Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

And Feb ain’t started slow …

My goodness – we’re not yet halfway through the month and there’s all this to write about!

Following the rehearsal I attended last month at Acland Burghley School for the OAE’s planned concert featuring Mozart’s clarinet concerto, February started with the actual performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. It was fascinating to see how the subtle changes that had been suggested during the rehearsals had made their way firmly into the final version – except that no version is ever final as the room, the audience and the moment make every performance unique. The interplay between Kati Debretzeni as leader and Katherine ‘Waffy’ Spencer on her beloved basset clarinet ‘Grace’ was moulded into an outstanding piece of music. The concert opened with an overture by Juan Crisostomo Arriaga – often dubbed the Spanish Mozart for his precocity and the fact that he and WAM were both born on 27 January, albeit 50 years apart. This was written when Arriaga was 14 and who knows where he might be in the pantheon if he’d lived beyond the age of 20. At least there’s a theatre named after him in his home town of Bilbao where we saw a not very good zarzuela production in 2008. Each half of the QEH concert concluded with a mad encore devised by Waffy of arias from Die Enführung aus dem Serail with ‘Grace’ as Konstanze and bassoons as the males, Belmonte and the Pasha, with Acland Burghley students displaying large card captions to tell the story. The OAE as well as being great musically are also great fun (see below).

One of the things that endears me to this band – apart from their musical excellence – is that at the end of every OAE concert the audience are handed a ‘Thanks for coming card’ from a different member of the orchestra. It’s a really pleasing gesture that makes you feel properly involved in the evening’s entertainment. Tonight’s card of course was from Grace herself.

Next up was a visit to the Young Vic as a proxy for patron Frances who was in Hull for a football match. I’ve pretty much given up on long distance away games, especially midweek. This was an insight session into Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass which previews from 20 February so the cast are half way through rehearsals. The director Jordan Fein joined us with cast members Eli Gelb, Juliet Cowan, Nigel Whitmey and Alex Waldmann. The play covers the literally paralysing effect on the main character of the news of the infamous massacre of Jews on Kristallnacht in 1938. It was interesting to hear about the directorial and design decisions and to discuss the relevance of the play today with genocides taking place in several parts of the world. At these events it’s always interesting to see all the research material provided in the room for the cast to be fully informed of the subject matter. In this case the walls were covered with lots of photos of Brooklyn in the 30s with newspaper headlines and cuttings about Kristallnacht. All this and a glass of wine and a chance to spend an hour chatting to the team – cast and development executives. In a fun insight into the actor’s life, Alex Waldman said that after being in rehearsal all day with Americans and doing an American accent he often got told to drop it by his kids when he got home.

Jordan Fein courtesy Young Vic Theatre
Steve Gregson

The next day saw me head off to the British Museum to see the Samurai exhibition which had just opened this week. It’s a comprehensive review of all aspects of the samurai era from 700 to their dissolution in the 1870s. And it’s not all about war and weaponry although there are some magnificent examples of armour, swords and bows. There are displays on art and culture, domestic life and, a surprise for many, me included, the important role of women samurai. The spread of samurai and shogun myth and history into modern films, anime and artworks is also featured. I went in at 2.30 expecting to spend an hour or so and was kicked out when the museum closed at 5pm. Time very well spent among elegantly displayed objects with excellent explanations and a lot of learning about the samurai.

As it was one of the few days so far this year in which it didn’t rain (yet, don’t speak too soon)- and the National Gallery has no scaffolding at the moment so I snapped this on the way in from Charing Cross station. Given the surprise rain remission I decided to walk to the Jugged Hare pub near the Barbican where our first week of each month City Orns group of Watford FC fans was to meet to discuss our managerless team and a whole range of other unrelated topics. It was only a couple of miles and took me through Red Lion Square, along Holborn, through Smithfield and past St Bartholomew the Great before the final stretch through the Barbican tunnel. Pub, food and company were well worth the walk. But I did get wet on the way home.

Thursday saw me again at the Southbank Centre for an experimental evening called the Classical Mixtape Live. All six resident orchestras were presenting short concerts over the course of two and a half hours. First up was the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall who played the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth – possibly the best known opening of any musical work – and then a suite from Howard Shore’s music for the Lord of the Rings. It was hosted by an Irish presenter Vogue Williams who gushed and stuttered from her notes up by the organ desk. Not quite sure why. She opined that the players must be exhausted after playing like that – for 7 minutes – perhaps ignorant of the length of many symphonies and concerts, let alone opera.Then came the fun part. Four orchestras were repeating the same 20 minute set in four locations around the centre. It could have been good except that someone didn’t really study the logistics of getting 2,700 people from the RFH into the four other venues despite inviting the Green Side and the Blue Side to head to different locations. So there was more queueing than listening. I only got to two of the four.

In the Clore Ballroom off the main foyer members of the Chineke! Orchestra were perched on podiums around which we all milled. It was a bit like a promenade performance at the Bridge Theatre without the stewards to guide us. Now Chineke! is admirable in being a largely BAME band giving opportunities to musicians who might not have found their way to a classical orchestra. They looked a bit nervous and the conductor probably struggled to see everyone given the set up – very dramatic lighting! They played Montgomery Variations by Margaret Bonds but it was difficult to get a sense of the piece while being on the move. In the Undercroft, a storeroom under the QEH, the London Sinfonietta played Steve Reich. Unfortunately the space is so small that there was a one out one in policy and I didn’t make it to the head of the queue. Nor did I ever get to the end of the lengthy line trying to get into the Purcell Room to hear the Aurora Orchestra performing music from Mahler’s time in the Alps.

However the delight of the night was the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer presenting a programme of Bavarian Oompah music including the Tristch Tratsch Polka and a selection from The Sound of Music. The Guardian gave the whole evening a two-star rating but noted that the OAE team were “having a whale of a time using beer glasses as percussion and proving they are most definitely game for a laugh.” They were led by Adrian Bending who noted, rather cheekily, in his intro that if people wanted to hear the fifth symphony as Beethoven might have heard it himself, they should come to the QEH on Sunday to hear the orchestra’s historically informed performance. Seeing them in lederhosen, dirndl skirts and with Adrian using tuned beer glasses as percusssion and Waffy Spencer singing ‘Do Re Mi’ it was something to behold. You can take a look at them here:

Finally we all reconvened in the RFH for the Philharmonia to take us into space with Mars and Jupiter from Holst’s The Planets and some of John Williams’ music for Star Wars. It was an interesting evening somewhat marred by the logistics but I hope they do it again with a bit more planning. It was good to see four of the six orchestras in a different light.

The next evening brought an altogether different experience. My granddaughter has a prominent gender-switched role as Arvide Abernethy in Guys and Dolls, the annual musical production at Langley Park Boys School where she is in the sixth form. I’m not a huge fan of musicals but had to admire the incredible professionalism of this young cast. Great set and costumes, singers all mic-ed up and fully commited to both lusty and subtle performances. At several points there were over 100 performers on the stage a testament to the depth of music and drama talent across the entire school. It is billed as the ‘whole school musical’, and what with all the people involved behind the scenes, it really was. The band, the lighting, sound and performances were of astonishing quality. As my son said after seeing it next day, it makes you rethink what is meant by ‘school play’ these days.

Saturdays seem to bring drama around Watford FC. I watched a narrow defeat at Southampton on TV and then learned a little later that the club has replaced Javi Gracia who resigned last week with a completely unknown manager. We’ll see. So on Sunday I was pleased to be back on more secure territory. The Hungarian conductor Adam Fischer is a long time and frequent collaborator with the OAE and being able to go to both the rehearsal and the performance of Beethoven symphonies 4 and 5 was a real privilege. I wondered how different the conversations with Fischer would be compared to the self-directed rehearsal for the Mozart last month – in truth not very. There was still lots of consultation with members of the orchestra, comments discussed and annotations made on their scores for dynamics, expression and so on. The two symphonies are very different with the fourth being much less familiar. It was a delight to see them shaped by a maestro with a top orchestra and then enjoy the end result a little later.

Player list and the view from the stalls

Between the rehearsal and the concert was a talk with Adrian Bending, Phil Dale (not in lederhosen today) and Christopher Rawley They talked about the differences in self-directed and conducter-ledconcerts and agree that Adam Fischer is someone who excites them with his interpretations which often catch them by surprise. They clearly have the greatest respect and affection for him. The session also featured a wonderful contrabassoon and three trombones about which Christopher and Phil talked. The contrabassoon was made by a maker well-known to Beethoven and might have been used in the early performances of the fifth and ninth symphonies. There is a campaign to keep this instrument which bears the number 001 in the country as it is currently up for sale. Christopher demonstrated the deep notes this piece of wood can deliver and Phil expressed his delight at Beethoven scoring for three trombones in the fifth symphony – a pattern followed by many other composers keeping trombonists gainfully employed.

Pre-concert talk with Adrian, contrabassoon, Christopher and Phil

On Monday I had a lovely Zoom call with Daisy Scott in Boston, Mass to discuss theatre, music, retirement, families and lots more – but not world affairs as there is not much to say except mutual despair. It is a real pleasure to be in regular touch with our Boston family.

Tuesday evening featured a trip to Watford for a thank you party from the council for the work several of us have been doing with the relocation and redisplay of Watford Museum. It was a nice gesture to thanks us volunteers and we all look forward to the opening of the museum next year after a major building refurbishment. The group I was with had focused on the football club so it was good to see the work of other teams looking at grassroots sport, the diverse community and entertainment and to meet up with old and new friends. It rained in Watford too! Heavily, but one of our team Alan kindly gave me a lift back to the station.

In Bangladesh in 2009, Manzur E Mawla was co-presenter with Eeshita Azad of the pilot television programmes I made for the BBC World Service aimed at encouraging young Bangladeshis to learn English as a Foreign Language. He later relocated to the UK and we have been in touch with him and his family on a number of occasions. He emailed this week to say he was in a play at the Drayton Arms Theatre and would I like to go. Well, interest piqued, what else could I do?

It’s a venue I’ve not been to before – a small 50-seater above a lovely pub. The play was called Modern Romance and was a series of twelve scenes – six pre-filmed and projected, six acted live – about the various whacky ways people get together these days. Scatalogical, filled with innuendo – how do you make paper clips and staples sexy ?- it was funny and revealing. My friend Manzur did a two-man scene with Jay Ramji as a gay Under 21 football couple one Arsenal (guess!) one Fulham who among other escapades embrace at a goal being scored while playing against each other to the consternation of coaches. It was written by Giles Fernando and directed by Penny Gkritzapi who I had a pleasant chat to in the bar afterwards and spent time with Manzur and other cast members. Manzur had done some acting back in Bangladesh before we worked together and had started acting classes again here only recently. It transpired that this was his UK stage debut, and very well he did, having joined the cast at very short notice. A totally unexpected fun evening added to my calendar by a chance email.

The live action cast with Manzur and Jay third and fourth from left.

Last outing for this post is to see Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House. Another soggy trip into town and no drinks beforehand as it’s a bladder-challenging two hours and twenty minutes with no interval. Susie Stranders’ insight talk last month was very helpful in making both the story and the musical motifs clear so I could look out for particular moments in the piece. The choral singing was incredibly powerful and included a children’s chorus which Susie had prepared – great job! I took my seat being slightly panicked about being a long way from the aisle should nature call. Then it was suddenly time for the final black out and curtain calls. How on earth to two and a half hours pass so quickly? Answer: engrossing story from Pushkin, marvellously varied score with simple tunes and powerful orchestration, brilliantly sung, accompanied by an orchestra on top form and a superb overall production directed by Richard Jones. A brilliant night at the opera.

Mark Wigglesworth invites us to applaud the orchestra after a stunning performance led by Bryn Terfel as Godunov and a cast of hundreds.

News

Where did January go?

So after a refreshing break in Alicante it’s home to reality: car for MOT; final eye test after cataract surgery and the promise I made to sort out 45 years worth of company paper work for shredding. So glad I did take my Christmas break.

The first play of the new year was the intriguingly named Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo at the Young Vic. The tiger of the title is the ghost of an animal shot by a US marine stationed in Iraq during the ill-founded war. It (in human actor form) prowls around the stage bringing memories for the marines and philosophical questions for their interpreter Musa who used to be the gardener to Saddam Hussein’s two sons, who appear later, and cause a guilt-trip for Musa who allowed them to exploit his daughter.

It was surreal, written by Rajiv Joseph and directed by Omar Elerian who has a track record with surreal with Ionesco’s The Chairs and Rhinoceros which we saw at the Almeida. It was funny. moving, if a bit erratic, but a worthy start to a year of theatregoing.

I loved Maggie O’Farrell’s book Hamnet. I did not like Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage version which a gang of us went to see at the Garrrick with great expectations and emerged with great disapppointment. I had misgivings therefore about the much talked-about film version, somehat allayed when I noted that Chloé Zhao co-wrote it with the book’s author. So I booked a matinee showing at Picturehouse Central and decided to go into town early and take in the last few days of Wayne Thibault at the Courtauld Gallery. I don’t think I’d heard of him but an email from the gallery intrigued me so off I went and am very glad I did, The exhibition was entirely of works from the 1960s when he was grouped with the Pop Art movement. He painted still lives of everyday Americana – slot machines, deli counters, cakes and the like. They were very affecting in making you look intensely at the ordinary and think about things in a new way. He also made prints of several of the subjects one of which on display he had hand coloured twenty years after making the original etching.

I loved the thick paint around the lollipops

I had an hour to spare before the film so popped into Yoshino to say Happy New Year to Lisa, collect my supply of gyokuro tea – my first drink of every day – and have a delightful light lunch chatting to Lisa as she prepared the space for a 30 strong party of Japanese bankers that evening.

Hamnet the film did not disappoint. It matched the slow reveals of the book, filled the screen with nature, glovemaking and the love and the games of young children. The storytelling was clear and excellent and the child actors were all very accomplished. The tragedy was well handled and the closing scenes at the Globe had me welling up. What a performance from Jessie Buckley! I knew she was good but this was astonishing.

From time to time, the orchestra of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment organises trips for Friends. I wrote about a visit to the amazing Hatchlands keyboard collection with Steven Devine last year. This one was to explore the wonder that is the V&A East Storehouse with Martin Kelly, my viola-playing team captain when we won the Chistmas Quiz. Martin had selected a number of instruments from the extensive V&A catalogue and gave us fascinating insights into the contruction, history and use of instruments ranging from the tiny kit fiddle used by dance masters to the enormous Dragonetti bass via a serpent and a harp and others from the racks. Some of the detail of design, carving and inlay was phenomenal. The breathtaking size of the storehouse and the randomness of displays made for a fascinating visit even after Martin had finished his excellent part of the tour.

Then it was back from drenched Hackney Wick to the Royal Opera House for an insight evening on the subject of Boris Godunov with my friend Susie Stranders taking us expertly through Mussorgsky’s score. I got there early and spent an hour not reading my book but chatting to a gentlemen with shared widowerhood and love of music as topics for conversation. As we left the table to go to the talk we shook hands and he said, “By the way I’m Mike”. “Me too,” I replied. Susie’s talk was peppered with anecdotes from performances and some excerpts sung by cast members including Bryn Terfel who is Godunov.

I’ve seen Sheridan’s The Rivals several times but went with Frances to The Orange Tree on her recommendation, She’d already seen it when I was away and came to see it again. I congratulate her on her taste. Updated to the flapper era 1920s, Tom Littler’s production was wonderfully funny and Patricia Hodge as Mrs Malaprop was outstanding. The rest of the cast were superb too in the intimate Orange Tree space where you feel part of the action. I recalled going with my grandchildren to see the Richard Bean and Oliver Chris update Jack Absolute Flies Again at the NT a few years ago. Sheridan’s work from 1775 stands a lot of different interpretations. Must be something about the core material!

The OAE often invites friends and the local community to open rehearsals at its base in Acland Burghley School. On this day there was a Friends event at 2 pm followed by a Community one at 4. I was very impressed to see the numbers of people streaming into the school as I was leaving. The orchestra was rehearsing mostly Mozart’s clarinet concerto played by principal clarinetist Katherine ‘Waffy’ Spencer and directed from the violin by leader Kati Debretzeni. Waffy was at pains to point out that the work was written for the basset clarinet and she has had one made specially so that the concerto can be heard as Mr M intended. As always it’s fascinating to eavesdrop on the discussions that form the final performance and the exchange of ideas around this most democratic of orchestras. They were off to the Anvil in Basingstoke, Oxford and the Warwick Arts Centre before coming into the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Sunday 1 February. Waffy then introdued a piece they were going to play as an encore – an adaptation of an aria from Mozart’s Die Entfuhrung where the warring male and female protagonists were a bassoon and her clarinet. It was lively and very funny.

Kati makes notes, Waffy cradles her basset clarinet ‘Grace’

I then made an interesting cross north London journey on the C11 bus – Gospel Oak, Hampstead Heath, the Royal Free Hospital, Belsize Park and eventually Swiss Cottage – to the Hampstead Theatre to join Frances for a new play in the smaller downstairs space The Ghost in Your Ear.

This was an interesting event in which we were all equipped with headphones to hear the script of a ghost story being read by an actor in a sound studio for an audiobook. It’s written and directed by Jamie Armitage and the sound design is buy the brothers Ben and Max Ringham who did such a great job with Blindness at the Donmar back in the lockdown days. As someone who has spent a lot of time in the control room of audio studios it was intrinsically interesting and the story getting progressively scary was very well paced. Frightening it was, but not heart-attack inducingly so.

I got a final sign off after my cataract operations and can now revert to my familiar state as ‘a bloke who wears glasses’ with varifocals with no correection for distance and enough for close up that I can type and read my phone and kindle without need to rummage about for reading glasses. I then had the pleasure of two trips to the Union Club, first to have lunch with my dear friend Michele who has had a hard year as as a make-up artits as the film and TV industry shrinks and then for dinner a couple of days later with newly-master’s Guildhall graduate Kristina, a fine soprano, her boyfriend Luka and Paola who looks after tickets and data for the OAE and who I know well from my many visits to their gigs. On both occasions food, wine, service and company were excellent.

I went ( slightly by mistake and rescued by checking my ticket folder) to a matinee of Woolfworks at the Royal Opera House. This ballet had been heavily advertised in ROH emails and I had hoped Rosa might be back from Spain to come with me. Not to be however so I set off on my own and didn’t pick up any new friends called Mike on this occasion. The ballet by Wayne McGregor is based on three Virginia Woolf books: Mrs Dalloway; Orlando and The Waves. I’d read the first two but not The Waves, which I’ve now purchased. The work is classed as a three-act ballet but I felt it was three one-act ballets given the variety of source material and treatment. Mrs Dalloway was all bustling charatcters around three huge revolving wooden frames introduced by Gillian Anderson reading an excerpt from Woolf’s essay On Craftsmanship. The stories of Clarissa and the shell-shocked Septimus intertwine with elegant moves. Orlando matches the surreal nature of the book by having gold-costumed charaters with ruffs anf bustles making their way through several centuries and a gender change all accompanied by a startling laser display that carved up the stage and indeed us in the auditorium. The Waves was played out against a projected backdrop of extremely slo-mo monochrome waves and ends with her suicide note being read. The score was specially composed by Max Richter and was very filmic, dramatic and emotional. It’s still on and comes to cinemas from 9 February if you fancy a look. Highly recommended. https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/live-in-cinemas-woolf-works-details

The last week of January contained three remarkable outings to the theatre. The first was Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, generally acknowledged as his masterpiece and you can see why. With its time shifts, a quest for the unknowable, dangerous relationships and moments of side-splitting humour it makes for a mind expanding evening. I’d seen the original NT production and this version at the Old Vic couldn’t be more different, but as with Sheridan earlier, the class of the work shines through. Whereas the NT production was naturalistic with vistas of stately home parkland, the design of which is an imporatnt factor in the play, Carrie Cracknell’s version at the Old Vic is sparse, in the round with a few props and helps you to concentrate the interplay of the characters and the richness of the language. It was a bit of a shock also to see the venerable Old Vic transformed for an in the round production as apparently all this season’s plays will be.

The Old Vic transformed for a season in the round

The mood changed abruptly the next evening when we went to see Guess How Much I Love You at the Royal Court. Written by actor Luke Norris and directed by Jeremy Herrin it is a play about a couple’s loss of a child through a non-viable pregnancy. Their grief and their reactions to it are powerful and moving. Rosie Sheedy and Robert Aramayo – newly Bafta-nominated for I Swear that day – display an array of reactions to the terrible news the ultrasound scan brings them through changing scenarios over time. But within the overall sadness of their plight the play has great moments of lightness and humour. Very effective set design and lighting gave a real sense of their enclosed and captive lives as they lived through the intensity of loss and eventually move towards a more promising future.

After intellectual exercise and emotional turmoil the week ended with J B Priestley’s When We Are Married at the Donmar. Sheer madness and hilarious farce ‘oop north’ when three couples discover that they weren’t officially married by a young curate 25 years ago. Facades fall away, roles reverse, past pecadillos intrude and there is a literally staggering performance from Ron Cook as the photographer from ‘The Argus’ who has been sent to snap the triple anniversary for the paper. Told to go away he gets progressively drunk, his cheeks redder at every new appearance, and crashes his way through the set. It was a shock to see John Hodgkinson as the host of the celebrations Joseph Helliwell since we last saw him covered in blood as Titus Andronicus. I’d never seen this play before and it made me rethink Priestley who I only knew from An Inspector Calls and Time and The Conways.

The month ended with a final piece of drama on the stage of Vicarage Road Football Stadium where I had the pleasure of Frances’ company in the hospitality Sir Elton John Suite which I’d won through The Supporters’ Trust lottery. We had good food and wine, visits from Luther Blissett and Tommy Mooney, a poor loss to Swansea City on the pitch and later the news that our much-loved manager Javi Gracia had resigned. He’d been back to his family in Malaga earlier in the week and I think decided that wet, grey Watford was not where he wanted to be. The club have gone through many managers (23 I think, some twice as with Gracia) over the fifteen years the current owners have been in charge but only a few have got in first by resigning.

News

Music, mystery, movement and more

I had the privilege a couple of weeks ago of seeing an hour of the technical rehearsal of The Unbelievers at the Royal Court as part of Frances’s patrons’ deal. It was fascinating and set up a sense of great anticipation for the play itself. It did not disappoint. The central performance of Nicola Walker was quite stunning as a woman grieving the mysterious disappearance of her teenage son. Spoiler alert – he doesn’t appear but his absence hangs over the three intercalated time periods after his failure to return home.

The whole cast remains on stage throughout except for a couple of costume and role changes in a set that has a sparse domestic interior at the front with what looks like a police or doctors’ waiting room at the rear. Fear, anger, incomprehension, blame and violence swirl through the mother, her two ex- husbands, children and step-children. Some people, it seems, found the mingling of the day after, a year after and seven years after time periods confusing but I thought it added to the power of the writing, depicting clinically the way grieving does affect your sense of reality and time. It sounds bleak but had quite a few moments of hilarity. A serious examination of grief, guilt and sanity leavened by tender, moving and funny moments.

Next it was off to the downstairs theatre at Hampstead where new playwrights are given space to experiment. The Billionaire Inside Your Head by Will Lord was an examination of greed, ambition, entitlement and fantasy in an office setting. Echoes of Glengarry Glen Ross and other Mamet two-handlers spring to mind as a thruster and a slacker trade dreams and insults. The entitled slacker Darwin is the son of the company’s owner who as well as appearing in the drama, opens it with a chorus-like prologue as The Voice, that sets the scene for us all to examine our thoughts. The debt-collection nature of the company is perhaps a bit less exciting than Mamet’s realtor wheeler dealers but the tension between Darwin and the OCD Richie is well depicted. It was exciting, engaging and thought-provoking – just what Hampstead downstairs aims to be.

There was lots of the movement of my title in both the above but the prime expression of it this week came in Akram Khan’s Thikra: Night of Remembering at Sadler’s Wells where I had the pleasure of Rosa’s company. Devised in conjunction with the Saudi visual artist Manal AlDowayan, this is an intense hour of modern dance infused with classical Indian forms and a sound track that moves from a foreboding drone through ragas, Balkan chorale, drumming and hints of Purcell.

The twelve female dancers all have waist-length black hair that forms an important part of the performance. Would have been an interesting casting call: “Find me twelve women with equal-length black hair who can dance classical Bharatanatyam choreography”. Nine of the dancers were uniformly clad in olivey long dresses while the sacrificial victim was in white, the matriarch in red and her sister in black. AlDowayan’s involvement gave it a very graphic look that comes from her work in exploring cultures, heritage and change. The narrative didn’t really matter but was essentially about annual rebirth and renewal through sacrifice. Visually stunning, musically stimulating – an hour of total transportation into a world of magic and wonder. You can get a short glimpse of it here.

A select group of us returned to the Bridge Theatre for The Lady from the Sea. I haven’t been there for ages as it’s been wall-to-wall Guys and Dolls. I wrongly thought this was a version of Hedda Gabler but Ibsen actually wrote a play with this title so I need to brush up my Scandi classics knowledge. This was a Simon Stone adaptation, so after the Billie Piper Yerma, expectations were high for something off the wall. And we got it – the usual Ibsen anguished captive bride played bravely by Alicia Vikander resisting the cage into which her husband Andrew Lincoln, in great form, had placed her. The drama plays out on a thrust stage (the Bridge is so versatile as a space) which becomes soaked with rain in Act 2 and then turns into a swimming pool. Writing, acting, sound and lighting were all excellent but the award of the evening has to go to the set design and build – the vision of Lizzie Clachan. Another exceptional evening of entertainment.

After all this fun it was back to work – as a producer! A couple of times a year for the last few years, I’ve recorded an audiobook version of a reader for use in teaching English as a Foreign Language in Germany. I’ve now, it appears, done 11 of them – here are a few from Hueber Verlag in Frankfurt.

I have a small repertory company of actors who are brilliant at producing a range of characters in the course of the narrative – teenage protagonists, their parents, threatening outsiders, police and other officials. The stories are often a bit Famous Five but tackle issues like single parenthood, criminal behaviour, the environment and relationships. For this one, Joining the Circus,I invited Gyuri Sarossy, who I met at a Hampstead Theatre party a while back, to perform the script. It doesn’t sound the most likely name for an English language project but he is English born of a Hungarian father and English mother. The story involved a farming family setback by the father’s accident and a circus family devastated on finding their usual pitch was waterlogged and wouldn’t work. Gyuri was born in Bristol so we opted for a West Country accent for the farmers and an East Midlands for the circus people. It worked extremely well and I am constantly amazed at how these actors can switch characters seamlessly in a single sentence. After the recording Gyuri was off to Budapest to record his final scenes in a vampire movie. Another spoiler – he dies. A week later we hear that the client likes the results of the session. Great news – we’ll all get paid! A little.

It was then on to my main unpaid role as a trustee of the British Bilingual Poetry Collective. I was invited by the publisher of the collective’s anthology Home and Belonging, which resulted from a series of translation circles like the last blog’s reference to the Barbican, to chair a discussion panel at the Palewell Press Literary Festival. The day also included readings from a number of poets including Chika Jones and Nasrin Parvaz who feature in our anthology. It was fixed a long time ago and so I missed Watford’s best game of the season so far, a 3-0 demolition of Middlesbrough – such dedication to the cause, such a fair weather fan!

However the occasion was very interesting with my panellists translating from Arabic with Dr Amba Jawi and Catherine Temba Davidson as collaborators, Barbara Mitchell who translates from Spanish and Caroline Stockford who does Turkish and Welsh and finds striking and unexpected parallels. We ranged over the process of translation and the difficulties of rendering essence and spirit rather than words, the degrees of faithfulness and liberties translators are allowed and the reactions of the original authors.

In all the cases featured here there were difficulties since all the authors were in prison on political charges. Palewell Press specialises in human rights publications so this was only to be expected. The overriding message was that all art forms have to continue to expose and challenge human right abuses whever they occur.

Next day, to make it a full weekend of poetry, I co-hosted BBPC’s annual contribution to the Tower Hamlets Season of Bangla Drama. The season has a theme each year – we’ve done ‘love’ and ‘hope’ and this year it’s ‘kindness’. We decided to go all alliterative and call the session Kindness with Kazi using the poems and songs of the national poet of Bangladesh Kazi Nazrul Islam. Shamim Azad and I hosted the occasion which had performances by the brilliant singerJoyeta Chonchu of a couple of Nazrul songs , my colleague Milton and I recited one of his most famous poems “I Sing of Equality” followed by a discussion of his work and influence on people’s lives. After a short break we then broke up into pairs to talk about kindness given or received in our personal lives after which everybody wrote a short poem or piece of prose. There were some very moving contributions and very positive feedback that participants found it both enjoyable and valuable.

Monday saw me joining Frances at the Orange Tree Theatre for Hedda. Ibsen is all the rage these days it seems – well I guess he has been for a while. This is an adaptation by Tanika Gupta – well really more of a new play based on – Hedda Gabler, relocated to Chelsea in the post-war, post-partition of India period. Tanika’s take is based around the need to conceal the ethnicity of Hollywood’s Anglo- Indian stars, in particular Merle Oberon. The evening was pacy, directed by Hettie Macdonald, twisty and with a full range of emotion, fear, deception, devotion and angst.

From the dramatic opening with her lifelong maid, brilliantly portrayed by Rina Fatania, asking which face whitening she’d like today through to the realisation that she’d made a disastrous marriage believing her screen career to be over, Pearl Chanda was Merle Oberon.

A powerful performance with hints of her former influencer status dashed by the creeping reality of her current dull life. It touched a real nerve with me as I was currently reading Kiran Desai’s Booker nominated The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny which brilliantly examines the whole question of identity, ethnicity and personal authenticity. I was fortunate to be able to speak to Tanika about our Kindness event and she said her father used to sing Nazrulgeeti (KNI songs) around the house all the time. That was before seeing the play so sadly I wasn’t able to tell her how much I enjoyed it.

Another part of the Season of Bangla Drama was a presentation of kindness stories collected by long-term Bangladesh resident Peter Musgrave who had taken part in our BBPC Kazi session so it seemed only right to go to his. An added attraction was that Gitabini, the singing group featuring my friend Rumy Haque was to perform. There were stories to bring hope of new flood resistant ways of building houses and farming being demonstrated by NGO staff to educate the Bengali populace, particularly in the most threatened areas. One of the countries most prone to disappearing into the Bay of Bengal if climate change continues unchecked – not sanguine about the current COP to prevent it – but good to see alternative approaches to mitigate the effects. Gitabini sang a Kazi Nazrul Islam song and Rumy recited her conservation-oriented poem about a banyan tree and I was able to chat with a number of old and new friends at the post-event Koffee and Kake.

I’m fortunate to call the young composer Dani Howard a friend and so when her saxophone concerto was finally to receive its UK premiere I just had to whizz off to Poole to the Lighthouse Arts Centre to hear it. I did some voluntary work a few years back for the London Chamber Orchestra which had originally commissioned the concerto but then got into financial difficulties and couldn’t complete the contract. So I’d waited nearly two years to hear it. Stockholm Philharmonic and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra came to the rescue and while I didn’t make the world premiere in Sweden, I wasn’t going to miss out on the first UK performance. The journey was horrendous. The train was 30 minutes late arriving at Waterloo because of earlier signalling problems, and quite a bit more than that departing. Then we couldn’t get into Southampton Station because of other trains blocking our platform. Finally they decided to skip some stops and head directly to Poole after Bournemouth. At least Delay Repay will kick in and I’ll get some dosh back. By the time I’d checked in to the hotel, checked out the location – my first time at The Lighthouse – and gone for a walk down to the Quay it was dark. I guess one benefit of this was the bright lights of the Poole Museum shone out. A quick beer and back to the hotel to prepare for the concert. Was all the hassle worth while? Oh yes.

The concert opened with a Wagner piece I’d never heard – the overture to his first opera, a comedy called Forbidden Love. A comedy from Wagner! It failed miserably and lasted for only two performances in 1836, but the overture was fun, very jolly and lively, opening with castanets of all things! But the main event came next. Dani had written the concerto specifically with the versatile Jess Gillam in mind. In three contrasting movements the music showcased Jess’s talent but also wove evocative call and response moments with different sections of the orchestra. Lush pastoral passages alternated with bold percussive swathes and the brass were strongly featured – Dani does like her brass – one of her first pieces I heard was her trombone concerto for Peter Moore at the Barbican in April 2022, another amazing performance. Dani says the concerto is a homage to Adolf Sax who invented the wonderful instrument which finds its place more frequently in jazz clubs than in the concert hall. I love the way Dani combines pure and simple sounds from nature with a clear understanding of the power of complex orchestration. She’s a master of the medium. The Times critic liked it too: The first movement bubbles and chatters, passing ideas between soloist and orchestra, while the finale is a dazzling moto perpetuo, dispatched with seeming ease by Gillam. Best of all was the central movement, an extended cadenza for Gillam, who made it seem as if we were hearing Sax’s innermost feelings.

Jess Gillam is a master too and for her encore, chose a piece she’d played in BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2016 – Pedro Itteralde’s Pequeña Czarda – when the conductor was Mark Wigglesworth, now principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, whose home base is the Lighthouse. Most appropriate. After the interval we heard the orchestra in full flow with Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. It will be interesting to compare this rendition with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s approach in June next year on period instruments under Sir Simon Rattle.

Dani takes in the applause with Jess just visible beside her

What made the evening extra special was that Dani invited me to the pre-concert reception where I met her mother, Belinda, again – we had both been at the Barbican gig in 2022 – meet her sister Sam for ther first time and catch up with boyfriend Sion Jones who I’d met at the Colin Currie percussion concerto at the Wigmore Hall. Dani was of course the centre of attention with a former pupil effusing over her influence on his career and her former music teacher from Hong Kong, now working in Poole, bringing a class of her primary pupils to say hello. After the concert, Dani had some formal duties but after a while she and Sion were able to join Belinda, Sam and me in the pub where I’m afraid we stayed till they kicked us out. After all the music it was an evening of fascinating conversation eavesdropped and joined in with by locals Jeff and Jonny and covering coping with bereavement, mine and the Howards’ who lost a husband/father last year, music, the arts generally, contracts, 2027 paradigm shift and blogging among others which were continued outside the pub until we all decided to head for our rather tardy beds in three different hotels.

News

Too busy to blog …

It’s been a long time since I last did this. There’s been a lot going on. Cataract operations and follow ups. British Bilingual Poetry Collective’s first appearance at the Barbican. Football matches. Women’s World Cup cricker. Copy to prepare for Watford Museum and editing for TU Delft. A massive crop of quinces to be cooked and made into jelly, pickles, marmalade and membrillo. But still time for a few theatre and concerts. And while my last post began with a trek west across south London to see my granddaughter play in her band, this one starts with a diagonal trip north to Alexandra Palace to see my son-in-law perform.

It’s 20 years since The Thick of It hit our screens and so why not have a party to celebrate? The creator Armando Ianucci was joined by the stars Peter Capaldi, Rebecca Front and Chris Addison, who at the time was mainly known as a standup comedian rather than an actor. The evening was elegantly hosted by Miles Jupp. There was lots of chat about the provenance (Yes Minister), about the semi-improvisatory nature of the scripts and the fluid filming style. There was a lot of swearing of course and a pre-interval recreation of the Tucker/Reeder sacking scene. It was a very entertaining evening although as a fellow-traveller on the bus back to Finsbury Park said: “It turned a bit into the Chris Addison show in the second half.” When tasked with this Chris confessed it was PTSD from all those panel shows he used to do.

Next up was another visit to Acland Burghley School for a recital by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s new intake to their Rising Stars scheme. Every two years the OAE recruits young singers to serve a kind of apprenticeship with opportunities to appear at their concerts and develop their professional lives. This year’s group seemed pretty well set to me with well-delivered introductions to their Handel arias.

They were left to right Sofia Kirwan-Baez (soprano), Angharad Rowlands (mezzo-soprano), Hugo Brady (tenor) and Peter Edge (baritone). Chosen from over 100 singers who applied they were accompanied by a chamber group of OAE players conducted from the harpsichord by Steven Devine. It’s really encouraging to see so much young talent embarking on their chosen careers.

The last Sunday of every other month finds me co-hosting a BBPC poetry adda (get together). We read, perform and often translate poetry and have voluble discussions about what we hear. This month we had a performance poet Pip McDonald perform a couple of pieces and then engage in a valuable discussion about the art of performance with many tips for budding performers. It was a friendly and positive occasion, with tea and snacks, as I hope the photos demonstrate.

So what’s occurring at Marble Arch? After the horror of that artificial hill, it was a delight to discover that there’s a new MOCO in town. I’ve visited the museums in Barcelona and Amsterdam but had missed out on the fact that MOCO London opened in September last year but had an email with a voucher for half-price entry so off I set. It’s a similar collection of modern and contemporary works with Banksy, Emin, Hirst, Kusama, Opie and Warhol all present and correct but with some excellent pieces that were completely new to me. One of thee first images to confront me was a photo of Elton John by Chris Levine, currently in a dispute with a collaborator over his holographic portraits of the late queen. I was then lured into a fascinating psychedelic infinity mirror room and then to its exact opposite in a contemplative installation Lunar Garden by Daniel Arshan inspired by the classic Japanese Zen gardens I enjoyed so much in Japan. There were a lot of really interesting artworks on display so it will be firmly on my agenda of museum visits as they have changing displays as well as the permanent collection. And it’s a spacious and elegant space over three floors.

I don’t often go to see a play twice in ten days but when Frances and I went to see The Land of the Living at the Dorman Theatre at the National, I said “I should have brought Rosa to this”. So I told her about it and we went together a week later. Rosa is my artist friend, one of whose major installations Lost treats the adoption scandal that took place in Spain between the late 30s and early 90s, known as the Spanish Stolen Children and she is currently working on a similar work featuring the American US Adoption Re-homing scheme. You can check Rosa’s work out at https://artcollaboratif.com. This play by David Lan, who used to be the creative director at the Young Vic, is about the attempt to repatriate children who were stolen from Ukraine and Poland by the Nazis because of their suitability to breed the super Aryan race. It was disturbing, thought-provoking and contained a masterful performance by Juliet Stevenson, an actor I’ve long admired. But there were also moments of humour and theatricality as when the Dorfman’s traverse stage is converted into a swaying train taking children back to their homes.

Both Frances and I have marvelled at the genius of Indhu Rubasingham and her work transforming the Kiln Theatre. Now she’s the artistic director of the National and as someone said after the play she’s spent a year of the Kiln’s budget on her first production as director in the Olivier. Bacchae is losely based on Euripides in a debut play by Nima Taleghani – a brave commission to open your first season at the nation’s principal theatre. Did it work? Hell yes! Rambunctious rapping, rhyming, big revolves, flying and dancing brought the contrast between the lifestyles and philosophies of Dionysus and Pentheus sharply into focus and the ever-present chorus of bacchantes led by Clare Perkins kept the whole spectacle flowing through mood swings and emotional turmoil. Ukweli Roach, James McArdle and Sharon Small shared the lead roles. There were lots of laughs, lots of theatrical in jokes and while it may not be what conventional NT audiences were expecting all the people we spoke to thought it was great fun.

My friend Jadwiga likes lunchtime recitals and has a list of churches and venues where she goes regularly so I was delighted to be able to take her to a lunchtime recital in a venue she hadn’t been to before. Some time ago on a vist to Ramsgate for the launch of Anna Blasiak’s latest book, I met Gabriela Mocan of the Romanian Cultural Institute and had taken my friend Dana to an evening concert there. The upshot is that I’m on their mailing list and was attracted by a recital by a Romanian pianist Kira Frolu in St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield.

Jadwiga was suitably impressed by this ancient church and we were both enthralled by the young pianist’s performance of an Georges Enescu suite – Mélodie, Mazurk mélancolique and Burlesque from Suite No.3 Op.18 – to keep the Romanian theme running followed by a wonderful performance of one of my favourite pieces Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition which is great in Ravel’s orchestration but rather special in the original piano form. It was made all the more poignant as the last movement is called ‘The Heroes’ Gate at Kyiv’.

Once again it was a privilege to experience the wealth of talent emerging from British conservatoires (Royal Academy of Music in Kira’s case) and a tragedy that so many of them will struggle to make a living because governments plural don’t care about the arts. We had a light lunch after the concert and walkedpast St Paul’s Cathedral and then through Postman’s Park with its fascinating plaques to people who died trying to save others’ lives. We then crossed the Millennium Bridge and along the south bank where I peeled off to meet Rosa for an early supper in the Archduke before making my second trip to the Dorman for The Land of the Living. It was interesting to see it from a different viewpoint and its powerful messages rang through again. I’m pleased to say Rosa was impressed too.

The Barbican Centre ran a series of October events under the title Voiced: the Festival for Endangered Languages. My poetry group BBPC was invited to contribute in three sessions. We ran a Translation Circle on Saturday 11 October (top below), our chair Shamim read poems in Sylheti in person on Friday 17 (left below) and in a foyer display through headphones and Eeshita and Anahita produced a polylingual audiovisual poem at the final session on Saturday 18. (Eeshita introduces the poem and the BBPC team celebrates.)

Shamim and I have run a number of translation session together but we usually know several of the people present. Not this time. Because of GPDR the barbican couldn’t even let us know who had signed up. However we did enlist the talent of Anna Blasiak to prepare a poem in Polish and Kashubian (endangered mix of Polish and German used on the north coast) which we then translated as a group which contained speakers of ten different languages. Interesting! However, the organiser got good feedback and we had a good party after the final session.

A change of mood on the Sunday as I moved back into the world of music with the OAE performing their first concert of their 40th anniversary season at the Queen Elizabeth Hall – Handel’s oratorio Solomon. It’s a fine work that includes the ever popular Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. Conducted by John Butt who has a long association with the OAE, it was great to see two of the rising stars from last week in the two choirs with Angharad having a small solo role as the second harlot involved in the famous judgement. The main character of Solomon was sung by one of the first intake of Rising Stars Helen Charlston, Zadok by Hugo Hymas and a Levite by Florian Störtz fellow alumni of the scheme. The three sections of the oratorio are very different in style and emotional impact but it was a pleasure to hear the crisp playing of the orchestra and the beautiful antiphonal choirs raising the roof.

The period was rounded off with visits to the Young Vic and the National again. A couple of weeks’ ago Frances was invited to an insight event in the Young Vic rehearsal room at which we heard from some of the actors and from director Nadia Fall about the forthcoming production of Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane. I think I saw the first revival at the Royal Court in 1975 with Beryl Reid and Malcolm Macdowell. It raised a lot of scandalous outrage among certain elements of society and the media.

Tamzin Outhwaite is the central character Kath in this production with Jordan Stephens as Mr Sloane. Poor Joe Orton is best remebered for being murdered by his boyfriend but he actually wrote some very funny plays (Mr Sloane, Loot, What the Butler Saw).

Within the frequent elements of farce are strong messages about unwanted pregnancy, homosexuality, promiscuity, race and class and hints of criminality. Well worth reviving in our once again intolerant times.

Another of the benefits of friendship with Frances was an invite to a talk to staff in the archive and design departments of the NT followed by a matinee performance of Hamlet. This is the second production in Indhu Rubasingham’s first season at the National and was directed by her deputy artistic director Robert Hastie. Hiran Abeysekera plays the prince quite brilliantly with much more humour than usual and a very emotional reading of the role. He’s matched by an outstanding performance from Francesca Mills as Ophelia who skips and dances across the stage enlivening every scene she’s in and casting a shadow over others after her death. It’s brilliantly staged in a palatial ballroom with an amazing mural which we were told in the pre-meet contains portraits of everyone who has played Hamlet at the National.

News

Musical mystery tour

August brought three excellent musical events all with a hint of mystery. The first was a rehearsal at Acland Burghley School in Camden for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s project Breaking Bach. Bach suites and concertos played on period instuments by musicians for whom I have the greatest respect, fine – but with street, hiphop and break dance accompanying it! Really? Not much of what the OAE does fails miserably so my frequent dance companion Rosa and I made it to Tufnell Park on a Sunday afternoon for the final rehearsal before the group took Breaking Bach to the Edinburgh Festival for its world premiere in the Usher Hall three days hence. We were asked not to photograph the performance so I don’t have any pictures but you can get a feel for it from the OAE’s website in a mo. Meanwhile our tickets included some branded merchandise – Rosa accepted my gift of a tote bag – “you can never have too many tote bags” while I have two pencils with seed capsules which I hope next spring will be planted out and become sunflowers.

To say we were blown away by the performance would be to put it mildly. Did I say the dancers accompanied the players? I was wrong – the dancers added a whole new dimension through their elegant, energy-filled moves and fantastic sense of rythym. They truly interpreted the music not just performed alongside it. Choreographer Kim Brandstrup had wanted to meld street dance with Bach for some time and now was afforded the perfect solution. Some of the dancers were newly professional, several were still students at Acland Burghley School and you really couldn’t tell the difference most of the time. There were solos, pas de deux and ensemble pieces caringly matched to the emotions and rythyms of the various selections from the repertoire. At the end of the afternoon my only regret was that I hadn’t booked to go to Edinburgh to see the full performance – although whether I’d have managed to get up from a bean bag is debatable. It went down a storm with the critics as I was delighted to read the following Sunday in my Observer and everybody else who attended. There’s lots more about the project on the OAE’s YouTube channel too with interviews with the choreographer, dancers and students . We can’t wait for a full production in the UK – no wait there has been one I guess – parochialist! – I mean in London. Staggeringly risky, stunningly successful!

The next stop on the mystery tour was a trip into a different musical culture. Rumy Haque is a friend who I’ve worked with at the British Bilingual Poetry Collective on many occasions, on translations and in workshops. She’s recently concentrated her attention on forming a musical group and invited me to its launch event at the Brady Arts Centre in Tower Hamlets.

I’ve heard a fair bit of Bengali inspired- music, have co-curated workshops on the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore and – while unable to read the poster – Rumy explained that the concert was celebrating the anniversary of Tagore’s death and would feature his songs. The ensemble is called GitaBina and has Rumy, Mitali Bonowari and Sunita Chowhury on vocals with harmonium, tabla and keyboards accompaniment. As often with these events it took a while to get started – the Spanish are accused of a manaña attitude – but my Bengali friends run them close.

GitaBina gathered round a portrait of Tagore painted by Rumy Haque

However it was worth the wait. The three voices have contrasting tones but combine brilliantly in conveying both the introspective, lyrical elements and the more rousing and passionate passages in the Tagore songs they performed. The harmonium underscore, strongly accented beat from the tabla and improvised frills from he keyboards added to the atmosphere of respect for and celebration of Tagore. Interpolated between the songs were readings of poems some in Bangla, one I’m glad to say in English – thanks Rumy. It was interesting and thoroughly enjoyable. Whatever the genre or style, music speaks to the soul and mine went home refreshed.

I’m fairly familiar with song cycles from both Robert and Clara Schumann and Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn with both male and female singers and piano accompaniment. So it’s off to Acland Burghley School again with my friend Frances, who lives nearby, for another new experience.

Tonight it’s the lovely Helen Charlston singing with a string quartet! That’s new. Helen has a long association with the OAE as one of the first in its Rising Stars programme and the star of the memorable Coldplay tribute video of Dido’s Lament.

Helen writes in her programme notes that there’s no precedent for this kind of arrangement. But she thinks similar things might have happened at the soirées where these songs would have been first heard. The conversion of the accompaniment from piano to scoring for string quartet by Bill Thorp brought a whole new level of expression to the songs for me.

It was fascinating to hear how the piano sounds were expertly shared around the four instruments. The Consone (Latin for harmonious) Quartet use period instruments – they were the first such to be chosen as BBC New Generation Artists – and those familiar warm gut string sounds added new sonorities and their playing a new sense of fluency to familiar tunes. I felt a much stronger emotional reaction to the fuller sound surrounding the lyrics and maybe the intimate surroundings of the elegant hexagonal school hall at the centre of Brutalist Acland Burghley helped as well.

Three very different experiences with unexpectedly (shame on me) pleasing results. And there’s another adventure to come with a trip to the Royal Albert Hall to hear the Irish Baroque Orchestra play Alexander’s Feast by Handel which I’ve never heard so the mysteries continue to unfold.

News

Gentle June

After the madness of May the new month starts at a somewhat gentler pace. First up on 2 June is a trip to Glyndebourne to see the Festival’s first ever production of Wagner’s last opera Parsifal. Having just driven to Stratford and back, I decided to do this one by train and the excellent £10 return Glyndebourne bus service from Lewes Station. It worked really well and I arrived on the most beautiful sunny day, took a walk around the lake, had a glass of wine and watched all the lovely people. I decided on a dark suit rather than the full DJ and it’s becoming clear that the dress code is much more relaxed than it used to be – there were even men in shorts! Oh and had a preview of dinner!

So, into the auditorium and during the wonderfully atmospheric overture a caption appears on the curtain referencing Cain and Abel. Now Wagner had already mashed up Arthurian legend with strict Roman Catholic Good Friday rituals. Could the story take another level of myth? Well in my opinion, no. The main charaters’ alter egos or older doppelgänger mooching around at the back of the set didn’t do it for me and the construct that Klingsor and Amfortas had been quarreling brothers also didn’t wash. All that said it was magnificently sung and the orchestra under Robin Ticciati was just sublime. And there were some great moments of theatre in Jetske Mijnssen’s production too. I loved the gang of Kundry clones whooshing down on poor Parsifal and I liked the procession of Titurel’s coffin round and round the altar before laying him to rest. On the coach back to Lewes one visitor complained that this went on a bit too long to which I replied “Well, there is a lot of music to get through before the next aria and at least there was some action.” Despite some reservations about the over-concepty production it was a great evening and I’m very glad I saw, but especially, heard it.

The next evening (Tuesday) saw me join a friend from 50 years ago, Alison Dunn, at her retirement party in the splendid Humble Grape wine bar off Fleet Street – a great choice as that’s where we first knew each other when she worked on Education and Training magazine with Barry Turner a long-standing writer and editor friend who did some consultancy work for me in my guise as an educational publisher back in the 70s. Tasked with speaking to everyone in the room – I only knew Ali – I did about 70% and what some fine famaily, friends and former colleagues she has.

Each year in November the British Bilingual Poetry Collective, of which I’m a trustee, runs an interactive poetry event as part of Tower Hamlets’ Season of Bangla Drama. So on Wednesday Shamim Azad, the founder, and I head off to see the coordinator of the festival Kazi Ruksana Begum to discuss plans schedules and the broad outline of this year’s event. The theme for 2025 is ‘Kindness’ and we’ll be switching our focus from Rabindranath Tagore to the national poet of Bangladesh Kazi Nazrul Islam in a session with the title Kindness with Kazi.

< Last years’ poster

The evening brings the last concert I’ll see in the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Southbank season. It’s an old favourite but like you’ve never heard it before. Elgar’s Enigma Variations must be one of the most played pieces in the repertoire with ‘Nimrod’ known in many different forms. However, the OAE presents ‘ historically informed’ performances so to hear the music played on gut strings, wooden not metal flutes, French not German bassoons made it sound completely fresh. Quite possibly how Elgar himself would have heard it. The variations formed the second half of the concert. Before the interval we heard his lively concert overture In the South written while he was in southern Italy and reflecting the sounds and landscape of the country. The mezzo Frances Gregory then performed five of Elgar’s Sea Pictures with great sensitivity and bursts of power to soar above the rich orchestral tones. the Portuguese conducter Dinis Sousa made his debut with the OAE and clearly developed a great rapport with them. He’s the principal conducter of the Royal Northern Sinfonia based a the Glasshouse in Gateshead and looks a fine prospect.

I remember a lot of excitement around Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice back in 1997 in the confines of the Cottesloe theatre at the National and I enjoyed it very much at the time. I was looking forward to this revival in the similarly contrained arena of the Donmar and it didn’t disappoint, mainly thanks to a brilliant performance from Hammed Animashaun as Mugsy. The banter between the boys, the knowledge that he’s going to lose and his dream of opening a restaurant in a disused toilet in Bow infuse the whole play which has a spectacular set transformation that’s worth the ticket alone. As with House of Games, I’m more than ever convinced I’m not cut out to be a gambler.

I should have gone to Garsington to see Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades on Friday. However my frequent opera comapnion Jadwiga was unwell and I couldn’t find a replacement at short notice. The brilliant box office have moved my booking to 21 June and we’ll be seeing Handel’s Rodelinda instead.

My next musical outing was on Sunday 8 June when I went to a new venue for me – Charterhouse. It was a concert organised by the Barbican as part of the European Concert Hall Organisation’s (ECHO) rising stars programme. It was a recital for trumpet and piano and featured a premiere piece Continuum by my friend Dani Howard. Dani had worked with the trumpet player Matilda Lloyd to create the piece. As Matilda said in her intro “It started with an icecream on the beach”. Knowing Dani’s large orchestral works, her opera and hearing her percussion composition for Colin Currie last month, it confirmed – if it needed it – her versatility and gift for melody and creating atmospheres. Matilda and her pianist Jonathan Ware had played this piece 18 times as they toured the European concert halls who form the ECHO with this one being the last. They all kindly invited me to join them for tea and cake or a beer after the concert so it was altogether a super Sunday afternoon.

As a special offer if you’d booked a Barbican ticket you could see the Encounters exhibition for a fiver, so I did. This was in a small gallery on floor 2 and featured the contrasting works of Giacometti, with whom I was familiar, and Huma Bhabha who I didn’t know at all. Huma was born in Pakaistan but is now based in upstate New York. Her monumental works which incorporate found materials contrast with the elegant skinny figures of Giacometti. I know which ones i’d like to own but it was an interesting hour contemplating differeing approaches to making sculptures.

The Encounters exhibition at the Barbican

Continuing with our catholic cultural chase, my next visit was to Sadler’s Wells with my daughter Jo to see Mathew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell . This was a belated birthday outing for Jo and we had a fine early supper in Moro before making our way through the heaving Exmouth Market up Rosebery Avenue. What are all these people doing out on a Tuesday? The ballet is set in sleazy Soho in the 30 where the eponymus pub is host to prostitutes, closeted illegal gays, a lovestruck barman and various other denizens of nighttime London. There were duets, larger ensemble pieces, the most amazing and fluent set changes and original music blended with ballads from the era sung with original vinyl hiss and crackle, endless style and commitment by booming baritones. We both enjoyed it a lot and chatted about it as we made our way back to Farringdon for trains back home. It’s good to enjoy your daughter’s birthday treat too!

Yoshitomo Nara is an artist I’d seen a little of and so off I went to the Hayward Gallery to see what must be one of his biggest ever shows outside Japan with over 150 works displayed. He’s the epitome of Japanese kawaii kitsch but with a twist – those sweet faced Hello Kitty style children’s faces contain messages of disquiet, protest and fear. Nara is very political in his work and repeats themes throughout his long career which the exhibition spans. There are installation – a ramshackle shed, a teacup fountain, paintings, drawings and sculptures spread over the whole expanse of the Hayward. It was fascinating to start with but there’s just too much to see and too much repetition of the themes that are dear to him. I’m glad I went however and got to have a chat with a film crew shooting it for The Sunday Times.

There was a double challenge getting from the gallery to my dinner with friends in Soho. First I had to navigate the waterfall and fountains on the walkway. They were fun – a cascade from the level above, water pouring from a waist and a green figure with a fountain for a head. Then I had to make my way across the Hungerford footbridge the scene of my disastrous fall last May. I managed both and had a great evening. I’ve been a fan of Nubya Garcia the young British saxophonist for a long time and managed to pop into the Queen Elizabeth Hall to get one of the last few tickets for her gig there next Thursday. It’s part of Little Simz’ Meltdown Festival which sounded a bit youth for me but I do like Nubya’s music so I bought one

The warm up band, Oreglo were a quartet of keyboard, drums, guitar and tuba – the latter becoming an instrument of choice it seems since Theon Cross in Sons of Kemet and other of the new groups that have arisen from Tomorrow’s Warriors – also a training ground for Nubya which she graciously acknowledged in her concert introductions. Oreglo were full of life and energy in a field that spanned jazz and prog rock and were an adequate preparation for the main event.

I was very surprised to see the band walk on stage Sam Jones headed for the drum kit but that doesn’t look like Daniel Casimir and that is certainly not Joe Armon jones at the keyboards. Nubya then followed in a huge-skirted off the shoulder gown and later introduced Lyle Barton at the keys and Max Luthert on bass. It’s a tribute to the quality of musicianship that you didn’t notice the personnel changes – yes the solos might have been a bit different but they fitted the music, mostly from the latest album Odyssey. She proudly announced that she had done all the arrangements for the strings that are on the album herself – taking her out of her comfort zone to make the sounds she wanted to hear. She also apologized for the lack of a string section tonight but had rearranged the songs for this concert. I am so glad I bought that ticket. The album is great and different but her live performances and those of these superb players were electrifying. She even did a walkabout through the audience with the final song from the album ‘Triumphance’ with its spoken word lyrics of life enhancing advice about resilience, tolerance and collective power. Nubya is true talent at the height of her own powers who received a standing ovation from the packed QEH audience which did include a few other people of my generation as well as all the meltdown youth.

After another visit to the Union Club, this time for lunch with a friend, we set off in the evening to enjoy The Taming of the Shrew in Tredegar Square in Mile End performed by a group called Shakespeare in the Squares. They perform an adapted version of one of the bard’s plays – different each year – in squares across London. I think it was 18 this year. The production includes songs for the audience to sing along with, some high quality acting and projection against traffic and aircraft and other ambient noise. And not only do they speak Shakespeare’s words eloquently they also play instruments and sing. We were lucky that it was a beautiful sunny pre-solstice evening and it was hugely enjoyable. I’ll try another venue next year.

More music on Sunday when my son was singing with the choir Pegasus and the Outcry Ensemble at St John’s Smith Square. Two fanfares opened the evening the familiar Copland’s Common Man and Joan Tower’s Uncommon Woman which I didn’t know and then a Britten choral work which I’d never heard ‘Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam’ which was, I’m told, very hard to sing but was a great listen with six differently styled sections setting the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins for unaccompanied voices. I had a good catch up with Tom in the interval and then enjoyed Britten’s Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge and Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms where the countertenor soloist was none other than Hugh Cutting who had been at Garsington the night before. I was able to tell him how much we’d enjoyed Rodelinda and his performance tonight. He too enjoyed the production at Garsington and thought it worked well, especially the dancers.

*The Outcry Ensemble and Pegasus Choir at St John’s Smith Square*

Uncategorized

No Mow – No Blog – May

Well the lawn didn’t quite escape the mower despite the warm weather and slow growth of grass but it had to have a tidy up. What did escape was the keyboard – too busy to type this month! It all started on Saturday 3rd with the last game of the season – unlucky draw – followed by a farewell to the season lunch at L’Artista and then Frances, Rose and myself whizzing off for a pre-concert Guinness in the Toucan with Ian Prowse (he didn’t have one) before he took to the stage at the 100 Club. It was as always with him a brilliant evening’s entertainment.

Then on Monday 5th Fran and I went to see the new Conor McPherson play The Brightening Air at the Old Vic. It’s a wonderful depiction of dysfunctional Irish rural family life with a standout performance from Rosie Sheehy as the disruptive Billie. The next day I had to record one of the English Language Teaching audiobooks that I do a couple of times a year. My voice over actor John Hasler (doing 16 different voices in Aussie accents around an RP narration – amazing) is about to rejoin the cast of Fawlty Towers at the Apollo Theatre with a bigger role than he had in the first run so I’ll probably catch that at some point in the run that starts late June.

Next up was a favourite ukiyo-e printmaker Hiroshige at the British Museum. I am familiar with most of the images displayed but seeing the vibrancy of the originals compared with reproductions was astonishing. The exhibition also included several indications of the complexity of making multi-coloured woodblock prints, inking them up and making sure paper is accurately registered. A technical triumph but also witty, emotional and dramatic scenes of love, life and landscape. It was interestingly curated too with prints fixed to scrolls which themselves were often the destination of woodblock prints.

With my mind firmly back in Japan I spent the evening downstairs at the Hampstead Theatre in the midst of a video game. The play was Personal Values and combined characters’ real lives with their personae in the game they were endlessly playing. As a non-gamer it left me a bit confused but others enjoyed it very much.

Back at Hampstead the following Monday saw a very different set of games presented. This was an adaptation by Richard Bean of David Mamet’s 1987 film, Mamet’s debut as both writer and director. It was powerful, twisty, scary and shocking but immense fun. I hadn’t seen the film for ages but recall it being altogether darker and while there were some elements of that here, it was as you’d expect with Richard Bean rather more about the laughs. I’m looking forward to more card games and sleaze when we see Dealer’s Choice at the Donmar next month.

Music started the month and gave me a real highlight in the middle. Sunday 18th found me in the Temple of Art and Music in Mercato Metropolitano, the sprawling food fest at the Elephant and Castle. The group in which my granddaughter plays keyboard, flute and does backing vocals – elegantly called Soulstice – were asked to headline a Youth Open Mic session. There’s a clip here – not very well recorded and not by me! They are usually an all girl band but their drummer couldn’t make the gig so a brother kindly stepped in. I’m prejudiced of course but they are actually rather good with a soul-tinged mix of their own originals, Sade, Amy Winehouse and so on..

Different but no less enjoyable was the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s concert at the Royal Festival Hall with Sir Andras Schiff conducting from the piano in a Schumann programme with a little Mendelssohn in between. It started with the Konzertstück which is a very lively piece for piano and orchestra and was followed by familiar passages from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Nights’ Dream and Schiff played Schumann’s only piano concerto after the interval. He had talked last year at an open rehearsal of his pleasure in having a brown Blüthner fortepiano rather than the shiny black Steinways that are usually provided.

He had it again tonight and did us proud, not only in the opening piece and the concerto, but gave us a solo encore of Brahms’ Albumblatt and then closed the piano lid very firmly and got the whole orchestra to play Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave as a bonus encore. Coming at the end of an eight day tour to Vienna, Graz, Antwerp, Amsterdam and Munich the energy of Sir Andras and the orchestra was quite amazing. And with even more bonuses – a preconcert talk with Laura Tunbridge, professor of music at Oxford, and an interval drinks reception for friends – it was a night to remember.

Sir Andras Scxhiff leaves the stage, leaving behind his favourite instrument.

On my way to the OAE concert I went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the exhibition of Edvard Munch portraits. These were very impressive with clear characterisation of friends and family placed in relevant environments. He obviously didn’t like several of his subjects as these were not flattering portraits but reflected Munch’s relationship with them and indeed with himself. I couldn’t escape the musical theme of the month of May as my two favourites were The Brooch which is a lithograph of an English violinist who styled herself Eva Mudocci and a quick stetch of Edward Delius at a concert in Wiesbaden. I also liked his walking self-portrait and a double portrait of the lawyer Harald Norgaard and his wife Aase with whom he had a lengthy relationship. It’s an unusual composition and was quite striking. Munch knew Harald from his youth and painted Aase separately on a number of occasions.

I also made it to another British Museum exhibition after being a radiotherapy buddy to a friend who is going through the final stages of cancer treatment. She is great company despite the circumstances and we have spent some good times together. As I remember myself radiotherapy leaves you pretty wiped out so she declined the offer of accompanying me to the BM understandably preferring home and rest. The exhibition was mostly of objects from the museum’s own collections but shed a fascinating insight into the religions of India – Hindu, Jain and Buddhism through their artefacts and what they symbolised. The galleries also had birdsong, tolling bells and chanting played quietly to make it a multisensory visit.

Dancing Ganesha a fixture in all three religions

My next adventure was into the world of words. The British Bilingual Poetry Collective resumed our Bi-monthly Poetry Meets at Bard Books on Roman Road in Bow. Shamim Azad and I led a session of poetry readings, discussion, translation and an open mic session which was much enjoyed by all present.

The late May bank holiday was spent having an early supper with Rosa and then a visit to the Wigmore Hall to hear the amazing percussionist Colin Currie. I wish they didn’t have a photo ban because the array of drums, marimba, vibraphones, glockenspiel and other thing you can bang to make music filled the entire stage. A varied programme showcased his ability to make exciting, moving, thoughtful and adventurous sounds emanate from this staggering collection of instrumental forces.

My main motivation for going was the world premiere of Vasa a Concerto for Solo Percussion by Dani Howard, a young composer I’ve been pleased to call a friend for a few years now. It was a complex piece featuring a series of different tempos, emotions and melodies. Dani had worked with Colin to devise the final form and told us later that she had to have a diagram of the stage layout of the marimba, two vibraphones, cymbals, drums and other devices, many of them foot-operated, so that she could ensure she was writing things Colin could physically move around the instruments to execute. It was a very rewarding evening concluding with some excellent conversation in the pub.

Bass drum and woodblocks were foot operated and 1-5 are various cymbals

I had intended to give After the Act at the Royal Court a miss as I’m not a big fan of musicals. However the indisposition of Fran’s intended companion meant that she asked me to go. The content should have been – and was – of real interest. The ‘Act’ was the appalling 1985 Section 28 that forbade taechers in schools and colleges to mention homosexuality, Equally appallingly it was only repealed in 2003.

The play contained some verbatim quotes from individuals – teachers, parents and students – who had suffered from the act, recreations of protests including a daring 1988 abseil in the House of Lords and, for my taste, too many occasions when serious issues resulted in the cast of four bursting into song accompanied by onstage keyboardist and drummer.

The next evening was far more satisfactory. Because Terrance Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea was on at the Theatre Royal Haymarket we were able to pop into Yoshino for a quick pre-theatre sample of Lisa’s excellent cuisine and hosting. Some analysts feel that the doomed love affair represented in the play was Rattigan’s sublimation of his own homosexuality – still illegal when he wrote it in 1952.

Starring the wonderful Tamsin Greig with a fine supporting cast, this was a faithful period-set production that allowed the play’s veiled messages space to emerge from the context and the conversations around love and death, suicide and survival, protest and resignation, passion and comoanionship were brilliantly done, very moving and affecting.

Thursday saw Fran and I make our hat-trick of theatregoing with a trip to Islington to see Ava Pickett’s debut play 1536. The setting is sixteenth century Essex where three friends indulge in gossip – has Henry really ditched Anne Boleyn? – their own relationships with men and each other and the role of women in a patriarchal society. It’s bold, it’s funny. it’s sexy and it makes you wonder how much better things really are today. The rolling changes in friendships are brilliantly delivered in crisp dialogue and while history is all around, the play tells us a lot about today. As a writer on the brilliant The Great on Channel 4, Ava Pickett is clearly a name to watch out for.

The month’s finale was a trip with Frances to see Simon Russell Beale in Titus Andronicus at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. After a pleasant drive up we had a late lunch, checked into the hotel and then made our way to the theatre. It was my first time in the Swan and we were a bit surprised that this production was in the smaller space, not the main hall. However the intimacy of the location made the horrors of Shakespeare’s most violent play (or is it Coriolanus?) very clear.

The production certainly didn’t stint on Kensington gore but used brilliant lighting and sound effects to protect us from witnessing the worst atrocities. SRB was his usual excellent self but was by no means outstanding. The whole cast under the direction of the versatile Max Webster was superb and brought the subtleties of the text into play as well as the torrid drama. And on reflection, yes this is the most violent of Shakespeare’s works.

We went out to Anne Hathaway’s house next morning for a walk around the orchards, had an enlightening tour of the house from excellent guides and then made our way back to London. A fine ending to a full and varied month of culture. As Shakespeare’s contemporary Thomas Dekker put it “O, the month of May, the merry month of May”.

News

Art imitates life

Three plays this week featured real life events dramatised by outstanding writers. At the Royal Court Manhunt written and directed by Robert Icke recreated the events of 2010 which saw the nation’s longest search for the fugitive murderer Roaul Moat. The play examined Moat’s mental state, childhood, failed relationship and his conviction that Northumberland Police had it in for him. The dramatic opening with an overhead camera projecting Moat’s pacing in his prison cell set the tone for a psychological and emotional thriller. In the lead role Samuel Edward-Cook was all muscle, repressed violence and angst in an outstanding piece of acting. Multiple-character supporting roles made for a fascinating examination of the factors contributing to his undoubted guilt. I remember the events clearly as I was held up on the way to a shoot by closed roads around Rothbury where he was finally caught. There was a post show talk in which an interesting aspect discussed was whether there was at the time a north south divide where, in the south, he was regarded as something of a hero for evading arrest for so long – seven days, in contrast to the north where he posed a real threat. Lots of food for thought.

Another favourite playwright, James Graham, featured an event from his native Nottingham. His The Punch at the Young Vic dramatised the cause and effects of a notorious one-punch death in 2011. Convicted of manslaughter and having served his sentence, Jacob Dunne was one of the first to experience restorative justice on his release from prison and it was the series of meetings between him and the victim’s parents that formed the core of this moving and enlightening evening. Directed by Adam Penfold the play was originally seen in Nottingham and transferred to the Young Vic with the same outstanding cast with once again a truly memorable central performance from David Shields as Jacob supported by a fine group of multi-character actors among whom I would single out the wonderful Julie Hesmondhalgh as, among others, the victim’s mother and campaigner for restorative justice. Her dancing is worth the modest ticket price.

I went to a completely new venue on Saturday – the Morocco Bound Bookshop and Café in Bermondsey – it’s name alone took me back to my early career in publishing where I knew about, but sadly never had the opportunity, to lavish a Morocco Binding on any of the books I produced. It looks to be a lively place with poetry open mic nights, jazz gigs, a book club and more. My visit was for the launch of a poetry anthology which contained a poem by my friend and British Bilingual Poetry Collective founder Shamim Azad. Published by a magazine ‘The Other Side of Hope‘ Other Tongue Mother Tongue contains twenty poems on themes of immigration in eighteen languages. Given BBPC’s experience with Translation Circles, this was obviously an event not to be missed. Shamim read her poem to open the event and then closed it with a rhythmical Bengali poem that had the audience all clapping along.

Monday morning had a musical start with a trip to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s base in Acland Burghley School in Tufnell Park. This was a Friends’ opportunity to observe 100 teenagers from ABS and Swiss Cottage School rehearsing for a performance at the Albert Hall on Wednesday as part of Camden Schools Music Festival. The OAE’s education director Cherry Forbes was at the heart of proceedings with music director James Redwood. It was fun, engaging and again encouraging to see so many young people enjoying the opportunity to sing and make music together. And it’s always a delight to be in the fabulous hexagonal Brutalist hall.

Tuesday saw me set off to the Romanian Cultural Institute in Belgravia for an evening of music performed by Romanian soprano Madalena Stan and pianist Lidia Butnariu. It’s in one of those magnificent houses in Belgrave Square. I went with my friend Daniela Tifui, who is of course Romanian, and she enjoyed her first visit to the Cultural Institute, the music and the chance to meet new people and speak in her first language. The concert had a number of popular opera arias, some Gershwin and a world premiere of a song specially compsed by Calin Huma who has been an envoy to the UK but is now about to transfer to Italy, combing music composition with his consular responsibilities to very good effect. There was a glass of wine afterwards and an opportunity to chat with Madalena and Lidia and other interesting people who regularly attend these events. And if Saturday gave me a throwback to my publishing days, today was back to my early days of filming as the piano was lit by a redhead – a rarity these days when most lighting is done with LED panels.

Madalena with a rose for Gershwin’s The Man i love (and the redhead)

A third play based on real life completes my week. Ben and Imo by Mark Ravenhill was first seen at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford but is now relocated and adapted to the intimate space of the Orange Tree in Richmond. Directed by Erica Whyman, It covers the fiery, feisty, often fraught relationship between Imogen Holst and Benjamin Britten in the period before his opera Gloriana was to be staged in a gala performance to celebrate the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. The powerful two-hander with Samuel Barnett and Victoria Yeates covers immense issues like the creative process, ownership of ideas, state funding of the arts and personal relationships during a period of intense work in which Imo’s role and remuneration were never adequately discussed, so trust, credit, job description and accountability were always tiptoeing or slipping on the shifting pebbles of the beach at Aldeburgh.

Imo’s dance demonstrations were a highlight as indeed were the musical elements woven into the script – Britten, Dowland, Wagner et al – all played by Connor Fogel. The evening was enhanced by a Q&A with Mark Ravenhill and Orange Tree’s Creative Director Tom Littler. Mark was delighted to have approval of his version of events from two singers in the audience who had worked with both Ben and Imo on his operas and her community projects.

One key element for me was how the very talented Imogen Holst subjugated her own creativity to serve first her father Gustav, and then Britten. I was impressed by the archive of her papers at the Red House where Britten lived with Peter Pears which is well worth a visit. Dee and I went in 2016. Writer Leah Broad who has pioneered the restoration of female composers in her book Quartet commented elsewhere on Imo: ‘few musicians have had such a wide-ranging impact on music in the UK as Imogen Holst, having turned her hand to everything from composition to conducting, teaching, public speaking, musicology, concert organising and musical administration. The full legacy of her work has yet to fully be understood – but as a composer, at least, new recordings and publications are paving the way for her to emerge from the combined shadows of Britten and Gustav Holst, and to receive the acclaim that her own modesty never allowed her to pursue.’

News

Vampires Bach in Ramsgate

Monday sees me off to the Hampstead Theatre to join Frances for the press night of John Donelly’s new play Apex Predator. It’s directed by Blanche McIntyre who did Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love so brilliantly earlier this year so expectation was high. First sight of the auditorium was of a domestic kitchen-diner surrounded by towering scaffolding – well most of London is still work in progress – and rice paper screens that rise and fall to signal scene changes.

At the start, with exhausted new mum Mia rocking her young baby girl Isla who won’t sleep, I thought we were in for an update on Look Back in Anger or other kitchen sink dramas. Sophie Melville plays Mia very intelligently veering from utterly broken, unable-to-cope mother to a raging harridan when castigating her often absent on secretive IT-based police work husband Joe (Bryan Dick). Their elder son Alfie is being bullied at school and Mia’s encounter with teacher Ana, played by Laura Whitmore – a splendid mix of smooth confidante, encourager of excess and vengeful destroyer – is all friendly deviousness. The cast is completed by Leander Deeny who plays Aggressive Commuter, Park Flasher, Oopulent Womaniser and Vampire Victim. Because yes, into the domestic scenario comes vampirism in a fabulous coup de theatre at the end of act one. Blanche later confided that victim Leander had arrived at the first read through announcing himself: “I’m lunch”!

Under Blanche McIntyre’s direction, aided by dramatic sound, set and lighting design there are plenty of moments of high drama but also some very funny lines and situation comedy that kept the audience gripped. There are perhaps too many elements covered in the play but as a metaphor for greed and exploitation and increasing levels of unchecked violence the vampirism works well. It also expresses our fears for the future of the world we are just about clinging on to – an aspect highlighted in Alfie’s (played very subtly throughout by Callum Knowelden) school presentation. My immediate post show WhatsApp to a friend still stands: On train on way home – exhilarating, scary, brilliantly directed (as I was able to tell Blanche), full of familiar anxieties and I will be very careful shaving tomorrow.

*The OAE choir and the RFH organ in all its splendour.*

Thursday evening is spent at the Royal Festival Hall for a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion by the Orchestra and Choir of the Age of Enlightenment. It was preceded by a talk with CEO Crispin Woodhead, leader Kati Debretzeni and singer Amy Wood. The discussion was enlightening (sorry) in showing how performers find something new in a very familiar work, how conductor-led and self directed performances differ and the panel pointed out various elements to listen out for. Not least the fact that the opening sung word of Part Twp lasts for a full fourteen beats. The word? Ach. (Ah).

The mass is a piece I’ve heard in several guises over the years and the story is familiar. After all I spent a long while in Israel back in 1992 producing a photographic The Bible Alive for Harper Collins publishers with photographer Tony May. Budget and logistics meant we could only use twelve extras so while the cruxifixion wasn’t too challenging we had fun with the wedding at Canaan and the feeding the five thousand spreads. And only affording to hire three camels made the Magi caravan cover spread a logistical nightmare with multiple walkie talkies across the hills. All this in the early days of image manipluation – years before Photoshop was developed, we used mostly the Quantel Paintbox.

The balanced forces of the OAE in two orchestras, the excellent soloists and a dynamic approach from Jonathan Cohen gave the mass a wonderful clarity and strong narrative sense. There were many highlights but for me probably ‘Erbarme dich’ (Have mercy) with the outstanding countertenor/alto Iestyn Davies interacting with Huw Daniel’s violin with muted string underscore was the pinnacle – suffering, compassion and humility all in a few bars of exquisite music.

It was altogether a wonderful evening in a hall with consummate musicians enjoying what they do best. At the end there was a stunned and respectful silence before an outbreak of rapturous applause and many recalls for bows from the soloists and Jonathan Cohen.

Theatre, music and now literature. Saturday saw me head off to Ramsgate for the launch of my friends Anna Błasiak and Lisa Kalloo’s latest book of poems and photographs – largely about growing up gay in Poland in the latter decades of the last century. But I was also able to take in some new areas of this fascinating town after having to be rescued by Anna after not reading the poster properly and going to the wrong (derelict) venue.

Liverpool Lawn terrace, end house and a seafront bus shelter and Spencer Square where Van Gogh lodged in 1876, some of the interesting architecture of Ramsgate

There are a number of ‘Lawns’ around Ramsgate – Anna and Lisa live in one too – and very elegant they are with their Georgian frontages and curved construction to enhance sea views. But now to the real purpose – the launch of Deliverance/Rozpetanie Anna and Lisa’s second collaboration in a volume of poems and photographs. It’s bilingual in Polish and English, often as you can see in the poems featured below in alternate phrases and sentences which produces a wholly different reading experience from the more conventional parallel text treatment. You can buy it here and it’s an emotional roller coaster with horrific stories of prejudice but lots of humour too and it is complemented by Lisa’s haunting photographs. Anna was interviewed about her work and read several of the poems to a thoroughly engaged audience.

Many of the photographs from the book were displayed in the gallery too and some of the concrete poems. I met a lot of new and interesting people and was able to pay for my overnight hospitality by assuming the duties of ‘wine pourer’ – well some things just come naturally.

News

Groupie Grandad

On Sunday I had the great privilege of attending the rehearsal for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Das Jahr concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Friends were invited to take coffee and cake in the Artist’s Bar at 13:00. So it was with great excitement that I entered as instructed through the Artists’ Entrance – this feels special already. Familiar faces were around, coffee was fine but the promised cake did not materialise. One of the familiar faces was composer Electra Perivolaris who I’d met a couple of weeks before at the OAE Season Launch. We had a chat about the piece of her’s that was being rehearsed and played today and it was soon time to enter the hall for the rehearsal to begin. I knew one of the other composers Roxanna Panufnik who I remembered from a previous occasion gives up chocolate for Lent. When I reminded her of this: “Ah,” she said, “but I’m a Catholic and today’s Sunday so we don’t have to fast!” She then introduced me to the other two composers Errolyn Wallen, appointed Master of the King’s Music in August last year, and Freya Waley-Cohen. I sat behind the four as they discussed each other’s work, prepared comments for the conductor and orchestra members. Seeing a cheeky thumbs up between Electra and tympanist Adrian Bending when a suggestion came good was fun to see. Watching them enhance the playing of their compositions was (sorry) enlightening. I’ve given lots of notes to actors and seen performances change for the better but in this new context it was exciting – literally in one instance when a segment of Freya’s piece was played for a third time with different intensity and I got goosebumps. I’m now a total women composer groupie!

Freya Waley-Cohen giving notes to the orchestra.

After the rehearsal concluded to everyone’s satisfaction, there was a break and then the composers joined Max Mandel (principal viola and artistic co-ordinator of the project) for a talk about Fanny Mendelssohn’s piano cycle and how it had inspired the four composers to write their own compositions. They also spoke of the challenges of writing for historically accurate period instruments.

Then it was off to the bar and a chance to catch up with more OAE regulars and to be joined by Frances for the concert itself. This consisted of several of Fanny’s original months from the cycle played brilliantly by Olga Pashchenko on an 1831 Erard piano similar to an instrument Fanny would have used. We also heard the only full orchestral composition she completed – it was an era when it wasn’t seemly for women to write for orchestras – the Overture in C major. It’s a shame she didn’t do more. Conducted enthusiastically by Natalia Ponomarchuk, the overture moved from haunting horn figures through strings and wind sections with strong melodies and frequent lively arpeggios that showed a mastery of composing for an orchestra. The three pieces by Electra (March), Errolyn (April) – as it happens their own birth months too – and Freya (After June) followed. The subtleties and reflexions of Fanny’s work became more apparent on this second hearing and I hope they’ll get many more outings which all three fully deserve. The second half of the programme started with Olga playing the summer months and then four principals from the OAE played a romanze from Fanny’s String Quartet in E flat major which again showed what an underrated, supressed compser she was. The word is that she was a far superior pianist than her younger brother Felix but wasn’t allowed to perform. The finale was Roxanna Panufnik’s piece Postlude inspired by the thirteenth section which Fanny had added to the year. It had witty echoes of Fanny’s own work and a rhythmic pulse which drove it along. There were minimalist passages and areas that fully exploited the orchestra’s capabilities – I really enjoyed it. Natalia Ponomarchuk brought both enthusiasm and precision to the whole concert.

*Olga Paschenko and Natalia Ponomarchuk take a bow with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.*

After a feast of music old and new it was time on to theatre new and slightly older. Monday was The Habits at Hampstead Theatre downstairs. It’s a first play by award-winning director Max Bradfield. It is set in a boardgame café in Bromley – very close to home! The action unfolds through a (to me) baffling game of Dungeons and Dragons (my son and grandson both play) and through the moments out of D&D character we learn of the participants’ real lives encompassing ambition, grief, addiction, fecklessness and perhaps love. It’s brilliantly acted with switches in and out of role done most skilfully and there are lots of laughs and some fabulous dressing up for the finale.

*Ruby Stokes as Jess with her dragon* in The Habits *at Hampstead.*

Across town to the Orange Tree in Richmond on Tuesday to revel in April de Angelis’s Playhouse Creatures. Written in 1993 and set in the 1660s when theatres were just opening up again after the Cromwell interregnum had closed down all forms of pleasure. It’s a period I was familiar with having done lots of research for a series of blogs and a script I wrote for Clive Myrie to present at the OAE’s concert of Restoration Music in 2021 when theatres and concert halls here were just opening again after the Covid lockdowns. In London theatre in 1660 there was a real sensation – women were allowed to appear on stage and took to it with gusto if Ms de Angelis is to be believed.

Some of the girl power here could have benefitted poor Fanny Mendelssohn a couple of centuries later. Funny, informative about acting craft in the Restoration period and with insights into the struggle for fair pay, the roles of women in those times both on and off stage, the play gives us plenty to think about that resonate in these uncertain times for actors and musicians as theatres try to recover from the lockdowns. It’s bawdy and brash and gives you plenty of belly laughs with a few winces of agonised reality thrown in.

The cast led by Anna Chancellor as Mrs Betterton – wife of theatre owner Thomas – are all excellent bringing depth to the on and off-stage characters they portray: Katherine Kingsley as sweary men-baiting Mrs Marshall; Dona Croll as Doll Common the drudge with attitude; Nicole Sawyerr pained at being supplanted as the King’s mistress by the younger version in the form of Nell Gwyn played with increasing assurance by Zoe Brough (that’s the character not Zoe’s performance).

Wednesday evening saw me again as a music groupie but also a grandad. Grandson Jake was playing his cello in the Royal Holloway Symphony Orchestra in a programme that included Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, Holst’s Planets Suite and the Trombone Concerto by Dani Howard who I’ve been honoured to call a friend and whose music in the Casa Battló in Barcelona I wrote about a few years back. I also attended the London premiere of the Trombone Concerto at the Barbican so was interested to hear how it sounded here. I had picked up my son-in-law (daughter at work sadly) and driven into a full, low, thoroughly disconcerting, huge red setting sun through Surrey lanes towards the M25 which was relatively free-flowing and we arrived at the magnificent Royal Holloway in time to grab a sandwich in the well-appointed campus shop. I remembered making a promotional recruitment video for RHU back in the 80s when I did a whole slew of such videos for KIng’s College London, Guy’s and St Thomas’s Medical and Dental Schools, Imperial College, Felsted and Harrow Schools. The Royal Holloway shoot was special as we had access to a helicopter to fly over the campus for the money shots – and also for the estates director to see close up footage of any necessary roof repairs!

Royal Holloway University Founder’s Building from the air

Who ever designed the auditorium clearly never expected 100 performers to be occupyingo the stage. People in the front row seats were in danger of injury during the longer slide extensions of the solo trombone. What was wonderful was to see so many young people being encouraged with whoops and whistles from their mates to entertain us with a programme of classical music. The players responded well. The Mendelssohn was a bit shaky to start but soon found its stride. Dani Howard’s trombone concerto was given an excellent reading under orchestral music director of the university Rebecca Miller with Amelia Lewis in fine command of the complex trombone parts.

*Amelia Lewis, Rebecca Miller and about half the orchestra at Royal Holloway Windsor Auditorium*.

After the interval the orchestra played Gustav Holst’s The Planets Suite and Chris and I – as well as being impressed by the massive forces deployed – reckoned that we very rarely heard all seven planets played together. The line-up included lesser-spotted bass versions of flute, oboe, clarinet and trombone and impressive percussion arrays. There was enthusiasm, energy and considerable musicality in the performance and it gladdens the heart to hear music of such quality from a youthful university orchestra at a time when university finances are so threatened.

After a debrief with Jake and some of the other players we managed to negotiate the insane Junction 13 from the A30 onto the M25 and the never-ending roadworks at Junction 10 and made it back home in reasonable time despite several overheads warning us of “Workforce in the Carriageway”. We saw few.