Berberis' World

Saturday, 17 October 2009, Royal Festival Hall.

“This wonderful performance of Mendelssohn’s ‘Elijah’ marked the 20th-anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in which Kurt Masur… played a crucial role […] Masur, looking rather like an Old Testament prophet himself, didn’t so much conduct the work as deliver it. His tempos had a momentum that especially suited the chorus… and allowed the choral singing the sort of unforced naturalness that distinguishes the best performances of the great German passions […] the fugues didn’t drown you in a flood of self-conscious counterpoint, and the chorus’s urgent projection gave the awe-inspiring romance of moments such as the storm and the prophet’s ascension to heaven a grandeur far removed from post-Victorian piety.”

Peter Reed, The Classical Source.

“The London Philharmonic Choir was outstanding: full of tone and equally incisive of attack. Large forces are called for here and the thrill of large forces we received.”

Mark Berry, MusicWeb.

The legend that is Kurt Masur announced his arrival at the Bishopsgate Institute by being late and then stripping to the waist. That said, at 82, Maestro Masur is entitled to keep his own time and, given his subsequent 3 hour workout, he’s allowed a change of kit. And it was from the waist up.

We’d been warned that he was a hard taskmaster, and would single out individuals whom he considered not up to that task. For those of us who’d not had the pleasure of working with him before this proved far less daunting than trying to interpret his instructions, both verbal and non-verbal. Sometimes he was crystal-clear, as when he told the tenors “You sing like women!”. Other times, his arms dropped to his sides and he would shake his head, chuntering away to himself for a while before telling us a story, the meaning of which we were seemingly not only supposed to divine but incorporate into our interpretation of the text. On more than one occasion it seemed to more than just myself that the version which finally satisfied Maestro Masur (after maybe 6 or 7 attempts to put his wishes into music) was exactly the same as the first one. However, whilst you are sighing and fidgeting and complaining as the same phrase is repeated ad nauseam, you have to remind yourself that we are not hearing what he is hearing. Also, what he wants to hear is a step on from that. Oh, and he is Kurt Masur.

So, Elijah. To be honest, I’d never heard of it until now. It wasn’t until I read the concert programme that I fully understood what it was all about. This is the ‘Speedread’ version. Elijah for Dummies, if you will…

‘Elijah prophesies years of drought for the people of Israel, punishment for their worship of a false god, Baal. After raising a widow’s son from the dead, he challenges the priests of Baal to slay a bullock and call upon their god to light the sacrificial fire under it. Their prayers go unanswered, but Elijah’s prayer to the Lord God of Abraham is spectacularly successful. The priests of Baal are slain and Elijah’s prayers bring the penitent Israelites abundant rain.’

And that’s only Part 1. In Part 2 ‘Elijah rebukes King Ahab, and Queen Jezebel rouses the people against the prophet. He flees to the wilderness, and laments in a poignant aria Es ist genug (It is enough). Angelic visitations restore his spirits, and he returns to the people, overthrowing kings and finally ascending to Heaven in a chariot of fire. The last section foretells the coming of Christ.’

As an all-but-card-carrying atheist, this is no more than a fairy story to me. The son wasn’t actually dead, just not very well; the only way to start a fire without human interference is by a bolt of lightning; weather systems, not prayers, bring rain; angels only exist in people’s minds, and don’t get me started on fiery chariots or Jesus.

Two of the billed soloists were replaced: John Relyea, who was to have sung Elijah, was suffering from a throat and sinus infection and was replaced by the wonderful Alastair Miles. Rosie Aldridge, who was to have been Queen Jezebel, was replaced by Sarah Castle. Such was the last-minute nature of these substitutions that Elijah had only 2 rehearsals with us, and Jezebel (accompanied by her 8 week old son) had to borrow a dress from one of the chorus. Alastair Miles was clearly a popular sub, although he cut an odd figure in his first rehearsal – tall, balding, and dressed like a farm-hand. However, he opened his mouth and this amazing sound emerged; we were so impressed with one of his arias that we broke into spontaneous applause.

The impending deluge in Part 1 is heralded by the sighting of a cloud in the shape of a hand, spotted from a high vantage point by a youth. Said youth doesn’t have much to do, and the part was to have been sung by a chorus soprano. However, on hearing her Masur asked for ‘him’ to indicate where ‘he’ was. Having been expecting a boy, the Maestro’s disappointment was evident. A boy treble was hurriedly found in time for the final tutti and subsequent performance, and all was well.

I wasn’t aware of this 3rd substitution until after the performance, however, as I arrived late for the Saturday tutti and, as under NO circumstances do you take your place if a rehearsal has begun, I had to sneak in and stand in the corner behind the door in order to hear the last-minute instructions. It was a blessing in disguise, as in the 24 hours between the Friday tutti and the performance I developed a sore throat* that would have been made much worse by an hour’s extra singing. As it was, I spent much of the time in the second half expecting to start coughing uncontrollably. Thankfully this didn’t happen, but the voice was not 100% – there were one or two moments when I had to mime as I didn’t trust myself to produce the right note.  And the only phrase that Neville said he’d be listening out for I still managed to get wrong. Ah well, onwards and upwards, to quote the man himself.

*This morphed into a full-blown and hideous head cold/cough, which I still have as I type.

Text aside, I enjoyed singing Elijah. I love the overture, even if 8 bars of it did become an earworm I couldn’t shift for days. (Neither, I might add, could I get over the fact that the opening bars were used by John Williams for the theme from ‘Jaws’.) I doodled a shark fin in the margin. The way it builds towards the opening ‘Hilf, Herr!’ is brilliant, wonderfully stirring stuff, as is the final chorus.

Masur was very keen to stress that our interpretation should be devoid of any sentiment, and much of his criticism of our performance in rehearsal was that we were being too sentimental. He would stand there, pretending to wipe tears from his eyes and plead with us to “stop singing so beautifully!” Confusingly, he also said that it was not, despite its content, a religious piece. Having never heard it performed, I only discovered after reading one particular review that it had been the Victorians who had imbued Elijah with the cloying sentimentality so beloved of that era, and so inappropriate in a piece which contains quite a bit of vengeance and smiting and destruction.

As of 25th October, I can only find 2 reviews of this concert online. I find this very odd, given Masur’s status and reputation. Also, I can’t find any decent recordings of any of the parts on YouTube. Either the sound quality is really poor or it’s in English or the singing is awful. And I mean awful. Nails-down-a-blackboard, cats-being-tortured, please-make-it-stop-my-ears-are-bleeding awful. Both of these situations can easily be remedied by going out and buying this CD. Or this one. Better still, buy both of them. I’m going to.

PS: Having given up on my totally inappropriately named Creative ‘Zen’ player (it did nothing to improve mine), I now have an iPod Touch. But no Mendelssohn. So I went looking for the 2 CDs that I recommend at the end of this blog entry… only to find that they’re the same. Many apologies to anyone who bought both on the strength of my review. Just me then…

PPS: If all else fails and you, like me, can’t seem to find a German version with A. Miles Esq, then try this one . I should get commission…

Saturday, 12 September 2009, Henry Wood Hall.

Spending 7 hours in an airless room singing with much repetition and hesitation (although not necessarily deviation) may not be everyone’s idea of a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but it was a chance to sing some nice cheesy tunes and I’m always up for that, circumstances permitting.

They did, so I arrived at HWH armed with a bag full of music, a frothyventimochafrappaccino and associated brain freeze. We dawdled into the hall just after 1pm and went through the first pieces we we’re there to record. Because that was the point of the day; to record some popular classical music for a CD. A CD rather than a DVD as we didn’t have to dress up. Neville nagged us, we made notes, sang the stuff through, sulked a bit at having to go over it again and again, made some more notes and waited for the conductor.

In the first half we sang O Fortuna, Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, the Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem, and two sections from the last movement of Beethoven’s 9th. I especially enjoyed the Beethoven – the last bit really does get the blood going.

After the LSC left, we stopped for lunch. I eschewed the on site refreshment (the basement eatery in HWH is nice but too dark) to patronise a local shop for local people, thus getting some sorely needed fresh air.

We regrouped to sing the Lacrymosa from Mozart’s Requiem, and the Hallelujah from Handel’s Messiah. The sops recorded Gunoud’s Ave Maria, but that was after the rest of the choir had been dismissed.

The endless repetition was frustrating but, to be honest, more frustrating was not being able to sing the rest of the music, especially the Mozart. I’ve only ever sung it twice, both times at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the ‘Scratch’ series of concerts, and it’s just wonderful. I sang Messiah in the same setting as well, but didn’t enjoy it quite as much. Nevertheless, the Hallelujah was nice and rousing, even if I started a bar before everyone else at one run-through. It would have been even more embarrassing had I come in forte, as indicated.

Pedant of the Week Award goes to the guys monitoring the recording. They had the orchestra play, over and over, the last bar of CotHS, which consists of one note. Still, when it’s only one note, you may as well make it a good one.

Sunday, 30th August 2009.

We’ve been married for 23 years today. To celebrate, we went for dinner with our two children at a local restaurant.

Normally, when we eat out we don’t talk. As far as I’m concerned this is almost entirely due to the fact that when I was at primary school the headmaster, Mr Barry, forbade all talking during lunchtime. He would stand behind his desk surveying the children in his charge, making those who spoke stand facing the window at the front of the canteen and therefore unable to finish their meal. You ate in silence and, because you wanted to talk, you ate as quickly as possible so you could get out. Nowadays, kids can run around cafes and restaurants and cinemas and do what the fuck they like, even if it means pissing other people off, because to restrict them is to ‘infringe their human rights’. Bollocks. You want human rights violations? Go to the Imperial War Museum. See how children had their human rights infringed by being starved to death by people allowed to run riot in others’ countries. And then talk to me about kids being able to run riot in restaurants.

Make the little sods sit down and behave themselves. Make them aware of others feelings and opinions. Make them more considerate. Stop them being so fucking selfish and self obsessed. And, while you’re at it, stop indulging their every bloody whim, stop telling them that they’re ‘special’ when they clearly are just average and, for everyone’s sake, stop making them believe that they can be famous when they have no talent for anything except being bloody obnoxious.

We have two kids, both of whom are blessedly normal, i.e. neither of them have learning difficulties or physical or mental problems. For this I am very grateful, as I am well aware that there are children who have huge problems simply being alive. Both ours have been brought up to know right from wrong, to appreciate that other people matter, and to do whatever they do to the best of their ability. Neither have been ‘hot-housed’ or pushed to be more than they are, or berated when they have failed to attain unattainable standards. They are both well-balanced, considerate and happy, and I am thankful for this. I’m glad that neither of them passed a GCSE when they were 6, or got 14 A* GCSEs at their first attempt, because I don’t think I could live with myself for having produced such shallow, results-obsessed people.

I love both our kids unconditionally. I’d like our daughter to find herself a job where she is appreciated for her organisational abilities and people skills, I’d like our son to do well in his GCSEs, but not at the expense of their happiness. If, as they get older, they make mistakes, lose all their money and/or their enthusiasm, I’ll be there to counsel them/bail them out/cheer them up.

Right now, we’re all sitting in the front room, each with a laptop. Part of me thinks this is quite sad, but another part is content that we are, at least, in the same room talking to each other now and again. Which is more than a lot of people do, and certainly more than I and my parents used to do on a Sunday evening. Or any evening, come to that.

Saturday, 29th August 2009, Methodist Central Hall, Westminster.

In essence, Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder involved me sitting around whilst other people made a lot of noise. After a performance lasting just shy of three hours, I stood up and sang for approximately 4 minutes. It therefore seemed wrong, somehow, to be applauded for about twice that but, hey, you take it where you can get it.

On stage, and performing their young socks off, were the Hertfordshire County Youth Orchestra, under the baton of the clearly adored and adoring Peter Stark. Joining them on stage were Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts (Waldemar), Rita Cullis (Tove), and Jane Irwin (Waldtaube). After the interval they were joined by Robert Hayward (Bauer), Alan Oke (Klaus-Narr), Nigel Robson (Sprecher) and members of both the London Symphony Chorus and the LPC, half of whom had to rush on at the last minute due to lack of seating.

It was all quite strange. I’d planned to go into London on my own, get lost, feel lonely, drink too much coffee and get to the rehearsal late and overheated, having dressed inappropriately for the weather. After the rehearsal, I would then have drunk more coffee, and mooched around the streets, probably ending up in the National Gallery or somewhere else where admission is free, feeling at a complete loose end until the 7pm call time and more sitting around waiting for our 4 minutes of reflected glory.

What actually happened was that we caught a bus from the end of the road. At Peckham, having endured quite enough of the bus, we caught the train from Peckham Rye and went to Victoria. Here, we went to a pub and had lunch (solid and liquid) before strolling down to the Hall. The tutti, such as it was, was more a game of musical chairs, seeing how many of us sops and altos could remain seated so that getting those remaining onto the stage for those last few moments was not too undignified a scramble (not to mention a health and safety issue).

That having been achieved, we had 4 hours to waste. This we did quite nicely by visiting the Cabinet War Rooms and the Churchill Museum therein. I’d been to the CWR before – with the kids, before the CM was opened – but remembered little of the detail.

It’s scary and humbling and fascinating being down there, under all that concrete (the Slab, a 1-3 meter thick layer of concrete on metal running the entire length and width of the building, one fact I didn’t recall from the earlier visit) knowing that real people had lived and worked in conditions that would have Health and Safety Executives wringing their hi-vis jackets and throwing up their clipboards in horror. My erstwhile other half is very up on statistics – what engine went in each plane, who won which battle etc etc – but I was more interested in the psychosocial aspect. These people worked underground for anything between 10 and 16 hours a day, often sleeping in the same tiny office where they worked, living on the same meagre rations as those above ground. For six years.

The maps with countless tiny drawing pin holes showing every movement of every ship involved in the war; charts showing how many died during the doodlebug raids; telegrams from Churchill when he was suffering from severe pneumonia, the hand scribbled order at the bottom warning that on no account was this news to reach anyone but the King; a push-button operated coil with which those charged with charting and predicting the enemy’s moves could light their cigarettes. I guess if you thought you were going to die at any moment, then giving up smoking was not high on your list of priorities.

I’ve just finished reading ‘Early One Morning‘, a novel based on a true story about those involved in the French Resistance. Even if only half of it is a quarter true, I cannot even begin to imagine how people dealt with being under such pressure, all day every day, for so many years. Reportedly, when the war ended, the men in the map room at the CWR simply tidied their desks and left the office to go home. You are left thinking: how? How the hell do people living at such an intensity for such a long time just go home?

I was moved to tears at the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. The display case full of battered shoes and broken spectacle frames was appalling to behold. It is still utterly incomprehensible to me that there are people who claim that the Holocaust never happened when so much damning evidence exists. It cannot be simple ignorance – these deniers are not lacking in intelligence – so it must be denial. If they are denying it because their minds cannot cope with the magnitude of such atrocities, then that might be acceptable. But they deny it because they secretly agree with the belief that there are people in the world who are sub-human, and that these people should be eradicated.

On the train on the way home there were two men standing by the door. In the quieter moments of the journey, I could hear what one of them was saying, which was essentially that anyone who was not white and English should be made to leave the country. In light of where I’d been that afternoon, this open racism seemed both shocking and reckless. On leaving the train, he could quite clearly be heard to say that he was going to continue to think these thoughts, and no one was going to stop him expressing them. Best of luck to him.

And, for entirely different reasons, the best of luck to the Hertfordshire County Youth Orchestra. You were all splendid, and may you go on to bigger and better things.

There’s not much going on, singing-wise. I’ve been off for a week and haven’t been inclined to do any listening, practice, or even getting drunk and roaring along to Brahms Requiem, which is always a good standby activity. Instead, what I seem to have done most of is laundry, laundry and more laundry. At least the banana yogurt remnants are now gone from the sofa cushion cover.

I’ve also (almost) convinced our 15 year old son to spare whatever small part of his brain is unaffected by the endless and combined stimuli of video games and Red Dwarf re-runs for his GCSE set text, Silas Marner, as read by Andrew Sachs. You can lead a boy to books but, sadly, you cannot make him read.

Or is it Jonathan Sachs? If he ever decides to give up being Chief Rabbi, he should definitely go into audio books.

The most frustrating conversation I’ve had this week (apart from the constant one I have with myself) was with James at whatever call centre deals with our banking queries. Much of the 21 minutes that I was on the telephone was spent navigating their “press 1 for loans, press 2 for complaints, press 3 for limb amputation” system of call misdirecting screening. Once connected to the human being department, James twice tried to sell me insurance and a mortgage, told me that I should not be using my husband’s log-on details to access our joint account – the joint account we had spent all the previous day balancing (me trying to suppress my terror at our increasing overdraft) – and failed three times to answer my actual question. All this and they don’t pay interest on credit balances anymore! Basterds.

After all this I took the train to Charing X, got lost in Soho, had a meal in Eat Tokyo, a drink at The Market Porter (unbelievably busy outside, room to breathe inside) then came home, not really in a drinking mood.