Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

13 December 2023

The Northampton Symphony Orchestra's Christmas Cracker concert always attracts an enthusiastic family audience, but this was the first year I can remember us selling out the Spinney Theatre at Northampton School for Girls. It was very exciting to take to the stage on Sunday afternoon to see more than 500 faces looking back at us. This was a triumph for the NSO Committee and orchestra members who delivered a very effective marketing campaign - and for our conductor John Gibbons who planned and delivered an extremely family-friendly programme. We played a mixture of traditional seasonal tunes (including Morton Gould's innovative arrangement of 'Jingle Bells' and Leroy Anderson's 'Sleigh Ride'), Christmas carols, film music (from 'Frozen' and 'Mary Poppins') and two narrated pieces featuring our compere David Birch. 'Sugar Plum on the Run' by Lior Rosner tells the story of what happened to the Sugar Plum Fairy after the events of 'The Nutcracker' - and provides an excuse for a miscellany of variations on Tchaikovsky's 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy'. We sandwiched Rosner's piece between movements from the actual 'Nutcracker Suite'. But our younger audience members seemed most excited by our performance of 'The Gruffalo' - Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's tale set to music by Philip McKenzie. Like Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf' this narrated piece features specific instruments of the orchestra as each of the main characters, with the piccolo (Graham Tear) as the mouse, E flat clarinet (Naomi Muller) as the fox, cor anglais (Harriet Brown) as the snake, French horn (Ian Jones) as the owl and the contra bassoon (Frank Jordan) as the Gruffalo. Each year the orchestra's transformation during the interval into a sea of santa hats, reindeer antlers and fancy dress gets sillier and sillier - and I think we looked particularly splendid on Sunday. But silliness does not come without risk: I had wrapped a long piece of tinsel around my French horn and just as we were approaching the climax of 'Frozen' I removed my third valve slide to empty it out in order to be ready for the big tune and managed to get a tiny strand of tinsel stuck in the exposed pipe, which prevented me from replacing the slide. As panic began to set in, I managed to play my next entry without using the third valve and then rapidly removed all tinsel and got the slide to fit back in without missing a note. Fortunately I  don't think anyone noticed my near disaster - but I will be steering clear of all tinsel in next year's Christmas Cracker concert!

'Bel Canto' by Ann Patchett

8 December 2023

I am a newcomer to the work of the American novelist Ann Patchett but, having just finished reading her brilliant 2001 novel ‘Bel Canto’ I am looking forward to exploring her other books. ‘Bel Canto’ tells the story of a mass hostage siege in a presidential mansion in an unnamed Latin American country. Among the array of international dignitaries held hostage at gunpoint is a famous American opera diva who had been giving a recital in the house. While this sounds like the plot of a thriller, Ann Patchett manages to make this seriously frightening situation into a gentle and quirky ensemble piece exploring relationships, language, music and quality of life. The slightly surreal, dreamlike quality of her prose reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro (particularly his novel ‘The Unconsoled’ about a famous pianist who arrives in an unnamed central European city to perform a concert). The eccentric but charming multinational cast of characters imprisoned in the house (and those imprisoning them) reminded me of the novels of Louis de Bernières. And the gentle tone and compelling characters, all confined within the walls of the house, had lots of similarities to one of my favourite novels of recent years, ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ by Amor Towles (reviewed here in September 2021). Ann Patchett brilliantly juxtaposes a beautiful, life-affirming story about the development of an effective and loving closed community with a brutal real-world framing. It’s an amazing novel.

Milton Keynes Sinfonia concert

30 November 2023

The last time I played with Milton Keynes Sinfonia was the concert in March 2020 just before we went into lockdown (reviewed here in March 2020). That evening had a strange atmosphere of nervousness about the rapidly worsening Coronavirus situation. My return to the Chrysalis Theatre in Milton Keynes last theatre to join the orchestra for an evening of ballet music was a much happier occasion. The programme included music from three ballets which all feature dolls, toys or puppets coming to life. The concert started with the ‘Introduction and Mazurka’ from ‘Coppélia’ by Delibes, followed by the ‘Nutcracker Suite’ by Tchaikovsky. But the main event was a performance of ‘Petrushka: A Burlesque in Four Scenes (1947 version)’ by Stravinsky. ‘Petrushka’ is a fiendishly difficult piece, incredibly dramatic and requiring supreme concentration from the orchestra to negotiate Stravinsky’s unpredictable shifts of rhythm and tempo. It also features a series of challenging solos. With apologies to everyone I have forgotten to mention, I was particularly impressed by the woodwind principals Lizzie Molloy (flute), Karen Mason (oboe), Tim Mackley (clarinet) and Ian Every (bassoon) and by my fellow horn player Tom Molloy, William Thallon on piano, Anwen Mai Thomas and a splendid trumpet solo by Nick Bunker. Though I think we were all quite nervous approaching the concert, conductor David Knight drew out an impressive and exciting performance from the orchestra and it was great fun to be part of it.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

21 November 2023

In 2019 Northampton Symphony Orchestra performed at Clifton Cathedral in Bristol (reviewed here in November 2019) - our first trip away from Northamptonshire since I joined the orchestra in 2000. This had been intended as the first in a series of annual weekends away for the orchestra but our plans were curtailed by the pandemic. Last weekend NSO was finally on tour again, spending two days in Grantham where we performed a concert at the Church of Saint John the Evangelist in Spitalgate. The concert was part of a programme of fundraising to support more community activities at the recently reopened church, which has just secured National Lottery funding to launch a Community Fridge - a space that brings people together to share food, meet up, learn new skills and prevent fresh food from going to waste. Our host was the church's Director of Music, the soprano Helen Winter, who helped to organise the concert, brought her choir, the St John's Winter Singers (plus guests from other local choirs) to perform with us, and sang two amazing solos with the orchestra herself. We travelled to Grantham on Saturday morning, rehearsed in the church in the afternoon and had a meal together on Saturday evening, ahead of the concert on Sunday afternoon. With some people unable to join us for the weekend, it was a smaller orchestra than normal and our Music Director, John Gibbons, did a great job of arranging many of the pieces for the available forces. The concert included music by Delius, Vaughan Williams, Wagner, Fauré, Mozart and Mascagni. Orchestra member Hilary Glanville gave a stunning performance of the 'Pastoral Fantasia for Viola and String Orchestra' by Northampton's William Alwyn - a beautiful, haunting piece with echoes of Delius and Vaughan Williams. But the highlight of the concert (for me at least!) was the 'Konzertstück for four Horns' by Heinrich Hübler which featured the NSO horn section - Callie Rich, Callie Scully, Ian Jones and me. Hübler was a horn player who performed in the premiere of Schumann's 'Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra' and was inspired to compose a similar piece. Hübler's Konzertstück is slightly easier to play than the Schumann and more evenly shares the melodic lines amongst all four solo horns. We were very pleased with our first concerto performance together and it seemed to go down well with the enthusiastic audience at St John's. We are looking forward to playing the Hübler concerto again at the NSO Friends concert in July 2024. Our Grantham concert was a lovely occasion, featuring a wide variety of musical styles and some beautiful, delicate playing by the orchestra, including wonderful woodwind solos by Graham Tear, Sarah Mourant and Christine Kelk. Although we were a little under-rehearsed I think this just made us concentrate more carefully in the concert which was one of our best performances for a long time. We had a really enjoyable weekend in Grantham: it was nice to spend time together as an orchestra, with plenty of great conversation over food. Many thanks to Helen Winter, John Gibbons and Callie Rich for organising everything.

Tom Robinson

16 November 2023

Last Friday we made a first visit to Storey's Field Centre - the impressive new community centre in the new district of Eddington on the outskirts of Cambridge - to see Tom Robinson in concert. Regular readers will know I am a big fan of Tom Robinson who we have seen perform many times across the country (see: https://culturaldessert.blogspot.com/search?q=tom+robinson). As usual Tom used the show to introduce a young musician he has been championing on his BBC 6 Music radio show. This time singer-songwriter Sam Eagle used the concert to launch his debut album ‘Are You Listening?’ Sam is a brilliant guitarist with a delicate, precise voice who writes beautiful, wistful songs. Tom Robinson often updates the lyrics to his songs - this time including references to Downing Street parties and other recent events - but, at 73 years old, he explained he can’t always remember the new words so he had printed them out, meaning he had to keep putting his glasses on mid-song to be able to read them: ah, the perils of getting older! His longevity has also caused him to update his 1994 song ‘What if we live to be fifty’ to ‘What if I make it to eighty’. It was great to see him again and to revisit 'Glad to be Gay', 'War Baby', '2-4-6-8 Motorway' and many other old favourites.

'Three Things About Elsie' by Joanna Cannon

8 November 2023

Joanna Cannon’s novel ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’ (reviewed here in January 2022) charmingly used a naive first person narrator to turn a fairly normal domestic situation into a thrilling mystery. As we saw events primarily through the eyes of 10-year old Grace we were never entirely sure whether she had spotted sinister activities that the grown-ups hadn't noticed or whether she was mistakenly misinterpreting things she didn't understand. I've just finished reading Joanna Cannon's 2018 novel 'Three Things About Elsie' which uses a similar device but with the protagonist at the opposite end of her life journey. Here the first person narrator is Florence, a woman in her 80s living in a retirement home. As she starts to encounter signs that an intruder has been in her room, and the reappearance of a shadowy character from her past, we begin to wonder how much of what she tells us is true and how much is the result of her failing memory. Like 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep' the story becomes a detective mystery as Florence and her friends try to uncover long hidden secrets. It's an entertaining and engaging novel, easy to read but full of beautifully turned phrases and much cleverer than it first appears. As with 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep' I felt the brilliantly unsettling device of the ambiguity of the narrator was watered down by inserting chapters from the points of view of some of the other main characters. But Joanna Cannon creates a great cast of likeable characters who initially appear to be cartoonish but gradually reveal their sympathetic human depth.

'Slow Horses' by Mick Herron

1 November 2023

I really enjoyed reading Mick Herron's spy thriller 'Slow Horses' - a novel that dives deep into the underbelly of intelligence work, far from the glamour often associated with the genre. Set against the backdrop of London's shadowy streets, 'Slow Horses' introduces readers to Slough House—MI5's dumping ground for disgraced operatives. The book blends the mundanity of bureaucratic exile with the high stakes of national security, creating a narrative that is both thrilling and absurdly comedic. Each chapter ends on a mini-cliffhanger that propels you eagerly to the next. As the slow horses grapple with a chance to redeem themselves by tackling an unexpected incident, Herron ramps up the pace. The plot, while often preposterous, is tightly woven and bursting with intrigue. 'Slow Horses' is the first in a series of novels and I'm looking forward to working my way through them.

Cruise to France and Spain

26 October 2023

We had a lovely cruise from Southampton to France and Spain last week on the MSC ship Virtuosa. We stopped at the beautiful old town of La Rochelle in France which has half-timbered medieval houses and Renaissance architecture, including passageways covered by 17th-century arches. It was wonderful to return to Frank Gehry's amazing Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which we originally visited in 2016. Our planned stop at La Coruna in Spain was cancelled as bad weather made it impossible to dock but instead we visited Le Havre in France. Largely destroyed during the Second World War, the city was rebuilt by the architect Auguste Perret, giving it a very distinct, and uniform, modernist appearance. We really enjoyed the Museum of Modern Art André Malraux (MuMa) which has one of France’s most extensive collections of impressionist paintings. Finally we stopped at Cherbourg in France, from where we caught the train to the delightful medieval city of Bayeux to see the Bayeux Tapestry. The excellent Musee de la Tapisserie de Bayeux allows you to walk alongside the 75m embroidery with an audio guide which talks you through the story of the events that led to the Battle of Hastings and the battle itself - and the accompanying exhibition and film explore the making of the tapestry and the history it depicts.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

26 October 2023

The last time the Northampton Symphony Orchestra played Sibelius' 'Symphony No. 1', in 2008, I was impressed by the assured opening clarinet solo by Naomi Muller (reviewed here in April 2008). Performing the symphony again, in the recent NSO concert at St Matthews Church in Northampton on 14 October, Naomi’s reprise of her unaccompanied solo was even more stunning. And rediscovering the intricacies of the symphony after 15 years reminded me how much I like the music of Sibelius. The first symphony marked his move away from programmatic music that tells a particular story and brilliantly demonstrates the captivating power of ‘absolute’ or abstract music - creating a beautiful, powerful and emotional sound world that is uniquely Sibelius. Our NSO concert opened with the ‘Polonaise from Eugene Onegin’ by Tchaikovsky and featured the original version of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Variations on a Rococo Theme’ with the wonderful ‘cello soloist Florian Arnicans. We also played two works by Malcolm Arnold - his orchestral arrangement of the ‘Tango in D’ by Isaac Albeniz and his ballet music for the one-act dance-drama ‘Rinaldo and Armida’. I particularly enjoyed getting to know this rarely performed dramatic and tuneful work.

'So Far We Have Come' by Tamsin Elliott and Tarek Elazhary

13 October 2023

I have been enjoying 'So Far We Have Come' - the debut album by Tamsin Elliott and Tarek Elazhary. The multi-instrumentalist Tamsin Elliot is a British folk musician and a co-founder of the folk-jazz fusion group Solana, while the Egyptian oud player Tarek Elazhary brings a background in traditional Arabic music. The combination of their musical styles results in an intriguing and gentle collection of tracks. The album features 16th-century English dance tunes and classical Arabic melodies, backwoods jigs and Cairo folk. The title track, ‘So Far We Have Come’ brings together accordion and oud in a slow, contemplative dance. I also liked the interplay between oud and harp on several tracks.  'So Far We Have Come' is an unusual and lovely album.

'Politics On the Edge' by Rory Stewart

6 October 2023

I'm a regular listener to 'The Rest is Politics' - the political podcast presented by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart - and I'm enjoying reading Rory Stewart's new book 'Politics On the Edge'. This memoir looks back at Stewart's political career as the Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border and in a series of ministerial roles in the governments of David Cameron and Theresa May. As a junior minister he served under three Secretaries of State - Liz Truss, Priti Patel and Boris Johnson. He unsuccessfully stood for election as the London Mayor and for the leadership of the Conservative Party, before being expelled from the party by Johnson.  His account of this period is a tale of despair with our political system and serious concern for its future. Rory Stewart launches himself into each new ministerial post with a seriousness and dedication that is quickly frustrated by superiors who appear to be more interested in their popularity and image than actually tackling the problems. He is a self-deprecating narrator, highlighting his own political naivety and his embarrassment about the occasions when he was persuaded to toe a party line he disagreed with in order to seek advancement within the system. His description of his first days as an MP at the House of Commons is fascinating and his exasperation at being given insufficient time in each ministerial role before being moved to posts that he appeared to be increasingly unqualified for feels brutally honest. 'Politics on the Edge' is a revealing account of our recent political history that is very readable, entertaining and worrying.

'Pygmalion' by George Bernard Shaw

28 September 2023

On Saturday we were at the Old Vic in London to see Richard Jones' new production of 'Pygmalion' by George Bernard Shaw. Like many people I'm very familiar with the musical 'My Fair Lady' but I don't think I had ever seen the original play that inspired it. The first half of the play feels so close to the musical you keep expecting the characters to burst into those familiar songs. But after the interval the play becomes more interesting, darker and a more philosophical moral discussion. In this production Bertie Carvel plays a fairly unlikeable Henry Higgins with the remarkable Patsy Ferran as Eliza Doolittle and John Marquez almost stealing the show as Alfred Doolittle. We first saw Patsy Ferran in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of 'The Merchant of Venice' (reviewed here in August 2015). She's a wonderful physical actor: her movement across the stage is fascinating and she embodied Eliza's transition from flower girl to duchess beautifully and believably. The Old Vic production drew on the text of both the original 1913 play and Shaw's own Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1938 film version, using excerpts from the music written for the film by Arthur Honegger (reviewed here in December 2005). Although it is presented as a fairly light comedy, Pygmalion's gender politics is more modern than I had expected. But this production is worth seeing for Patsy Ferran's performance alone.

'Constant Companions' by Alan Ayckbourn

21 September 2023

On Monday we made our first visit to the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough to see Alan Ayckbourn’s new play ‘Constant Companions’. Stephen Joseph pioneered theatre-in-the-round and the theatre that bears his name - and where Alan Ayckbourn has premiered almost all of his plays - is a lovely, intimate auditorium, with a steep rake on all four sides, which gives everyone a great view and makes you feel like you are sitting on the stage. ‘Constant Companions’ is Ayckbourn’s 89th play and sticks to his principle of using a simple, single set that would be easy for an amateur theatre company to reproduce. Set in the near future, the play explores the potential evolution of our relationship with sentient machines, as humans grow increasingly attached to the androids they have built as their servants. As always, Ayckbourn’s light comedy disguises darker underlying messages, which here echo the current debates about artificial intelligence. ‘Constant Companions’ is told through three separate but linked alternating stories which each develop through completely different timeframes. Ayckbourn likes to play with concepts of time, but manages to do so in a way that is both quite complex (if you were to try to explain it) but completely clear and understandable (as you watch it). The ensemble cast all capture the fine balance between sit-com caricature and genuine poignancy - with Leigh Symonds as Winston and Naomi Petersen as ED, the ‘faulty’ android he has been sent to repair, providing the emotional centre to the play. This is the ninth Alan Ayckbourn play I have reviewed here but it was wonderful to see a premiere production, directed by Ayckbourn himself, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre for the first time.

'Wiener Philharmoniker Fanfare' by Richard Strauss

15 September 2023

Like many amateur arts groups, the Northampton Symphony Orchestra has now restarted its weekly rehearsals and we are preparing for our next concert, which is on 14 October. During the period between our Friends Concert each July and the orchestra starting again at the beginning of September I like to keep playing my French horn. This year I set myself the challenge of recording Richard Strauss’s ‘Fanfare for the Vienna Philharmonic’. This joyous fanfare was written for 8 horns, 6 trumpets and 6 trombones. I played all 20 parts on the horn to create a multi-track recording. This project took me most of August. The piece lasts just over two minutes but it was surprisingly difficult to play any of the parts perfectly in just one take. I re-recorded many sections, creating an enormous number of partial tracks. But I decided I wouldn’t cheat by adjusting the pitch or speed of my recordings. About halfway through I did begin to wish I hadn’t embarked on this challenge! But I persevered, and although there are plenty of mistakes in the finished recording it was still very satisfying to complete it. You can hear the results of my vanity project at: https://youtu.be/C-J_m2a6L3w (please be kind about it!)

'The Husband's Secret' by Liane Moriarty

8 September 2023

Having enjoyed Liane Moriarty's novel 'Apples Never Fall' (reviewed here in September 2022) I have now finished reading her 2013 book 'The Husband's Secret'. I was a little sceptical by one of the cover quotes which described the novel as "literally unputdownable" but I have to say that's not far from the truth. Liane Moriarty is very much the Australian Anne Tyler - writing about suburban domestic family life in which the comfortable equilibrium is threatened by an expected turn of events or someone's sudden desire for a change. 'The Husband's Secret' weaves the stories of three women in short chapters that alternate between their three viewpoints, with their narratives gradually starting to overlap. It is this structure that makes it so compelling, with many chapters ending on a mini-cliffhanger that is often not resolved until the point of view shifts back three chapters later. The novel revolves around an incredibly difficult ethical choice and, while it is too gentle and thoughtful to be classed as a thriller, there are three devastating end of chapter surprises that I genuinely didn't see coming. 

'42nd Street' by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble with songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin

8 September 2023

Having recently seen one of my two favourite musicals, ‘Guys and Dolls’, at the Bridge Theatre in London (reviewed here in May 2023), it was a real treat to see my other favourite musical ‘42nd Street’ at Milton Keynes Theatre last Friday. ‘42nd Street’ is a classic tap dance musical with songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin. It is based on a 1933 film but didn’t become a stage musical until 1980. Jonathan Church’s production for Leicester Curve is great fun, with some amazing performances. There’s nowhere to hide with tap, as the audience can hear if any of the steps are misplaced, but the precision in Bill Deamer’s choreography on Friday evening was very impressive. And Nicole-Lily Baisden was wonderful as Peggy Sawyer - the chorus girl getting her big break (“Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!”). ‘42nd Street’ is a celebration of song and dance - the quintessential show about putting on a show, with the bare minimum of plot. I hadn’t spotted it before but one of the songs (‘Dames’) includes the line “but who cares if there’s a plot or not”. This version of the show didn’t quite match the once-in-a-lifetime experience of seeing Mark Bramble’s stunning production of ‘42nd Street’ at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 2017 (reviewed here in August 2017) with its massive cast of 55 people on stage (compared to 26 in the Leicester Curve production). But the combination of Warren & Dubin’s melodies and the ensemble tap-dance routines are always guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

'The Lion House' by Christopher de Bellaigue

1 September 2023

Having become fascinated with the Ottoman Empire after listening to the excellent Empire podcast (reviewed here in January 2023) I was intrigued to hear Rory Stewart (on The Rest is Politics podcast) recommending 'The Lion House', a novel by Christopher de Bellaigue set in the court of Suleyman the Magnificent. 'The Lion House', which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Barnaby Edwards, starts in 1522, two years after Suleyman succeeded his father, Selim I, as Sultan. Christopher de Bellaigue outlines the rivalry and connections between Suleyman's Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire of Charles V,  King Francis I of France, King Henry VIII of England, the Pope and the Doge of Venice. He introduces us to some of the key characters in Suleyman's court, including: Ibrahim - the Greek slave who became Suleyman's Grand Vizier; Alvise Gritti - the illegitimate son of the Doge of Venice who served Suleyman as an Ottoman Minister and Regent of Hungary; Suleyman's Polish wife Roxelana; and Barbarossa - the Barbary pirate who was appointed admiral of the Ottoman fleet. 'The Lion House' is more of an old-fashioned, slightly fictionalised, history book rather than a novel. It tells the macro story of Suleyman's Empire from the position of omniscient narrator, with very little dialogue. But it's a fascinating story.

Edinburgh Festivals 2023

1 September 2023

We had a great time at the Edinburgh festivals last week. This year we decided to go for 5 days rather than our usual 7, but we still managed to see 20 shows - and we chose well. I’m grateful to Kelly for her recommendations which were among our favourites. ‘Beautiful Evil Things’ was a one-woman show from Ad Infinitum in which Deborah Pugh plays the decapitated head of Medusa telling us the story of the Trojan Wars in a tour de force of physical theatre and story-telling. ‘Her Green Hell’ was another amazing one-woman performance, from TheatreGoose, with Sophie Kean playing the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Peruvian jungle, trying to make her way to safety - the remarkable true story of Juliane Koepcke and the 1971 LANSA Flight 508 plane crash. We also loved Out of the Forest theatre’s production: ‘The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria’. King Boris III chose to ally with Hitler’s Germany rather than Russia in the Second World War but went on to undermine the Nazi’s plans, saving the lives of around 50,000 Bulgarian Jews before apparently being assassinated. Joseph Cullen and Sasha Wilson’s play with a cast of five was a hilarious comic pantomime that also managed to present a fascinating and respectful account of this forgotten episode in European history. We went to two stunning orchestral concerts at the Usher Hall. We saw the Oslo Philharmonic, conducted by Klaus Makela, give a thrilling performance of Shostakovich’s ‘Symphony No 5’. They also accompanied Yuja Wang playing both Ravel’s ‘Piano Concerto in G major’ and his ‘Piano Concerto for the Left Hand’ - which we played with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra a few years ago (reviewed here in November 2017). And we really enjoyed seeing the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra from Venezuela playing the Beethoven Choral Symphony with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus - with conductor Rafael Payare pushing the pace throughout.

'Bleak Expectations' by Mark Evans

18 August 2023

I have been a big fan of the BBC Radio 4 Dickens parody ‘Bleak Expectations’ for many years (reviewed here in August 2008 and November 2012). As I wrote here in 2008: “Mixing its metaphors and Dickensian clichés in an enormous Victorian cauldron of gruel, Bleak Expectations creates a hilarious surreal world that could only exist on radio.” Proving me completely wrong, writer Mark Evans has now adapted his show for the stage and last Saturday we were at the Criterion Theatre in London to see it. The stage version features a completely new cast playing faithful recreations of my favourite characters. Dom Hodson as Pip Bin has exactly the right naive enthusiasm and blissful ignorance of the consequences of his actions, John Hopkins is ridiculously evil as Pip’s ex guardian Gently Benevolent and Marc Pickering has a ball playing all members of the Hardthrasher family. Best of all is JJ Henry demonstrating the unbreakable optimism of Harry Biscuit who is convinced that there is no problem that cannot be solved with swans (and cake!). Caroline Leslie’s production also, cleverly, includes a different guest star each week as the narrator, Sir Philip Bin. On Saturday our narrator was Stephen Fry - who seemed perfectly cast as the short-tempered pompous older version of the show’s protagonist (played on the radio by Richard Johnson). The guest narrator provides opportunities for some very funny ad-libbing with the cast and breaking of the fourth wall. Although I suspect everything is meticulously scripted, ‘Bleak Expectations’ has the feel of an improvised comedy in the vein of ‘Austentatious’ (reviewed here in August 2012). The enthusiastic young cast also reminded me of some of the funniest touring outdoor theatre companies such as the Pantaloons (reviewed here many times) and the Handlebards (first reviewed here in July 2018). It’s all incredibly silly but for a long-time fan it was brilliant. Harrumble!

'Romeo and Juliet' by WIlliam Shakespeare

9 August 2023

Last Friday evening we were back at Wrest Park in Silsoe to see another outdoor performance by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Last year we saw them perform 'As You Like It' (reviewed here in August 2022). This year's touring production is 'Romeo and Juliet', directed by Peter Stickney. The Lord Chamberlain's men provide the closest experience to what it must have been like to see the original versions of Shakespeare's plays - with an all male cast and Elizabethan costume. There are no gimmicks - just very high quality acting. They don't use any amplification, but even though we were near the back of the biggest audience I think I have seen for an outdoor production we could hear every word. We were lucky to have picked a dry evening and "the two hours' traffic of our stage" passed very enjoyably.

WOMAD 2023

2 August 2023

Last weekend I was back at Charlton Park in Wiltshire for the WOMAD Festival. At most festivals it is impossible to see everything (there were 160 artists performing at WOMAD this year) so you end up curating your own mini festival. I saw 23 performances (including 18 full sets) and this year my WOMAD was dominated by a series of remarkable women.

Liraz is a singer who was born to an Iranian-Jewish family and raised in Israel. In 2020, in defiance of the Iranian government, she recorded an album in a hidden basement in Istanbul with her Israeli octet and musicians from Tehran who cannot be named for fear of reprisals back home. Her music is joyous Middle Eastern pop underpinned by life-affirming political messages.

Marina Satti is a classically trained Greek-Sudanese singer  who founded Fonés - a female a cappella group performing traditional polyphonic songs  - and Chόres - a choir of 150 women aged 13–55. She combines catchy pop music with close harmony female vocals which draw on Greek and Bulgarian traditions and, at times, sound very like my favourite Finnish group Värttinä (reviewed here in August 2006). This video from 2019 showcases the vocal harmonies of Marina Satti and Fonés: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEs0YJrdjYg  

It was great to see the Manchester-born Palestinian singer, musician and broadcaster Reem Kelani again, who I last saw at WOMAD in 2007 (reviewed here in August 2007) and whose 2006 debut album 'Sprinting Gazelle' is still a favourite of mine. Her explanation of the stories behind her songs gave fascinating insights into Middle Eastern and Mediterranean ancient and recent history and I would recommend listening to her Radio 4 documentary on the role of music in Egypt's 2011 revolution, 'Songs for Tahrir', which is available on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019fxjf  

There were two great comic performances at WOMAD this year. It was wonderful to see the brilliant New Orleans-style Riot Jazz Brass Band - ten years after I first saw them at WOMAD (reviewed here in August 2013). As their website says Riot Jazz "hail from the grimy protoplasm of Manchester’s prolific creative scene, spreading unconditional love and irresistible energy across the nation and continent".  But what makes a Riot Jazz performance is their irrepressible frontman MC Chunky. Part compere, part comedian, part rapper, he provides a running commentary during and in between the tunes, orchestrating the audience participation, introducing the band and entertaining everyone, all in a strong Manchester accent. His role is also a very clever way of getting round the brass player's challenge of not being able to play continuously for an hour without a break. Here's a flavour of Riot Jazz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8iaBTIYv2w

Puuluup are a self-styled Estonian zombie-folk duo who play hiiu kannel (a rectangular violin-like instrument) and use electronic loopers to create multi-layered songs. As they explained "there used to be 38 other musicians in the band but it was too expensive so we got rid of them and bought a looper, and now we are rich". They have perfected a very serious kind of ridiculousness and the deadpan humour of their introductions to the songs is hilarious. We are told that most Estonian folk songs are about agriculture, or cross-country skiing. And when they finally play a love song it is an ode to a piece of technology - a wind turbine "but otherwise it is just like any other love song". This short video will give you an idea of taste of the craziness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVFFHgqrvZg

I always enjoy the Taste The World stage at WOMAD, where artists who are performing at the festival are interviewed while cooking a traditional dish from their country. This year I saw the eccentric Austrian singer Alicia Edelweiss wrongfoot her interviewer when asked whether the Knödel recipe she was demonstrating had been passed down through generations of her family, explaining that she had actually found it online last week in preparation for this session. And the most moving moment of the weekend was Sahra Halgan from Somaliland cooking a traditional meat casserole while talking about having to act, at the age of 16, as an untrained nurse during the war of independence against Somalia. When the resistance ran out of medicine, painkillers or antibiotics, she tried to relieve the pain of the wounded in the only way left to her - by singing to them. Somaliland has been a self-declared republic for 32 years, with a population of nearly 6 million people and regular democratic elections, but is still not officially recognised by the United Nations. Sahra Halgan singing, smiling and holding  a small Somaliland flag, while sprinkling spices into her bubbling casserole will be one of the images that stays with me from WOMAD 2023.

Finally it was a real privilege to see the legendary Afro-Peruvian singer Susana Baca. At 79 years her voice still has strength and delicacy, and her gentle, beautiful songs are delivered through a beaming smile.

You can see a selection of my photos from WOMAD 2023 at: http://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/WOMAD2023

London Athletics Meet

25 July 2023

On Sunday we were back at the London Stadium in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London for the Diamond League London Athletics Meet. This was billed as the biggest one-day athletics meeting in the world and we were part of a crowd of 50,000 watching an impressive line-up of Olympic and World Champions from across the globe. We didn’t move from our seats for just over four hours of gripping competition. With continuously overlapping track and field events coming thick and fast there is always something to watch - often too much happening at the same time! It was great to see some familiar British athletes competing - including Dina Asher-Smith, Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Hannah Cockcroft. We enjoyed a very entertaining Women’s Pole Vault competition, won by Wilma Murto of Finland. It was great to be there to see Zharnel Hughes beat the British record in the Men’s 200m set by John Regis in 1993. Femke Bol from the Netherlands looked outstanding in beating the European record for the Women's 400m Hurdles, with the third-fastest time ever. And there was an incredibly exciting finale to the afternoon as Scotland’s Jemma Reekie came from third place on the final bend to win the Women's 800m.

‘Groundhog Day’ by Tim Minchin and Danny Rubin

21 July 2023

Last Wednesday we were at the Old Vic in London to see the stage musical version of ‘Groundhog Day’, with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin and book by the screenwriter of the 1993 film, Danny Rubin. ‘Groundhog Day’ was originally produced at the Old Vic seven years ago, reuniting Minchin with Director Matthew Warchus, who had worked together on ‘Matilda’. Now, appropriately enough, ‘Groundhog Day is back at the Old Vic, in a revised version. In comparison to the film, the stage version has more time to explore the premise of what you would do if you were condemned to repeat the same day over and over again. The first half is fun but a little inconsequential. But after the interval the production becomes darker, more morally complex and much more interesting. Andy Karl’s performance as TV weatherman Phil Connors is a tour de force. He is hardly off stage throughout the show and the sleight of hand needed to ensure he is always ready to emerge from the bed in his B&B as the day starts again - despite having just been somewhere else on stage in a completely different costume - is brilliantly done.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

21 July 2023

On Sunday 9 July I played in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s annual Friends Concert - a Sunday afternoon bonus concert for the Friends of the Orchestra which provides an opportunity for us to play a range of shorter and lighter pieces. This year’s programme included ‘The Gold and Silver Waltz’ by Franz Lehár, Franz von Suppè’s ‘Isabella Overture’ and the musical joke ‘Perpetuum Mobile’ by Johann Strauss II. We also featured a young clarinet soloist from Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts trust playing the first movement of Weber’s ‘Clarinet Concerto No 2’ and NSO leader Emily Groom played the beautiful ‘Romance for violin and orchestra No. 2 in F major’ by Beethoven. The strings of the orchestra played Elgar’s ‘Serenade For Strings’ and we performed the ever popular ‘Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave)’ by Mendelssohn. It was a lovely way to end our 2022-23 concert season.

Wimbledon 2023

21 July 2023

On the middle Saturday of the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament we were very lucky to have tickets for No 1 Court where the roof was shut for most of the afternoon as rain came and went outside. We saw the men’s 3rd seed Daniil Medvedev lose the first set to Marton Fucsovics of Hungary before going on to win in four very competitive sets. Secondly we watched the women’s 2nd seed Aryna Sabalenka beat Anna Blinkova in straight sets. Finally we enjoyed an entertaining heavyweight contest between Alexander Zverev and Matteo Berrettini with Berrettini winning in three sets but needing two tie breaks to do so.

'Much Ado About Nothing' by William Shakespeare

21 July 2023

On Friday 7 July we were back at the Roman Theatre of Verulamium in St Albans to see the Ovo Theatre production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. It was a beautiful evening for an outdoor performance (though we struggled at first as the sun was directly in our eyes!). It was a typical Ovo production - an irreverent take on Shakespeare complete with 1980s pop music, audience participation and a small cast playing multiple parts (occasionally confusingly!). Great fun.

'Terminal World' by Alastair Reynolds

7 July 2023

Having really enjoyed Alastair Reynolds’ incredibly clever and satisfying genre-crossing novel 'Eversion' (reviewed here in June 2023) I was keen to read something else by him. ‘Terminal World’, published in 2010, is a more conventional science fiction novel, set in a far future, dystopian, steampunk Earth. It’s a thrilling chase adventure which takes us through a variety of places and encounters. I liked that the reader has to work quite hard to understand how this future world works: there is very little exposition - you just gradually piece together what is going on. But the plot constantly drives you forward and it’s a bewildering but enjoyable ride.

'Anomaly' by Jasdeep Singh Degun

30 June 2023

Jasdeep Singh Degun is a young sitarist and composer from Leeds who combines classical music traditions from across India with European orchestral music, jazz and 1990s Asian underground. His debut album ‘Anomaly’ (released by Real World Records in 2022) is a beautiful gentle collection of tracks across a range of styles, featuring other young British Asian musicians and string chamber orchestra. Jasdeep Singh Degun was mentored by Nitin Sawhney on the 2016 Sky Academy Arts Scholarship and he honours his mentor on the album with a version of Sawhney’s classic song ‘Nadia’. It’s a lovely album: you can listen to it all on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kujeSGIWXpkUwkUEt3mSrSQCBb3tdJ89A

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

21 June 2023

Northampton Symphony Orchestra conductor John Gibbons and the NSO committee have been doing a wonderful job in making each of our recent concerts feel like a significant event - not just another orchestral concert but a truly special occasion. Last Saturday’s NSO concert certainly fell into this category as we provided a rare opportunity to experience a live performance of Dimitri Shostakovich’s epic ‘Symphony No 11: The Year 1905’. Written at the time of the 40th anniversary of the 1917 Russian revolution, Shostakovich negotiated his troubled relationship with the Soviet authorities with typical ambiguity by appearing both to celebrate and undermine the anniversary, creating a programmatic work focussing on the failed 1905 revolution. In January 1905 a peaceful protest outside the Tsar’s Winter Palace in St Petersburg turned into a massacre with the Imperial Guard killing around 1,000 protesters. The symphony has the feel of a film score, following the events of that tragic day from peaceful calm to brutal slaughter. It is an incredibly exciting piece of music, with huge dynamic ranges that really need to be heard live. The relentless energy of the final movement, driven by a deafening array of percussion instruments, conjures up the onslaught of Soviet tanks, perhaps suggesting much later military interventions. Our NSO performance of this amazing work was thrilling and owed much to an excellent percussion section (Keith Crompton, Nathan Burt, Matt Butler, Delwyn Calcraft-Jones, Tina Kenny and Huw Morgan). Also memorable was the incredibly moving unison melody played by the entire viola section in the slow third movement ('In Memoriam'). I was pleased to get my brief quiet solo horn fanfare out of the way at the beginning of the first movement and I was in awe of Terry Mayo who had to produce the same solo fanfare on trumpet repeatedly throughout the symphony. But I have even more respect for Harriet Brown whose substantial cor anglais solo comes almost at the end of the final movement and who must have had nerves of steel to play this gentle lament so beautifully after having to wait through the whole of the thunderous, emotional symphony for this moment of gentle reflection. This video gives a really interesting overview of Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony: Shostakovich: How to Compose a Massacre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU7a1b4yE-Q We opened the concert with the ‘William Tell Overture’ by Rossini, with a gorgeous cello solo by Corinne Malitskie. And the concert also featured a rare performance of Hamilton Harty’s setting of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ by John Keats (from which F Scott Fitzgerald took the line ‘tender is the night’). It’s a lovely piece, brilliantly sung in our concert by the Irish soprano Alison Roddy. Hamilton Harty’s orchestration creates a Wagnerian feel with elements of Elgar and Richard Strauss. It is another great piece of music I have enjoyed getting to know by playing it. You can listen to ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ performed by Heather Harper with the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thomson at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVVoWOjWKTM

'The Anarchy' by William Dalrymple

16 June 2023

Inspired by the excellent Empire podcast, presented by the historians William Dalrymple and Anita Anand (reviewed here in January 2023), I have just got around to reading ‘The Anarchy’ - William Dalrymple’s fascinating book explaining the rise and fall of the East India Company. The story of how “India’s transition to colonialism took place through the mechanism of a for-profit corporation which existed entirely for the purpose of enriching its investors” is truly incredible, appalling and chilling - not least how much of the company’s metamorphosis from trader to army to leader of a continent seems to have come about through fairly random happenstance and luck. The book taught me much I didn’t know about the history of India but also showed me connections I was completely unaware of with the American War of Independence, the Napoleonic Wars and much more. As William Dalrymple concludes: “The East India Company remains today history’s most ominous warning about the potential for the abuse of corporate power - and the insidious means by which the interests of shareholders can seemingly become those of the state”. ‘The Anarchy’ is essential reading.

'Eversion' by Alastair Reynolds

9 June 2023

I am keen to recommend Alastair Reynolds’ excellent novel ‘Eversion’, without giving too much away about it, as I really enjoyed being surprised by its twists and turns. Although Reynolds is best known as a science fiction writer, this book starts as an historical tale of a ship sailing up the coastline of Norway in the early 19th century. But then things get increasingly complicated. The best praise I can give ‘Eversion’ is that it reminded me of three of my favourite novels - from three very different genres. But I won’t tell you which because that would spoil the surprise!

Canada and USA

 9 June 2023

We had an amazing holiday in Canada and the USA over the past two weeks. We flew to Montreal and then drove across Quebec to Saint John in New Brunswick then on to Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. We then flew from Halifax to Boston, Massachusetts for a couple of days before joining a cruise on the Holland America ship Zaandam. The cruise took us to Bar Harbor in Maine, back to Halifax and Cape Breton, and then visited Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, Quebec City and Montreal. It felt like several holidays sandwiched together! We were very lucky with the weather, getting mostly cool, sunny days with very little rain, and not seeing any evidence of the wildfires that are now causing so many problems. I think the highlight was our stay at a remote self-catering cottage overlooking the beautiful Bras D’Or Lake in Cape Breton, from where we explored the stunning Cabot Trail through Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

‘Guys and Dolls’ by Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows

16 May 2023

When Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr opened the Bridge Theatre, next to Tower Bridge in London, in 2017, they created a very flexible theatre space. This has provided the opportunity for Hytner and set designer Bunny Christie to develop some very innovative promenade productions. I really enjoyed watching live screenings of their promenade stagings of 'Julius Caesar' (reviewed here in April 2018) and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (reviewed here in October 2019). On Saturday we were at the Bridge Theatre to see Hytner’s new promenade production of ‘Guys and Dolls’ by Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows - though we opted to sit in the gallery, looking down at the performance rather than promenading. It was fascinating to watch the floor of the theatre, laid out as a New York street scene, gradually fill with hundreds of people as the audience wandered in. But the show becomes truly spectacular when the actors emerge from the crowd and large sections of the floor rise hydraulically to form small stages for each scene. An army of stewards constantly shuffle the crowd back, before the ground they have been standing on starts to move. And the lighting (by Paule Constable) shifts our attention to different parts of the arena as the story flows seamlessly across Bunny Christie’s constantly moving set. It’s a brilliantly slick theatrical experience. ‘Guys and Dolls’ is the Bridge Theatre’s first musical and it’s a triumph. As long-time readers may remember, ‘Guys and Dolls’ is one of my favourite musicals. I still treasure the memory of seeing the legendary National Theatre production in the early 1980s (with Lulu as Miss Adelaide). When we last saw a production of ‘Guys and Dolls’, at Milton Keynes Theatre (reviewed here in February 2007) I came to it with raised expectations and was a bit disappointed. But the Bridge Theatre performance has completely rekindled my enthusiasm for the show. ‘Guys and Dolls’ has some of the best songs of any musical and the script (in the style of Damon Runyon) is genuinely funny. There was some excellent singing - from Celinde Shoenmaker as Sara Brown, Andrew Sherwood as Sky Masterson and Cedric Neal as Nicely-Nicely Johnson - and Daniel Mays does a great comic turn as Nathan Detroit. Marisha Wallace, who has toured with Simply Red, Michael Ball & Alfie Boe, and Lisa Stansfield, brought a powerful soul voice to Miss Adelaide. And there was some great choreography by Arlene Phillips with James Cousins. It’s a wonderful musical party - with some brilliant additional interval performances. I came out beaming.

'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Brontë, adapted by Lucinka Eisler and Ben Lewis

12 May 2023

Emily Brontë’s 'Wuthering Heights' is one of the many classic novels I have never got around to reading. More unusually, until last Saturday I had also somehow managed to avoid the many stage, film, TV and radio adaptations. So when we went to see the new version of 'Wuthering Heights' by the Inspector Sands theatre company at the Royal Theatre in Northampton, I genuinely did not know the story. This excellent production, conceived and developed by Lucinka Eisler and Ben Lewis and jointly produced by China Plate, Inspector Sands, Royal & Derngate, Northampton and Oxford Playhouse, presents the story as a tale recounted by six actors, each playing multiple roles, often questioning each other via a microphone to unpick the events at Wuthering Heights. It's a dark, brutal story of repeated abuse and violence but told, in this production, with much humour. Photos of the characters are helpfully stuck to a board at the back of the stage to provide a family tree - the actors removing their picture when a character dies. The grim tale of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff is recounted in hindsight by the housekeeper Nelly Dean (Giulia Innocenti). It's a very inventive production, excellently acted. Condensing a complicated novel-length plot into a stage play, however, made it feel quite confusing at times - maybe assuming that most people would already be familiar with the story. So it has now prompted me to start reading the novel.

'Family Album' by Penelope Lively

4 May 2023

Penelope Lively’s 2009 novel ‘Family Album’ is a beautifully constructed series of snapshots of an eccentric English family. The opening chapter introduces us to the family as foreign affairs journalist Gina brings her new partner to meet her parents at the family home in which she grew up. But the following chapters start to flick backwards and forwards in time to show us the family’s history from the points of view of nine family members. It is impressive how Penelope Lively manages to make such a large cast of principal characters so distinct and well drawn: by the end of the novel you really feel you know them all. And her prose is gorgeous: a short passage describing walking down the staircase past photos of the children at various ages acts as a filmic montage of their childhoods. There are plenty of skeletons in the family’s cupboards (and their cellar) and much sadness in their stories. But this is a warm family portrait, drawn with love.

'Good' by CP Taylor

27 April 2023

CP Taylor was a Glasgow-born writer who wrote 80 plays in 16 prolific years - many of them for the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and Live Theatre in Newcastle. Sadly, he died shortly after the premiere of his most successful play, 'Good' in 1981. On Saturday we were at the Curzon Cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see a screening of Dominic Cooke's current West End revival of 'Good', from the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. Set in Germany in the 1930s, 'Good' demonstrates how the incremental effect of a series of seemingly small decisions to go along with the prevailing political flow adds up to a journey from good to evil. Professor Halder, played here by David Tennant, appears naive, cowardly and blindly optimistic rather than evil - but his acquiescence with the Nazi regime acts as an allegory for Germany as a whole. His story is inventively told in a non-linear narrative which flits back and forward in Halder's life, often turning on a sixpence from past to present within the same scene. The rapid switching between different places, times and characters is brilliantly done here by a cast of three actors - with Sharon Small and Elliot Levey each playing multiple parts. It's a very clever script with echoes of Tom Stoppard, and a very dark play which looks at good and evil as things we choose to do rather than inherent traits we cannot help - "subjective thinking masquerading as objective truth".

'Drive Your Plow Over the Complicité from the novel by Olga Tokarczuk

21 April 2023

On Thursday night we were at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry to see the Complicité production 'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead' directed by Simon McBurney. The play is based on a novel by Olga Tokarczuk about a 65-year old woman in a rural community in Poland, close to the Czech border, who is appalled by the human disregard for animal life. She wages a personal campaign against the local hunting club and others who have abused and killed animals, many of whom start to meet their own gruesome deaths. But, this being Complicité, her story is told with wry humour and ambiguity through physical theatre performed by an incredible ensemble cast. It was worth the price of admission just to see the amazing Kathryn Hunter, who narrates the tale, leaning on a microphone stand like a stand-up comedian and is ever-present through this nearly three-hour production. Hunter is the most fascinating physical actor and her performance is a magnificent tour-de-force. She is assisted by a brilliant multinational cast, including the always compelling Tim McMullan, and César Sarachu as the slightly dopey neighbour Oddball. 'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead' is a dark comic exploration of issues of animal rights, ecology and climate change, and it's great fun. With hardly any set, this is a narrative conjured up by human bodies, inventive lighting and projection and sumptuous sound design (by Christopher Shutt). It's a little too long and felt a bit repetitive at times but fans of Complicité will love this like an indulgent box of chocolates. 

Leighton House and Sambourne House

14 April 2023

On Saturday we were in London to visit Leighton House in Kensington, London, the home of the late Victorian artist Lord Frederic Leighton. One of a series of houses and studios designed and built by artists in the streets around Holland Park in the 18060s, Leighton House has recently reopened to the public after a major refurbishment. It’s an amazing building, packed with textiles, pottery and other objects collected by Leighton on trips to Turkey, Egypt, Syria as well as his own works of art. The building is part showpiece, part home and part studio and the exhibitions about Leighton and his contemporaries are fascinating to see within the house where he lived. We also visited the nearby partner property Sambourne House, which was the home of the illustrator and Punch cartoonist Linley Sambourne - a contemporary of Leighton’s. This is a more conventional Victorian town house, but the lavish decoration and furnishings are a celebration of late Victorian society. And every room is crammed with Sambourne’s drawings. Both museums are well worth a visit.

‘The Island of Missing Trees’ by Elif Shafak

14 April 2023

I’ve never been to Cyprus, and my understanding of the history of the division of Cyprus could best be described as hazy. Reading Elif Shafak’s 2021 novel ‘The Island of Missing Trees’ has filled in a lot of gaps for me. It’s a beautifully written family saga, told mostly in flashback with the constant presence of a fig tree that spans the generations (and takes its turn as the narrator). When two teenagers - one Greek, one Turkish - fall for each other in Cyprus in 1974 they may have chosen the worst possible time to be star-crossed lovers. Seeing their story through the vantage point of modern-day London makes us assume we know what must have happened but Elif Shafak cleverly teases us with unexpected twists along the way. Though it has its own individual style, ‘The Island of Missing Trees’ felt a little like a mixture of ‘Captain Corelli's Mandolin’ by Louis de Bernières and ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ by Amor Towles (reviewed here in September 2021) - showing us the passage of a tumultuous period of history through the personal tales of people caught up in it.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

26 March 2023

Saturday's Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert was the first in the 130 year history of the orchestra to consist entirely of works by female composers. The 'Women of Note' concert at Christchurch in Northampton was an exciting evening: it has been a really enjoyable process for the orchestra getting to know unfamiliar repertoire and exploring the stories behind the pieces and their composers. All the works we played deserve to be better known so I have included links here to recordings by other orchestras.

We started the concert with the suite 'Penillion' by the Welsh mid-twentieth century composer Grace Williams - a lovely piece that draws on the eisteddfod tradition of improvised penillion singing, usually accompanied by harp. This four movement work for full orchestra features a prominent role for the harp, but the faster second and fourth movements also feature Eastern European and Spanish influences. Listen to 'Penillion' by Grace Williams, played by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIU2vT0tJ5Y

Errolyn Wallen's 'Triple Concerto', for a trio of violin, viola and accordion, accompanied by string orchestra, is an entertaining, genre-defying piece written in 2018 for the Kosmos Ensemble. It was exciting to see Kosmos perform it with the NSO - featuring Harriet Mackenzie on violin, Meg-Rosaleen Hamilton on viola and Miloš Milivojević on accordion. And Kosmos brought the house down with their encore of Astor Piazzolla's 'Libertango'.  You can watch Kosmos playing Errolyn Wallen's 'Triple Concerto' with Worthing Symphony Orchestra in 2018 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdR7oM2BYPw

The second half of the concert opened with 'Turbulent Landscapes' by Thea Musgrave - a suite in which, like Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition', each movement is inspired by an artwork, in this case paintings by JMW Turner. Each movement also features one member of the orchestra as a soloist. I wrote here previously (in February 2023) about the significant challenge of playing the solo horn part in the third movement, ‘Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps’. It was a nerve-wracking experience, particularly having to stand up to play it, but I think it went pretty well. The other soloists within the orchestra sounded fantastic: Nick Tollervey on tuba, Sarah Mourant on oboe, Terry Mayo on trumpet, Robert Reid on bass clarinet, Paige Johnson on piccolo, and Naomi Muller on clarinet. These solos were not like the short solo passages we often have to play within a symphony: here each movement is almost a mini concerto, and I know from my own experience how much time each of my fellow soloists must have spent preparing for the concert. 'Turbulent Landscapes' was a really challenging work to play but I think our performance was very impressive and I've really grown to like this unusual, programmatic work. You can listen to Thea Musgrave's 'Turbulent Landscapes' performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, while looking at the relevant Turner paintings at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnokpA37ieY

At last year's Edinburgh International Festival I saw the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, performing Florence Price’s ‘Symphony No 1’ (reviewed here in September 2022). This symphony, premiered in 1932, was the first work by a Black woman composer to be performed by a major US orchestra. We finished our NSO concert with Florence Price's Concert Overture No. 2 - one of several of her works that might have been lost had it not been discovered among Price’s affects in an abandoned Chicago residence where she lived toward the end of her life. You can listen to Florence Price's Concert Overture No. 2  played by the BBC Concert Orchestra at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk4ST2sGDvI It's an enjoyable weaving together of several well known spirituals and was a lovely way to end what felt like a very special concert. As one audience member said on Facebook: “If you missed this, you missed a fantastic evening. I knew none of the pieces and only one of the composers (Florence Price) and yet I'd rank that as one of my best orchestral evenings ever. Wonderful.”

Danny Baker

24 March 2023

Regular readers may remember I'm a big fan of the writer and broadcaster Danny Baker. When we saw him at Warwick Arts Centre in 2018 (reviewed here in May 2018) his anecdotes and reminiscences focused on the 'rock ‘n’ roll years’ – recounting his experiences of working as a journalist at the NME and getting his break as a television presenter. When we caught his latest tour (possibly his last - he seems determined to retire on his 66th birthday this June) at Milton Keynes Theatre last Saturday, he promised to bring his story up to date. But he still spent the entire first half of the evening (an hour and three quarters before the interval) recapping his childhood and early career for anyone who had missed his previous shows. After the break he covered the happenstance of his discovery of radio broadcasting as his true home, and his extensive career as a writer, for Angus Deayton, Jonathan Ross, Chris Evans, Rob Brydon, Peter Kay and many others. Danny Baker is a compelling storyteller and this performance was an amazing tour-de-force. Eager to squeeze in as many stories as possible, his rapid nonstop delivery, with barely a pause for breath and no sip of water to ease the throat, while constantly pacing the stage, lasted more than three and a half hours. And even then you felt he was disappointed he hadn't managed to get through everything he had wanted to say. But it never felt like the marathon ordeal this makes it sound. I felt completely drawn into every story to the point I sometimes forgot I was in a theatre watching a bald middle aged man wearing a fez and clutching a snooker cue (to point to the pictures projected on a screen above the stage). Danny Baker's reflections on his life are jaw-droppingly incredible, laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly humble - and brilliantly performed. If he does retire this summer I'm so glad I got to see him one last time.

'Henry V' by William Shakespeare

17 March 2023

On Saturday we were at the Royal Theatre in Northampton to see 'Henry V' - a joint production by Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Shakespeare’s Globe and Headlong, with Leeds Playhouse, directed by Headlong’s Artistic Director Holly Race Roughan. This was an interesting take on 'Henry V', played in casual modern dress on a bare stage with all the actors on stage for most of the performance, sitting on chairs to watch the scenes that didn't involve them. Dispensing with the role of Chorus, the cast took turns to introduce each scene, speaking the stage directions and announcing which characters they were playing, making the audience feel like we were eavesdropping on the rehearsal room. Oliver Johnstone played Henry V, not as the traditional soldier king but more like Hamlet, a troubled soul who talks to his dead father (introduced at the start with a scene from the end of 'Henry IV Part 2') and a reluctant leader. His "Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George!" is spoken quietly to himself as if rehearsing what he plans to say to his troops. And the final words of his rousing St Crispin's Day rallying cry are interrupted by another character changing the subject. While it was interesting to consider Henry as someone whose miraculous transition from the playboy Prince Hal to warrior monarch might have been more political spin than reality, the production's host of clever ideas removed much of the emotional punch of the play. I was, however, fascinated by the essay in the programme by Jane Grogan which relates the way Shakespeare portrays Henry's imperial ambitions to  conquer France with the political context when the play was written. Elizabethan England had no empire but had established plantations in Ireland and Virginia, and the ships of the joint stock trading companies were setting off from London to trade with the powerful Ottoman empire. Shakespeare was writing in a time of emergent empire and used Henry V to reflect on the new 'empire state of mind'. Having just been listening to the wonderful 'Empire' podcast (reviewed here in January 2023) discussing the Ottoman empire it was really interesting to connect this to what was happening in England at the same time.

'The Merchant of Venice 1936' by William Shakespeare, adapted by Brigid Larmour

10 March 2023

Last Saturday we were at the Watford Palace Theatre to see ‘The Merchant of Venice 1936’, Brigid Larmour’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, set in the East End of London, starring Tracy-Ann Oberman as Shylock. Casting the Merchant, Antonio (Raymond Coulthard), Portia (Hannah Morrish) and others as black-shirted followers of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists immediately shifts your sympathies to Shylock’s East End matriarch. And showing the events of the play against the backdrop of The Battle of Cable Street gives a very different feel to most productions of ‘The Merchant of Venice’. This idea, suggested by Tracy-Ann Oberman, is not just a very clever way of dealing with a ‘difficult’ play, but allows for a much wider exploration of anti-semitism and prejudice. Watford Palace Theatre has used Brigid Larmour’s production as the basis for a wider project which includes an extended online storytelling platform: https://www.merchant1936.co.uk/ Tracy-Ann Oberman is excellent as Shylock and Hannah Morrish’s Portia as Diana Mitford is a very clever mix of sensible and sinister.

'Othello' by William Shakespeare

3 March 2023

On Saturday we were at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see the NTLive stream of Clint Dyer’s production of ‘Othello’ from the National Theatre in London. Using a bleak, monotone set dominated by broad stone steps on three sides, this production suggests a 1930s fascist state with almost everyone dressed in black shirts. Giles Terera’s Othello is the only person of colour and the constant refusal of other characters to accept his offered handshake is subtle but noticeable. Rather than simply seeing the play as a study in jealousy, Clint Dyer focuses on its racism and misogyny. Paul Hilton’s Iago, complete with an Enoch Powell thin moustache, is perhaps a little too obviously dastardly. Giles Terera gives an outstanding performance as Othello, and Rosy McEwen is great as Desdemona but I felt Tanya Franks as Iago’s wife Emilia was the revelation here. Clearly showing her as a woman physically and emotionally abused by her husband made sense of her willingness to assist Iago’s deceit of Othello. Having Iago address his interior monologues to a Greek chorus of actors sitting on the steps across the stage, rather than breaking the fourth wall to address the audience directly, was a clever way of implicating the wider society in his prejudices and his actions. It’s a fairly bleak production of a very grim play but excellently acted.

Lucy Porter

24 February 2023

Last Saturday we were at The Stables in Wavendon to see the comedian Lucy Porter. I was familiar with Lucy Porter from her appearances on ‘The News Quiz’ on BBC Radio 4 but I had not seen her live before. This show was part of her ‘Wake-Up Call’ tour which focuses on midlife crisis management and happiness. She is a very accomplished stand-up comedian with a likeable personality and a gentle approach. She is clearly a very thoughtful writer: her set was carefully crafted with lots of clever running jokes and returning themes. Her material is mostly domestic and observational - nothing too political - but very funny. And it was lovely to see a 2-hour stand-up comedy performance with hardly any swearing and a comedian who never stopped smiling.

'Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps' by JMW Turner

17 February 2023

One of the things I most enjoy about playing in an amateur orchestra is discovering, learning and understanding music I didn’t previously know. And the more you find out about a piece of music, the more you appreciate it. We have just started rehearsing for our next Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert, on Saturday 25 March, which is a complete programme of works by female composers (see: https://www.nso.org.uk/). One of the pieces we are playing is ‘Turbulent Landscapes’ by Thea Musgrave - a suite in which, like Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition', each movement is inspired by an artwork, in this case paintings by JMW Turner. Each movement also features one member of the orchestra as a soloist. I am beginning to get to the grips with the significant challenge of playing the solo horn part in the third movement, ‘Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps’. I thought I should have a look at the painting so I searched for it online and went down a fascinating rabbit hole. Turner’s picture depicts, as you might expect, Hannibal and his soldiers (complete with elephants) crossing the mountains in the face of an oncoming storm, during the Punic War in 218 BC. But what I hadn’t initially realised was that Turner was painting it during the Napoleonic Wars and it is really a jibe at Napoleon. The French painter Jacques-Louis David had previously painted a triumphant portrait of ‘Napoleon Crossing the Alps’ over the Great St Bernard Pass in May 1800 and this was Turner’s response. Turner shows Hannibal/Napoleon as a tiny figure on an elephant in the distance, overwhelmed by a whirling blizzard as mountain-dwellers attack his troops. Turner’s painting was first exhibited in 1812, and was considered to have been prophetic when, later that year, Napoleon was forced to retreat from Moscow by the Russian winter (the subject of another famous piece of music - Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’). So as I practise playing Hannibal’s rallying cries to his troops over the ominous rumble on the approaching storm, I am now also reflecting on the subtext of the Napoleonic Wars.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

8 February 2023

The composer Malcolm Arnold - who, as I never tire of telling people, played trumpet in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra as a schoolboy in Northampton - wrote the music for many films. These included ‘The Heroes of Telemark’ - a 1965 British war film directed by Anthony Mann based on the true story of the Norwegian heavy water sabotage during the Second World War. Like many films of its era, the music commissioned for the soundtrack became the property of the film company and the parts used by the orchestra during the recording were routinely destroyed afterwards. The music from ‘The Heroes of Telemark’ had therefore never been performed live, until the Malcolm Arnold Festival decided to attempt to resurrect this classic film score. In 2017 John Gibbons was asked to reconstruct the music and spent several weeks in a cottage in the West of Ireland listening to the film over and over again to piece together the orchestral score. This was a painstaking process of detective work and careful listening - aided by a deep understanding of the way Malcom Arnold orchestrated his symphonies. John was also fortunate to discover a note in Malcolm Arnold’s archive which told him the key of the film’s main theme (as the running speed of cine film can vary, so what you hear is not always exactly the pitch the music was performed). John’s concert suite of the music from ‘The Heroes of Telemark’ was performed at the Malcolm Arnold Festival in 2017 and this week it got a second performance by the Northampton Symphony Orchestra at our concert in St Matthew’s Church, Northampton, conducted by John Gibbons. It was fascinating to talk to John about the process of arranging the music into a piece that would work as part of a concert - which involved changing the order of some of the main themes to make more sense as a single piece of music, rather than simply following the plot of the film. The music includes a typically stirring heroic Malcolm Arnold tune, lots of tension-building dissonant chords, the whole orchestra whistling innocently and a German marching band - which featured some stunning tuba playing by Nick Tollervey. It was great fun to play ‘The Heroes of Telemark’, particularly having recently watched the film on BBC iPlayer - and exciting to be part of this rediscovery of a classic film score. Our concert also featured the lovely ‘Piano Concerto No 5’ by Saint-Saens, brilliantly played by Julian Chan. We finished the concert with ‘Scheherazade’ by Rimsky Korsakov. This is the third time I have played ‘Scheherazade’ with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra (I reviewed our previous performance here in March 2012) and I don’t think it is recency bias to say this was the most complete of the three performances. The wind and brass solos were all wonderful - with Sian Bunker (bassoon), Naomi Muller (clarinet) and Graham Tear (flute) all truly outstanding. And the solo violin part was played beautifully by Emily Groom, with the haunting final high harmonic note floating, almost inaudibly quiet but somehow catching your ear throughout the closing orchestral chords. It’s a thrilling piece to play - particularly the rapid fire final movement which feels physically exhilarating to be part of. It was a thoroughly enjoyable concert.

'Black Cuillin' by Duncan Chisholm

3 February 2023

‘Black Cuillin’ is the new album from Scottish folk fiddler Duncan Chisholm. The album is inspired by Sorley MacLean’s poem ‘The Cuillin’, written in 1939, which uses the Cuillin mountain range on the Isle of Skye as a symbol of hope for the war with Nazi Germany. I’ve long been an admirer of Duncan Chisholm, particularly his gentle, lyrical fiddle playing. I loved his 2008 album ‘Farrar’ - a hauntingly beautiful collection of slow airs and laments - and I wrote here about its successor ‘Canaich’ (reviewed here in December 2010) - truly beautiful music. Duncan Chisholm has the ability to make the fiddle sound like a human voice. I was lucky to see him live in 2014, accompanying Julie Fowlis (reviewed here in May 2014). ‘Black Cuillin’ is a varied collection of instrumental tracks, some more upbeat folk/rock and some the slower, wistful melodies that he does so well.

'Bournville' by Jonathan Coe

27 January 2023

Regular readers will know I am a big fan of the books of Jonathan Coe. When I wrote about his 2019 novel 'Middle England' (reviewed here in January 2019), the third in the series he began in 2001 with ‘The Rotters Club’, I said it felt like he was writing specially for me. The new Jonathan Coe novel ‘Bournville’, which I have just read as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Peter Caulfield and Cara Horgan, is similarly on my wavelength. It’s a moving family saga, starting on VE Day in 1945 and following Mary Lamb and her relatives through to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Set in and around Bournville in Birmingham, there is a lot of chocolate in this book. It will keep Jonathan Coe fans happy as it reprises all his favourite themes - from Birmingham to Brussels to some great writing about classical music: there is a whole section of the book themed around Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’. The story of generations within the same family set against the backdrop of key historic moments (the Coronation, the 1966 World Cup final etc) reminded me of Kate Atkinson’s ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’. Showing the lives of the main characters against the backdrop of real political events across the latter half of the 20th century also reminded me of Peter Flannery's ‘Our Friends in the North’ (reviewed here in April 2006), particularly in the poignant final chapters. While not strictly part of the series, ‘Bournville’ is a novel clearly set in the Rotters Club universe - with links to, and appearances by, members of the Trotter family. We also re-encounter Thomas Foley, the protagonist of another Jonathan Coe novel ‘Expo 58’ (reviewed here in September 2013). Like the Rotters Club books, there are cameos by some real figures - including Boris Johnson (though Jonathan Coe’s Author’s Note points out that “Whether he's a fictional character or not remains hard to determine”). And the sections about the pandemic are a valuable record of the peculiar period of lockdown that is already fast receding in the memory. Like ‘Middle England’, ‘Bournville’ is a comic tale about our recent history with a melancholic feel.

'Empire' podcast

20 January 2023

I’m completely hooked on the ‘Empire’ podcast which looks at how empires rise, why they fall and how they have shaped the world around us today. ‘Empire’ uses the classic podcast formula of simply bringing together knowledgeable enthusiasts and allowing us to eavesdrop on their conversation. The historians William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, plus expert guests, weave a series of truly fascinating, shocking and revealing stories which provide much needed context and nuance to many of the challenges facing us today. The first series of ‘Empire’ focussed on the British in India, covering the East India Company, the Raj, Gandhi, Independence and Partition. The second series, which started in December 2022, looks at the Ottoman Empire. But the podcast format, with new episodes recorded each week, enables ‘Empire’ to respond to current events, such as the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the appointment of the UK’s first Indian-origin Prime Minister. The episode featuring David Olusoga discussing the Queen, the Commonwealth, the future of the monarchy and the long shadow of Empire, and the episode with Sathnam Sanghera talking about his book ‘Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain’ are both brilliant. All episodes of ‘Empire’ are still available to download: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/empire/id1639561921

New York Youth Symphony album

13 January 2023

When Covid halted live performance in 2020, the New York Youth Symphony - an orchestra for musicians between the ages of 12 and 22 - decided to channel its musical efforts into recording its first album. Following the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matters protests it was agreed that the album should be made up of works by Black composers. Because of the pandemic the album had to be recorded one section of the orchestra at a time so they could be socially distanced - and the recordings were painstakingly stitched together. Now, amazingly, the eponymous New York Youth Symphony album has been announced as one of the five nominees for the “Best Orchestral Performance” Grammy - an incredible achievement for a youth orchestra, nominated alongside some of the biggest and best professional orchestras in the world. I’ve been listening to the album, which is conducted by Michael Repper and produced by Judith Sherman, a 13-time Grammy winner, who is also nominated as classical producer of the year. It includes works by Jessie Montgomery, Valerie Coleman and Florence Price - whose ‘Symphony No 1’ we saw performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra at last year’s Edinburgh Festival (reviewed here in September 2022). The first piece on the album by Florence Price is ‘Ethiopia's Shadow in America’ - a three movement work composed in 1932 which was lost for many years and only rediscovered in 2009. It’s an entertaining and moving work with a lovely slow movement. The album also features Florence Price’s ‘Piano Concerto in One Movement’, played by Michelle Cann - a very tuneful, cheerful work. For more about the story of the New York Youth Symphony Grammy nomination, see: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/entertainment/2022/11/16/new-york-youth-symphony-nominated-for-a-grammy

‘How to Disappear’ by Gillian McAllister

6 January 2023

I really enjoyed Gillian McAllister’s quirky time-travelling crime thriller ‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ (reviewed here in July 2022) so I was keen to read something else by her. ‘How to Disappear’, published in 2020, is a more conventional thriller which tells the story of a family entering witness protection. Told through a series of very short chapters, each alternating between the points of view of the main family members, it completely gripped me. It’s a believable contemporary tale which emphasises the difficulties of adopting a completely new identity, and avoiding contact with people from your previous life, in the age of social media. Gillian McAllister makes the novel pacy and incredibly scary: it’s the most tense I have felt while reading a book for years, but I couldn’t put it down.