This was an opportunity to hear two genres of Indian music in one concert. I don’t think that we’d seen Amjad Ali Khan before this concert – although I had heard my father’s recordings of him playing with Ravi Shankar.
This concert was part of his residency at the Wigmore Hall, which I think was a new idea back then.
The first half of the concert was singing in the Carnatic (Southern Indian) tradition. This was interesting but not as relaxing and delightful to our ears as the sarod music performed by Amjad Ali Khan himself in the second half.
For some reason the Wigmore Hall on-line stub for this concert is incomplete and has errors in it (at the time of writing – February 20180 – here is the link anyway.
So I have uploaded the information sheet, which I am sure is accurate:
Professor Tim Connell had no idea what he was unleashing when he asked me to produce a party piece for the nascent Gresham Society Soirée.
I had no idea what sort of audience we might have, although Tim suggested that he was encouraging Gresham Society members to bring youngsters with them to give the event an age-diverse, party feel. That year, there were a few youngsters in the end.
Unaccustomed as I was to putting on party pieces at that time…a dozen or more years later I am far more seasoned at it…I fell back on material I had prepared or used in the past.
As a youngster myself, I had often used Any Old Iron as a party piece for entertaining old folk, as the old folk at the time that I was a young person were steeped in music hall material.
I had prepared a version of Any Old Iron with a rap break a couple of years earlier…for the life of me I cannot remember quite why…I think I had intended to use it at a Long Finance conference, as Brian Eno had been recommending that we break up the serious s*** with some musical audience participation. Hilariously predictable results ensued, not least a roasting in the Evening Standard…
…but I digress, other than to clarify that my Any Old Iron with a rap break (aka a vocal cadenza) remained on the e-jotter unused in 2009, until the Gresham Society Soirée of 2011. Here’s the very piece:
I decided to dress up in my most spivy outfit (see headline picture from the Lingfield races a few months earlier), including a Rolex-like watch and chain which I had given to my father in the 1990s and then re-inherited on his passing.
I also took a clutch of old pennies from my childhood old pennies collection, as I figured that the youngsters present wouldn’t appreciate what a weighty and princely-looking sum “tuppence” might seem unless they received some coin of the appropriate era.
I also decided, with the benefit of hindsight, unwisely, to involve the pianist, David Jones, not only in playing the piece for me (which of course he was able to do with ease and aplomb). Unbeknown to me at the time, David is a master of the party piece in which you sing faster and faster – in his case the far more difficult Elements Song by Tom Lehrer…
…I am digressing again…
…anyway, I asked David also to join in some business, which occurred to me as we practiced ahead of the show, where I would approach the piano and say:
Hit me!
…in the time honoured fashion to encourage a musician to play. The joke was that David was to feign misunderstanding the entreaty and pretend to throw a punch at me.
We practiced the manoeuvre a couple of times. My final note to David was that he would need to put more effort into the fake-punch and I would have to put more motion into the fake receipt of the punch to make the device look realistic.
But in the heat of show, as it were, David possibly over-enthused…or I under-dodged…such that I really did receive a punch from David, which made me stop for a moment and say:
Ow, that really did hurt
…before carrying on. I think the audience thought it was all part of the show, so they laughed just as we had wanted them to. The song went down well. The bruise wasn’t too bad. David is still talking to me…just about…but perhaps not so open to my last minute bright ideas for performance tweaks any more.
We’d seen them perform before and had even previously seen one of their concerts at which Andrew Carwood explained the sectarian political backdrop to the music in those Tudor times…
…it must have been like the politics of Brexit but with capital punishment in place of the earhole bashing.
No wonder these Tudor composers took solus in lamentations and such Jeremiad material.
As usual with such concerts, it was fascinating to hear the contrast between the lesser and the better known composers; Tallis and especially Byrd being the better known and better represented composers on the night. The better known fellows deserve their status in my view; certainly for this type of music.
Late in life, mum formed an unlikely friendship with the young, extremely talented pianist, Karim Said. I can’t remember exactly how it came about.
I know I recorded some BBC4 programmes about young musicians, which mum loved and watched over and over. Karim was one of those featured artists.
I think mum then watched those programmes with Angela Broad and I’m pretty sure Angela knew Karim, perhaps because he was one of the Tabors’ sponsored artistes…so the rest is history…
…anyway, mum and Angela had been to see and had met Karim before this gig. Mum and Karim had also had some exchange of correspondence, I seem to recall.
A very young Karim, I think from mum’s earlier outing with Angela to see him
Mum the groupie. I don’t suppose artistes at Karim’s stage have that many groupies either.
When this concert came up, it was most fortuitously located and timed for me; lunchtime at St John’s Smith Square. As a friend of the venue, I get a fist-full of free passes for those lunchtime concerts. I was also able to organise my work around a visit to Church House that morning, which was maximally convenient.
Here’s the order of play:
Charlotte Bonneton And Karim Said at St John’s Smith Square. The violinist and pianist perform Beethoven’s Sonata For Violin And Piano No 3, Boulez’s 12 Notations For Solo Piano and Faure’s Violin Sonata No 1 In A.
My taste in music did not/does not always coincide with mum’s and Angela’s, but on this occasion we were as one. We all enjoyed the Beethoven and the Fauré; we none of us liked the Boulez, which seemed in any case to make poor Karim’s fingers bleed.
“I’m going to tell him if no-one else will…” said Angela afterwards, in the matter of the commercial sense (or lack thereof) in Karim pursuing the work of composers like Boulez.
No matter.
Mum had a cracking good time. Karim was extremely pleasant and attentive after the concert. He even introduced us to his fellow musician, Charlotte, making mum ever so pleased by describing mum as his friend.
At a very geeky level this is an exciting Wigmore Hall concert, because this was our first concert of the 2011-2012 season, which was the first season that Wigmore Hall archived fully on-line.
In truth, Brad Mehldau concerts tend to be a bit geeky anyway. The fellow has so many influences and blends so many styles in with his jazz piano, the concert is almost like a music quiz.
Back then, I was less fascinated by the mandolin than I am now at the time of writing (January 2018)…
…but I have long been intrigued by the instrument and it was very interesting to hear it used as a jazz pairing with Brad’s inimitable jazz piano style.
I think technically Brad was no longer the curator of the Wigmore Hall jazz seasons by the time this concert came around, although it might have been, technically, the tail end of his 2010/2011 commitment to the venue.
I seem to recall that I enjoyed this concert more than Janie did…
…I also seem to recall that we both felt that we had “done” Brad Mehldau now, this being the third of his we had been to, unless the concert works or partner musicians were the main attraction for us…
…what could be a more fitting conclusion than a late night concert at the Wigmore Hall?
Back then, I used to describe Lord’s and the Wigmore Hall as the last two places on the planet where stewards refer to me as “young man”.
Now (as I write in late 2017) I’m afraid that not even the stewards at those two places call me “young man” any more.
But I digress.
This was a lovely short concert of Paco Peña and friends making glorious music together.
I’m pretty sure that Janie picked me up and whisked me back to Sandall Close after the concert – this was our penultimate weekend there. Another story.
We didn’t book much of the Lufthansa Festival that year, sadly, as the programme was excellent, but we did book this one superb concert by Ensemble Caprice.
No problem buying CDs of the music we heard at this one:
I still listen to these albums quite a lot. The Telemann is the more interesting but both are good.
We miss that Lufthansa Festival now its gone – the scaled down spring baroque festival at SJSS is a very modest affair by comparison. A shame we mostly missed out that year but at least we got to see one good’un in these visitors from Montreal, Ensemble Caprice.
We had the joy, honour and privilege to see the marvellous Hespèrion XXI that spring, little knowing that it was to be one of the last few concerts Montserrat Figueras was able to give.
The concert was entitled Mare Nostrum, a celebration of early music cross-fertilisation between eastern and western traditions of music, spanning from Byzantium to Al-Andalus and Sephardic traditions of music.
Available for download by clicking the image or through all major outlets
I also remember being slightly irritated on the night that none of the music we heard was available to buy on CD, as the relevant music was to be on a “forthcoming” CD. I would have been more sympathetic had I known that Montserrat Figueras was struggling with her health at that time.
I satisfied my crazy craving for Hespèrion XXI music at the time by procuring:
I resolved to seek out the Mare Nostrum album when it came out, but of course clean forgot about it and then went through a phase of not buying music, because I had so many CDs.
But today (29 December 2017), recalling how wonderful that 2011 concert experience was and how moving we had found this east-west fusion early music, I naturally could not resist the temptation to download the Mare Nostrum album. I’m so glad I did.
Janie and I have been thoroughly enjoying listening to the music and recalling that very special concert from 2011.
We have seen Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI several times since. We always enjoy those concerts, but feel very lucky to have experienced their live sound while Montserrat Figueras was still on the scene.
I love a bit of Corelli under almost any circumstances, but these adaptations of Op 5 concertos for the recorder have an especially soulful and melancholy timbre.
In the absence of Janie, I snapped up one of the CDs during the interval, as I was so sure she’d love the sound, which she did. We still both listen to this recording rather a lot. Indeed we are listening to it as I type.
Also available as a download now, from Amazon (click the pic) or elsewhere
It isn’t all that often that book to go to the Wigmore Hall on my own. But I really liked the look of this concert and Janie really didn’t fancy a special trip into town on a Monday evening, even for the Wigmore Hall. She was, at that time, normally still working long Monday clinics at her place.
The diary suggests I had worked a long day myself that day, ending up at Lord’s late afternoon, perhaps for a meeting about the Middlesex business plan. I’ll guess that it was the day of the AGM and that I therefore skived the Middlesex AGM that year for this concert.
What dedication to the early music cause and oh boy was it worth it.
The upshot of Janie missing out on this one was probably, in the longer term, good news. Since then, if I say that I shall nevertheless go alone to a concert that I really fancy, Janie usually then relents and agrees to come with me.
We don’t normally do musicals. But this one sounded interesting and different so we booked it.
Set in Nigeria in the late 1970s, it is basically a tribute to the life, music and politics of Fela Kuti.
It was at the National, so of course no on-line resource to help navigate all the whys and wherefores of the show. This search term – click here – should find the (mostly rave) reviews and other resources you might want.
I’m not sure we need a subsidised National Theatre to import this sort of hit show from Broadway and make a hit of it in London, but anyway I’m glad it was on there and I’m very glad we saw it. This was just the sort of boost we needed so soon after Phillie’s passing. A life-affirming show, but with real grit too.
