Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert
12 May 2024
When we last played the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra, accompanying Lucy Parham in 2007, I wrote here (in November 2007) that the piece always reminds me how nervous I was playing the exposed horn solos in the first and second movements as a teenager with the Didsbury Symphony Orchestra in 1983, accompanying Peter Donohoe, and how relieved I was this time to be leaving those solos to the NSO Principal Horn David Lack. Now that Dave is sadly no longer with us, last Saturday it was my turn again, for the first time since 1983. Our NSO concert, in. St Matthews Church in Northampton, featured the brilliant young Russian soloist, Victor Maslov. There is a wonderful video on YouTube of Victor playing the Grieg Piano Concerto 15 years ago at the age of 11: https://youtu.be/ITJZEN2B87Y?si=5ZVVXUsn_tNwSV8t The 2024 version was even more spectacular: it was a genuinely thrilling performance by one of the most exciting soloists we have accompanied in recent years. Victor seemed to be playing this most famous of concertos neither in a lush romantic style nor in a disciplined classical approach, instead managing to make it feel much more contemporary - a fascinatingly inquisitive modern take on a work that can feel over familiar - but without losing any of the passion. In contrast to my teenaged self, this time I found the short horn solos really enjoyable and I was pleased with how they went. But mine was a minor contribution to an incredible performance that will live long in the memory of everyone who was there. Victor Maslov's encore, a short Prelude by Scriabin, was delicate and mesmerising. It was a challenge for the NSO to follow this in the second half of the concert but Brahms' 'Symphony No 4' is a work that deserves to stand alongside the Grieg concerto. It's a lovely piece that demonstrates how Brahms continued and developed Beethoven's symphonic style - built on meticulous syncopated rhythms, driving chord progressions and controlled power. Brahms 4 is one of my favourite symphonies. This was the first time I had played it for more than 25 years but I was surprised how well I still knew the horn parts. It's a lovely symphony, incredibly satisfying to play, in which each every note feels carefully crafted. NSO conductor John Gibbons shaped a beautifully controlled performance which was incredibly moving - with Graham Tear's gorgeously measured flute solo in the last movement exemplifying this. We opened the concert with the 'Froissart Overture' by Edward Elgar and also played Laura Rossi's witty musical journey through Italy, 'Jailhouse Graffiti' which was commissioned by John Gibbons to celebrate an April Fools prank he and Laura played on the Ealing Symphony Orchestra in 2005.
Labels: Concerts, Music
'Nye' by Tim Price
10 May 2024
On Thursday we were at the Library Theatre in Leighton Buzzard to see the NTLive broadcast of ‘Nye’ by Tim Price, directed by Rufus Norris, live from the National Theatre in London. This was the 100th NTLive performance since this innovative model of broadcasting live theatre to cinemas around the world started in 2009. I think I’ve seen 34 of the 100 broadcasts which have become an artform in their own right. It’s not better or worse than being in the theatre - it’s just different. You don’t quite get the same atmosphere as being in the auditorium with the live actors, but you do get close-ups and viewing angles that you wouldn’t have in the theatre, and you can hear every word much more clearly. ‘Nye’ dramatises the life of the Labour politician Aneurin Bevan and the founding of the National Health Service. Tim Price’s play starts with Bevan (played with wide-eyed wonder by Michael Sheen) in hospital himself, being treated for the stomach cancer that will kill him, and then tells his story through flashbacks and delirious dream sequences (as the morphine kicks in) with the doctors, nurses and other patients in the hospital taking the parts of Nye’s family, friends, colleagues and political opponents. The patient dropping in and out of consciousness, reliving incidents from his life, reminded me a lot of Denis Potter’s TV masterpiece ‘The Singing Detective’: there is even a fully staged song and dance number led by Michael Sheen. Vicki Mortimer’s set constantly reminds you we are in a hospital, with beds tipped on their sides to form the desks of the Tredegar Council chamber and the green benches of the House of Commons conjured up by surgical curtains. Michael Sheen brings a fascinating mixture of naivety, passion and mischief to his Nye Bevan. He is on stage throughout, playing out scenes from various chapters of Nye’s life but always dressed in his hospital pyjamas - reminding me of Arthur Dent in ‘The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. Sharon Small is great as Jennie Lee, Nye’s colleague and wife. Also impressive are Kezrena James, as the nurse who morphs into Nye’s sister Arianwen, and Tony Jayawardena, as the doctor who becomes Winston Churchill. But the lasting impression of ‘Nye’ is its moving tribute to the NHS and the amazing statistics projected across the stage at the end of the play which show how many lives were saved in the first few years of the new National Health Service.
Labels: Drama, Film, Theatre
'Real Tigers’, ‘Spook Street’ and ‘London Rules’ by Mick Herron
3 May 2024
I’m still working my way through Mick Herron’s Slough House series of spy novels. Having enjoyed ‘Slow Horses’ (reviewed here in November 2023) and ‘Dead Lions’ (reviewed here in January 2024) I have now raced through the next three books in the series, determined to finish reading the novels before I start to watch the ‘Slow Horses’ TV series. Book 3 ‘Real Tigers’ ratchets up both the comedy and the violence, with the Slough House team of disgraced former spies ending up in a major gun battle (and an amusing episode with a double decker London bus). Book 4 ‘Spook Street’ has the most thrilling plot so far and I think is my favourite to date. And Book 5 ‘London Rules’ is a brilliant exercise in black comedy, featuring a truly farcical political assassination. Mick Herron manages to make the books comically ridiculous while keeping the plots (just about) believable enough that you care about the outcome. And his descriptive writing, conjuring up Dickensian descriptions of contemporary London, is very impressive. I’m looking forward to reading the final three books in the series.
Labels: Books
'Red Side Story' by Jasper Fforde
26 April 2024
Regular readers may remember that I am a big fan of Jasper Fforde’s silly comic fantasy/sci-fi novels (you can read my reviews of 14 Jasper Fforde books at: https://culturaldessert.blogspot.com/search?q=%27+by+Jasper+Fforde). Jasper Fforde’s 2009 novel ‘Shades of Grey’ (reviewed here in April 2011) is perhaps his most ambitious and complex work, depicting a post-apocalyptic dystopian society far into our future in which social standing is determined by your ability to perceive colour – with the majority of the population only able to see grey and just a privileged few families seeing yellows, greens or reds. It has taken fifteen years for the promised sequel to ‘Shades of Grey’ to arrive but ‘Red Side Story’ (which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Chris Harper and Jasper Fforde) was worth the wait. I had forgotten much of the complicated setting and plot of the first book, and I found it a little difficult to get started with its successor. But Fforde’s engaging cast of eccentric comic characters draw you in and, as I realised that ‘Red Side Story’ was going to begin to explain how its surreal future-world had come about, I was gripped. This was a much more satisfying tale where there is real jeopardy and you really care about the fate of the main characters.
Labels: Books
'Love's Labour's Lost' by William Shakespeare
24 April 2024
Last Saturday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the new RSC production of ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ directed by Emily Burns. I had only seen ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ once before (the 2008 RSC production that featured David Tennant as Berowne - reviewed here in October 2008). It’s not the greatest Shakespeare play but it’s interesting to see him trying out elements that would flourish more effectively in his later works. The bickering between Rosaline and Berowne, for example, feels like an early draft for Beatrice and Benedick in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. And the shambolic performance of ‘The Pageant of the Nine Worthies’ at the end of ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ clearly points the way towards the more complete comic set-piece play-within-a-play ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ at the end of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Emily Burns’ production is lots of fun, very much played for laughs, with some brilliant comic scenes. She sets the play in the present day, at a luxury Pacific island retreat, with the men as billionaire tech bros. The supporting characters are maybe a little too close to pantomime but the four central lovestruck men and the four women who break their resolution of chastity are brilliantly played, particularly by Luke Thompson as Berowne and Ioanna Kimbook at Rosaline. The RSC is always wonderful at finding amazing young actors: 16 of this cast of 19 are in their RSC debut season. I also enjoyed Tony Gardner as the comically frustrated Holofernes (showing a touch of Basil Fawlty to Jack Bardoe’s Manuel-like Don Armado) - but, like much of the play, these scenes are brief, incidental to the plot and don’t seem to go anywhere. It was a very enjoyable, high-quality production of a play that has its limitations.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
‘Behold Ye Ramblers’ by Neil Gore
19 April 2024
Last Saturday we were at The Place in Bedford to see the Townsend Theatre production of ‘Behold Ye Ramblers’, a new one-person play, written and performed by Neil Gore, which tells the story of the Clarion movement that started in the late 19th century. In 1891 the journalist Robert Blatchford founded a weekly newspaper called ‘The Clarion’ to draw attention to the conditions suffered by working people in industrialised Victorian Britain and to spread a socialist message. But from the start, Blatchford’s vision was of better support for workers, both in the factories and in their recreational and cultural activities. This led to a large network of local Clarion Cycling Clubs, Vocal Unions, Dramatic Societies, Handicrafts Clubs, ‘Cinderella Clubs’ (for children) and Rambling Clubs, which started the struggle for the right to roam freely across open moors on ancient paths. The Sheffield Clarion Ramblers, founded in 1900, is recognised as the first working class rambling club and survived until 2015. The National Clarion Cycling Club still survives today, as does the People's Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne, which began its life in 1911 as the Newcastle Clarion Drama Club. Neil Gore’s play shows the growth of the Clarion movement through speeches, poetry, and music hall songs, making you feel like you are at a Clarion Club meeting through lots of audience participation. He makes clever use of projections of actual Clarion newspaper pages and posters for Clarion Vocal Union concerts, together with colourised early film of working class communities. It’s a fascinating story which demonstrates the strong socialist roots of many of our everyday creativity traditions today. The tale of The Clarion reminded me a lot of ‘The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists’, so it was interesting to discover that a one-person Magic Lantern show of Robert Tressell’s classic book is going to be the next production from Townsend Theatre. https://www.townsendproductions.org.uk/shows/behold-ye-ramblers/
Labels: Drama, Theatre
'American Fiction' by Cord Jefferson
10 April 2024
We first visited The Rex in Berkhamsted, described by the BBC as "possibly Britain’s most beautiful cinema", in 2008. This beautifully refurbished art deco picture house has cabaret tables and large, high-backed swivel chairs in the stalls and rows of the most comfy cinema seats with masses of legroom in the gallery. Last Saturday we were back at The Rex, for the first time in many years, to see Cord Jefferson’s Oscar-winning film ‘American Fiction’. Based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett, the film follows Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, an American academic (brilliantly played by Jeffrey Wright) who is increasingly frustrated as his Greek-tragedy-inspired novels are filed under ‘African-American Studies’ in bookshops because the author is Black. When publishers reject his latest manuscript for not being "Black enough", he writes an over-the-top parody of stereotypical ‘Black’ books under a pseudonym and (inevitably - and to his immense embarrassment) it becomes incredibly successful. The film is a very funny and intelligent literary satire but it's also a moving family drama with an impressive cast playing well drawn believable characters.
Labels: Books, Film
