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?

Bebo, Cigala and Chavela

That's to say Cuban jazz veteran Bebo Valdes


who recorded a wonderful disc sent to us by our friend Pedro in Madrid, Lagrimas Negras, with charismatic Romani Flamenco singer Diego El Cigala


and, last but by no means least, the fabulous Chavela Vargas, born in Costa Rica, rooted in Mexico and beloved of Spanish audiences, who came out as a lesbian at the age of 81 (past lovers included Frida Kahlo).


All this because I was rooting around for some genuine cantaors, whose tradition Manuel De Falla played a crucial part in keeping alive, as I prepared for the City Lit class on the BBC Symphony Orchestra's forthcoming Argentinian/Spanish concert. I started with the great Camaron, whose abrasive vocalising made contralto Hilary Summers so uncomfortable when she came to supper some years ago ('that man sings like dog!' has stuck).

Well, it's so unBritish, isn't it (Hilary, who's Welsh, has opted not to sacrifice purity of sound for sheer voicewrecking balls)? After all, De Falla wrote of his Cante Jondo ('deep song') Competition in 1927 that 'the essential quality of pure Andalusian cante is to avoid any imitation of a concert or theatrical style and one must bear in mind that a competitor is not a singer but a cantaor. The cantaor should not be discouraged if he [or she] is told that in certain notes he [or she] is out of tune. This is not considered an obstacle to the true connoisseur of Andalusian cante.'

How I love the authenticity and even the simplicity of El Amor Brujo, De Falla's 1915 homage to the skills of flamenco dancer Pastora Imperio - and all the more now since Josep Pons reintroduced the skills of her tradition in the shape of Ginesa Ortega. You can see Ortega about a minute and a half in to this slice of documentary, which starts with a dance from De Falla's early one-act opera La Vida Breve:



We saw and heard the compelling Ginesa at the BBCSO's previous Spanish concert conducted by Pons, but as that included the revised El Amor Brujo, what we didn't get was the spine-tingling melodrama of the rejected heroine's 'conjuration for the reconquest of lost love', which is hair-raisingly climactic in Ortega's voice on this essential recording.


As I had to move a little sideways to the Latin American first half of Friday's programme, I thought a bit of fusion wouldn't go amiss: hence the collaboration of Bebo and Cigala on a disc which totally captivated our visiting friend Juliette. There's film, too, of the two ages in concert. I've chosen 'La bien paga', here without the extended piano improvisation on the disc. 'You've been well paid for your kisses, white woman; I'm leaving you'. Go fullscreen, as usual by clicking on the image once it's moving, to catch El Cigala in his full gorgeousness.



Chavela Vargas's songs are very different, rooted in the laid-back mariachi tradition of Mexico, but there's nothing easy-listening about the sentiments of 'Volver, volver', so close to the dark gypsy lamentations of Andalusian music: 'I'm on my way to madness, but even if everything tortures me, I still know how to love. I listen to my heart and I'm dying to go back, to go back.' No idea who the two guys who creep up behind the grande dame might be, by the way.



Our finale last night, incidentally, was the Malambo finale of Ginastera's Estancia, inimitable encore of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela's concerts under Dudamel. Cynics say it's all getting a bit tiresome, but as far as I can see the joy never fades from these young musicians' faces when they play it: a well-earned party after an evening of deeply serious music-making. It's going to be difficult for Pons and the BBCSO to compete with this, and if it doesn't bring tears of joy to your eyes, you're a hard soul indeed.

Light of the world

Heck, you might think, that's a bit steep as an epithet for young talent. But I challenge you to find a curmudgeon who didn't come out of either of the Teresa Carreno Youth Orchestra of Venezuela's concerts last week floating on air. The photos by our top man Chris Christodoulou catch it all very well, as usual.

Was a bit surprised to see nice Fiona Maddocks's qualification in yesterday's Observer that normal standards didn't apply, given the huge size of the orchestra, whereafter - it may have been subbing - she added no word about their Tchaikovsky Fifth under Christian Vasquez. The point is that, as I wrote in my Arts Desk review, I found it stunning by any standards - disciplined, flexible, profound and, of course, thrilling with all those strings including the much-mentioned 13 double basses going full pelt at Tchaik's finale battle-drill. The TCYO is heading in the direction of its big brother, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, which is now one of the great orchestras of the world, under Abbado at least, but it need have no fears of feeling inferior, just a desire to aspire to the same extraordinary standards.

Some folk moan that we get the same old Ginastera and Bernstein Mambo encores, that the chucking of the jackets and the conga-ing around are routine. I'd argue that it's the ritual party the kids need after working so bloody hard on their very tough programmes. That's a joy you can't fake.


How I wish I'd heard their Prokofiev Fifth on Tuesday, too (I couldn't: I was taking the BBCSO students through Grainger/Delius/Joseph Taylor and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring). There they'd already had the advantage of Sir Si taking them through it in Berlin. But don't underestimate Vasquez: he's more self-effacing in demeanour than Dudamel, but seems just as sure of what he wants and how to get it. Indeed, as Rattle famously said a few years ago, this is the most important thing going on in the world of music, and by inference it's up there with the most positive things going on in the world, period. The potential for good is limitless, and look at all the kids who've been inspired already.


More background on the Carrenos, and the Sistema experience, from my Arts Desk colleague Kate Connolly.