Pictures from a presentation

Awards ceremonies are always best approached with circumspection – not difficult in this case, as I hadn’t heard a single one of the ‘winners’ in the BBC Music Magazine’s final list for 2013 – and then you can only be pleasantly surprised.

As I was on Tuesday afternoon. I’ve written up the event for The Arts Desk, homing in on what most interested me. The three strands of live performance were bound to take the lion’s share, yet there was no contest from Janina Fialkowska and even the charismatic Angelika Kirchschlager; Mei Yi Foo swept us all away with the canny choice of pieces by Gubaidulina, Unsuk Chin and Ligeti from her Best Newcomer award-winning disc ‘Musical Toys’.

She was snapped brilliantly by the BBC Music Magazine’s photographer, John Millar, both in action (above) and alongside some of the splendid Kings Place artwork (the shot I used over on TAD). I thought Millar’s top shot was of Jacques Imbrailo, Mark Padmore, Foo, Berlin Phil cellist Olaf Maninger and the so compelling-to-look-at Kaija Saariaho (a thoroughly sincere person always willing to give of her time, as I know from a short acquaintance). I used it over there, but I can’t resist including it here too

especially as it’s followed by formality, with Janina Fialkowska joining the picture.

Several other photos I couldn’t accommodate, or they didn’t tell the story I wanted. One is of Tony Hall and Sir Mark Elder head to head

before S’Mark swept the board with his Halle recording of Elgar’s The Apostles. This too I have yet to hear, but I didn’t much care for the same team’s The Kingdom, nor indeed for S’Mark’s Goodall-in-Wagner approach to Elgar, who always seems to me to need much more sweeping along, especially in oratorios like these. But we’ll see. 

A few more photos: here’s Mark Padmore looking moved, as indeed he was, talking about Bach as a lifelong companion and the uncanny inspiration of Peter Sellars.

And composer Dai Fujikura, interesting sound-maker in the concert I caught of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Japanese day, quirkily setting up Foo, whom he obviously admires.

As for ‘Musical Toys’, I thought it might just be through her canny choice of repertoire that Foo triumphed, but having listened to the disc a couple of times, I hear so much imagination in the distant voices of the Gubaidulina, while the Chin is technically terrific, and you should really try out the later Ligeti pieces when the notes of the chromatic scale begin to accumulate (he starts with one, ends with all twelve).

It was serendipity that the first unknown personage I was led up to, via the constantly popping-up Sebastian Scotney and David Fraser of ECM, happened to be the founder of Foo’s intriguing new label Odradek and also a pianist, John Clement Anderson. He lives in Pescara and so – with him, I’m presuming – does one of the other pianists featured on the label, Pina Napolitana from, yes, Naples, whose all-Schoenberg disc I need to hear at leisure with a score. Already, though, I’ve been hooked by another featured artist, Domenico Codispoti. 

His Liszt B minor Sonata was bound to feel just a little straightforward with Khatia Buniatishvili’s crazy interpretation still ringing in my ears, but he’s clearly a real poet, as the Petrarch Sonnets clearly show. And what’s haunting me is a Granados piece from Goyescas I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know, El amor y la muerte. This is the image, from Goya's Los Caprichos. 

The ‘ballad’builds around Goya's moment. A young man is dying in the arms of his beloved after losing a duel. The strength of the will to live ebbs and flows alongside the woman's sad consoling song, which breaks the heart before the final darkness falls, at least in this performance. Such profundity. If Odradek carries on at this level, it should have a few more award-winners on its hands. How delighted I am to find that the company has put up a film of Codispoti playing this very piece. Give it your full attention; and if you don't, you'll probably find as it develops that you drop anything you're doing.

My afternoon with Valery

I've known longer waits than Sunday afternoon's predictably leisurely build up to the Gergiev interview I'd been asked to conduct and write up for the Concertgebouw (which he visits early next year for the first time since 1995). There was the 1991 hanging around in the antechamber to his Mariinsky - then Kirov - office, fascinating to watch the various petitioners come and go; the all-day will-it-won't-it-happen anticipation of a second interview which eventually ended up at 1am in a bedroom of Petersburg's Astoria Hotel; the third wait culminating in a speed along the Neva to the Gergiev family home; and the interviews snatched during the two intervals of an extraordinary Mariinsky concert (viola concertos by Kancheli and Gubaidulina framing a Mahler Six conducted straight through with barely a pause between movements).

You might think me a bit of a masochist if I say it's always worth it. But so responsive, rather than on-transmit, is our Valery that something unexpected usually transpires. Besides, the journey, as it were, can be as interesting as the arrival, and never more so than on this occasion. Columbia Artists Management had suggested I show up at 1pm after the Barbican morning rehearsal and said they'd confirm it. They didn't, weren't to be tracked down, so I blagged my way backstage and then had to furnish a business card for the suspicious trio who greeted me. This seemed to conjure up Columbia's vice president (and Gergiev's manager) Doug Sheldon, who took me in to the conductor's room. And there a lively discussion on various players and halls was to-ing and fro-ing between a very engaged Gergiev and four other musicians including - the one I thought I recognised, and he helped me to place him - heldentenor Simon O'Neill.

Simon needed a short session to sing a bit of Siegfried through with Gergiev, and outside I met a colleague I haven't chinwagged with for some time, vivacious Tommy Pearson, who's made films with VG and wanted to nab him to discuss 3D projection among other things. So it transpired that Valery, Tommy, Doug, the LSO's digital marketing manager Jo Johnson and I all piled into a waiting car at 2.20. The driver had a rather treasurable rendition of the maestro's name stuck up on the window; I needed to edit this shot so as not to put egg on the face of the car-hire firm.


And so we all had a splendid risotto in Charterhouse Square, a lively batting to and fro between us all and Valery curious as ever to know what we thought of this and that. We discussed the Hochhauser tours and visa problems - no prizes for guessing how VG sorts out his - Abbado in Rome (Gergiev was conducting the Santa Cecilia orchestra on the day Claudio arrived for rehearsals), film music, ballet v opera at the Mariinsky and what I thought of Deborah Warner's ENO Onegin which Gergiev will be conducting when it arrives at the Met (I could only be diplomatic and say it might be very different, which no doubt it will be, with Netrebko and Kwiecien).

Also had a good chat with the others while Valery went off to discuss future LSO seasons with its managing director Kathryn McDowell. Then back he came - clutching Muti's recording of the Scriabin symphonies, which may or may not be a clue as to what's in the pipeline - off my other lunch companions went and we finally had our interview at 5pm. Whereupon Gergiev, who had been so delightfully freewheeling and curious though seeming to crumple physically somewhat after his spruce demeanour four hours earlier, spoke with perfect focus and diplomatic charm about the Concertgebouw, Dutilleux and Leonidas Kavakos (who'll be playing the Sibelius concerto). I left exhilarated, as always, and the evening's concert, with the gorgeous Anne-Sophie Mutter on riveting form in a Gubaidulina masterpiece, was much more than just the icing on the cake.


Love this photo of all three artists at an earlier recording session for the work (Gubaidulina centre) by Harald Hoffmann for DG - included it in the Arts Desk review but can't resist repeating it here.