Saturday 13 December 2003

At long last I’ve got rid of most of the backlog of admin from recent events and I’m able to start planning ahead to March’s projects.  I spent a few hours this week in libraries looking at the original published material for the Kellie symphonies that we’ll be recording then. Those will start finding their way onto my computer soon. It’s tempting to delegate this work to someone else, but actually inputting every note onto the screen is quite a good way to get the measure of at least one aspect of the music. Both pieces exist in more than one contemporary keyboard arrangement too, which will be useful for clarification of those passages where publisher Robert Bremner was obviously working from a very messy score. 

I still haven’t confirmed the venues and dates for the tour, but I’m very close to doing so – with just less than three months to go I’d better nail those quick. 

On Thursday Emmanuelle Haïm invited me across to Edinburgh to hear the last performance of the touring Glyndebourne Theodora. I think I’d prefer to have seen the Peter Sellars production with its original starry cast – only Christine Rice was really in control of the stage – but there were some wonderful things in it, and anyway I found myself feeling immensely grateful for the chance to sit for four and a half hours listening to Handel’s sublime music. Sitting still for five minutes usually stretches me.  

Emmanuelle is a remarkable conductor: in almost every number, you were already drawn in to its specific emotion by the second bar.  Whenever a song started I thought ‘oh I remember this one, it’s great’.  When she conducted Poro with the SCO in the summer, there was a memorable moment in the rehearsal when someone (no names) asked of the intro to an aria ‘Is this forte?’, i.e. ‘Should this be loud?’ Emmanuelle explained in lucid detail and with great enthusiasm what the aria was about, the different feelings the singer was conveying, and why. ‘But is it forte?’ came the inevitable reply, to which Emmanuelle responded with another careful circumlocution. ‘I’m on your side here,’ I thought.  And the result of this refusal to deal with bland technicalities is, that rather than ending up with an orchestra that just plays loud or soft, you get an orchestra that plays music that means something.  And the Glyndebourne touring band (on modern instruments) sounded great, and played music that moved, breathed and meant something.  An old friend from student days who I hadn’t seen for 15 years and more, Malu Lin Swayne was leading the second violins, so I leant over the orchestra pit in the second interval and we grinned inanely at each other for a while – joyous. 

It wasn’t until I was on my way home that I remembered how in the Easter holidays I’d listened in the car to Paul McCreesh’s recent recording of Theodora all the way through, and hadn’t recognised a single note. Now what does that tell you about Mr McCreesh and his affinity for Handel?

To town yesterday for a very useful meeting with Ben Twist and Catherine Murtagh about marketing for the March tour, and Ben and I drew up a job description for a marketing assistant – i.e. someone to make my life possible for the next three months.  I’ve had a few bites of interest for possible candidates already.

To balance out the shock of me actually attending an opera (well, an operatic production of an oratorio really, I’ve still never sat in the audience for an opera) I watched a marvellous piece of television with my daughter this morning – Dick & Dom in da Bungalow. The spirit of Tiswas lives on in this anarchic low-budget burst of exhilarating energy – watch it while you can, I laughed my socks off.

Not quite such laughing matter is the King Crimson Eyes Wide Open DVD, which my son has taken a great interest in. His first comment was ‘Is this rock music?’ Me: ‘Well, it’s got two guitars, bass and drums, and it’s loud, so yes, it probably is.’ ‘Hmm, unusual.’  I bought it, because for most music I can tell pretty well from listening to it what making it looks like, but King Crimson have me flummoxed.  And it’s riveting to watch: I’d always assumed that Adrian Belew used electronics to get the notes he does on the guitar, but of course he does it all with his fingers, which is astonishing. And watching Trey Gunn, I still can’t figure out which notes happen where on his Warr guitars. You have to be thankful that someone somewhere is making music like this and somehow making the numbers add up for it to pay the bills – and the next incarnation of the group will have Tony Levin in it as well.  My admiration for Mr Fripp grows: if I tried to make music with a bunch of players like that, my brain would explode.  And the look of serene enjoyment on his face as screamingly beautiful musical obscenity happens all around him is alone worth the price of the discs.