Winter lights in Örebro

Late lunch in the cosiest imaginable cafe of Örebro, Sweden, brought afternoon sunshine on the wall

while only a couple of hours later the sun had set, a colder temperature was finally kicking in after the mild weather and heavy rain of the previous day and the giant straw goat of Swedish tradition, covered in pine branches, glittered by the ice rink in the centre of this extremely likeable town.

I came here two and a half weeks ago to witness the birth of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra's project to twin each of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos with a new work inspired by it; you can read all about that and more on Örebro here on The Arts Desk. It was bad luck for the piece that the next day's recording sessions had been cancelled, and that amiable conductor Thomas Dausgaard was heading to Stockholm on an early train, but lucky for me and an ever curious companion, the delightful Lucy Maxwell Stewart that we had time to explore the delights of what the Swedes call a city but we can only think of as a well-equipped town.

We started off by walking past the concert hall, the pluses and minuses of which in its newly renovated state I've written about on TAD, and to the main church - effectively the cathedral - of Örebro, St-Nicolai. Begun in 1270 in this settlement which was long a valuable trading post, it had a tower added in the 15th century and major 19th century renovations.

Historically it's most famous for the cult of the Swedish rebel Engelbrekt, whose burial place became a site of pilgrimage, discouraged by the removal of his remains to who knows where. Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, French founder of the current Swedish royal dynasty, was elected here in 1810.

The inside is warm and welcoming, as I've found with every Swedish church I've visited. There are some lively coat-of-arms memorials on the walls, but the chief treasure is the retable of carved saints flanking  paintings of Christ's crucifixion and entombment attributed to the Renaissance German carver Markus Hebbel.

It was given to the church in 1661 and makes a fine backdrop, along with the 19th century east window, to concerts, as we were to find out that evening. Many of you will recognise the Angel Gabriel, designed by a Victorian firm in England, from the upper half I sent as Christmas greetings. Here's his full length

and his solitary position in a north window.

Just as attractive is the Prodigal returning to his father.

Örebro's main square is to the east of the church. The town hall had an attractive digital advent calendar on the go.

Just to the north is the town's most picturesque sight, the castle founded in the 14th century and variously fairy-taled by Duke Carl, later Carl IX, at the end of the 16th and by 19th century romanticisers. Nowt worth seeing inside, I'm told, but the moat and the river Svartån as it rushes through it contribute to the magical external impression.

This reminds me of the rapid waters in Uppsala as punctuating points of Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. Still waiting to see that famous university town, always postponed it because it's so close to Stockholm's  Arlanda Airport by train.

'Old Örebro' in town is simply a courtyard with what might be the town's best restaurant, Kungsgatan 1, where we ate later. But there's much more of that sort of thing a bit further east. A walk in pleasant autumnal-feeling weather

along the Svartån which flows out into huge Lake Hjälmaran

took us to Wadköping, the name nationally-famous Swedish novelist Hjalmar Bergman gave to Örebro. Wadköping is partly like Stockholm's Skansen, and full of tourist-oriented dinky shops, but the buildings all came from the south part of town, thanks to the enterprise of one resident in 1965, and many are lived in, which keeps it all alive. And everything was open on 11 December, lacking only the Christmas market which was clearly happening at weekends since the empty wooden stalls were still waiting for something to happen.

The most impressive of the old buildings is Kungsstugan, King's Lodge, so called because Duke Karl before his royal appointment stayed here several times in the 1580s.

The grass growing on the roof isn't a new design feature; you can see it in late 19th/early 20th century photos (though not this one)

and retains its painted ceiling on the upper level, which you can see on selected occasions.

Next door (here, to the left)

is the house which once belonged to the father of Kajsa Warg, the Swedish Mrs Beeton. Good education for kids to see replica food laid out, but the authentic charm remains in the ceiling decoration here.

In the cafe, 'Kajsa Warg's Must' is to be had at this time of year. Not exactly a must, unfortunately, tasting a bit like cherry Cola, but a seasonal obligation.

To accompany it upstairs in the delightful eatery run by a hostess whose natural charm was typical of all Örebroians we met (and that includes the Syrian newsagent who settled here 26 years ago and was so proud that his son was now teaching at the English-language school), I chose obligatory meatballs with lingonberry sauce - forgive me for doing the boring Facebook thing of putting up the plate of food, but I did the same in Oslo -

and we lingered in these congenial surroundings until dusk. Next door is an olde sweetshoppe, which reminded me a bit of the Terry's Victorian reconstruction in the York Castle Museum, lacking only the latter's enticing smell which has stayed with me ever since I saw it in childhood.

The windowboxes are planted with mini Alpine and heather gardens,

with Wadköping's main street stretching out to the right. It bisects the older wooden buildings typical of the town before the great fire and the bigger new ones (17th-19th centuries), the grandest seen at the end of this alley,

while residents have some enviable dwellings including this one with mistletoe in the porch

and this courtyard.

Darkness had almost fallen by the time we headed back

along the river

where all these buildings are modern blocks of flats, but beguilingly lit in white with an illuminated paper star at each window. These haven't caught on to the same extent in the UK, but I remember them being prevalent in Kerala at this time of year.

We managed to inveigle our way into the university building where an avowedly fascinating natural history collection of stuffed animals hanging over banisters, the Biological Museum, is lodged, but the door to that curiosity was sadly locked.

So back via the now illuminated castle

to a tour of the Konserthuset and a chat with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra's director and animateur Gregor Zubicky, whom I'd met when he gave lively introductory talks at the Stavanger Chamber Festival.

Then a rest, then to the Luciakonsert we'd seen advertised in St-Nicolai. It was a stunner, a programme of 20 variously styled homages to the Sicilian saint so eagerly adopted by Swedes in the 20th century, rendered charming by nearly 100 schoolchildren wearing white with red sashes, holding candles and singing from memory around the chosen Lucia, whose lit-up crown is, of course, the loveliest thing of all. There's a more professional photo to illustrate the TAD article, but this one, which I ventured to take but of course without flash and hence fuzzier, I rather like.

Parents were proud and happy to chat with us, and then we returned to K1, nearly empty only by virtue of this Friday being the time when all employees go out to the conference centre in packs for their office Christmas dinner.

Frost had set in overnight to decorate the station as I waited for the 8.37am train to Stockholm Central, and the sun only just rising.

I missed snapping the flock of swans passing over the train lines, but got one reasonably evocative shot along the way.

So, in absence of the usual longer jaunt at this time of year - it's nice to experience mysa, the Swedish equivalent of the now-trendy Danish word hygge, a form of hunkering-down cosiness - this gave me the most benevolent take on what light means in Scandinavian darkness. You could easily spend more than a day in Örebro during the summer, when we'd certainly have cycled to the lake along the river and gone for a swim. But I'm happy to have experienced something of the real Jul so beautifully Edwardianised in Fanny and Alexander: it's reconciled me to the tawdrier version we have here.

Seasonal notes

That's notes in both senses - purely musical ones, and writing about the music, which I was honoured to do for two releases of the highest quality. Actually both came out last year, but top Norwegian ensemble Music for a while's Canticles of Winter didn't get pushed/distributed here until recently (they came close to a deal with Deutsche Grammophon). My excellent friend and colleague on The Arts Desk, Graham Rickson, echoes most of my thoughts in the first of his Christmas CD roundups here. 

As for what I felt on listening to the white-label copy, that's in the liner notes, and if they smack to you of gush, they're certainly not insincere. I really was bowled over by that chance encounter with Tora Augestad and her phenomenal players at a late-night cabaret in Stavanger, bought their Weill CD - one of the best, if not the best, I know - and got sent the selection of Dowland and other classics transformed. It's high time the group made their UK debut, preferably at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. This is an ensemble of equals, and if there's a better, cooler jazz trumpeter than Mathias Eick I don't know him. Stian Carstensen's accordion also adds sharp icicles, and not just to the group's second version of 'Der Leiermann' at the end of Schubert's Winterreise (very different from the first). Canticles of Winter tends to the dark, chilly side, but it's none the worse for that.

All brisk brightness, on the other hand, is the third and last of Neeme Järvi's complete Tchaikovsky ballet recordings with the Bergen Philharmonic for Chandos. I'm not so much proud of these notes as grateful to Chandos for letting me do what I'd always wanted - a number by number synopsis pointing out the specific nature of the musical genius in each. Good news, too, is that the equally idiomatic and characterful concert performance of The Sleeping Beauty Act Three from Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra has been recorded for release on the RLPO's own label.

Finally, if you want a big aural binge in the lazy days between Christmas and New Year, let me reinforce what I had to say about two big Stravinsky boxes on BBC Radio 3's CD Review (four days left to listen on the iPlayer). Several friends have already bought the DG box on the strength of what they heard, and while Stravinsky's own performances are of infinite fascination on Sony, and the presentation much more sexy/nostalgic,

the variety of interpretations here is no doubt richer, and gives an interesting perspective on the range of approaches to Stravinsky over 80 years. Excellent value for money, too, I'm told. And it should be pointed out that neither edition is 'complete' - several key arrangements of other composers are missing though not, on DG, the essential, telling transcriptions of two Wolf songs right at the end of Stravinsky's life. I was pleased with the radio segue into the chromatic first of them from the dodecaphonic In Memoriam Dylan Thomas.

Happy listening, and season's greetings, with a second plea for charitable giving to Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS). Circa 3,500 would-be migrants lost their lives at sea this year, another 30 hitting the news today. Even one would be too many.

Brave new (musical) world

I mean that in the genuine original sense of Shakespeare's Miranda, not ironically like Huxley. Among the many good deeds in a naughty world - and it's never seemed more horrible, in my lifetime, than this year - are the enterprises of young musicians like violinist Ben Baker and conductor/cellist Jonathan Bloxham. It's been my greatest pleasure to follow the trail from the East Neuk Festival, where, having arrived the night before the Retreat players' second concert, I only just met Ben, via Pärnu, where he was playing in the superlative Festival Orchestra along with Jonathan who was also on the conductors' course, to Southrepps and several Wigmore Hall recitals.

In all of which there was no need to talk of promise: the complete, sophisticated musicianship is totally there already. And it made a nice farewell to a great musical year earlier this month to attend their 'Christmas Charity Concert' in The Warehouse, Waterloo (both photos of orchestra, conductor and soloist by Boris Bizjak). Voluntary donations were to go to as fine a charity as any worth your attention, Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), to which I'm also going to give all the money we save on stamps and cards by sending e-season's greetings.

The young - in some cases very young - orchestra of students and graduates made as fine a job as any I've heard of Mozart's Figaro Overture, Barber's Adagio for Strings and Haydn's 'Surprise' Symphony, with Sibelius's Valse Triste as an encore (Jonathan following in the footsteps of master Paavo Järvi in Pärnu). All the more remarkable on three hours' rehearsal that afternoon. Jonathan has an elegant conducting style and is getting to grips with the individual rubato so essential to conductors of quality (several famous ones don't have it, and never will). Ben played the second of Beethoven's Romances for Violin and Orchestra, usually a bit mundane but not in the hands of this supreme, understated master. Friends I'd invited along were wild with enthusiasm at the quality.

I'm not sure that goddaughter Mirabel (pictured above with Jonathan, Estonian violinist Marike, mum Edwina and friend Caroline) would have gone quite that far, but in attending her first grown-up concert - an hour without interval seemed manageable, and so it proved - she took it all in, especially the 'surprise' of Haydn's slow movement, such a brilliant symphonic treat. Having won the hearts of several girls in the concert with the big eyes noted by Jonathan and Ben, she was also perfectly socialised in the after-concert drinks, running up to the box and putting in extra pound coins, chatting to perfect strangers. She's also more recently, courtesy of John Savournin, had 'Happy Birthday' sung to her by the cast of Charles Court Opera's panto Mirror Mirror at the King's Head Theatre, about which I've heard great things and which I can't wait to see in the interstices between Xmas and New Year.

Ben will be playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto at the next Warehouse concert, 28 February, 6.30pm.

A morning by the Mersey

I went to Liverpool for the first time over 20 years ago, to interview conductor Alexander Lazarev, marvelling at the city's otherness. I only returned at the beginning of this month, choosing a very rare programme from the magnificent Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under one of the world's best conductors, Vasily Petrenko - chiefly for the complete Third Act of Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty (every number, every repeat, all in one terrific sweep). I'll revisit the hall here, but not the concert, which I reviewed for The Arts Desk.

Glad I gave myself the next morning in the city, one of initial sun, wind and general clarity. My intention was to head for the Walker Art Gallery, still on the list to tick off, but somehow I felt I had to step out from my odd but not uncomfortable hotel in interesting Seel Street and down to the Mersey.

Much has developed there since I first saw the then relatively new Tate Liverpool, and of course the whole setting sucked me in. Up top is looking inwards towards Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's massive Anglican Cathedral, with the Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez's painting of the harbour pilot ship Edward Gardner along the 'dazzle' lines of the way craft were painted in 1917 and 1918 in the foreground.

Hadn't been intending to go back into the Tate, but glad I did, even if I never got to the Walker. Plenty to see here, in the company of great views from various windows,

the building seeming to float ship-like on the vast Mersey estuary, which I can only compare to the Neva or the Hudson.

The ground floor gallery was showcasing Matisse's Snail, a giant cut-out featured in the great Tate Modern exhibition, this time keeping company with bronzes and some beguiling paintings, not least of inattentive and engrossed women readers. Above it on several levels were educational rooms in the 'Constellations' series, choosing an artwork and connecting it by various themes. Cezanne's centrally placed Gardener Vallier was one great choice, Louis Bourgeois's row of breasts representing the depersonalizing seducer Don Juan another. But the room which really hooked me was a remnant from what must have been a great exhibition, African-American artist Glenn Ligon's curatorship of works which took his fancy alongside his own, Encounters and Collisions. I subsequently ordered up the catalogue, a good Gesamtkunstwerk with articles and short stories as well as images.

Concept is at the heart of Ligon's own dominant installation Untitled, 2006. He's painted over the neon, so that the potential light of a still-redeemable America only glimmers behind black (this image and the next courtesy of the Tate).

In another fascinating idea, the final scenes of Edwin S Porter's 1903 silent film featuring 'blackface' actors based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, with the picture long vanished, makes a comment on the historical disappearance of black people through history. The Death of Tom is accompanied by a really wonderful soundtrack from jazz pianist Jason Moran based on the vaudeville song 'Nobody'. Works by others in the room include Lorna Simpson's composition made up of photo-booth images of black American men in the 1950s, too detailed to work as a reproduction here, and Franz Kline's Meryon (1960-1).

After a coffee in the cafe, with great views through the windows of Albert Dock - the first construction, in 1846, purely of cast iron, brick and stone - I walked around the docks area and the ferry terminal.

Incredible to think that nine million British and Irish folk left here to seek a better life. Less good to think about the slave trade so important to Liverpool. All of this is duly documented in an area that keeps its atmosphere despite a certain museumization (still, glad that Albert Dock didn't become a landfill site, as considered in the early 1980s).

Past some striking new buildings, one reaches a familiar cityscape: the so-called 'three graces'

dominated by the Royal Liver Building, inaugurated in 1911 and dominated by the two 'liver birds' which quickly acquired mythical status (chained because if, like the ravens of the Tower of London, they fly away, the fabric will crumble).

I didn't realise that the statues of Liverpool's fab four had only just appeared here, which would account for the crowds gaping at them and snapping away.

It was by chance that I soon came across Mathew Street with the famous Cavern where the Beatles played over 300 times.

This is the centrepiece of the more recent mythology of the city (well deserved).

Nearby is the very handsome Georgian Town Hall, closed for a Christmas function, so I only snapped the fine ironwork in the porch

and a diversity of temples of religion and commerce. Liverpool reminds me of Glasgow, with equally friendly people but surely a higher quotient of fine Victorian and Edwardian architecture.

Having collected my rucksack from the hotel, I took a detour on the way back to Lime Street Station so I could see the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in daylight.

The auditorium has had the best of the overhaul work finished earlier this year, and sadly I didn't photograph that, but you get some idea of the fine foyers including a welcoming bar

and gilded reliefs of Apollo by Edmund C Thompson

in line with what I gather is work in 'Streamline Moderne' by Herbert J Rowe in the 1930s, following the destruction by fire of the original concert hall.

Then across Hope Street to the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, aptly known as 'Paddy's Wigwam'.

The original plans to a design by Lutyens only reached the crypt, which I didn't have time to see, but the postwar rethink left something no doubt more extraordinary, to which Liverpool Catholics contributed every penny they could. Completing Fred Gibberd's design took from 1962 to 1967. Impressive as the outside in reinforced concrete with Portland stone cladding may look closer too - not least via a vast flight of steps only completed in 2003 - the inside is worth a gasp or two.

A democratic circle with the altar at the centre, its glass glows somewhat lugubriously and up in the dome is a memorable design by John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens, its yellow, blue and red representing the Trinity.

I was sorry to have to leave precipitately, especially since the friendly lady who talked to me about it had much more to say, but I only just caught the train.

I'll return, of course, but it was good to see Liverpool pre-Christmas, even early in the morning as various 'entertainments' made their way to the shopping precincts.

Since then, white lights and candles have shown me how truly beautiful seasonal illuminations can be in Sweden, courtesy of a wonderful day and a bit in Örebro, so that put me in more of a festive mood; more on that anon.

Leonora at the Frontline

That's the Leonora of Verdi's La Forza del destino, as sung at English National Opera by a phenomenal new American soprano on the block. I've already written a little about Tamara Wilson, London debutante of the year, but not about the visit she so freely agreed to make to my Opera in Depth course at the Frontline Club. One of my students, Robin Weiss, took both the class pictures.

Well, maybe I was daft not to ask if I could record it, because there was so much in those two hours that neither I nor the students had heard about before. As when I steered the 'Brunch with Brünnhildes' Sue Bullock and Catherine Foster, we heard all about the practicalities of singing, the slog of staying on form and making sure you're not sick for the performances, in which case you don't get a penny for all that preparation, what it's like for a woman in opera if the monthly occurrence messes up or changes the voice, and how it can; plus plenty about the technique, the perfect placement and keeping the voice even-toned and well connected throughout the range in spite of the two passaggios in the female voice where the breaks can occur; who was so good at it, like Sutherland, the queen of technicians, who rarely moved the position of her head in performance and how far you can compromise that when a director asks so much of you.

It was also fascinating to learn of the way Tamara approaches text - most singers only 'do' a literal translation from the original, but she adds one in which what's really being meaningfully expressed can be scribbled on with all kinds of profanities, if helpful (viz Donna Anna's underlying fury in her reaction to her would-be rapist). And she cried, or at least shed tears, all the way through the Verdi - how on earth could she manage that without it affecting the voice? One way is to focus on revisiting a childhood scene (if, presumably, happy) - that brings tears of the right sort. Though she found it difficult recently when her grandfather died.

Which, of course, Calixto Bieito did, and Tamara (pictured above as Leonora by Clive Barda for ENO) seemed genuinely happy about what he'd put her through. The artists all arrived at the first rehearsal expecting to sing things through, but in they went to the production straight away, going through each scene over a number of days. Some adjustments would have to be made - Gwyn Hughes Jones, for instance, wasn't happy about his placement on a ramp at one point - but the results seem to have been harmonious. And having lived in terror of Bieito's reputation, our soprano found that he was a 'real pussycat' face to face.

How different all this, then, from when she stepped in for an indisposed Latonia Moore as Aida at the Met. Just one walk around the stage for entrances and exits and positions - nothing too complicated - and then the performances. Great Violeta Urmana, the Amneris, was a help, but you can't always depend upon it. The kindness of colleagues usually saves the day, though. Tamara's best pal in the business is Christine Goerke, only now making a breakthrough with roles like Brünnhilde, Elektra and the Dyer's Wife, and partly through Goerke she knows she won't even be thinking about those pinnacles for another 10 years at least. We can wait. I was surprised to learn she made her own first breakthrough with roles like Konstanze in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Norma is now a comfortable sing.

Which is why I suppose the bit of coloratura in the Empress's Awakening Scene of Die Frau ohne Schatten comes easily to her. Having reviewed the live Frankfurt CD set for BBC Music Magazine - the review is in the January issue along with a whopping piece on Stravinsky - I asked in advance if she'd mind if we played the whole 'Judgment of Solomon' scene in the class; as with everything else, she was easy and gracious about it and pointed out details in the sequence that helped us understand what she was doing technically. It was only a couple of weeks before the ENO opening that I heard this phenomenal and dramatically expressive voice for the first time, and wondered why we hadn't come across her before. Now we have, and there are talks afoot for more at ENO, though I wouldn't be surprised if the Royal Opera leaps in with role offers that are usually so hard to fill well.

Our five weeks on Forza inevitably filled up with a range of great recordings and performances. Dusolina Giannini and Callas give the best and most expressive interpretations of Leonora's arias, with a special spotlight for another American soprano, this time one who didn't last too well, Susan Dunn, singing 'Pace, pace, mio dio' with a youthful gleam and such ardour on her one and only arias disc. When we came to the big duets and arias for Alvaro and Carlo, we were spoilt for choice: Carreras and Bruson on CD, De Luca and Martinelli for the last duet, Carreras and Cappuccilli on a 1978 DVD from La Scala which only showed, too, what happens when you do nothing with the tricky non-conflicting Leonore-Padre Guardiano duet, even given two of the greatest singers ever (Caballé and Ghiaurov). The scene-stealers, though, were Domingo and Milnes in a Met concert with James Levine so perfectly attuned to them. Here they are, albeit in much poorer picture quality than on my Met DVD, singing 'Solenne in quest'ora'.

That's star quality for you. It still seems that the cornucopia of Forza remains most easily realisable in concert. I still wait for a staging that convinces throughout. Anyway, we've put it uneasily to bed now. On next term to Boris Godunov in six weeks with Enescu's Oedipe and Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest in the remaining four. If you'd like to come along, do contact me at david.nice@usa.net.

Stop press: reports of bad things ahead for ENO have been confirmed; more anon. Disaster lurks if the inexperienced management doesn't listen to reason. And all this started with such a piece of stupidity from the Arts Council that it makes my blood boil just to think about it.  Can it be possible that one of the very best of years for the company, artistically - one fine MD setting the seal on his achievements, another weighing in with electrifying performances - could be followed by the worst, potentially from next September on?

Two gay lives and a famous death

Nothing online can compare to browsing in a real, live bookshop. I do that in Daunt Books on Cheapside most Wednesdays before or after a weekly appointment, and the spontaneous not-looking-for-anything-in-particular has been much assisted by the selection of novels under different countries (Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the Sicilian bit of the Italy section tend to be favourites). There soon turned out to be a connection in that many of the authors I view in the light of personal discoveries have been published are being published under the New York Review of Books imprint: grown-up Erich Kästner (Going to the Dogs), the disingenuous Curzio Malaparte (Kaputt and The Skin) - and now the equally slippery, dualistic Sanford Friedman.

Friedman's essence is there throughout in the presumably not much adapted protagonist of Totempole, what we might describe as a divided consciousness which shares something in common with Lambert Strether in Henry James's The Ambassadors. It's best summed up by Friedman's long-term lover the poet and translator Richard Howard in his introduction to a posthumously-published masterpiece:

Perhaps the only explanatory gloss that the reader of Conversations with Beethoven should be aware of is the entirely contradictory (and therefore dreadful) amalgam of compassion and contempt for humanity that inspired it. This double entendre might be unrecognizable unless one saw and suffered from it in early and intimate circumstances, as I had occasion to during the many years I lived with the ultimately astonishing novelist Sanford Friedman. 

Astonishing indeed: quite apart from the fact that a candid novel about the tortuous path to gay self-acceptance could be reasonably well-received in the mid-1960s, I don't think I've ever read such a ruthless description of the role sexuality plays in infancy, childhood, adolescence and maturity as that in Totempole. I was reminded of Malaparte, not just in the animal names Friedman gives to each of the slices of life; and of myself at times, thankfully not straightforwardly in the unbearable psychological torment the confused 10 year old Stephen Wolfe inflicts on a boy weaker than himself, but I was certainly complicit in the bullying of a friend to deflect that bullying from myself, albeit when I was in my early teens, the worst years at school.

On the other hand there seems to be a wish-fulfilment in the more idealistic sequences which I'd be very surprised to find had an exact parallel in Friedman's own life; otherwise, only a ruthless examination of the wavering between atavistic instinct and a nobler ideal, reconciled to a degree in the last and longest section, dealing with Friedman/Wolfe's time serving in the Korean War, where the keynote is love and not death.

In the light of Howard's remarks, the portrait of a difficult genius during his last eight months in Conversations with Beethoven may contain an element of autobiography, or at least of identification, too. This premise is brilliant. The use of Ferdinand Hiller's text as epigraph summarises it neatly:

It is known that conversations with Beethoven had in part to be written; he spoke, but those with whom he spoke had to write down their questions and answers. For this purpose thick booklets of normal quarto writing paper and pencils were always close to hand.

I'm told that some of these survive, but I have to presume that Friedman made the ones in the book up, otherwise it wouldn't exactly be a novel. But its construction is brilliant: as the words of others leave us to imagine the deaf Beethoven's mostly irascible responses - with a few exceptions when he actually writes things down - his relationships unfold with hangers-on, concerned friends, those who care more about his art than his health, above all the main respondent, his sometimes (but not entirely) feckless nephew Karl. I don't think I'm spoiling the 'plot' when I say that the powerful, disturbing misogyny that's been built up dissolves in a climactic deathbed confrontation with Karl's mother. You'll know if you want to read this book from the outline of its approach I've just given; I think you should.

Patrick Gale's A Place Called Winter is more to be read for sheer entertainment and a good epic story well told, with 'fit for screenplay' written all over it. Boldly, the author imagined a reason why his great-grandfather Harry Cane should have made a clean break with his wife and child in England and gone to build a new life in Canada. Not long ago, families would have been appalled and disgusted at such a conjecture - I still see any inference of gay relationships in the lives, say, of the great composers, being met with cries of 'infamy' and 'vile slur' - but hopefully that time is past.

At any rate there's little but sympathy for the protagonist and we always root for him as we do not for Friedman's Stephen. I suppose I was a bit frustrated at first that we got no parallel inklings of his sexual orientation until the point where he begins his first gay relationship, as if it were a surprise to Harry; even if that kind of love dared not speak its name, the instincts would have been the same. I also thought it was bit coy about the sex, bearing in mind the core readership of Richard and Judy's Book Club (though I don't think Gale dumbs down at all). But the changes of scene are vivid, the characters good and bad strongly drawn, and a respect for the time of the action fitting. Here's just a sliver of dialogue between Harry and Petra, his pioneer beloved's sister:

She tapped her glass with her fingernails, shy of meeting his eye. 'Is it...is it emotional or simply a physical need the two of you are answering?'

'When I'm with Paul?'

She nodded, glancing up and away.

'I suppose, in a different world,' he began carefully, 'if everyone felt differently, it would be both. When a thing has always been forbidden and must live in darkness and silence, it's hard to know how it might be, if allowed to thrive.'

'I wonder,' she said, 'if everything were allowed, how many men would discover they were like you? I sometimes think most men dislike women intensely or resent them or something, and only marry them because that is what is expected, and because of children. And because no other option presents itself.'

'Oh, but I like women very much.'

'Oh. Good. Only not...?'

'Not quite as much. No.' 

By way of afterthought, I've found the gay love-story aspect of the five-part thriller on BBC Two, London Spy, very touching and real (as always when the words of Auden/Kallman's Anne Trulove come to mind: 'if love be love, it will not alter'). It's beautifully and broodingly filmed, with great cameos from many of the UK's best actors, and an often poetic script, and best of all is Ben Whishaw - the perfect Dionysus in the Almeida's Bakkhai -  as an incorruptible romantic who, having known the flipside, recognises love when he sees it. There's still one episode to go, so I shouldn't say too much, but we had a bit of a let-down this Monday with the supposed revelation of what the MI6 man may have been murdered for, and it was a bit laughable, even in the mouth of Adrian Lester. Well, we'll see how it all ends.

7/12  Postscript to that last comment following the final episode (and no spoiler, promise): not well, if we're talking about a satisfying denouement. Not even the totally convincing way Whishaw kept up the incorruptibility could carry it for me. Disbelief could not be suspended: there were incredulous groans of 'what?' from both of us here. Such a disappointment.