Romantic music from the late 19th early 20th century. Not the sort of music that Daisy normally goes for, but there were several songs by Alma Mahler in this concert; as Daisy knows Marina Mahler, the granddaughter, Janie was interested enough to give it a try.
Actually, the simplicity of the solo voice and piano pleased Daisy; the whole concert was very relaxing. Even the Alban Berg, which I thought might be a bit impenetrable, wasn’t.
I really liked the Sibelius song they performed on encore – Var det en dröm? – which I don’t think I had ever heard before.
On Janie’s suggestion, we had taken a sneak peak at Massimo Dutti before we got to The Wig. I had some colourful shirts put aside for me to try on after the concert.
But once the performance had ended, we both had a bit of a hunger on, so went to the Wigmore Hall restaurant, just for some soup, to tide us over until evening. Butternut squash soup it was, very tasty.
If you look at the table behind us, I inadvertently caught the performers at lunch – Julius Drake glancing in our direction while talking to the woman to his left; Katarina Karnéus sitting to Julius Drake’s right
After soup, we legged it to Massimo Dutti where the young lady who had been serving us earlier was just about to give up on us and put the shirts away again. I bought four, which I shall always associate with this very enjoyable afternoon and concert.
Did I mention that I had a recording deal lined up? Yeh, Simon Jacobs, who does producing as well as recording and all that – he signed me up to do a demo in his high tech studio. This could be the start of my stratospheric popular music career and not before time, frankly.
Now Simon is a very musical chap and has been so for longer than I have known him, which is well north of 40 years. Here, for example, is his latest hit, Ghosts, which he released many weeks ago, but it refuses to fade in the Spotify rankings, still getting infeasible thousands of streams a week on that platform – the YouTube is below so you can also see the vid:
So what, in the name of all that is good and pure, was Simon thinking when he suggested that I record the Warren & Durbin classic, I Only Have Eyes For You. Not in the original Dick Powell pitch/key of C (heck knows that is hard enough for me, even with the sheet music to look at), but nine whole stops up the register in the Art Garfunkel range.
Nine whole stops. That’s like, Notting Hill Gate to South Ruislip, if you are daft enough to go west from Notting Hll. Even Ian Pittaway, my music teacher, who has crazy ideas about my ability to reach high notes, only nudges me three or very occasionally five stops up.
Here’s the result of Simon’s wild musical concept:
Anyway, Simon said that he much preferred the Art Garfunkel version of the song:
While I complained that even the original Dick Powell was wicked hard for me to play and/or sing.
But Simon insisted that his recording gadgetry could rectify any minor failings in my singing and that he thought he could, with a little effort, turn me into a latter-day Art.
It seemed like a jolly good excuse for a get together and/but life seemed to intervene for a while, so a ridiculous number of months passed before we actually got round to implementing the plan.
On the day, I arrived at Simon’s West London studio, which also doubles as his house, late afternoon/early evening, ready for a rollicking rock’n’roll evening of music.
First up, obviously, we indulged in some appropriate herbal substances; a big mug of tea each, together with some chat about really trendy topics, such a Brexit.
Then down to business with the recording.
I felt a little strange working on that particular song, that particular week. A couple of days earlier I’d been to the funeral of our neighbour, Barry Edson, who was an aficionado of film musicals. I’d had several interesting conversations with Barry about Warren and Durbin songs and Barry had shown me interesting stuff about those song writers from his library-sized collection of books on the topic.
But back to me recording I Only Have Eyes For You in an Art-like style with the help of computerised sound engineering.
Actually it was a very interesting process for me. Simon clearly does this sort of thing a lot, but mostly with his own, not with anyone else’s, voice.
We had a rehearsal run through. Then we took a recording take which sounded crackly. That led to some rearrangement of the microphone, the music and me. I even offered to remove my socks but those lengths were deemed unnecessary.
Then a couple more takes, at which point Simon thought we might try to repair take four with some fragments, but after we’d done that, I suggested one more try at a better straight-through take.
I’m glad I did that, because the final take was, in my opinion, quite a lot better than the previous ones (I realise that notion might be hard for the listener to believe).
Then Simon really got down to doing the sound engineering thing.
Simon is geeking my song
It was a bit like having your homework marked in front of the school teacher. On many of my notes, there was a huge amount of vibrato which Simon was able to smooth a bit.
Imagine, as an analogy, someone using fancy software to turn my legendary illegible handwriting into something that looks more like a legible script.
Is there any handwriting-smoothing software that might help? – September 1989 sample
The music software would help each note find its probable home on the scale. But sometimes the thing I had sung was closer to some other note than the note that the purist might fussily describe as the “right” note.
Actually I believe I did sing all the right notes…just not necessarily in the right order.
But it didn’t matter because Simon’s fancy software could shift pretty much whatever I sang to the exact place it belonged on the scale.
On just one occasion did Simon have to say, “I’m not even sure what you’re supposed to be singing there – may I please see the music?” – that was on the second intro couplet, which Art Garfunkle doesn’t sing.
And there is the one note that I strangled so very comprehensively that no amount of tinkering seemed able to repair it. Let’s imagine that I was gulping with emotion on that note.
Then some more listenings and some more tinkerings…
…by which time I was getting quite excited and wondered whether we should try more and more takes, on the basis that my voice seemed to be getting better and better each time.
The conversation then drifted towards artistes who had spent months or even years trying to perfect individual tracks for release.
I wondered whether we might lock ourselves away, perfecting this track, for, say, five years, in order to emerge, not only with a sure-fire hit on our hands, but with Brexit over. Simon thought that five years is probably not long enough…to ensure that Brexit is over with.
Anyway, in case you missed it above, or want to hear it again, here’s the end result:
Timothy then joined me and Simon for dinner at The Brackenbury Wine Rooms, which was a suitably convenient and high quality location for some good food & wine plus some top notch natter. It was a good opportunity to get to know Timothy a little better – the only time I’d met him before was at Simon’s Circle Line album launch, about 18 months ago, which was not an occasion for getting to know people well.
On parting, I suggested dates for me to return to record the rest of the album. But Simon just shook his head politely and solemnly. “A one-off recording deal, that was”, he said.
“Not even a B-side for the single?” I asked.
Simon shook his head politely and solemnly again, as both Simon and Timothy said, “goodbye,” not, “au revoir.”
But…
…and here’s a thing…
…when I listened to the track again the next morning, it sounded far better to me than it had the evening before. I said so to Simon, in a thank you message. Simon’s reply, perhaps similarly inspired by a re-listening:
Glad you like your recorded performance! Do let me know when you’re ready to record your whole album!!
So now I have an album deal lined up? Yeh, that well-known music producer Simon Jacobs…this must be the next stage of my stratospheric popular music career and not before time, frankly.
Declaration of interest: I have known Lydia White, who plays the role of Bella in this production, since before she was born; she is my best mate John’s daughter. This production is Lydia’s professional debut.
Picture borrowed from Lydia’s Twitter account – I’m guessing she wont mind.
Declaration of uninterest: this type of musical theatre is simply not the sort of stuff I would normally see. Yes, I wrote lyrics for Newsrevue in the 1990s, which is sort-of musical theatre and yes I wrote the lyrics for Casablanca the Musical at the turn of the century.
Yes, I am familiar with recordings of many of the great musicals of the 1930s through to the 1970s. But you can search Ogblog high and low for signs of straight musical theatre going in vain.
So, there I was; a chap normally predisposed to parodying musical theatre rather than appreciating it, trying to lap up Rags the Musical, a troubled piece from 1986 which closed on Broadway after just four nights, much revamped for this 2019 revival.
Rags is about a group of Jewish immigrants arriving in America early in the 20th Century. It has often been described as a sort-of sequel to Fiddler On the Roof, with several of those involved in writing the latter also involved in writing Rags. Here is a link to Hope Mill Theatre’s resource on this musical/production.
I thought the quality of this production was quite exceptional. I didn’t really know what to expect in a disused mill, relatively recently re-purposed as a small theatre with grand ideas to put on big shows like this.
Can they do it? Yes they can.
Coincidentally, I ended up sitting next to a pair of gentlemen who I had noticed sitting next to me in the Jūb Thai before the show. The chap immediately next to me turned out to be a local who has become very impressed by this new theatre on his manor. He told me that their home grown productions, of which Rags is one – have been consistently excellent.
The thing that impressed me the most was the universal quality of the performances. Not to detract at all from Lydia White’s superb performance, the praises of which clearly I am here to hail, in seriousness I thought the whole cast, every one of them, was truly excellent.
The quality of the musicianship was very high too. The music is a mish-mosh (if I might throw in bissel Yiddish) of ragtime, klezmer, jazz and show; that cannot be easy to contain and deliver to consistent quality, but the musicians and singers keep going to a very high quality level throughout.
The book was clearly problematic from the 1986 outset with this musical – I think the radical rewrite has partially but not totally solved the problem. I have some sympathy with the original author Joseph Stein. He originally set out to write a screenplay, settled on the libretto of a musical but kept the big picture story about the immigrant experience at the turn of the 20th Century. I have read a synopsis of the original version and it really does try to cover an enormous scope of subject matter for a musical.
And much like a troyer-shpil in the Yiddish Theatre tradition, which Rags The Musical parodies in many ways, it tries to throw in everything but the kitchen sink. So this is not one for the Royal Court.
The rewrite for this production is a smaller canvas but as a result some of the nuance is, I think, lost. So, for example…
…*spoiler alert*…
…Bella’s demise towards the end of the piece seems like happenstance rather than part of almost inevitable conflicts between ambition, desperation, industrial action and greed.
The writers have made some interesting choices, some of which work better than others. I loved the theatre trip towards the end of the first act where the protagonists see a Yiddish version of Hamlet which ends up with Klezmer music and Horah dancing despite Hamlet and Ophelia’s despair.
I was surprised by The Kaddish (mourner’s prayer) song, though, for which the writers chose simply to set the original mourner’s prayer to music. I imagined it would be something akin to the Fiddler On The Roof Sabbath Prayer song, which picks and chooses passages from the Hebrew prayer to make a very charming musical song in English.
The Mourner’s Kaddish is actually a tongue-twister of a prayer – part in Hebrew part in Aramaic – it must be really hard for people to learn it if they haven’t grown up with it and it must sound very strange to the uninitiated ear. Unfortunately I had reason to see and hear a mourner’s kaddish again, two days after seeing the show. I thought about it and really struggled to understand why the Rags lyricist hadn’t selected choice phrases in English to depict the meaning of that prayer with dignity and beauty. Perhaps superstition played its part – you just don’t mess with the prayer for the dead.
I was also surprised that the Children Of The Wind song doesn’t appear until right at the end of the show – reprised almost immediately in the finale. The musical would, to me, have seemed more holistic if that song had appeared early, e.g. when the immigrants arrive, as well as at the end of the show when their tale has been told.
But then what do I know to critique a musical? I don’t really do musicals.
At the small canvas level, the story very much resonated with me. I am, after all, a mostly third generation Jew, three of my four grandparents came to London from the Pale Of Settlement around the time this musical is set – plus or minus 20 years. My father’s family were indeed in the shmutter (rag) trade…they even changed their name to Harris; an idea which the Rebecca character considers but chooses to reject.
Grandma Anne With Dad (left) & Uncle Michael (right), both born in the UK. Two older brothers, Alec and Manny, came as infants with Grandma Anne from the Pale. The Rossinov family changed its name to Harris (based on my grandfather’s first name, Herschel) around 1930.
My mother’s family were musicians; quite quickly in England becoming far more high-falutin’ type musicians than the klezmer musicians in Rags, although I suspect my family arrived performing in much that style.
Grandpa Lew, sitting, with Great Uncle Max standing. Max was already an accomplished musician (strings) when they came to England, Grandpa Lew came as an infant and was never trained as a musician, but I’m told could play pretty much anything on the piano by ear. I inherited none of that.
More importantly, much of the big picture story of Rags resonates very strongly today, I’d argue to a greater extent than it did in 1986. Anti-immigration is a large element of the Brexit saga and also the Trump experience in the USA. The issues around ghettoisation, cultural assimilation and the like are very much with us, albeit not so much in the Jewish community any more. Questions around whether migrants are desirable for sound economic reasons, wanted for reasons of commercial exploitation, accepted because allowing migration is the right thing to do or not wanted at all – these questions are high on the agenda in most nations.
Despite my reservations about the book and some of the songs, I think this is a really super production and a performance piece for our time; it has the potential to do extremely well.
So what did I really think about Lydia White’s performance?
I can try to compare it to the many performances of Newsrevue casts I have seen. On that score, I can honestly say that her performance would be a standout in that environment. An environment where standout performers (e.g. from my era, Dorthy Atkinson and Rosie Cavaliero) have tended to go on to have very successful careers.
In Rags The Musical, the whole cast is very strong and/but Lydia more than holds her own in that company. For a professional debut I think it is an extremely assured and talent-packed start to her career.
It was also a great pleasure to chat with Lydia for a while after the show and learn/observe what a friendly, tight-knit group the company seems to be. Lydia won’t get that everywhere she goes in her show business career, but it’s good news that her first production is such a good one with such a together company.
…Rohan Candappa implored me to attempt Sound Of The Suburbs by The Members in a similar style.
My problem with Sound Of the Suburbs, though, is that I never found it convincing as a new wave or punk anthem. On that track, The Members always felt like a “me too” act, performing in a style that wasn’t authentically them.
Indeed, my research uncovered a few uncomfortable facts about The Members. Firstly, they were from Camberley, which is not what I’d describe as a suburb; I’d call Camberley “home counties”.
I also discovered that the lead man in The Members took Nicky Tesco as his “nom de punk”. Not very punk in my view, next to names like Sid Vicious and Rat Scabies.
Hence my adaptation being, “The Sound Of Home Counties” – a mash up of Sound Of the Suburbs with Tell me Daphne by William Byrd.
My nom de punk is Ged Waitrose
Rohan Candappa said, “never explain”, but then I don’t listen to everything Rohan says.
Rohan also said, “Ian, you’re a Rock God”. I’m rolling with that idea; Rohan talks a lot of sense sometimes.
Here’s The Sound Of The Suburbs by The Members:
https://youtu.be/NsHGnw1txLY
While here, believe it or not, is the version of Tell Me Daphne with the highest number of YouTube hits in the whole of the webosphere:
I joined the nice “front Row couple” I quite often see and chat with at SJSS (and also occasionally at The Wig). They asked after Janie, as usually do and we chatted about Janie’s mild aversion (or I should say relative aversion) to SJSS.
We also discussed the ageing demographic at both venues and I alluded to the fact that I sometimes still get called “young man” at The Wig, whereas not so at SJSS.
One of their number, Emily Worthington, describes the project well in the following vid:
…and also the next one, which is about one of their earlier Beethoven projects:
I couldn’t help but think of the Noel Coward song, “Don’t Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington” despite the fact that the charming young clarinettist shows none of the unfortunate characteristics attributed to Mrs Worthington’s daughter in the song.
Anyway, the ensemble treated us to Czerny’s wind ensemble arrangement of Beethoven’s Septet in Eb Op 20. A light piece which was apparently very popular in Beethoven’s day.
Here is a charming performance of the original Beethoven septet:
The Czerny wind version has only recently been revived – essentially Boxwood & Brass seek out such versions for revival.
Returning to the phrase, “young man”, that really does apply to Carl Czerny, who was all of 14 years old when he arranged this piece for wind ensemble. Precocious little fella.
Meanwhile, as we upped and left the hall at the end of this excellent lunchtime concert, the nice man from the nice couple patted me on the shoulder and said, “see you soon, young man”. It doesn’t really count once you’ve seeded the idea to someone, but still I thought it was a kind, friendly touch.
Remember where you first heard the name of this Yorkshire-based wind ensemble, Boxwood and Brass; ‘appen they were champion – I were well chuffed wirrem.
I was keen to see this concert of young award-winning artistes, including two young guitarists, Jesse Flowers and Andrey Lebedev, who would be performing Elizabethan music. Actually, the Elizabethan theme included both Elizabethan periods – i.e. Tudor music and also music from the last 60 or so years.
Ian Pittaway gets really irritated when I mention Janie’s aversion to the lyrics of a certain type of Tudor secular song, which she describes as “Hey Nonie No” music.
Ian P points out, perhaps with some veracity, that there is only one Elizabethan song that actually contains the offending words, “Hey Nonie No”. Well, Ian ran out of road today, as the concert contained, amongst many other things, Thomas Morley’s It Was A Lover And His Lass, which certainly contains that line. I felt some of Janie’s finger nails digging into the back of my hand when we got to that bit.
But the Dowland songs were his usual darker stuff: In Darkness Let Me Dwell, Now O Now I Needs Must Part and Come Heavy Sleep, which Janie and I both tend to prefer both musically and lyrically.
Janie wondered why the words to these more substantial songs are not credited to their authors. I didn’t know the answer to that question but my guess is/was that they are words that had been handed down through oral tradition and that the first time they were published along with (e.g. Dowland’s) music, the authorship was lost in the mists of time. But at the time of writing I seek an authoritative view on this point.
Anyway, below is a more comprehensive list of the music played, taken from the programme.
Both of the guitarists played using modern, vertical fingers on the right hand rather than the horizontal finger technique Ian P is encouraging in me. I must say I thought the Tudor music sounded lovely on the modern guitar in the hands of both of these guitarists.
Janie and I also both enjoyed the modern-Elizabethan solo guitar pieces; Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland and Philip Houghton’s Ophelia…a Haunted Sonata. Let’s just say that we found the modern songs too difficult for us.
I had spotted sitting near to us one of my occasional real tennis pals from Lord’s, Michael, who I knew was an accomplished guitarist, as he had studied Benjy (my baritone ukulele/Tudor guitar) with great interest one time at Lord’s.
We chatted with Michael for a while during the interval, choosing not to bother with refreshments at that hour, before hunkering down for the short but more difficult second half of the concert.
Janie and I had never been to a Saturday lunchtime concert before and I’m not sure we’ll be returning on a Saturday lunchtime again in a hurry. It just doesn’t time well with our other regular activities, so it all felt like a bit of a rush, early in the weekend, getting to the Wig on time. Mind you, it is surprisingly easy enough to park around there on a Saturday lunchtime, we learnt…
…and we did very much enjoy the concert. Janie has decided to hedge her bets in the matter of the term “Hey Nonie No” music, by rebranding it as “Ring Around The Rosebuds” music. Very cunning.
Meanwhile I cannot find any examples of these youngsters playing Tudor music on-line, but here is a very young Jesse Flowers playing some Bach lute music transcribed for guitar, beautifully:
Highly recommended – we always enjoy Cardinall’s Musick concerts. We love their sound and we like the way that Andrew Carwood talks to the audience with a likeable mix of deep scholarship and folksy delivery.
Lots of unfamiliar pieces and even unfamiliar composers in there.
Here is a little vid of this group rehearsing and talking Byrd a few years ago:
https://youtu.be/8bMiYnzkZx4
I’m starting to get a bit fussy in my old age – perhaps because I am learning more about early music.
For example, it seemed to me that the Gregorian Chants interspersed in the Guerrero in the first half, were delivered (at least by the bass and tenor voices) in a staccato style when changing note within a word, quite contrary to the “smoothing” technique Ian Pittaway suggested to me. Patrick Craig, the countertenor, sang with that smoothing technique and it sounded cleaner to my ears. Janie thought the staccato was deliberate and fine.
I also found myself comedically irritated by a spelling mistake in the words for the Agnus Dei in the programme lyrics for that Guerrero mass…spelling that phrase Angus Dei at one point. It made me wonder whether there is a beef of God as well as a lamb of God.
But these are tiny points. The concert was a feast for the ears and just the calming experience I needed after a long day.
I particularly enjoyed the second half of the concert, with shorter pieces by Peter Philips, Philippe Verdelot, Adrian Willaert, Francisco Guerrero, Luca Marenzio, Daniel Torquet (“who he?” I hear you cry – Andrew Carwood is struggling to trace him too) and William Byrd taking the first 40-45 minutes of that second half.
There was a Christmassy encore by Hieronymus Praetorius – we were horrified to learn that, liturgically/technically speaking, we only reach the end of Christmas this weekend.
Still, we loved the concert and thoroughly recommend the broadcast to lovers of this type of music.
As many friends and acquaintances know, I have been mucking around with a baritone ukulele for a few years now. I have also been taking an interest in the early music element of the instrument which is, to all intents and purposes, a Tudor guitar.
So I have recently been trying to combine some of the material I like for basic chordal strumming of songs I remember and like from my youth, with some of the techniques I’m starting to acquire to play early music.
Here are a couple of early efforts: Germ Free Adolescents and My Perfect Cousin, in the style of broadside ballads.
Here is Germ Free Adolescents in its original form by X-Ray Spex in 1978:
https://youtu.be/DGROSJbCPV8
Whereas, here is my humble effort, unplugged:
https://youtu.be/E-XLiGhXvF0
My Perfect Cousin was released by The Undertones in 1980:
https://youtu.be/Pgqa3cVOxUc
Whereas here is my more plaintive, unplugged version of the song:
https://youtu.be/IdijP6HhvmA
Work in progress, admittedly, but I feel there is something there – for me, even if not for anyone else.
It wasn’t really a random concert. Katie Cowling was supposed to be delivering a programme named Blow Ye Winds with Johan Löfving, but Katie was poorly so Johan showed up with another of his regular pairings, flautist Yu-Wei Hu, to perform a slightly different programme named The English And French Gardens. The medieval element had gone but a fairly similar Baroque assortment to that originally planned.
From and linked to http://www.flauguissimoduo.com/ – photo by Aiga Ozo
So, it might not have been a random concert but it was a Random concert, by which I mean John Random was going to join me. Or was he? There was some traditional too-ing and fro-ing with “can make it”, “can’t make it”, “can make it but might be late” messages. In the end, John arrived in time to see all but the first sonata.
So this concert closed a loop or two. John really did get to hear and see a theorbo. In fact, I think the concert included a little first for me too, as Johan Löfving played a short theorbo solo piece – I don’t think I had ever heard the theorbo as a solo instrument before. It was a lovely little piece. Coincidentally, it was by Kapsberger, which also closed a loop for John, as although he had seen Les Kapsber’girls, on that occasion the girls did not perform anything by their eponymous composer. I managed to find a snippet of Johan Löfving playing the very piece in question:
Not the best recorded audio nor video you’ll ever see, but a rare sighting of solo theorbo
Here is another short vid, which shows both of the Flauguissimo Duo – the Sonata by Johan Helmich Roman which they played as the closing number of our concert:
It really was a very charming lunchtime concert – these SJSS ones are such a treat when I can get to them and it was such a pleasure to be able to share that musical experience with John.
Afterwards John and I had a bite of lunch together in the crypt, which is a great place to eat and drink. John described it as his favourite crypt. Janie would agree wholeheartedly with that – she is also a devotee of the SJSS crypt, claiming that the crypt is the best thing about the whole place and that some small scale concerts should be held down there.
John suggested that he would like to spend far more time reading Ogblog than he has available and that a decent length of custodial sentence might provide him with the time and inclination so to read.
I suggested that, on our way back to Westminster Tube Station, we might ask some of the more pugnacious Brexit protesters on College Green to provide John with the means to such a custodial sentence, but John demurred. Not dedicated enough to Ogblog, then?
Time flew by and I realised that I really needed to get back to the flat, as I had arranged further Renaissance/Baroque style activity for the rest of the day – a lesson on early music guitar technique with Ian Pittaway…
…who subsequently sent me a link to this lovely 10 minute vid by Elizabeth Kenny explaining everything you ever wanted to know about the theorbo but were afraid to ask…
…followed by a real tennis bout at Lord’s against a nemesis-like adversary, formerly a seriously top-ranking amateur cricketer, against whom I had never previously emerged victorious at tennis. But, steeled by all this early music, I did prevail for once this day.
Sadly, we have no photo or video of Colin’s performance. Actually, that might be just as well.
Let’s sign off instead with some more Flauguissimo Duo – not a piece we heard on that day but a really lovely rendering of some Gluck and a chance to see Johan Löfving’s guitar playing and some beautiful virtuoso flute playing by Yu-Wei Hu:
Clearly not. In my own defence, I thought that activity would have died down by the Saturday before Christmas. For us, work-wise, it had – but not for the shops and shoppers in neighbouring Oxford Street. Who knew?
In any case, I was very keen to see and hear this concert. Janie and I had very much enjoyed the Avital Meets Avital concert some eighteen months earlier:
So I was fascinated to see how Avi Avital got on with Baroque music and sort of glossed over the proximity to Christmas when I booked this Venice Baroque Orchestra concert.
Suffice it to say that the journey was suitably awful for Janie and me to agree, “never again at this time of year”…again. Yet, also again, the pain soon turned to pleasure when we listened to the music and watched the musicians.
Mostly Vivaldi, but we got to hear some Geminiani (of the Corelli variety) and one piece by a later Neapolitan composer, Giovanni Paisiello. Avi told a fruity anecdote about the difference between Venetians and the hyper-romantic Neapolitans.
Avi Avital also told an amusing anecdote from his early childhood about falling in love with the Winter concerto from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, only to find out some years later that the piece he had actually fallen in love with was the Summer Concerto. Avi claims, it wasn’t until he went to Venice to work with the Venice Baroque Orchestra, that he actually experienced a violent summer thunder storm and realised why that stormy-sounding music represented summer rather than winter.
But the most interesting anecdote, which Avi told right at the end of the concert, was the fact that the concert very nearly didn’t happen at all. Most of the musicians were stranded as a result of the Gatwick Airport Drone Incident, which had required Avi’s team and the Wigmore Hall to work tirelessly rerouting musicians to enable the concert to go ahead. And we thought we’d had a stressful journey to that concert!
The orchestra are clearly seasoned exponents of this flavour of baroque music, although we felt that one or two members of the orchestra were not at their best that evening; perhaps travel or even life weary.
Avi Avital is an extraordinary, charismatic virtuoso of his instrument – his quality shines through all he plays. Yet, Janie and I both felt, some of the pieces that have been transposed from violin virtuoso pieces lose some of their musical quality through the transposition. Not for want of fine playing, but simply because the mandolin is a more limited, metal-stringed instrument. I enjoyed the change in some of the transposed pieces, but really missed the violin’s colour on others.
Below is a YouTube of a lovely, similar performance from a concert in Seoul a few week’s earlier:
