On poetic prose

I guess my uneasy relationship with poetry is much the same as the vastly more experienced Diana Athill's. She writes about hers with typical clarity in her book about the Andre Deutsch years, Stet (Granta), here dealing with her early attitude to effectively standing by as an editor while the poet did his or her stuff:

I read the work carefully, tried to make the jacket blurb say what the author wanted it to say, was moved by some of the poems as wholes and parts of other poems...all that was all right. But I also felt a kind of nervous reverence which I now find tiresome, because it was what I supposed one ought to feel in the presence of a superior being; and poets, although they do have a twist to their nature which non-poets lack, which enables them to produce verbal artefacts of superior intensity, are not superior beings. In the distant days when they were singing stories to their fellows in order to entertain and instruct them, they were useful ones; in the days when they devised and manipulated forms in which to contain the more common and important human emotions they were clever and delightful ones; and in the comparatively recent days when they have examined chiefly their own inner landscapes they have often become boring ones...

So why can't I stick with a book of lyrics? Auden is probably the only poet whose shorter meditations I can read consecutively. And yet I love it when a novelist, ideally even a biographer, is truly a poet, too, in terms of fashioning sentences full of rhythm and a perfect rightness if you read them aloud. Jim Crace is one such, Martin Amis another, though he now tends to write for writing's sake rather than to express the bigger picture.

I had forgotten how magical Angela Carter's prose could be (though the closing sentence of Wise Children, 'to tell the truth, I love her best, and always will' if I remember it correctly, has long been one of my favourite lines, on a par with the miraculous discovery of Shakespeare's Parolles that 'simply the thing I am shall make me live'). It was after our classes on Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle that I finally came round to reading The Bloody Chamber and other stories.


Carter has also, very elegantly, translated the Perrault originals (illustrated by the inimitable Gustave Dore above and below). But The Bloody Chamber is something else. What richness in every fin-de-siecle sentence, what Jamesian nuance, what sensual pleasure. In fact, it's quite impossible to extract a line or a paragraph, because none is less than perfect.

'The tale does not log everyday experience, as the short story does', Carter is quoted as writing in the introduction; 'It interprets everyday experience through a system of imagery derived from subterranean areas behind everyday experience'. And for the subterranean, nothing less than jewel-studded poetic prose is good enough.

Heavenly Sophie

You know there's something wrong in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier when a Marschallin lacks personality and Sophie Anna Barbara von Faninal, in effect her younger self but with a better chance of happiness, makes more of an impact. So it was at Covent Garden yesterday when Lucy Crowe showed more spirit and voice than Soile Isokoski's not very endearing Marschallin. I had her picture here, but as the Royal Opera seems to be the only organisation that doesn't, as it stands, like blogs using their publicity photos, I've had to replace her with the equally good Sarah Tynan receiving the silver rose from Sarah Connolly's Octavian in the McVicar production at ENO (photo by Clive Barda).

I won't write more about the less well co-ordinated Royal Opera show here; you can see what I thought - with pictures - on theartsdesk.

What I will say is how it rather reinforced what I've always felt, which Kate Hopkins expands upon in her Colette-oriented programme article: that Sophie is more than just the ordinary young girl dismissed by Hofmannsthal. She lacks the experience of the Marschallin, but she shows every sign in her indignant diatribes against a horsebreaking potential husband of becoming as wise as Resi. David McVicar's original Scottish Opera production pointed up the parallels by giving both women the same baby-doll wig. I've only seen one weak Sophie on stage, Patricia Petibon in Vienna. The others I best remember were all lassies of great spirit: Barbara Bonney, Lisa Milne, Rosemary Joshua, Marie Arnet stepping in for Sue Gritton and lighting up the stage as no-one else did in that ENO revival, Tynan and now Crowe. Just for the hell of it (and because a second Royal Opera picture had to go), I've edited my own perfect-rose picture for silvery inclusion here.


Crowe phrased 'Wie himmlische, nicht irdische' more ecstatically than anyone I've ever heard on stage - though no-one can surpass Lucia Popp here. Her Sophie and Walter Berry's Ochs, even more meticulously detailed than Peter Rose's last night, go with Bernstein's spectacularly stretched-out vision on the CBS Rosenkavalier so recently reissued by Sony. It may not be a standard, but no-one who loves this opera should fail to snap it up.


Well, I have been an old grump this week over two operas I love so much being only half-cooked ('ist mein Leiblied, weiss sie das?', I could say of Rosenkav). Sir Colin Davis's Verdi Otello in concert irritated more than it delighted me. I went back to the second of the two performances on Sunday to check I wasn't being too dyspeptic about the stand-in, Simon O'Neill. He did a good job under the circumstances, but Shakespeare's Moor he ain't.

Crumb of wisdom

'It's easy to write unthinking music' quoth Virginian one-off George Crumb (pictured above at yesterday's BBCSO Total Immersion event by Simon Jay Price). 'But I don't think it's a good thing to create less than good music in a world that's full of a lot of indifferent music.'

Maybe he was thinking of dashed-off pop, but I take that remark to mean indifferent contemporary, 'serious' music. Crumb at 80 doesn't seem to have composed anything that fails to engage at least the curiosity as well as the intellect. If yesterday's two concerts suggested that he touches the metaphysical better with a handful of players whose talents and personalities he knows than when he traffics in large forces, it was still a privilege to hear both sides of the coin. Hopefully my Arts Desk review puts that across.

One aspect I've not mentioned there is the beauty of his written or printed scores. You can get a sense of this from the 'Spiral Galaxy' page of Makrokosmos Vol. 1 which Joanna MacGregor left behind on the piano after her scintillating performance (we met her later, a little dazed by the event).


I also didn't mention how much fun Crumb can be, both as a person and a composer. The new film just released on DVD - three quarters recital, one quarter documentary - spotlights several character sketches of his doggie friends from the recent Mundus Canis.


Why should the feline species get all the best tunes, he drily asks. There's also a spellbinding performance by Robert Shannon of Eine Kleine Mitternachtsmusik, Crumb's homage to a theme by Thelonius Monk. Guitarist David Starobin, who made the film and also features in it, was a sensitive companion in the afternoon talk yesterday; Stephen Montague seemed a little more, shall we say, self-oriented. His foyer piece didn't match up to the master, but it was fun to see the black- and white-masked kids putting their hearts and souls into the project. Here are some of the balcony artists bringing the Barbican environs to life.


Happy 80th birthday, George. We like you a lot.

Curtain up: Linda Esther Gray

I only had to mention the name of Linda Esther Gray at the end of the last blog entry, and within minutes Will popped up from America exclaiming 'now THERE was a voice'. I have a feeling this could trigger many more homages. In fact the reason I caught up again with Linda, who taught J for several years and took him to sing to the late, great Charles Craig (now THERE was another voice...), was because I've recently read her autobiography.

Linda published A Life Behind Curtains herself several years ago because she didn't want any editing. And I can see why: it's an incredibly daring literary experiment, blending flashbacks, dream sequences and extraordinary candour in a story unlike any other. Of course, I feel it could now be taken on by a bigger publisher and then we'd have it proofed a bit more thoroughly. But otherwise not a word needs to be changed. The unflinching honesty is painful at times. This is the tale of one extraordinary Greenock lady's journey towards being one of the greatest Isoldes ever, and the shocking aftermath of a life-saving operation which undercut an instinctive technique as well as her confidence and eventually led to a catastrophic vocal demise. It's also, which we all like, a story of battling through painfully to a greater humanity and a generosity in communicating her lessons to others.

I can't recall going backstage as a student to collect the autograph of anyone else I'd never heard of before. But back in the early 1980s I was moved to do so in Linda's case because she was the second of two Sieglindes in Scottish National Orchestra performances of Wagner's Die Walkure Act One. The first had been Jessye Norman, imposing but rather mezzoid and, as so often, occasionally flat up top. Then along came Linda, and I was knocked sideways by the vocal beauty as well as the sheer power which went hand in glove with expressive urgency. Later I saw her Isolde in the Goodall ENO Tristan. It was wonderful, but in my late teens I still hadn't 'got' the whole message of that opera (Chereau's Bayreuth centenary Ring, which we used to watch on telly an act a week, had a more immediate impact).

It's unfortunate that Linda reached her full artistic majesty at a time when operas were filmed far less frequently than now. Even on CD all we have - and it's quite a big 'all' - are her Isolde for Goodall, breathtaking, and her Ada in the Sawallisch Munich performances of Wagner's early opera Die Feen. Having now heard her Proms Wesendonck Lieder with Haitink and an affecting Desdemona Willow Song, I'm hoping BBC Legends will bite the bullet. But we'll see.

Anyway, many heartfelt exchanges passed after I'd read the book, culminating in Linda's visit to my City Lit Opera in Focus class. She joined the class Xmas lunch round the corner at PJ's in Drury Lane - this none too flattering-to-me photo kindly taken by Nick Spence is the only one in full focus -


and then held the floor for two hours. She could have talked for twice as long, and covered not only amazing chapter and verse on technique which I couldn't provide but also her current work on a biography of her teacher and close friend Dame Eva Turner.

This was apt because of course we've just finished six weeks on Turandot and Dame Eva's 'In questa reggia' had been central. The photo of her below, I'm now informed, first appeared on Lisa Hirsch's website, and is owned by her.


Linda told us how the lassie from Lancashire had been present at Toscanini's world premiere, and how well she knew Alfano, the much-maligned composer who completed the final scene, from Turin days. It's a daunting line of continuity, from contact with Nellie Melba and Rosa Ponselle to Linda's own bel canto teaching. Listen to the tracks on her singbelcanto website: they start with a stunning 'Dich teure halle'. Dame Eva's Puccini is history; but so too is Linda's Wagner. There's only Christine Brewer in the world today to match her, and we're looking forward to going together to hear her on Thursday with great Sir Charles.

Three giants

By 'giants' I'm not referring to Petroc Trelawny's three guests on the Radio 3 Music Matters book review tomorrow, who are: one legendary giant, the trenchant and delightful Robert Tear; one VIP, Elaine Padmore, Director of Opera at the Royal Opera, who was naturalness itself; and I/me. I allude rather to the three very thick books we've all been reading over the past few weeks, and their subjects are giants too: Serge Diaghilev, the socially aware organisation we now know as English National Opera, and Benjamin Britten, not quite a giant at the time under consideration but a very innocent teenager and a young man waking up to the possibilities of life, and the means of expressing them.

As this is essentially a plug to advise you to listen - and whatever the excellent Music Matters team leave in or take it, we really did have a marvellous time - I'd better not pre-empt what we thought of the books, which was mostly remarkably consonant. The most beautiful to look at is Sjeng Scheijen's study of the ultimate impresario.


What I wouldn't give to have Profile Books enveloping my words with their high production values. Not that I have any complaints against Yale on that score, but I was certainly impressed with their senior publicity officer Valentina Zanca's role in Sjeng's introductory Pushkin House lecture a month or so back. The illustrations - portrait drawings to back up the main text, a fine central spread of colour designs for the Ballets Russes - complement handsome typeface, quality paper...who wants e-books, a subject briefly raised in the studio, when handling a tome is as pleasurable as this?


Faber, having passed on their thorough presentation of the Britten letters, do the diaries well enough; though Britten was no Prokofiev when it came to literary style or penetrating character study. I'd still hold up Anthony Phillips's annotation and indexing of the Prokofiev diaries (a real feather in Faber's cap) as the ideal. Can't wait for his Volume Three, which must be imminent.


What's to add to our programme comments on this one? It's a diligent record, a little antiseptic at times, like the Britten diaries none too well indexed. I didn't get a chance this morning to praise the contributions of the leading players interviewed by Susie Gilbert. Sir Charles Mackerras is pithy good value, as always; so are Pountney and Elder. But we need to hear more from the singers - and believe me, you will, when I get round to writing about Linda Esther Gray's astounding autobiography, my undisputed musical book of the year, in a blog post or two's time.

Shop Bell

Of course I'd prefer it if you bought someone an Eritrean donkey for Christmas (believe me, we tried some time back, but the organisation was not as user-friendly as it might have been). If, however, you must go in for seasonal merchandise, do it in style and visit my friend Cressida Bell's online shop.

Cressida had an open studio weekend in her Hackney enclave, as always. We dropped in on Sunday. Having indulged myself on the previous visit with a very bright tie, I bought the godson one this year from the wacky range of monuments (his isn't among this batch, so if he sees this entry and he doesn't like the one I got him, the artist will swap it).


Otherwise, there's a bright range of cushion covers, scarves and lampshades.


Yes, it's in the Bloomsbury line but not, I think, too derivative. And this year Cressida has produced what I think is her best card ever, a Ravilious-style view of rooftops, hills and sea inspired by her mother's stamping ground on the South Downs. Must go and see the Raviliouses in Eastbourne, and we're planning a trip to exotic Bedford for the Edward Bawden exhibition.


Alternative to the Bell Shop, if you're looking for something cheap and cheerful: how about a nice bunch of sprouts, fresh from Loddon?


World AIDS Day, I'm embarrassed to say, almost passed me by yesterday. But we're mindful in a way, revisiting Mike Nichols's stupendously well acted film of Tony Kushner's now-classic Angels in America.


The human complexity of all the characters, led by what must be Al Pacino's greatest performance ever as Roy Cohn, made it hard to watch the Coen Brothers' new film, A Serious Man. This, too, is well acted, and the cinematography is good as ever, but why the cardboard cut-out goodies/baddies? Surely it isn't interesting to choose as your hero a man to whom things just happen? Take away the local trimmings, and A Serious Man is just another of those movies about a dysfunctional American household. Its start never links to the leap-forward in time, and it ends just as purposelessly. I couldn't have cared less.

Chopin's Minerva and Mercury

Last Monday I did a crazy thing, the sort of madness to which only London's teeming concert life can sometimes drive one. I had my tickets for the legendary Elisabeth Leonskaja's Chopin recital at the Wigmore Hall already booked when I was asked to interview Louis Lortie (photographed by me above after our Tuesday morning interview; Leonskaja's portrait was taken by Jo Schwartz). I like Lortie's playing but I hadn't heard him for years, so when I found he, too, was giving a Chopin programme on the same night over at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, what could I do? Leonskaja simply couldn't be sacrificed.

The answer was to hear half of both concerts. Lortie's was a whizz through all the Etudes, with Op. 10 in the first part - that would give me time to hop on my bike, speed over Waterloo Bridge and weave through the back streets of Covent Garden to Oxford Street and on to the Wigmore.

I can't say how glad I am that I took that decision - though if I'd started at Leonskaja's recital, I don't think I could have left it. Lortie's was easier only because he served up Op. 10 as sparkling champagne, making light of the virtuosity so that all the essential lines came shining through. Even No. 12 wasn't as heavy as usual, though forceful enough at a carefully-placed climax. I'm glad he wasn't distracted by the horrific coughers, who launched uncovered into an almighty chorus around me before the last chord of No. 3 had faded away.

From the very best cocktail party to a religious service was how it felt at the start of Leonskaja's second half. I'd arrived in good time, since her first had gone on much longer than Lortie's. It had included the Second Sonata, and now she was about to embark on the Third. Incredible not only because she went from Polonaise-Fantaisie to F sharp minor Nocturne to the beginning of the sonata without anyone in the audience moving a muscle in the darkened hall; but also because her colossal sweep included an exposition repeat in the sonata's might first movement.

Heavenly length indeed, as with Richter, Leonskaja's ideal and her duo partner many years back, in Schubert. Here, too, the weight seemed effortless, the expression going ever deeper as in the best meditation: music as a sacred rite. I haven't been so moved at a piano recital since my previous benchmark, Richter in Chichester Cathedral, 1989. I even turned adolescent and sought out the great lady's autograph.


She was charming backstage, less the loftily expressive Athena/Minerva of the platform, and seemed younger than her 64 years. She's back at the Wigmore playing Schubert in May, and as soloist in the Schumann Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican. I can't miss a single appearance here from now on.

A more withdrawn austerity and perfectionism came from German pianist Bernd Marseille at the French Institute on Sunday. He came with another daunting programme: variations by Haydn and Brahms (the massive Handel set) and Schubert's D960 Sonata. It's difficult when you've just heard the very best, but Marseille was certainly impressive. Here he is in the French Institute's striking library with its director Laurence Auer, fast becoming ubiquitous in the social snaps of the blog.


Good news from the Rachmaninov Conference - much of the Duo Va i Ve's programme is now up and running on YouTube. This gives us a chance to hear their powerful espousal of their compatriot Pantcho Vladigerov's 'Pessen' from his Bulgarian Suite



and Rachmaninov's revelatory two-piano arrangement of his C sharp minor Prelude. Do stay with it until the end; there are notes and colours here undreamt of in the original.

Changing London for a letter

Which means Loddon, just south of Norwich, that great city where we spent a blissful few hours on Friday afternoon looking around the cathedral after dark. And for Londoners seeking purer air and wanting to swap an n for a d, there's one extra enticement to Loddon now that the adorable Katherine Howard, ex-Sony and EMI gal, and her equally good-natured husband Andy Walter, who I'm delighted to say is still restoring historical recordings at EMI despite all the vicissitudes there, have turned the barn of their mill house (seen in the photo beyond the duck sign) into a concert hall.


There was a big event last year, with the first-rate Henschel Quartet (whose latest disc of Mendelssohn and Bruch is sheer delight). But the launch of more and grander things to come, now that Katherine has her lively brood of four more or less sorted, happened on Friday night. Katherine used to go salsa dancing with a quirky and delightful chap who's now leader of the second violins in the Royal Opera Orchestra, Jan Schmolck. He and his pianist wife, Frances Angell, formed two-thirds of a trio but found that co-ordination with the cellist, who lived a long way from them, had become tricky. Now they've collaborated with some of the leading players in British orchestras to set up the Turner Ensemble, which launches an official residency at Kings Place on 17 January.

The Mill Room wouldn't accommodate the sort of larger-scale ensemble they have in mind for their first, enticing Kings Place programme, so the Angell-Schmolcks came to Loddon with one of the finest horn players in the UK, Roger Montgomery.


They delighted a packed crowd of locals, Norfolk based musicians and sundry Londoners who'd come specially, including ourselves, Phil and Susan Sommerich, and the inestimable Andy Stewart. His article about 'Mill Power' in the 7 November issue of Classical Music eloquently says all that needs to be said on the subject.

Except, of course, how bracing the launch was, since it hadn't happened then. As I know from the players who visit my BBC Symphony classes, our orchestras have within their ranks instrumentalists as good as any who appear at the Wigmore or the QEH. Better than most, I'd hazard in this case, because Frances plays with such restrained power that you'd never know what a struggle the livelier movements of the Franck Violin Sonata or the Brahms Op. 40 Trio are for the pianist. Which is not to say that she was discreetly accompanying in any way, just that the tone was never forced - and we were sitting right at the front - and the musicality total. Jan and Frances expressed all the drama of the Franck to those in the audience who might have needed the visual aspect to convince them of the inner story; not that they would have realised the killer effort involved.

Roger's part in the proceedings chimed serendipitously with my visit to Jasper Rees's horn play the night before (see below). Roger told me Jasper had persuaded him to loan one of the horns which hung above the Hampstead stage. Poulenc's idiosyncratic Elegie was written for Dennis Brain, very much on my mind since his part in the play. And there was even deeper lament in the Adagio mesto of the Brahms Trio. I couldn't tell why it was affecting me so strangely, not least when horn and violin take up solo lines and the piano stays silent for a while; it was only afterwards that Andy drew my attention to the note which told us it was completed, like the German Requiem, in memory of the composer's mother. Frances told me afterwards that having an audience always changes the way she plays it - the elegy needs a sense of shared mourning.

All this sobriety shouldn't detract from the sheer joy of the occasion, the delight of some folk who'd never been to a chamber concert in their lives, the mulled wine and the mince pies.


But after 24 hours in Norfolk, it was back to more seriousness with the last of the Southbank Schnittke concerts. I hadn't bargained for the challenge of involving the composer's widow Irina in the pre-performance event with an interpreter (two, in fact) present. That meant dialogue couldn't flow as freely as it might have done with just Vladimir Jurowski or Sasha Ivashkin, both of whom speak the most elegant English. But it was important to have the connection, the slight awkwardness melted away and I think everyone had their turn in making unusual and interesting points. Here's the distinguished troika afterwards.


You'd never believe that in half an hour's time Vladimir and Sasha were to embark on one of the toughest concertos in the repertoire. The concert was sombre but focused and magnificent, difficult to write about without becoming unduly portentous, but I've tried in my latest Arts Desk review.

So that's our fill of Schnittke in what would have been his 75th birthday year, so zdravitsa with a glass of vodka. It seems apt to leave him plaintively awaiting an audience. He's certainly found one, made up of quite a few members of the younger generation, over the past fortnight.

Cor rep

Praising a fellow Russian music expert's work to the skies, and to his face, some years ago, I was disarmed when he retorted 'oh, licky, licky'. Can you believe me if I say that I only gush sincerely? In the present case, I'll admit that I might not have gone to see I Found My Horn at the Hampstead Theatre had it not been the brainchild of Jasper Rees, nominally a new boss (though we're not supposed to have such things in the democratic world of The Arts Desk). I'll also claim that if it hadn't been anything special, I wouldn't have felt obliged to write about the experience here; after all, recent minidisasters like the Jacques Brel Tribute (Diamanda Galas's part in it honourably excepted) and Ryan Wigglesworth conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra have passed unremarked.


Jasper's book has been sitting on my shelves since a mutual friend gave it to me as a birthday present. I liked the photos, read the preface and realised this was clearly going to be a cut above Jilly Cooper's Appassionata or even other more real books on matters musical; but postponed it for a rainy day. The author, who talks about finishing, well, starting Ulysses, will appreciate my obligation to make at least some headway with Finnegans Wake and maybe re-read Proust first.

But here it was, presented on a plate in the form of a consummate one-man show directed by Harry Burton, with skilful lighting and excellent sound for the well-chosen horn snippets. Jonathan Guy Lewis made a sympathetic case not just for midlifecrisis Jasper and his determination to return to his unrequited love the horn, at which he was not very good as a boy (spot-on masterclass in school-orchestra Schubert 9), but also for doyens of the horn world Dave Lee, Hermann Baumann and Lowell Greer.

I laughed a lot, but I also had tears in my eyes when Jasper stands among young people listening to more young people play Sibelius's Fifth at the Proms (the great horn theme helps), and when Dave tells him to pull himself together and remember that Dennis Brain was seven years dead at his age. This touched a nerve with those of us approaching 50. Louis Lortie, whom I have yet to report on, has just turned the half-century and reminded me on Tuesday that he's already lived longer than nearly all the composers whose music he plays.

So, mortality and making something of yourself before it's too late, that stock of the feelgood movie, combine here. And the grand finale is superb, because Lewis CAN play the horn and re-enacts Rees's spiritual crisis as he faces the British Horn Society in Mozart's Third Concerto (photo, as above, by Alastair Muir).


The fact that he goes from being total crap to putting his heart and soul into it is theatrical licence, but of course you're rooting for him to succeed. As he does, on all levels. This show should run and run, but sadly it finishes at the Hampstead Theatre on Saturday. Here are Jasper, Jonathan and their capricious love object in front of Hampstead ghosts present and to come.


Oh, and about that Brel concert: I do feel I should have stuck up for the wacky Goth Diamanda, whose disgusting rendition of 'Amsterdam' was the only real highlight despite cries of sacrilege and horror.


Beware artists with single names like Bono. I've already forgotten the nondescript Brit and the gravelly Flem who made unintelligible mush of Jacques's lyrics (which are in any case the only point as the music is ballad-simple). Good to see Marc Almond in chirpy form, but he was like a very slick end-of-pier-show host; and what was all the fuss about Camille O'Sullivan? She seemed rather amateurish and inexperienced to me.

Stop press: I've got to take the stage again tomorrow. Sasha Ivashkin didn't want to have to chair as well as to participate in the RFH pre-performance Schnittke talk with the composer's widow (and amazing pianist) Irina and Vladimir Jurowski. So with some trepidation I've agreed to take it on. Don't miss the last concert in a challenging series.

Schnittke's supernova

Imagine Wagner's in-the-beginning Rheingold Prelude burgeoning and exploding into other dimensions, and even then you can have only an inkling of what Schnittke's hour-long Third Symphony of 1981 sounds like in the flesh. I heard it live for the first time last night in the Royal Festival Hall, as part of the latest instalment in Jurowski's hugely ambitious Schnittke Festival.

All the historical stylisations and musical monograms, from Bach right through to Bernd Alois Zimmermann, go into the melting pot, or rather the meltdown, but I beg to differ for once with Ed Seckerson, the colleague with whom I'm usually most in harmony. He ends his Arts Desk review by writing what he whispered into my astonished ears at the end of last night's performance: 'I don't believe a note of it'. And I replied, rather fired up, 'I believe every single note'.

Which was a bit of an exaggeration: I almost lost sympathy when a big Mahlerian slow-movement finale took over from all the supernova build ups and bursts. But I soon came back into the fold. And it wasn't difficult given that Jurowski's preparation and all-stops-out realisation with the LPO stunned at every point. As John Riley said to me in another of our wildly enthusiastic post-concert blethers, just when you thought the centre couldn't hold and there had to be a blurring of textures, our hero kept it in brilliant focus.

So just as execution, it was as dazzling a performance as I think I'll ever hear in the concert hall. From Lee Tsarmaklis's consummately sung and danced tuba solo, so crucial a mooring early on in the work, to the last echoes of that hyper-romantic melody on the flutes, the LPO played with an almost frightening conviction (though I did see some of the players smiling at the huge grandiosity of it all, which was reassuring). Some folk still don't buy Schnittke's range of reference, but at its best - as here, in the Viola Concerto and the First Concerto Grosso - it all coheres with astonishing subterranean logic. As for revitalising the symphonic experience back in 1981, it struck me that Schnittke took up where Shostakovich's toppling masses in his Fourth Symphony left off (and remember Shostakovich could never be the same again after the infamous Pravda attack). I may well go back to one of several recordings, including Rozhdestvensky's which features another apt image on its cover, Bosch's outer panel paintings for The Garden of Earthly Delights.


Yet as John said, the live LPO/Jurowski experience took the symphony to a level which I'm presumptuous enough to think hasn't been reached before, nor ever will be again. And just in case you think I'm a bit of a Jurowski obsessive, I have to say that the intriguingly planned but rather oppressive first half - Webern Passacaglia, Lindberg Chorale (Bach's 'Es ist genug' the basis) and Berg's Violin Concerto - left me half asleep, for all its textural revelations.


Maybe I take too over-emotional a view of the Concerto and its dedication to the angelic 18 year old Manon, daughter of Alma and Walter Gropius, whose struggle and death are usually so vividly re-enacted here. I snapped her striking tombstone on Alma's grave just around the corner from Mahler's in Grinzing Cemetery.

Leonidas Kavakos, whose playing invariably hooks me, seemed to be keeping his distance. The playing didn't sing or cry out in the way I remember from Nigel's outlandish performance (dressed as a vampire - John Drummond apparently had to restrain him from applying a trickle of fake blood to the corner of his mouth).


In short, it felt like a dispassionate play-through, though beautifully balanced and with Kavakos (pictured above by Yannis Bournias) sensitively attuned to his colleagues. Afterwards, violinist and conductor re-convened to talk to Southbank Head of Music Marshall Marcus in the RFH Ballroom. I only just caught it because I was coming up from the cloakroom and there was Vladimir, approachable as ever and especially pleased that I'd picked up the Amfortas reference in Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony; he'd found another Parsifal quotation in it and one from Beethoven's Op. 111. Here are a couple of photos by the ever-reliable Chris Christodoulou, sent to me by the Royal College of Music following rehearsals and performance of the festival launch and that unforgettable Prokofiev Six.



We talked about the dangers of critical jumping to quick conclusions. VJ's been disappointed by reception of last season's most daring ventures, which I missed, but determined to go on with his extraordinary programming and heartened by the crowd. Best of all, I'd say, is that first on their feet at the end of the Schnittke were the teenagers and twentysomethings. A new climate is afoot; with animateurs like Jurowski, Petrenko, Nelsons, Dudamel, Salonen, Ticciati and Nezet-Seguin around, the change of attitude in the younger generation advances in joyous leaps and bounds. It was high time.

People of the Peking Diner

They told me Rupert Goold's new ENO Turandot was going to be set in a Chinese restaurant; I laughed. I saw the trailer; it looked as if it might work. I went to the show last night; I haven't experienced a more brilliant piece of totally reinvented music theatre since Richard Jones's production of Wozzeck. Sets by Miriam Buether, costumes by Katrina Lindsay, video art and design from Lorna Heavey and Rick Fisher's lighting all go towards creating the total visual experience. All production photos here are by Catherine Ashmore.

Like Jones, Goold takes cues from the text, in this case about violent appetites, doll-women and total sadism, and creates a whole world from them. Puccini's and Gozzi's China is a never-never one reinvented by western fantasies; the anything-catered-for Chinatown dining experience is a good equivalent. Entourages come from all over the world to face the riddles, so why not gather all sorts of masqueraders and religions in the restaurant? Puccini's theme-park of stylistic references finds its equivalent here. And the cruelty is slightly picture book, too, so why not make it bloody but entertaining and strip-cartoonish along the lines of Tarantino's Kill Bill!?

In any case, whether or not you like Goold's solutions - and for me, everything worked - you have to concede the tightness and discipline of the theatrical vision. What a joy, after the aimless mooching Zambello allows her cast in The Tsarina's Slippers, to see every chorus member an individual, every dancer a tight and bizarre executant of wacky routines (by Aletta Collins).

Musically, the reason for mounting Turandot without all the resources it ideally needs is the stupendous lead Ed Gardner gives the ENO Orchestra and Chorus. This is another high watermark for them to set alongside their Peter Grimes. The number of top Cs in the soprano line is awesome; the orchestra catches the watercolour beauties as well as the extended lurid splendour of the score. Gardner relishes the slow torture of the Prince of Persia


as well as the lovely little garden-reverie indulged in by Ping, Pang and Pong as they sit on the back stairs of the restaurant, watched by the writer who seems to be creating Turandot as he goes along (an emblematically detailed performance by top-notch actor Scott Handy).


The Act Three atmospherics have never sounded eerier, piccolo and harmonics going hand in glove with the horrifying kitchen of our Peking Diner.


Calaf sets the flames on the big cooker going and delivers 'None shall sleep'. Clearly Goold wasn't going to get more than the odd hand gesture from Gwyn Hughes Jones, but the tenor does rise to the vocal challenge. Earlier, his bottled top and invisible low notes made us wonder if a Nanki-Poo hadn't strayed into boots several sizes too big for him. It's a serviceable performance, as is Kirsten Blanck's in the insane role of the ice princess (here poignantly abetted by a little-girl alter ego who skips around to the 'moo lee wah' children's chorus). Blanck's high notes may be blowsy but they're never shot like several of the Turandots we've been watching in the class. She acts decisively and brings energy to the final duet


where Alfano's cumbersome orchestration is matched by a pig-headed kitchen creature taking over the sensitive writer's notebook. Goold's solution to the ending Puccini never got round to finishing is much better than Tony Palmer's in that absurd Scottish Opera production twisted around Puccini, his wife Elvira and their ill-fated maid Doria Manfredi.

Liu here is the superb Amanda Echalaz, a dangerous voice on the cusp of blowing apart, but stylish and always dramatically motivated. She and Goold give a different but plausible take on whatever 'Signore, ascolta!' is in this vivid if not always well-fitting translation. The torture scene is momentarily shocking, but think about it: Puccini's sadistic stagecraft knows no bounds here. It was both a masterstroke and a stumbling block for the happy ending to sacrifice Liu in this way (Busoni's Turandot is so much easier to celebrate because, apart from the unfortunate offstage prince in the first scene, no-one dies).


The suicide is not pretty, nor is it meant to be. Yet this grimness is offset by the bizarre jokes that abound elsewhere. A colourfully-dressed old wino is taken up by the writer to play the Emperor; a clown fanfares the beginning of the trial on a toy trumpet. The mechanical maids-in-waiting, dancers with amazing legs, do a brilliant job of acting out Turandot's violated state, collapsing in pairs as the latest man gets the riddles right. The end is appropriately colourful, however queasy. Like Laurent Pelly's Glyndebourne production of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, Goold's Turandot manages to say some thought-provoking things about our pick-and-mix, casually violent society without labouring the point a la Alden or Bieito. If you're just out for the voices, you might be forgiven for giving it a miss. But if you care about living theatre and great conducting, you have to see it.