Zoom courses: from Lucretia to Rosenkavalier

"S'ist mein Leiblied' - 'it's my favourite song' - declares Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier of his signature waltz-tune. By the same token, Rosenkavalier is probably my Leiboper - certainly the one I know best, the intricacies of which, in both Hofmannsthal's libretto and Strauss's music, seem inexhaustible. This coming term's Zoom course, starting tomorrow (9 January) will be my third visit in the opera classes, but since the last time there have been new recordings and new productions on video (including Bruno Ravella's for Garsington, the exquisite and Grace-Kelly-stylish Miah Persson's Marschallin and Hanna Hipp's fine Octavian pictured in it above by Johan Persson; Irish National Opera takes on this staging in March with a fine cast led by Celine Byrne, the fabulous Paula Murrihy and Claudia Boyle). There's always more to discover. And as always when I repeat a classic, I don't look back on old notes. 

Last term ended rather more positively than I was expecting. I'd been reluctant to revisit Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, so whittled it down to three rather than five classes (Rosenkavalier will have seven, Korngold's Die tote Stadt also three). Ronald Duncan's often excruciating libretto troubled me even more in Oliver Mears' production when I saw it at Aldeburgh. 

I'd always wondered about André Obey's play Le viol de Lucrèce - about which all the contributors to the Rape of Lucretia symposium book I picked up are so cagey that an addendum slip had to be printed giving it proper credit. Then I found that Thornton Wilder had translated it in 1933. Surely Eric Crozier, at least, knew this? It's so much better, in every respect, than the drama Duncan fashioned. For a start there's no Christian overlay. There ARE two narrators, a man who follows Tarquin's progress, a woman who reflects Lucrèce, but they don't appear until Obey's second act (the first has two soldiers relay, chorus-like, what's going on in Collatine's tent). The aftermath is much more acceptable today: Lucrèce as powerful tragic heroine, knowing that her divulging of the rape will trigger Collatine's vengeance and a Roman uprising, not some self-disgusted victim. 

At the beginning of the last and third class I continued the comparison between opera and play. But joining us were Jean Rigby, the most moving Lucretia I've ever seen on stage, and her husband Jamie Hayes, who'd directed the work for British Youth Opera. Jean had already instigated a kind of cast reunion of the original Glyndebourne Albert Herring - since I don't seem to have written about it here, I must boast about the other visitors: John Graham Hall, Alan Opie, Felicity Palmer, Alexander Oliver and Felicity Lott (who sang Lady Billows in a revival) - and I knew what a fun and generous person she is. 

Everything Jean had to say about the circumstances around that remarkable Graham Vick Lucretia at ENO back in 1987 informed what we were about to watch - namely Act Two from the moment Tarquinius awakens Lucretia to the end of the opera. And the film itself was testament to how, when every singer has worked on phrasing and meaning so intensively - not just Jean, but everyone else in an extraordinary cast - reservations about the infelicties of the text vanish in the face of such consummate music-making, such singing-acting. The whole film is available on YouTube but in a fuzzy picture, so I recommend you get the DVD. 

We were blessed with our guests this last term. I'm so happy that John Savournin, our most innovative living Savoyard as singer and director, was able to join us for the two classes on The Yeomen of the Guard (I still didn't manage to persuade two students that G&S is worthy of keeping company with the best). John's brilliant re-imagining of Patience for nine singers at Wilton's Music Hall was the big surprise in my operatic 'Best of 2022' for The Arts Desk. When we spoke he was preparing for the last performance of Golijov's Ainadamar at Scottish Opera, a production I long to see; hence, I think, the moustache.

And right at the end of the five classes on Verdi's Aida, I suddenly remembered that Tamara Wilson, one of the most generous of guests way back when I was still giving live classes at the Frontline Club and she was performing Leonora in The Force of Destiny at ENO, had sung the title role all round the world (but not, sadly, in the UK, and after a bad experience in Verona which I think may have had to do with a refusal to sing it in blackface, as the vile Netrebko recently did, she has retired the role from her rep). 

When we met online, Tammy was preparing to revisit the role of Turandot, this time for Barrie Kosky in Amsterdam (I was so hoping we could go and stay with our friends there, and see it, before Christmas, but too many hospital appointments got in the way). I remembered how revelatory she had been on the previous visit about how she marks up the score, and includes intentions, and so requested she did the same here. The 'intention' behind 'straniero, ascolta!', for instance, reads 'feel pleasure that I'm going to kill him'.

So yes, what fun we had. And I'm hoping we'll be able to welcome at least one Marschallin, Octavian, Sophie and Ochs to the Rosenkavalier sessions; watch this space. Still not too late to join if you can - from anywhere in the world, time depending. And if you can't make the class, you get the video. Full details below; click to enlarge.

Strauss conducting Tristan

'Now I’ve conducted Tristan for the first time, and it was the most wonderful day of my life'. I used the same quotation - the 27-year-old Richard Strauss to Wagner's widow Cosima, on 17 January 1892 - to introduce my review of the Glyndebourne performance at the Proms earlier this week, because I surmised Robin Ticciati felt that way on conducting his first Wagner opera for the first time too.The above photos were sent, signed, from Weimar to fellow-composer Humperdinck, whose Hänsel und Gretel Strauss premiered in that beautiful town in 1893. 

Tristan und Isolde at Weimar starred Strauss's future bride, Pauline de Ahna (also a favoured Elisabeth at Bayreuth) and his pupil Heinrich Zeller, for whom he wrote the insanely taxing role of Guntram in his hyper-Wagnerian first opera. There were no cuts - rare then, and still not so common now (the Aix production conducted by Rattle this year has a whopping one in the dialectics of night and day, love and death, the lovers indulge in before the Liebesnacht proper gets going. I think we should hear it all - there are no commonplace bars in Tristan). 

We have one precious sound-document of how Strauss approached this most elusive of all great masterpieces: a recording of the Prelude made in 1928 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (the best sound is on the DG pressing, but that's not downloadable here).

Yes, it's fastish - difficult to compare timings with other Preludes because there's a 'concert ending' which takes us to the Liebestod music - but the rubato, the ebb and flow, are masterly and above all human. That's the difficulty for the conductor to decide: human or oceanic? Others prefer slower tempi, surprisingly so Toscanini (but then remember that the biggest discrepancy in Parsifal Act Ones at Bayreuth was between Strauss and Toscanini, who took half an hour longer...). In my first Opera in Depth class on Tristan und Isolde, I played both the Strauss and this NBC recording.

All the students who spoke preferred the Strauss; I was delighted. Though it's very much a matter of choice and temperament, when Wagner only writes 'Langsam' ('slow') at the start. Conductors would be wise to observe his tempo fluctuations thereafter. Anyway, in the second class, I played the way to the climax in performances by Stokowski (very volatile, masterfully conducted, and played by the Philadelphia Orchestra) and, for slow-burn intensity, by Mravinsky and Pappano. Personally, I felt a 'yes, this is how it should be' once the drama of the Prelude properly flows from Ticciati at the Proms. You would be well advised to listen to the complete performance while it's still available on BBC Sounds (until the end of this month).

We've now passed the halfway mark in Class Five last Wednesday, and of course I have nothing in my head but the sounds of the 'Liebesnacht'. The compelling but deeply unsettling way that director Krzysztof Warlikowski handles it in Munich, with spellbinding performances from Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros (pictured above) and superlative conducting from Kirill Petrenko, seems to me the best approach I've seen. 

Soundwise, I'm constantly shifting in examples between so many recordings, but predominantly Lauritz Melchior and Kirsten Flagstad with Beecham (or Reiner), Bayreuth '66 (Nilsson and Windgassen with Böhm conducting), Vickers and Dernesch with Karajan, Margaret Price and Rene Kollo with Carlos Kleiber, Linda Esther Gray and John Mitchinson with Goodall. Linda is returning to talk to us next week, and Peter Rose will appear to discuss Marke's monologue. Later we hope to welcome Robin Ticciati and Antonio Pappano, and Anne Evans in the final class. More in the pipeline. It's rich!

Rouvali: great performances with dodgy endings

I get no medal for having predicted, in my Arts Desk review of Santtu-Matias Rouvali's December 2018 Strauss concert, that either he or Jakub Hrůša would be appointed to succeed Esa-Pekka Salonen as the Philharmonia's Principal Conductor in 2021. Hrůša is the more experienced of the two, and a deep thinker open to ideas in interview - one of the most memorable I've ever had the pleasure to be granted - but apparently the players found him 'too demanding'. So they've gone for the wow factor and the mad hair (straight as a dye in a photo I found of SMR in his student days). All recent images here by Camilla Greenwell for the Philharmonia.

Two further performances in just over a week gave me a chance to discover further what makes Rouvali tick (in interview, he's surprisingly nervy and a bit evasive, or that may be a language thing). Biggest asset: he shows that natural sense of freedom/rubato and the ability to quicken or slow the pulse in an instant. Abbado, Haitink, the Järvis, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and Yannick Nézet-Séguin all have it; Rattle and Salonen don't.

The interpretation I heard of my favourite Strauss tone poem, the Symphonia Domestica (alongide Don Quixote, which I know is objectively the finest), launching Gothenburg's fabulous Point Music Festival was mostly miraculous. All the better, too, for coming from that most refined of symphony orchestras - stringwise, to my mind, up there with Berlin, Amsterdam and Vienna - in a hall which really allows big sounds to breathe and not attack you like an angry rice pudding (as my nearest and dearest once said of an Ashkenazy Alpine Symphony in the Royal Festival Hall).

As I've already stated in my Arts Desk roundup, Rouvali's genius was at its brightest in the difficult ebb and flow of the huge slow movement. And then, as the crazy family-reunion grand finale should goes up a notch in fruitcakiness to sehr lebhaft (crotchet = 116), Rouvali kept it steady. No wonder people were criticising the work itself for going on too long. The parody of the Beethovenesque not-knowing-when-to-stop can only succeed if it's wild. Yes, the horns got their insane whoops right, but that's not the point. A fall at the last hurdle. 

The following Thursday, the Philharmonia were using his latest concert here to celebrate the appointment (didn't hang around much at the Ballroom 'welcome', too many platitudes being spouted). It began sensationally, with a deliciously layered account of Adams' perfect curtain-raiser The Chairman Dances. Pekka Kuusisto seemed a bit too muted - not literally - for the overloud brass in the opening movement of Stravinsky's Violin Concerto, and saved heartfelt expression for the beautiful homage to Bach which proves the work has soul. 

Petrushka was bound to be a brilliant showcase for Rouvali's sense of refined colour, as the Musorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition had been in an earlier Philharmonia spectacular. He favoured tone-painting and conductor's tricks over storytelling, which was fine on its own terms. All solos were flawless and characterful; the trumpeters were going great guns. Then, after the Rite-ish onrush of the Masqueraders - swelling trill; finish. The concert ending, which I'm sure Stravinsky must only ever have intended for performance of the orchestral 'three pieces'. No pathetic death, no ghost on the roof. 

This shock happened to me only once before, in a BBCSO/Bělohlávek Prom for which I'd prepared the nine-year-old son of a friend I took as guest. I was aghast then that he didn't get the full story, and I went into a spin here. What kind of musician does that? Surely only one without theatrical instinct. Rouvali partly redeemed himself with a virtuoso performance on the 'bones' with Monti's Csardas (accompanied by the wonderful Liz Burley, superb in 'Petrushka's room'). But I'd much rather have had the last five or so minutes of the ballet. My Arts Desk colleague Bernard Hughes hit the nail on the head (which means I totally agree with him). 

Redemption, then, on his SMR's first recording with the GSO, which I finally listened to. Hair standing on end from the first string tremolos of the young(ish) Sibelius's first movement onwards. A magnificent performance from start to finish. Let's hope for more like this, and no deflationary endings. Which reminds me that there won't be anything deflationary about the greatest living conductor, Bernard Haitink (pictured below at the Barbican in March by Mark Allan), bowing out in September. 

He's decided that a Lucerne appearance will be his last, having celebrated his 90th birthday with the LSO in style. Wise self-knowledge to the end (of his professional career, that is; may he enjoy as many more years as he wants feeding his endless curiosity). I'll never forget his totally inspirational masterclasses in Lucerne, his Bruckner 4 or Beethoven 6, among the most recent performances, and so much else going further back.  Don't miss the Vienna Philharmonic Prom on 3 September; queue for an Arena place (£6) from noon if necessary. I did just that for Bernstein and the same orchestra in Mahler Five, and that's a concert which likewise I'll remember as long as I live. 

Cleo from 7 to 8.30

I've made my homage to Friday's special event on The Arts Desk, and I don't have many more words to add; I just want the excuse to add a couple more photos taken at Friday evening's astonishing event by Patrick Anderson. J and I, reeling out stunned by the high level of the 90-year-old's delivery in four songs - that's technique and soul for you - and by her obvious Menschian qualities, recalled that La Laine was always in the background as we grew up - her jazz and scat-singing, endlessly impersonated, at a more sophisticated level than that of a torchsong belter like Shirley Bassey (often watched at home with the sound down, my parents' idea of fun). Yet she is undeniably one of the greats.

I see I've already told how when I shared a flat in No. 32 Dundas Street in my second year at Edinburgh University, we wore out a budget-price reissue of Cleo singing in the 1950s. And in the review I mention the sensation, at her appearance in Michael Tilson Thomas's LSO series The Gershwin Years, of feeling as if she was singing to me alone, so direct was her communication. Those flashing eyes roving round the audience and fixing on individuals were still at work on Friday. Kudos to Jude Kelly, again, for choosing so well in the Southbank's (B)Old - as in 'Be Old', creatively - festival. Sorry to have missed Julie 'Going to the Zoo' Felix in the Clore Ballroom earlier.

Feeling dizzy from ten days of spectacular events. This would have to be the greatest, but the reminder of what peerless ensemble acting is all about in the Maly Theatre of St Petersburg's meticulously observed double whammy was wondrous and has sent me back to Grossman's Life and Fate to try again (this time I'll stay the course).  Cédric Tiberghien's exquisite and encyclopedic Chopin playing redeemed Paul Kildea's narrative in the spectacular setting of Brighton Pavilion's Music Room (more on that little excursion anon). The accompaniment to the 1926 silent film all too loosely based on the operatic Der Rosenkavalier in the carefully renovated Queen Elizabeth Hall was a treat - the first real sugar rush of the week.

The second was the opera itself, on Sunday at Glyndebourne. I've written up my second visit to the Richard Jones production, with a very different revival cast, here on The Arts Desk. But I ought to add here the interesting perspectives given by my companion, artist friend (and mother of our youngest goddaughter Mirabel) Edwina and her friend Christine. Here's Edsy before our picnic in blissful seclusion.

They found the opera spooky, weird and unsettling - the Jones effect, but it's definitely there in the music's queasy gearchanges and timeleaps. As Bill Knight took a special batch of photos for The Arts Desk, it's a pleasure to have the excuse of using more than the original four over there. Here are Rachel Willis-Sørensen, a redhead taking very well to the raven-haired look of original Marschallin Kate Royal, and Kate Lindsay, the most lustrous of Octavians (Tara Erraught first time round was funnier in the cross-dressing comedy, but not quite on the same level vocally).

No question about this Leopold, bastard son of Ochs and acted once again by Joseph Badar  as a crucial component of the drama, presenting the silver rose.  Here he is flanked by Brindley Sherratt as his feckless dad and Willis-Sørensen.

Erraught's and Lars Woldt's were the faces made for comedy last time: on Sunday the winning mug belonged to Elizabeth Sutphen as a feisty Sophie.

Rose-presentation: again unforgettable the slight swaying, prefaced by raised heels from all which get a laugh, but the seriousness kicks in again very quickly.

Time for Sherratt to step forward fully in his visual transformation (gammon make-up and hideous wig). Ochs and Annina (Stephanie Lauricella, classy casting),

delight in the letter as the retinue unfold girlie cards to parallel the fashion pictures for the Marschallin's levée in Act One

and payup time in Act Three (oddly Bill doesn't have any pics of the big stuff thereafter).

After that claustrophobia it was good to get out into the gardens in a blissful evening light overlooking the fields and downs.

I don't always make the first Glyndebourne weekend, so I'd forgotten what flourishes in the garden at this time. Irises everywhere, of course

complemented by alliums

and the yellow variety by the lake.

Wisteria still flourishing by the house

and the first roses along the wall.

Dicksonia antarctica springing up from its winter sleep

and one final shot of picnickers with the mulberry in the foreground. What a lush time of year.

Lovely weather for the wedding, too, the previous day. Yes, I watched the service live, switching off rapidly as the coach hit Windsor town and the blether of the BBC commentators became too much (only Kirsty Young kept it real). Loved the contrast between Tallis's 'If Ye Love Me' and the Gospel choir. Both performances were excellent, but I'm glad that cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason had the limelight. He'll stay calm and centred now that he's a megastar, and no-one deserved the success more; he's a natural.

Decca issued this photo (uncredited) to celebrate big sales for his debut album, also far from the usual bits and pieces (it includes a complete performance of his signature Shostakovich First Cello Concerto with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by the superb Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla - her CD debut too, I think I'm right in saying).

We're a long way now from Cleo. Or perhaps not... The title, by the way, homages one of my favourite films, which I wrote about here.

Eight from the Gedda collection

I had an amazing, impression-packed three days in Stockholm: three stupendous concerts in the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic's HK Gruber festival (including the great man's definitive, legendary performance - conducting, singing, shouting, kazoo- and recorder-playing - of his ever-startling Frankenstein!!), a brilliantly staged production of the new, hit-and-miss Dracula opera by Victoria Borisova-Ollas and a vulgar, fun one of Turandot at the still-cultish Folkoperan, costumes from Bergman films brilliantly curated in the oppressive but fascinating Hallwylska (House-)Museum. But the biggest surprise was on a freezing Sunday morning when the square between the Scandic Haymarket Hotel where I was staying, formerly the Art Deco department store where Greta Garbo was discovered while working as a shop assistant,

and the Konserthuset, proudly proclaiming its star composer,

was transfigured from a fruit, flower and vegetable market - chanterelles very much the prominent items -

into a fleamarket.

Better than any I've encountered in the UK, its antiques were interesting, a print-stall led me to buy two illustrations from Lindman's 1920 Nordens Flora for less than £6 each - and then I discovered the records. First - on my way to a cash machine to pay for the prints - mixed boxes of LPs at about £1 each, where I snapped up Decca Phase 4 Ketelbey, Drottningholm Court music, an old Melodiya choral disc featuring Rimsky-Korsakov's Tatar Captivity, and this,

the great Gedda singing Swedish patriotic music including gems by Stenhammar and Alfven. Would that I'd discovered the real treasure house earlier. The boxes in question started with what must be the complete discography of the Serge Jaroff Don Cossacks Choir, progressed to a variety of tenors from Russian vintage via Caruso through to more recent contenders, hit a strand of HMV's old Viennese operetta recordings and ended with classic Swedish artists like Elisabeth Söderström. I asked the guy on the stall how much? He replied '30 kronor each'. I pointed out that what I'd already bought were only 10, he reduced it to 20. When, having made a selection, I asked again, he explained why these were more, launching his thunderbolt. This was the private collection of Nicolai Gedda, from his Stockholm apartment on Valhallavägen (his main home was in Switzerland, where he died on 8 January aged 91. A clip from the tribute programme to which I contributed on Radio 3 can still be heard here).

What, break up a treasury, fail to establish an archive? That seemed sad to me. But better that someone should make a selection who really loved the tenor and his wide-ranging artistry. And it turned out that the choice I'd made was actually quite representative. The DG Serge Jaroff LP I chose signalled the involvement of Gedda's adoptive father, Michail Ustinov (distantly related to Peter), who sang bass in the choir.

To be honest, listening was quite a shock - such comically terrible intonation, especially from basses trying for the low notes. But also such esprit and some fine solos. The back of the sleeve was annotated - Gretchaninoff's Credo has 'fakral' (farewell?) beside it, and 'God save thy people' 'Tchaiokvsky OBS'. This is the hymn arranged at the beginning of the 1812 Overture (and sung, in Karajan's recording, by the Serge Jaroff Choir).

There were so many volumes of tenors from Melodiya's 'The World's Leading Interpreters of Music' series, including Yershov and Sobinov. I chose the one dedicated to Nikolay Figner, since his history went back furthest: he created the role of Hermann in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades, opposite his wife Medea as Lisa. The recordings date from 1901-2 and 1909, yet sound amazingly present - enough to tell that this was not a beautiful voice, at least when the tenor was in his early forties, but certainly one full of character, and one hears the heroics not in the Hermann aria but in Davidov's 'Away, away'.

Had to take a token of Gedda's great Swedish predecessor, Jussi Björling, especially as two weeks ago, searching 'Che gelida manina's for the Opera in Depth classes on La bohème, I found the ideal - not his later recording for Beecham (which overall is still THE classic), but one made with Nils Grevellius conducting in 1938. That's not on this LP, but other Grevellius-era recordings are, weirdly remastered with echo-chamber around them in 1961, the year after the troubled tenor's death at the age of 42 (a tear shed here, incidentally, for the news today of Dmitri Hvorostovsky's death from a brain tumour at 55).

I didn't realise Gedda's own debut recital came out as early as 1952. When I went into the BBC studios to record a Radio 3 tribute in January, the aria they played was Lensky's from this LP, with Alceo Galliera conducting the Philharmonia. So delicate, so feminine. The gutsiness came later, but Gedda never pushed like Björling, which is why we heard him singing so well at the age of 72 in the Golders Green Hippodrome (I reproduce the signed ticket on the blog here). The French arias are ravishing, too. This was my most treasurable find: on the inner sleeve is inscribed 'Dorogoi Mamochke, na (can't read the word), ot Koli, Chicago 26/4/1952'). Presumably dedicated to his adoptive mother Olga, his aunt. His real parents were Swedish and half-Russian. To know more about Gedda's humble and clearly not easy beginnings - after which he was swept from being a Stockholm bank clerk to overnight stardom in Adam's Le postillon de Longjumeau at the Royal Stockholm Opera - I've ordered up a second-hand copy of his autobiography, mercifully translated into English.

I could have chosen from the two LPS each of The Gypsy Baron, A Night in Venice and Wiener Blut as the operetta representative, but since it's closer to my heart I went for the excerpts - all that were recorded - from Richard Strauss's Arabella. Gedda features only very briefly in a scene from Act 2, and Schwarzkopf even in her younger days was predictably mannered and faux-girly as the heroine, soubrettish-sounding too. But the prizes here are the Philharmonia horns, presumably led by Dennis Brain, the Mandryka of Josef Metternich, a baritone I'd never paid much attention to before, and the pacy conducting of Lovro von Matačić - would that he had left us complete R Strauss rather than Lehár.

Had to have a specimen of Gedda singing Russian folk music with balalaikas. This is all good, but the two bell numbers at the end with a cappella support are especially magical. As for this,

which I selected before I know whose records these were, it's the original of a CD which has long been such a favourite at home. The CD only has four overlapping songs, including the consummate original version of Soloviev-Sedoy's 'Midnight in Moscow' seductively sung by Vladimir Troshin, and the extras on here include more surprises as to how jazz-oriented Soviet Russia could be in the late 1950s, not least with three guitarists playing the St Louis Blues. When I stayed in St Petersburg with the Romashovs, the grandmother, Elizavata, was fond of a radio station which played nothing but songs by Soloviev-Sedoy and his colleagues. I bet that no longer exists. Anyway, what superb arrangements and fine vocalists on this LP.

Well, you're spared further chronicles of further purchases because first, I had no Swedish notes left before I had to dash in to the afternoon concert, and second, I had reached the limit of what I could pack into my hand luggage. I had to look in two batches - about an hour into my first market browsing, I was heading towards hypothermia and was splendidly revived by fish soup with celery in the wonderfully old-fashioned (and extremely popular) Café Avenyn just down the hill. Which I returned to after the concert to take a breather before catching the Arlanda Express back to the airport, and indulged myself with the rich chocolate of a 'Sarah Bernhardt' (you can get these in the wonderful Bagariet in Covent Garden's Rose Street, too). It had been packed at lunchtime, by the way, a very lively scene, but this was 5pm on the same Sunday, so much quieter.

To scoop up more Geddaiana was so tempting - I now realise from reading how Gedda collected books on art, Russian art especially, that beautiful old volumes on another stall would have been his, too. Someone else was going through a box of letters, but didn't move on in time so I didn't get to see whether those were his as well. I repeat, how sad when the collection of a great person gets broken up and no archive is established. Heck, there ought to be a Gedda Museum in Stockholm. I hope a Swedish musician reads this and heads to the marketplace next Sunday - these mementos need an appreciative home. Anyway, I've done my bit. Watch this space for more on the Bergman exhibition, and The Arts Desk for both an overall Stockholm/Gruber piece as well as a transcription of a very emotional 65-minute interview generously granted by HKG.