'An Alpine Symphony' by Richard Strauss
25 October 2013
It feels somewhat
indiscreet to start by revealing a lady’s age, but my good friend Catherine
Rose has hardly made any secret about achieving her first half-century. Rather
than hiding away and pretending it wasn’t happening, Catherine chose to
celebrate her fiftieth birthday by realising her ambition to conduct ‘An Alpine
Symphony’ by Richard Strauss. Last Sunday I was part of an orchestra of 125
players which assembled in the hall of Bedford School to spend an incredibly
enjoyable day tackling the Alpine peaks of this rarely performed work. The
musicians were mainly drawn from three local amateur orchestras (Bedford,
Milton Keynes and Northampton) together with professional orchestral players
from across the country. The Alpine Symphony requires massive forces, including
a wind machine, pipe organ, four Wagner tubas, cow bells and a heckelphone. Perhaps
someone should have advised Strauss that this is not a recipe to get your work
performed regularly. Nonetheless the Alpine Symphony is a piece held in great
affection, particularly by horn players (including Catherine and myself).
Instead of the usual four French horns, Strauss asks for eight on-stage players
plus twelve offstage horns. On Sunday we managed to assemble a total of fifteen
horn players and it was a fantastic experience to play as part of such a huge
section. The Alpine Symphony is a glorious piece with some stunning, joyful
climaxes. It must be amazing to be commanding such enormous forces by wielding
the conductor’s baton – though it must also be completely terrifying. We ended
the day with a performance of the symphony to an audience of family and
friends. I think it was a pretty impressive rendition – particularly on a
single day of rehearsals. It was a wonderful day – which also raised a
significant amount of money for Catherine’s three chosen charities. A great way
to celebrate a landmark birthday.Labels: Concerts, Music
'One Summer: America 1927' by Bill Bryson
18 October 2013
Bill Bryson write
two kinds of book – the travelogues which detail his first-hand
encounters with countries, communities and people across the world,
and his extensively desk-researched explorations (of Shakespeare,
science, domestic life etc). I think my favourite Bryson is his
childhood reminiscences 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid'
(reviewed here in 2007) which (just about) fits into the second
category. I particularly enjoyed his ability to conjure up the
characters of a different era. So I was looking forward to Bill
Bryson's new book 'One Summer: America 1927' which looks at five
remarkable months in which America changed the world. Reading 'One
Summer: America 1927' as an unabridged audio book, narrated by the
author, I was initially a little underwhelmed. While there was
nothing wrong with Bill Bryson's narration, I had just finished
listening to the stunning performance of Julian Rhind-Tutt reading
Jonathan Coe's novel 'Expo 58' (reviewed here in September 2013) and
I'm afraid anyone would have sounded a bit flat after that. Also Bill
Bryson's excessive use of statistics is particularly hard to take in
without seeing the numbers in front of you. But once he got beyond
the statistics and started to build pictures of the key individuals
in his story I became gripped. The summer of 1927 in America was
witness to an amazing array of events and an incredible cast of
characters. Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly non-stop
across the Atlantic. In baseball Babe Ruth was breaking every record
in the books. The boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney
drew the largest crowd to any sporting event ever. The lazy
President, Calvin Coolidge, (about whose death Dorothy Parker would
later ask “How could they tell?”) decided not to run for office
at the end of his (unelected) term while future President Herbert
Hoover built his reputation co-ordinating the relief effort after the
great Mississippi flood. Al Capone presided over an empire of
corruption and extortion in Chicago. Henry Ford ended production of
his Model T and embarked on a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to
create a rubber-producing city in the Amazon (Fordlandia). And
talking pictures arrived with Al Jolson in 'The Jazz Singer'. It was
quite a summer. Bill Bryson takes us chronologically through those
summer months – with digressions to fill in the before and after to
many of the stories. Lindbergh, Ruth and some of the other main
protagonists provide overarching narratives which hold the book
together. It's a powerful evocation of an era of prohibition,
gangsters, anarchist terrorists, adventurers and celebrities. Labels: Books
Jeremy Hardy
16 October 2013
We first saw
Jeremy Hardy in about 1997 in Lowestoft. I’ve written here before about that
performance (in March 2007): “while on
holiday in Suffolk, we were surprised to see the enormous old seaside theatre
in Lowestoft advertising an evening with Jeremy Hardy. This theatre, which had
Ken Dodd the previous week and Jimmy Tarbuck the following week – seemed an odd
setting for a left-wing political alternative comedian. We booked our tickets
and, on the night, found ourselves lost in a sea of empty seats with only about
a dozen other people but Jeremy Hardy dealt with a potentially embarrassing
situation extremely impressively. Quickly abandoning his prepared material he
probably worked harder than ever that night and completely won his tiny
audience over – one of the most impressive comedy performances I’ve seen.” Last week we caught up with Jeremy Hardy again at Kettering Arts Centre, as
part of his 30th anniversary tour, and he was even better. He is a
very assured performer. Not needing to rely on any theme, props or onstage
persona, he simply walks onto the stage and talks continuously for nearly two
and half hours (with a 20 minute interval). His delivery sounds like a seamless
stream of consciousness, mainly focussing on politics and current affairs. If
you look closely you can detect a few prepared sections but mostly it feels
improvised rather than scripted. Jeremy Hardy’s politics are uncompromising but
his thoughtful, logical, self-deprecating style is very winning, and incredibly
funny. It felt like he could have gone on all night, and we would have been
delighted if he had.Labels: Comedy
'Floating Letters' by Tsuumi Sound System
10 October 2013
I'm very much
enjoying 'Floating Letters', the new album by Finnish folk/rock
group Tsuumi Sound System. I reviewed 'Hotas', the previous Tsuumi
Sound System album, here in April 2008. Their music is cheery and
inspiring with a rhythmic complexity that demands syncopated
toe-tapping. At first it sounds a lot like Scottish folk but the
instrumentation, harmony and style continually shifts. Hard to
categorise but easy to enjoy. The playing is slick and impressive but
always wearing a smile. Here's a taster: http://vimeo.com/53798510Labels: Albums, Music
‘Life and Death: Pompeii and Herculaneum’
3 October 2013
Almost a year ago
we visited Pompeii for the first time and were bowled over by the
scale of the site and the size of the preserved buildings. So we had
been looking forward to seeing the exhibition ‘Life and Death:
Pompeii and Herculaneum’ at The British Museum. It was so difficult
to get tickets for the exhibition when we booked, in May this year,
that we ended up going on the final day last Sunday. There were huge
crowds waiting for a last chance to see the well-preserved relics of
Roman life and, even with the timed ticket system, you had to be very
patient to get close to each of the exhibits. The excellent audio
guide proved a very useful way to pass the time while queuing. ‘Life
and Death: Pompeii and Herculaneum’ wasn’t a very big exhibition
but that meant it was possible to explore everything it contained –
and this took us a good ninety minutes. The exhibition was laid out
in rooms equating to the rooms of a typical Roman villa, making sense
of the context of the many artefacts. The quality of preservation of
the wooden objects from Herculaneum was amazing. We were also struck
by how overtly sexual (by modern standards) many of the pictures and
sculptures were. There was one particularly explicit piece (if you’ve
seen the exhibition you will know the one I mean!) that was located
in a small side room with a notice by the entrance suggesting it
wasn’t suitable for children. While I was there one father was
getting exasperated by the enthusiasm of his young son (who must have
been 7 or 8 years old) to see whatever it was his dad didn’t want
him to see. In response to the boy’s pleading “why?” the man
eventually shouted “because I’m your father and I’m exercising
moral judgement!”. The casts of the bodies of some of the volcano’s
victims, captured in agonising poses at the moment of death, provided
an eerie and moving end to the exhibition. Labels: Exhibitions
