On the Rach Pag

Spent a jolly, sunny afternoon on the Southbank dialoguing and monologuing on the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in the company of Rachmaninov fans (from the -off Society and the Philharmonia Friends) and the compelling, if controversial Nikolay Lugansky. Let's face it, his manner divides opinions: many find him cold, and I don't understand that at all. All emotion is kept between the lines, with the subtlest of rubato and the ability to change colour on a single note. His performance of the Rhapsody on Saturday evening was crystal clear, beautifully sprung - it was a joy to watch the fingers bouncing off the keyboard - and hitting just the right notes of tenderness in the famous 18th variation - that near-inversion of the Paganini Caprice, as the above example shows, and as Lugansky demonstrated in the talk once we'd persuaded him over to the keyboard - without any excess sentimentality. The art that conceals art.


As a person (above left, beside the grinning, chin-up goon) he is, as I knew he would be, easy to talk to, responsive, enthusiastic, full of interesting ideas. The whole thing, I add rather nervously, was filmed, so no doubt there'll be a post mortem at some point. We locked horns just a bit over whether the Dies Irae, the Latin chant for the day of wrath, links to Russian orthodox znamenny chant or not, in which case you could say that the work has some Russian links (Nikolay insists it's the only one where there are none). But this led to a passionate defence of the free-flow autobiography in the Fourth Concerto, a work to which Lugansky is passionately devoted; and indeed of Rachmaninov's own style as a pianist.

That led me to bring up, mentioning no names at the time, what I thought was the ill-advised attempt of Stephen Hough to resurrect Rachmaninov's fast speeds in interpretation - and quick as a flash, also without naming names (and I've no idea if he knows Hough's versions), Lugansky said he thought it wouldn't work, because you'd only get the leggiero without any of the composer-pianist's phenomenal pesante force at those tempi. Exactly right. I still think Hough shouldn't be playing Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky at all - at best it's a rush, missing notes blurred by sustaining pedal, at worst a complete dog's dinner (that awful performance of the Rach 2 at the Proms a couple of years ago).

Anyway, we're here to praise Caesars Rachmaninov and Lugansky, not to bury well-meaning Stephen. But I sure would bury Alexander Lazarev on present form. He launched the evening's concert with another interpretation to forget - a Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings crushed by his completely unnecessary brute force, arms flailing left and right as he gave emphatic cues to violins and cellos they didn't need (and at one point, in the cellos' case, fatally failed to follow properly). Monstrous. As for the pause between Elegie and Finale which brought ill-timed applause and unleashed a battery of latecomers, that was his fault: a sensitive conductor would have gone straight into the slow introduction with the first of Tchaikovsky's Russian themes. The Rach Pag was surprisingly together, but still the orchestra was far too loud. I didn't hang around to hear Lazarev stomp all over Shostakovich 6, especially as I'd heard the Philharmonia give a riveting performance of it with Ashkenazy over at the QEH while the Festival Hall was being renovated.

Other than that sour note, it was a fun day. We heard a great deal from Lugansky about the Rachmaninov country estate of Ivanovka in Tambov province and the amazing moral force of the man who's run it for decades and had it rebuilt according to the original plans.


I sounded off about the Dies Irae from its origins to Berlioz, Liszt (the incredible Totentanz) and the sweep of Rachmaninov's output (with excerpts from his own recordings of The Isle of the Dead, the Vocalise and the Third Symphony). Found Oleg Kagan's recording of the Denisov-arranged Paganini 24th Caprice and Manze/Egarr in the Corelli variations on La Follia, basis for Rachmaninov's own set, which Lugansky thinks is his most difficult and ascetic work (though he plays it superbly alongside the Chopin and Paganini variations on a treasurable disc). Gillian Frumkin, loyal student and Philharmonia Friends dynamo, took me and the super-efficient, friendly girls from the Phil for a plate of pasta at La Strada beneath the hall - a perfect afternoon to sit out and watch the thronging crowds. So let's end with a couple of shots of a rare true May afternoon on the Southbank before the torrential rains of Sunday.

Brodsky's sentimental journey

And the ship sails on - to Venice or Petersburg? Is the exiled poet on board going to see his mother and father again, and will they be dead or alive? The cinema of fluid, dream-like images is established right at the start of 70-year old master-animator Andrey Khrzhanovsky's first feature film, A Room and a Half. A free fantasia taking as its starting-point Joseph Brodsky's memoir of childhood, or rather of being the child of two idiosyncratic parents, it's a total masterpiece, a Gesamtkunstwerk as Vladimir Jurowski wrote to me when I asked if he'd seen it, in which image both real and animated, poetry, magnificently-acted drama and music all knit in a perfect 130-minute whole.

As I think I wrote below, I questioned the wisdom of packing in a film on the evening of Noelle's funeral. But this couldn't have chimed better with the reflective mood, and it all came together in an exquisite epilogue where Brodsky sits round the table with his parents and asks them how they died. And then his mother asks how he died, too. I trust that isn't a spoiler, because it's certainly not the point and follows the logic of the film. The senior Brodskys are superlatively well played by Alisa Freyndlikh and Sergey Yursky. Here's Freyndlikh, a hugely respected actress in Russia, with the great man and their interpreter at Monday's Lumiere screening.


At first you think these two are too old to be the parents of a young boy, but of course that's part of the point: as Brodsky writes in the memoir, 'If my mind gravitates now to their images as old people, it has to do presumably with the knack of memory for retaining last impressions best'.


One of the most touching animation sequences is the scene of two crows watching TV; one tenderly wraps a red scarf around the other. 'There are two crows in my backyard here in South Hadley', writes Brodsky. 'They are quite big, almost raven-size, and they are the first thing I see every time I drive to or leave the house. They appeared here one by one: the first, two years ago, when my mother died; the second, last year, right after my father died. Or else that's the way I noticed their presence'.


But it's not all elegiac. The way Khrzhanovsky films Brodsky's roistering youth makes the Leningrad students on the rooftops seem like participants in a Paris-set nouvelle vague movie


and the scenes where he brings girls back to the 'half' barely partitioned off from the 'room' are witty, too. Above all the flight-sequences, over Petersburg - to which the film is also a lovesong - or Venice


are unforgettable - especially when the Brodskys sell their piano in preparation for the forced Jewish exodus to Siberia, prevented only by Stalin's death, and first the piano and then a whole orchestra flies over the Leningrad rooftops. That sequence is included in the trailer, but it feels completely different due to the musical soundtrack, which in the film is a collage beginning with the funeral procession of Mahler's First Symphony and evolving rather nightmarishly. You'll need to click on the screen again once it starts playing to get the full picture over on YouTube.



Music is vitally important to Khrzhanovsky, and he never strikes a false note in his use of it here. What I really wished I'd seen at the Schnittke Festival was the animated film The Glass Harmonica, heavily censored in the late 1960s and with a wonderful score by the composer. Ah well, we'll catch up some other time. But do see this haunting work of genius while you can: I believe it's still on at the Curzon Mayfair at the time of writing.

Quick newsflashes on other great Russian artists, two of them properly covered over on The Arts Desk: the Minervaesque Elisabeth Leonskaja (born in Georgia to Russian parents, since some have asked) went deep as ever in Schumann's Piano Concerto and a Chopin encore at the Barbican last Saturday; on Wednesday Vadim Rapin stunned alongside Gergiev and the LSO in the new MacMillan Violin Concerto, a work that's here to stay; and before a more trad programme tomorrow (Saturday evening), I'm getting to talk to the great Nikolay Lugansky about Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and sounding off my own thoughts on this fascinating piece, too.


Do come along - it's a real bargain, a full afternoon's entertainment - 2-4pm, Chelsfield Room, Festival Hall - for a tenner. Tickets available on 0800 652 6717. End of plug.