Verbier fare

No. it wasn't all lotus eating. For the most part I kept myself to myself, stocked up on delicious local produce and fresh bread in my self-catering flat (the second, after I'd moaned about the dark, viewless first, just perfect) and missed a couple of banquets because of my devotion to late-night Leonskaja after the main concerts of the evening.

Bit of a pity, that, on my second night, because there was a big do out at a restaurant near the golf course. I arrived at 11.40pm, delirious from Leonskaja's Schubert D850, just in time to find the only folk I actually knew on the point of departure. The food was finished, but not all the distinguished guests had gone. As Bashmet, Maisky and other familiar faces flitted past, I saw the divine Anne Sofie von Otter (pictured below for the Verbier Festival by Nicolas Brodard singing the ballad of Faure's Melisande in that evening's concert) and wanted to tell her how much her tribute to Anthony Rolfe Johnson had meant. Yes, she said, so many famous losses already this year, and several others close to her. And we talked a bit about Tony's warm and ever-helpful collegiality.


Spoke to that romantic young cellist Andreas Brantelid about the morning's Debussy trio revelation. Also saw Bengt Forsberg, and wanted to press the flesh after that totally individual recital he'd given at the Wigmore. Never met a friendlier artist. He was there with his daughter, and told her delightedly I was the one who'd given him that review, and how I'd understood his intentions. I pressed the Grainger celebrations idea next year on him, and quick as a flash he came up with the relevant Percy dates.

So there was talk if nothing more than a cream eclair to go with it. Earlier, at least, some of us had enjoyed a sumptuous reception at the simple but obviously first-rate Grange Hotel where I chatted with the delightful Laurence from the tourist office about Edinburgh, where she'd au paired in days gone by. Dvora and Michael Lewis and I agreed that the above tuna and mango spoons and all the other bonne bouches were the best we'd ever tasted. Dix points for presentation, too: how's about this for confectionery?


Even so, I was very happy to potter around delis, patisserie and Migros seeing what Valaisian fare was on offer. Bought some choice local meats and was pleased to find seasonal raspberries, apricots and the best cherries ever, many of which I consumed on the balcony of my lodging staring over at the western peaks.

In praise of Percy

No innuendo is intended, though given Percy Grainger's voracious and distinctly dodgy sexual obsessions it could be. Anyway, I'm currently deep in a bout of Graingermania. This has been quite a week for hearing great stuff I've never come across in the concert hall before. Saturday was the Alpine peak, perhaps of the year: Martinu's most consistently powerful symphony, the Third, in the penultimate instalment of Belohlavek's BBCSO Martinu symphonies cycle. Thanks, Thomas and Hedgehog, for 'spreading the love around' in your comments to the previous entry. But what led to a more recent re-discovery was maverick Swede Bengt Forsberg's inclusion of Grainger's To a Nordic Princess as the first of his two encores in last Wednesday's recital.

As a result, I dug out my CDs of Martin Jones and the man himself in all the works Grainger 'dished up for piano', and I started reading John Bird's biography. Bird's prose makes for very sober reading alongside the mad screeds of Percy himself, but still, what a life! Even before he appears in the world, there's crazy Rose, the mother from hell, wishing good thoughts on her unborn child by banishing her hapless hubby from the boudoir and fixating on a statue of Apollo at the end of the bed. Whatever problems Percy subsequently had - not least the appalling flagellation which he openly wrote about wishing to apply to small children, so thank God he had none of his own - can be laid at Rose's door. Peter Carey should write a novel about the relationship between those two; maybe Jane Campion could make a film of it.

The fact remains, though, that for all his psychobluster and inconsistencies, PG seems to have been a natural man, the freshest of composers and a master pianist. I'm now listening to his performance of Chopin's Third Piano Sonata, and I reckon the slow movement is my favourite now, while the finale is the most vivacious ever. What a shame there's not more film of his playing; I could only come up with this less than minute clip from a documentary. It's worth seeing, if only for the extraordinary flying motion.



Grainger was inspired by Eugen D'Albert during his student time in Frankfurt: 'when I saw D'Albert swash around over the piano with the wrong notes flying to the left & right & the whole thing a welter of recklessness, I said to myself, "That;s the way I must play". I'm afraid I learnt his propensity for wrong notes all too thoroughly.'

As for his own compositions, I was knocked for six by the In a Nutshell Suite, where cowpat pastorale goes off the rails into Schoenberg/Ives territory, and then on for another six glorious minutes. Had a YouTube clip of Grainger's deepest slow movement in its orchestral version conducted by Rattle, but I now see that's been removed 'due to third party infringement'. Shame.

I worked out that next February will be the fiftieth anniversary of Grainger's death. I don't see his bracing and prolific output featuring in any of the major orchestras' rep, but let's see what happens.

Spring in the City

It's here at last, in bud, leaf and blossom. The skies are blue, wherever the volcanic ash cloud be lingering. Fotherington-Thomas was out and about on his bike last Wednesday, whizzing up to Maida Vale for a BBC Symphony Orchestra afternoon concert - a huge triumph for ten-year-old Lucien, if a little less so for his younger sister Jessica - then to London Bridge for a weekly engagement before wandering around to see what Southwark's been doing with the greening and on to Bengt Forsberg's brilliant, idiosyncratic recital at the Wigmore Hall.

Bengt led me on to a wave of Grainger enthusiasm, of which more in maybe the next entry, but for now I just want to expend a few pics on English city gardens. In the reclaimed zone around City Hall called Potters Fields, once a cemetery, there's been some adventurous planting, and even raised vegetable beds which seem to be respected in the public space.


So you get tantalising views of London Bridge and County Hall through trees


and beyond the herbaceous beds designed, the website tells me, by Piet Oudolf.


They have some growing up to do, but the peony shoots promise much.

Crossing Tooley Street, I was drawn to a magnolia gleaming in the sun. It's between council blocks on a patch of green before the viaduct.


Another pink magnolia in an unlikely place is on an otherwise bald road in Chelsea.


I saw it on my way back from Chelsea Physic Garden, where activity is slow; but the fruit trees begin to blossom


and I'd never seen a pitcher plant in its incipient state - just as creepy as the finished, fly-trapping monster.


Two final Spring blossoms for good measure: one by a posher Chelsea House on the King's Road


and another by the canal at Little Venice


taken on the way back from the Maida Vale concert. Effortless master Jiri Belohlavek continues his run of great concerts - this was certainly one - with the penultimate instalment in his Martinu symphonies series at the Barbican tonight. I'm talking on the Third, as well as a bit about Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements and Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto, at 6pm in the big hall, so do come along and say hello.