Patricia Hammond, a London-based mezzo from Canada, has put heart and soul into making an authentic recording of songs from both sides in the First World War. But can she get a review? Editors complain that the music does not fall into any recognised genre and refuse to assign it. Absurd but true.
What does Patricia have to do to get a flash of attention?
It presents the sound-world of the 1910s, painstakingly reconstructed with original instruments and instrumentations. It was funded by Ian Rosenblatt, so my colleague Matt Redman could take all the time he needed to transcribe from sources, train musicians unused to this particular style, and expand the original sheet music outward in arrangements that would have been at home in the West End salons of the second decade of the 20th century. My own research started when I was eight, listening to 78rpm records in my parents’ basement.
We have presented music from the pacifists and the Germans as well as some neglected gems that have, as far as I know, never been recorded. We performed it in a wooden studio with very little separation, gathered together as musicians would have gathered around an Edwardian recording horn.
And can we get a review, or a mention in a newspaper?
Classical editors tell me it’s jazz. Jazz editors tell me it’s classical.
Aside from works by Eric Coates, Cecil Forsyth and Herbert Ivey, all of whom are considered classical, we use such authentic instruments as a steel stringed guitar (a Gibson L-4 from 1911, especially designed to be heard without electronic amplification), an accordion and saxophone, not to mention a violin, cello, harp and flute.
The BBC Concert Orchestra often includes a guitar and drums in their lineup. Weill’s Mahagonny rejoices in banjo, steel guitar and woodblock, and Golden Age Broadway shows are now proudly presented by the likes of the ENO…to protest at their being included in a classical session is ridiculous.
But somehow we have fallen between two genres.
The 1910s was a time when new recording technologies caused a sudden flowering and cross-pollination of many musical trends. Parlours, Thé-chantants and dansants, recital halls and theatres burst with new ideas. There were no microphones, so ‘classical’ technique was essential. Jazz-style improvisation had yet to come. It’s perhaps unfortunate that the songs produced at the time proved so popular, as it’s the revivals that people associate with it, not the source. If You were the Only Girl in the World brings to mind the Good Old Days and pub singalongs, because nobody listens past the scratches in an old record to hear how it originally sounded.
Our 1910s bands, Ragtime Parlour and the Versatility Serenaders have performed at Orchestral “Lates”, museums and festivals, but always, always the categorisation issue crops up, as does our lack of representation by an agent. Parameters are narrow, and getting narrower, conversely, as music genres splinter and fan outward in new directions that defy classification. We joke that people like the Dolmetsch family were dismissed as cranks, and we see our Edwardian research as a new Period Performance category that just isn’t recognised yet.
I knew a feisty old fellow who had an independent record shop in the nineties, and gleefully put Emma Kirkby’s CDs in “Easy Listening”. People are entirely entitled to their opinions.
But Hell, if Purcell’s Bawdy catches, with titles like As Roger Last Night to Jenny Lay Close or Full Bags, a Brisk Bottle are happily reviewed by the arbiters of taste in the classical world, why not The Rose of No-Man’s Land?
What do I have to do to get a review?
The Hollywood actor is in Israel for the Jerusalem premiere and general release of her debut film as director. In A Tale of Love and Darkness she brings to the screen the autobiography of Israeli writer Amos Oz.
Natalie, who also co-wrote the script, plays the role of Oz’s mother, Fania. Portman, who was raised by Hebrew-speaking parents in the US, says the book reflects much of her own family history.
The music is by Nicholas Britell. The film has been shown at Cannes and Toronto film festivals.
He has been chief conductor with the BBC Symph since 2013. Today, Sakari Oramo renewed until 2020.
Yuri Bashmet, viola player and ensemble director, puffing away at a press conference yesterday in Rostov-on-Don.
There’s a swell of protest online at the truly appalling singing of the Rugby Union World Cup anthem by Paloma Faith, a throaty pop pusher. A petition has been launched to have her replaced.
Traditionalists are calling for the restoration of Dame Kiri, or Bryn Terfel. Gustav Holst is turning in his grave.
Sign the petition if you want to raise the stakes.
A message from new chief executive Cressida Pollock on ‘some of the exciting changes that are happening at ENO’:
You will notice a few changes in the way that our brand looks and feels.
We have been looking at how we express the ENO brand, whether through the way that we look and the way that we write and speak, and also through our culture and the way we behave.
After some fantastic work by the team, and contributions from supporters, stakeholders and the public, we have gently updated our brand to reflect our renewed commitment to placing our audiences at the heart of everything we do.
You will see more of this in coming months – in the theatre, in our advertising and online. We hope you like these changes as we redouble our efforts to attract new audiences to opera, whilst taking care of our loyal patrons and customers.
Ms Pollock, 33, is a McKinsey’s management consultant who speaks and thinks jargon. No head of any other opera house on earth would talk of ‘expressing the brand’ or put ‘stakeholders’ before the paying public.
This unhappy new ENO puts image before art.
The hall he endowed for the New York Philharmonic was renamed yesterday.
Avery Fisher, an enthusiastic violinist and electronics millionaire who died in 1994, gave his life for classical music.
David Geffen, a rock mogul, gave $100 million.
That’s why his name is now on the hall.
There is no room for sentiment in arts fundraising.
The Pope was a no-show for the season’s first symphony concert, but Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand turned up on the red carpet and so did the biggest gift in 173 years of Philharmonic activity. The board chairman, Oscar Schafer, and his wife, Didi (pictured), gave $25 million.
Just like that: $20m for the endowment and $5m for free concerts in the park. Mr Schafer is a hedge fund boss.
It is the rule in US arts organisations that the chairman gives the biggest check. That’s why Carnegie Hall is burning the midnight oil to find a replacement for Ronald Perelman, who fell out with the executive director and the rest of the board and won’t be giving them another cent.
Allan Kozinn has trained his critical eye on his own profession and has come up with a shortfall. He writes a list of what a critic ought to be in 2015… and leaves us struggling to name one who ticks all the boxes.
In the 21st century, after all, a classical music critic should come to the job with an overstuffed (conceptual) tool bag. It must include a familiarity with the great works of the historical canon, as well as a sense of their place in history, both general (political, social, etc.) and musical – and a familiarity with some of the more interesting outliers by so-called minor composers as well. The canon is sprawling now, taking in opera, symphonic music, chamber music, sacred works, art song and solo instrumental music from the last millennium.
But a critic who focuses only on the canon and who cannot respond to the wildly variegated contemporary canon is useless. And to respond properly, these days, a critic needs a functional knowledge not only of the formal styles and techniques – serialism and post-tonal approaches, minimalism and post-minimalism, not to mention the various neos (neoclassicism, neo-romanticism, et al.) – but also the vernacular ones: with so many new works drawing on jazz, rock and world music, a critic cannot afford not to know them. And really, it’s hard to imagine anyone growing up in the late 20th or early 21st centuries who hasn’t moved in all those worlds. Today’s composers do. Critics should as well – and not just out of a sense of duty but because this is our musical universe.
Who can we name, on any major newspaper, who fulfils those criteria?
Sir Jonathan Miller has lashed out at the US political correctness brigade who forced the cancellation of a Mikado production because it did not employ ethnic Japanese singers.
‘It is amazing that anyone who could think the operetta was Japanese could find their way to the bus stop.’
He adds: ‘Anyone who can find their own way to the lavatory without advice will know perfectly well it has no connection whatever with the Japanese; there’s nothing Japanese about it from start to finish. It’s not racist.’
The city of Chongqing now has the largest piano museum in China. It opened on Tuesday with 200 historic pianos of various periods, including one that was owned by Camille Saint-Saens.
Yundi Li is the museum’s honorary director.
Speight Jenkins, the former Seattle Opera director, is worried that the most experienced character actors in opera are being replaced by cheaper, younger substitutes. He has written a thoughtful, detailed essay on the risks:
The other day one of the excellent character artists in opera wrote me that he was going into another business: he likes to perform in the United States, but many companies, both large and small, have stopped engaging mature performers and were using young artists instead. This could be much more a disaster to opera than it might seem.
[..] Some character roles demand mature voices and could easily harm young and still settling voices. Take the five Jews in Salome, four of whom are tenors. Strauss created some of the most difficult small roles in opera for only a few minutes for each because he believed opera would always take place in repertory opera companies where there were plenty of singers who could ideally fill the roles during an eleven-month season. That was the case, certainly in Europe, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Our current American system in which everyone in the cast is assembled from scratch in almost all of our opera houses never occurred to him. The fact remains: if any one of the Jews can’t handle the difficult vocal line, it harms the whole, and these are parts that should not be sung by developing voices.
Read Speight’s full article here and share your thoughts below.
