Milton Keynes Sinfonia concert

26 March 2025

In March 2020 I stepped in at the last moment to deputise for one of the horn players in Milton Keynes Sinfonia who was ill, giving me the unexpected pleasure of playing Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No 5’ at the Chrysalis Theatre in Milton Keynes in one of the last live concerts before we entered lockdown. Last Saturday I was in a similar position, as a late replacement for an ill horn player, returning to the Chrysalis Theatre to play Beethoven's ‘Symphony No. 6’ (The Pastoral) with Milton Keynes Sinfonia. I've known the clarinetist Christine Kelk for many years, and I was aware that she had been chair of the Milton Keynes Sinfonia for a long time, but I was amazed to discover that she's now celebrating 50 years with the orchestra. Saturday's concert was a tribute with a programme, chosen entirely by Christine, which featured two of her favourite pieces of all time. Alongside the Beethoven Pastoral Symphony, the concert included Mozart's ‘Clarinet Concerto’ with the brilliant young clarinet player Poppy Beddow. We started with Rossini's famous overture ‘The Thieving Magpie’, but it was the Beethoven I enjoyed the most, in a strong performance crafted by conductor David Knight, with great clarinet playing by Tim Mackley. It was clearly a very popular programme with the packed audience: a really enjoyable concert.

'Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen' conceived and curated by Samantha Manton

20 March 2025

Two Temple Place is a beautifully eccentric neo Tudor/Gothic building on the Victoria Embankment in London. Commissioned by and built for William Waldorf Astor in the 1890s, Two Temple Place is now owned by The Bulldog Trust and hosts a year-round programme of community and cultural activity. Its wood panelled rooms and stained glass windows make it a slightly incongruous setting for the current exhibition 'Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen'. This fascinating collection of works by artists from working-class backgrounds, conceived and curated by Samantha Manton, explores the overlooked richness and diversity of working-class life and creative expression from the 1950s to the present day. As I started to walk around the exhibition the tone of celebration of the joy, fun and passions of ordinary everyday life reminded me both of the Pitmen Painters of Ashington (celebrated in Lee Hall’s play ‘The Pitmen Painters’, reviewed here in October 2009 and November 2019) and of Hetain Patel's ‘Come As You Really Are’ exhibition in Croydon (reviewed here in September 2024). So it was wonderful then to come across pieces by some of the Pitmen Painters and by Hetain Patel, later in the exhibition. It was good to see the very recognisable paintings of Beryl Cook, but it is the many images of ordinary, often unnamed, people that dominate Lives Less Ordinary. The majority of the exhibition consists of photographs - beautiful, stark depictions of everyday life from the 1950s, 80s and 90s. Most focus on the people and their interests and enthusiasms, rather than on the difficulties of their lives. And the other recurring theme that jumped out was the places depicted - including Middlesbrough, Stoke on Trent, Liverpool, Northumberland, Glasgow, Handsworth, Rochdale, Bolton etc. I was struck by a quote from the painter George Shaw, whose practice revolves around the Tile Hill Estate in the Midlands: “If you can't find yourself in your own backyard you're not going to find yourself in the Serengeti, are you? So for me, it was taking those cliches of epiphany and the sublime and putting them in a place where great thoughts aren't rumoured to happen.” It was also great to see a display about the Desi Pubs project developed by the Creative People and Places consortium Creative Black Country which I featured in my 2016 report ‘The role of voluntary arts activity and everyday participation in Creative People and Places’. The exhibition's aim is "recognising the extraordinary in the ordinary". It's on until 20 April and is free. More details here.
 

‘What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory’ by Brian Eno and Bette A.

14 March 2025

I had seen some of the publicity about ‘What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory’, the new book by Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse, but it was when a friend at one of our partner organisations emailed me to say “it is essentially a manifesto for everyday creativity … I am buying a dozen copies and passing them around everyone involved!” that I thought I must get around to reading it. It is a short, beautifully produced book, with witty illustrations by Bette Adriaanse, and its message is both simple and incredibly thought provoking. Much of Eno and Adriaanse’s theory seems to focus on everyday creativity (though they don’t use that term). They suggest ‘art’ means “all kinds of things where somebody does more than is absolutely necessary for the sake of the feeling they get by doing it” and that “making art seems to be a universal human activity”. I also liked their comparisons with science: they say “Science makes models of things so we can understand how they work. Art makes models of things so we can understand how we work.” and “Just as we need science to tell us how the changing world is, we need art to help find out how we feel about it.” ‘What Art Does’ is a cleverly simple answer to a seemingly impossible question.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

4 March 2025

To prepare for each of our Northampton Symphony Orchestra concerts I usually practise at home by playing along with recordings. Often, while I am trying to get grips with a piece I haven't played before, I find that the available recordings are all too fast to keep up with. Even when I have learned my part it can be difficult to match the pace of a professional orchestra. But usually NSO conductor John Gibbons finds a speed that allows us to give a good account of the composer's intentions, without pushing the orchestra beyond its limits. In our concert at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton last Saturday, however, I think our piano soloist Anthony Hewitt actually played much of Ravel's 'Piano Concerto in G major' faster than any of the recordings I had been using. It was an incredibly exciting performance which the orchestra just about managed to keep up with. The concerto is an amazing piece, which NSO last played in 2008 with Lucy Parham (reviewed here in November 2008). It’s fiendishly difficult, with complex rhythms and bluesy melodies that sound very like Gershwin. The slow movement is a beautiful gentle waltz, which opens with almost three minutes of unaccompanied solo piano and then features a gorgeous extended cor anglais solo, exquisitely played in our performance by Harriet Brown.

All three works in Saturday's concert, while very different in style, were linked by elements of dance and syncopated rhythms. 'The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra' by John Adams is a companion piece to his 1986 opera 'Nixon in China'. Playing John Adams' minimalist style is a very particular challenge for an orchestra, requiring incredible concentration and counting not to lose your place in the repetitive patterns of notes. It came together really well in the performance which I think was the best the orchestra had played the piece.

We concluded the concert with Rachmaninoff's brilliant late orchestral work 'Symphonic Dances'. Everyone I have spoken to who knows the 'Symphonic Dances' seems to love the piece. I hadn't played it before but it has been really enjoyable getting to know it over the past eight weeks. Rachmaninoff incorporates echoes of the music of Stravinsky, Tchaikowsky and Copland as well as referencing many of his own other works. The lush romantic harmonies I associate with the Rachmaninoff symphonies and piano concertos are present, but here marshalled into a driving rhythmic framework. And his melodies are achingly beautiful, particularly the second movement's wistful Viennese waltz and the breathtaking alto saxophone solo in the first movement, beautifully played by Graham Tear. The finale, with its jigsaw puzzle of syncopated cross-rhythms built to a stunning climax which was a fitting end to a thrilling concert.

'Killing Thatcher' by Rory Carroll

28 February 2025

Robin: I’ve just finished reading ‘Killing Thatcher’, Rory Carroll’s fascinating account of the 1984 Brighton bombing of the Conservative Party Conference. This meticulously researched book examines the paths that led to Brighton for both the IRA bomber Patrick Magee and the Prime Minister. He works hard to explain the motivations both for the bombing and for Margaret Thatcher’s approach to Northern Ireland - including a brilliant six-page summary of the origins of The Troubles. The chapter recounting in detail the early hours of 12 October 1984 at the Grand Hotel in Brighton is horrific and gripping. And the tale of the subsequent manhunt is like a thrilling police procedural novel. Rory Carroll also ponders the consequences of the sliding doors moment that came so close to killing a British Prime Minister and how this would have significantly changed history in Britain and Ireland and across the world.

Spiers & Boden

25 February 2025

When we saw the brilliant folk big band Bellowhead at the Riverside Theatre in Aylesbury last November (reviewed here in November 2024) I described it as "possibly the best gig I have ever been to". So it was great to get the chance this week to see Bellowhead founders Spiers & Boden again at The Stables in Wavendon. I last saw John Spiers (melodeon) and Jon Boden (fiddle) playing as a duo at The Stables in 2022 (reviewed here in July 2022) when they were promoting their 2021 album 'Fallow Ground'. This week's performance felt very much a reprise of that tour, still mainly featuring the songs and tunes from 'Fallow Ground'. But you can't really complain about traditional folk musicians not doing new material and it was another brilliant concert. Spiers & Boden are great ambassadors for English folk music, entertainingly explaining what an orphan Morris-dance tune is, why the same tune gains completely different titles as it is passed on from one community to another, and why a lengthy narrative ballad from the 13th century survives with only a fraction of its original verses. They are also outstanding musicians and it is always a pleasure to see them live.

'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

25 February 2025

I still have fond memories of the period when Rupert Goold was the Artistic Director of the Royal and Derngate theatres in Northampton (now more than 20 years ago). His productions were always inventive and ambitious and it has been fascinating to watch his career since, including a spectacularly over the top staging of 'The Merchant of Venice' in the newly refurbished Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2011 (reviewed here in June 2011). Now, as he prepares to take over as Artistic Director of the Old Vic in London next year, Rupert Goold has returned to Stratford to direct a stunning new RSC production of 'Hamlet' which we saw last Saturday. He has chosen to set the play entirely on a ship, creating an even more claustrophobic feel to Elsinore with the cast trapped together by the ocean. Es Devlin's magnificent set turns the Royal Shakespeare Theatre stage into the deck of a ship, with the bow pointing directly out into the stalls, surrounded by large tanks of water, and Akhila Krishnan's video design showing the ship's wake at the rear of the set. Luke Thallon is a brilliant, restless, twitchy Hamlet, giving the famous speeches a realistic feel as he appears to be thinking out loud. He is supported by a strong cast including Jared Harris as Claudius, Nancy Carroll as Gertrude, Elliot Levey as Polonius and Anton Lesser as the Ghost and the Player King. But they all risk being upstaged by the set. As the drama becomes more intense the ship starts to move, with the whole vast stage tilting. The final scene, with the swordfight between Hamlet and Laertes taking place as the steeply angled deck starts to plunge into the waves, is genuinely thrilling - an amazing theatrical experience. 

'A Real Pain' by Jesse Eisenberg

18 February 2025

On Friday we were at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see ‘A Real Pain’. Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, ‘A Real Pain’ follows two Jewish cousins from New York (played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) on a trip to Poland to visit places associated with their late grandmother. It’s a beautiful, subtle, moving film: the cousins’ odd-couple relationship is funny but the humour is gentle. The film explores the believable complexities of grief and pain - and the impossibility of judging hierarchies of pain. The visit to a former concentration camp is incredibly powerful, more so for its use of silence. ‘A Real Pain’ is a thoughtful film that doesn’t outstay its welcome and wonderfully resists the temptation to try to solve the challenges it presents.