Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert
24 June 2010
Mendelssohn’s music for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is a delightful, tuneful, popular work but, for any French horn player, it conjures up fear as all that pretty, innocent music seems to be leading menacingly, and all too quickly, towards the terror that is ‘The Nocturne’! To be fair, the horn solo in the Nocturne is also a very pretty tune, but it’s a mountain to climb for a horn player: not technically that difficult but very long, requiring considerable lung capacity (like climbing a mountain actually!). I was relieved to discover that ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was to be the first item on the programme at last Saturday’s Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert, giving me a chance to conquer its peaks while still reasonably fresh. And I must have practised playing through the Nocturne at least 100 times over the past 7 weeks, so I was well prepared. In the end, I got through it without any major problems. I’m sure some notes were a little strained as I began to run out of breath, but I think it went as well as it could have done and it was a great relief to get through it unscathed. Overall, I thought our performance of the Mendelssohn was pretty good. Indeed, the orchestra was in fine form on Saturday in what I think was our best concert since Alexander Walker took over as our conductor. The fabulous violinist Irmina Trynkos returned to give a dazzling performance of Chausson’s ‘Poeme’ and the ‘Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso’ by Saint Saens. And the concert concluded with an impressive and exciting performance of the ‘Symphonie Fantastique’ by Berlioz – including a truly beautiful cor anglais and offstage oboe duet at the beginning of the third movement by Peta Foley and Kathy Roberts. It was a long concert – tiring but exhilarating.
Labels: Concerts, Music
'The Little Stranger’ by Sarah Waters
18 June 2010
I really enjoyed ‘The Night Watch’ by Sarah Waters (reviewed here in January 2008) so I had been looking forward to reading her latest novel ‘The Little Stranger’ and I wasn’t disappointed. From the start you feel you are in safe hands: Waters is an excellent writer who seems to be able to create historical novels that feel as if they could have been written in the relevant period. ‘The Little Stranger’ is set in Warwickshire in 1947 with the country recovering from war, still constrained by rationing, anticipating the arrival of the new National Health Service and beginning to come to terms with a world that has changed forever. It tells the story of an aristocratic family struggling to maintain a once-grand, dilapidated country house, through the first-person narration of the local doctor. And very soon we seem to be entering classic ghost-story territory. But is ‘The Little Stranger’ a ghost story? Without any of the narrative tricks of ‘The Night Watch’, Sarah Waters has constructed a novel that appears to be a simple, spooky tale but subtly manages to say much about the changing social order at a turning point in history. Deceptively straightforward, there is considerable depth below the surface and your view of what the book is really about gradually evolves without you really noticing – while you are carried briskly through 500 pages of gripping, often chilling, narrative.
Labels: Books
Denmark
18 June 2010
We had a lovely holiday in Denmark last week, despite less than wonderful weather. We stayed in central Copenhagen and did most of the tourist things - though we were surprised, after walking out to the harbour to see the Little Mermaid, to discover that the statue is currently in the Denmark pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai and has been temporarily replaced by a video screen showing live footage of Expo visitors walking past the Little Mermaid in sunny China! We took a trip to the North East of Zealand to Helsingor to see Kronborg Slot - the setting for Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' and also visited the former capital, Roskilde. We saw the site of a Viking fortress at Trelleborg and sampled the slightly tacky delights of the Tivoli Gardens (imagine Alton Towers compressed to the size of a postage stamp!). Denmark is an interesting place with a fascinating history and extremely friendly and helpful people.
Labels: Holidays
‘Bang Goes the Knighthood’ by The Divine Comedy
4 June 2010
Mock operatic arias, jaunty music-hall ditties, sumptuous romantic melodies, sudden time-changes, concert-hall piano, strummed ukulele, orchestral strings, witty lyrics and corny rhymes: it can only be a new album by The Divine Comedy! The Divine Comedy (reviewed here in September 2005 and July 2006) returned this week with the wonderful ‘Bang Goes the Knighthood’. After Neil Hannon’s cricket-themed album 'The Duckworth Lewis Method' (reviewed here in July 2009) ‘Bang Goes the Knighthood’ takes us firmly back to the classic Divine Comedy sound. Arguably Hannon undercuts every moment of beauty he creates by being unable to resist the temptation to slip into whimsy. But when you love a band you tend to love the full package – both sublime and ridiculous. The beautiful highpoint of this album is the perfect foxtrot ‘Have You Ever Been in Love?’ but I’m equally taken with ‘The Lost Art of Conversation’ which manages to rhyme all of the following:
- a conversation
- David Jason
- Francis Bacon
- concentration
- League of Nations
- The English Patient
- imagination
- hallucinations
- Good Vibrations
- the Reformation
- transubstantiation
- Bram Stoker’s creation
- The Land of the Thracians
- time and patience
and, in case that wasn’t enough, also links Frank Lampard, Joan of Arc and Van Dyke Parks. Beat that!
Labels: Albums, Music
Cider with Rosie’ by Laurie Lee, adapted by Daniel O’Brien
4 June 2010
We were at the Oxford Playhouse last Saturday to see the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds production of ‘Cider with Rosie’ by Laurie Lee – a new adaptation by Daniel O’Brien. An inventive, ensemble piece, with original music by T J Holmes, it uses six actors to play Laurie and his five siblings as well as every other character in the story. The whole cast is onstage throughout, adding sound effects or background action to scenes in which they are not the principal players. The effect is entertaining and amusing with much to admire in its stagecraft and some lovely songs. It reminded me of the stage adaptations of novels by Shared Experience which employ a similar physical ensemble approach. But I would have preferred more narrative drive: the approach was very episodic (in line with the book I assume, though I haven’t read it) and there was little to indicate the overall passage of time through Laurie’s childhood. As a play it grew on me but didn’t grip me, though it received a rapturous reception – I suspect there were plenty of fans of the book in the audience.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
