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Throwback Thursday: Five Questions for Julian Lloyd Webber

05 Thursday Nov 2015

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As a cellist of sorts myself (and I read Travels With My Cello over and over again when I was at school) I’m looking forward to interviewing Julian Lloyd Webber next week for my ongoing Amati Magazine series on British music colleges. He’s now principal of Birmingham Conservatoire, but when I interviewed him for a short Metro article in July 2008 for Metro he was touring small venues around the UK with one of his wonderfully entertaining programmes of neglected miniatures and anecdotes – one of the things we’ve really missed since he’s had to stop playing. But he’s already re-energised the Conservatoire and I can’t wait to hear what he has in store next.

Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber has just been appointed to lead the British pilot of El Sistema – the revolutionary Venezuelan music education programme. He’s also playing a recital at Alnwick Playhouse tonight.

What’s the idea behind this concert?

This is a new venture for me. I’ve been doing quite a few concerts in more intimate venues, like the Alnwick Playhouse, and we’ve come up with a programme that’s more involving and personal. I play a bit, read from my book Travels With My Cello and later on there’s a Q&A with the audience.

Are you unearthing any more rare repertoire?

It’s quite a mixture. Not so much in this recital, but I’ve been doing quite a bit of new music lately. I’ve just been playing a new piece by Howard Goodall, and I’ll be premiering a work by Patrick Hawes next month. I’m always keen to expand the cello repertoire, whether by rediscovering older repertoire or playing new music.

Why are you so outspoken, when so many musicians just turn up and play the notes?

I think classical music gets a bad deal in the media. It’s overlooked in comparison to other forms of music. If classical musicians don’t stand up for what we love and believe in, we can’t expect anyone else to do it for us!

Why does Britain need El Sistema?

When you see all the knife crime and drug problems, it makes perfect sense. People think Britain is too wealthy to need a Venezuelan initiative, but I don’t agree. El Sistema is about using the symphony orchestra as a catalyst for social change – and reaching children who would never get to learn an instrument, in the normal run of things. It’s very timely.

Have you had to play your cello at any airports lately?

Actually, yes – I was waiting for an internal flight in Turkey last week and was a bit short of practice time, so I got the cello out right there in the lounge and had a bit of a brush-up. People looked at me as if I was some sort of lunatic.

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Throwback Thursday: Tristan und Isolde at 150

11 Thursday Jun 2015

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I won’t get to review the new Tristan und Isolde at Longborough this summer, and I didn’t get to review Welsh National Opera’s most recent either. Same problem in both cases – the senior critics snaffle all the plum gigs (and plums don’t get much juicier than Wagner at Longborough). I only know that – based on what I saw of the 2013 Longborough Ring Cycle – it’ll be extraordinary. Michael Tanner once told me that in his view, Longborough embodies the spirit of Bayreuth more than Bayreuth itself, these days.

Meanwhile, here’s something I did write about Tristan for Metro, in 2006 – WNO’s revival of Yannis Kokkos’ 1993 production. Mark Wigglesworth conducted, and in light of his subsequent appointment to ENO, I think what he had to say then is still of some interest.

“Since I have never in my life known the true bliss of love, I will raise a monument to this most beautiful of all dreams – in which, from first to last, love shall be completely fulfilled”. Say what you like about Richard Wagner – he was a man of his word. In Tristan und Isolde, his 1865 re-telling of the Celtic legend of Sir Tristram and Princess Yseult, Wagner created a love story so overwhelming that even he started to wonder whether he’d gone too far: “Only mediocre performances can save me – good performances will drive people mad!”

So perhaps Welsh National Opera’s Tristan und Isolde should carry a health warning. Conductor Mark Wigglesworth certainly has some sympathy: “It gets inside you, more than any other music. It’s bad for your health!” And he should know. The buzz about this revival of Yannis Kokkos’ 1993 production is coming from a pair of remarkable young Wagnerians. One is Annalena Persson (Isolde) – the Swedish soprano who stole last season’s WNO Flying Dutchman from under Bryn Terfel’s nose. And the other – conducting Tristan for the very first time – is Wigglesworth himself.

Though it’s not his first brush with Wagner. Wigglesworth conducted The Mastersingers of Nuremberg at Covent Garden in 2002. Good training? “No – It’s absolutely no use to Tristan”. Because this opera, he explains, is a very special case indeed. “Mastersingers is a very human piece, with lots of action and genuine historical characters. Tristan is much more difficult – you’re relating to the emotions rather than the characters. Even though it’s shorter than Mastersingers, the sheer intensity that you need to maintain over the whole evening is incredible. I expect it to be much more draining”.

And it turns out that Wigglesworth has, after all, been in training for the challenge. “Starting early is the best thing. I started work two years ago – though you can’t really get to grips with the structure until you’re rehearsing full acts”. But you can begin to immerse yourself in the extraordinary emotional and philosophical world of this huge work. Tristan’s plot – an eternal love-triangle – is deceptively simple. But Wagner, as he wrote the opera, was embroiled in a passionate affair, not just with a friend’s wife, but with the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer. It’s this philosophical dimension that lifts Tristan’s central love story onto a cosmic level.

Wigglesworth’s done his homework. “As a conductor, I have to be interested in the drama – I can’t make a musical decision divorced from the dramatic situation. The idea of just conducting the orchestra is impossible for me.” And he likes what he sees on stage – “I first saw Kokkos’ production back in 1993. It just tells the story; it’s very simple. It’s not a Konzept production, with a capital K”. That’s important for him. “A lot of directors hide behind complex ideas. You can get a bit bogged down, and forget that this is a great story with extraordinary music. Our job is to tell that story.”

But how – practically – do you tell a story that begins with a cry of longing and ends, nearly four hours later, in a quarter-hour musical orgasm? For Wigglesworth, the secret’s in the pacing. “From the very first note, it flows right through to the very last note. It fulfills itself, musically and emotionally, only at the very end” he explains. “You don’t want to peak too early!”

Four hours of deferred ecstasy – no wonder some listeners find Tristan und Isolde slightly more than they can bear. And yet Wigglesworth can’t contain his enthusiasm: “Wagner was just the most extraordinary musical genius we’ve ever had – even more than Mozart”. So it’s worth it? “Tristan’s the greatest love story.  Ever. And it’s told in the most romantic music. Ever. It can transform you”. There’s your answer. Why listen to Tristan und Isolde? Well, why fall in love?

Throwback Thursday: To see or not to see…Ludovico Einaudi

28 Thursday May 2015

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One of the most fun things about writing for Metro was formats like this: basically a license to sharpen your claws against a certain subject. If it came out looking even-handed, you’d failed. “The readers like a bit of attitude”, the editor told me. This was for an appearance by the Clayderman de nos jours in Birmingham in 2007, and since the editor at the time was my girlfriend, I thought I could probably get away with pushing it a bit. I don’t think she knocked it back…

To see or not to see: The Pros and Cons of Ludovico Einaudi

Pro:  As a student of the great Italian composer Luciano Berio, Einaudi’s classical pedigree is beyond question. But unlike most contemporary composers, he actually sells records.

Con:  The Crazy Frog sold records. Einaudi’s success in the UK comes from his exposure on Classic FM – a station for people who find Saga Radio slightly too cutting-edge. And while Berio smashed the boundaries of contemporary music, Einaudi’s the musical equivalent of a scented candle.

Pro: From Philip Glass to Michael Nyman, Minimalism has long been the accessible face of contemporary classical music.  Einaudi simply brings it to the masses.

Con: OK, so less is more – but this much less? Minimalist masters like John Adams and Steve Reich tackle themes like 9/11 and the Holocaust, and their music never shies away from harsh sounds and strong emotion.  Einaudi’s inspirations include “waves”, “the most beautiful sunset” and a “lovely warm summer night”. It’d insult the intelligence of a pre-school recorder class.

Pro:  Einaudi’s always expanding his musical language. He’s collaborated with an Armenian folk musician, harpist Cecilia Chailly and – on his current tour – German electro-experimentalists To Rococo Rot.

Con: Somehow Einaudi makes them all seem just as bland. His endless, foursquare piano noodling reduces even the most interesting fellow-performers to ambient backing sound. Aural wallpaper? Einaudi’s musical Mogadon isn’t as exciting as that.

Pro:  He’s the most successful living Italian composer – the heir to Rossini, Verdi and Puccini.

Con:  That’s true – a situation that critic Norman Lebrecht has described as “a calamity of unprecedented cultural magnitude”.  Hum Nessun Dorma. Now hum something by Einaudi.  Can you?

Pro:  It’s just lovely and relaxing.  What’s so wrong with that?

Con:  Nothing – and if you’ve been hankering for a 21st century Richard Clayderman, Ludovico Einaudi is the answer to your prayers.

Throwback Thursday: The Berlin Philharmonic in Liverpool

14 Thursday May 2015

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There’s one orchestra in the news this week – though let’s be honest, as we saw in  February, everything the Berlin Philharmonic do is newsworthy. Here’s the article that I wrote for Metro in 2008, when they played at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall as part of the city’s year as European Capital of Culture. I was particularly chuffed to be able to talk to my old Birmingham colleague Jonathan Kelly for this article – not the first great musician to take the journey from Birmingham to Berlin, and not, I rather suspect, the last…

“I don’t want to sound arrogant” says Pamela Rosenberg.  “I think we’re considered to be the flagship orchestra in Germany and I know that our city, and chancellor Angela Merkel, see us as ambassadors.  But internationally, there are a lot of wonderful orchestras – and we’re in the mix”.

Fair enough.  Until, that is, you realise that Rosenberg is General Manager of the Berlin Philharmonic – and suddenly it becomes an understatement on an heroic scale.  For classical music fans, the BPO’s Liverpool gig is the unquestioned climax of 2008.  Tickets sold out months ago.  Because as anyone even remotely interested in classical music knows, the Berlin Philharmonic is arguably the finest orchestra in the world.

And best of all, it’s conducted by a Liverpudlian.  There’s not a music-lover on Merseyside who isn’t choked with pride to see Sir Simon Rattle coming home at the head of this legendary band.  But to appreciate the true significance of Rattle’s appointment as principal conductor in 2002, you need to understand the BPO’s unique place in German culture.  In the first half of the twentieth century, under its visionary conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, it established itself as the supreme interpreter of the great German classics, from Bach through to Wagner.

Later, under the autocratic Herbert von Karajan, it developed a rich, silky-smooth sound that set a new international benchmark for orchestral playing.  “You may never again hear playing as beautiful as this” one critic is said to have told a younger colleague after a BPO concert “but now you know that it can be done”.

Berlin Phil oboist Jonathan Kelly feels the same way.  “I’ve been listening to CDs of this orchestra since I was a boy.  For me it’s always been an ideal”.  And seated bang in the centre of the orchestra, he’s uniquely placed to experience the Berlin sound.

“The sound is part of the orchestra’s tradition, something it’s very proud of” he explains.  “Everyone who joins the orchestra is aware of that, and maybe even adapts their own sound to fit.  What’s special about the sound is that it has this almost animal quality that rises up in concert, like a living thing.  It’s this wonderful dark sound, but also very strong.  This orchestra has incredible reserves of energy.  Everyone, from the front to the back, gives absolutely everything in a concert.  I love that.”

So what prompted the musicians to embrace a conductor as defiantly un-traditional as Rattle?  The BPO’s Liverpool programme – Messiaen’s orgasmic Turangalîla-Symphonie – could hardly be further from the orchestra’s ancestral heartland of Beethoven and Brahms.  Rosenberg sees Rattle’s appointment as proof of the musicians’ commitment to the future.

“I think it was a signal that the orchestra wanted to embrace innovation” she suggests. “Rattle’s broad-minded approach to music, and the huge scope of his interests, from early music to the 21st century – this was of great interest to the musicians.  Now, there’s a synergy – artistic exploration is fed by tradition, and that exploration refreshes the tradition.”  Kelly agrees:

“In some ways he’s found a meeting of two traditions.  Older players in the orchestra, especially the ones who played under Karajan, are very positive about him.  They like the fact that he’s so human.  He’s not a grand maestro type – he just wants to make music with them.”

And no orchestra makes music like the Berlin Phil.  At a time when Liverpool’s own rather fine Philharmonic is scaling new heights, the BPO is an inspiring example of how an orchestra can come to embody a modern city.  Rosenberg has a message for the European Capital of Culture:

“Classical music is vital for the communal health of a city.  It can be a galvanising instrument.  Both in Liverpool and in Berlin, orchestras have the potential to make a huge difference.  An orchestra contributes to both the social and the spiritual life of a city.  Without one, you’re looking at a wasteland”.

Christopher Hogwood and Handel’s “Flavio”

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

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It’s still hard to credit that Christopher Hogwood is no longer with us – for anyone of my generation, he’d been at the front of the Historically Informed Performance movement for as long as we’d even known about it. I still recall, as a teenager, borrowing his L’Oiseau-Lyre box-set of Mozart symphonies with the Academy of Ancient Music from West Kirby library and being outraged at what I heard (there’s nothing more conservative than a 17-year old).

Years later, he directed concert performances of three major Handel operas with the AAM over three years in Birmingham – an experience that, with encouragement from Annette, would launch me on an ongoing exploration of a genre I still (if I’m honest) find problematic. Shortly after Flavio we booked our first trip to Drottningholm. Meanwhile, in April 2008, I’d interviewed Christopher Hogwood for Metro, and found a warmth, a charm and an enthusiasm strong enough to persuade any sceptic. Here’s the article:

Birmingham Town Hall has heard a lot of Handel. The Victorians couldn’t get enough of his oratorios, and Ex Cathedra’s recent performance of Messiah is just the latest in a line that stretches back to the Hall’s opening in 1834 – and beyond. Indeed, if the city fathers who designed the Hall had any particular vision in mind, it was surely a temple to the cult of old Georg Frideric. But still, it’s unlikely to have heard anything quite like this – as the Academy of Ancient Music, seven singers and the conductor, harpsichordist and Handel biographer Christopher Hogwood take the stage for a full concert performance of Handel’s sumptuous 1723 opera seria Flavio, Re De’ Longobardi.

“Handel was a great opera writer – the theatre was his first and greatest love” explains Hogwood. “The Academy of Ancient Music was looking for a project to span the three years prior to Handel’s anniversary in 2009, and I wanted to do something coherent – all my career, I’ve been working to try and bring some coherence to our picture of Handel. So we’re performing three Handel operas over the three years. Last year we did a very early Handel opera, Amadigi; next year we’re doing one of his very last, Arianna, and this year we’re doing one from his middle-period”.

But there’s rather more to the choice than that. To the majority of music lovers, who know Handel for Messiah, the Water Music and the ITV Champions League theme tune, it can come as a surprise to realise that he wrote over 40 operas. With a field this wide, Hogwood made his choice with a view to its impact.

“Flavio has a large cast, and quite an amusing subplot – there’s a surprising amount of light comedy, as well as all the usual high dynastic politics that you get in opera seria. It’s dramatic – one of the characters actually dies on stage, which is exceedingly rare in baroque opera. And there’s a running storyline about the difficulty of governing Britain. Handel’s London audiences would have enjoyed that, and I think ours will too”.

That’s important when you’re trying to revive a work that’s barely been staged in 285 years. The very fact of Flavio’s neglect is a reminder of an inconvenient truth about baroque opera seria. Its reputation for stilted classical plots, high-flown emotion and flashy but superficial singing has proved a hard one to shake – and for Hogwood, the popularity of Handel’s oratorios is partly to blame.

“This idea that the operas are statuesque and undramatic is a misconception created by opera companies who’ve tried to stage the oratorios as if they were operas. They don’t work – you just end up with a chorus of 50 on stage and nowhere to go. Handel’s oratorios are a completely different conception from his operas. He understood the theatre; his operatic music reflects that. And a lot of modern directors who do stage the operas don’t really trust Handel’s music, it seems to me. So they fill the stage with guns, helicopters and nudity. But it’s not TV opera – it has to have a certain studied formality. And it needs great singers”.

No problem on that front, with a cast that includes Iestyn Davies and Robin Blaze. “We haven’t got costumes and sets” says Hogwood “but we’ll certainly have action; people walking on and off, enough to show that these are characters in a drama. That spares us the hypodermic syringes and helicopters – which to me is an improvement. It’s less expensive too!”

And his advice to beat those other misconceptions? “Read the words! You have to know what they’re singing about – there are moment-by-moment changes of mood and emotion. And be ready to rise to some really big themes: themes of honesty, loyalty, power and love.” Big themes, powerful drama and great music…maybe it’s time,once again, to rediscover a Handel we’ve all forgotten.

Throwback Thursday: Philip Glass at Futuresonic

14 Friday Nov 2014

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“Throwback Thursday”? Is that a thing now? I’m informed so. In which case (and despite it being Friday), since simply everyone seems to be interviewing Philip Glass at the moment, here’s an interview I did with him for Metro back in 2009 prior to Manchester’s Futuresonic Festival. Whatever your views on his music (and mine seem to swing from one extreme to another with almost every new piece of his that I hear), there’s no denying that he’s an engaging, generous and endlessly intriguing interviewee.

No-one’s likely to mistake Futuresonic for a festival of contemporary classical music.  But if you’re going to throw a token classical gig into your genre-bending celebration of dubstep, deep house and italo disco, you might as well think big.  And in Philip Glass, Futuresonic’s bagged pretty much the most famous classical composer on the planet.

It’s hard to overstate Glass’s influence.  His haunting, pulsing film scores – from cult documentaries to blockbusters like The Truman Show and Candyman – are instantly recognisable and widely imitated.  Brian Eno, David Bowie, Sonic Youth, Pet Shop Boys and Aphex Twin have all listened to, and learned from, Philip Glass.  He’s on the soundtrack of Watchmen…and Grand Theft Auto IV.  He’s been mocked on South Park.  Unsurprisingly, then, he’s not unduly troubled by his status as Futuresonic’s solitary “classical” presence:

“I’ve been called a lot of things over the years and they don’t mean very much to me.  As long as I’m not being described as ‘atonal’ or ‘minimal’.  Whether it’s called popular or classical music, the interesting thing today is that the barriers are coming down.  After 20 or 30 years of battering away at these labels, younger composers are feeling able to work in whatever way they like, and I’m very glad to be part of that.”

So Glass finds nothing strange in being part of a line-up that includes DJ Kode 9, Anti-Pop Consortium and a team of Last.FM DJs.

“That they’re interested in popular music, digital music – I’m very glad to be included in that.  The Ensemble that I made my name with in the 1970s is still working – the synthesizer sounds have improved a lot – but we’ve kept up to date with digital technology.  My company has always tried to do that.  We were amongst the first to put concerts online.”

All the more surprising then, that Glass isn’t appearing with his legendary, synth-led Ensemble, but instead performing an evening of solo piano music without a mike or mixing desk in sight.  A good, old-fashioned solo piano recital in a digital festival: it’s a vintage Glass paradox.  But for a composer who’s increasingly turned to classical concertos and symphonies (he’s about to begin his Ninth) while the rest of the world has been catching up with his early electronica, the problem is nonexistent.

“In my solo piano concerts I don’t have an intermission; and there’s no Chopin, no Schubert – it’s all me!  I play music from over 30 years, going back to 1979.  But because of the fact that it’s someone playing a piano, it’s automatically viewed as a classical ‘recital’.  Yet when I perform my amplified music, it’s viewed differently.  I do play in concert halls, but I write dance music and film music also.  The range of things that interests me is much wider.  But the other day, someone told me one of my Etudes for solo piano reminded them of a Schubert Impromptu, and I thought, ‘what a compliment’!”

And Glass’s readiness to take that compliment is surely the most important message he brings to Futuresonic.  “Here’s a question: are we at a point in the history of music when we can look back and not feel embarrassed?  Art isn’t like science.  I’ll be playing on a concert grand piano that was built no more than 20 years ago in New York or Hamburg; the result of 300 years of continual improvement.  Technology does that.  But art doesn’t.  Music doesn’t always go forward – it goes sideways, and sometimes backwards.”  Five decades in, Glass’s extraordinary career continues to prove a universal point: it’s not the technology that matters, it’s the music.