For reasons no-one (not even herself) can explain, Janie is quite partial to Shostakovich, yet cannot abide Prokofiev.
Anyway, a client offered Janie a pair of fine seats at this concert and we said yes.
According to my log, we:
bumped into John and Angela [Kessler] there.
From memory, we encountered cousin Angela and John, rather than actually having a collision with them. I don’t think I knew, at that time, that Angela was on the Board of the LPO and I suspect that Angela and John were too polite to mention that fact.
We heard:
Bernd Alois Zimmerman – Trumpet Concerto “Nobody Knows de Trouble I See”
Dmitri Shostakovich – Symphony No 7 in C, Op 60 “Lenningrad”
Janie and I loved the Leningrad Symphony as performed that night by the LPO under the baton of Kurt Masur. I didn’t see the following review at the time, but Brian Hunt in The Torygraph bore out our assessment – he absolutely loved this concert:
This might well have been another pair of hand-me-down tickets from one of Janie’s wealthy, music-loving, globe-trotting clients. Or perhaps Jilly at that time. My log is silent on the matter. It doesn’t feel like the sort of thing I’d have booked myself.
No matter – it was a very good concert, in that Midori is/was quite a special talent, who emerged as a child prodigy in the 1980s, then withdrew from public performance in the mid 1990s and since then occasionally reappeared. This was during one of her reappearance phases.
It was good to see her perform chamber style rather than with a big orchestra, although most of her concerts on that tour, by the looks of it, were big concerto stuff. In truth the Barbican Hall is not ideal for smaller scale works, but still it worked.
We heard:
Claude Debussy – Sonata in G Minor for Violin and Piano
Maurice Ravel – Sonata for Violin and Cello
Camille Saint-Saens – Fantaisie for Violin and Harp in A Major, Op 124
Gabriel Faure – Quartet for Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello No 1 in C Minor, Op 15
I remember especially enjoying the violin & harp piece. Very charming. Here are some other people performing that Saint-Saens work.
Another trip to the Proms with The Duchess (Janie’s mum) to see the European Community Youth Orchestra. The Duchess had a bit of a thing about youth orchestras.
This concert, under the baton of Bernard Haitink, was surely interesting if for no other reason than that. A great opportunity to see the great man.
We heard:
Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major
Anton Bruckner – Symphony No 7 in E major
Emanual Ax tinkled the ivories in the first piece of the night.
I don’t think this was the best rendition of Bruckner 7 I have ever seen…nor even the best rendition by Haitink, as we returned three years later to see the great man perform the same piece again, with the Berlin Philharmonic that time…but I think the following panning by Rick Jones in the Standard is a bit unfair.
I think The Duchess must have chosen this one. I don’t remember her being partial to a bit of Brahms, but she must have been. I am quite partial to Brahms too.
In truth I don’t remember this particular concert well. I was familiar with the Dvorak and Brahms pieces but not the Lutoslawski one. I’m not sure I am much the wiser having heard it.
This was our one visit to the Proms that season away from the clutches of The Duchess. I had fallen into the habit of treating her to one ort wo Proms each season, by that time. Janie and I occasionally also went to something of our own choosing.
On this occasion, I think the programme looked unusual and yet approachable. Alexander Lazarev conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. I wanted to hear Francesca da Rimini performed live and Janie had acquired a taste for countertenor singing. Plus some unusual pieces.
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka – Capriccio brillante (on the Jota Aragonesa)
Sergey Prokofiev – Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor
Giya Kancheli – Symphony No. 3
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Francesca da Rimini
Alexander Glazunov – Raymonda, Op 57 No. 26 Grand pas espagnol Act 2- encore
Trad. – Eightsome (reel) – encore
What could possibly go wrong?
Nothing. Nothing went wrong. Although in truth, I don’t recall much about the lesser-known pieces and I cannot for the life of me work out where the countertenor fits in with this collection of pieces. Janie cemented her view that she didn’t like Prokofiev and that big symphony orchestra concerts were not really her favourite thing. Still, we both very much enjoyed our evening.
Here’s what the Glinka sounds like:
Here’s a good recording of the Prokofiev.
The Kancheli is strange yet certainly haunting:
I really enjoyed the Francesca da Rimini. Here is a more recent version of it from The Royal Festival Hall, but you’ll get the idea:
Dig this little bit of the Glazunov:
Fine composer, was Trad. Should have paired up with Anon – they could have been the Lennon and McCartney of the 11th to 19th centuries. Yet Janie insisted that the final encore was Trad’s “Tiresome Reel” rather than Eightsome Reel. I kinda see her point:
Geoffrey Norris in The Telegraph wrote very fondly of this Prom:
Rick Jones was less impressed in The Standard. I’m not quite sure what he means by an errrant electronic high-pitched note. Janie would argue that Prokofiev is meant to sound like that.
I think I have the programme somewhere but this was on my mystery list until I found it in both our diaries while doing one of my “25 years on” trawls.
This was a “birthday treat” for Janie in which I expect i picked up the tab and Pauline, Duchess of Castlebar, graced us with her presence.
Janie’s not much one for opera but we all agreed that Carmen was a good place to really test that hypothesis. I had “done” Carmen as a small child of course – type cast as an urchin boy – another story for another Ogblog.
Anyway…
…this was the Jonathan Miller production at the ENO.
Edward Seckerson in The Independent sort-of liked it:
I think we were fairly indifferent to the production. It certainly wasn’t as good as the Putney Operatic Society’s version 25 years earlier…I wasn’t in it for a start.
Janie had known Laurie & (especially) Dot Johnson for a great many years – the latter being one of Janie’s clients.
Laurie was very well known in show business and media circles, primarily for writing TV theme tunes such as the following, which Janie and I both remembered fondly from our childhoods:
In 1997, it seems that Laurie, in an attempt to stave off dotage, was launching an autumnal recording and touring career with a new combo; Laurie Johnson’s London Big Band.
Dot kindly invited us to the 8 June concert and the star-studded after show party.
We were among the youngest people in the audience that night. Actually, I think our combined ages at that time (75-ish) might still have made us among the youngest people at the show that night.
Janie and I, seated among the guest celebs in that central block of seats deemed the best in the Barbican Hall, enjoyed watching the bobbing heads of the elderly concert-goers in front of us, making micro-movements in recognition of the swinging beat of the music.
Indeed, for years…nay decades after the concert, Janie and I would mimic the uber-syncopation, not least the cymbal beats, of the Big Band’s rendition of the This Is Your Life Theme:
That one seemed to go down especially well with the elderly bobbing-head brigade.
The after show party was very enjoyable. I guess that we technically met a great many celebs: Laurie Johnson, Ron Moody, Jack Parnell, Don Lusher, Kenny Baker, Benny Green and Tommy Whittle were all on the bill…
…as was a lovely young woman named Alexia, who was a singing waitress at a restaurant that Laurie and Dot liked. They had taken Alexia somewhat under their wings and were promoting her through this show/tour.
We didn’t meet John Dankworth & Cleo Laine that evening, much to Dot’s chagrin, as she seemed very keen for Janie to meet them, but for some reason (health we think) they were unable to attend. Nor was Lionel Bart there, possibly for the same sort of reason.
I do however remember chatting at length with Herbert Kretzmer, who was a good friend of the Johnsons and was very interesting company for quite a while at that function. Fellow lyricists and all that – me and Herbie had a great deal in common. 😉
Go on, bob your head gently to the swinging strains of the This Is Your Life theme again – you know you want to:
I’m not sure why we went so very little in 1996 – I’m guessing we might have been preoccupied with other things when the Proms programme came out.
I don’t think this concert would have been our first choice, but Pauline liked Debussy and was convinced that Janie simply needed to work at it to find a place in her heart for Prokofiev. We tried a few times over the years and it didn’t ever work.
Valery Gergiev, conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, would certainly have been a draw.
I made three mixtapes for Michael & Elisabeth Mainelli’s wedding, which were used at the informal party on the Sunday after the formal wedding. I kept track listings (dated 12 May 1996) and can therefore recreate the experience, 25 years later, mostly in embedded YouTube form. Occasionally such embeds get moved, removed or delisted, but you should be able to hear most if not all of them.
Here’s Tape Three, which I called “The Cynical Wedding Tape”. Side A continued the theme of a dance party mix from Tape Two, but all the tracks have an element of cynicism towards romance. Side B was intended to be an “after the main party” cynical selection, which I named “Sit Around & Think About It”.
A couple of the tracks on this tape have not yet found their way to YouTube in a suitable form (e.g. Ben Murphy’s recording of my own lyric, The Ultimate Love Song). I have uploaded MP3s of those tracks, so you can still hear them…if you dare.
Cynical Wedding Tape Side A: Dance Que Pasa / Me No Pop I, Kid Creole & the Coconuts Don’t Leave Me This Way, Thelma Houston Money, Flying Lizards I Heard It Through The Grapevine, Gladys Knight & the Pips Just Don’t Want To Be Lonely, Main Ingredient Why Do Fools Fall In Love?, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers Thin Line Between Love and Hate, Persuaders I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor Mistra Know It All, Stevie Wonder She’s Gone, Hall & Oats One Day I’ll Fly Away, Randy Crawford Will You Love Me Tomorrow?, Shirelles
Cynical Wedding Tape Side B: Sit Around & Think About It The First Cut is the Deepest, PP Arnold Falling In Love Again, Temperance Seven Don’t Get Married, Roy Bailey & Leon Rosselson Ever Fallen In Love With Someone…, Buzzcocks Freebird, Lynard Skynard It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band I Used To Love Her But It’s All Over Now, Rolling Stones Born To Shop, Guns ‘n’ Charoses Single In Spring, Roy Bailey & Leon Rosselson Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Neil Sedaka The Ultimate Love Song, Ben Murphy
I made three mixtapes for Michael & Elisabeth Mainelli’s wedding, which were used at the informal party on the Sunday after the formal wedding. I kept track listings (dated 12 May 1996) and can therefore recreate the experience, 25 years later, in embedded YouTube form. Occasionally such embeds get moved, removed or delisted, but you should be able to hear most if not all of them.
Here’s Tape Two, which comprised my idea at that time for a dance party mix with a bit of a 1990s feel to it but mostly rooted in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, which is the era of dance music for which I sensed that most of the guests, like ourselves, could not resist dancing if they heard the right sound.
Frankly, looking at the mix today, 25 years on, I would still happily put this mix on if I wanted to get people dancing. Might need a few leaning props around the dance floor and some stretcher-bearers on standby for people of my generation.
Michael & Elisabeth Wedding Tape 2 Side A: Dance Fast We Are Family, Sister Sledge Twist & Shout, Chaka Demus & Pliers Harvest For The World, Isley Brothers I Feel For You, Chaka Khan Sex Machine, James Brown Love Machine, Miracles Incredible, M-Beat Featuring General Levy I Want You Back, Jackson 5 This Old Heart Of Mine, Isley Brothers Backstabbers, O-Jays Pump Up The Jam, Technotronic Featuring Felly Harlem Shuffle, Bob & Earl Land of 1000 Dances, Wilson Pickett
Michael & Elisabeth Wedding Tape 2 Side B: Dance Varied La Bamba, Los Lobos Stayin’ Alive, N-Trance featuring Ricardo da Force Sexual Healing, Marvin Gaye Now That We’ve Found Love, Third World Proud Mary, Checkmates Ltd Ride On Time, Black Box You Never Can Tell, Chuck Berry I Knew the Bride…, Dave Edmunds Easy, Commodores I Say a Little Prayer, Aretha Franklin Do You Love Me?, Contours 54-56, Toots & the Maytals Shake, Otis Redding If You Don’t Know Me By Now, Harold Melvyn & The Bluenotes
LPO Shostakovich Hunt Telegraph 25 Oct 1997, Sat The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
