BBC Young Musician 2012
16 May 2012
I have written extensively here before about the BBC Young
Musician competition (in May 2006, May 2008 and May 2010) and I’m pleased to
report that, compared to the dark days of 2008, the BBC coverage of the 2012 finals
continued the return to a sense of dignity that I observed here in 2010. The TV
coverage of BBC Young Musician 2012 was slick and modern but also serious and
respectful. It’s just really sad only to see three concerto finalists rather
than all five category winners getting the chance to perform at the Sage,
Gateshead, with the Northern Sinfonia. Once again this year there was no brass
concerto in the final concert. Apart from this, however, 2012 was a vintage
year for the competition. The field seemed stronger than I can remember it and
amazingly, after predicting the winner for the very first time in 2010, this
year I knew Laura van der Heijden was going to win as soon as I saw her
performance in the Strings Final. She was clearly something special and her
performance of the Walton ‘Cello Concerto on Sunday was mesmerising. It is hard
to believe she has only just turned 15. So well done Laura and well done BBC
but how disgraceful that none of the national newspapers reported the result of
BBC Young Musician 2012, see:
http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/05/not-one-uk-paper-reports-bbc-young-musician-result.html.
Labels: BBCYoungMusician, Music, TV
'A Midsummer Night's Dream' by William Shakespeare
14 May 2012
We started Voluntary Arts Week 2012 on Saturday by making
the short journey to the TADS Theatre in Toddington. TADS is celebrating its 50
th
anniversary – which it shares with the Royal Shakespeare Company – by presenting
its first ever performance of a Shakespeare play. Sue Sachon’s production of ‘A
Midsummer Night’s Dream’ has clearly been a major undertaking for TADS: the
theatre has been transformed for the occasion, creating a central stage area
with seating on two sides and the greenery of the Athenian forest covering the
whole auditorium. This spectacular setting (designed by Grainne Allen) is
perfect for a wonderful performance that makes you wonder why it has taken TADS
50 years to get around to Shakespeare. Setting the production in the Edwardian
era gives the play an added poignancy. It feels like a last hurrah for the old
way of life – in which an aristocratic father is prepared to condemn his
daughter to death for refusing to marry his preferred suitor, while the
deference of the servants already seems old-fashioned and outdated. The rude
mechanicals are dressed as cloth-capped labourers and bring to mind Robert
Tressell’s ‘Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists’. Amid the mirth and mayhem, the impending
shadow of the Somme hangs over these “hard-handed men”. There were some great
performances: Michael Collins stood out as a mercurcial Irish Puck, Dave
Corbett was powerful as Oberon and Steve Loczy and Cameron Hay show an
impressive range of emotions as Lysander and Demetrius. Lea Pryer completely
inhabits the part of Titania – convincingly amorous with the ass-headed Bottom
though it is probably only fair to point out that he is played by Lea’s
husband! Steven Pryer is a great comic turn as Nick Bottom but the show is
stolen by the tiny young actor, Harry Rodgers: his performance, in a wig of
flowing golden locks, as the bellows mender Francis Flute playing Thisbe (in
the play-within-the-play) is hysterically funny. All of which reminds you what
an excellent amateur theatre group TADS has become – and what a wonderful play ‘A
Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is: a triumph.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
‘I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan’ by Alan Partridge with Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons, Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan
11 May 2012
I’m not a great one for celebrity autobiographies and I wasn’t
sure how much I would enjoy the ‘autobiography’ of a fictional celebrity but I
thought that ‘I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan’ might be an undemanding
bit of light relief. Once I got started with the unabridged audio book, read by
‘Alan Partridge’ himself, I realised that I was in for a treat. ‘I Partridge’
is a really clever and incredibly funny book. I found myself laughing out loud
at least once a chapter. The book, written by ‘Alan Partridge’ with Rob
Gibbons, Neil Gibbons, Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan, is exactly how Alan
Partridge would have written his autobiography. It is painstakingly accurate (or
pleasingly pedantic) in its references to Alan’s broadcasting career, taking in
all the incidents that I remember clearly myself having followed Steve Coogan’s
comic creation from its inception. Indeed you quickly realise that Alan
Partridge has now been around so long and appeared in so many incarnations,
since his debut on Radio 4’s ‘On The Hour’ in 1991, that he has grown into a
rounded character with a substantial ‘real’ history. But the historical events familiar
to us from Alan’s various radio and TV shows are recounted in the book very
much from the Partridge point of view, and with the benefit of hindsight, and
may not always be exactly as you remember them. ‘I Partridge’ is not a ‘greatest
hits’ exercise, merely replaying old jokes, it actually adds a further layer of
hindsight humour. There’s also a lot of playful meta-textual stuff, with Alan
being careful to warn us when he is about to shift to a first person, present
tense, narration for effect, and pointing out which passages his publishers
have insisted he includes. This talking directly to the reader, together with
the confusing nature of having a fictional character reading the audio version
of a book written by a fictional character about events that, though fictional,
we actually remember from more than 20 years ago, gives the book a strangely
sophisticated feel. The inclusion of a (very funny) birth scene in the first
chapter made me think of Laurence Sterne’s ‘Tristram Shandy’, perhaps
intentionally as Steve Coogan starred in Michael Winterbottom’s 2005 film of
Sterne’s novel, ‘A Cock and Bull Story’. ‘I Partridge’ is much harder to
describe than it is to read: I found myself picking it up at every available
opportunity and loved every minute.
Labels: Books, Comedy
Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert
11 May 2012
I’ve played in loads of amateur orchestras and performed in
countless concerts over many years. As a French horn player, I have
particularly enjoyed playing music by the great Romantic composers of the 19
th
and early 20
th centuries. But I have played hardly any music by one
of the most popular and most romantic of all composers, Giacomo Puccini.
Puccini was primarily a composer of operas and wrote very little for the
concert hall. Our latest Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert last Saturday
was ‘A Night at the Opera’ – a programme of overtures, interludes and arias
from some of the best known operas. This provided a rare opportunity for the
orchestra to play some Puccini, specifically ‘Un bel di’ from ‘Madam Butterfly’,
‘Nessun Dorma’ from ‘Turandot’ and ‘Vogliatemi bene’, the Finale to Act One of ‘Madam
Butterfly’ which I particularly enjoyed – it’s gorgeous music to play. We were
joined by two operatic soloists, the soprano Sally Harrison and the experienced
tenor John Hudson. John is a former Principal with English National Opera who
we were incredibly lucky to secure as a last-minute replacement when our
original tenor came down with flu the day before the concert. The singers were
both great and very entertaining and it was interesting for the orchestra to
experience the very different discipline of playing for opera. Because each aria
is literally telling a story, accompanying the singers is quite different from
playing with a concerto soloist. The ebbs and flows of speed and volume are
different every time you play the piece and you need to pay incredibly careful
attention. By contrast, Verdi’s overture to ‘La forza del destino’, with which
we opened the concert, felt like a very conventional orchestral piece. The
programme also included pieces from Bizet’s ‘Carmen’, ‘Cosi fan tutte’ by
Mozart and ‘The Merry Widow’ by Franz Lehar, finishing with ‘Brindisi’ from
Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’. It was a fun concert which went down well with the
audience and we returned to Puccini for an encore of ‘Vogliatemi bene’.
Labels: Concerts, Music
'Silver: Return to Treasure Island' by Andrew Motion
2 May 2012
It was interesting reading Andrew Motion’s novel ‘Silver:
Return to Treasure Island’ immediately after Robert Louis Stevenson’s original
story. ‘Silver’, which I read as an unabridged audio book, narrated by David
Tennant, tells the story of Jim Hawkins’ son and Long John Silver’s daughter
returning to the infamous island to recover more of the treasure. Initially the
story appears to follow a parallel path to ‘Treasure Island’ but with very
little of the original’s menace. I think you can tell this is the work of a
poet – beautifully written with every word carefully chosen – but it feels a
bit slow and lacks the thrill and adventure of its predecessor. Once we arrive
at the island the narrative twists in a new direction and becomes less
predictable and much more interesting – less ‘Treasure Island’ (reviewed here
in April 2012) and more ‘The Lord of the Flies’ (reviewed here in June 2006). ‘Silver’
is a clever, thoughtful book but whereas Stevenson continually ratcheted up the
levels of evil, Motion’s tale feels too safe to be truly scary or thrilling.
Labels: Books
'Wonderful Town' by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green
2 May 2012
Since visiting New York last year (which I wrote about here
in April 2011), I have become much more aware of quite how many films, books,
plays and musicals are set in Manhattan – and much more interested in the
geography of these narratives. So it was fascinating to discover Leonard
Bernstein’s ‘Wonderful Town’ which forms the centrepiece of his trilogy of New
York musicals and is, to some extent, the missing link between the more celebrated
shows, ‘On The Town’ and ‘West Side Story’. The new production of ‘Wonderful
Town’ – a collaboration between The Royal Exchange Theatre, The Hallé Concerts
Society and The Lowry, directed by Braham Murray, which I saw at Milton Keynes
Theatre – is a rare revival of a largely forgotten work. While the story is very
slight and the songs didn’t escape to take on a life of their own, nevertheless
it was a very enjoyable experience. And it was really interesting to spot little
ideas and motifs that were recognisable precursors of ‘West Side Story’. The
music was great – though I am sorry I didn’t have the opportunity to see the
show at The Lowry in Salford where it was accompanied by the entire Hallé
Orchestra, conducted by Sir Mark Elder: that must have been something to
behold. I am glad I spent some time listening to recordings of the music
beforehand so that it felt reasonably familiar. There were some wonderful big
production numbers with great dancing, choreographed by Andrew Wright. For me,
the showstopper was ‘Pass the football’ sung by Nic Greenshields as Wreck – an unusually
structured chorus, “like nothing you have ever seen”. ‘Wonderful Town’ had a
lot of similarities with ‘Guys and Dolls’ (reviewed here in February 2007) in
its set, characters and score. But it was the hints of what was to come, not
just in ‘West Side Story’ but also in ‘Candide’ that made it particularly
compelling.
Labels: Musicals, Theatre
