Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert
25 October 2022
Last Saturday I played in the first Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert of the orchestra's 2022-23 season - a wonderfully varied programme which attracted a packed audience to St Matthew's Church in Northampton. The concert opened with 'An American in Paris' by George Gershwin, which NSO last played in 2010 (reviewed here in April 2010). Hearing the piece again also brought back happy memories of Christopher Wheeldon's brilliant stage adaptation (of the Vincente Minnelli film) in London in 2017 (reviewed here in April 2017). It was a bright, cheerful performance with a great trumpet solo by Terry Mayo and a perfect lugubrious tuba solo towards the end by Nick Tollervey. We followed this popular work with another perennial favourite, Sergei Rachmaninoff's 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini', with the Ukrainian pianist Dinara Klinton. Dinara previously played with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in 2017 when she dazzled in the ‘Piano Concerto for the Left Hand’ by Maurice Ravel - a performance that no-one who was at the concert will ever forget (reviewed here in November 2017). Famous for the slow, lush, romantic 18th variation, the 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini' is a challenging piece to pull together, full of fast variations with flurries of piano notes punctuated by precisely placed orchestral stabs. So it was worrying when we discovered, during our final rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, that our pianist's train had been delayed and she might not arrive in time to run through the piece with the orchestra. We started to play it through without the piano solo and, while we were playing (and unseen by conductor John Gibbons) Dinara Klinton ran up the central aisle of the church, threw herself onto the piano stool and instantly joined in the music, just in time to launch into a cadenza - without having removed her backpack from her shoulders. She gave a stunning performance in the concert, taking much of the piece at a dramatically fast pace and lovingly playing with the tempo (and our expectations) in the slow passages. It was a privilege to be accompanying her. We finished the concert with 'Symphony No 9' by Ralph Vaughan Williams - celebrating the composer's 150th anniversary this month with his final symphony. It's a serious, dramatic work, not very well known and not the easiest piece to understand, but it really grew on me as I got to know it over the past couple of months. And it was interesting how much better it seemed to work in performance than rehearsal - perhaps needing the additional concentration and pin-drop silences that you only get in a live concert. Among many fantastic solos, the stand out moments for me were Dan Newitt's gorgeous flugel horn solo in the second movement, the violin solo by orchestra leader Emily Groom and the distinctive saxophone passages, excellently played by Eva Jennings and Vicki Reamsbottopm. It was a great concert which felt like our most complete performance for some time.
Labels: Concerts, Music
'Towards the End of the Morning' by Michael Frayn
20 October 2022
Michael Frayn's 1967 novel 'Towards the End of the Morning' depicts a bygone era of Fleet Street newspaper offices - young men in suits spending their days staring out of the window, the slow manual compilation of nature notes and crossword clues, a mysterious unseen Editor, long liquid lunches and the dream of escaping the dead-end of print journalism through appearances on radio, or even television. It's a gentle, poignant satire punctuated by some brilliant set-piece farce scenes. The whimsical tone reminded me of Jerome K Jerome's 'Three Men in a Boat', daydreaming through slow, endless days and never taking itself too seriously. 'Towards the End of the Morning' is a slight novel but Michael Frayn manages to draw sympathetic, likeable characters who may be flawed, and ultimately doomed, but feel like friends.
Labels: Books
‘John Gabriel Borkman’ by Henrik Ibsen
20 October 2022
On Saturday we were at the Bridge Theatre in London to see Henrik Ibsen’s 1896 play ‘John Gabriel Borkman’ in a new version by Lucinda Coxon, from a literal translation by Charlotte Barslund. This story of a disgraced former banker, imprisoned for speculating with his investors' money, feels all too topical. It’s a play with three leads - the titular banker, his wife and her sister - and Nicholas Hytner’s production boasts three star performances, from Simon Russell Beale, Claire Higgins and Lia Williams. Simon Russell Beale’s Borkman bears a striking resemblance (both physically and behaviourally) to a recent UK Prime Minister, and ends up looking like a blatant audition for King Lear. (Regular readers may remember I am patiently waiting for Simon Russell Beale to play Lear - see my review of his Prospero in ‘The Tempest’ here in November 2016.) I particularly liked the comic exchanges between Borkman and Vilhelm Foldal (Michael Simkins) which were wittily scripted and delivered in perfect dead-pan. But I felt Lia Williams stole the show with her performance as Ella. I had a feeling we had seen her on stage before and I now see I reviewed her super Rosalind in ‘As You Like It’ here in November 2005. I really enjoyed ‘John Gabriel Borkman’, more so for not having seen it before and discovering the unravelling plot for the first time.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ by William Shakespeare
14 October 2022
On Saturday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the RSC production of ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ directed by Blanche McIntyre. I had only seen ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ once before - in a Royal Exchange Theatre production at Upper Campfield Market in Manchester in 1996. It is sometimes described as one of the ‘problem plays’, with an uncomfortable plot that is essentially: girl falls in love with boy - boy rejects girl - girl persuades king to force boy to marry her against his will - boy runs away - girl stalks boy across Europe, tricks him into sleeping with her by pretending to be the girl he actually loves and thereby forces him to return to her. It is also one of those Shakespeare plays that feels like he is trying out ideas that he will use to greater effect elsewhere. The imprisonment, blindfolding and humiliation of Parolles, for example, has a clear connection with the treatment of Malvolio in ‘Twelfth Night’. Blanche McIntyre gives the play a contemporary setting, with social media feeds projected across the back of the stage - which does prove useful in clarifying some of the main off-stage plot developments. The acting was impressive and entertaining, with a great central performance by Rosie Sheehy as Helena. But it’s not a great play.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
BBC Young Musician 2022
14 October 2022
One of the lesser-noticed impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic was how it broke my proud record of having reviewed here every one of the biennial BBC Young Musician competitions since 2006. The 2020 competition was interrupted by lockdown, with the Concerto Final eventually going ahead in May 2021. I did manage to watch it - and percussionist Fang Zhang was a worthy winner - but it took place while we were away on holiday and I wasn’t able to post my review. I am delighted to say that normal service has been resumed in 2022, and even more delighted to say that the television coverage of this year’s BBC Young Musician was the best I can remember. Wonderfully the BBC bowed to the inevitable and asked Jess Gillam (a finalist in 2016) to present the coverage, as a double-hander with the equally impressive Alexis Ffrench. And remarkably (and I like to think this must be in part a result of my moaning here since 2008) they have finally reinstated a final that features five full concertos - rather than cruelly depriving two of the five category winners from their moment on stage accompanied by an orchestra, as has happened since 2010. It was brilliant to watch the live broadcast, on Sunday evening, of five full back-to-back concertos - a thrilling, incredibly varied and fantastically moving concert. I was very smug at having correctly predicted all five finalists from watching their category finals (which moved me to tears several times). But I must admit I was completely wrong-footed by the decision to award the overall title of BBC Young Musician 2022 to the percussionist Jordan Ashman. He was brilliant, and gave a very impressive performance of the spectacular Percussion Concerto by Jennifer Higdon, but I really thought the choice was going to be between two of the other finalists. Nevertheless the whole competition was really enjoyable and very fully and respectfully presented. Finally BBC Young Musician is once again as good as it used to be!
You can read all my previous posts about BBC Young Musician at: http://culturaldessert.blogspot.com/search/label/BBCYoungMusician
Labels: BBCYoungMusician, Music, TV
‘Jack Absolute Flies Again’ by Richard Bean and Oliver Chris
7 October 2022
Just over ten years ago the National Theatre had a big hit with ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’ - Richard Bean’s loose adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s play ‘The Servant of Two Masters’ (reviewed here in October 2011) which was a great star vehicle for James Corden. Now Richard Bean and Oliver Chris (who was in the original cast of ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’) have taken a similar approach to Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s classic restoration comedy ‘The Rivals’ to create ‘Jack Absolute Flies Again’. This sets the action in 1940 in the grounds of an English stately home which has been commandeered to host an RAF squadron. The National Theatre production, directed by Emily Burns (which we saw this week at The Odeon in Milton Keynes as an NT Live filmed broadcast) boasts a beautiful set by Mark Thompson. ‘Jack Absolute Flies Again’ is cartoonishly broad comedy - extremely silly but enjoyably likeable. From the start there is plenty breaking of the fourth wall (with characters pointing out “that didn’t happen in the original!”). Caroline Quentin’s Mrs Malaprop stretches her malapropisms to the limit and beyond, before playing with our expectations. The cast are all having a ball - and there is a great 1940s dance sequence. But Richard Bean and Oliver Chris also manage to inject a little serious wartime poignancy into the pantomime.
Labels: Drama, Film, Theatre
