Tuesday 3 September 2002

On the train to Luton Airport. On Friday Marie and I went to a meeting to convene a consortium of groups led by the SCO, looking into the live presentation of classical music. It was the director Ben Twist's idea, and his proposal has attracted a nice big Lottery grant. Now one of the conditions of the grant was that we commission some audience research, and here I have to swallow my innate cynicism about such an exercise. My natural belief is that such work tends to ignore the elephant in the room, which is: people don't go to classical concerts because usually they're not very good. Still, it was a very encouraging meeting and I'm sure it will turn out to be a useful project despite my moaning.

On a rare night out, Helen and I went to see the Canadian Opera Company at the Edinburgh Festival on Friday night.  In case you think I've suddenly developed an enthusiasm for opera, we got free tickets, and it was Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, which isn't really an opera anyway. That's my excuse. Director Francois Girard came up with a marvellous solution to the presentation problem. The production was visually stunning, with a huge mound of plague victims dominating the stage, and during Jocasta's aria, which was sung competently if almost completely without interest, the bodies behind her began to move and eventually revealed themselves to be beautiful young women swaying around seductively in slow motion with their tops off. Now this solved the boredom problem instantly. Paul Morley complained on BBC2's Late Show that they were kind of distracting him, but surely that was the whole point: 'Oh bugger, this singer isn't up to much, let's get some dancers to take their clothes off'. Perhaps I should suggest at the next meeting that soft porn is the answer to classical music promotion. As one of the audience near us said on leaving, 'I really enjoyed that, probably for all the wrong reasons'.

I made it down to East Sussex in time for Adrian's concert of virtuosic fiddle sonatas with La Serenissima, and had a quick beer with Philip Pickett in the interval to muse on the difficulties of getting work in America. The sonatas were all written by or for the Dresden court orchestra leader Pisendel, and we've spent the last three days recording them with me acting as producer rather than harpsichordist. On Saturday night I had a chat with soprano Julia Gooding, who to my amazement remembered the salient points of a conversation we had 8 years ago ...

Anyway, we've been recording in a little medieval church along the road from Adrian and Mhairi's place, which has the UK's biggest barrel organ in the loft, and a pyramid-shaped mausoleum (and plentiful brambles) in the churchyard. Also a wonderful brass inscription in the church which keeps referring to 'the said Master Batys'. If my surmise on 17th century pronunciation is correct, this must be a joke.  

Tony Kime parked his recording truck out on the road and we've had a productive few days, although it's felt like the main activity of the week has been eating and drinking extremely well (Ade's a good cook), interrupted occasionally by making a record. I've got all the session CDs with me in my bag so that I can finish my editing notes in transit.

And finally, check out www.giantkid.net - both my kids have just road-tested the 'No!' CD and it passed with flying colours.  Instant community singing of a rare strangeness.