Tag: Music at Oxford

Music At Oxford At The Old Royal Naval College, 9 June 1992

I was reminded of this evening when John Random and I visited the Old Royal Naval College and toured the Painted Hall ceiling in January 2018 – click here or below for that story:

If It Ain’t Baroque…Don’t Fix It, A Day Out With John Random, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich,18 January 2018

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.

Instruction pack for hosts – including boat form – click here.

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.

Those who want a laugh about what happened the last time I was “conned” into transferring by boat will enjoy the following piece – click here or below:

Nicaragua, Morgan’s Rock to Mukul, 16 February 2016

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:

You Can’t Hurry Trusts, NewsRevue Lyric, 7 May 1992

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

Music at Oxford Fireworks Concert, Radley College, 20 July 1991

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.

Music At Oxford At The Sheldonian Theatre & Bodleian Library, 7 July 1989

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!

Top recall, Annalisa, top recall.

Music At Oxford, Binder Hamlyn’s Sponsored Gig: Belshazzar, Sheldonian Theatre, 6 July 1990

This was the second go that BDO Consulting (Binder Hamlyn’s management consultancy) had at sponsoring a Music At Oxford gig. I wrote up the frenetic first year of this exercise some while ago – click here and below:

Music At Oxford At The Sheldonian Theatre & Bodleian Library, 7 July 1989

My log for 1990 records:

Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] came along… We all stayed at the Moat House which was less fun than the Randolf.

The programme summarises the musical element of the gig neatly on one page:

If you want to hear the music, I have saved The English Concert’s recording of the version they performed in that Oxford concert as a playlist on YouTube Music. Click here. Don’t be put off if the link is crossed out. You can hear the music regardless of whether you have a YouTube Music account or not. You’ll just get adverts if you don’t.

As for the event itself, one of my main memories of it is connected to my agonising back injury at the time, which had only slightly lessened in pain level in the weeks between the injury and this event. I was going through one of my “soldiering on” phases in July.

Caroline no doubt tolerated my pained mood with grace but I don’t suppose I was at my best in terms of being good company.

We stayed at the Moat House that year, as indeed we did in 1991 as well. It felt like a bit of a come down from the Randolph from 1989, not least because the Moat House seemed less accommodating to us partying for much of the night.

The other thing I remember about the corporate entertaining aspect of the event itself was feeling that I fell short in terms of being the in-house know-all in the matter of the work we were going to hear. Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert – no problem at all. I could talk about them without difficulty. But the piece itself, Belshazzar, which colleagues felt was, on the surface, a story from a bit of the Bible that I was supposed to know about…I remember drawing a near blank.

Belshazzar’s feast…writing on the wall…Book of Daniel I think…not really my thing, the Bible…

Hopeless.

Let’s face it, these days no-one needs someone like me for this stuff. Wikipedia does the job in plenty of detail.

Or you can instruct an AI to produce a suitably amusing, entertaining synopsis of the story. Here’s ChatGPT’s excellent effort produced with 30 seconds of instruction from me and fewer than 30 seconds of word spew by the software:

Handel’s oratorio Belshazzar is a richly dramatic retelling of the biblical story of the doomed Babylonian king who meets his fate amidst a whirlwind of prophecy, divine intervention, and questionable party etiquette. With a libretto by Charles Jennens, this musical spectacle features a colorful cast of characters and explores themes of hubris, faith, and the consequences of bad decisions—all wrapped up in Handel’s glorious score.

The curtain rises, metaphorically speaking, on the city of Babylon, which is under siege by the Persian king Cyrus. But Belshazzar, the Babylonian king, isn’t the sort to let a little thing like a military crisis cramp his style. As the besieging armies gather outside the city walls, Belshazzar is busy inside indulging in a grand banquet. This isn’t just any feast; it’s a celebration of excess, arrogance, and a bold defiance of the gods—a recipe for disaster if ever there was one.

Belshazzar’s mother, Nitocris, is the voice of reason in the chaos. Wise, devout, and thoroughly unimpressed by her son’s antics, she tries to persuade him to temper his arrogance and take the threat of Cyrus seriously. Naturally, Belshazzar ignores her sage advice, because what’s a good tragedy without someone doubling down on their hubris?

Meanwhile, outside the city, Cyrus is not your average conqueror. He’s portrayed as a virtuous leader, guided by divine providence and a sense of justice. Alongside him is Gobrias, a Babylonian nobleman with a personal vendetta against Belshazzar, who had his son executed. Gobrias’s hatred burns hotter than the desert sun, and he’s all in on Cyrus’s plan to overthrow the Babylonian king.

Back in Babylon, Belshazzar’s party is in full swing, and things take a dramatic turn when he orders the sacred vessels plundered from the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem to be brought out and used as drinking cups. This act of sacrilege is the ancient equivalent of poking a very angry bear with a very short stick. As the wine flows and the revelry peaks, a mysterious, disembodied hand appears and begins writing on the wall. The text, cryptic and foreboding, sends the partygoers into a panic. Belshazzar, for all his bravado, is understandably shaken and calls for his wise men to interpret the writing.

Enter Daniel, the Hebrew prophet, who has a knack for decoding divine messages. He’s summoned to explain the ominous graffiti, and his interpretation is anything but reassuring. The writing—“Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin”—translates to a grim prophecy: Belshazzar’s reign is over, his deeds have been weighed and found wanting, and his kingdom will be divided between the Medes and the Persians. Not exactly party talk, but it’s a showstopper nonetheless.

While Belshazzar processes this bad news (or rather, doesn’t), Cyrus and his forces execute a cunning plan to enter the supposedly impenetrable city. They divert the Euphrates River, lowering the water level and enabling the Persian army to sneak into Babylon under the cover of night. It’s a heist worthy of an action film, complete with suspense, strategy, and a dramatic payoff.

The climax comes swiftly. Cyrus and his troops storm the city, and Gobrias, fueled by vengeance, confronts Belshazzar. The once-mighty king meets his end, and Babylon falls into Persian hands. Cyrus, magnanimous in victory, proclaims freedom for the Jewish exiles, allowing them to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. It’s a triumphant conclusion for some and a dire cautionary tale for others.

Handel’s Belshazzar is a feast for the ears and the imagination. The music captures every nuance of the story, from the swaggering arrogance of Belshazzar to the solemn wisdom of Daniel and the heroic resolve of Cyrus. The choruses are particularly noteworthy, ranging from the jubilant praise of the Persians to the somber lament of the Babylonians. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions, with plenty of drama, divine justice, and a hint of schadenfreude as Belshazzar gets what’s coming to him.

In summary, Belshazzar is a tale of epic proportions, blending history, theology, and theatrical flair. It’s a story where the writing’s literally on the wall, hubris meets its match, and redemption shines through the rubble of a fallen empire. Handel’s music ensures that this timeless story continues to resonate, entertaining audiences with its grandeur, poignancy, and occasional moments of dark humor. So, the next time you’re tempted to throw a wild party in defiance of the gods, remember poor Belshazzar and perhaps reconsider the guest list.

That sounds well cool. I’ll give it another listen.

Trevor Pinnock and his gang did the show again at the Royal Albert Hall a couple of week’s later (Prom 3). Here are a few (mixed) reviews from that performance:

Belshazzar Prom Grier StandardBelshazzar Prom Grier Standard 23 Jul 1990, Mon Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

24 Jul 1990, Tue The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

24 Jul 1990, Tue The Independent (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com