As part of The Ultimate Love Song‘s 25th birthday celebrations (born 29 February 1992, so perhaps six-and-a-quarterth birthday…
…and because I find it hard to resist responding to requests (thank you, Andrew Poole)…
…I think I have fiddled around and successfully uploaded an MP3 of Ben Murphy’s rendition of The Ultimate Love Song, which was on Ben’s 1993 cassette album “Cover of the Rolling Stone” along with several other songs of mine. More on that anon…
…here’s The Ultimate Love Song, sung by Ben Murphy.
One of the great mysteries of my diaries and logs. Normally I would leave a clue as to who accompanied me. This time, there are no clues. Did I book this one as a single ticket – so keen to see Simon Rattle and the CBSO I decided to go it alone? My electronic financial records don’t go back far enough for me to be able to tell.
OK, let’s round up the usual suspects. Jilly. Annalisa. Bobbie. (Were it anyone other than one of those three, I’m sure there would be clues in my diary/logs).
I had written the following NewsRevue piece, destined to be a hit, the day before this concert and would have been full of it that evening, if accompanied:
Roberto Gerhard – Don Quixote (complete ballet: 2nd version)
Leos Janáček – Glagolitic Mass
Here is a more recent Simon Rattle with the Berlin (rather than Birmingham) lot, doing a short extract from the Gerhard…
…and a short extract from the Glagolithic Mass:
If you want to see what Simon Rattle looked like in Birmingham in the 1990s, the following is his farewell gig there from 1998, with the CBSO & CBSO Chorus:
Edward Greenfield in the Guardian loved this concert:
I mentioned to John during that 2018 visit that I had attended (nay, even been part of the hosting group for) a concert in 1992, around the time, strangely, that John Random and I first met.
I did recall that I had seen Evelyn Glennie perform that evening and that it had been a BDO Binder Hamlyn event as part of my old firm’s sponsorship of Music at Oxford. But the rest I couldn’t recall and I felt a bit silly about that, because I knew that I would have kept the programme at least and that it was all lined up to be Ogblogged…eventually. I should have dug out the bumf before the 2018 visit.
Anyway, curiosity got the better of me a few days later and I dug out the programme. Indeed, not only the programme but, inside the programme, instructions from the BDO Binder Hamlyn marketing department telling me what to do.
Here’s the programme:
Below is a link to a pdf of the instruction pack for hosts. There is even a copy of the form you needed to fill in if you wanted to arrive in Greenwich by boat.
People who know me through Z/Yen and associate “me and boats” in the context of our many Lady Daphne boat trips over the years, might be surprised to realise that I chose not to arrive by boat…those who know me a bit better than that in the matter of boats will be far less surprised.
A common theme to all the elements of this story so far is Michael Mainelli, who was/is:
the BDO Binder Hamlyn partner who led on the Music at Oxford sponsorship/marketing events,
my business partner at Z/Yen who owned and led on the Lady Daphne boat trips thing,
someone who, coincidentally, visited Morgan’s Rock in Nicaragua with his family (though not Mukul, which didn’t exist back then) a few years before Janie and I went there.
Anyway, I got a chance to interview Michael about the Music at Oxford event yesterday (25 January 2018). His main regret was that he couldn’t recall who he took as his date that year to Music at Oxford. Our conversation then side-tracked onto the loony rule that Binder Hamlyn had (and many firms still have) prohibiting intra-firm romances. Michael was already going out with Elisabeth back then but it was a secret, closely guarded by several dozen of the several hundred Binder Hamlyn staff and partners. So Michael had to take a decoy date to events like this instead.
Once we got over that digression, Michael recalled that this particular event was rather a ground-breaking one. Certainly it was the first time that we had taken a Music at Oxford concert beyond Oxford. But Michael thinks it might have been the first (or certainly one of the first) commercially sponsored concerts to take place at the Old Royal Naval College Chapel.
Michael also recalls that Evelyn Glennie was very pleasant company over dinner after the concert.
Here is an interesting little vid about Evelyn Glennie:
Here is a little vid of the percussion and timpani cadenzas from the Panufnik Concertino that Glennie played that night in the chapel – but this is some other people playing. It is a bit noisy:
But the Old Royal Naval College Chapel is a Baroque building of great beauty, so you might want to imagine the sole baroque piece we heard that night, Bach’s Ricecare a 6 from A Musical Offering. Here is a sweet vid of the Croating Baroque Ensemble performing it:
But surely the last word should go to John Random. Because, strangely, that 1992 spring/summer was when John and I met – through NewsRevue. John was the first director to have my comedy material performed professionally – click here or below for one of the better examples from that season:
On spotting that we also heard a piece by Antonín Dvořák in the Old Royal Naval College that summer’s night in 1992, I was also reminded of one of John Random’s lyrics from that same summer. Because that was the summer that Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. John wrote a superb lyric to the tune of Slow Hand by The Pointer Sisters, which included the wonderful couplet:
Not a compatriot of Dvořák,
I want a lover who’s a Slovak.
1992 was a seminal summer in so many ways.
A mere 25 years later…double-selfies hadn’t been invented in 1992
This was one of several Music At Oxford events that my old firm, BDO Consulting (aka Binder Hamlyn Management Consultants) sponsored between 1989 and 1992.
The first of them included an action-packed, cartoon-like journey to Oxford – click here or below.
The 1991 edition was a far more sedate affair – at least it was for me – as the fireworks were part of the show on this occasion.
Annalisa de Mercur accompanied me on this occasion. I think we all stayed at The Moat House, as we had done in 1990 when Caroline Freeman accompanied me.
We heard:
George Frideric Handel – Water Music Suite No 2 in D major HWV 349
Johann Pachelbel – Canon
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Serenade No 13 in G K525 “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”
Johann Sebastian Bach – Brandenburg Concerto No 1 in F BWV 1046
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Horn Concerto No 4 in E Flat K495 3rd Movement
Malcolm Arnold – Sinfonietta No 1 for two oboes, two horns and strings
Samuel Barber – Adagio for Strings
George Frideric Handel – Music for the Royal Fireworks
Ah, in fact I have the running order from the programme:
It was quite a late evening affair, this one, with the second half not even starting until 9:45, so the fireworks must have been at what would now be deemed to be an antisocial hour.
I’m pretty sure we young consultants were discouraged from continuing our antisocial activities on our return to the hotel, so the boisterous singing |I remember from the first event I’m pretty sure simply didn’t happen this time around.
Drinking and chatting in the hotel bar almost certainly did happen, though.
I remember this one as a very pleasant and largely relaxing outing. I’m not sure I had any clients of my own there that night – perhaps one – and the relative popularity of the programme meant that my musical knowledge (such as it is) was little called-upon.
Postscript: Annalisa recalls…
Is this the one with chandeliers in the marquee and a view across the lake? If so, I remember it. Clearly, the chandeliers made more of an impression than either the music or the fireworks! Chandeliers in marquees have become pretty commonplace now, but at the time I had never seen anything like it!
To the Royal Festival Hall in deep midwinter with Bobbie, as part of the BBC Symphony Orchestra 60th Anniversary festival. We went to a couple of these concerts; this was the second of them.
Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich waved the stick and David Butt played the flute. We heard three great works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
Symphony No 39 in E Flat Major
Flute Concerto in G Major, K313/KE285c
Symphony No 40 in G Minor, K550
I’m not sure this was a perfect fit of conductor and orchestra for these works, but it was lovely to hear these familiar pieces in the Royal Festival Hall. I cannot find any newspaper archive reviews for this one, so my one-line review based on a memory of an event from nearly 34 years ago (as I write) will have to do.
Bobbie and I went to a couple of Friday evening concerts at The Royal Festival Hall as part of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s 60th Anniversary festival.
We were supposed to see the great Günter Wand performing a couple of Beethoven Symphonies, but Günter pulled out at the last minute so Andrew Davis decided to shake a stick at one of Günter’s signature pieces:
Anton Bruckner – Symphony No 8 in C Minor.
Hence, a one piece concert, this.
I did subsequently get to hear and see Günter perform this piece with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at what turned out to be his last BBC Prom hurrah – another occasion when we turned up to hear one set of pieces and got Bruckner 8 instead.
It’s just as well that I like Bruckner 8. I guess I have become mighty familiar with it over the years, collecting four Bruckner 8’s in 10 years between 1989 and 1999.
Malcolm Hayes in The Telegraph was unsure about this brave (but in his view, flawed) 1991 attempt:
Annalisa was due to join me at this concert, but had to pull out at the last minute for some reason. The reason is not captured in my log. It was a Sunday, so I expect it was a health reason rather than a work reason.
Anyway, I hobbled to the Albert Hall alone for this Prom. I think it was the first time I had been to the Proms alone and possibly was the only time I have done so to date (the date of writing this being late 2024).
I say hobbled, because the cursory “traction” approach to my multiple prolapse was obviously not working and I was still in a great deal of pain with my back after my injury in June that year. Indeed, I associate my evening alone at the Proms with Anton & Günter as the point at which I resolved that I would have to try something else, but that I was determined to try something other than major surgery before possibly submitting to that as a last resort.
This was a one piece concert:
Anton Bruckner – Symphony No 5 in B Flat Major, performed by the maestro Günter Wand conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
I suspect that Bruckner 5 is a good number for contemplative thought – it is certainly long enough. I do remember finding this performance especially moving and being really taken with it.
It was filmed and the film has been released on DVD – here is an extract:
If you look very carefully you might spot me sitting in the stalls on my tod.
This was a big concert with a massive cast. Two big works:
Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, ‘Eroica’
Leos Janáček – Glagolitic Mass
One heck of a lot of musicians: The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir & BBC Symphony Chorus, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & the (now) late, great Czech conductor Libor Pešek. Not to forget soloists John Mitchinson, Michael George, Jane Eaglen, Ameral Gunson and Ian Tracey.
Jilly accompanied me on this occasion, according to my log, which is usually pretty reliable, as long as I wrote the details down at or near the time, which on this occasion I guess I did.
However, I returned to the scene of the crime, for a different rendition of the Glagolitic Mass, a couple of years later and did not log the name of my companion, which has resulted in one of the greatest mysteries in the entire history of Ogblog postings about 1992 classical concerts – click here or below.
The prime suspect for the 1992 evening is now Bobbie, who has gone very quite on that topic.
Jilly wrote to say:
With regards to the concert in 1992, I must admit that my memory does somewhat fail me. I can hardly remember what I did yesterday, let alone 30 years ago, but all I can say is that I don’t remember ever seeing the Glagolitic Mass performed, and I’m not sure that I’ve actually ever seen Simon Rattle conducting in person, but if it’s helpful for you to put me down as having been at the concert with you I won’t object!
Well, Jilly, what do you have to say now that the log has fingered you for a different performance of the Glagolitic Mass? I’m expecting a confession. No need for an apology.
To be fair, Jilly also says:
Thank you for attaching the review at the bottom; how that choir managed to sing a Slavonic piece without the score just baffles me. Reading and pronouncing the transliterated version of Rachmaninov Vespers utterly did my head in, and that was with a good number of rehearsals.
Bobbie joined me on my birthday in 1990 for this Prom. I seem to recall it was a goody.
James Conlon conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in the following works:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Violin Concerto No 4 in D major, K 218
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 6 in A minor
Isabelle van Keulen was the soloist for the Mozart. She was a young star back then, as was Mozart when he wrote his violin concertos.
Here are YouTubes of Isabelle’s recording of the Mozart 4 Violin Concerto. With the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra rather than the Rotterdam Philharmonic, but you can’t have everything. The girl can play.
There’s not much out there to illustrate James Conlon conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic, but this section from Liszt’s Faust Symphony is rather charming:
While here is the Rotterdam Philharmonic more recently, with current Principle Conductor Lahav Shani, performing a short snatch from Mahler 6:
Meanwhile, back to that 1990 concert, Robert Henderson in The Telegraph seemed satisfied but not ecstatic:
Edward Greenfield in the Guardian waxed lyrical about the Mahler but not so about the Mozart. Comparing a 24-year-old prize winner debuting at the Proms with Pinchas Zuckerman seems a tad unfair, though.
Baby Doll May 1993 Tue, May 11, 1993 – 28 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Observer May 1993 Cottesloe Sun, May 9, 1993 – 55 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
