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.