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For the Sunday Times (SL)

U. A. FANTHORPE was born in Kent.

BILLY COLLINS is the author of six books of poetry including… Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes.

IAN MCMILLAN is poet-in-residence for Barnsley FC.

TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER… suffered a serious stroke which left his speech impaired and his right side paralysed…. [He] continues to write, and play the piano – a number of pieces for the left hand having been composed specially for him.

OWEN SHEERS was born in Fiji.

VERNON SCANNELL was born in 1922. He studied for a year at Leeds University and served in the Gordon Highlanders in the Second World War in North Africa and the D-Day Normandy landings. He has had various jobs including teaching and a spell as a professional boxer.

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* Answering Back, ed. Carol Ann Duffy

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For theartsdesk

But this was not one of those times.’

1. So, what’s with the beard?

After I graduated from the War Studies Faculty at KCL I rather fancied myself as a war correspondent, so I grew the beard. Then I just rather fancied myself.

2. We somehow get the impression that you are always very sarcastic and cynical about most things. Is this truly the real you or is it an image that you are projecting?

Yeah, I’m just one of those really nice, cuddly people who just longs to be disliked for who they really aren’t.

3. How can you, in a few words, describe the real you?

I’m the sort of person who can’t help noticing you’ve left out Question 4. Sorry – I was born with a red pen in my hand. (True story: it was a Chooty.)

5. What can you tell us about the many talents you possess, for instance singing and playing the piano?

Two isn’t ‘many’ – unless you’re an Amazonian tribesman. Or a bigamist.

6. Are you as passionately interested in sports, or is it just PE instructors?

It’s true. When I was a schoolboy I had a terrible – and unrequited – crush on our Head of Sports. But something told me a 20-stone former rugby international might not appreciate me ‘being honest about my feelings’.

7. You’re always with a book in hand. Who are your favourite authors, and how has reading influenced your life?

Reading has been the bane of my existence. I blame my parents. As for favourite authors, see (parts of) Question 13.

8. What made you come to Sri Lanka and what keeps you here?

First time, unemployment. Second time, unemployment. What keeps me here? The threat of continued unemployment.

9. Do you enjoy teaching? Why did you take up this profession?

I do. Some people are just born with the instinct to bully kids and bend folks’ ears.

10. What are some of the worst moments in your teaching career? 

(Other than this one? Boom boom!) I hate every moment in which pupils seem unwilling to learn. The fault could be mine, or it might be theirs. Either way, it’s unbelievably depressing.

11. We are sure you are aware of your popularity among mainly the female student population of the school. What, in your opinion, about you appeals to the opposite sex?

You mean it’s not the beard?!

12. Did you have wild crazy days in college or were you the “good” student? Tell us of your college life. 

Tragically, all record of my undergraduate ‘career’ was destroyed in a freak blaze…

13. Who are your idols, if any?

Many. Jacques Kallis; Roald Dahl; Bruce Chatwin; the 2^nd Earl of Rochester; Jeffrey Barnard/Peter O’Toole; Philip Seymour Hoffman; Alexander (‘the Great’); Dr Gregory House; Dr Hannibal Lecter; Geoff Dyer; Maurice Bowra; John Forbes Nash, Jr.; Christopher Hitchens; Toby Ziegler; Jim Morrison; Sir Ranulph Fiennes; Radiohead (all of, but mostly Thom); Arthur Rimbaud; Russell Crowe; GF Handel; L v Beethoven; WG Sebald; TE Lawrence; JM Coetzee; Margaret Atwood; Lydia Davis; Yasmina Reza; Helen DeWitt and Wendy Cope. (Google ’em.)

14. Well, now, for the famous last words…share with us a phrase/line/quote you live by? 

‘ho me on met emou kat emou estin’ – George W Bush. (And Jesus.)

For theartsdesk

A piano, a pianist, and a soft white light. Good, I think. Good. Neat. Clean. Then I see the banner projected onto the backcloth. It is 15ft by 6, at least. It says ‘EVOCATIVE’. 

The pianist begins to play. The banner remains. Sort of. Now it plays a slide-show of scenes from Italian cities – a dusty turreted horizon here, a homoerotic statue there – the postcard shots zooming in and out like very slow MTV, and all to the melodious strains of Bach’s Italian Concerto. I glance around nervously, in case Dr Lecter is sitting nearby.

To be clear: Peiris’ playing is excellent. Phenomonal, in parts. And his programme involved a courageous and daunting array of (lesser-known) pieces. The Bach – practically an exercise in not being a virtuoso – was played with measured precision, quicksy-tricksy without being robotic, just enough rise and swell to make Bach himself sound vaguely human (not the easiest feat). The first movt. was crisp and clinical; the ‘Andante’ beautifully taut; the ‘Presto’ keenly busy.

Likewise, Debussy’s Images (book 1) – the impressionist nature of the three pieces drawing on the performer’s every resource in terms of both emotional colour and technical skill – and Manuel de Falla’s Fantasia Baetica, a work of often fiendish activity.

But here’s the demur. Evocation is a show-don’t-tell kind of business. If the music is (so) evocative – ‘evoke, v. tr.: to produce or suggest through artistry and imagination a vivid impression of reality’ – then the images (or Images) are, by definition, unnecessary (yes, I also think it’s cheating to name impressionist works). And even if one isn’t taking QUITE such an ascetic stance, surely it is in the nature of musical interpretation that the punters be permitted to generate their own visuals? The artistry may be the composer’s; but the imagination, at least in part, must reside in the listener. The slide-show seemed like an assault on the freedom of the audience. Even if it doesn’t suggest that the performer doesn’t trust the crowd as far as he can spit [and there’s a perfectly good argument for that, if you’re bold enough to make it], between the Monets and the mood-lighting the work’s all been done for us.

A second problem. Debussy’s neo-tonal structures and refusal to settle make his music ideal for ‘depicting’ water, certainly (item one, duly: ‘Reflets dans l’eau’). But, sooner or later, everything ends up sounding like the one babbling brook. And there’s only so much water you can take on before you need the bathroom. [Debussy’s own view? “I am trying to do ‘something different’ – in a way reality – what the imbeciles call ‘impressionism’ is a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by art critics.” So.]

Same goes for the de Falla – because it goes the same: a rather inevitable hazard if you programme a concert full of pieces designed to have the same effect. The result was at least 20 minutes of cadenza without a satisfying cadence. The disappointed auditory expectation grew tiring, and suddenly the graphics were not distracting enough for the endless swell and crash and drift. It was getting like Lord of the Rings 3. Nearly there. Oh, hang on, one more sub-plot. Ah, this is it. Oop, no, bloody hell, there’s more.

Interval. (Did I say 20 minutes?) Colour Study in Rupaktaal, by Dinuk Wijeratne – and still nothing verging on the cadential. Slowly but surely, the shuffling, throat-clearing and sweet-eating began. Needless to say (well, no; but I feel I should reiterate…) Rupaktaal was expertly played, and Peiris kept it alive with dynamic range and audible transfer of action from the bass/rhythm line to the melody – often with a ‘middle’ line, too. But. This was hardly the Bolero, the local flavour just wasn’t getting through, and you don’t get that sense of drive and power when you’ve already begun to wonder if the piece will ever end.

Things picked up smartly with Astor Piazzolla’s L’Histoire du Tango (arr. for piano by Kyoto Yamamoto). With its flickering fin de siecle footage of chorus girls and romancing couples the whole AV business acquired some workable zest just when the music became interesting enough not to need it. But here, at least, the effect worked, in a nostalgic, flea-pit cinema kind of way. Even Peiris’ red shirt made sense. (It’s hard for concert pianists to exude much stage-presence without turning into Liberace. But Peiris wasn’t exactly push the boat out.) The second movement, with its light and gloom, both on stage and in the music, was actually quite… evocative.

My heart sank, I confess, when I saw The Nokia Variations on the menu. But Rohan de Livera’s ringtone-poem was a smart commission, and the more credible, essentially, for not being a musical prank. (So much not, in fact, that several people grumbled they couldn’t pick out their favourite jingles.) I’d quibble that it was none too easy to distinguish the ‘Rag’, ‘Fanfare’, ‘Mauricesque’ (?) and other movements – honestly, that aspect of things all seemed a bit spreading and splashing and Debussyesque again. Still, no trivial performance, this: akin to Christopher O’Riley’s hyper-specific Radiohead reductions, and markedly the most interesting piece of the evening.

But the most adroit move was saved for last: Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ sonata. The still, small voice of calm. The ultimate evocation. Which I maintain we’d have figured out for ourselves without the moon on the OHP.

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From the Sunday Times (SL)

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.

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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.