Taras Blubber

It was after a performance of Janacek's gutsy triptych of death Taras Bulba that I let slip to my friends in the audience my embarrassing condition. It's one that is shared by many other musicians and it's time to confront the stigma.



For despite our reputation for hard-nosed cynicism and lack of sentimentality, many of us are afflicted by an inclination to tearfulness at certain passages of music - and I mean real jerked tears of the most pathetic kind. It's not easy reading music through misty eyes (let alone the sheer indignity of it all) so you'd have thought it preferable to prevent it happening. But the only cure I know is to disengage from the music and go through the motions a little, robbing the performer of a uniquely intense experience. Damn you, music!

So now Taras Bulba - rather, a specific passage towards the end of the superb coda - can be added to my personal list of music to get all emotional about. This includes the end of Sibelius 2 (another coda); a 2-bar passage in Sibelius 4 (in which dread turns to hope which turns to rapture which ebbs away to desolation. 2 bars!); the end of the 1st movement of Brahms 4 (another coda!); the insane fugue in Shostakovich 4; 'Erbame dich' from Bach's St Matthew Passion.

My list could go on. But it's time for others to fess up. What's guaranteed to get your ducts to water?

Truly unbelievable

Check out this story about a £560,000 hole in the LPO's accounts. The industry can do without these characters, and there is a worrying string of these stories this year, with the alleged fraud perpetrated against the King's Music website, and Peter Maxwell Davies's agent making off with a similar sum in the approach to the composer's 75th birthday.
Equally we can do without the Evening Standard claiming the Star Wars soundtrack as one of the LPO's big successes. I mean, they have almost certainly recorded it at some point, but you don't mess with the LSO on this one:

Seminal, fluid piano

All hail the freely-tempered and hairy-armed Geoff Smith, who has battled what he describes as 'complacency, conservatism and cultural prejudice' to get the backing to develop his fluid piano. Well done Smith, the Guardian, and, we have to say, us, for getting it out there. Watch this space.

Omnes una manet Knox

It's tough, learning to play contemporary music, so those who make it a specialism are tough people. All of which clearly makes Garth Knox - for 8 years the viola player with the Arditti Quartet, former member of Boulez's Ensemble Intercontemporain, and collaborator as a soloist with contemporary composers both well-known and not - some kind of muscled brute.

But Knox is not one to keep it all to himself. As well as his diverse teaching and performing activies (which include work in dance and theatre projects), he is also the composer of Viola Spaces, a set of studies whose admirable aim is to give students a way of practising contemporary techniques. You never know, I may even get hold of a copy myself.

Anyway, on his website Knox gives some sample performances of the studies. Here's a good one:



You can also watch him (or is it John Malkovich?), together with 3 fresh-faced apostles, run through his version of Marin Marais's Les Folies d'Espagne in which each variation demonstrates one of the techniques practised in the studies.

As I said, it's tough learning to play contemporary music. But Knox's website makes it easy to create your own contemporary viola masterpiece simply by playing the examples simultaneously. I recommend setting off the Marais variations first, then turning on the studies ad libitum to create a veritable palimpsest of viola sounds.

World Barlines Day: 19 November

Classic FM has announced the first-ever ‘national listening day’. It is being held in association with the RPS’s Hear Here!, which they style 'the first classical music project dedicated to listening’.
Two bold 'firsts', the second of which, I am certain, is the most outrageous lie since Handel told Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni that he had two penises (Barlines Top five UK listening projects explicitly dedicated to Classical Music found after a cursory Google search: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1).
But the first 'first' is a different matter. Although national governments are the only bodies that can nominate a proper national holiday, anyone can nominate a themed day and stick the word ‘National’ or even the word ‘World’ on it, and institutions from the smallest charity up to the United Nations do just that. Normally they are either in the spirit of fun (Talk like a Pirate Day, International Day of Slayer etc) or they are organised in order to raise awareness, such as World Aids Day, National Stress Awareness day, Carers Rights Day etc. If there is fundraising involved it tends to be for an extremely good cause, such as the British Legion selling poppies prior to Remembrance Sunday.
It is unheard of that a commercial organisation will be asked to create a national day for its own gain. The RPS asking Classic FM to host a national listening day is a bit like the Royal Society of Medicine inviting Cadbury to sell mini rolls in aid of the first-ever ‘Eat Mini Rolls Day’.
If it is this easy we want in on the game. Barlines wants its own day. National Listen to Classic FM Plug Itself Day, or whatever it’s called, is on Tuesday 17 November. We can’t choose anything on the following weekend, because the Saturday is No Music Day, and the Sunday is St Cecilia’s Day. We propose something on the Thursday, with a slightly more liberal remit. How about the first-ever 'World Smelling day, on which you are allowed to play a Bit of Music'?. How about it? The first-ever classical music project dedicated to smelling! 19 November, remember the date. Tell us what you smelled! And what you listened to while you were doing it!

Britten OWNS Richter

Watch Benjamin Britten mess with the best pianist in the world! This will never get old - the mischievous smile, the sweat pouring off Sviatoslav Richter's brow...

Magnifico

Are they allowed to do that? If not, we're probably definitely not allowed to do this:

The force is strong with Domingo

Plácido Domingo has shunned the material wealth of the $1m Birgit Nilsson prize, which, we suspect, is why he was rewarded with a statue of a golden jedi during the ceremony Royal Swedish Opera on 13 October.
As the first winner of the competition, nominated by the late 'primadonna assoluta' herself, putting the prize money towards his own Operalia competition has set a strong precedent of philanthropy which will be hard to shake off. As Sondheim and Lenny said, 'you just have to pass it along'...

Separated at birth

Mussorgsky



Runnicles



Our Donald is just one vodka-soaked bender from being completely indistinguishable from the infamously-tortured Russian hellraiser.

The food of love

Long live the great Lanza. It is 50 years (yesterday) since Mario Lanza died and, in commemoration, and in preference to writing something new, this is a diamond-polished opportunity to drag out the Barlines top five opera related foods. We like this game. Here goes:

Presumably ever since people recreationally stretched their leftovers over the bits of wood they were eating off there has been a link between music and food. One discerning clergyman during the enlightenment said that heaven was the sound of 'eating paté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets'. Not the sound of moaning virgins, vanquished infidels or the cadences of the spoken mass, mind, but actual brass instruments.

Many great singers have had a weakness for the pies, and we have heard singing teachers with our own ears endorsing fat as a backdoor route to a natural support and superior sounding vocal chords. Some said that the slimline Maria Callas lost something after she shed the pounds. Deborah Voigt, having lost 100 of them following gastric bypass surgery, said that her singing is no longer 'as effortless'. Some have been cruelly consumed by their appetites, like Mario Lanza, mayherestinpeace, who drank champagne like water. On the other side of the pros arch, we won't go as far as to say that English audiences are dead until they get a few fingers inside them, but anyone who has been to Garsington or Glyndebourne or, indeed, taken a hip flask to a cinecast, can attest to a certain alco-dramatic synergy. Anyway here are the Barlines top five opera-related foods.

1. Tournedos Rossini. No contest, Barlines' all-time number one greatest musical gourmand happens to be our second-favourite bel canto composer. Place a seared fillet steak on a fried crouton, then drown it with foie gras, truffles, demi-glace sauce and madeira. Apparently the recipe was the composer's own, and it was he who gave it to Adolphe Dugléré, chef at the Café Anglais in Paris, a man Rossini later dubbed Le Mozart de la cuisine. In Larousse Gastronomique, you will find entries for omelette Rossini, scrambled eggs Rossini, soft-boiled eggs Rossini and roast chicken Rossini, all of which involve smothering the principal ingredient with foie gras, truffles and demi-glace. The encyclopaedia also credits the composer with inventing a way of stuffing macaroni with foie gras by means of a silver syringe. The story goes that Rossini once said that he only cried three times in his life: when his first opera was booed, when he first heard Paganini play the violin, and when he dropped a truffled turkey in a lake whist picnicking.
2. Georges-Auguste Escoffier's creations in the Savoy kitchens in honour of Dame Nellie Melba are well known – serve your peaches on a bed of vanilla ice cream and add raspberry purée (although originally spun sugar was used instead) and you have Peach Melba. Make your toast thin, dry and crispy and ditto. The three-octave diva once had a serious food-related sense of humour failure when Enrico Caruso, clasping her tiny hand under the table, during a performance of Bohème, in order to pronounce it frozen, pressed a hot sausage into it. The offending piece of meat was hurled across the stage in disgust.
3. Bizet's Omelette. A brilliant spoof of stilted bel canto ensemble writing, the Omelette quartet is from the composer's early opera Dr Miracle. Written when he was 19, for a competition organised by Offenbach, it has long outlived the other 70-odd contenders.
4. Spaghetti alla Caruso. A great commercial ambassador for Neapolitan food to New York, the tenor had a particular fondness of chicken livers. Recipes for the sauce vary, but you can't go far wrong if you fry some mushrooms in butter with some onions and garlic, deglaze the pan with a glass of wine, turn the livers in some seasoned flour and sautee separately while the wine reduces, then add around a tin of tomatoes with some tomato puree before adding the livers. Season and garnish with parsley.
5. JD Wetherspoons' Chicken Korma. Most of the standard venues for small touring opera companies have a J D Wetherspoon round the corner. Forget the idea of not eating before a show, from our own experience most of the band and singers will be in there about an hour and a half before curtain-up.

Hieronymus who?

Deane Root has been appointed editor in chief of the Grove Music programme at Oxford University Press. Professor of music and director of the center [sic] for American music at the University of Pittsburgh, he will, no doubt, bring to the post an impressive judgment, gleaned from his multi-roped, gleaming career as a professor, scholar and librarian. More importantly, it gives us the opportunity to trot out the Barlines top five questionable entries in Grove list again. It first appeared in the 19 July 2008 edition of Classical Music after we found some wildly inconsistent comment on standard subjects in the Oxford Music Online database. We felt a bit mean back then, and we still do, because, as Guglielmo Baldini would say, alla fine del giorno, Grove is our life blood – a constant fixture on the Barlines Firefox bookmarks toolbar, when blogs, cartoon strips, and Anime review podcasts come and go.

1. Esrum-Hellerup, Dag Henrik, composer for flute who was named after several small Danish Villages. Probably the most well-known spoof, we had assumed that it was a nihilartikel – a deliberate false entry inserted to reveal copyright infractions, but we have it on good intelligence that editor Stanley Sadie was not amused.
2. Baldini, Guglielmo. As above, from the 1980 New Grove – a long-running spoof before it was picked up by Grove, but some nice touches were added. The author’s name – Di Gennaro – for example, is the vulgar Italian version of the two-faced Roman God, Janus (thank-you Viola d’Odio). It is also said that the entry ‘Verdi, Lasagne’ was nearly sent to print in this volume.
   
3. Scott, John (i). Hearsay. Don’t take our word for it, but this early English organist may remind some who work in ecclesiastical circles of a more recent one.
4. Mango, Hieronymus. Likewise not confirmed as a spoof. It is in fact unlikely that a mischievous sub-editor would choose such a silly name, but all the other references to the 18th-century Italian composer we have found have, like 70% of the undergraduate music history essays in the UK, the unmistakable whiff of Grove about them. All of his operatic subjects (the complete mango) are duplicated elsewhere among his contemporaries.
5. Kathleen McMorrow, who reviewed the New Grove Second Edition for the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, insists that Burgas, a Bulgarian town the size of Warrington which sports one 800-seat theatre, has no place in the dictionary as, she says, ‘the closest accommodations are in Varna, 90km further north up the Black Sea Coast’. Finally, Barlines would like to spare a thought here for French academician Louis Bollioud-Mermet who lost out on being immortalised on the second spine from the left so that the legend on that volume would read ‘Back to Bolivia’. Also, tribute must be paid here to Mr David Fallows, author of Grove’s own article on spoof entries, for managing to begin each paragraph of his article on Gilles de Bins Dit Binchois with successive letters of the Franco-Flemish composer’s name.

The problem with you is it's all Mimi...

Operagnostic your correspondent may be, and certainly allergic to Puccini, but duty calls and so a break in sunny Provence is briefly interrupted by an evening in front of la télé.

As you probably know, the vast majority of French telly is a complete disaster, a consumer of the souls of men. The one exception is Arte, the Franco-German cultural channel with the unashamed mission of intelligent cultural broadcasting. And on Tuesday 29 September, all the talk was of its multi-platform transmission of 'La Bohème en Banlieue' ('La Bohème in the Suburbs'), a live performance of the opera staged in and around a block of flats in Bern, Switzerland.

Featuring actual residents as extras, real-life locations (including a real-life artist's studio which was used for the appropriate scenes) and an audience of local people able to move around and follow the action from mere metres away, the production demonstrated a truly committed attempt at live action opera.

The only real quibble was in the handling of the necessarily long scene changes (you were occasionally aware of a protagonist or two legging it to the next location) in which singers, fresh from their arias, would be collared by a presenter and given dull Match of the Day style questions to answer. And was there a touch of self-satisfaction in the explanations of how the technical challenges involved in the production were overcome?

But the singers (Maya Boog and Saimir Pirgu as Mimi and Rodolfo, Eve Liebau and Robin Adams as Musetta and Marcello, Gerardo Garciacano as Schaunard) all took to their unfamiliar circumstances with dedication, even deploying that rarely used operatic weapon - acting. And who could fail to be moved, if not amused, that she dies on a bendy bus heading for... the 'Endstation'?

You should find it here, until 6 October.

Mambo No 5

The BBC Inspire composers did a grand job on the 5-way real-time fanfare thing at the last night at the Proms, but there was some transcendent heckling from an audience member at Glasgow Green.
See it on t'Iplayer just after 58 minutes through.

The Clap

Much more "SFW" than its title would suggest, The Clap is a short film by Geoff Lindsey, featuring a hilariously obsessive classical music fan. Do you get the feeling this guy spends an awful lot of time on the Radio 3 messageboards?

The Diva Guide

Following the recent discovery of Katherine Jenkins' supposed demands on her hotel room and from observing the most flamboyant and extravagant female opera singers of today, I feel compelled to collate and share my observations for all those aspiring, fame-seeking singers. I am certain that...by following these simple 5 steps, you too could become an opera diva!

1. Perfect the look of expectant applause when entering the stage. Indeed this can be developed by the same look being repeated during any length of musical interlude between singing.

2. Wear as much Bling as possible - this will ensure that you will glitter and sparkle on stage, drawing the audience's attention and blinding all other singers on stage.

3. Act the bimbo! Granted, you may have a degree from a top University and studied with tutors across the world, but it appears that vacancy sells! Accompany this with a blond rinse and you'll be laughing your way to the nearest Tiffany's.

4. Always have the last word - or note in this instance. Regardless of whether you are singing a dramatic quartet or a final love duet before your dying moments, sing loud, proud...and that little bit too long!

5. Ensure your flowers are bigger and better than anyone else on stage! If this means paying the stage hand an 'exclusive favour' then so be it!

Lick my binary

An oak carving in the royal palace at Stirling Castle has yielded what is thought to be 'binary' musical notation on its perimeter, thought to be the oldest instrumental notation in Scotland. Essentially giving a form only, interpretations of the source have been diverse.
Barnaby Brown of the RSAMD, pictured with the head (Photo: RobMcDougall.com) has undertaken serious researches, leading to a performance by pupils from Allan's Primary School of a nine-phase work extrapolated from the home-grown harp tradition.
A little known folk duo from New Zealand followed a more troubadourian reading:

A peek inside Katherine Jenkins' hotel room

Your favourite cello-toting hellraiser was rather amused to read the following press release this morning:

KATHERINE JENKINS TO BE TREATED TO UBER LUXURY SUITE FOR BIG GIG WEEKEND

Big Gig organiser Kevin Newton is providing Katherine Jenkins with the five star luxury Wells Cathedral suite in his 14th century Swan Hotel for the night of her concert on Sunday 27th September.

As one of the three rooms of luxury Kevin is throwing Katherine the following special treats:

Rose petals in the gold bath

Special silk pillow slips to prevent wrinkles and creases

Humidifier in the room for her voice

Godiva chocolates

White roses everywhere

Dom Perignon champagne

A sheepskin rug down the side of the bed so her feet touch that first thing the next morning

Bowls of maltesers

Cans of lilt

Rose quartz crystals because they attract unconditional love next to the bedside.

It’s got me thinking: perhaps I’m being a bit too reasonable with my hotel room requirements. I’ve never asked for anything more outrageous than a warm room with a bed, hot running water and a half decent breakfast in the morning, and it strikes me that my diva image could be greatly enhanced if I were to aim a bit higher. So here is my new list of hotel requirements:

A 24-carat gold toilet, studded with diamonds

Silk bog roll

Fluffy baby rabbits hopping around the place

Chomp bars

An additional king-size four-poster bed for my cello

A chocolate fountain

Asses milk in the bath

Kaballah water

My own personal sushi chef

A really fit masseur in a leather thong

And if I don’t get all of these things, I’ll thcream and thcream and thcream until I’m thick.

Its Not Just A Good Pub Guide

This could turn out to be one of those websites which starts out with good intentions but either doesn't really get off the ground or briefly flourishes before withering due to lack of interest. But if Barlines can help by giving it the merest whiff of publicity, then that is what Barlines will do.

The site, www.themusoguide.com, aims to provide practical information to the travelling musician (which, let's face it, is what most musicians are) regarding all those things which might just enhance that often wearisome life. That means places to eat and drink, interesting local activities for days off, musician-friendly lodgings, lift-sharing and gig-swapping opportunities - anything which, as the website's founders say, 'helps take the potential headache out of musician's Russian Roulette'.

It sounds like a great idea. After all, not every gig is going to be in an easily accessed city-centre venue with a choice of nearby amenities. But even in some of the smarter provincial towns, how much nicer to know there's a characterful local establishment serving proper grub at a good price, rather than having to rely on the holy trinity of Wetherspoons, Pizza Express and Cafe Rouge (though god knows there are times when they shine like beacons in the gloom). But the main thing is that the information is provided by musicians themselves meaning that the recommendations should have the particular concerns of the muso at heart.

Endearingly, the webmasters are keen that the site is for recommendations only and not a forum for moaning and bitching. Let's hope that the general community of musicians can keep its almost pathological inclination for mickey-taking in check.

Pirates of the high Cs

AAAAAAAAaaahahaaaargh meharties. Or since the official talk like a pirate day isn't until the 19th, I'll put it this way: What is the true relevance, please kindly, of the copyright faff to classical music, because if we're right, classical is going to be the worst-off of all musics when the smoke clears unless we pull ourselves together. This is a terribly long post, for which I apologise, but I can guarantee to put some hackles up by the end.
The commercial and creative sectors are drawing up jaggedy battle lines against the universe and its computer, and the most recent players to land on the board aren't really helping. The big internet providers have said that piracy isn't their problem, and claim that it is only perpetrated by a minority anyway. The evergreen Stephen Fry, speaking recently at the iTunes festival, spoke/ranted for the best part of an hour at the Roundhouse, in protest against 'Draconian' measures for file-sharers, in a we-might-do-a-bit-of-downloading-when-we're-poor-but-we're-all quite-nice-folk-anyway-marvelous-fabulous-who-will-support-the-
industry-when-we-have-more-money sort of thing.
In pop and the genres in which Stephen Fry shifts units, this is a very tempting argument.
We interviewed classical composer Eleanor Alberga yesterday, and wanted her take on it, but the words died somewhat on my lips as I tried to outline both sides of the argument as it relates to classical music.
Three-hundred years ago, around the time when copyright was first set down in the Statute of Anne, Handel's tunes were mercilessly filched for use in ballad operas. Speaking in the 12 September issue of Classical Music, L'avventura's Zak Ozmo said: 'Handel's opera Poro was performed 16 times in the 18th century, but various tunes fron it were performed hundreds of times every year through ballad opera'. Did Handel seethe at the missed income? Did it give him so much exposure that he didn't care? Can't that be a decent model for our times? It is extremely easy to write pastiche of any composer for a film/tv soundtrack; it happens all the time, and doesn't make any money for the composer being copied. Can there be a model that allows material to be used freely if it means more popularity/commissions?
Whatever the answer we sure as hell need a model that works quickly, because if the pirates win their cause, classical is going to be first down the plank. Here is how I know this:
I spoke to Christian Engstrom of the Swedish pirate party just before the European elections, and he saw the essential conflict as being between the enforcement of copyright law and human rights - basically, if you're going to effectively prosecute file-sharers it means all sorts of invasive monitoring of emails etc, which violates human rights. It's still illegal to open someone else's snail mail, by the way. They promote a copyright term of 5 years. They won over 7% of the Swedish vote, which means one, maybe two seats in the European parliament.
All well and good, but since we are, like, a classical music magazine, this is how the next bit of the interview went, before we lost it and started shouting at him.

So, ideally, anyone could organise a performance of a six-year-old work and perform it in whatever way they wished withough paying the composer anything?
Yes.
Do you think that classical composers would be able to earn a living under this system?
I think most classical composers aren't able to earn a living under the present system anyway. They will have to adapt their business model, that is what it is like being an entrepreneur, running a company, which is in effect what most cultural work is. If you can't make a profit from it, unfortunately you have to do something else. It is called a market economy and that is the way it is.
The commercial potential of a classical work lasts for much longer than five years after composition. If the Swedish Royal Opera mounts Einstein on the Beach, which Philip Glass, now a professional composer, wrote while driving a taxi to support himself in the seventies, should he not get his dues now?
If you can't support yourself by whatever you do, you have to do it in another way. There may be a small number of classical composers who would lose money from this reform, but it is no counter argument against safeguarding the civil liberties of our society.

Barlines at Dartington: Concert no 3

Somei Satoh: Kisetsu
Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante for winds and orchestra
Haydn: Symphony no 104

Melinda Maxwell, oboe; Janet Hilton, clarinet; Sue Dent, horn; Laurence Perkins, bassoon
Conductor: Diego Masson
Dartington Festival Orchestra

One of those concerts which gives the summer school students a chance to see and hear their masterclass tutors in action (in the Mozart). But also an opportunity to hear something a little different. Dartington has a long tradition of inviting resident composers, and this year it's the turn of the Japanese musical colourist Somei Satoh (there's a Japanese theme to the festival as a whole - it culminates in a couple of performances of Madama Butterfly, in which Festival Orchestra, student conductors and the opera class come together). Over the weeks of the school he has been holding composition classes, and various concerts have featured his work.

Working on a piece like Kisetsu poses particular challenges for an orchestra, particularly when the remainder of the programme is firmly classical and ends with as rumbustious a piece as Haydn 104. For a start, it is resolutely quiet, testing string harmonic technique and bow control under pressure, and relying on much ppp wind writing; and it's certainly no place for a percussionist with the DTs. It is also slow, very slow, with very few moving parts. As a result, any slight surge in volume or intensity is magnified. And there is a sense of anticipation, once each momentary bloom of timbre has subsided into silence, regarding what will come next.

But it's not just the performer's technical skill which is tested. Any ambient noise, a squeaky chair, a buzzing mute, is easily discernible. That's not to mention a violinist's stomach rumble (for that's what happened) causing the placid musical meniscus to tremble in a rather unexpected way.

Next: Haydn's Creation, with Aussie legend and the Bradman of the Baton, Sir Charles Mackerras (fingers crossed for the Ashes, eh, Sir C?)

GRAaaaaaaaah!

Can’t the Proms turn out some professionals to do the choral parts in the annual Beethoven 9? Trained singers are booked to do the early music, opera and new music bits, so why not the big choral repertoire? The cost is not prohibitive – the stage is filled with pros for many other Proms and during the Stockhausen day last year the stage and most of the arena was filled with highly-trained musicians who were being paid – so it must be a matter of priorities. How hard would it be to get in the BBC Singers, the Geoffrey Mitchell Choir and then a load of students from the Royal College next door? You wouldn’t even have to pay the students for goodness sake (give them course credits – the oldest trick in the book). Trained singers are going begging all over the UK for the measliest of gigs – I’m not suggesting that they should be exploited, I’m lamenting their underuse.

I had the opportunity to take a guest to the SSO/CBSO Chorus Beethoven 9 at the proms the other day. I wanted to take a friend who used to play trumpet for one of the German opera houses, but I suspected, since the BBC hadn’t engaged professionals to sing the choral part, that those bits would be over-mannered and under-powered, in the manner of amateur choruses the world over. The CBSO chorus is an admirable choir, but on the whole I wasn’t wrong, so it was a good job that I took someone else who wouldn’t hold me personally to account for the BBC’s apparent disdain for this masterwork.

It is impossible to find someone to blame, and it is difficult to know which came first – the embarrassingly low standards or the institutional contempt for choral singing.

Let’s go back to basics here. Singing and playing a violin are roughly analogous activities from a consumer point of view. The more talented you are, the better you sound. Practice also helps. Contrary to the consensus of the twentieth century, singing once a week in an amateur choral environment does not equip you to handle choral masterpieces to a professional standard. Doing this in large numbers does not bypass the problem.

Barlines is a huge enthusiast of amateur choirs. We have conducted dozens, of all different types. We love them. However it is clear to us that any properly trained male voice, for example, could drown out, with the sweetest of tones, the tenor and bass sections of any non-professional choir in the UK with his back turned and without breaking a sweat. We have seen it done, by various people in a number of prejudicial environments. He could then proceed to diminuendo, crescendo, exert emphasis and generally emote in ways simply unavailable to the others, due to having been trained a lot in those exact things. It is analogous, in fact, to the difference between a professional violinist and an amateur violinist. Can anyone imagine a scenario where a professional orchestra would replace its violin section with amateurs?

This is rather cruel, but it really has to be done. Here is last week’s prom performance (available on t’iPlayer till Saturday evening). Skip to 56 mins 44 seconds. Witness people singing. Then listen to this clip (from the beginning) of a Bernstein performance and witness singers singing:

On the evening what brought it home was the pivotal F natural/A dyad on ‘vor Gott’ – at this point the audience should be blown away by the raw harmony, the universe should stand still, the ethereal tendrils of eternal brotherhood should grasp you by the balls etc, but Volkov dispatched it with a crispness typical of the performance. It was consistent, and certainly provided a good springboard for his swift reading of the ensuing alla Marcia, but I am certain that the limitations of the chorus influenced his entire approach to the final movement.

Listen back a bit on the iPlayer and tell me that this is good enough for the UK’s flagship Beethoven 9 performance.

Barlines at Dartington: Concert no 2

Gounod: Messe Solennelle
Ravel: Daphnis & Chloe (suites 1 & 2)
Dartington Festival Chorus & Orchestra (plus guest vocals from Exaudi)
Conductors: Brian Kay and Diego Masson

Firstly, erk, a correction: yes it was the Cello Concerto no 2 by Shostakovich that we played in Wednesday's concert, not no 1 (a rather less searching piece).

But anyway, following that intense experience, the prospect of Gounod's unfamiliar mass promised to be something of an anticlimax - it's one of those pieces which gets labelled as 'unjustifiably neglected', as sure a sign as you can get of something being justifiably neglected. In this case, well, it's not long, so would be a useful concert-filler, next to other relatively short pieces like the Beethoven Mass in C, or the Schubert E flat mass (even if putting Gounod in the same programme as Schubert would cruelly show up the differences between the two in tune-smithery).

Here, though, the companion was Ravel's ballet, which, as well as being an orchestral showpiece of the ultimate kind, gives a chorus a run-out in something rather less chaste than standard choral fare. This is particularly so in the second suite, where their wordless singing adds a real Hollywood bloom to the most glorious depiction of sunrise in all music (I'd like to add my personal thanks to Ravel for giving the tune to the violas, while the violins busy themselves with their fiddly background noodlings). But it's in the final section where the chanting really pays off, delivering an erotic charge the piece misses a little bit in the purely orchestral version - you feel just a little bit dirty even playing along.

Other than the music, one reason for looking forward to the Friday concert is that summer school director Gavin Henderson gives a hint of what's to come the following year. I guess the big news this time is that next year will be his last festival (after nearly a thousand years in charge), so there's a vacancy for 2011. Evidently, nobody has been lined up yet, so now's the time to start getting your CVs in order.

Next: Haydn, Mozart and Satoh.

Barlines at Dartington: Concert no 1

Shostakovich: Cello Concerto no 1
Dvorak: Symphony no 8
Soloist: only Karine Georgian!
Conductor: Diego 'Dieu' Masson
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The Dartington Festival Orchestra, house band of the Dartington International Summer School, has a somewhat polyvalent existence. A ragamuffin collection of freelancers, teachers, students and musicians of varying degrees of spuriousness, it exists primarily to:

a Accompany various choral courses during the last 3 weeks of the school
b Work as the pit band for the opera course at the end of August
c Provide cannon fodder for the advanced conducting course classes (6 students chosen for their all-round musical skills rather than nascent dictatorial qualities)

All this involves 6 hours' rehearsal a day (6 days a week), covering a range of repertoire. But the high point of all this work is the opportunity to perform a couple of concerts each of the 3 weeks the orchestra is in residence. And the first of this season was a belter, featuring a powerfully committed performance of Shostakovich at his most bleak by one of the world's most powerfully committed cellists. The concerto is not so well known - apparently, Ms Georgian herself had only performed it once before (I remain to stand corrected) - but from its opening falling minor second figure, to its mechanical percussion conclusion, via a cadenza in which the soloist duels with (and beats off) a furious bass drum, and a scherzo where she dances with a trio of beserk bassoons, the piece never stops probing at the scary crevices of the musical imagination.

Next up: er, Gounod!
(And Daphnis and Chloe.)

Nixon on Bernstein: "Son of a bitch"

Hands in the air for New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, who has published US government documents relating to Leonard Bernstein on the magazine's blog, including FBI files, memos from the files of Richard Nixon’s infamous 'plumbers', and several lively excerpts from Nixon’s White House tapes.

Those who have read the transcripts of Aaron Copland's relentless MacCarthy hearing will know of the terrifying resources the US government was willing to put into the monitoring and interrogation of left-wing composers in the middle of the last century.
Initially, it seems, J Edgar Hoover's office dismissed 'ambiguous and sweeping' insinuations about the politics of our beloved Lenny. But as McCarthyism took hold an X appeared next to the 'communist' box on his file. Much later, in the late sixties some serious stationery was committed to documenting Bernstein's support of Black Panther associates who had been charged with criminal activity.
The most entertaining parts of the file include some personal correspondence in 1961 between Hoover, director of the FBI, and a New York Philharmonic-attending communist-hunting nun, who received free literature and a plug for Hoover's book Masters of Deceit.
Some splendidly paranoid correspondence from the Nixon administration surrounding the premiere of Bernstein's Mass makes interesting reading, while sound files of Nixon dismissing Bernstein's habit of kissing people on the mouth, including Alvin Ailey, as 'absolutely sickening', and dismissing the composer himself as a 'son of a bitch' are simply beyond parody.

Pissed on at Glynders

Young Pythagoras here had developed a reputation over the last few years of guaranteeing blue skies at Glyndebourne simply by turning up. Early in the season? Late in the season? No worries. A succession of (it turns out) ineligible young ladies were encouraged to pack sunscreen with the fizz. All the more so in August! If only I had gone as far as suggesting a parasol – anything to put between myself and the angry skies last week would have been appreciated.

A first interval in patchy cloud encouraged us to lay the picnic out, only to find – a mere fourteen-and-a-half hours of Tristan later – that the weather had turned inclement all over the damn salmon.

Not feeling quite so smug for nabbing the secret spot that always catches the last of the afternoon sun (but lies what, in rain, feels like three miles from the auditorium) the picnic was hastily adjourned to under a big tree. Which does not, it turns out, offer the same sort of weather-proof cover as, say, a restaurant. Who’d a thunk.

Come the Liebestod my moth-worried black suit was almost dry and (ah, the smell of wet wool in the evening) but that situation proved temporary, as the scramble to the car was effected in a violently wet cloud chunder.

My motto from now on? Don’t end up with a wet suit – just turn up in a wetsuit. Ok, it needs tweaking I suppose.

*Blub*

We can't take it. Admittedly Barlines cried at the Youtube Symphony Orchestra global mashup (it's beautiful, just beautiful, and there's a fit xylophone player and a bloke in a Star Wars helmet) but we may just implode in a glob of nostalgic tears and snot if what we hear is true. Kiri Te Kanawa has reportedly (and steady, it wouldn't be the first time some quarters of the press have jumped the gun on this one), announced that, after 40 years, her swansong on the operatic stage will be playing the Marschallin in Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, for Cologne Opera next April.

She brought grown men and women (and women dressed as men, and Barlines, who was but a boy) to their knees over 20 years ago in the role at the Met (see below); just think of the atmosphere in the house as she signs off her career with the act 3 trio - as the knowing, experienced Marschallin, her heart breaking, releases the strapping young Octavian to pursue the younger Sophie.

Kill for a ticket.

Backatcha Depp

Mere amateurs in the product stakes. I take your autoerotic chair cello thing and raise you the mighty NOLIGRAPH Staffwriter

WANT!!!

Normally I've no patience with musical merchandise. From the first "I've Passed My Grade 1" badge to the keyboard socks that just keep popping up in your Christmas stocking every year even when you're in your thirties, people will persist in thinking that you find these items amusing. The Chopin Bored is about as funny as getting your bottom caught in a bacon slicer, and frankly anyone who voluntarily wears treble clef cufflinks or earrings ought to be euthanised.

Having said that, I WANT one of these. Do any of my adoring fans fancy buying me one?

And they're off!

BBC Maestro mentors Peter Stark and Jason Lai are experts at doling out the advice to aspiring conductors, but now they are dealing with the big players, and they need to do their homework.

As commentators on the Proms 'maestro cam' (mad, mad props etc) they will be giving us the lowdown, cue by cue, on the Proms performances of conductors Daniel Barenboim and David Robertson respectively, through a dedicated camera which can be accessed through the red button.

A broadcasting first, claims the BBC (see the broadcasting feature in the next issue of Classical Music). Au contraire, ma tante, au contraire. Listen and learn from the master:

Lovin' summer

The country may be plunging still deeper into what is shaping up to be its third summer soaking in as many years, but while the nation's heliophiles curse, its melomanes at least have reason to be a little more cheerful.

The summer months are a time of musical abundance, with festivals both small and large striking up all over the place. And unlike the (sez I) misguided souls for whom a music festival equals feeble bands wailing away somewhere in the distance, drug-induced stupefaction and trench foot, your average classical music festival-goer will probably have to endure little more than unyielding church pews - the rest is all quality music at affordable prices in interesting venues and locations.

But it's not just the audiences who benefit from this musical bonanza. Musicians can buzz off to the numerous summer schools, as equally widespread geographically as the festivals and covering every conceivable aspect of music. There you'll find internationally renowned performers and teachers of the highest quality providing expert tuition to students of various ages and standards, all in the spirit of open musical collaboration.

Of course, such institutions are found in many other countries, often, dare we say it, with more reliably attractive climates. But with literally hundreds of courses on offer, Britain is at the forefront of the summer school movement.

Indeed, you can look forward to Barlines' own despatches from the granddaddy of British summer schools (actually more of a cross between a festival and summer school, with a substantial number of public performances) at Dartington, where, from the second week of August, your correspondent will be working away in the ranks of the Dartington Festival Orchestra. It's the school's house band, made up from freelancers, teachers, students and others, and accompanies the opera and choral courses, works with student conductors, and gives about 7 concerts over the three weeks it operates. Hard work for sure, but it gives a real insight into life at a classical music summer retreat.

Barlines salutes the CBSO

I love Stephen Hough and I want his babies. I also want Andris Nelsons' babies. And Laurence Jackson's. And Eduardo Vassallo's. Hell, I want the whole of the CBSO's babies. I'm going to be up the duff for the next 50 years.

In case you hadn't worked out, last night's Prom was stunning. Hough was sensational in Tchaikovsky's unfairly neglected 2nd concerto (Why is this a neglected work??? WHY??????) as were leader Laurence Jackson and principal cello Eduardo Vassallo, who took pivotal roles in the gorgeous slow movement. Then after the interval, the orchestra, under the baton of new musical director, the impossibly young-looking Andris Nelsons, dispatched an awesome Firebird that was full of fairytale magic, power and delicacy, overwhelming Russianness, everything you could possibly want from this piece and more. Particular kudos to principal horn Elspeth Dutch, who was just fabulous.

After cheering like a madwoman, I staggered out of the hall to the bus stop in a complete daze. I still don't think I've quite woken up from it. And to think that you can get that experience for a mere £5...

Nirvana vs Rick Astley

We at Barlines applaud musical genius in all genres. It is in this spirit that we bring you this masterful amalgamation (or "mashup", as the kids are calling it these days) of two of the most famous popular songs of the last 30 years: Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit and Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up. DJ Morgoth, Barlines salutes you.

Ugandan music school needs your help!

Students at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD) have developed a relationship with a music school in Uganda. The Kampala Music School only exists due to the kindness and donations of others, extending the musical education of the Ugandan children through the help of volunteers. The school strives to offer as much musicianship development as possible, but due to lack of funds struggles to keep up with the demand. There is only a small core of teachers, who attempt to keep up with all the instrumental teaching.

Last summer, three RWCMD students spent their summer holidays volunteering at the school, teaching woodwind instruments, forming a choir, orchestra, wind band and other ensembles, and taking general musicianship classes. This summer, four string players are flying out to volunteer.

Elspeth Addicott however will be going one step further. The recently-graduated saxophonist is going out to Kampala for six months to teach saxophone, flute, clarinet, oboe and bassoon, and is appealing for donations as the school is desperately short of resources. All donations – instruments, reeds, accessories, sheet music, cleaning equipment, etc – are gratefully received. There is a particular shortage of oboe materials, but donations of any kind are extremely welcome.

If you are able to help, contact Elspeth directly at elspetha93@hotmail.com.

Classical Music Rules!

Well, if the masterminds behind http://www.musoc.org/ are to be believed, art music rules, this being its preferred term (and one, naturally, pooh-poohed by the editors at Classical Music magazine). Taking its place in a centuries-old tradition of polemical writing about learned music, musoc.org has nailed its cholers to the mast and decided to speak up.

In so doing, it has come up with seven conditions, all of which a piece of music must fulfil to be classified as art music*. In summary:

1 Must be written for acoustic instruments or unamplified voices**
2 Must be by a single author and be an original work***
3 Must be written down in traditional score, with the composer having sole right to amend it****
4 Must take its place in a long-established musico-historical tradition (western or equivalent)
5 Must remain faithful to the composer's intentions, performers obliged to follow the score as closely as possible*****
6 Must be musically complex, making use of a range of manoeuvres, techniques and characteristics (an unhelpfully inexhaustive list is provided) to the extent that its performers will require advanced musicianship and musical education on the part of its performers, and 'high levels of concentration, understanding and competence from listeners for appreciation and (even basic) comprehension'; and 'be susceptible to theoretical analysis'******
7 Must communicate 'transcendent reflections on the human condition', thereby satisfying the listener emotionally and/or intellectually.

Alas, we have neither the time nor space to delve further into musoc.org's ideas and motivations here. But Barlines is particularly taken by the way the e-pamphleteers insist that music is art music or it is nothing, hence their use throughout of the formulation 'pop "music"'. But if there is no other form of music than art music, then isn't the very term 'art music' itself redundant?

*although a piece which does not satisfy these conditions may be counted if most of its composer's other work does
**although mechanical/electronic devices are allowable in some unspecified circumstances
*** although it is not a requirement for the composer also to have written any verbal text used
****unless he/she dies before completion.
*****except where improvisation or ornamentation is explicitly allowed or tacitly expected
******although making its susceptibility to analysis a defining condition of music seems, in more ways than one, rather too much like defining someone as a musician by his/her susceptibility to being punched in the face

Own your environment!

Luke Jerram’s ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ project, in which decorated pianos are installed in public spaces – inviting the public to indulge the titular act – has come to London.
Thirty street pianos, in locations including the British Library, Leicester Square, Portobello Road, Tate Britain, London Wall and Millennium Bridge, now ‘belong to everyone in London’ until 13 July, when they will be donated to local schools and community groups.
‘Questioning the ownership and rules of public space “Play Me I'm Yours” is a provocation, inviting the public to engage with, activate and take ownership of their urban environment’, Jerram writes on his website, http://lukejerram.com.
Barlines has been intrigued to receive a press release from the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) saying that five of its members will descend on the Liverpool Street Station instrument for an hour and a half, starting at 1.30pm on 3 July. Booking the thing out for professionals seems a strangely elitist thing to do to a project which is intended to question ownership and rules, and in the interest of artistic integrity we warmly invite anyone in the area to take ‘ownership of their urban environment’ at exactly that time and place in noisy and creative ways.
John Alley, LSO principal keyboard player, will be joined by principal flute Gareth Davies, violinist Sarah Quinn, viola player Malcolm Johnston, cellist Rebecca Gilliver and anyone else who wishes to partake of this piece of public art.

www.streetpianos.com

Ultimate Jackson Tribute

From moonwalk flashmobs to candlelight vigils, Jackson mania has gripped the world since the untimely death of the King of Pop. But by far the most impressive tribute to Michael Jackson so far has come from Robert Ridgell, organist at Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church, who played a spectacular improvisation on Beat It and ABC in the postlude for the service on 28 June, including a fughetta section and some genius harmonic shifts. Fortunately it was recorded for posterity.

World’s oldest musical instrument ‘played intro to Beat It’

Yes folks, the oldest musical culture known was one of sex-mad, proto-motown tonalists. An early analysis of the oldest known musical instrument (a flute carved from the wing bone of a large vulture, recently discovered in Southern Germany – see full barlines article below), which was found alongside an anatomically intriguing figurine of a female nude, has reportedly revealed that the first three of the five finger holes roughly correspond to a major triad, making the most famous synthesised minor third fall of all time a doddle for even the most cack-handed early human.

So, tens of thousands of years before Pythagoras had his harmonic revelation whilst eyeing up the local blacksmith muscularly beating an anvil, it seems the first humans to settle in Europe had a music culture based on the primary intervals of the harmonic series. There would seem to be ample opportunity here for some critical-theory-booting backlash along the lines of the natural superiority of a now historically-endorsed Western tonal system, especially with this glorious piece in the Times: ‘World’s oldest musical instrument 'played Star Spangled Banner’, and you would be in the distinguished company of many of this country’s best-loved bel canto conductors. But, as the late King of Pop taught us through his immortal flat-seventh/dominant usage, it's not the spacing or the size of your holes that counts, it’s what you do with them that’s important.

Full story from Barlines Classical Music, 4 July

Oldest musical instrument holds key to rise of man

A bone flute, radio carbon dated to be at least 35,000 years old, has been discovered in the Ach Valley in southern Germany. It is the oldest instrument known, dating from the early settlements of modern humans in Europe. Originally carved from the hollow wing bone of a griffon vulture, the five-hole flute was reassembled from 12 pieces found in Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany and is nearly complete, measuring around 8.5 inches long. Precisely carved fine lines alongside the finger holes possibly indicated where they should be cut during construction.

The instrument is one of several important artifacts recently discovered at the site, including a similarly ancient, anatomically-detailed carving of a woman. Two fragments of ivory flutes were also found in the cave, adding to a growing collection of instruments found in the area, including a seven-inch, three-hole flute, made from mammoth ivory, which was uncovered in 2004, and two instruments carved from the wing bones of a mute swan.

‘These finds demonstrate the presence of a well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonised Europe,’ wrote Nicholas J Conard, lead author of the project and a professor at the University of Tübingen, in an article in journal Nature, published online in late June.

As to the nature of the music it would have produced, playable reconstructions of the earlier finds have revealed a propensity for primary intervals, based on the first few modes of the harmonic series, and the recent discovery is expected to conform to this. Conard said of the 2004 discovery, ‘The tones are quite harmonic’.

In terms of music history, a preference for primary intervals at the earliest stages of known music history would seem to endorse the manifesto of the tonalists, but Conard’s team has suggested that the discovery may have significance for the emergence of man itself:

‘Music could have contributed to the maintenance of larger social networks, and thereby perhaps have helped facilitate the demographic and territorial expansion of modern humans relative to a culturally more conservative and demographically more isolated Neanderthal populations.’