An equal partnership, full of felicity

This is a review of a gig given by Tommy Smith (tenor) and Brian Kellock (piano)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

6 June

This is a (delayed) review of a gig given at The Stables, Wavendon, by Tommy Smith and Brian Kellock on Tuesday 2 June at 8.00 p.m.

The jazz world / market remains a dazzlingly small one, and no disrespect to Stacey Kent’s enchantingly quirky vocal-style, but there is no way that the ticket-price of her gig at The Stables (on 1 July) – at Wavendon, on the outskirts of Milton Keynes (@stablesMK) – should be £9.00 more than that for someone of the class of Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith ! Let alone excellently partnered – as they have played together for some years – by pianist Brian Kellock. (More, if one considers that an announcement offering two tickets for the price of one had been made.)

Where else to be on a Tuesday night if not @StablesMK ? Tommy Smith and Brian Kellock for just £12.50 ! pic.twitter.com/IBWSW7I3DU

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 2, 2015

Staff of The Stables, talking about the gig beforehand and the fact that it was two sets of fifty minutes, seemed puzzled that it was piano and sax, not a trio – they had clearly not figured that a jazz trio is, typically, piano with bass and drums, whereas it is larger groupings, from a quartet upwards, where one has a voice (human or instrumental, since clarinets, saxes, trumpets, trombones, flutes, etc., have much in common with our voices), or a pair of such voices.


The gig tended to alternate slower / quieter numbers with livelier / faster ones, and the first transition needed to bed down, after a number by Michel Legrand (he had a piece in each set, as did hits for Glenn Miller). For there is something banal about ‘I want to be happy’* (from Tea for Two), and, after quite a right-ahead statement of it, the duo took a time to work their magic, before getting it away into jazzified territory : they did it, because they can do anything, but the shock of the new did not subside straightaway.

After that, and with Hoagy Carmichael given an elaborate piano introduction of that dizzying kind, where one can both not catch the tune or even confidently state any more what ‘Stardust’ should sound like, they treated the repertoire as raw material for their ever-inventive treatments.

Third up to-night at @StablesMK, Tommy Smith and Brian Kellockwith HoagyCarmichael's Stardust - one deserving of being shared with someone

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 2, 2015

At times, they came very close to home, sweetly rendering the melody, but, with the same reverence, embellishing, enlivening and abandoning all but its shape. Both men have a strong rhythmic quality to their playing**, not just, with Brian Kellock, elements of boogie-woogie, blues or stride, but in their phrasing, and in fitting so well together, though both are – from the harmonics and note-pattern of their chosen standards – creating before us, with and through their practised feel for chordal variation / progression, and changing accentuation.


If the staff at The Stables had been worried about any lack of difference, from piece to piece, in the sound of a duo, they need not have been – standard orchestral playing can easily be less varied than that of a small ensemble, if one is attuned to the dynamics, pace and resources of chamber musicians :

In December 2014, hearing Jan Garbarek, majestic again with The Hilliard Ensemble*** , one reflected on his distinctive sound-quality, sharp in a sort of way that maybe (as we know it to be so ?) suggests Scandinavian – and what it is that gives those players who have their own voice a tone that is all theirs, even if, of course, it will be cast in a variety of hues. Sound-production is always going to be subject to a number of factors, but, with Garbarek, it is only partly his attack, and more, at the heart of it, how he breathes with the instrument, and infuses his phrasing with the felt physicality of the breath.

Calling Tommy Smith’s tone ‘straight’ might sound as if it implies that he is square, but consider the word in phrases such as He looked at me straight or In a straight-ahead linking passage, and think again. Nothing simple / simplistic in what he does, but a clear and candid way of delivery that gets right to the point, and, bringing to his approach, a wealth of skill and experience that lets him place juxtapositions of register, breath-quality, intensity and feeling with strong, intuitive assurance.


Something that Tommy Smith did in one piece, very atmospherically, was directing the sound of his tenor into the body of the piano. At first just so that his playing came off the lid onto the strings, but, later, pointing the outlet from the horn onto the strings, and even with the bell of his instrument inside the frame.


During the interval and quick to get to the foyer, one found Tommy Smith, all ready to sign CDs for just £10 (and Brian Kellock soon joined him). He was asked about his breathing, because his breath-control and the way that, sometimes almost speaking, he breathes through his sax had been a joy to witness. As he was going to say in the second set about the ensembles that he had been playing with (from a quartet to new compositions with a symphony orchestra, where he needed to use a harder reed), as well as that talk of directing his sound into the piano, he answered that it depends what one is playing and with whom. But he was very alive to the idea of someone watching him as he played, breathing through these longer phrases, and having wondered how he did that.

When we resumed, we were told that some had come up, made themselves known, and bought CDs and got them signed, so we were also given an explanation of the title of the new one, Whispering of the Stars – not a piece of vanity that the pair are stars, but how, in the North of Norway (where Tommy Smith apparently spends some time), the effect of exhaling into the cold air is described.


We were also told us a little more about blowing into an open piano :

* As a twelve-year-old at a school in Edinburgh that did not have many resources, there had been the stringed frame (no more) of a piano on the wall, and Tommy Smith had liked playing notes at it (which, he swiftly revealed, had been the opening ones of the only tune that he knew, the ‘Pink Panther’ theme)

* In a concert with The Stables’ own Sir John Dankworth to celebrate 150 years of the sax (so in 1991 ?), he had a piece for eight saxes, JD and his Eight Dwarves, but also a solo piece, likewise played with a pianist (but in the dark), and also into the body of the piano – which was reported in the press as having used a synthesizer...

* Brian Kellock, he observed, had been using moments of opportunity to determine his use of the sustaining pedal


Come a second Gershwin song, ‘They can’t take that away from me’, it seemed (he was not quite clear) that Brian Kellock might have heard Tommy Smith sing at some point, when the latter admitted that he did not know the words anyway. (Behind, and unheard on stage, a woman said The way you wear your hat.) In the light of this observation, it was curious that Tommy Smith chose to tell us that he was puzzled by what the title might mean, for, in fact, the lyrics are plain enough : the song must have a context, where, even if one separates a couple, the memory of qualities that one observed in, or of experiences with, the other cannot be negated (I’ll miss your fond caress).

What, if permitted, would have made a great photograph was Tommy Smith, standing the base of the bell of his sax on the floor, and leaning on the neck, during an extended piano solo. After the gig, one joked with them about the longest that he had had to wait, and Brian Kellock quipped As long as possible !

In the first set, one could see Tommy Smith, with respect tinged with amusement, look down the length of the instrument, under the lid, for an indication from his colleague – it did come, but it was a long time coming, both times, as the other really got absorbed by his solo, and away into a distant fairway, from which he yet came back.


They finished with nothing as late as a tune from 1927 (Tommy Smith had managed to suggest, earlier, that one’s relation to a date subsequent to one’s birth made a song from that year not earlier, but a later one), but from around five hundred years ago, whose title, in Gaelic, he did not try to pronounce. The meditative tone of the piece and its playing brought the gig to a different type of close, where each, as we applauded, could celebrate the other’s artistry and the whole evening.


On leaving The Stables, they were getting into their hire-car (Tommy Smith behind the wheel), so they were saluted – next stop was Brighton, and one wished them well for that.


End-notes

* Which Tommy Smith was getting at, in the second set, when talking about musicals and ‘The Surrey with the Fringe on Top’ (from Oklahoma (Rodgers and Hammerstein)) : revealingly, given that he has even less reason to be called what he is than Chick Corea** (Tommy Smith is not his real name), he told us that he had had to watch his uncle in Les Misérables, as Jean Valjean, fifteen times, because he had been in the show as many times (although he begged to see the backstage effects on the last occasion...).

We also learnt that he had been forced, in childhood, to side with his father against a maternal predisposition towards The Stylistics, and (to which Tommy Smith ascribed a painful side) The Twist, in favour of Glenn Miller and other jazz influences, so we had a lively take on a well-known Miller number :

@THEAGENTAPSLEY @StablesMK Wonderful gig- beat my chattanoogoo choochoo into a cocked hat! Lovely to meet you.

— Rosey Fergusson (@roseyfergusson) June 3, 2015

** Especially so in a Rumba by Chick Corea called Armando, which, as was rightly suggested, is his Christian name ('Chick' is a nickname that has stuck, not uniquely in jazz).

*** In their final collaboration, and also in the concert after which the singers were to cease being a vocal quartet : until one first saw them, it was barely credible that just four men could produce such a rich and consistent texture.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Kafka, killing, and punishment

This is a Festival review of A Short Film about Killing (1988)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

17 May

This is a Festival review of A Short Film about Killing (Krótki film o zabijaniu) (1988), as screened at Saffron Screen’s (@Saffronscreen’s) Polish Film Festival on Saturday 16 May 2015 (which is held to celebrate ten years of establishing community cinema in Saffron Walden ?)

The film was introduced by Dr Stanley Bill, from the Faculty of Modern and Mediaeval Languages at the University of Cambridge, who drew attention to two people who had been instrumental in its making : its cinematographer (Slawomir Idziak) and composer (Zbegniew Preisner, who has written for other films by Krzysztof Kieślowski*), the former for his use of filters in front of the lens, the latter for his self-taught style and beautiful melodies.

After A Short Film about Killing, some conversation took place with Dr Bill (and Andrew Atter) about the death penalty**. It appears that there is no definitive version of the film’s relevance to what happened in Poland : in one, it may have done no more than fitting in with the Zeitgeist, whereas, in the other (reported in the Festival’s leaflet), it was instrumental in creating it, first through a moratorium, then as part of a post-Soviet identification with, and desire to join, the EU.

Be that as it may… but is any perceived weakness in the film’s juxtaposition of state and individual killing just because one might assume that Jacek should previously have told Piotr what he does in the prison cell (as if it would, or could, have made a difference, as an exculpation for what had been done – please see below), whereas the fact is that (although the trial judge praises the speech) we do not ever hear what the latter said, in the former’s defence and against the death penalty, and for the failure to avoid the latter of which Piotr blames himself ?

If one knows about the law (as Kieślowski’s co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz also did), although we are told (by the prosecutor, in his narrative prior to the judgement being carried out ?) that the case had gone to appeal, and that a higher authority had not granted a pardon, it is extremely unlikely that a fledgling barrister such as such as Piotr (Krzysztof Globisz) would have handled those further stages : in fact, everything is consistent with what Jacek (Miroslaw Baka) tells him, that he asked for Piotr to be present, because the sole part of the judicial process that had registered with Jacek was his name being called from the court building just before he was driven away. A dual purpose is served, of course, not only that Piotr hears Jacek out, and wants to defy the inevitable, but that his being there point up the inhumanity and the horrible reality of the sentence : his opposition is symbolic, but what, when seeking admission as a barrister, he had said to the Bar committee about criminal penalties (not least capital ones) not being a deterrent is borne out by Jacek Łazar’s own case [does the name denote the word for ‘leper’, connote Lazarus in the New Testament ?].


The film, not just polemically (for we are free to make our own mind up), juxtaposes our notions of crime and punishment : as Dr Bill agrees, we are not a little reminded of Dostoyevsky (even if there seems to be more redemption in pre-Soviet Siberia than in Soviet-era Poland), and opinions may differ about what ‘sentimental’ means as a description. Piotr Balicki’s stance against the judicial machine may be emotional / polemical, but his defiance (as Christ’s is, before Pilate ?) is in words, not actions – maybe, on reflection, we are reminded of, and hope for, what happens in Kafka’s ‘In der Strafkolonie’, where the Explorer’s not so much disagreeing with as failing to endorse*** the Officer’s justification for fitting the punishment to the crime upsets the regime, albeit bloodily and crudely.

In handling and taking as its text Thou shalt not kill [better rendered as ‘murder’ ?], the film is tied to two dates, 17 March [1986 ?] and 27 April 1987, both of which link Jacek and Piotr – or, as we see him in his celebrations on that day, Piotrek (the diminutive by which his girlfriend calls him). With a different, though not wholly dissimilar, aesthetic of connectedness to that of James Joyce, commemorating 16 June 1904 in Ulysses****, A Short Film about Killing shows how, at the moment when Piotr’s reflections over coffee are being coloured by negativity at the thought of what he might have to bear in his professional life, Jacek, who has been cursed by the gypsy woman whom (in a catalogue of bad-mindedness, by him and others) he had rudely rejected, turns his mind to murder (heralded by sinister tones in Preisner’s score) :

The word ‘reflection’ is where we began the film, with the confusing image of a building seeming to rotate and twist as we see it in the glass of the door that Waldemar Rekowski (Jan Tesarz) opens and closes (maybe as Jacek’s own heart and soul are shown doing, as work is found around town for his idle hands, be it frightening the pigeons, or edging a stone forward, as if were just obeying gravity in an accident ?). And, as Dr Bill had mentioned that we might notice, in the cinematography can be seen occlusions of part of the frame*****, but also how the light on the buildings, even of the housing estate, becomes a sort of golden sepia, and the sky, particularly, seems perpetually that of sunset – culminating, after the killing, in a halo of bright sunlight, as if of some unholy transfiguration (in which we might identify Georg Büchner and his revolutionary play Woyzeck ?), before the sombre, washed tones of court-room and prison.

There are hints, here, at Jacek’s mental state, but maybe knowing of the events that had led to the death of his younger sister Marysia would not, as the law stood then in Poland, have afforded him the help of pleading diminished responsibility : Kieślowski does not dwell on the moment, but, when Jacek finds Beatka [with a name that seems to connote blessedness / saintliness, just coincidentally the girl who interested Waldemar and to whom he made a suggestive offer ?], his ideas about what they can do, now that he has acquired a car (and whoever exactly they are to each other), may have lucidity, but they betray that it is in fantasy that he has found a solution to their problems.

Think of capital punishment as a fit one as one may, or as a deterrent, but it may not have been a fit one here, where no one in Jacek’s place would have been contemplating the actual consequences of his actions.

People have claimed that, to A Short Film about Killing (Krótki film o zabijaniu) (1988), they prefer the hour-long version that forms part of Dekalog :

It's where I started, but I cannot agree with them - there is just too much going on to be limited to that length. pic.twitter.com/loobwqOgri

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 5, 2018

End-notes

* As well as the Dies Irae for The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza) (2013).

** Only abolished in the UK, and in living memory, by the efforts of Victor Gollancz, Arthur Koestler and other campaigners – however well known it may be that Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged, relatively few seem to know that this cessation was not merely something that happened (and by no means overnight).

*** Respectively, they are der Reisende and der Offizier : well Kafka knew how (as also in, for example, ‘Das Urteil’) to portray ego-states in all their fragility. So much so, that we almost easily credit that his own personality was of this kind, or else that he was always foreseeing crushing bureaucracies – as if, despite what Alan Bennett wishes to tell us in The Insurance Man, Kafka did not work as a lawyer for The Workers’ Accident Insurance Office. Or even foreshadowing Nazi horrors (as if what The Third Reich resorted to was scarcely unfamiliar to Eastern Europe ?).

**** Albeit one which is more akin to that of Michael Haneke’s films from The Seventh Continent (1989) onwards, or to that of Cloud Atlas (2012).

***** Over coffee with his girlfriend, and when she carries out a palm-reading (the service offered by the gypsy woman, but rejected), we see Piotr’s and her brows shielded by a dark bar at the top of the frame, as he tries to contemplate the future.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Soprano and conductor : Barbara Hannigan at Saffron Hall (Part I)

This is a review of Britten Sinfonia with conductor / soloist Barbara Hannigan

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 May (updated / completed in draft 12 May)

This is a review (in progress) of a concert given at Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW) by Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia), conducted by – and with soprano solos from – Barbara Hannigan, on Saturday 9 May at 7.30 p.m.

In this concert, the two halves had a strange symmetry : an overture (by Mozart), timed at five minutes, an aria lasting nine minutes, and two works for full orchestra of twenty-four minutes, which yield prime factors of 2, 3 and 5…


Part I :

* Mozart ~ Overture to Idomeneo

* Stravinsky ~ Excerpt from The Rake’s Progress (Act 1, Scene 3 : Anne’s scene)

* Haydn ~ Symphony No. 49 in F Minor (nicknamed La Passione)


We began excitingly with Mozart, in the overture to Idomeneo, where – right from the opening – conductor Barbara Hannigan gave us a sense of delayed gratification by using suspension, holding back on the grandeur that we were to come to, complete with a Mozartian trill. Those who know Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia), and its principal bassoonist Sarah Burnett, will not have been surprised at how effortlessly she contributed to the texture, and when her playing came effortlessly forward for a little solo passage, which caught the mood nicely.

All in all, Hannigan brought out an explosive quality in Mozart, but also a brittleness, not least in the restatement of the opening material, when we had shrill tones from the twin flutes (and we were to hear quite a bit more, and fully as skilfully, from Claire Wickes and Sarah O’Flynn). In the closing cadences, and for full effect, Hannigan held back, but also, with arm aloft, allowed the Sinfonia, polished as ever, to step straight into the operatic excerpt that followed, and make it all of a piece* :

This provided, amidst the woodwind sonorities and Sarah Burnett’s beautiful presence and tone-quality, a pleasant sudden welcome into Stravinsky’s asiatically influenced sound-world – and a moment of contrast before Hannigan entered as soloist in this libretto (co-written by Auden with Chester Kallman). Charged words, which, as Hannigan utters them, seek a status both for her as Anne, and – inter-relatedly – for her relations with Tom (absent, but whom she feels obliged to contemplate and address).

Momentarily (and most like his ‘appropriations’), Stravinsky seems to echo Copland’s incidental music for Quiet City (typically known as reduced in a discrete composition for trumpet, cor anglais and string orchestra). This, just before, and to devastating effect, we were brought to the point of Hannigan’s voice alone, and with the pivotal words thou art a colder moon, where Anne’s mood, and convictions, change : which (we surely know, even without knowing the piece as a whole) are likely to threaten her future.

The strings become active again, with an evocation of the night, and – as Hannigan gave us I go, I go to him, whose repeated words both stressed determination, and making resolute a hesitant spirit – a gentle parp from the brass. By the time of the closing sentiments, we had the full effect of the massed desks of woodwind and brass at the rear (twelve players in an orchestra of around two score), and, as Hannigan meditated on the words that self-reinforcingly locked Anne into her course of action, there was an invocation of earlier settings about the unconditionality of love, such as John Hilton’s of ‘If it be love’. Even as we had these words, the scene concluded with a vigorous up-beat :

Love cannot falter, cannot desert.
It will not alter a loving heart
It cannot alter an ever loving heart



Haydn’s Symphony No. 49 in F Minor is not only, if not much performed, at least recently much broadcast on Radio 3 (@BBCRadio3), and one, of all works in a minor key, to wear it relatively easily, albeit starting with a slow movement :

1. Adagio
2. Allegro di molto
3. Menuet e Trio
4. Finale : Presto


That said, and even including a live transmission by this line-up earlier in the week, it is a work that can easily sound safely repeatable, almost homogeneously generic**. Not so at Saffron Hall on Saturday night !


The first movement, described by Jo Kirkbride in her programme-notes as in the style of sonata di chiesa, was characterized in Hannigan’s interpretation as quiet and inward, with a refreshingly sparing use of accents. When the horns came in, gloriously, the watchword was still restraint, and, by breathing with the music (as if with the flow of an aria) and being true to the calling of the heart, she had us wanting more, with a yearning for how the music next unfolded.

As yet, the central performer – literally, in the form of Maggie Cole (at the harpsichord keyboard), facing forward from within the ensemble – had not figured, but, when she made her entry, its unforced naturalness, and the way in which Hannigan was responsive to the tone and style of Cole’s cadences, brought us to the point where – though still deliberately kept a little separate from the full underlying feeling – we were feelingly aware of its closeness, and ready when the lovely sonorities of woodwind and brass came through.

This is one of those pieces where, ideally subtly altered (as with a da capo aria – working with whose form is not, of course, an inessential part of Hannigan’s métier), the material comes back, again and again : did we feel elegance, which maybe subsumed desire (needing to stay hidden), and, next, that feelings have come to a point of being tempted to believe in themselves ? Perhaps, for such words are, at best, indications of what the best of music will sometimes only hint at. What one can state, though, is that Cole’s playing evoked the beauty of the ensemble-writing, through her contributions to the texture.


Right from the opening gesture of the Allegro di molto, Hannigan made a feature of the cross-accents that came prior to the rich, full sound of the orchestra at large, and – making a link to the preceding Mozart – the lightness and brightness of the writing : all of this, necessarily, had been set up by the careful handling of the Adagio. For, many versions of this symphony turn it into terrace dynamics, but Hannigan showed us a more complex angularity in the score, and it worked so well just to see, and catch, string-entries, made very slightly ahead of each other, by divided first and second violins.

This is another movement that goes around and around, but one that allowed Cole, once again, to enter in a way that was essential to the whole, letting us sense ‘the opening up’ of the Allegro, more and more. Thus, Cole first brought to the harpsichord part subtle variations in her attack, and, at other times, an impression that it was aswirl (but mixed in with a woodwind and brass that were more measured), and then fed that latter sensation into the sharpness with which we revisited earlier matter.


With a superbly rendered bassoon-line from Burnett, Barbara Hanningan set the Menuet’s sustained notes in the realm of stateliness, but with Cole then emphasizing the tender detail in the continuo writing. In this movement, what was particularly noticeable was that, in passing from woodwind to strings, there was no loss in transmission : not just that we heard a smooth transfer of the material, but that the line within the music was part of the communication, or itself, in some way, was the communication.

And, if we truly heard, there was the care with which the performance was heightened by maintaining us, through the well-executed precision of the Sinfonia players, slightly apart from what might have been (and all too often is) simply overt and immediate in the sound and emotion of this work. Almost inevitably, Maggie Cole’s voiced keyboard-playing continued to be integral to the experience, with a sense that one note was speaking to, and informed by, the next – just as with communication of musical lines within the orchestra, but at a level beyond even phrasing, or shaping, to why each note was there, had to be there***.

When we came into the Trio section, Cole approached her part with a quality as of recitative, with the whole movement very balanced : elements of ebb and flow in the continuo were carefully juxtaposed with the rest of the ensemble, and we had an overall sense of both a pulse within the music, and of its gracefulness.


Although the Finale had been described rather differently by Tom Redmond, hosting the Radio 3 live broadcast, Hannigan imbued the Presto with what sounded like impatience, but tempered by tutti that were determined to present themselves as much more matter of fact (again, that sort of face saving from earlier ?). Amidst all of which, we had snatches of the real feeling, beneath the nerve-laden energy : this playing and conducting of Haydn came across, unlike what had been heard broadcast, as having understood the work anew.

Indeed, one had little desire to watch what Hannigan was doing – as, with some conducting, one can be drawn into thinking important – so much as to be aware of what was brought forth from the instrumentalists, and also of the gradations, inflexions and tone-colours given (not least by Maggie Cole) to this familiar score. Whether it was using the power in the sustained oboe and bassoon notes, or having clearly worked with Cole to make the continuo role a living and emergent one, this was the insightful conclusion of three works that had spoken to each other (as is by no means unusual to find in Britten Sinfonia’s concerts) :

In fact, such was the engagement with the meaning of the work (rather than its mere form) that being at the end actually came almost as a surprise, as well as a welcome time to be able to show one’s appreciation.


A concluding part of the review, in a separate posting, to come…



End-notes

* Respected by the audience at this point, by not starting to applaud, whereas it sadly was not after the second Mozart overture, which obliged Hannigan to take a bow, and go off stage, when one sensed that, in this same way, she had wanted to show us something by linking it, mood for mood, with one of his concert arias (from later in that decade) :

-> Fair enough that there is a role for setting off the applause, but it must also be in sustaining it until - not much beyond - that bow.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 9, 2015

** Of course, being in the auditorium would have made some difference, but that performance just did not have a spark of the especial kind that would have one picture oneself there to hear it : actually, it gave one trepidation about what one might hear four days later…

*** Somewhere, there is a link (to come) to the masterclass, with The Doric Quartet, that Murray Perahia gave for CRASSH in Cambridge (@CRASSHlive, the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities), where he talked about how one chord relates to the next in Beethoven's writing for string quartet : for the moment, this blog posting must suffice.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

We close every Thursday afternoon [Emma ~ 1975, Scene Three]

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

8 May

With them...

A 150-word story for Mark Brown

[and all that he and so many do for mental-health difficulty]

Whatever it was that they did have, what was almost more important – with them, for their story – had been 'non-events'. Then, spirits of impossibility and inopportunity had been accorded oversight : 


Their not kissing (when, hurriedly, they first might have kissed)... before that (through fright – at what might be ?), choosing not to be there at all (when first they could have met)... even before that, The Fates intervening (to prevent what should have been a less-knowing meeting – just as 'awkward' for being so ?)...


Painting oneself into a corner ? Hardly a lyrical, poetic image (redolent more of Stan and Ollie ?) of them and theirs – yet is it one that speaks of, and into, the implausibility, the notion of the unimaginable, made solid by words, by the voice ?


Made too fleshly solid (for their co-produced impracticability, unreality ?) for the first real event, though booked, to evade the intractability of being a last non-event.


© Belston Night Works 2015



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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

The Izzie Poems (Part V*)

This is : A Poem for Izzie and Iggy

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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4 May (Postlude added, 4 October ; plus, from a Tweet, two haikus, 13 October)

A Poem for Izzie and Iggy

What you devoutly shared,
You might still have shared –
Not as lovers’ secrets,
But as thoughts, open
And showing your care


A clear communion,
As between one speck –
From another world – and
One more, made kindred
By shared origin ?


Or do ‘the poets pipe
Of love’ childishly ? :
Gawain, elevating
His slight dalliance,
Because he is famed… ?



© Belston Night Works 2015


Postlude :

To the tune of : My Lady Isabella's Jig so obsessed was she, with herself, that she overlooked how she turned him off

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 3, 2015

Twinned traitors

He enjoys stories
Of her dark, sexy exploits
With the other men

It makes the sex sharp,
And fine, that he might hit her –
For what he'd allowed


Succubus

Sucking your nipples
Till you came (or seemed to come... ?)
Accorded prowess :

Flattery's efforts
Let you worm in warming hope –
Which you could then crush


End-notes

* These are the other Parts : Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

The Izzie Poems (Part IV*)

This is : A Poem for Iggy II

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

4 May

A Poem for Iggy II

Stardust sounds so much fun,
Unlike, dear Iggy,
Major Tom, dutiful,
The protein-pill man,
Making all the grades


Louis chirp-states Stardust,
Before throatily
Drawling – with scat notes –
Out the melody’s
Lines, lovingly so


Even when Stéphane
Sends smiles through the song***,
Stardust is more dust, still,
Than Star-Shine Bright,
From another world



© Belston Night Works 2015


End-notes

* These are the other Parts : Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part V.

On @YouTube, though, StéphaneGrappelligives us another take on Stardust : http://t.co/hjfc37HWXM

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 4, 2015


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

The Izzie Poems (Part III*)

This is : A Poem for Iggy I

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

3 May

A Poem for Iggy I

Iggy Not-Quite-Stardust,
And Not-Much-Spaceman,
Crash-landed – with his craft –
In that southern Sea
Of Isabella


Gravity’s attractions,
Notwithstanding strong,
Quite unsecondary –
In that descent, swift
To Isabella


Hush, said Isabella,
Whisht, whispered then he :
For he did not un-know,
But knew, knew anew,
Through Isabella


© Belston Night Works 2015



End-notes

* These are the other Parts : Part I, Part II, Part IV, and Part V.

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

The Izzie Poems (Part I*)

This is : A Poem for Izzie I

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

1 May

A Poem for Izzie I

Sounds, in the air, sound our hearts,
Find out the longing that stays
Silent, the more that we say,
Cramming the air that departs
Our vacant lips


Lips, lips that touch, touch our soul,
Deepen the yearning that knows,
Silent, the way that we go,
Parting the halves of the whole
Within our mind


Mind, in two minds, not to be,
Seeking the loving that binds,
Silent, the ones who are kind,
Healing the wounds on the tree
That living inflicts


© Belston Night Works 2015




End-notes

* These are the other Parts : Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

The Izzie Poems (Part II*)

This is : A Poem for Izzie II

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

29 April (5 May, links added to other Parts)

A Poem for Izzie II

These things, once known,
We do not un-know –
But know again,
Here, where now
We sense ourselves


Our love, though new,
We know, know anew –
Till we once find,
Here, e’en here,
Where we may be


Maybe, through words,
We knew what we know –
But now see,
Here, unseen,
What now we see


© Belston Night Works 2015




End-notes

* These are the other Parts : Part I, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

An incomplete account, by Tweet, of Arcangelo's Monteverdi (Greenberg ?)

Responding, in Tweets, to Arcangelo's concert at Saffron Hall on 19 April

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

20 April

A little response, by Tweet, to the worlds within the programme that Arcangelo (@ArcangeloTeam) brought to Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW) on Sunday 19 April at 7.30 p.m.

On a technical, performance level, there is so much being said

At @yorkearlymusic, @ArcangeloTeam @SaffronHallSW ? Great wonder in these suspensions, dissonances, closes, bounded / unbounded emotions !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 20, 2015

Palettes of textures, sound-worlds, vocal contrasts are givens, but @ArcangeloTeam runs the gamut from infectious joy to affect-less lulls !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 20, 2015

Concerts as places where we can learn to listen – to living music

Not talking above its head, with techniques, theorbos, Jonathan Cohen helped an audience at @SaffronHallSW listen to @ArcangeloTeam better.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 20, 2015

The English word 'madrigals' could just sound like 'a drag' - but *madrigale*, with a gesture and gusto, soars, sings - as @ArcangeloTeam !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 20, 2015

Why this music matters to us

Monteverdi's music matters, @SaffronHallSW, as communicated by, and within, @ArcangeloTeam, because its humanity is our own - our joys, pain
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 20, 2015

With male @ArcangeloTeam singers on the @SaffronHallSW balcony, it made head sense (San Marco), but only 'sound sense' later Context is all
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 22, 2015

More Twittering to come...


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Audience stats for the week

Audience stats for this week : 10 to 17 April 2015

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

17 April

Audience stats for this week : 10 to 17 April 2015

Defining the week, as Blogger® (@Blogger) does in this case, as the period from 2.00 a.m. on 10 April to 1.00 a.m. on 17 April 2015, and as a percentage of the top ten by page-view, these countries account for this share of the audience...

United States : 83.2 %

Russia : 8.9 %

France : 3.5 %

United Kingdom : 1.7 %

Ukraine : 1.3 %


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IVB)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IVB)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 April

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IVB)

Part IVA was a preview of Beethoven, with his familiar Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major, Op. 55, which is being brought to us (at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday 11 April 2015) at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge (@CambridgeCornEx), by celebrated conductor Christoph Koenig (coupled with Elgar’s less-performed concerto, for violin and orchestra, played by Pinchas Zukerman, a truly legendary soloist) – this is a resting-place for a gratuitous Epilogue to that preview...


One will notice that the preview itself steered quite clear of the question of the (rescinded) dedication to Napoleon Buonaparte – for several reasons. One is that [the nature / meaning of] commissions or dedications, such as that which gives us the name of The Razumovsky Quartets (for the three that his Opus 59 comprises) – or, with Bach, BWV 988 and BWV 1046 to 1051 (respectively, the so-called Goldberg Variations and Brandenburg Concertos) – are sometimes pretty questionable.

What appears to be the title-page of the autograph score

Another is that it is arguably more interesting to realize of the poet whom William Wordsworth became that, from 1792 (and not for a little while afterwards), he did far more to support The French Revolution and [notions of] La République française than Beethoven probably did in, say, flirting with offering his work in progress to Napoleon (what does this actually tell us about the 3rd ?)*.

The last, and most persuasive, conjoins these points, i.e. that the music – as any music worth its name – transcends such temporal considerations : the Op. 59 quartets may have been dedicated to Razumovsky (and have sought to please / flatter him), but what does that really tell us other than about the patronage that supported Beethoven as a composer (and what scholars choose to try to read into the works on the basis of having this knowledge) ?


I should like to suggest that we might get as much understanding of this ‘Eroica’ symphony (completed in early 1804) by turning to the heroism of Leonora in Fidelio (whose character gave us no fewer than three overtures [link to, and data from, All About Ludwig van Beethoven]: No. 1, Op. 138 (1805), No. 2, Op. 72a (1805), No. 3, Op. 72b (1814).

Or by asking what impulse in Beethoven (in 1807) gave us, with another heroic (but also tragic) figure, his overture Coriolan** (Ouvertüre zu Coriolan), Op. 62 ?


End-notes

* Or, maybe, that Byron wrote an 'Ode To Napoleon Buonaparte', which Schoenberg set as his Opus 41 (initially in 1942, in versions (with narrator and piano) for string quartet, and string orchestra, the latter of which was first performed in November 1944).

** Also mentioned here, earlier in the season.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IVA)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IVA)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

8 April

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IVA)

Last year, for Part III at The Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx), our guest soloist was Noriko Ogawa in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3

Now, after that evening with The Brussels Philharmonic, we are back, on Saturday 11 April at 7.30 p.m., to The Royal Philharmonic (@rpoonline, as orchestra in residence), and to Beethoven, with his equally familiar Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major, Op. 55, brought to us by celebrated conductor Christoph Koenig (coupled with Elgar’s less-performed concerto, for violin and orchestra, played by Pinchas Zukerman, a truly legendary soloist)


A note on terminology :
As there are five Beethoven concertos for piano and orchestra, and nine symphonies, it has been my habit to think of the third of the former as ‘Beethoven 3’, and of the latter as ‘Beethoven’s 3rd’*


1. Allegro con brio
2. Marcia funebre : Adagio assai
3. Scherzo : Allegro vivace
4. Finale : Allegro molto


Unless I have been confusing which Beethoven symphonies exactly I do confuse (in which case, this preamble would not appear, as irrelevant), I always have to check myself, when chancing upon his 3rd on Radio 3 (@BBCRadio3), in case (it does matter) it is actually the 7th (or vice versa), and I can then, instead, be mentally prepared for ‘the apotheosis of the dance’ – though Wagner seemed to want to describe the whole symphony with this phrase – or, contrariwise, the 3rd’s inextricably linked Scherzo and Finale.

From the days when pocket-money bought highly physical musical artefacts

(records [LPs], with highly legible sleeves)

For the sound is, unless very strangely played, unmistakably Beethoven (as, for me, much of his orchestral oeuvre is), and unmistakably one or other of these symphonies – what probably leads to being confused (other than a history of listening – please see image above) is the preceding movement in the Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major, Op. 55, which appears second, marked Marcia funebre :

The equivalent position in Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92, though marked just Allegretto, is haunted by a motif with a definite pulse or beat. However, because it is passed around the orchestra, it is not technically an ostinato** (contrary to what Wikipedia®’s web-page suggests), yet its effect means that it might still be described as Alla marcia when at its most subdued (or even sombre) – thus, one connection with the 3rd, if not exactly so, is there in the march-like solemnity (and one gathers that the Allegretto’s appeal gave it a life separately from the 7th).

The theme from the Allegretto

It is also quite Brahmsian, twenty years before Brahms the man ever was – just, in connection with the richness of his symphonic writing, think of the orchestration, and mood, of the central section of the Allegretto of the 3rd… Before, however, the dramatic Beethovenian drop on the scale of A Minor [graphically depicted here, on YouTube (@YouTube), at around 4 : 14], the key in which this second movement is written.

Yet more is to come, for, shortly before the halfway point, and for a couple of minutes, urgent modulations, and tense fugal writing [starting at around 8 : 47 and 8 : 57, respectively, in an equivalent clip with graphics], bring in one of the most devastating pieces of writing that Beethoven was ever to conceive, with [at around 11 : 21 in that clip] a grinding, 'grungy' feeling of sawing in the lower strings, coupled with uneasy brass – a sensation that, even in the recurring brightness of the upper strings and woodwind, does not obviously subside for more than a couple of minutes, and maybe never does fully disappear before the movement's close.


Even if the Finale of the 3rd may be in sonata form***, unlike that of the 7th (in variation form), it has structural similarities, as well as quite definite swooping gestures (and accompanying whoops and whistles from the woodwind), and other jumps between octaves, that give an immense feeling of familiarity with the theme, no least when Beethoven reduces it almost an oboe.

For, thereafter, he almost teases us into paying attention to it, as he re-states it with different forces, and (reminding us of the Allegro con brio, with which the work opened****) differing the underlying rhythmic patterning – turning it, by turns, into a genteel dance, a stately procession, maybe a funereal treatment that echoes the Marcia funebre… until, that is, he abruptly, and noisily, cuts through with what soon leads to a coda, complete with threats of including dummy final closes, and false endings.

* * * * *

Finally, one may notice that this preview has quite steered clear of the question of the (rescinded) dedication to Napoleon Buonaparte – for several reasons, which, not to make this preview over-lengthy, are given elsewhere.


End-notes

* Thankfully, nothing to do with this film (from 2000), although – almost unbelievably – there were two more outings to come :

** A word to which our word ‘stubborn’ is closest, it seems, and from which, then, we derive ‘obstinate’.

*** Exactly categorizing ‘sonata form’, across the centuries, can anyway prove fiendishly difficult (let alone what one may mean by the word sonata).

**** With, heralded by subtle brass chordation (is that a word ? it is now) [at around 7 : 26 in the clip with graphics], its sudden plunge to a fragile moment of stasis [from around 7 : 54 to 8 : 02], followed, before and after some more very strikingly energetic string-writing, by wistful moods with oboe, and with very hushed strings.

As a whole, the movement also shows that Beethoven's scoring is more durable than to be lessened by the appropriation, in living memory, of the principal theme for automobile advertising…


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)