‘Stuart: A Life Backwards’ by Alexander Masters

19 August 2010

I’ve been reading ‘Stuart: A Life Backwards’ by Alexander Masters, the fascinating, unorthodox biography of Stuart Shorter – a tale of life on the streets, prison, drugs, violence, self-harm and sexual abuse. Much of Stuart’s story is shocking and distressing but in Masters’ telling Stuart emerges as a compelling, funny, impressive and likeable personality – a triumph of finding the person amongst the problems. Masters intersperses the account of his own relationship with Stuart with the story of Stuart’s life before they met, told chronologically backwards. This gradual revelation unpicks the chain of episodes that have led Stuart to the situation in which we first encounter him. It’s an innovative approach which really helps you to understand the whole person but I also found the flitting backwards and forwards a little distracting. ‘Stuart: A Life Backwards’ is an amazing book – not quite like anything I have read before – not always easy reading but very effective at making you think about the whole nature of our society in very different ways. It’s funny how most of our debates about class tend to ignore the homeless underclass who see people who live on a council estate as ‘posh’.

'Inception' by Christopher Nolan

9 August 2010

I like a bit of ambiguity in a film: the trick is getting the right balance between telegraphing the plot and creating something so complex it is frustratingly unfathomable. For me, Christopher Nolan’s new film ‘Inception’ achieved just the right balance, starting by bombarding you with confusion then allowing you to gradually – and very satisfyingly – start to piece everything together before leaving you with a lingering soupçon of ambiguity. I really enjoyed Nolan’s breakthrough film, 'Memento' (reviewed here in February 2007) and he does seem to bring a refreshingly creative complexity to everything he does. ‘Inception’ involves Leonardo DiCaprio leading a team who go into someone’s dreams to plant an idea. The surreal nature of dreams within dreams works (once you get the hang of it) because it maintains its own strict logic. The special effects are amazing: as characters walk up walls and along ceilings, and streets full of buildings fold over on top of themselves, it all manages to appear ‘real’ rather than obviously computer-generated. And I loved what I hope were a number of knowing references and in-jokes – absolutely unessential to your struggle to comprehend the plot but terribly satisfying when you spot them. For example, a fleeting cameo from Pete Postlethwaite seemed to me to be a reference to ‘The Usual Suspects’, famous for its own puzzles about what is real and what is imaginary. And surely it wasn’t a coincidence that DiCaprio’s wife is played by Marion Cotillard, best known for her Oscar-winning role in ‘La vie en rose’, and the musical trigger DiCaprio’s team use to communicate to each other in the dreams is Édith Piaf singing ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’? These clever hidden references (and I bet there were heaps more I didn’t spot) reminded me of the allusions to Kate Bush lyrics in David Mitchell’s novel ‘number9dream’ – absolutely nothing to do with the plot but terribly pleasing when you notice them. ‘Inception’ is not an easy film to follow but it’s well worth the struggle – proper complicated!

‘Quartet’ by Ronald Harwood

3 August 2010

Last Saturday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see ‘Quartet’ by Ronald Harwood – a play about four aging opera singers meeting each other again in a retirement home for musicians and planning to reprise their famous performance of the quartet from Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’. It was cleverly written exploration of growing old and differing attitudes to aging – and provided great roles for a quartet of well-known actors of a certain age: Timothy West, Susannah York, Michael Jayston and Gwen Taylor. A gentle play and a little bit predictable but enjoyable and inspiring – and really made me want to see ‘Rigoletto’.

WOMAD 2010

27 July 2010

I had a great time at the WOMAD Festival at Charlton Park in Wiltshire last weekend. It was near-perfect festival weather – dry all weekend but not too hot. I saw 28 bands in total, ranging from the Cuban son of Sierra Maestra to the West African funk of Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou from Benin, to the Pakistani devotional singing of Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali. There was a distinctly humorous flavour to this year’s festival which included lounge versions of ‘Ever Fallen in Love’ and ‘Blue Monday’ by the French group Nouvelle Vague, the politest singalong version you will ever hear of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ led by the excellent Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and the surreal experience of being part of a massive crowd singing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ with octogenarian world music original Rolf Harris! Rolf was on fine form, entering into a conversation with every heckler and signing ‘thank you’ to the sign language interpreter at the side of the stage who was struggling to translate the nonsense words and farmyard noises of one of his songs. I particularly enjoyed hearing the young Iraqui oud player Khyam Allami, accompanied by the amazing Italian master percussionist Andrea Piccioni who could make a tambourine (well actually a tambourella) sound like an entire drum kit. And I would have liked to have heard more of Kormac’s Big Band – the live hip-hop orchestra from Dublin who include a barbershop quartet alongside the eponymous DJ. I loved watching Takht Al Emarat – a group of seven very serious, straight-faced young men from the United Arab Emirates who played some lovely traditional classical music. I don’t think any of the musicians could speak English so the gaps between pieces were just a brief embarrassed silence but as the enthusiasm of the crowd grew, you could start to see a few smiles creeping onto the faces of the players and by the final rapturous reception they were beaming from ear to ear. It was also great to see the Bavarian group LaBrassBanda really working a huge festival crowd with their unique take on fast-pumping techno dance music played on trumpet, trombone and tuba. The incredible Staff Benda Bilili (reviewed here in November 2009) were on excellent form and it was good to see the late great Charlie Gillett remembered by having a stage named in his honour. But I think my two favourite performances were by Lepistö & Lehti and Chumbawamba. Accordionist Markku Lepistö and double bass player Pekka Lehti are former members of the Finnish band Värttinä and have created a lovely album (called ‘Helsinki’) of contemporary tunes drawing on the Finnish folk tradition. They are gently engaging performers and played a wonderful set on the BBC Radio 3 stage in the arboretum on Saturday afternoon. I had never seen Chumbawamba before but was completely bowled over by their appearance on Friday evening. Their ‘Tubthumping’ days are now a historical footnote (and they resolutely resisted many calls to perform their solitary hit) but they are still articulate, witty and strongly political. Incorporating traditional English folk songs, acapella voices, catchy tunes, radical messages and fascinating stories, they were excellent and I strongly recommend their 17^th album ‘abcdefg’ – “a concept album about music”.

Gilberto Gil

22 July 2010

Following the ‘Point of Culture’ debate at the Purcell Room on Wednesday, I made my way next door to the Royal Festival Hall, together with Alan Davey, Jude Kelly and my Points of Contact colleagues, to see the legendary Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil give a rare UK concert as part of the Southbank Centre’s ‘Festival Brazil’. Gil was a key figure in the Tropicália movement in the 1960s and spent time in London when exiled from Brazil by the military dictatorship. More recently, of course, he was the instigator of the Cultura Viva programme and its ‘Pontos de Cultura’ scheme which I visited Brazil in March to observe. But on Wednesday his performance was a celebration of forró – the high-tempo, rapid-fire dance music of Gil’s home territory of the North East of Brazil. He also included a few examples of something I think he called ‘shott’ – a corruption of ‘Scottish’ – which blends forró with European folk dance music to create a strange Brazilian version of Scottish country dance tunes: bizarre, surreal but still incredibly cool. Forró is infectious, toe-tapping music featuring the distinctive syncopated tinkling of a triangle, with accordion, violin, banjo, guitars and drums. Gil’s version is turbo-charged forró with electric guitars and a rock flavour but it still has that traditional rural party-music feel – a little like rockabilly. There was some jeering from fans upset at not hearing Gil’s greatest hits: imagine going to see a Paul McCartney concert only to discover that he wasn’t going to play any Beatles songs but was going to do 2 hours of skiffle (but actually, wouldn’t that be amazing?!). Gil is a bit Paul McCartney, a bit Bob Marley, a bit Chuck Berry and a bit Nelson Mandela. For all his legendary status as sixties pop icon and exiled political activist, it is hard not to keep returning to Gil’s appointment as Minister of Culture in President Lula’s first government. As Gil jigged his way across the stage, a little grandfatherly but still incredibly cool, I couldn’t decide whether it was more amusing to imagine a British rock star becoming a government minister or to picture a government minister dancing in front of a packed Festival Hall audience.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

20 July 2010

On Sunday I played in the annual Northampton Symphony Orchestra Friends’ Concert – a free bonus concert for subscribing ‘Friends’ of the orchestra. This is always a nice way for us to say thank you to the people who have supported us throughout the year and for us to feature particular sections of the orchestra. I really enjoyed Sunday’s programme which included Copland’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ (for brass and percussion), Elgar's ‘Introduction and Allegro for Strings’ and the ‘Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments’ by Richard Strauss as well as the ‘Karelia Suite’ by Sibelius and Rossini's overture to ‘The Thieving Magpie’. For a short programme it was surprisingly strenuous, particularly in a very hot theatre, but I think all the pieces went well and it was a lovely way to round off our 2009-10 season.

'Bedroom Farce' by Alan Ayckbourn

20 July 2010

On Saturday evening we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see Peter Hall’s Rose Theatre, Kingston, production of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1976 play ‘Bedroom Farce’. Set in three contrasting bedrooms, all seen next to each other on the stage, this is a cleverly constructed comedy which features four couples so that someone is always out of place. A variety of devices are employed to create reasons why people end up in each other’s bedrooms but ‘Bedroom Farce’ isn’t really a bedroom farce at all in the conventional sense. Like most Ayckbourn plays it deals with ordinary people in a domestic setting and is concerned with relationships at different stages of development. As well as being very funny, ‘Bedroom Farce’ is suffused with typical Ayckbournian poignancy and it’s easy to recognise aspects of yourself and your own relationships in all four couples. Setting all the action in three bedrooms is a model that was developed to great effect by Andy Hamilton in his ‘Bedtime’ TV drama series but Ayckbourn was doing it 30 years earlier.

Milton Keynes International Festival

20 July 2010

On Friday we were at the opening evening of the first Milton Keynes International Festival. We started with a visit to ‘The Magical Menagerie’ (‘Le Manège Carré Sénart’), the latest fantastic Artichoke production created by François Delarozière and his company La Machine who were responsible for ‘The Sultan’s Elephant’ that transfixed the streets of London in 2006 and the giant spider, ‘La Princesse’ that was a seminal moment in Liverpool 2008. ‘The Magical Menagerie’ is a spectacular variation on the traditional fairground carousel. Life-size models of a bull, a buffalo and other animals rotate while giant insects circle them in the opposite direction and brightly-coloured fish rise up to the roof. Each seat on the carousel is equipped with a lever which you can use to move the head, tail, eyes etc of the relevant creature. The whole machine resembles an exaggerated Victorian automaton. It’s bizarre, beautiful, fascinating and completely captivating.

Next we ventured into the darkened interior of the former Sainsbury’s supermarket to see ‘Asleep at the wheel …’ an ‘immersive sound installation’ by Janek Schaefer. Entering this vast, unlit, low-ceilinged space, and walking towards a queue of parked cars with their hazard lights blinking, felt like entering an eerie, underground car park. You are encouraged to move from car to car, sitting in the back seats and immersing yourself in a confusing soundscape emanating from the car radios. You gradually realise from the snatches of spoken word amongst the music, static and sound effects that this work carries a strong message about environmental sustainability. But, for me, the attraction of ‘Asleep at the wheel …’ was the childlike excitement of exploring this spooky film-set rather than the message.

Finally we made our way to Campbell Park for ‘Full Circle’ by The World Famous with Terrafolk, an outdoor spectacular with music, lighting and fireworks. Terrafolk are a Slovenian turbo-charged folk group who I first saw some years ago at the Edinburgh Fringe. They are virtuoso musicians who mainly like to play it for laughs – always crowd-pleasers. In ‘Full Circle’ the four musicians were suspended in translucent pods which gradually opened to reveal them to the audience – which immediately conjured up memories of ‘This is Spinal Tap!’ (although in this case all four pods did open correctly!). We were then treated to a range of musical styles accompanied by stunningly beautiful fireworks and other effects. An odd mixture of sublime and ridiculous (particularly the death-metal version of ‘You Are My Sunshine’!) it was certainly a memorable performance. At times it felt very ‘prog-rock’ – you half expected Rick Wakeman to appear. But it was good fun and an interesting way to end our first experience of the Milton Keynes International Festival.

'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen, adapted by Laura Turner

12 July 2010

On Saturday we made the short journey to the gardens of Woburn Abbey to see an outdoor performance of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Chapterhouse Theatre Company. It was a perfect setting for a tale set in and around grand country houses and it was a beautiful evening to be entertained by the wit and wisdom of Jane Austen. The actors at these outdoor productions really work hard – having to project to be heard at the back of a large audience spread across the lawns and not getting any break as they spend the interval strolling through the crowds, selling raffle tickets and programmes while still resolutely in character (the Bennet girls clearly on the search for potential husbands in the audience!). Even the drawing of the raffle was done with Austenian flourish and those female members of the audience celebrating their birthday were called up to the stage for a kiss from Mr Darcy! It was a very enjoyable evening with fine performances, particularly from Hannah Lee as Elizabeth Bennet and Edwin Wright as Darcy.

City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra concert

6 July 2010

On 24 June 1990 I played in the inaugural concert by the City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra. The concert took place in Peterborough Cathedral, conducted by Antony Hopkins, and featured Rachmaninov’s ‘Piano Concerto No. 2’ played by Anthony Goldstone and the premiere of ‘Portrait of Peterborough’ by Amanda Stuart. It was very exciting to be a founder member of a new symphony orchestra and I soon got involved in the committee and became Chair of the orchestra in 1993. My involvement with the City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra set me on the path that led eventually to becoming Chief Executive of Voluntary Arts. So I was delighted to be invited back to Peterborough Cathedral last Saturday to attend the CPSO’s 20^th Anniversary Concert – though the realisation that it’s been 20 years makes me feel extremely old! It was a splendid concert, with the orchestra giving a wonderful performance of Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No. 9’, conducted by Russell Keable and involving four local choirs. The Choral Symphony is a mammoth work and a major challenge for any orchestra. We first performed it with the CPSO in 1993, conducted by Norman Beedie, in the first of our annual ‘landmark’ concerts. Saturday’s performance was extremely impressive and the ending of the final movement was thrilling. There are only a handful of players left in the orchestra from my time in Peterborough, but it’s great to see it still going strong after 20 years. And lovely to see the indefatigable Steve Osborn and Jackie Over still driving the organisation. I’m looking forward to the 30^th anniversary concert already! (Read the Peterborough Evening Telegraph article at: http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/lifestyle/culture_2_1843/music/celebrations_reach_a_crescendo_1_653796)

Wimbledon 2010

6 July 2010

We had a lovely day at Wimbledon last Friday. We saw both ladies’ doubles semi-finals (including the ladies’ singles finalist Vera Zvonereva) and both mixed doubles semi-finals on court one. There was some very entertaining tennis – particularly the mixed doubles match won by the eventual champions, Leander Paes and Cara Black. And we had plenty of sunshine and more than six hours of uninterrupted play. It was a shame to miss the men’s singles semi-finals, which were being played on centre court, but we were sat towards the back of court one and could hear the reactions of the crowd on Henman Hill and snatches of commentary from the big screen, so it was relatively easy to work out what was happening.

‘Inspector Drake and the Perfekt Crime’ by David Tristram

1 July 2010

The TADS Theatre Group’s performance of the gloriously silly ‘Inspector Drake and the Black Widow’ by David Tristram (reviewed here in April 2009) was one of my picks of the year for 2009. I was delighted to discover that Joe Butcher’s wonderful performance as Inspector Drake won him the NODA ‘Best Actor in a Play 2009’ award – extremely well-deserved. But I was even more delighted to see that Joe and Kevin Birkett were to reprise their roles as the Inspector and his dim-witted Sergeant in David Tristram’s sequel ‘Inspector Drake and the Perfekt Crime’. So last Friday we made the short journey to the tiny TADS Theatre in Toddington for another evening of excellent mockery of the murder mystery. It was a brilliant send-up of the genre, incorporating slapstick, visual gags, word-play and with “more twists in it than, well, a really twisty thing” – all excellently performed by a great amateur cast.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

24 June 2010

Mendelssohn’s music for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is a delightful, tuneful, popular work but, for any French horn player, it conjures up fear as all that pretty, innocent music seems to be leading menacingly, and all too quickly, towards the terror that is ‘The Nocturne’! To be fair, the horn solo in the Nocturne is also a very pretty tune, but it’s a mountain to climb for a horn player: not technically that difficult but very long, requiring considerable lung capacity (like climbing a mountain actually!). I was relieved to discover that ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was to be the first item on the programme at last Saturday’s Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert, giving me a chance to conquer its peaks while still reasonably fresh. And I must have practised playing through the Nocturne at least 100 times over the past 7 weeks, so I was well prepared. In the end, I got through it without any major problems. I’m sure some notes were a little strained as I began to run out of breath, but I think it went as well as it could have done and it was a great relief to get through it unscathed. Overall, I thought our performance of the Mendelssohn was pretty good. Indeed, the orchestra was in fine form on Saturday in what I think was our best concert since Alexander Walker took over as our conductor. The fabulous violinist Irmina Trynkos returned to give a dazzling performance of Chausson’s ‘Poeme’ and the ‘Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso’ by Saint Saens. And the concert concluded with an impressive and exciting performance of the ‘Symphonie Fantastique’ by Berlioz – including a truly beautiful cor anglais and offstage oboe duet at the beginning of the third movement by Peta Foley and Kathy Roberts. It was a long concert – tiring but exhilarating.

'The Little Stranger’ by Sarah Waters

18 June 2010

I really enjoyed ‘The Night Watch’ by Sarah Waters (reviewed here in January 2008) so I had been looking forward to reading her latest novel ‘The Little Stranger’ and I wasn’t disappointed. From the start you feel you are in safe hands: Waters is an excellent writer who seems to be able to create historical novels that feel as if they could have been written in the relevant period. ‘The Little Stranger’ is set in Warwickshire in 1947 with the country recovering from war, still constrained by rationing, anticipating the arrival of the new National Health Service and beginning to come to terms with a world that has changed forever. It tells the story of an aristocratic family struggling to maintain a once-grand, dilapidated country house, through the first-person narration of the local doctor. And very soon we seem to be entering classic ghost-story territory. But is ‘The Little Stranger’ a ghost story? Without any of the narrative tricks of ‘The Night Watch’, Sarah Waters has constructed a novel that appears to be a simple, spooky tale but subtly manages to say much about the changing social order at a turning point in history. Deceptively straightforward, there is considerable depth below the surface and your view of what the book is really about gradually evolves without you really noticing – while you are carried briskly through 500 pages of gripping, often chilling, narrative.

Denmark

18 June 2010

We had a lovely holiday in Denmark last week, despite less than wonderful weather. We stayed in central Copenhagen and did most of the tourist things - though we were surprised, after walking out to the harbour to see the Little Mermaid, to discover that the statue is currently in the Denmark pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai and has been temporarily replaced by a video screen showing live footage of Expo visitors walking past the Little Mermaid in sunny China! We took a trip to the North East of Zealand to Helsingor to see Kronborg Slot - the setting for Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' and also visited the former capital, Roskilde. We saw the site of a Viking fortress at Trelleborg and sampled the slightly tacky delights of the Tivoli Gardens (imagine Alton Towers compressed to the size of a postage stamp!). Denmark is an interesting place with a fascinating history and extremely friendly and helpful people.

‘Bang Goes the Knighthood’ by The Divine Comedy

4 June 2010

Mock operatic arias, jaunty music-hall ditties, sumptuous romantic melodies, sudden time-changes, concert-hall piano, strummed ukulele, orchestral strings, witty lyrics and corny rhymes: it can only be a new album by The Divine Comedy! The Divine Comedy (reviewed here in September 2005 and July 2006) returned this week with the wonderful ‘Bang Goes the Knighthood’. After Neil Hannon’s cricket-themed album 'The Duckworth Lewis Method' (reviewed here in July 2009) ‘Bang Goes the Knighthood’ takes us firmly back to the classic Divine Comedy sound. Arguably Hannon undercuts every moment of beauty he creates by being unable to resist the temptation to slip into whimsy. But when you love a band you tend to love the full package – both sublime and ridiculous. The beautiful highpoint of this album is the perfect foxtrot ‘Have You Ever Been in Love?’ but I’m equally taken with ‘The Lost Art of Conversation’ which manages to rhyme all of the following:

• a conversation
• David Jason
• Francis Bacon
• concentration
• League of Nations
• The English Patient
• imagination
• hallucinations
• Good Vibrations
• the Reformation
• transubstantiation
• Bram Stoker’s creation
• The Land of the Thracians
• time and patience

and, in case that wasn’t enough, also links Frank Lampard, Joan of Arc and Van Dyke Parks. Beat that!

Cider with Rosie’ by Laurie Lee, adapted by Daniel O’Brien

4 June 2010

We were at the Oxford Playhouse last Saturday to see the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds production of ‘Cider with Rosie’ by Laurie Lee – a new adaptation by Daniel O’Brien. An inventive, ensemble piece, with original music by T J Holmes, it uses six actors to play Laurie and his five siblings as well as every other character in the story. The whole cast is onstage throughout, adding sound effects or background action to scenes in which they are not the principal players. The effect is entertaining and amusing with much to admire in its stagecraft and some lovely songs. It reminded me of the stage adaptations of novels by Shared Experience which employ a similar physical ensemble approach. But I would have preferred more narrative drive: the approach was very episodic (in line with the book I assume, though I haven’t read it) and there was little to indicate the overall passage of time through Laurie’s childhood. As a play it grew on me but didn’t grip me, though it received a rapturous reception – I suspect there were plenty of fans of the book in the audience.

'Noah's Compass' by Anne Tyler

26 May 2010

Anne Tyler is an author who produces hugely entertaining, readable novels which are all much more clever and profound than they appear – tackling difficult subjects without creating difficult prose – something also achieved by David Lodge but not many others in my opinion. ‘Noah’s Compass’ is Anne Tyler’s 18^th novel and sees her returning to a familiar format after the more ambitious digressions of her previous two books, ‘The Amateur Marriage’ and ‘Digging to America’. Set, as always, in Baltimore ‘Noah’s Compass’ is a seemingly simple tale of family relationships, aging, loneliness and memory loss. It has much in common with one of Tyler’s most celebrated works, ‘The Accidental Tourist’ but shows, I think, a maturing confidence in her writing, relying much less on exaggerated comic characters and set-pieces. Like a stripped-down version of ‘The Accidental Tourist’ everyone is less extreme and more believable, less happens but the emotional interaction feels stronger. ‘Noah’s Compass’ is a short novel – the first book I’ve read at a single sitting for some time – but manages to be intriguing, funny and very moving. Less is more.

European Union Baroque Orchestra concert

26 May 2010

Before I start to praise the wonderful concert by the European Union Baroque Orchestra, which we were at St John’s, Smith Square, in London to see last Saturday, I should declare an interest. Our good friend Lindsay Kemp is the Artistic Director of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music and had programmed this concert as the finale to the 2010 festival. And it was wonderful. Regular readers may have deduced that baroque music is not one of my usual enthusiasms but I was enthralled by this look at the concerti grossi by Arcangelo Corelli. It helped to have attended a recording of BBC Radio 3’s ‘Discovering Music’ in the afternoon at which Stephen Johnson explained and analysed the three main works to be performed that evening, with the European Union Baroque Orchestra on hand to provide excerpts and examples. The concerto grosso was developed in Rome in the late 17^th century, and employs a small chamber ensemble (the concertino) contrasted with a full string orchestra (the ripieno). Corelli pioneered this form of music with his twelve published concerti grossi – three of which were the focus of Saturday’s concert. At the time he was writing them, it was unusual to expect an audience to listen to purely instrumental music that had neither words for singers nor a clear story to follow and most composers assumed that the attention span for such works was likely to be no more than five or six minutes. Corelli boldly stretched this duration by introducing recurring motifs to create a subtle impression of familiarity, even when listening for the first time. He also expanded the size of the orchestra, on at least one occasion using 76 string players. For Saturday’s concert the European Union Baroque Orchestra was augmented by a number of its former members so that there were around 50 people on the stage – what now seems like a massive number of players for a baroque performance. The EUBO draws together the best young baroque musicians from across Europe each year, with the majority of its alumni going on to perform professionally. On Saturday they were directed from the violin by the charismatic Italian soloist, Enrico Onofri, a fascinating figure on the stage – gangly and hairless, save for his dark, hooded eyebrows, dressed entirely in black but with a bright white scarf laced through the end of his violin and tied around his neck to support the instrument. Constantly moving to the music, nodding his head and, occasionally leaping in the air to push the young players forward, Onofri was a perfect example of the violin soloist as ‘rock star’ – perhaps suggesting the effect Corelli himself had in this role. At the time Corelli was writing, the violin was a relatively new instrument: the concept of the virtuoso violin soloist as the star, accompanied by an orchestra, was still being developed by Vivaldi and others. Most of Corelli’s concerti grossi feature a concertino with two violins and a ‘cello – the violins (here played by Onofri and Margaret Faultless) answering each other in a constant conversation. But Onofri undoubtedly stole the show. The enhanced EUBO created a marvellous sound and showed how exciting this early orchestral music is. A packed St John’s, Smith Square, was thrilled by the performance and the two encores that followed. It was a great concert.

BBC Young Musician 2010

21 May 2010

I said here in May 2006 that "I love the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition" but in May 2008 I felt it was a major disappointment “that the impact of this landmark musical event should be so watered down in its thirtieth anniversary year”. So I approached the BBC Young Musician 2010 with some nervousness to see whether full coverage of the competition had been restored after the debacle of 2008. Overall I was pleased and greatly relieved: the extensive coverage of the five category finals on BBC4 showed plenty of the actual performances, mostly uninterrupted, and the concerto final was broadcast live and in full. But clearly the wonderfully indulgent concert of five concertos is something that no longer warrants clearing the schedules, and the price of live classical music on BBC2 was a pruning of the format to only allow for three finalists. This meant the introduction of a semi-final in which the five category winners reprised their solo recitals in order for three to be chosen to perform concertos with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. I really felt for the two unsuccessful semi-finalists, who in any of the previous competitions would have taken their place on the final stage with the orchestra. It was very disappointing that, for the first time in 32 years, the final didn’t include a brass concerto. Nevertheless it was a wonderful concerto final with three fine performances and a clear and worthy winner. Regular readers will be amazed to learn that, for the first time in the history of the BBC Young Musician competition, I correctly predicted the winner! (Though I was only picking from three, rather than five contenders of course.) And all the broadcast performances were beautifully presented and excellently filmed – the BBC really does the visual presentation of classical music brilliantly well. In 2010 the BBC Young Musician competition regained a sense of dignity and I suspect it will long be remembered for the truly wonderful, astounding performance of Saint-Saëns' Piano Concerto No. 2 by the 16-year-old winner Lara Ömeroğlu. See for yourself at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s3fk5