— The Nelson Evening Mail, Wednesday, April 10 1907
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All the best people are born in October.

In Moldova (and Czechoslovakia), ‘carp’ is spelled ‘crap’.

In 1492 Native Americans discovered Columbus lost at sea.

Exultant language is reserved for the mountains.

Ye cannae shove yer granny off the bus.

You can get syphilis through wooden spoons.

Real men wear real clothes.

Termite baiting is currently in progress.

Max Hastings is the author of 27 books, most about conflict.

Not all of Mozart’s paintings were perfect.

Scotland have been knocked out of the Rugby World Cup.

One of the known properties of honey is that it drips.

Some Russian villages purposely elect the village idiot.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, August 2 1906

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In 1943 a British pilot made an emergency landing on the Italian island of Lampedusa, only to have it surrender to him.

Kelo trees live for up to 3,500 years, and remain standing for another 700.

A ‘BLT’ is a sandwich containing bacon, lettuce and tomato.

Spinal Tap were originally called Lamé, but this soon changed after the named repeatedly appeared on posters without the accent.

24 sitting Labour MPs have died since the year 2000.

After Michael Jackson’s death ’emaciated’ was the most searched word on the Merriam-Webster dictionary homepage.

Gaius Plinius Secundus was the ‘Elder’ of the two famous Plinys.

The little black bits in kiwi fruit are spider cack.

José Mauricio Nunes Garcia’s Missa Dos Defuntos is a very obvious rip-off of Mozart’s Requiem.

Arthur C Clarke owned a Sinclair C6 electric vehicle.

The Fountain Café in Walliston, Surrey, dispenses the nastiest coffee south of Manchester.

Many C.19^th paintings are believed to have used pigment derived from pulverised Egyptian mummies.

You don’t need a sense of humour in paradise.

If you really wanna dance
then I’ll dig out the banjo.
Why not? I’ll play along with you.

If you wanna learn how
I’ll even show you the moves:
I could teach you a thing or two.

I will,
I will –
I promise!

But gently now…
I’ll keep my thoughts to myself,
the better to expose your little secrets.

The art of concealing,
the trick to grafting;
pricking here,

and quipping there.
So help me,
I’ll destroy your every plan.

So if you wanna dance,
you little count,
if you really wanna dance

well then sure, I’ll play along with you.
Of course
I’ll play along.

—

The Betty Nansen Teatret’s Mozart Undone features six singers and five instrumentalists in a two-hour ‘freewheeling musical deconstruction’ of 20 of Mozart’s most recognisable melodies – or what Nikolaj Cederholm would call ‘hits’. Formerly-recognisable, anyway. These ‘hits’ have been, according to the show’s garrulous and inimitable press release, ‘re-imagined and re-engineered into a wild synthesis of ancient and modern genres’ involving such (neo?-)classical touchstones as The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Mumford & Sons, and – deep breath – Dolly Parton.

The players come nominally dressed as characters from The Magic Flute – plus Don Giovanni (naturally) – but with only half a dozen of them, each playing numerous ‘roles’, there are never-ending on-stage costume-changes, and no shortage of off-stage antics (we will say nothing of the poor girl charged with inserting microphones into condoms…). The costumes themselves, however, seem influenced less by the fashions of Mozart’s own era than, say, the aesthetics of a Stanley Kubrick production, with a dash of Lady Gaga thrown in for good measure – the net result roughly approximating, perhaps, the opium-befuddled nightmares of an overwrought Mozart scholar. In many respects, it’s not a million miles away from Amadeus. Except that – ahem – there is no actual narrative to speak of. What there is, is a lot of water. Bloody gallons of the stuff.

This entire thing probably has to be seen to be believed – a kind of full-on (and slightly inevitable) ‘Cirque du Gubbay’. But doubters be warned: the company’s Beethoven show had Darwin, Turner, and Nelson Mandela in it. And that ran for months. In Norway.

So, what is a ‘theatre concert’? You have to run to keep up with Cederholm’s comically relentless enthusiasm for his work (think Adrian Edmondon’s Red Baron in Blackadder), but the rough explanation goes something like this:

‘Theatre and music are very old colleagues. But the musical, vaudeville, opera – these are not the ancestors of the theatre concert: they are its cousins. The theatre concert is a real hybrid: music and theatre as equals!

‘In Copenhagen, in the Nineties, we wanted to do musicals; but there was a dissatisfaction with the way that musicals were done – the music was always serving a secondary role. You know when the story calls for a song about someone finding a letter on a mantelpiece… and it’s always a bad song! And there’s always that certain style of singing. Rock concerts, also, had these Old Testament-style rituals: “Good evening, London!” And they had a very low dynamic. In the first quarter of an hour they had shown you everything they had to offer: lighting, playing, singing.

‘So our first show was Gasoline, about ‘The Rolling Stones of Denmark’, and we took an interpretation of their work – as when a theatre does Shakespeare or Chekhov. The only difference is we can hear how the Beatles were supposed to sound. We had the boldness to say, “It doesn’t matter: a song can mean a lot of things.” We interpret not only through the music but also through the rituals, the costumes, the dramas. It’s very rich. You cannot necessarily get everything from seeing it only once.’

Cederholm, it seems, is constitutionally incapable of resisting a challenge. Having subsequently pulled off theatre concerts on Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys and the Beatles (twice), he thought ‘Why don’t we do a classical composer?’ Why not, indeed. But between the mischievous mentions of ‘electro-Irish, punk, and power ballad’ influences, and the programme credits for ‘Music Directors and Producers’ (Jens and Peter Hellemann) and ‘Songs written by’ (Neill Cardinal Furio), an obvious question arises: what really remains of Mozart once he’s done being undone?

Cederholm doesn’t falter: ‘The basic notes.’ But his aim is not to put on a note-for-note concert of Mozart’s music so much as to recreate the antic spirit of, say, Die Zauberflöte’s original Freihaus performances. ‘We just took the music that we could talk with,’ then ‘we tried to make the lyrics about important issues today that would fit…’

To wit, as played over (a piece formerly known as) a piano concerto: ‘Where is my target? / Where is my drone? / The cruel insurgency / I track on my phone.’

Your call. As I said, there’s no storyline. ‘This is not about Mozart, certainly. But if you want to make connections, you are free to do that for yourself.’

Traditionalists will argue that the end product is less Mozart being re-worked than Mozart being worked over. At best, it’s Mozart being sampled (remember the Lloyd Webbers vs Paganini, back in the day? That. Only more so). But Cederholm is unbothered. In fact, he’s far more concerned about people turning away from it because it’s ‘Mozart’.

‘Is it for Mozart-lovers? Maybe… if you are an open-minded Mozart-lover!’ But not liking Mozart is not a reason not to go, either. ‘The years gone since Mozart composed have added to the significance of his music,’ he says, with heavy ambivalence. ‘Same as with The Beatles, Mozart produced some of the greatest hits – part of our understanding of what Music should sound like. He’s a big hit-maker: in the cinema, in the supermarket… So the audience come with their luggage; but the most exciting thing is people don’t know what it is they are going to experience.’

The whole performance, not so incidentally, is in English. ‘Mozart was German but wrote in Italian, the language of opera. English is the language of pop music, and we want to reach out to an audience everywhere.’

And that audience is…? ‘It’s a lot of people who would rather go to the movies. But also traditional theatre-goers, who find the energy very satisfying. It’s a family form. It’s for everybody who loves a good show!’

—
For Sinfini Music. Published/edited version here.

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For Sinfini Music

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For theartsdesk

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For theartsdesk

 
Arriving at Ladies’ College at the seventh hour, game-faced and Chooty drawn, I was informed that the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka’s New World Concert was sold out.*

While a few hundred rupees for an evening’s live music remains a pretty good deal, I have to confess this eventuality had not occurred to me. But I was pleased to see the event attracting a crowd, relieved to get a return from a righteous absentee, and sorry to see that other iniquitous no-show-ers had let their seats simply go to waste. (For shame!)

Though they put their best foot forward from the outset, the SOSL did not (does not) quite have the coherence or verve demanded by Edmundo Villani-Côrtes’ Concerto for Flute and Chamber Orchestra (essentially Western Classical tradition, with Brazilian flavouring). The brass and wind sections, especially, struggled with the punchy rhythms of the opening ‘Gingado’ (though the percussion were conspicuously precise). The ‘Moderato’ was more solid – although I find I now experience a default hint-of-Orson-Welles nostalgia in any and every SOSL slow movement [see all previous reviews].

The ‘Allegro’ is heavy with the roaming vigour of early C.20th Americana – Gershwin, Copland, Grofé et al. – and the orchestra went at it. The result was not always four-square (it’s Latin Americana, after all), but the mellower, sunset-over-broad-flowing-river moments were good, and even the mistuning of the horns [also see all previous] seemed somehow to contribute to the melancholic flavour.

The end came out of nowhere, rather, and I was left reflecting that a) it was a smart move to begin with this lesser-known Concerto, and b) it was hardly the orchestra’s fault that the music itself doesn’t quite seem to go the distance.

Their lack of indulgence to visiting flautist Celina Charlier, however, was reprehensible. The Brazilian could not have been expected to blow much more life into the piece without sacrificing the ever-fragile tone of her instrument; but for the most part the solo line did not stand out, which rendered the whole business somewhat underwhelming.

Conversely, the ensemble seemed impelled by soprano Tharanga Goonetilleke’s authority over the two square feet of stage she was permitted to call her own. Her voice was full-throated and -lunged without ever sounding forced, and her physical performance active enough for the four operatic excerpts to retain the excitement of their theatrical origin. (The imaginative failure of the programmers to consider looking for four songs also from the new world we will ignore for now.)

Goonetilleke’s flexibility, in particular, was impressive. Sparkling and graceful in Gounod’s ‘Jewel song’; vivid in Puccini’s ‘Quando m’en vo’’ (Boheme, inevitably); mournfully beautiful in the ‘Porgi amor’ from Figaro (otherwise a bad choice: no offence to Mozart, but shorn of its context the aria is underpowered and absent its natural trajectory).

The highlight, though, was the utterly sensual ‘Piangero la sorte mia’ from Handel’s incomparable Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Both musically and emotionally, Goonetilleke’s torment was pitch-perfect. Moreover, she had the confidence not to over-reach: the da capo was a model of restraint.

I wasn’t banking on enjoying the second half quite as much. Even with the watchful and experienced Gregory Rose at the helm, the headline item, Dvorák’s tumultous Symphony No. 9 in E minor, From the New World, seemed like a voyage too far for the SOSL and all who sail in her.

But it seems you can teach an old sea-dog new tricks. Some, anyway.

The strings rose out of the mist and the horns pa-pah’d, firm but clear; the woodwind were appropriately tremulous; the tutti strings were a little effete, but nonetheless present and correct; on cue, the trumpets sounded the battle call, a clarion of terrible, crystalline beauty. Five stars, again, to the percussion.

It wasn’t all perfect, of course. Where the cellos led, the others followed (round the teepees, step in time!), but where the violins led the merry dance, things were prone to rushing. Perhaps they were disoriented by Rose’s habit (perfectly musical…) of conducting now downwards, now upwards (…but not necessarily very easy to follow).

But there were some nice touches: I particularly liked the billowing curtains at the moment when the spirits of the dead appear to invade the security of the campfire. And on the crest of the great crescendo I found myself smiling. It was an ungenerous ‘I didn’t think you had it in you’ smile; but they did.

After the final cascade there was applause. Which was fair enough. This once.

Rose sped up the ‘Largo’ a tad. The cor anglais was not pretty; but it was haunting and rustic and honest – think Jeremy Irons’ ‘playing’ in The Mission – and thus, I suppose, contextually ‘right’. The string interventions were still a little thin, frankly. But the audience were patient, and allowed the orchestra to marshal their forces. The rewards were in some delicate duetting between the first-desk cellists, sweet interplay between flute and clarinet, and good cavalry from the brass.

In the slide-show of the earth from the air (the continental US, anyway) that is Dvorák’s ‘Scherzo’ not all images got the same treatment, a few clunked in transmission, and some were slightly out of focus; but we definitely felt we’d been given the full tour (albeit with the wild Hinjuns safely air-brushed out).

And then the final ‘Allegro con fuoco’. Even the violins got out the elbow grease for this, even if they were not over-liberal in its application – and bravo (blastro!) to both trumpets and trombone (from somewhere I caught a pre-echo of Dukas’ Sorceror’s Apprentice that I’ve never noted before: was it them?). The horns predictably wimped out of the vital slog to the summit, but by the end it was as broiling and stormy as could be mustered.

Which is to say… underpowered. Even stingy. Lacking in lustre. The Mayflower pilgrims were a parsimonious bunch, no doubt; but even they might have found two double basses to be unnecessarily cheap (the SOSL does have more). Oh, the notes were alright, sure; but the sound – played so safe – was, by and large, less New World than New Deal: snatching victory from the jaws of depression, but at (a) cost.

Same old, same old. Let’s have Gregory Rose back, though. Why, he even restored the National Anthem to its occasional glory!** [Yes, I’m going to keep treating it like a programmed item, as long as the SOSL keep on performing it.]

He also gave little intro speeches to each piece – about the Latino-orchestral tradition, say, or the fact that the New World was new to Dvorák too – and even, rather charmingly, sang a couple of musical examples. With his modernist black suit, and professorial white hair, he was like a kind of musical neo-Jesuit: Lennie Bernstein (oh, Lennie! Lennie!) meets Benjamin Britten. It shouldn’t really need someone to fly halfway round the world to deliver such Classicfmera, of course, but it beats shelling out for the programme and trying to decipher it in the dark.

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* Yes, the Sunday Times has not been receiving its press tickets of late. Go figure.
** Is there a reason why this only happens under the foreign conductors? Is it because they actually treat it like a piece of music instead of a dreary obligation?

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As printed*** in the SL Sunday Times.

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*** without asterisks.

Mozart’s Sonata in D Major is a lightish confection, perhaps slightly more icing than cake, from an era when pianos were still quite piano and you didn’t need a 15” hand-span to play the big numbers. The piece, written in the composer’s relative maturity, is also, in itself, quite scaled back, and Pommier played it, such as is possible, according to the manner of the day (i.e. feet nowhere near the pedals).

It was a consummate rendition, neither metronomic (contra my boyhood piano teacher) nor excessively flamboyant, and as a thunderstorm opened up outside the alternate turns of vibrancy and quietude preserved us under the umbrella of tranquillity.

Not so with the ‘Appassionata’ (Sonata no. 23 in F minor). Even Beethoven reckoned this monumental and heroic piece to be one of his best works – and it is PDG. From the noble, march-like principal tune to the pounding of the keys (NB appassionata not to be attempted on first dates) and the trilling in the ivory stratosphere, Beethoven gave his full, brawling, elemental mad-browed might to the storm now raging outside. As the thunderclaps landed bang on the chords, it ceased to be clear who was providing whom with the ‘rolling accompaniment’. In Pommier’s fade-to-pianissimo ‘Allegro assai’ I scribbled: ‘the two avenging soldiers fall together in the rainstorm, lie on their backs looking up at the clearing skies, and, finally, rest in peace.’

That said – and perhaps it was the hour-glass shape of the venue, or just where I was sitting – what I had taken as the pianist’s exemplary restraint in the Mozart now seemed just a touch too cool. By the end of the ‘allegro ma non troppo’ Pommier could (should?) have been hitting the piano with a sledgehammer – but wasn’t. No matter: the piece still rightly got a standing ovation.

It is hard to believe that Liszt’s Sonata in B minor is separated from the ‘Appassionata’ by only fifty years. But both indicative and evocative of the particular brand of untrammelled Romantic genius that Liszt typified, the pedal (the important one) was down and everything was going full whack (everything except the nicely atmospheric storm, of course, which had passed without so much as a by-your-leave).

Huge – almost symphonic – in scope, and incorporating, in its massive single movement, touches of Puccini, Wagner, Mendelssohn, even Gershwin, the virtuosic B minor seems to condense not only the whole orchestra into two hands, but the whole of C.19th musical history – half of which hadn’t even happened yet.

Needless to say, this is a ridiculously difficult piece, even by the standards of the international star circuit. Simply daring to play it is half the show (just reading the sheet music is a challenge beyond all but the most battle-hardened pianists), and it was amazing to see it done with such gliding dexterity – not least from a man with the physique of a Welsh baritone/shot-putter.

There’s something slightly frantic and Tom-and-Jerryish about Liszt’s virtuosity, though. Jerry hits Tom with frying pan (crash), Tom sees stars (twinkle twinkle), Tom trudges home, tail dragging on the ground (minor slow bit), Tom plots revenge (low growls), Tom sets trap (short mischievous bursts), Jerry comes sauntering along (ominous crescendo), then start again in the next episode.

To accuse Liszt of pure stunt-making would be harsh; but there are moments when extreme showmanship can make a piece seem… less profound… than perhaps it actually is. It’s like, say, Thomas Pynchon novels: colossal, not frankly 100% convincing, and more beloved of the critics than of the broader literate populace (who prefer Dickens). The B minor is, undeniably, a showstopper. But personally I’d have closed with the more satisfying Beethoven.

Pommier, inevitably, wasn’t let off before the audience had extorted two encores: a trifling little central-European dance number that he played with almost dismissive effortlessness; then a shameless and totally brilliant rendition of Chopin’s Minute Waltz, so fast it ought to have been renamed. Genuinely impossible, without sight of the keyboard, to ‘see’ how this could be played by human hands.

—

Jean-Bernard Pommier and CMSC chief Lakshman Joseph de Saram are discussing launching an appeal for a concert grand, in readiness for the opening of the new National Performing Arts Theatre. This is a tremendous idea that deserves support (please direct cash donations to me c/o The Sunday Times – in unmarked, non-sequential bills – and I’ll see that it gets to the right place).

Nor – I hasten to add – was it ill grace that prompted Pommier to comment, gently, on the Goethe’s piano. It’s not concert standard, is all (basically, there are a couple of strings missing, but it’s also not sufficiently tuned), and in a national capital, with visiting musicians of Pommier’s calibre, that’s a poor show.

Published version – incl. minor abridgements – here.