Also in Rattle week...

...I heard performances wonderful not just in parts - like the second of Sir Si's Sibelius series concerts with the Berlin Phil, very much a curate's egg - but as a perfect whole, and - apart from the Philharmonic Octet Berlin without Rattle at the QEH on Friday night, consummate - in less expected places (pictured above, two of my star performers throughout the week, violinist Julia Hwang and pianist Dmitri Alexeev).

Personally, I think I'd have chosen the Alexander Ivashkin Memorial Concert on Thursday night, even had I not worked with Sasha and loved what I knew of him, over Rattle's last Sibelius concert at the Barbican and Salonen conducting Ravel at the Festival Hall. The reason? A very rare chance to hear Russian master pianist Alexeev in action. The last time I caught him was partnering Sasha in Prokofiev's Cello Sonata at beloved Noëlle Mann's memorial concert*, and before that with Sitkovetsky in the First Violin Sonata as part of the Prokofiev 2003 concert she organised at St John's Smith Square. Here are all three, at I know not what event.

Brahms's late piano pieces have been obsessing me recently; I've played Nicholas Angelich's set over several times. And I've never heard Op. 119, with its extraordinary mixture of the elegiac, the light-as-air and ultimately the heroic, live in concert. Alexeev did not disappoint in finding the connections between the four pieces, in ranging from introspective heartbreak to unusual pride and strength.

But this was a concert in which everything made some kind of deep mark or another. True, Alexeev made the Steinway sound like an altogether different instrument from the way Boris Berman played it (Berman pictured above on 12 February; young photographers Alice Andrewartha and Sergey Kryuchkov will have to forgive me for not disentangling which photo is whose). His Prokofiev Seventh Sonata was just too loud to start with. But I've rarely heard a more shatteringly powerful account of the great slow movement, moving from Schumann stylised to the tolling of bells and the keening of human grief. The other ultimate depth came from the framing of the concert by cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, starting with perfect privacy in Schnittke's Klingende Buchstaben based on some of the notes in Ivashkin's full first name of Alexander.

In discussing the programme with that wonderful pianist Danny Driver - who wowed us with fellow Goldsmiths pianist Andrew Zolinsky in two pieces from Shostakovich's Op. 6 Suite, as good a performance in its way as anything on the programme - I suggested that the only possible ending could be the 25-minute epilogue to Schnittke's ballet Peer Gynt arranged for cello, piano and tape, winding its way into infinity. Irina Schnittke was to have played the piano part. But Altstaedt found it too much to prepare in so short a time, and his ineffably simple but profound substitute, the Allemande and Sarabande from Bach's Fifth Cello Suite, led to at least two minutes' silence. Unfussy, infinitely private and of the essence, his playing led me to go home and try and find something comparable among my sets. Two I threw out on to the regifting pile as being so wide of what I now want in this music; only Yo-Yo Ma came close.

Another bonus in place of the Schnittke was the Andante cantabile from Tchaikovsky's First String Quartet, played with introspective simplicity by the Goldner String Quartet (pictured above). But it was also vital to have students from Goldsmiths College involved. Mark Shanahan worked wonders on the Chamber Choir (he told me afterwards how, getting them to harmonise Bette Midler and really working on fullness of sound) in the big early-Rachmaninov liturgical setting Ever-vigilant Mother of God.

And the Goldsmiths Sinfonia (pictured above with Sasha's photo on the easel to the right) settled from a less than unanimous opening to cool style in Prokofiev's 'Classical' Symphony. Grandson Gabriel came up with a real winner, Outta Pulsor from his Suite for Cello Nonet, originally a multitrack work for one cellist, the fine player and film composer Peter Gregson who led this group (had a fascinating conversation with him later over supper about film music). This time Outta Pulsor was graced by nine players, some of them originally brought together by Sasha's wife Natalia Pavlutskaya, also a cellist and teacher (at Trinity, hence the name TrinityGold). Really distinctive melody, fascinatingly shaped textures around it. Below, some of the cellists with conductor Andrew Morley.

I love Natalia: she reminds me of everything that's best about the Russian character: the intense warmth and affection, the talent, the discipline. I was, as I said in the opening speech she'd asked me to give, very surprised and incredibly honoured when she asked me to be involved. I had no idea that she and Sasha apparently respected me, as of course I did him (I didn't know Natalia at all well when he was alive). But she welcomed me like a long-lost friend and invited me to the after-performance supper, too. Here we are being very genuinely affectionate at the pre-concert drinks - thanks to Alice for that. OK, so it's grimace and paunch from me, but it shows you the kind of person Natalia is, I hope.

An evening rich and wonderful beyond belief, still to be properly digested over the months to come.

Another exceptional person I adore is a younger mover and shaker. I met Ed Picton-Turbervill when he came up to me after a Salome talk I'd given at Covent Garden and asked me if I'd go and talk at his school. The results are recounted some way down this blog entry. Since then we've become, I hope, good friends, and here he is nearly at the end of his three years as an Organ Scholar at St John's College Cambridge.

Over five weeks ago J and I went up to Cambridge at his invitation to hear a late Epiphany spectacular in the chapel - the above pic of Ed by his college's famous bridge and the wing where he resides was taken on that visit. We returned on Valentine's Day to catch the last event of nine - all FREE - in the St John's Music Festival curated by EPT, who modestly appears nowhere in publicity or programmes to take the credit.

I begged to be excused from that Saturday's St John's evensong as I was keen to sample King's, and sit in the choir pews there, which we did in style thanks to Research Fellow Hanna Weibye, loveliest of colleagues as dance critic on The Arts Desk. I also wanted to hear beloved Herbert Howells. But what I'd been told was right - King's can't match St John's for choral splendour. The men are far too loud for the boys and it can't be healthy for Stephen Cleobury to have been in place since 1982, with the contract running until (at least) 2019. Anyway, he beats rather than shapes, which was what impressed me so much about Andrew Nethsingha at St John's.

After the service. we found ourselves treated to rather fine illuminations outside King's, part of Cambridge's e-Luminate festival. Its website is a bit messy, so I gathered that the rainbow colours projected onto arches were the work of Jack Beccegato Zero.

but didn't find out who did the more dynamic work on the later ensemble to the north. It really has to be seen in action, but you get the idea here.

Everyone seems to hate the Victorian tower of St John's, but I'd rather it was there than not, and the illuminations did a good job on it.

The evening concert, which reflected the festival's theme of 'the old made new' both in its programme and by taking place in St John's Divinity School, Victorian Gothic recently restored to lavish effect, didn't start until 8pm. That gave us a problem that if we stayed for the second half, we'd miss the last convenient train back to London. So we only caught the first, and in a way I'm glad because it ended on such a high. Accomplished piano duo Marie-Noëlle Kendall

and Patrick Hemmerlé were giving two world premieres, starting with Robin Holloway's Soldered Schumann, an attempt to give new life to the Schumann Andante and Variations in B flat which he and Britten both regard(ed) as a noble failure. The Andante is itself lovely stuff, but Holloway's emendations struck me as rather ungainly doodlings, and you can call me arrogant or deluded if you like but his contribution really was the sort of thing I used to improvise on the piano in my better moments.

Would Holloway's Silvered Schubert be the same? I've had the privilege of finding out from the recording Ed sent me, but on the evening I was so bowled over by Hwang's performance of the original Fantaisie for Violin and Piano with ex Pembroke College Organ Scholar James Drinkwater that I knew nothing could actually surpass it.

Anyway, Hwang (pictured again above, good publicity shots) and Drinkwater made such a persuasive case for the Fantaisie that I wouldn't hear much said against it: she with her burning intensity and pitch-perfect technique, he with crystalline runs and supreme elegance. What's Holloway's beef with it?

...that nothing after the opening is worthy of it [this is the wraith-like violin theme against shimmering piano, not easily transcribed for two pianos, and so much is violinistic that its point in rearrangement is lost]. Especially the Variations, which dissipate rather than gather - above all in not providing a minor version [ie variation] to search the lovely Lied more deeply.

Well, the song itself ('Sei mir gegrüsst') certainly lives up to the opening in the lovely modulations taken here by the piano alone, and the variations preserve the lightness of the whole premise by some ethereal filigree (very difficult to make light of it, but these two did). Holloway's elaborations, in the recording I've listened to, are also pretty in a more music-boxy sort of way. But his gawky late-romantic interjections are not, and the minor-key variation he supplies disintegrates into doodlery. His extended 'Apotheosis' for the return of the opening sounds horrid to me, overdone with Lisztian-style tremolos.

The interjection of another song, 'Death and the Maiden', is cleverly combined with the rhythm of the finale, but it's too heavy and long-winded for the Fantaisie's airy premise. As for the material of the finale, which seems to me typical Schubert at his most penny-plain but very much himself, I don't find this 'harum-scarum' 'vapid' (Holloway's note again) and the transition to the song reprise has a marvellous key change- C to A flat - which I find again so typically Schubertian. All this is lost in Holloway's flummery and by the end you're screaming for it to stop (which probably means that I was, even listening to the recording). I don't find anything tiresome or overlong in the Schubert original (about 20 minutes to Holloway's inflated 35). I went home and marvelled at the recording by Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov. The first interpretation to be recorded, by Adolf Busch and Rudolf Serkin, remains one of the greatest: here it is.

Forgive all this length but I wanted to argue the case so that Ed can see I thought about it properly (I know  he likes the Holloway much better than I do, and he should be proud of having hosted the world premieres). The main thing is that the evening featured two very good performances and one superlative one (the Fantaisie proper), and it made me engage with why the work isn't, in my opinion, deeply flawed.

Several wonders since then - Nielsen from Oramo, Sibelius from Runnicles in accord with the Inverness setting - but those will have to wait until the next instalment.

*Shin-ichi's remark below about Sasha's performance with Dmitri Alexeev at Noelle's memorial concert gave me courage to view the whole performance again on YouTube. There's an interesting story here in that I proposed playing at least part of the Prokofiev central movement within my introduction the other Thursday. I utterly respect Natalia's artistic integrity, reflecting and standing up for Sasha's, in that she said he felt he hadn't had enough time to prepare on that occasion. So we didn't play it in the concert.

Yet I'd like to take the liberty of putting up for the second time on this blog the Moderato - Andante dolce movement, because as I said the other Thursday, it seems to me to encapsulate both Sasha's wry humour in the outer portions and his generosity of spirit in the great, beautiful Prokofiev melody at the very centre.

Actually these two's performance also convinced me of what's 'inside' the finale too, and that follows on this time round. If you like what you hear, don't hesitate to watch the entire performance.

Remembering Noelle - and Sviatoslav

Sviatoslav Sergeyevich Prokofiev, the composer's elder son, died in Paris on 7 December. He was 86, a grander age than I'd (mis)remembered, but I feel sad that I hadn't seen him over the past couple of years - he was too unwell to travel for any of the more recent Prokofiev events. We were not expecting to have to mourn/celebrate anyone other than our dear Noelle Mann at her memorial concert on Wednesday, but in the event Sviatoslav's death cast me back to all the others we have lost in this sphere - his younger brother Oleg, his wife Nadezhda, Christopher Palmer, Ted and Joan Downes, Viktor Varunts...I'm sure there are others I haven't recalled.

The above photograph was taken when I visited Sviatoslav at his Paris apartment and was royally welcomed by both him and the warmly hospitable Nadezhda, who died not long after our meeting. In addition to going over his memories, he'd kindly looked over the chapters of the book in which he played a part, and made detailed, helpful suggestions. He was always courteous, slightly shy but not exactly reserved, and like his brother suggested that, whatever the problems over the years, Sergey and Lina had always been loving parents who instilled decent human values in their boys. There's a fine interview with him on one of the Prokofiev websites. As I've said many times before Sviatoslav's son Serge Junior looks more like the great man than either of the sons; it's always quite uncanny meeting him. Our thoughts to him and his family. On which note, while looking at the memorial on the sprkfv website, I came across this lovely group picture taken in 1997.


By no means everybody's there, but the ones featured are, left to right, Nadezhda and Sviatoslav, Beatrice, Oleg, Cordelia, Gabriel, Nika, Lina, Serge Jr. and Irina.

The concert, which inevitably Serge Jr. wasn't able to attend, was a total triumph - I imagine that anyone in the surprisingly large audience who had come just to hear the music and hadn't known Noelle would have been very much enriched. As we knew they would be by Dmitri Alexeev's almost frighteningly well articulated account of the Sixth Piano Sonata, which had most of us leaning forward in our seats no doubt with hair standing literally on end.

But I was also especially moved by hearing Barbara Nissman's big, warm piano sound in the perfect space of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. It took me aback when Chris Mann came on to introduce the programme and the applause just went on and on. So, feeling like blubbing out loud, I was duly centred when Barbara launched into Liszt's surprisingly restrained transcription of Bach's Organ Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV543, followed by crisp Prokofiev and the ineffable Rachmaninov G flat major Prelude.

Sasha Ivashkin, I'll hazard, gave his best ever performance of Prokofiev's Cello Sonata, cushioned and given room to breathe by Alexeev's incredibly sensitive piano partnership (at the 2003 St John's Smith Square concert organised by Noelle, Sasha had been partnered by Mikhail Rudy, while Alexeev made a superb team with Dmitry Sitkovetsky in the First Violin Sonata). I always turn to the cello sonata's middle movement in Rostropovich's world premiere recording with Richter, when of course the ailing composer would have been in the audience, for the gorgeous melody at its heart. But I hadn't rated so highly its counterpart in the finale until I heard the way Ivashkin and Alexeev conveyed its introspective soul. Alas, there are no professional shots of the event, so you'll have to make do with my makeshift pic of the three artists receiving flowers at the end.


There were so many interesting folk to see in the interval that I was almost late for joining the Goldsmiths Chamber Choir at the beginning of the second half (out came the horrid black Armani shirt which I'd bought half-price in Jermyn Street before my first Kalina Choir concert with Noelle). As Chris said, Noelle had never been able to marshal as large a choir as this in her lifetime, so she would have been pleased. We sang Tsar Fyodor's 'Dostoino yest' as harmonised by Ossorguine and Kastalsky's Cherubic Hymn.

I had the option of joining Goldsmiths forces for Prokofiev's apocalyptic trailblazer Semero ikh (Seven, they are Seven), but declined with two excuses: that one afternoon rehearsal probably wasn't enough, and that I wanted to hear it in the hall. I'm glad I did, because it sounded extraordinary: what quality from the glissandoing, growling augmented brass section, what a wail the sopranos set up in one of the weirder incantations. Here's a suggestion of the forces at the end of a very varied and emotionally rather exhausting evening.


Glad we had the chance to recollect in tranquillity at Deptford Town Hall last night. Sasha chaired reminiscences from myself, Barbara, Simon Morrison, Nelly Kravets (who nearly had us all lose it by reading Noelle's last e-mail to her) and Fiona McKnight of the archive.That, too, has been recorded so I'd like to recapture what passed in a bit of a haze. But I was delighted to see a former student, Yumiko Nunokawa, who travelled all the way from Japan with Shin-Ichi Numabe (Nelly, by the way, had come from Tel Aviv, Barbara and Simon from America). More on our meeting in another shorter entry.

Afterwards, Chris treated us to a meal in the Greenwich Cafe Rouge, a lively occasion which I know Noelle would have liked (could earlier hear her saying 'enough already!' as we got to the end of our tributes). Here's the stalwart Mr Mann, who's very blunt about simply getting through the time since Noelle's death but always seems able to pull himself together and rises to the occasion, with Barbara (partly because I loved her winter wear).


We promised more get-together music making and feasting to remember our doyenne at least once a year.

Listen!

Or rather 'Slushay!', the title of an early revolutionary song used in the atmospheric first movement of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony. Its text was crucial to the composer, beginning 'the autumn night is as black as treason, black as the tyrant's conscience'. 'Listen to the Banned' is a collection of tracks by artists around the world whose free expression has been curtailed by censorship. It's been very carefully assembled by the multitalented Deeyah, born in Norway of Punjabi/Pashtun parents.

It's better than I could have hoped, since many of the artists represented aren't merely giving us plain protest songs. Most are superb and refined musicians, starting with Iranian singer Mahsa Vahdat.


She takes me back to our Christmas day in Isfahan some years ago, when our hotelier invited us to his home and gave us a concert featuring his teenage son, a superb player of that weird and wonderful big drum with jingles the daf (we have one sitting here at home, a handsome beast; I think that's what Mahsa is holding in the above photo), and his wife, a first-class singer who, like Mahsa and many others, can't perform in public except in the company of a male singer.

I suppose it's because I have a special, if unversed, affection for middle-eastern artistry that I love the subtle art of Afghanistan's Farhad Darya, Lebanon's Marcel Khalife and the Israeli Palestinian Kamilya Jubran. But the marimba/mbira accompaniment to the song of Zimbabwe's Chiwoniso Maraire is enchanting too. And there's a real note of exuberant protest in the number 'to freedom' Uighur Kurah Sultan composed while in prison under Chinese orders (sadly he died in 2006).


I especially like the segue from Sultan into the solo voice of the Alevit Kurd Ferhat Tunc.

One quibble, the usual when it comes to the loose title of 'world music'. It's not enough just to have a paragraph on the artists, however handsomely produced the booklet; we need texts and translations of all the songs. But this is a good 'beat the Xmas mush' present: read about it here and buy it on Amazon; you'll be promoting the work of Freemuse, disseminating freedom of song throughout the world.

And you can help another deserving cause make it to Xmas slot no. 1 (though sadly the X Factor winner is no doubt the firm favourite; to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw on inferior French farce, 'ten million teenage girls can't be right'). I like the subversive idea of a specially recorded Cage 4'33, but I also like this, not exactly as music, but the idea and the film are good. You'll need to click again on the screen once it's started to get the full YouTube picture.



And all power to the students and lecturers who yesterday claimed public spaces to fight back with classes and speeches, not brickbats. Hope they manage the same today. How proud I was of Goldsmiths forces last night at Noelle's memorial concert for flinging out Prokofiev's quasi-revolutionary 1917/18 incantation Seven, they are seven so superbly. They'll need a bit of that eloquent, focused fire for their protests. More on the superlatively moving and engaging concert when I get some pictures through.