Bath International Music festival 2007

We have been able to attend five of the amazing plethora of concerts this year and they have included a superb piano recital from Imogen Cooper, playing Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert; a double bill of the soul singer Mavis Staples and Motown music from Jazz Jamaica; songs from June Tabor; Jazz from the Mingus Big Band and a brilliant concert from the London Symphony Orchestra Brass section. An eclectic selection, as the whole programme has been this year, once more under the inspired direction of the multi-talented Joanna MacGregor. Again we have wished that the city had a concert hall worthy of the festival.

Last night we were in Bath Abbey for a quite extraordinary concert given by the excellent Bath Camerata and the Paco Pena Company. It was a Spanish night to remember. In the first half, and after an interlude from Paco Pena on the guitar, the Camerata sang 14th. Century music, including songs by de Morales, Guerrero and Victoria, the cool, pure sound echoing throughout the Abbey. There was, however, nothing ethereal about the rest of the concert.

The second half of the programme was devoted to a performance of Pena’s remarkable Missa Flamenco by the combined forces of the Camerata and the Pena Company. Commissioned by a Festival in Cracow, Poland in 1988, the work unites traditional flamenco dancing and singing with the familiar words of the Mass in a Spanish translation. Pena says (on his excellent website) that ‘there is a tribal pulse in flamenco that touches something in people’s souls’. Last night we and a packed audience joined the tribe!

Pena’s roots are in Cordoba’s flamenco and catholic culture, and his aim in this work is to unite both, and on this hearing his intention is triumphantly realised. It was an event, an experience, an emotional tornado to be in the Abbey last night. We were amongst the many who couldn’t see the performers, tucked away as we were in the choir stalls. Even so just hearing the music and the sounds of the dancing was enough to involve us, and as we heard the final ‘Amen’s, like many others we moved nearer to the centre of the building so that we could see the delighted performers as they received an ovation and responded with an encore.

Passion, art, music, religion in harmony. What a night!

B.R.

Daniel Barenboim (1942- )

Barenboim has had a remarkable career. He made his debut as a pianist in Vienna and Rome when he was only ten years old and in the next three years had performed in Paris, London and New York. He made his first recording in 1954 and subsequently recorded all the Mozart sonatas and concertos, the Beethoven concertos (twice) and the Brahms and Bartok concertos. But then – and we have met this before - he moved on to a complementary career. He conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in London for the first time in 1967 and was soon invited to conduct many of the great European and American orchestras. He has been director of the Orchestre de Paris, in 1981 conducted Wagner at Bayreuth and has served as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and of the Berlin State Opera, now its conductor ‘for life’. Last year he was named as the principal guest conductor of La Scala Opera in Milan.

In 2004 Barenboim won the annual Wolf Prize. Awarded to living scientists and artists for ‘achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations among people’, the ceremony was filmed as part of the Divan documentary. Looking tense in the crowded Parliament building, Barenboim in accepting the award reminded people that the Israeli Declaration of Independence is based ‘ on freedom, justice and peace…irrespective of religion, race or sex’, contrasting it with Israeli’s treatment of Palestine. Furious with this unexpected response the Israeli Minister of Education stood up and said that the awarding panel was divided on whether it should grant the prize to Barenboim. She had been against it, and was now angry at his ‘attack on the State of Israel’. Quietly he responded that there had been no ‘attack’, but a wish to draw attention to the contrast between precept and politics.

Barenboim is a humanitarian of the first order. He was the Reith Lecturer of 2006. (Interestingly his friend Edward Said had given the 1993 Lectures). He spoke (in various different cities) on the theme ‘In the beginning was Sound’. We heard some of them and felt that we were meeting a civilised and cultured man of great warmth and distinction. You can hear the lectures on one of the BBC websites. Barenboim is a free spirit in an age of closed minds, and his musicianship and values are to be treasured and honoured by all who care for beauty and justice.

B.R.

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

I have just seen the deeply moving film ‘Knowledge is the Beginning’. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra was set up in 1999 as an expression in music of the peace that eludes the Middle East, and the film follows the fortunes of the orchestra from its inception to 2005. It was the brainchild of the late Palestinian academic and activist Edward Said and the renowned pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, born of Russian Jewish parents in Argentina. Their close friendship was itself a symbol of human solidarity across ethnic and religious barriers. Members of the orchestra are young musicians from Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Spain and together they have performed in a variety of European cities. Sevilla was one of these, significant to Barenboim and Said because of its ability to accommodate and honour Jews, Moslems and Christians during the early medieval period when the Spanish monarchy welcomed diversity.

The climax of the tour was a performance in Ramallah. It took more than two years for members of the orchestra to come to terms with such an idea and the logistics of organising travel for so mnay different nationalities was complicated. Spain came to the rescue when Prime Minister Zapatero issued all the players with Spanish passports. The authorities refused permission for Israeli members to fly to Palestine, so the players separated, travelling to different airports. The Israeli members arrived on the day of the concert in a fleet of patrol cars and were whisked away after the concert was over. This was the first time the orchestra had performed in the Middle East, and it was a tremendous success as well as a memorable event.

Throughout the fascinating documentary, members of the orchestra gave their views of the experience they were sharing and their hopes for the future. Most of them were cautious but positive about the possibilities of peace. Hearing their belief in the future against the civic implosion of Palestine in the last few days, was a poignant reminder of the apparent hopelessness of a conflict that seems to have no end. Until there is knowledge there can be no understanding is the powerful message of the film which is full of the most glorious music-making. See it if you can. There is a DVD.

B.R.

More about Daniel Barenboim next time…..

Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

It has taken years for Elgar to outlive his reputation as a provincial composer famous only for his ceremonial music: Edward by name and Edwardian by nature. Certainly he had little musical education and emotionally belonged to the Malvern Hills of his childhood. He learned his exceptional skills as he composed, and as he taught and played the violin and the organ. He had social ambitions to move beyond his comparably humble origins (his father owned a music shop), and to be accepted as a major composer. His middle years brought him fame but he died a disappointed man, feeling that he was still without the fame he deserved.

Roy Hattersley in his book ‘The Edwardians’, recalls the mixed welcome given to the first performance of ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ and Elgar’s poignant response. ‘I have worked for forty years and, at the last Providence denies me a decent hearing of my work. ..I ask for no reward, only to live and hear my work.’ Elgar had strong friendships (several of them featured in his first popular work, ‘Enigma Variations’) a good marriage, offers for professorships overseas, and many opportunities to conduct his music (much of it still available on disc).

But he reveals in his music an unmistakable sadness, true perhaps of his character. However whatever battles he fought in himself they were transformed into music that is both hopeful and joyous, and much of it profoundly moving. The tear-laden larghetto movement of his second symphony is for me one of the supreme moments in all music. His symphonies have the stature of Bruckner’s but without that composer’s tendency to divide his music into episodes. There’s a seamless unity about Elgar’s greatest works and although he repeats motifs again and again, each time he does so there is something fresh to say. His brilliant orchestral virtuosity is based on the use of traditional resources unlike many other composers at the turn of the century, but with an unmistakable individuality. A friend who is an amateur conductor once said to me ‘the players love his music because he gives everyone something to do’.

I have just bought a five disc collection of Elgar’s music published and played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and containing all his major orchestral works as well as ‘Sea Pictures’ sung in a performance by the incomparable Janet Baker. Sheer delight and long after the music is over it continues in my head! Michael Kennedy on the Philharmonia Orchestra’s website writes that after his death Elgar’s music went out of fashion. ‘But in the 1960’s the tide began to turn and more than ever before he was regarded as the greatest English composer since Purcell.The tide is still coming in'.

B.R.

Second Anniversary

This is the 114th posting in this series and it marks the end of our second year. The first forty one blogs began with ‘Sounding Off’ on 3rd May 2005 and were all about Spanish music and artists. We then moved on to the wider musical scene, with my personal reflections on particular concerts I have been to, and sharing my enthusiasm for composers and artists for whose music I have a special affection. Even so, we kept on returning to our origins, and scattered around there are additional postings on Spanish themes such as Gitano music and music sung on the pilgrim way to Santiago, with return visits to Rodrigo, Albeniz and Domingo, as well as three reflections on nationalism in music. The number of people who visit us suggests that I am not just talking to myself. Thank you for ‘listening’. Comments are always welcome.

It must be obvious to anyone reading these blogs that I am no expert, although since we started on them I have learned quite a lot. But appreciation doesn’t have to be the same as knowledge, and in the end I belong to the ‘ I know what I like’ sort of musical enthusiast, although recognising that there is always something new to learn. For example I have always found Johann Sebastian Bach difficult to appreciate. He just seems to go on and on – technically brilliant, to me he has often felt emotionally dry, although I know aficionados of his music would cry ‘shame’ on such a judgement. But a few days ago I heard the master-pianist Murray Perahia play his Partita No.2 in C minor and was overwhelmed by its crystalline beauty. Hearing it was a benediction; a deeply moving, cleansing and purifying experience. It demands of me that I now listen to Bach with a less prejudiced ear.

There is a considerably more significant anniversary in a month’s time. Edward Elgar was born on June 2nd. 1857. The 150th anniversary is being marked by a surge of performances of his music. In Birmingham, for example. His oratorio ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ was given its first - under-rehearsed- performance there, and making reparation for that poor beginning, the City of Birmingham Orchestra and Chorus are performing the work in Symphony Hall on June 1st. As if that wasn’t enough they are also performing his other less well- known oratorios, ‘The Apostles’ and ‘The Kingdom’ on the two following nights. Some marathon!

More about Elgar next time.

B.R.