Tuesday 24 May 2005

Recovering from a stinking cold. At last this week I don't have any pressing deadlines, other than a concert on Saturday, so it's a chance to catch up on lots of unanswered mail and a bit of planning. I'm to be Katherine's external adviser (or some similar title) for her GSMD research grant, studying nyckelharpa in Sweden; Alison is cooking up an excellent project for summer 2007; and DG and I are writing proposals of an orchestral nature.

This morning I dropped in to the university to hear Allan Wright's exam: when I was a student I don't think I'd have had the nerve to play two harpsichord pieces both over 13' long without a break, at 10am under exam conditions, with an audience. Sweelinck and Handel: mammoth. I didn't really like the Handel G major Chaconne before, but now I've warmed to it.

The mail today brought the raw takes of the piano version of Nathaniel Gow's 'Coilsfield House' that I recorded in Halifax, NS last August. I thought at the time that it might fit on the Lion CD but now I'm not so sure, especially after I so much enjoyed playing it on the melodica in Leith last week. I might find a home for the track yet though: the Reinagle 'East Nook of Fife' variations that I recorded during the Geminiani sessions look like ending up on a tribute CD for John Paul Jones (the Scots founder of the US Navy rather than the ex-Led Zep composer). 

The Vanity Fair DVD is out this week too ...

Two bits of listening from the 70s caught my attention in the last couple of days. One was William Malloch's bizarre orchestration of Bach's Art of Fugue, where the final fugue disintegrates into other fugues by half a dozen different composers, and then dissolves further into the sound of the orchestra tuning up: amazing. And I've been revisiting my youth by listening to Mike Oldfield's album Hergest Ridge, both in its stripped-down minimalist remix (the only version now available), and the stunning original version which is technically a bit of a mess but has much more emotional depth and the occasional musical surprise, like a nutcracker solo over what sounds like a hundred overdubbed fuzz guitars. I remember the first time I heard the original when I was about 15, after already getting to know the remix quite well: it was like removing a bit of tidy 1950s panelling to find an ornate Victorian fireplace. The original version also has a sense of danger about it: everything is at full stretch, from the playing and the mixing to the pressing itself (the vinyl sounds awful in places). Paradoxically, these imperfections make it very appealing to listen to: everything and everyone is being pushed out of their comfort zone for a musical need.