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BBC PROMS 2014 VIDEOS


There is supposed to be a video bar here which displays selected YouTube videos from last year's Proms, but it seemed to be a bit erratic testing it and may not show on a mobile. If there are problems . . .plans, mice, men and Google, you know . . .
Anyway, don't you want to read stuff as well? Then scroll down and read on.

Wednesday 20 May 2015

Brainstorming Szymanowski: Król Roger at Covent Garden

Production Photo of Król Roger© ROH. Photograph by Bill Cooper, 2015
Getting inside anyone's head is a tricky business, but with the Royal Opera House's superb production of Szymanowski's Król Roger it's a case of two heads being trickier than one. In this case those of both Kaspar Holten and Szymanowski.

Working out what was triggering the synapses of the former is perhaps a little easier than figuring out the electrical (but not, maybe, musical: for they were plentifully supplied by Pappano and the orchestra) sparks of the latter.

It's mildly disconcerting, anomalous even, to be faced with a twelfth century Norman King in a business suit, let alone a prophet-shepherd in a kind of mid-sixties Elvis costume, wearing some of the widest flares ever seen on stage, even at the Hammersmith Apollo. Or a 20's bright young thing Queen missing only the foot-long cigarette holder.

Perhaps that accounted for what I thought was somewhat more reluctant applause at the end of the second act than it deserved. It could be much of the audience was taking longer than might have been expected to grasp we were in the head of Szymanowski in the 1920's, not ahead of him.

Though in this production, by the end of the opera, we are a good couple of decades ahead; and, if we're thinking properly and are alert enough, or we bought the programme with its photos of a Dionysiac cult in Venezuela which I for one had never heard of before, a good eight decades on. Having passed through, with this time nothing more than the orchestration and playing to aid us, rather hurried through Timothy Leary's time and the 'Me Generation'.

Well up, in fact, if you think about it with the 'Millennials' so-called, whose minds, I take it, far from being expanded,  have contracted to a narrowed vision of self and a near total withdrawal from the general tribulations of climate warming and almost perpetual war. Or, in other words, any philosophical regard beyond mere introspection and any political activism that might outlast the life of a YouTube video of sitting demonstrators being pepper-sprayed or black boys being shot by the cops for the better future good of mankind.

The programme, in fact, was a model of its kind, though I would have liked to have been warned rather more in advance that I was expected to think about Nietzsche (whose Also Sprach, having got hooked on the Strauss version, I read at school and though it's still on my shelves have never had the psychological strength to go back to) or Schopenhauer, with whom I only have a passing acquaintance, and something of a second-hand one at that.

Now, while Schopenhauer and Nietzsche may have helped us to get our heads around the heads (both the towering one on stage, and Kaspar Holten's) I'm not entirely convinced it altogether lifted the top of Szymanowski's cranium at least as far as the music, more than the libretto, was concerned.

For all the hints in the programme at Debussy and orientalism—a neighbour I overheard during the interval mentioned Ravel too; Ravel?—it was Scriabin I kept hearing. Scriabin with words, instead of scents and lightshows. And by the end, and, for all we'd been warned at the interval that Marius Kwiecien was feeling unwell—it didn't show—in the King's aria to the sun I couldn't help but feel this was all, in Szymanowski's head, as much, if not more, about his homosexuality as the rise and collapse of the Superman.

Though perhaps I was led there partly by the curious effect of listening to an opera in a totally unfamiliar language and having to rely entirely on the English surtitles.. It is odd, I realise, how much one normally takes from the nuances and phrasing in opera, even when your knowledge of French, Italian or German may not be fluent.

The singing was extraordinarily powerful. So was the orchestra, So was the production. So was the applause at the end. (By then most of the audience must have got over the Elvis costume; perhaps the Shepherd changing into a suit helped.) It is a terrible shame that it has had such a short run. Please, Covent Garden, bring it back.





Thursday 7 May 2015

Wheelies at the Proms

'Carbonblack' wheelchair. Photo from carbonblack.


No, not really. For one thing I'm banned by my friends from doing wheelies in my wheelchair. That was after some great black youngsters stopped my loaner from running rampant and mowing down a bunch of Japanese tourists at the bottom of the Turbine Hall ramp at Tate Modern.

I was new to using wheels then, and younger, and I hadn't yet realised the importance of wearing gloves: I burnt the palm of my hands trying to stop it as it dawned on me too late that the ramp was steeper than it looked and I was going a bit fast . . .

They asked 'Can you do wheelies in that thing?" 'Course," I said. And demonstrated, Then spotted twenty Japanese tourists scattering in fright out of the corner of my eye. That was Lesson Two in wheelchair management. If you're going to do wheelies on a ramp, don't.

At the Albert Hall in the Proms Season, I don't do wheelies. I do a nifty pirouette or two every now and then waiting for the lift though to ease the boredom of waiting for it to empty of the people whose only disability is either laziness or an appetite for junk food.

Well, it makes me happy, though my friends tend to get embarrassed. But as I point out, often, I can''t see why being disabled means you can't play every now and then.

Waiting for the lift is in fact about the only disadvantage for a wheelchair user at the Proms. The last few seasons, as I've come to use my wheelchair more and more often, I've found the stewards unfailingly helpful. They even buy my gallery tickets for me when they spot me in the gallery queue.

It has to be the gallery, though, if I haven't got other tickets. Unlike the Colosseum (in Rome, I mean, not the London one) which offered even the lions a free lift up to the Arena, as far as I know the Albert Hall doesn't. Not even if the Lions are music critics. And while I'm thinking of that, did any of them dare take up the offer of 'free seats for critics' at Covent Garden's Mahagonny?

This is by way of being a little 'thankyou note'. It is so nice to be treated with a smile and a real offer of help without feeling patronised or only part human, Which, despite the success of the London Paralympics, which really did change the way many people looked at people with a disability, does still happen. It means I really look forward to the Proms.

Apart from people who don't really need to using the lifts, of course. I'm not that bothered having to wait at the end of a Prom, though it does tend to annoy my friends who in turn have to wait for me, but the intervals are different.

I need my interval cigarette. Some concerts I may need more than one, and a stiff drink to go with it to dare go back for the second half. Or at the very least I might need to eat my sandwiches if I haven't been able to eat before I leave home. With the lifts full of the 'non-disabled' (I like that phrase: turns the tables neatly, I think) managing either or both in time can really get tricky.

So, if this season you are one of the non-disabled, please think before you dash for the lift. You may be leaving a prommer sandwich-and-nicotine starved.

[The wheelchair in the picture above, by the way, isn't mine. I just wish it was, but unless I win the lottery I'll just have to lust after it. I've heard of 'Kickstarter'. Wonder if there's such a thing as 'Prommercarbonfibrwheelchairstarter'?]

Tuesday 5 May 2015

Apples and (Clockwork) Oranges. . . and Prom 38


Steve Jobs at home in 1982 with  records and  a Michell Gyrodec.

photo:Diana Walker
Know who that is? Well, he and this blog's author share some things. Here's a hint. This blog is written on an Apple Mac, and I've had Apple Macs from the day I put my typewriter in the bottom of the wardrobe and forgot about it. Not that I totally forgot: it was a pale lime green portable Olympia.

Apparently you can still buy one like this in the USA. (For almost the same price as a MacBook Air!)  I should have kept it to sell on eBay shouldn't I?
My first Apple that wasn't the kind you were supposed to give teacher was a Mac SE. . .that was the cuddly little beige one with a monochrome screen about the size of an iPad's, and the small iPad at that. It wasn't that much bigger than my typewriter, and all the software was on floppy discs. How on earth we produced magazines on those, I can't imagine now, but we did.

And behind him? Way back under the window on the floor to his right? That's an original Michell Gyrodec. That wasn't my first turntable, but I fell in love with it just as I did with Apple Macs before I could afford either.

I first saw a Gyro in the small Georgian window of a small hi-fi shop in Shrewsbury late one summer night. It had gold weights under the platter . . . and it had been left to spin quietly at 33rpm reflecting gold from a small spotlight everywhere. I wasn't just entranced; I was hypnotised.

As was everyone who came to my flat when I finally managed to get hold of one. Most still are. So much so some don't get around to actually listening instead of watching until the first side's nearly done.

I knew (probably anyone who knows much about either film or hi-fi does) that Stanley Kubrick had a Michell turntable (though not a Gyrodec) and put one in A Clockwork Orange. And that John Michell created the model of the spaceship for 2001 A Space Odyssey mostly out of Gyrodec parts in his workshop near enough to the studios you might have been able to hear HAL over the traffic. Sadly, it disappeared from Boreham Wood Studios long ago.

But Steve Jobs owning a Gyrodec? The man who was practically the inventor of the antitheses of (analogue!) vinyl? And who people could, with some justification, blame for it spinning in its grave? That really was news to me. But it feels nice to know we have more than an apple in common, even if our bank accounts were, even then, as far apart as . . .well, as apples and oranges.

What's this got to do with the Proms? Not a lot, but something. Between concerts if I want to hear what someone else makes of Messaien's Turangalila apart from Juanjo Mena and the BBC  Phil in Prom 38 I'll be listening to one on a Gyrodec. And I'll be recording some to listen to later, or maybe even again on one of my Apple Macs.

Perhaps that Gyrodec was at least partly responsible that Apple seemed to really care about their recorded sound right from the beginning. And later, perhaps for the BBC using Apple Macs to edit their recordings of live concerts on.

The Turangalila I may be listening to between now and mid-August  one that I doubt many are familiar with at all, but which I like: Seiji Ozawa conducting the Toronto Symphony on RCA Victor.way, way back in 1967. There's something about that performance that makes it cleaner and (despite the size of the orchestra) almost minimalist in textures that you don't get elsewhere and which Petrenko and the NYO Messaien's Turangalilo at the Proms 2012 didn't really achieve at the Proms three years ago.

It was reissued on CD a couple of years back, and got a 'Record of the Month' from MusicWeb International. Deservedly I thought. Though if you want to hear it, or even a snip from it, you'll haver to look for it second hand, I'm afraid. It's not even on YouTube . . .

Not all music ever recorded or played is, some of those who'll be dropping into Prom 37 for Mista Jam and Stormzy but probably won't be listening to Messaien even with a score of lager and Baccardi shots in front of them the following night, need to know. Some was even played before the London Tube that'll be taking them to the Ministry of Sound existed, let alone YouTube.

Let's see (or hear, rather) if Prom 38 in August will also become a fave rave of mine.


Sunday 3 May 2015

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. . .What is it with these youf proms?


I won't be donning flip-flops, board shorts and spilling vodka from a duty-free litre bottle over the Gallery  at any of the 'youf' Proms this season. But I don't see what good Proms like No 37 will do. I mean, I went to the Frank Zappa late night Prom back in 2013, and I can't say I noticed any of that audience going to any of the other Proms that week.

And these 'Ibiza' Proms? Apart from the total unlikelihood of any of those audiences getting infused with a sudden overwhelming desire to hear a Bach Mass, a Mahler 6, Mozart's Entfuhrung or an evening of Frank Sinatra songs (I ask you . . .) what are they for?

(Actually, who are those Frank Sinatra songs for? Or the Steven Sondheim Prom; or Fiddler on the Roof? Does some idiot at the BBC entertain some notion of a mass migration of audiences from The Lion King or Cats out of the West End to the Albert Hall? Or even from  the 'multimedia' Sinatra at the Palladium that'll be running at the same time?)

Some years ago I was talking to some young people who were making a pilot for a series about kids clubbing for Channel 4. It was, they thought, a good series to be scheduled for late on Friday nights. I asked what their demographic was. "Eighteen to twenty-four year olds who go clubbing," they said.

"Oh," I said, "but late on Friday nights, isn't that just what they'll be doing instead?"

Somehow, the anomaly hadn't struck them. I think a handful of episodes did eventually go out: on Monday nights. When (I have done this in my time!) no-one is really in a fit state to want to relive the weekend that probably finished only in the early hours of a Monday morning . . .



I'm not snobbish. I wasn't brought up on classical music myself, just learned to like it from listening to Radio 3 over the years. And every time I go to a concert, an opera, or a Prom I depress myself looking around for—and all too often failing to see—anyone much under fifty (or sadly, even under sixty) and seldom anyone in their twenties who isn't fairly obviously a music student. Not even in the Arena at the Albert Hall.



At Covent Garden recently, I sat near a bunch of kids, obviously 'doing drama' somewhere (I don't think Brecht is on the syllabus these days) who'd been, by the look of it, dragooned in to seeing Mahagonny. I was actually very keen on Brecht when I was at school and at about the same age. But they couldn't wait to get their thumbs on their iPhones. And I didn't spot them again, not even for Il Turco in Italia, which they might well have found funnier, and even a bit 'relevant'.


It would, of course, be great if the Albert Hall was flooded with teens and twenties, but it is not going to happen via Pete Tong or Mista Jam. Nor, I think, through 'ten easy bite-size pieces' that any youngster will have heard on Classic FM if they actually listened to it.