme Järvi, and played so brilliantly by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on Chandos.

The disc was one of my two picks for an orchestral new releases stretch on last Saturday's CD Review (still available to listen to on the BBC iPlayer for another couple of weeks; our slot is around the 1.16 mark, though I also very much liked what I heard of  Hannah French's Building a Library on Haydn's Trumpet Concerto as we waited to go live on air). The other choice was a Mahler 6 from Daniel Harding, not a conductor I've found more than middle-of-the-road before, but with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra he's fired up and has a lot to say. And the cover gimmick of heartbeat ECG and hammerblow frequency is a good one.

Sarah chose the two Brahms Piano Concertos from Barenboim and Dudamel on DG, a recording which I found almost impossible to listen to in its ponderousness after the flights of Robin Ticciati in the First Symphony and now, on CD, Stephen Kovacevich's versions with Colin Davis when he was still plain Bishop. Sarah's other disc, the Schoenberg arrangement of Brahms's G minor Piano Quartet and his Accompaniment to a Film Scene, with Marc Albrecht conducting the Netherlands Philharmonic, was much more to my taste, and the Accompaniment came in useful when I was illustrating Shostakovich's original first interlude in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk to my Opera in Depth students - it's just possible he knew Schoenberg's work in 1931.

The Fučík selection - I know, how easily the finger goes on the keyboard from c straight to k - really is quite a sequence, with excellent notes to match by Nigel Simeone (though even he can't unearth all the programmes - what, for instance, are the Marinarella and Miramare Overtures, miniature tone poems, all about?) It's a real New Year's Day concert of overtures, marches and polkas with plenty of novelties like whistling, anvils and farting bassoon. Andrew McGregor did a spot check on that venerable Viennese institutions and found that Fučík, Prague-born son of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and very much part of the K&K set-up, had never featured.

He had an interesting peripatetic life as bassoonist and military bandmaster, working in two Prague theatres as well as in Sisak (in Croatia), Sarajevo, Budapest and Berlin. I find it piquant that the most conventional of the marches, Under the Admiral's Flag, was played at Trieste's naval yard in 1911, with Archduke Franz Ferdinand present, for the launch of the Dreadnought battleship Viribus unitis (the Austrian navy not being something that figures much, for obvious reasons).

Certainly the waltzes are up there with Josef Strauss's for sheen and beauty, if perhaps not quite the same degree of memorability. The lessons of Dvořák, Fučík's most famous mentor, shine in the woodwind writing both there and in the Marinarella Overture, where Rusalka seems to glide out of the water. But if we're talking about tunefulness, Fučik probably has the distinction of being the most-played Czech composer ever through his 'Grande Marche Chromatique' Entry of the Gladiators; intriguing to learn that it was partly written to serve the new chromatic possibilities in valved brass instruments. It's a proper riot in the full-orchestral garb on the CD; the little harmonic sideslip in the trio tune is typical.

Fučík can't resist giving little kicks to his melodies, whether in syncopation, harmony or orchestration. Uncle Teddy is such fun, with Bohemian thirds and sixths to boot, and I love the eastern European otherness of Hercegovac; but undoubtedly the one on my brain, which I partly got played on the show, is the cheerful-making Florentiner March, supposedly mimicking the chatter of an Italian girl to which her man - an Austrian officer - grunts back 'Jawohl' on two low notes. The polkas are fine, too, especially The Old Grumbler with the bassoon (the RSNO's David Hubbard, excellent) getting under the dance's feet as well as joining it. So is it going to take a Czech conductor of high status to appear in Vienna on January 1 and get these pieces included? And if that doesn't happen, wouldn't Neeme make a marvellous New Year's Day master?

Preludes for the First of May

And what preludes, starting with the night-into-day of Hans Sachs's meditations as reflected in the third act introduction of Wagner's Mastersingers and ending in a blaze of Handel. It was deliriously wonderful to be strolling around Oxford early on the morning of May Day, even if I hadn't been there in time for the dawn chorus from Magdalen tower or the sunrise pub openings (that's quite a memory). But there I was, happy to be accosted by a merry drunken girl student with dyed hair as I bumped into Tom Service on the way to the Sheldonian.


Indeed, it was a kind of dream, because we were heading to hear Barenboim and the Berlin Philharmonic (or Philharmoniker, as it now prefers to be known as a 'worldwide brand', ouch). Every year since the fall of the Wall, the orchestra has played a 'Europe Concert' in a beautiful venue on 1 May, so after Prague and Moscow it was Oxford's turn. The concert also showcased a young cellist who, no-one could avoid thinking, might be another Du Pre in the Elgar Concerto, but with a personality very much her own, Alisa Weilerstein. Here she is with Barenboim in the first of two wonderful professional shots reproduced here by courtesy of the 'artist', Chris Christodoulou.


About that Dionysian event I managed to wax lyrical for the Arts Desk, only an hour after the performance, ensconced in the comfort of the Randolph Hotel and struggling with wi-fi connection. There's just one more thing to add, courtesy of TAD colleague Jasper Rees, who was there as a friend of the BPO's second horn; and that's to the effect that the players were as impressed by the audience being part of the performance as we were to observe them smiling at each other and enjoying what they were hearing when not engaged. Of course the Sheldonian is hardly the lap of luxury; most of us were sitting on benches with the person behind's knees around our ears. My witty neighbour, responding to my comment about forgetting pain under such circumstances, commented 'but my muscles don't have ears'.

Yet we were all jolly still, moved to tears by the Wagner and Elgar, exiting with our legs buckling after a concert ending as exciting as any I've heard (in fact only Bernstein's Mahler 5 at the Proms is probably up there for me). I can hardly believe it, but while the BBC hangs fire on transmission - the concert was shown live all over Europe - medici.tv has it up and running for free (no idea how that works; anyway, I'm reliving the finale right now) You can do a 'Where's Willy' in the second of Chris's photos if you want, for there I am at the giddying end of Barenboim's Brahms One, hands raised aloft, before I followed my next-but-one neighbour's example and rose to my feet, quickly joined by Tom.


How it had really affected us was, in fact, one of those delayed reactions - as Fiona Maddocks and I exchanged wonder at how shaken we were, I suddenly thought I was about to burst into tears, of which in the aftermath there hadn't been any hint up to that moment.

Stepping out, I gathered most of the May Day revels were done, and morris dancers gathered outside Blackwells and the pub next door.


Can anyone explain the white-faced, begloved cortege with a branch of cherry-tree blossom, who did a weird circular pattern by the Sheldonian before processing onwards?


Anyway, by the end of the concert, J and Hen, with whom we were spending the weekend at her parents' house in north Oxford, were due to arrive, and as I'd bumped into Andrew van der Beek and his daughter Theodora on their way to the next musical event, we all met up for a splendid lunch in the wonderful Quod.


Andrew and Theodora were off to hear a rehearsal. As the BPO left, the OAE came in to play for the Schola Cantorum's 50th anniversary concert that evening. We'd planned a quiet evening in Norham Road (with the delicious Julie and Julia, as it turned out - ah Meryl, what a comic genius), but how could we resist hearing the programme in preparation? Here was another glorious sound, the cut and thrust of a brilliant young choir conducted by the excellent James Burton, joined by 100 former alumni.


Among the soloists giving their services was Dame Emma Kirkby, who'd once - as she told everyone amusingly and with no little charm - been turned down at an audition by the SC chorusmaster. He had written out some ornamentations to her solo in an attempt to make amends.

Alas, the chunk of rehearsal we heard didn't include the MacMillan premiere, but we were certainly knocked for six by Handel's Dixit Dominus. And the minute the gorgeous Christine Rice opened her mouth, what quality. I managed to have a quick chat with her, as I'd only the day before been listening to her singing an Elgar song.

Well, that was quite a start to a glorious if climate-wise variable weekend. I'll catch up with our visits to three colleges in a future entry.