From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
There is no wholly recommendable performance on record of Mahler’s third symphony. The earliest, by F. Charles Adler in 1952, is faultlessly idiomatic, as is Jascha Horenstein’s 1970 LSO account, but both are marred by inferior orchestral playing and poor sound.
Claudio Abbado’s 2007 DVD from Lucerne is as good as it gets…
So could a new release be the long-awaited?
Read on here.
And here.
And here.
From Elena Riu, special to Slipped Disc:
Two weeks ago, on a trip to visit my elderly mother and family in Caracas I revisited Schuman’s extraordinary ‘Kinderszenen’ as preparation for a concert in London, where I live.
On my rickety, old, out of tune and humidity-stricken upright, neglected for months, I returned once more to this familiar score and to the faded stage of my Caracas childhood. Seen through Schumann’s world, I remembered the sunny ease of life in my country before my departure. The plentiful mangos beckoning from generous trees, the ‘patinatas’ ( roller skating parties) in the streets of Altamira, where I lived (now a war zone). The sun shining in the eyes of people, always ready for a joke, ready to step in to help a passer by, an old person. The Perfect Happiness of a day in the Parque del Este, the all pervading feeling that everything good was awaiting and possible. Abundance.
No more. After years of lies, corruption and embezzlement by a dictatorship, what I revisited and witnessed last month were scenes which could have come straight out of Guernica or indeed, Goya’s Disasters of War.
I would have never described myself as particularly patriotic. The daughter of an exiled Catalan philosopher and an Italian immigrant living in the UK my identity’s net is cast wide and far. Then, in 2014, something changed. Massive but peaceful protests were met by brutal repression and killings of young people, almost children, by government officials. If you have never been to Venezuela you might find it difficult to imagine the gentleness and charm of its people. Their beautiful voices, their sense of humour, their concern for their elders, their love of children.
My outrage grew as I watched videos depicting woundings and murder and heard from friends and relatives. This government has turned my country into one of the most dangerous and violent places in the world. This is a place were, if something happens to you, the last person to call is a policeman.
Last August, my mother was ill and I went out. There was a chill in the air. The stale smell of fear prevailed upon the city. In ordinary neighbourhoods, I saw people looking for food inside the rubbish bags lining the street. Shock and disbelief lingered for weeks.
Now I am back and what I see is utter misery and destruction. Much worse. At first one only notices the coverings, the ravaged surfaces. The demoralization of architecture. Then, you look deeper, you take in the detail. Eyes too tired and scared to see, mouths without smiles, the holes in the clothes. The people. The victims.
To see what really goes on in a country one must use public transport. A tricky one in my country…Let me tell you. One does not use public transport lightly in Caracas if one can help it. It is far too dangerous. But then, a car does not guarantee safety either. So many of my friends have been held at gunpoint at traffic lights….Forced by airport authorities to get some official documents I ventured out on the only march-free day since our arrival. Having to cross the city from one government office to another, it was a toss-up between hailing a cab on my own (probably far more dodgy than taking the tube) or tubing it, as at least , if I got kidnapped, robbed or murdered someone would see it. So I decided, against everyone’s advice, to opt for the latter.
The underground was packed. It is 10 am and I am scared. A mugging is taking place as I arrive on the platform. People are shouting. I run in. I look around and then I feel it. This unusual, eerie presence. The silence. The staring. The downcast faces. The hunger games.
These are the real hunger games. The government has done it homework. This is no rookie dictatorship. Maduro and his retinue have mastered starvation as a form of warfare. Its corroding denial has debilitated, scared and infiltrated the minds, hearts and souls of Venezuelans. People joke that Maduro’s supporters have been bought out with a ‘bozal de arepa’ : a bread muzzle. Not surprising. You can see why. Finding food is an epic endeavour. If you are a tourist, or have access to foreign currency you can walk into any supermarket and buy at hugely inflated European prices but if, like most people, you earn a minimum wage of $40 a month the only way is to queue for subsidized goods. This takes most of the day and consumes most of your energy and it is usually futile.
The people I sat with in the tube, in government buildings and offices, were beaten into submission by hunger. Parents paraded their sick children in the carriages for money. Rage and sadness flooded my heart.
In Yoga philosophy, Prana, the life force, is sustained by a number of things, one of them being food. These men, women and children had only one though in their minds:’ where am I going to find my next meal?’. Marching is hard on an empty stomach.
And what marches. Imagine the M25 lined with people. How can they carry on? Who will help them? Where will they find the strength to continue ? But against all odds, their spirit is not beaten yet. A thirst for justice , but most of all, love and the truth keeps them going. I walk down my street and join them for a while and feel immense pride but I also feel the fear. Anything can happen , because the President has armed hordes of thugs and instructed them to go out and use knifes, guns and baseball bats on anyone they fancy . Anyone can be a killer here.
I remember that I need to stay alive to bring my daughter back to safety, so I relent and go back to Schumann.
For years, I held a small, anonymous protest. I would not perform in Venezuela if it meant receiving money which was in any way tainted by officialdom. Social media protest isn’t my thing. I read and admired the posts by Gabriela Montero, one of our finest artists. I have signed petitions, gone to marches in London and told everyone I meet what is going on but I haven’t publicly pronounced. I have decided to speak up now because I wanted to set the record straight regarding the way in which news from my country is presented. The accounts are mostly incorrect and misinterpreted. It is very difficult, for a non-Venezuelan, to access and interpret live videos from social media in an accurate way. It is important that you understand the gravity of the situation. We need the support of the UK government. We need help. Human rights are violated . Innocent people are being killed every day. After the events of this week, flooded by feelings of guilt, impotence and worry for my close ones and unable to offer my support in person I have obtained a twitter account. To bridge the gap between the now and then. The here and there. Between the two disparate sets of childhood memories.
The scenes from this trip elicited a very different response and the titles of each piece in the cycle evoqued recent events. Schuman’s lens is now distorted. This is indeed a ‘Foreign land’
Down the road, in Plaza Altamira , an opposition stronghold, there are no children playing or pushing prams like I am used to. The sound of tear gas and bullets mingles with that of people shouting, running and screaming. We run inside for cover. All the children – at least the ones lucky enough to have a home with walls – are indoors.
These days, a grand event for most families is to have two meals a day ( the equivalent of winning the lottery), or to make it home safely, or even better, to make it home at all!
The bakery next door, once famous for its cakes displays a ghostly array of empty shelves. I become the family’s chief bread hunter. My duties involve going down at strategically timed intervals in case they manage to bring out a few trays. Imagine trying to hold down a job and raising three kids whilst having to hunt around the city for bread, soap, toilet paper (a luxury item). ‘A begging child’ is now an all too familiar sight in most streets with gangs of children running around looking for food in any way they can get it. My street is no exception.
Hundreds of people of all ages take to the streets.
What can anyone say to the parents and family of Armando Canyizales, a child of 17 killed today by the very people who should have been protecting him. And all the other children, parents, grand parents that have been murdered?
Elena Riu, London, May 4, 2017
Elena Riu will play Kinderszenen at Trinity Laban on May 10. Details here.
Post from Dan Turkos, a Philadelphia bassist:
I opened my flight case at San Francisco International Airport after flying Southwest Airlines to find that the neck had been broken on my double bass from circa 1870. This instrument is my love, affectionately named Penny, and my livelihood as a professional musician. The bass was inspected by TSA (Transportation Security Administration) and myself at Philadelphia International Airport as requested on my case.
I had a layover at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Upon arrival at SFO, hinges were missing, a combination lock (with code available) was sheared off the side and the duct tape used for extra piece of mind was cut. Clearly the instrument was opened without me present, disregarding my request on the instrument case.
I don’t avidly post on Facebook, but my colleagues and I agree that this treatment of instruments is unacceptable. Spread the word so airline workers receive proper training to deal with such luggage or at the very least, read a note and value it’s content as to avoid these issues in the future.
We have been notified of the death of Keith Harvey, founder-cellist of the Gabrieli Quartet for the past 50 years.
He was also principal cellist with the London Philharmonic and the English Chamber Orchestra.
Born in Liverpool in 1938, he suffered polio in childhood, overcoming those difficulties to win the Suggia Prize at the Royal Academy of Music. He was the youngest graduate to go straight from the Academy into a principal seat in a London orchestra. He later flew to Los Angeles for top-up lessons with Piatigorsky.
The Gabrielis were an adventurous ensemble who gave world premieres of works by Britten, Panufnik, McCabe and many others.
The Independent is the second English-language outlet, after Slipped Disc, to report the death of Baris Yazgi, a Kurdish-Turkish violinist who died last week in the Aegean Sea, still clutching his violin case.
Reporter Lizzie Dearden has pieced together fragments of his movements and his motives by taking to family members and a former girlfriend.
Read her account here.
And our editorial here.
The longest soap opera in British football is the saga of the once-successful Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger, who clings to his job despite winning nothing much for years.
Time now for a proper opera.
Highbury Opera Theatre has commissioned artistic director Scott Stroman to compose an opera from Nick Hornby’s Arsenal-fan novel, Fever Pitch. The librettist is Tamsin Collison and the work will premiere in September, just as Wenger or his successor is trotting out a new team at the Emirates.
The opera will last 90 minutes.
Plus injury time.
Who gets to play Wenger? (Bostridge would be brilliant.)
Colin Firth in the movie, Fever Pitch
When the School District of Philadelphia found it had more than 1,000 broken musical instruments in store, it called in the experts.
Temple University, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boyer College of Music & Dance, and others all gave good advice.
First, the broken instruments were given a serious, curated exhibition.
photo: Robert Blackson
Then composer David Lang was called in to write a symphony with parts for every damaged flute, broken bridge and wounded clarinet.
The symphony will be performed next year. And a lot of money has been raised to repair instruments.
Full story, by Allison Meier, here.
Around 1,000 people have posted comments on the main site of the conductor’s protest at the death of an El Sistema viola player in the country’s civil violence, and his challenge to the regime of ‘enough is enough’.
Among the most hostile comments is one from a post in the name of the young victim’s godfather and uncle, Guillermo Carillo. He maintains that his nephew did not die for any cause but as a victim of petty interests on both sides. He attacks Dudamel for being complicit in the present situation.
Others say that Dudamel’s intervention is ‘too little, too late,’ condemning his long collaboration with the regime.
Others still call for dialogue, tolerance, a way forward.
The Festival d’Ile-de-France, founded in 1976 and featuring more than 30 concerts in various locations, is no more.
The autumn festival has been facing difficulties since the local authority cut its grant last December by 68 percent.
Like many French arts events, the festival is heavily dependent on public subsidy, in this case amounting to four-fifths of its total budget.
An appeal for public donations and sponsorship failed.
The festival today posted a closure notice.
Our diarist Anthea Kreston is inching closer to a dream date in Berlin:
I have had a chance to sleep in a little this week, and of course I am sick – I have been putting that off for months and it finally had a chance to pounce. I have a huge piece of cardboard on which I have a list of all of the music I have to play between now and October, with graph paper to chart the progress. Of the 10 Beethoven sonatas (which start early September), we have put together four this week (roughly). Mendelssohn octet has begun, and I start working through the Four Seasons with my rehearsal pianist tomorrow.
And next week is Berlin Philharmonic.
Procrastination as a classical musician is not an option. Or, rather, if you choose procrastination, your career as a classical musician will be short and painful. Every musician knows that the neurological aspect of learning is painstakingly slow, and needs both time and a certain amount of “resting” to achieve flow. There is an entire branch of Music Psychology devoted to cognitive neuroscience. In fact, in autopsy, you can distinguish the a musician vs a non-musician by the brain. Gaser and Schlaug (2003) studied the brains of musicians (both professional and amateur) and non-musicians and discovered increased amounts of grey matter in auditory, motor and visual-spacial brain areas. So – in a nut-shell – you should be practicing right now instead of what you and I both know you are doing right now, which is reading this instead of doing what you are actually supposed to be doing RIGHT NOW!
So – another thing that occurred to me this week is that, no matter how old you are, if you are the youngest sibling, you will always, somehow, either not know what you are doing, have to be talked to “sternly”, or simply have to be rescued. I am the youngest of three girls, all capable musicians in their own niches. I was on WhatsApp with my oldest sister (a frighteningly capable person who can seemingly sightreading an entire page of music flawlessly after it has been flashed to her for 10 seconds). She asked what the rep was for Berlin, and I told her I was playing viola – Heldenleben. She wrote back OMG and told me to hold on a second. She got back on WhatsApp 1 minute later and said she had scheduled a FaceTime “meeting” (read: lesson) with her husband (an incredible violist) to just “double check” a couple of spots this weekend. This is also the sister who “just happened” to be in Europe three times this year and had time to come stay with us and go to Ikea and help set up our internet, among a million other things (she brought an entire suitcase filled with Trader Joe’s things as well).
I asked if she thought I was some kind of a moron, and she said, “of course I do, but in the most supportive way”. Sometimes being the youngest is the best possible thing in the world. And now – I must go do the thing we all know I am supposed to be doing right now instead of typing with my thumbs on this ridiculous phone keyboard – immediately! I have a lesson tomorrow!
The conductor has issued his strongest statement yet in the wake of continuing violence in Venezuela, violence that has now claimed the life of a young El Sistema musician.
Gustavo Dudamel makes it clear that his words are aimed at the Maduro government. And he puts the name of the murdered Sistema player at the head of his post. Here’s what he says:
‘My entire life has been devoted to music and art as a way of transforming societies. I raise my voice against violence. I raise my voice against any form of repression. Nothing justifies bloodshed. We must stop ignoring the just cry of the people suffocated by an intolerable crisis. Extreme confrontation and polarization cannot seize common conscience and peace, constituting borders and barriers to understanding and peaceful and democratic coexistence. Historically the Venezuelans have been a fighting people but never a violent one.
‘For democracy to be healthy there must be true respect and understanding. Democracy cannot be built to fit the needs of a particular government or otherwise it would cease to be a democracy. The democratic exercise involves listening to the voice of the majority as the ultimate bulwark of social truth. No ideology can go beyond the common good. Politics must be exercised from conscience and in the utmost respect of the Constitution, adapting itself to a young society that, like the Venezuelan, has the right to reinvent itself through the healthy and unobjectionable democratic checks and balances.
‘Venezuelans are desperate for their inalienable right to well-being and the satisfaction of their basic needs. The only weapons that can be given to people are the necessary tools to forge their future: books, brushes, musical instruments; in short, those that embody the highest values of the human spirit: good, truth and beauty.
‘I urgently call on the President of the Republic and the national government to rectify and listen to the voice of the Venezuelan people. Times cannot be defined by the blood of our people. We owe our youth a hopeful world, a country where we can walk freely in dissent, in respect, in tolerance, in dialogue and in which dreams have room to build the Venezuela we all yearn for.
‘It is time to listen to the people: Enough is enough. –Gustavo Dudamel’
UPDATE: Furious reactions to Dudamel’s statement.
‘Mi vida entera la he dedicado a la música y al arte como forma de transformar las sociedades. Levanto mi voz en contra de la violencia y la represión. Nada puede justificar el derramamiento de sangre. Ya basta de desatender el justo clamor de un pueblo sofocado por una intolerable crisis. Históricamente el pueblo venezolano ha sido un pueblo luchador pero jamás violento.
Para que la democracia sea sana debe haber respeto y entendimiento verdadero. La democracia no puede estar construida a la medida de un gobierno particular porque dejaría de ser democracia. El ejercicio democrático implica escuchar la voz de la mayoría, como baluarte último de la verdad social. Ninguna ideología puede ir más allá del bien común. La política se debe hacer desde la consciencia y en el más absoluto respeto a la constitucionalidad, adaptándose a una sociedad joven que, como la venezolana, tiene el derecho a reinventarse y rehacerse en el sano e inobjetable contrapeso democrático.
Los venezolanos están desesperados por su derecho inalienable al bienestar y a la satisfacción de sus más básicas necesidades. Las únicas armas que se le puede entregar a un pueblo son las herramientas para forjar su porvenir: instrumentos musicales, pinceles, libros; en fin, los más altos valores del espíritu humano: el bien, la verdad y la belleza.
Hago un llamado urgente al Presidente de la República y al gobierno nacional a que se rectifique y escuche la voz del pueblo venezolano. Los tiempos no pueden estar marcados por la sangre de nuestra gente. Debemos a nuestros jóvenes un mundo esperanzador, un país en el que se pueda caminar libremente en el disentimiento, en el respeto, en la tolerancia, en el diálogo y en el que los sueños tengan cabida para construir la Venezuela que todos anhelamos.
Es el momento de escuchar a la gente: Ya basta. –Gustavo Dudamel
A torrential storm has stopped all outdoor activity at Frankfurt airport this afternoon. All check-in was stopped.
Dozens of flights have been diverted or cancelled.
Thousands of passengers are being offered later bookings.
