Friday 16 July 2010

Islay Holiday drawing to a close here. This photo should sum up Scottish holidays.

I’ve been swimming in Loch Indaal a lot too.

Also special mentions to the brewery, an taigh osda, and the community garden (which is about 20 times bigger than it looks in the photos). The Road to Sanaig now has a café/gallery at the end of it, which was a bit of surprise. It has really comfy sofas though.

I only brought a couple of books with me: I’ve never been completely convinced by Dan Clowes’s work in the past, but his new one Wilson is quite superb. The Best American Comics 2009, on the other hand, was a bit disappointing on the whole: too many aimless improvisations to really grab me. But standout exceptions were the peerless Chris Ware (of course), Adrian Tomine and R. Crumb, and I also enjoyed the work of Kevin Huizenga, Laura Park, Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, and Dan Zettwoch. Check them out.

I got up yesterday to the news that Charles Mackerras had died. I’ve got lots of happy memories of working with him, both playing in the SCO and producing at the BBC. The world of conducting is largely filled with charlatans and chancers, but he was undoubtedly the real thing: a first-class musician with integrity and technique.

He also had unexpected reserves of energy and enthusiasm. In his last few years if I was producing a broadcast he would get me to surreptitiously record the rehearsals (against union rules) and print a CD to hand him at the end, so that he could listen to it all in more detail in his hotel room later – “I really can’t hear a thing, you know!”.  His growing deafness didn’t seem to stop him being able to get exactly what he wanted out of the players.

After an explosive performance of the Glagolitic Mass at the Edinburgh Festival in 2003 I went back to congratulate him and tell him I’d enjoyed the bits that weren’t in my score: with typical rigour, he'd restored some cuts made before the first performance for want of a set of pedal timpani.  He took me over to his score and proceeded to stand there in his vest, still adrenalised from the performance, enthusing about Janacek’s writing and showing me all the missing bits that he’d reinstated, rather than engaging with the long queue of people outside his dressing room who wanted to tell him how great he was. 

He was always open to finding out more about music: one of the first times I played for him in the SCO was in a performance of Handel’s Jephtha in the mid-1990s. I noticed that one of the arias in Chrysander’s edition didn’t have the usual ‘Da Capo’ printed at the end, and showed Sir C in the tea-break. He went off that night, did some homework, and the next day the da capo was cut.

Thanks to John Purser for passing Jordi Savall my way. He called a couple of times while I was in the garden and as a result I am writing some notes for his next Celtic Viol CD. Unfortunately I have to write them very very soon.

On another subject altogether, check out my pal Gordon’s latest work here. And on the Today programme too.