A real treat - Martha’s favourite concerto and one of my favourite symphonies and at our favourite concert hall the same night. Wonderful playing from the CBSO under the baton of Xian Zhang.

The concert started with Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, which I’d not heard before, but is gentle and beautiful.

Michael Collins was the soloist in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. The music just emerged as if he was thinking it into existence, not having to coax it from a single-reed wind instrument, with interesting register issues. Seriously impressive, and no wonder his recent recording of this has been winning awards.

And then after an interval, the orchestra doubled in size and the organ added in order to tackle Saint-Saens’ great 3rd Symphony. I was hoping for a little more volume and passion in places, but the speed was just right, and the orchestra wonderfully clear and precise. I heard lots of tones and ideas that I’d not heard before, and I realised just how many great ideas Saint-Saens brought to it, particularly interesting rhythmical differences between different instruments. No wonder that he was reported to say about it “I have given all that I had to give. What I have done I shall never do again.” Which he didn’t. Fantastic.

Xian has made the “improbably journey from a small town in China to the New York Philharmonic” [NYT] and then on guest engagements with lots of other orchestras. She didn’t draw much attention to herself whilst conducting, or in the various entrances/exits in the applause at the end, but she certainly drew some great playing from the CBSO. Difficult to know how much this is down to her, as they are a fine group, but I’d certainly be keen to watch her at work again. Shame we missed “Maestro” where she was apparently one of the tutors.

The most interesting photos of Greenbelt are now available at flickr.

We don’t often go to the cinema, though we do watch a lot of films at home, through the NetFilms postal service. So it was a bit of a surprise to go 3 times last week to 2 different CineWorlds. And Martha made it 4 times!

Mamma Mia was the draw for her 3 times — yes, she found it that fun. I went one of those times, and we also saw Wall-E together. Strange to say, I found them quite similar films, as both had strong rom-com notes. Though byeond that you have a chick flick musical, and a piece about the dangers of consumerism and lack of environmental thinking. But both were hugely impressive in their own way, and the quality of Wall-E’s CGI was a real treat.

I also saw The Dark Knight with S, which was trying to be more serious, but the cod psychology from the characters didn’t make sense all the time. Still, some good performances, though Heath Ledger and most of the others weren’t as good as some were claiming. Heath was great - but only at one mood, and didn’t really vary it.

Continuing our holiday, but now at home, we played another game of Scrabble. Martha started with a bingo (STRIPEs) and later I played MUSETTE so we were one all. No other plays were that great, but still I got 379 and between us a score of 711, which is our highest yet.

Last night we tried something different - a bunch of experienced folk players, but from different musical spheres. ‘Folk from Here’ was formed to fuse Northumbrian Pipes (Kathryn Tickell), Sitar (Jonathan Mayer), Melodeon (Julian Sutton), Fiddle (Marie Fielding), led by Kuljit Bhamra on Tabla (etc.).

Half of the music was written specially by Society for Promotion of New Music composers, though we preferred the pieces written by the performers themselves, which we really enjoyed.

It was one of those gigs that we only went to because it was on the doorstep - we’d not have chanced something so different if we’d had to trek to Birmingham or Bristol or London. So, three cheers to all the festivals in Cheltenham!

Having been at some concerts this weekend, I’ve just read a really interesting piece by the Director of the Cheltenham Music Festival. What exactly is classical music? Here are some of his musings:

Our name, the Cheltenham Music Festival, remains fraught with issues. For starters, what is the ‘jazz’ of our sibling Cheltenham Jazz Festival, if it isn’t also ‘music’? And how wise would it be to call ourselves the Cheltenham Classical Music Festival? … In a programme like this year’s, where would it leave Romanian gypsy kings Taraf de Haidouks, Northumbrian pipist Kathryn Tickell …?

And how potentially unappealing is that word ‘classical’ anyway? For too many it seems to imply something that’s a bit dried up, exclusive and unattainably complex - sounds dreamed up by dead people and residing in a musical museum. Yet every single note of every single concert in this Festival will, I hope, blow these notions apart - this same classical music is vibrant, welcoming, absorbing and very much alive.

But if ‘classical music’ is a problem term, are the alternatives any less problematic?

Some call it ‘Serious Music’. Oh dear - can we possibly dare to take it, and ourselves, that seriously? Where is the joy of music in that, even if some classical music is extremely serious and beautifully miserable?

Some call it ‘Art Music’. I know where they’re coming from, but does that imply that any other kind of music isn’t ‘art’?

If people are drawn to this kind of music, as they seem to be, later on in life, should we call it ‘Grown Up Music’? …

If for most people a Music Festival takes place outdoors, why not call it the Cheltenham Indoor Music Festival? With the exception of all our weekend Surround Sound events, that would at least be true…

And I suppose if a Music Festival for most means, in its broadest sense, ‘Popular Music’, how about the Cheltenham Un-Popular Music Festival? The trouble is, quite a bit of the music featured in this 2008 Festival - Carmina Burana, The Planets, The Lark Ascending, Grieg’s Piano Concerto - really is very popular music.

He doesn’t know the answer, and neither do I. Do you?

Went to a great concert yesterday with Tim and Ann, who are visiting for the weekend. Unusually, we sat on the Town Hall stage and watched the orchestra that was on the ground at the back of the hall, I guess because the BBC Philharmonic at fairly full strength was too big for the stage. They started with Vltava from Smetana’s Ma Vlast, and I was reminded what a beautiful piece it is, even with its false ending. It was also great to be hearing it live; the depth of the double bass and the sparkle of the percussion add something that I don’t remember just with recordings.

The challenge of the evening was Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, completed in 1954. Tim and Ann really like it, but on my first hearing I wasn’t grabbed. Too often the percussion, for example, seemed to be playing completely incidentally to the rest of the orchestra. However, as a percussionist, at least there was an impressive range of percussion, including 4 different cymbals, 2 tenor drums, 2 side drums, gong and celeste. I must listen to it again — and it was recorded for BBC Radio 3, but I can’t find out when it will be broadcast. Alternatively the Phil have recorded it.

The second half started with a very robust rendering of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with soloist Aleksandar Madžar. Fantastic - with lots of great tunes that the Lutoslawski seemed to lack. The evening closed with Kodály’s Dances of Galanta, which was quite enjoyable, and raised a smile with its unexpected final few beats.

Second up we tried our luck with The Dowland Project - an intriguing mix of 15th - 17th Century tunes with tenor, lute, viola and, err, sax. The Dowland refers to composer John Dowland, but they only did a few of his tunes, with music from all around Europe. One review of their most recent album Romaria says

Romaria is an ethereal listening experience. Its bold improvisatory elements make this recording well suited for the jazz enthusiast who is looking for a little something different.

John Surman’s sax clearly lift it beyond just an ‘early music’ ensemble, and I thought his use of bass clarinet was inspired. He pushed into its higher registers, where it sounds quite sax-like, plus using it down low where it adds a funky woody vibe. It didn’t quite attract me like the Hilliard Ensemble + Jan Garbarek combination does, but it was great to see them live, because they were quite clearly enjoying themselves as they played. And that’s something you can hardly ever tell on a recording (except one Nina Simone track where one of the players at the end says “that’s groovy, baby”).

“Unleash your inner slob”

Probably an unfair quote to lead with from this book by Stephen Cotterell, but an arresting one. This book was a surprise; I thought it was making the case for reducing busyness and generally downsizing life. Which it was, but only partly. More than that, Cotterell makes the case for real fulfilment coming through community, as emerging from God. And more specifically a God whose substance is Love - the Christian God.

Late on he mentions occasions where we land up “just killing time” - for example, hitting delays at stations or airports. Even if its just semantics, his suggestion to think of it differently, instead “redeeming time”. And “time wasting” should become “enjoying time”. One practical suggestion is to sit in a chair for a few minutes not thinking of anything, but being aware of your breathing. He suggests this as a way of allowing hidden thoughts out, as well as awareness of God to appear. A more orthodox Christian view would be to call this “meditation” and make it directly Christ- or Bible-centred. (To the point that the next book I’m going to read is on Lectio Divina - praying ‘into’ Bible passages.)

I didn’t find it amazing, but it’s a new mixing of ideas, and should have something to say to almost anyone.

All 4 of us went to this concert recently, at Birmingham’s great Symphony Hall. It included such classical ‘pops’ as Grieg Morning and In the Hall of the Mountain King, Strauss Radetzky March, Delibes Prelude and Mazurka from Coppélia, Elgar Nimrod, Tchaikovsky The Sleeping Beauty Waltz.

In the second half it moved to emulate the ‘Last Night of the Proms’ with the likes of The Dam Busters March, Jerusalem, Nessun Dorma, Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory. This was all accompanied by hundreds of flags - mostly Union Jacks, but some English and Welsh ones too. Plus some form of red ensign I couldn’t quite identify. I felt slightly uncomfortable seeing all this. Partly because it’s so rare to see lots of national flags in the UK (except at sports matches I never attend), and partly because the movement was almost enough to make me feel sea-sick! I also feel I ought to know what’s right and wrong with nationalism, but I can’t claim to. All I know is that the US flavour of it - with their flag everywhere — feels crass and slightly xenophobic because you can’t get away from it.

But back to the music. The tenor and baritone soloists weren’t that audible, but appeared to do reasonable justice to Bizet The Pearl Fisher’s Duet, Nessun Dorma, and leading the singing at the end.

The highlight for me was hearing Delius’ On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, which I hadn’t really
appreciated before - a beautiful piece. Oh, and the seats up on level 5A opposite the stage, have headrests.
Worth remembering in future.

I like doing codewords, and we’ve got a book of them which we’re slowly doing. (If you’re not familiar with them, they contain all 26 letters of the alphabet, and each is given a number. You need to work out what letters represent which numbers.) Some are quite easy to get going with, but others much harder. Particularly when fewer than half the numbers/letters are known, it’s very easy to make false assumptions.

Anyway, here’s one that I thought I’d try a new challenge with. After filling in the given letters, could I do the rest in my head? It was a medium-hard one to get going with, but yes, I did it. I did warn you that this post was a pure show-off.

(Though I must confess that as I post this a few days later, I can’t remember any of it …!)