The Lebrecht Album of the Week has the first review of a premier album of orchestral and film music by George Martin, the Beatles’ man behind the glass wall.

How good a musician was the Beatles’ producer? I talked to George Martin three or four times and, while I found him very likeable, was unimpressed by his musical curiosity. Like many other producers I knew at Abbey Road, he was a purposeful fixer who knew what needed to be done to make a track work and which of London’s hundreds of freelancers he had to call in to patch up a session that, somehow, lacked the finishing touch. String quartet for ‘Yesterday’, piccolo trumpet for ‘Penny Lane’, George Martin knew who to call and how to integrate them. He had a quirky turn of mind, rather than an original concept.

This first album of his orchestral music and film scores, elegantly played by Craig Leon’s Berlin’s Music Ensemble, gives us an opportunity to see what might have been going on behind George’s determinedly bland musical façade…

Read on here.

And here.

And here.

 

A last minute intervention by Rome stopped the auction of a cache of Verdi manuscripts and letters at Sotheby’s London yesterday. The Italians agreed to pay £358,000 to make the documents, privately owned in America for half a century, available for scholarly and public perusal.

The Italians will also pay Sotheby’s commission.

Brian Galliford is no more. He died this morning in Amsterdam, aged 53, after a terrible struggle with cancer. He had lived and worked in Holland since 1991 and was loved wherever he went.

Here’s the official notice:

 

After a long illness on October 27 2017 the British born tenor Brian Galliford passed away.

Brian was born January 8 1964 and studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. In 1991 he made his home in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

 His operatic repertoire included Herodes Salome (Vorarlberger Landestheater Bregenz), Piet vom Fass Le Grand Macabre (Komische Oper Berlin, Niedersächsische Staatstheater Hannover, Vlaamse Opera, Teatro Nacional de São Carlos Lisbon, Nationale Reisopera and Neue Oper Wien), Don Jerome Betrothal in a Monastery (Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse & Opéra Comique, Paris), The Rector and Bob Boles Peter Grimes (Royal Opera Covent Garden, Nederlandse Opera, Nationale Reisopera), Iro The Return of Ulysses (English National Opera), Tanzmeister Ariadne auf Naxos (Welsh National Opera), Bardolpho Falstaff (Opera Holland Park), Graf Albert Die tote Stadt (Nederlandse Opera), Eisslinger and Zorn Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Nederlandse Opera, Oper Frankfurt, Vlaamse Opera), Monostatos Die Zauberflöte (Nationale Reisopera) and Fatty Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny(Nationale Reisopera).

As regular guest artist at the Netherlands Opera he has also sung in Die Soldaten, Der RosenkavalierBoris GodunovCapriccio and Salome. He has been a guest artist at the Glyndebourne Festival (Betrothal in a Monastery), Bregenzer Festspiele (The Cunning Little Vixen), Nationale Reisopera (Idomeneo, Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino), Wiener Kammeroper (Owen Wingrave, Die Gespenstersonate), Opera Zuid (I pagliacci) and Taller Amsterdam (Weisse Rose, Los Heraldos) as well as Old Deuteronomy in the 1992/93 Dutch production of Cats. He was involved in a number of world premières including Cuentos de la Alhambra (José Luis Greco), Rixt (Henk Alkema) and Los Heraldos (Ilse van de Kasteelen) as well as a television film production of Udo Zimmermann’s Weisse Rose. In June 2010 he created the roles of 1st Patient and Provocateur in the world première of Alexander Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart directed by Simon McBurney and conducted by Martyn Brabbins at the Netherlands Opera.

 Brian Galliford sang with conductors including Antonio Pappano, Simon Rattle, Vladimir Jurowski, Esa Pekka-Salonen, Carlo Rizzi, Kenneth Montgomery, Tugan Sokhiev, Ingo Metzmacher, Ryan Wigglesworth, Hartmut Haenchen, Peter Eötvös, Luca Pfaff, Edo de Waart, Reinbert de Leeuw and Valery Gergiev and worked with such directors as Simon McBurney, Benedict Andrews, Martin Duncan, Daniel Slater, Willy Decker, Harry Kupfer, Nicola Raab and Tim Albery.

 In January 2011 he made his French debut to great critical acclaim in the lead role of Don Jerome in Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery at the Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse and at the Opéra Comique in Paris. He was delighted to return to Toulouse at Christmas 2013 as Ménélas in La Belle Hélène.

 2013 saw his debut at La Scala Milan in Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart directed by Simon McBurney, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. La bohème at the Saturday Matinee in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, followed by Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with the Netherlands Opera took him home to Amsterdam, after which he made his first visit to the Salzburger Festspiele as A Fool in Birtwistle’s Gawain. He spent the autumn in London for semi-staged performances of Peter Grimes with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski and then Simon McBurney’s Magic Flute at English National Opera with Brian as Monostatos.

 The cremation will be private.

The diminishing role of the London Coliseum on the opera scene is underlined by the next ENO co-production with the Grade-Linnit company.

Next spring they will put on a five-week run of Chess, written in 1984 by ABBA songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, and Lloyd Webber collaborator Tim Rice.

Sic transit harmoniae mundi.

 

press release:

Chess, the epic love story set amid the tensions of a world championship chess match, will be the fourth production by Michael Linnit and Michael Grade in collaboration with ENO. Chess will have a strictly limited five week run at the London Coliseum from Thursday 26 April 2018 – Saturday 2 June, with a press night on Tuesday 1 May 2018.

This new production, featuring  English National Opera’s award-winning Orchestra and Chorus, will be directed by Laurence Connor, whose recent credits include School of Rock and Miss Saigon on Broadway and in the West End, Les Misérables on Broadway, and the international Jesus Christ Superstar arena tour. Choreography is by Stephen Mear.

Chess, written in 1984 by songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, and Tim Rice (Jesus Christ Superstar, The Lion King, Evita), tells a story of love and political intrigue, set against the background of the Cold War in the late 1970s/early 1980s, in which superpowers attempt to manipulate an international chess championship for political ends. Two of the world’s greatest chess masters, one American, one Russian, are in danger of becoming the pawns of their governments as their battle for the world title gets under way. Simultaneously their lives are thrown into further confusion by a Hungarian refugee, a remarkable woman who becomes the centre of their emotional triangle. This mirrors the heightened passions of the political struggles that threaten to destroy lives and loves.

This collaboration between the GradeLinnit Company and ENO has previously produced highly acclaimed runs of Carousel with Alfie Boe and Katherine Jenkins, Sunset Boulevard starring Glenn Close, and Sweeney Todd starring Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel.

Over 190,000 people have attended one of these musical theatre performances at ENO’s home, the London Coliseum. A significant number of these audiences have already returned to see an opera with us, and Chess will offer another opportunity to introduce new audiences to our beautiful theatre and to the work of our company.

During Summer 2017 ENO will also be presenting Effigies of Wickedness with the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill, The Turn of the Screw with Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and two further ENO Studio Live productions which will be announced in November. Our Orchestra will also play for two productions (Roméo et Juliette and Un Ballo in Maschera) with Grange Park Opera.

The Canadian music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin has cancelled the next two weeks with a recurrence of the wrist injury that afflicted him in the summer.

He has pulled out of Messiaen’s Turangalila with the Rotterdam Philharmonic this weekend, replaced by the Estonian, Olari Elts.

 

City of Edinburgh Music School, reportedly the only free music school of its kind in Europe, is to be shut in a new round of council cuts.

Parents are up in arms. The council says it will spread music teaching peripatetically across the city.

Report here.

Having given the go-ahead to a new concert hall in Munich, the state of Bavaria is now having second thoughts after seeing the costs shoot through the roof.

The Gärtnerplatztheater reopened two weeks ago after extensive renovation. The work, scheduled to take three years, lasted seven.

And the cost, signed off at 70.7 million Euros, has now turned out to be 121.6 million Euros.

The funding authorities are furious.

 

I have written a Heckler’s column in this week’s Spectator arguing the case against the concert hall that Simon Rattle and the LSO are trying to shout into existence.

Sample:

Concert hall, what concert hall? The only cash on the table is £2.5 million from the Corporation of the City of London. The hall is hot air. There has been no public consultation, no actuarial study of demographic need, no consideration of best possible sites or size. There is not even a consensus within the classical sector that a new hall is a top priority when audiences consistently fail to fill the Barbican and Royal Festival Hall. As for the proposed location, it’s a concrete bunker abandoned by the Museum of London because not enough people want to go there. Or ever will.

Blithely dismissing these facts, the LSO has signed up a shprauntzy New York firm to create what Sir Simon Rattle calls ‘an exceptional new place for the enjoyment and understanding of music that is welcoming and open to all’. Unlike today’s facilities, which are a deterrent and shut….

Read on here.

UPDATE: Munich pulls back on new concert hall

The pianist Peter Donohoe pays generous tribute to Sir John Manduell, who died this week, aged 89.

It is with a heavy heart that I write this. John Manduell was the Principal at my Conservatoire – the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester – from its inception in 1973 (as the Northern College of Music) until his retirement in 1996. My Manchester student years were dominated by him, his personality and his vision.

He took the job of Principal at the point at which the Northern School of Music and the Royal Manchester College of Music were amalgamated, having promised a major arts centre for Manchester, as well as a new concept in music colleges – with great facilities for both students and public – in the new building. There seemed to be a good chance that the new college could make Manchester the UK’s pre-eminent place for secondary musical studies. In order to achieve the latter, he had to compete with the ever-present domination by London – particularly amongst foreign students wishing to study in Britain – but he largely succeeded, particularly in the field of vocal studies, with the accent being particularly on opera.

During my student years, I myself was involved as a percussionist in performances of Verdi’s Aida, Massenet’s Thais, Walton’s The Bear, Crosse’s Purgatory, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress and Puccini’s La Bohème, and just after my time there came performances of Wagner Das Rheingold – all of which were massive projects, costing huge amounts of money – often with celebrity directors – that would surely never have happened without Manduell’s drive, persuasiveness and vision.

He managed – against huge odds – to place the RNCM on the international musical map. To us students his priority seemed to be to build the image of the new institution to the outside world.

His predecessors – Ida Carroll at the NSM and Frederick Cox at the RMCM – were perhaps less interested in the way their respective colleges were perceived outside the walls of their buildings; they were very involved with the lives of the students and the internal goings-on of the institutions, and were probably to some extent guilty of ignoring the realities of the modern commercially-driven world beyond the ivory towers that colleges of any subject can be. Standards were very high indeed at both the old colleges, and the family atmosphere was wonderful, but they were beginning to be perceived as old-fashioned.

Manduell, however, was a genius at building the reputation of the RNCM, attracting major sponsors, large numbers of foreign students – particularly to the postgraduate courses – attracting the attention and support of the Arts Council, getting the college talked about in the media, and creating a major new voice in British music education.

I was often – as a student and just afterwards – guilty of maligning him; I was a difficult student, very quick to judge, and generally behaved like a very large square peg in a small round hole.

The very first time I met him was when he set up a series of interviews with the existing RMCM and NSM students – to whom he referred famously, although allegedly, as ‘residual commitments’ to ‘get to know them’. This took place three months before the move to the new building, the latter taking place in January 1973; I started my course in September 1972, and the meeting thus took place in the old RMCM building just after my arrival.

During this meeting he asked me, with a very sceptical look on his face, if this ‘business of studying percussion was really serious’. I saw red straight away because I had always believed, and still do, that specialising in one instrument – which, in the case of the piano, Manduell passionately believed in – was to lose out on so many things, both artistic and personal. We ended the meeting with my antagonism over the next four years almost guaranteed.

I already didn’t fit the mould – I had previously studied violin, viola, double bass, clarinet and tuba, sung in two church choirs twice a week (one of which being Manchester Cathedral), and had taken organ lessons. I wasn’t much good at any of them, with the possible exception of the viola, but I was and still am very glad of the experience. Then I took up symphonic percussion a couple of years before university, and became an extremely proficient player; I was very serious about it, and practised a lot – unlike on the piano. My express desire to go against the new RNCM policy went down with Manduell very badly. So I dug my heels in – about that, and about almost everything – almost as a matter of principle. I was complete pain in the arse to the RNCM management generally, and to Manduell in particular.

However, I did indeed do a double diploma – now it would be described as a double degree – in piano and percussion – in both cases as a teacher and as a performer. I am not only very grateful to Manduell for reluctantly allowing me to break his rules, but also for appointing one of the most extraordinary people I have ever worked with – my percussion professor – Gilbert Webster (retired principal percussionist with the BBCSO during the Boulez era). Webster had an influence on my long term future whose profundity cannot properly be put into words – very obviously over my piano-playing as well as his chosen instrument(s), and I have John Manduell to thank for his decision to appoint him as Head of Department.

Allegedly, Manduell was not – contrary to one of the comments I read on Facebook – familiar with all his students. He allegedly failed to recognise several of them when passing them in the street. He was allegedly guilty of favouritism and a certain ruthlessness. He made the public performance of opera – the grander the better – the RNCM’s best known activity; this, allegedly, led to some very promising singers being broken by being promoted in huge roles that they were not yet ready for. And many of his appointees were allegedly often absent as well as being definitely famous, and were willing to accede to the Principal’s wishes however much they allegedly disagreed with him. [Such a situation is vaguely reminiscent of what one gathers about Margaret Thatcher’s relationship with her ministers.] He also allegedly ignored students’ complaints against certain teachers’ abuse of their position – the long-term results of this being seen in recent years when the dangers of one-on-one teaching hit the headlines.

Now dispensing with the word ‘allegedly’, he did not take any interest whatsoever in my activities after leaving – failing to reply to any correspondence regarding such events as my London recital debut, my Proms debut, and my first ever recording, all of which took place within the five years after I left the RNCM in 1976. Whether or not other alumni experienced the same lack of interest, I wouldn’t know. It was a regrettable side to him that did not personally endear him to me, despite the dichotomy created by my growing admiration for him on a professional basis. But I suppose the truth is that I was paying for being a permanent nuisance as a student. In any case, he did respond to my prize at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition in 1982 by making me a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music, along with John Williams and Raymond Slater.

Having said that, I always realised what a visionary he was (at the same time as being a realist in the modern world). What an excellent writer, a media-friendly character, a brilliant politician: he was a past master at fielding public meetings and word-spinning to the point of genius! An overall exceptional man.

His many achievements included building a college that I miss in so many ways, and for so many reasons, with an engaging and persuasive personality that loomed over me – and looked over me no doubt often with horror – at a very formative time.

I am very sad indeed to look back at the degree to which I was a thorn in his side. I so wish we could have met at some point over the last twenty years, and mended fences; life is too short for long-term grudges, as is proved by yesterday’s news. I started this by saying that I have a very heavy heart, and I repeat it.

Peter Donohoe

UPDATE: The Telegraph has an obituary today.

 

Some purposeful reflections by our weekly diarist, Anthea Kreston.

Intonation is a very tricky thing. Not only are there several different systems of intonation for western classical music (let’s not even for a moment contemplate traditional Indian classical music or Central Asian music), the systems trade off within the piece, and have to be adjusted also to the flavor of emotions, or if someone has an open string, and it seems sometimes, depending on the weather or what people ate that morning.

It can make you paranoid, cause fights, create a feeling of inferiority/superiority, and block you from having flow or trust. It also has to have a hierarchy between the four musicians, which is in constant flux – so each person has to either adjust or lead each note. But most of all, it sometimes seems like such a farce and a moment to posture – like when the Wizard came out from behind his curtain in the Wizard of Oz – or when everyone realized that the Emperor had No Clothes.

Let’s get down to it – if you, yourself, don’t have a completely solid and reliable personal technique, all of the above is completely fruitless and not only a waste of time for yourself, but something which will creat utter chaos amongst your group. If you can’t lay down perfect, constantly changing intonation moment after moment, there is simply no point.

So – before we talk about all the hoopla above, let’s make sure we know exactly what we are doing. We have all had years and thousands of hours to think about this, but often, the goulash of advice from past teachers and colleagues, mixed with the firm deadlines and seemingly endless list of things to be accomplished puts a shroud of confusion over our fundamental individual technique choices and leads to wasted practice time and technical decisions which simply don’t hold up under pressure.

Since we are talking intonation, let’s focus on the left hand, and break it down statistically and neurologically so we have a grasp of our challenges.

First, neurologically. Humans have only 4 slots in their working memory bank – the working memory is what we use for problem solving. You don’t use these for driving your car or brushing your teeth or (truth be told) reading a bedtime story to your utterly adorable children. But multiply 13 by 27, or remember a phone number someone just told you for longer than 5 seconds, and there you have it – one working memory slot used up. Remember multi-tasking? Turns out that is a fable – we can only switch-task – and there are only 4 things on that stove, all on medium heat waiting for you to turn them up and down – good “multi-taskers” are just quick “switch-taskers”. The good news is that, so far, they have found no limit for our long-term memory slots. Great news, in fact! Let’s figure out ways to move our “working memory” items into long-term storage for easy retrieval, and free up a slot of two for plain old, having “fun” while we perform.

Here is what I use my slots for – one each for left hand, right hand, emotions, and one for emergencies. The left hand one can’t be doing your personal work at the same time as adjusting to intonation of your group – otherwise there goes your “emotion” or “emergency” slot. Not good. Not good at all. We have all been there or seen concerts when the person is clearly firing on all 4 cylinders and still needs one or two more. So let’s push our “personal intonation” into long-term storage so we can use one of our coveted memory slots for immediate group intonation.

I think it is a fantastic thing to spend some quality time making sure your own house is organized before inviting everyone over for an Intonation Party. Let’s get those dirties in the hamper and vacuum the stairs!

Questions to ask yourself:

1st position:
Is my first position organized in such a way that every finger can easily perform its job with no movement by the hand, thumb, or wrist? Do I know the fundamental character and strengths and weaknesses of each finger, and can I compromise the stronger ones to bolster the weaker ones? Does my thumb move at the second joint to support certain fingers (if it does, figure out how to not do this)? Does my hand pivot to reach the 4th finger (bad idea – wastes valuable time and leads to overuse and injury of your tendons)? Is my wrist completely straight and strong, or does it make small adjustments (see above)?Develop a hand shape which is strong, stable, in which all 4 fingers can easily and quickly perform their role – both in regular and extended (up and down one half step) position without altering your hand. Video yourself and make sure you have this. This can take a month to figure out.

All the rest:
Then, when you have this shape, move it exactly, and without changing it, to 3rd position. The base of your hand should lightly touch the bottom bout of the violin. Exactly the same position. In first, your thumb can ground itself physically by the curvature of the base of the scroll, and in third the base of your hand grounds by the bout. Now, with that same shape, swing the elbow around and find 5th position. If your thumb was solid in 1st (and therefore in 3rd), your 5th potion will be exactly the same. Your thumb and the pudgy bottom joint of the thumb will lay exactly against the violin, with the tip of the thumb feeling the end of the neck, and the rest of the thumb nestled between the bouts. You should not have to have any more positions for your hand – if you stretch your fingers out you can reach to the end of the fingerboard. We now have one position which works for the entire fingerboard. Second is always a mystery, but it is between 1st and 3rd, and 4th I pivot my elbow to 5:00 (5th and up is 4:00). There you have it.

Shifting:
Now that we have a solid hand position (you can developers your own, but the fundamental questions remain the same), let’s talk about simplifying shifting from one position to another. First, some fun numbers. Forgive me if they aren’t exactly correct but you will get the idea.

I conceive of the violin as one string, one finger. The different strings are activated by the angle of my elbow (which is controlled by big muscles in my back). I measure everything by the first finger, all other fingers are ready to go, but the box of my hand remains steady and is grounded by measuring from 1. For example, if I need to go from a B to an F on the A String, finger 1 to 3, I don’t practice 1 to 3, I practice only first finger, A to D, then my 3rd finger is ready to go to F. I will now tell you how to learn only 10 shifts instead of 15,360 (the combined number of possibilities for 4 fingers, 4 strings, 10 positions up and down).

Fun with numbers.
Going from first position on the A string to an F on the A string. 16 possibilities (combinations of the 4 fingers). Measure by 1st finger – only 4 possibilities.

Multiply this by 10 positions – 16×10=160. Measure by only your 1st finger=10.

160 combinations on one string multiplied by 4 strings – 160×4= 640. Remove different strings from the equation and measure by 1st finger=10.

Combination of switching between strings (A to G, D to E etc.) – 12 options. 640×12=7,680, or 10 if you conceptualize one string, one finger.

This was only for shifting up. You also have to shift down – 7,680×2=15,360 different possibilities for a string player for the basic 10 positions. Or only 10 possibilities.

The good news about being organized with your hand is that it doesn’t matter if you shift up or shift down – the position on which you land is exactly the same – like pushing a button on the elevator. The third floor doesn’t look different if you came from the 7th or the 2nd floor.

The best use of your time is to do a one octave scale on one string with just your first finger. And also a series of one octave arpeggios (major, minor, diminished, subdominant etc.). Simplify your music, practice the shifts on one string, one finger. Then the other fingers are just accoutrements- details to be slightly adjusted later.

For the opening of the Mendelssohn violin concerto, I practice just my 1st finger on the e string – g,b,b flat,b,a, which gets me to the second statement.

Just some basic house-cleaning ideas. Have fun!