Tintin or Asterix?

According to an article I read a few years ago, you’re either for one or the other, and certain other choices line up with that. I’m a Tintin man myself, though I don’t think the rest of the hypothesis holds very well. For one thing, if you prefer Tintin, you’re supposed to be neat and tidy.

After my third concert in the SSO Prokofiev series (plus the preview at Shanghai – did I tell you I’ve recently been there?), I’m beginning to wonder if I’m a Shostakovich man myself. For me, Prokofiev’s piano sonatas are more interesting than quite a lot of his more public, symphonic music, at least going on what I heard tonight.

I might manage a more considered view later.

High Technology

Today, for the first time, I used one of those new automated checkouts – it was at Coles on the corner of King and George Streets in the city: the resort of the desperate when heading home rather late and in search of a prepared meal. I felt a bit bad about doing the checkout staff out of a job, and I’m sure that there isn’t any saving passed on to me. There were special attendants hanging around to tell me what to do, and when I mentioned my bad feeling, one of them claimed that staff weren’t to be had. That is always rubbish.

Last Friday, re-entering Australia from Shanghai (sorry to be a bore about this but I don’t get out of the country that often) I used my new e-chipped passport for the first time. You have to stare at the camera which checks that your physiognomy matches that when your photo was taken for the passport. I suppose I am throwing immigration officers out of work but strangely or not, I don’t feel so bad about that. Actually, they probably aren’t out of work yet, but just mounting more elaborate defences of Fortress Australia. Should I be grateful?

There was some saving of time, at least while the new mode of passport is in a minority, but it was all for naught by the time we had waited for the luggage to be unloaded.

Shanghai by Moonlight

On the fence outside the premises of the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra.

Continued in subsequent sections, and perhaps more clearly visible, if less accurate:

Johann Strauss also scores a spot on the adjacent corner.

I presume Johann is playing a waltz, but I’m not sure which:

I’m still puzzling over the identity of the disconsolate chap lurking by the columns.

Avenue Q & The Founding of a Republic

On Friday night to see Avenue Q at the Theatre Royal.

It’s taken a while for this show to reach Australia. Had D (who is still away) been in town we would almost certainly have gone to see this earlier, as we’ve enjoyed some of the better-known songs on you-tube and the premiss (muppets and sesame street for young adults) is beguiling. The “Q” is a take on the alphabetical avenues of Manhattan, though the plot does have a gay angle which was thought sufficient to warrant an ACON preview gala and ACON volunteers collecting at the end (a la Priscilla).The twin announcements of the end of the Sydney run (18 October) and $50 tickets ($49.90) for all seats finally forced my hand.

I hope this discounting doesn’t mean the promoters are losing money on it. Tickets were only being sold for the stalls.

But that is too gloomy to contemplate.

The show doesn’t really pretend to be profound, but it is funny and smart and at this price I’d say pretty well irresistible if you can get to it before it closes. It is memorable without needing to be a “blockbuster.”

It is certainly better value for money than the Chinese anniversary-of-1949 spectacular, The Founding of a Republic. (建国大业). That’s the People’s Republic, of course.

This was showing in Sydney on one screen only, at Hoyts Broadway, surely by some special arrangement with the Chinese consulate (when do you see Hoyts doing single-screen releases?). Amidst numerous shots of Chairman Mao looking helmsmanish, piggy-backing children through fields of flowers, etc, the chief interest in the film for me and I suspect quite a lot of the audience, judging from their responses, turned out to be spotting the familiar faces of actors and even film directors popping up, often in quite tiny roles.

The ticket to this cost me an astounding $17 on the Monday public holiday. I don’t know if this included a holiday surcharge. Otherwise it seems that this is about what a film costs these days if you are silly enough to front a mainstream cinema unarmed with the relevant discount voucher or membership card.

Così 3

Tonight again courtesy of my friend who is in it to Opera Australia’s Così fan Tutte.

My seat was a little further back than the last time, and it seems the attendance is improving. Then again, it may just be the loyal Tuesday subscription audience, an audience that, my taxi-driving-opera-following friend Sk maintains, is particularly devoted to the form.

On the way into the Gents at interval I said “Hullo, Peter” to PS, a longterm Quadrantine (I try not to hold that against him) and my English I tutor [31 years ago], as he was on his way out. That’s my tutor for Literature – amazing! We had another tutor for “Language”, and that is another story, but I bet they don’t have 2 tutorials a week in English I these days. PS was a bit nonplussed – I have the same problem as a former teacher occasionally greeted by ex-students/pupils, though I am sure he has more. I didn’t like to tell him that I gave the last of his novels in my possession to 2MBSFM a couple of years ago, though authors surely have to grow accustomed to this.

After interval, tiring of the constricted sound from our miserable orchestra pit, I moved to the front row. I encountered a strangely uptight neighbour, who had stowed all her (numerous) possessions on and under the empty seat. When I expressed a desire to sit in it, she asked to see my ticket! (Ironical, given that my ticket was for a considerably more expensive seat, albeit discounted. I am astounded that I nevertheless showed it to her.) I assured her that I would be able to move if the rightful owner [actually: for lawyers, licensee: the distinction has some fascinating consequences] arrived. She made some remark about not disrupting the performance if that person arrived. I was (inwardly) confident nobody would, as proved to be the case. Things were a bit frosty between us after that. I wish I could have done more to annoy her, though probably I had done enough.

There is a point, probably when you have gone to a third performance, when you risk becoming a bore about the details of a production (as opposed to about the people you sat next to). Are they details which you simply missed before, or is a little coarse acting creeping in? I thought a little finger-wagging by Fiordiligi/Rachelle Durkin on the first occasion Henry Choo assayed her breasts (a reprise of the “yes/no” moment in La ci darem da mano) fell into the latter category. In other notes: RD handled the lower-register moments (which are the very difficult and exposed parts) better than before.

The principals were trying on their microphones for size and technical difficulties in anticipation of the broadcast on ABC2 next week.

I found myself moved to tears in Ferrando’s aria where, though he feels betrayed by Dorabella, he declares he still loves her. (At least, that’s the way it goes in the present translation.) I don’t really know why.

Let no such man be trusted

The man that hath no music in himself, that is.

Tonight to the SSO’s program, originally advertised as “London Calling” and featuring Vaughan Williams’ “A London Symphony” and Richard Hickox as conductor.

Hickox was replaced by Mark Wigglesworth (who is also stepping into Hickox’s shoes for Peter Grimes), and the London Symphony by a rejig of the program from:

The Wasps: Overture
Flos campi (Flower of the Field)
A London Symphony
(Symphony No.2, 1913 version)

to

BRITTEN Sinfonia da requiem
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Flos campi (Flower of the Field)
The Lark Ascending
Serenade to Music
ELGAR In the South

The result was to relocate the heavy lifting of the RVW symphony to the Britten and the Elgar, and leave behind an altogether more pastoral and benign version of Vaughan Williams – perhaps a little too much of the very sweetest stuff.

I suppose the SSO took some special step to alert me as a ticket holder to the change of program, but if so I overlooked it: the first inkling I had was when ABC Classic FM’s anticipatory publicity for the live broadcast didn’t mention the [or, properly, "A"] London Symphony.

So it’s probably just as well that, having persuaded a musical but non concert-going colleague to take up my ticket in my absence on the strength of the London symphony, I took it back once I was back in town.

My neighbour was a young man who informed me that he’d just got into the Sydney Sinfonia for next year. His teacher was Ronald Prussing, so obviously he is a trombonist. I’m not sure if much of the RVW was really up his street for fairly obvious instrumental reasons.

Those obvious reasons, just in case they aren’t obvious, are the absence of any trombone parts: in my experience young orchestral musicians are pretty partisan about their own patch of the orchestra.

Fortunately, both the Elgar and the Britten offered compensations.

The Britten is his first really big work, commissioned, amazingly, for the purported 2,600th anniversary of the Japanese empire. You have to wonder how Britten ever came to accept the commission: Japan’s belligerence was already well known. My own guess is that, as a young artist on the make, he just couldn’t resist it. Then perhaps having had second thoughts he responded with what must be one of the most ungracious ever fulfilments of a commission: a work which, evoking Christian forms and dealing with death, cannot have failed to have and must surely have been intended to offend. Some (probably liberal, western-oriented) Japanese cultural official must surely have had cause to regret that he ever thought of young Benjamin. I wonder if he was there when the work was finally premiered (BB conducting) in Japan in 1956.

There is a kind of sport with early works of composers – identifying influences and precursors to what with hindsight can be thought of as their mature style. In this case, the first movement has a melodramatic massiveness which I don’t think BB ever after assayed. In the second movement I wondered whether BB had been listening to a bit of Shostakovich or whether they’d both been listening to Mahler: this movement contained the most hints of BB’s mature style. In the third movement – well, even a left-wing composer in Britain in the 30s could probably not escape the influence of Sibelius.

The first half closed with ‘Flos Campi.’ It is very lovely stuff with a viola solo (Roger Benedict) and with the choir, which sings wordlessly, providing a halo of built in reverberation. There was also a rather odd “red Indian” (but probably actually Appalachian in the Cecil Sharp sense) section.

In the second half, in the additional sweetener section, we got rather more of the same. Michael Dauth lent his own style (more reserved than, say, Dene Olding’s) to the Lark Ascending and also had a prominent solo in the Serenade to Music. This is a setting of the final quasi-nocturne in Merchant of Venice when the characters discuss music in a kind of lyrical postlude. The relevant text from which the heading to this post is derived is:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.

Actually, I was a bit worried about my neighbour on this score, as for a musician he spent an inordinate amount of time reading his program – I am afraid that rather a lot of the music (albeit, much of it short on trombone moments) must have passed him by. He told me that free tickets to SSO concerts were a benefit conferred on him by the Sinfonia membership: maybe (now I’m sounding about doctors serenading the virtues of copayments and the vice of bulk billing under Medicare) there should be some, nominal charge. Then again, it’s true that many young musicians are keener on playing than on listening and there’s nothing really new about that.

There is a luxury version of the Serenade with about a dozen [16, in fact] soloists. The SSO took the more prudent approach (given that Cantillation was already on tap for Flos Campi) of doing the version with choir and a quartet of vocal soloists. It is only stating the obvious to say that they took a budget approach to the choice of soloists, who didn’t even merit a picture or biography in the program booklet. The men were fine but maybe a bit more money could have been spent on the ladies.

There is a section where the music takes a darker turn when the words explain how it is that the music of the spheres cannot be heard by mortal souls “whilst this muddy vesture of decay/ Doth grossly close it in.” At this point the hall where I was sitting was invaded by a sinister buzzing sound which can only have emanated from the amplification system (or from my own tinnitus: though for me this usually takes a high-pitched whistle rather than a buzz). Fortunately, this proved to be transient.

The Elgar was a bigger work than I anticipated, and made for a dashing finale. The opening was reminiscent of the prelude to Act III of Lohengrin. It is easy to see why Strauss thought highly of Elgar and in this work Elgar was at his most Straussian [well maybe not most Straussian: I have since heard the broadcast of Sir Andrew Davis conducting the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Elgar's "tone poem," Falstaff, though that is perhaps early Strauss, whereas this goes further forward], including a closing section reminiscent of the finale to Rosenkavalier but without such taxing high string divisi writing (very wise: I doubt if London strings could match Dresden’s, Munich’s or Vienna’s at this time).

Despite my own (rather bemusing) oddly puritanical guilt at such almost entirely unalloyed pleasure, it was a most engrossing and captivating concert. Any minor regrets about the program changes pale in comparison to the wrench that Richard Hickox is not here (conducting whatever) and with us still as originally planned.

David Marr on ABC Classic FM

I’ve known David Marr and Neil Armfield at one remove for many years. I know they’ve known each other for about the same amount of time. This lent a certain comical and dramatic irony as David interviewed Neil about his career and upcoming production of Peter Grimes on ABC Classic FM the other morning, without giving away any of this.

Funnier was David’s back announcement for Bach’s cantata, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben. David obviously knows that the number is 147, but he was a bit vague about the letters which come before it. There was a little Marresque um, and then he hazarded a guess:

“BMV 147.”

I’d like to think David was led astray by the BVM. I suspect BMWs are a more proximate cause.

Mazeltov!

Last night to the most luxurious wedding I have ever been to, at the Art Gallery of NSW.

The taxi to get me there never arrived so I drove. There was valet parking!

The ceremony took place in the Schaeffer room, in which you will find Ford Madox Brown’s picture of Chaucer at the court of Edward III.

There is also a picture by Henry Scott Tuke, A sailor’s yarn.

Tuke painted the picture when working at Falmouth, where he had purchased an old ship (presumably not actually seaworthy) and set it up as his house and studio. The painting was exhibited in London in 1887 and entered the NSW collection in 1889.

The plaque on the wall names the the boy featured in the painting and mentions that he lived with Tuke on the ship for some years. Tuke, the note deadpanly adds, later became known for his genre pictures of boys/youths bathing.

There were some interesting people there, including the girl who beat me in sixth class, whom I last saw 32 years ago. She was one of the bride’s best friends from high school and witnessed the register.

To be at a wedding as a gay man or, in this case, to be there on one’s own, is a slightly awkward situation. They are the heterosexual coupling moment par excellence. (We can all go to the Family Court when it is over.) There was a moment when I toyed with the thought: would I not like to have a wedding myself?

And then, for some odd reason, the celebrant started reading all the formal stuff from the Marriage Act, including the now statutorily entrenched common law definition of marriage, which states (thus precluding any growth or development of the common law to meet contemporary standards) that marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.

Of course, the “for life” bit is as at the time of getting married, since otherwise one would need to add “subject to the provisions of the Family Law Act.”

Nor is the bit about to the exclusion of all others is really true any more. Now it is possible to be married and simultaneously have a multiplicity of de facto relationships, each with pretty much the same consequences as marriage, at least so far as property division on separation, inheritance (well, almost) and status of children (if any) are concerned.

The formal Marriage Act bit did make me almost come round to the opinion that some hold (and generally speaking was my starting position years ago in relation to marriage). Why is the state in this business?

Nevertheless, it was a lovely wedding and they are a happy and fortunate pair. The government has nothing to do with that at all.

The second-last song was “When I’m 64.” There was a playful little alteration of the usual text:

Digging the garden, smoking the weed
Who could ask for more?

I’m not sure how many people spotted it: it was a little musos’ joke.

The last song was “YMCA.” The groom knew the movements better than I did.

My car was waiting for me right outside the front door. I doubt if it will ever again be parked in a spot so grand.

B and R, Mazeltov!

Beethoven, and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in Sydney 5

Last Friday night to hear the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra play Schubert, music from Rosamunde and “Unfinished” Symphony, and, with Nicholas Angelich, Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto.

It was the Beethoven 4 which really drew me in. It’s my favourite Beethoven [piano] concerto – if only because I am a countersuggestible type and feel compelled to go beyond the general (or at least ABC-Classic-FM-poll) favourite, No 5.

The hall was a little under half-full, by my reckoning (500-550; usual suspects observed on complimentary tickets). My neighbours told me it was about the same on the first night (when I would expect even more dignitaries and sponsors to attend).

The TSO’s approach to marketing remains puzzling – or alternatively just predictably misconceived.

For months, it was selling only the first level of the hall. Owing to the pricing policies it had adopted, this meant that the cheapest seats were $80 (A reserve) and there was otherwise a $100+ Premium reserve. I have complained about the pricing structure before. No wonder sales were slow. Eventually, the second level was opened up, though even this only brought a B reserve at $49 into play: in the very last row of the circle and in the last bays of the galleries at the side of the stage. Tellingly, the night I went, the back row and the keyboard side gallery were practically full (the non-keyboard side was relatively empty but my neighbours told me it was fuller on the first night). There is a demand for the seats at this price.

I heard the first half of the Thursday concert courtesy of the live broadcast. There is a very jaunty little skipping theme in Die Zauberharfe which is very difficult to dislodge.

As to the Friday program, it was a shame that there weren’t more to hear it. The Schubert was delightful (Rosamunde) and quite satisfactory (the symphony) and the Beethoven, well not the best I’ve heard it, but still compelling. I expect it would have been better if I’d had a more frontal piano sound (I was sitting in the opposite gallery). Serves me right for being frugal – but what can one do but lend one’s weight to the invisible hand?

The TSO has a distinctive wind section. First, because the flautists are both male – masculinity is almost a disqualification for any full-time flute playing job in Sydney (though there are two males who supplement the AOBA flute section). Secondly, because the principal oboe and clarinet both have rather old-fashioned sounds. Paradoxically, this means a thinner oboe sound, but a rounder clarinet sound than has more recently become the fashion. I wonder if the seeming convergence of sound is a trend driven by a drive for sectional blend. Still, there was nothing wrong with the famous moment (as featured in orchestration textbooks) in the “Unfinished” where the clarinet and oboe double the opening theme an octave apart.

On Saturday night, to the SOH for Fidelio.

On my way in, I overheard an intriguingly urgent conversation about paging someone between a member of the house staff and someone who had emerged from backstage.

As D is away, I had returned his seat, and my neighbour in his place, Po, told me how much he was looking forward to hearing Nicole Youl as the heroine, Leonore. She was originally a substitute for Lisa Gasteen, but had only sung one matinee, being replaced at the opening night and all other performances by Elizabeth Stannard.

Just as the curtain seemed destined to rise, OA’s General Manager, Mr Collette emerged from behind it to announce that, as she was warming up, Nicole Youl became indisposed, her understudy was in Melbourne, Anke Höppner was coming in to sing the role from the side of the stage (NY would mime and speak the dialogue) but that Anke wasn’t here yet. The curtain would go up at 8.15.

Often I am a bit skeptical about exactly how last-minute Opera Australia “emergency” indispositions are, but the overheard conversation in this case puts Mr Collette in the clear. Just as well Anke H only had to come in from Turella. At least that’s what my friend Sk told me when I rang him to kill time whilst waiting for the show to start. (The SMH says Bardwell Park: so he was pretty close.) Sk knows this sort of thing because for many years he drove a cab. On account of his operatic enthusiasm and knowledge of show finishing times, he frequently picked up at the SOH after shows. As well as conversations with individual artists, he has a rich supply of overheard conversations from OA luvvies when they travelled together in the back of his cab.

In the end, it was 8.10. Fortunately, it is a short opera.

Anke did pretty well. Given that she had no rehearsal, she did excellently. As always seems to be the case with stage-side singers, she warmed to her task as the evening went on, though probably the dramatic stuff at the end suited her better than her first big aria. She sings big which makes her voice less manoeuvrable for the curly bits.

The last time I heard Anke she was also standing in - for Cheryl Barker in The Macropoulous Secret. It’s a bit surprising and even insulting in a way that OA can’t find the occasional real role for her.

A friend whom I ran into on Monday night (who had not gone to the same performance of Fidelio as I had) was very critical of the production and more specifically its musical values and conducting in particular. He’d seen better recently, he said, on a Tuesday night in Turin. He is well-travelled. I don’t feel qualified to say anything about that because it is a great work and though there was some scrappiness, there wasn’t anything that came between me and the work. Fidelio gave Beethoven a lot of difficulty, but it really is full of a lot of very solid music, even if it starts off (after the overture) a bit like the Papageno parts of The Magic Flute. I always come out tapping the rhythm of “Retterin des Gatten sein” from the final chorus.

So far as the drama is concerned, there is one grimly funny moment which (though criticised for it) Conal Coad made even funnier. Leonora (disguised as the young man, Fidelio) is recruited by Rocco (CC) to assist him to go down to the deepest darkest cell where the unknown political prisoner (whom she suspects to be her husband, Florestan) is being starved and thirsted [OK: "thirsted" is not an actual word, but he's on short supplies of water as well as food] to death. News has come that the minister is coming to visit the gaol and Pizzaro, the governor of the gaol, knows that if the minister finds Florestan there the game will be up. He decides that Florestan must die sooner than previously planned. He orders Rocco to dig a grave (and pays him generously for this). Rocco tells Leonore that they have to bury the prisoner. Rocco is a bit evasive about this: Leonore asks: “Is he dead?” Rocco says: “Not yet.” Leonore presses him: “So is your job to kill him?” Rocco answers, reassuringly (so he thinks), that Leonore shouldn’t be afraid: the governor himself will be coming to do that. Their job is just to dig the grave. As if that makes it all right. Rocco would never be involved in murdering anybody. (Shades of Neddy Smith, years ago: “I’m a thief, not a liar.”)

Julian Gavin as Florestan was the best I have ever heard him. And that’s not meant as some veiled insult or even faint praise: I found him quite convincing, musically and dramatically.

Perhaps I suffered from being up too close to be convinced by Peter Coleman-Wright as Pizzaro. Vocally, he is convincing, but he always seems such a nice chap and there is something about the way he moves around that made me feel that his baddiness was all a bit of a giggle. I think I first saw Robert Allman in this part, and he was really a monster. I was probably further away from the stage, and also quite possibly more readily convinced. That’s a bit of a theory I have about all remembered experience, and certainly about action on the stage. I can recall being utterly convinced as a child and teenager by dramatic depictions which I am sure, re-viewed through adult eyes, would fail to have the same impact.

Fidelio did provide an opportunity to compare the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra and the TSO in Beethoven. The AOBO had about 1 string player more right down the line (9/8/6/5/4, I think, though I’m working from memory by now). It is of course hampered by the pit and the demands of pit work. It would be nice to see the orchestra out on the stage more often but they hardly have the time for it. If they were, my guess is that the AOBO’s violins mightn’t measure up to the TSO’s, though if they could match them for rehearsal and preparation time (as well as time on the stage rather than the pit) maybe they would.

Pericles

On Tuesday night to see the Bell Shakespeare’s production of Pericles at the Drama Theatre. This was billed as a co-production with the percussion group Taikoz. I don’t know if this is always the case, but I noted that the membership of Taikoz was differently billed for Sydney and the ensuing Melbourne season.

It was a wet night and there didn’t seem to be anything else on at the Opera House. This felt odd on the way in, and even odder after as we forlornly (as in forlorn hope) retreated in the wind and rain from the vast and almost dark mass of the House.

The production has received almost universally mixed reviews. One advantage of this is that it is difficult to be disappointed.

As to the “concept” of the production (exoticism; references to I think Japanese theatrical style which went beyond the music, which eclectically went as far as Gamelan pastiches), this snippet from Wikipedia has subsequently caught my eye:

Adrian Noble’s 2002 production at the Roundhouse (his last before leaving the RSC) stressed diversity in another way. Responding to critical interest in Orientalism, Noble accentuated the multicultural aspects of the play’s setting…. In an echo of the music played during the interval of the 1619 Whitehall performance, Noble featured belly dancing and drumming during the intermission of his production.

Others claimed to appreciate the shift to quality in the second half, which is usually thought to contain a higher proportion of William S’s own work. I personally found it the other way around. The first half, while clunky, was made bearable by the narrative mode and in particular the added attraction of Taikoz’s live music which was an integral part of the production (and, proportionate to the number of actors, a substantial part). In the second half, the plot just seemed to stretch on and on and towards the end the musical elements became attenuated. Intense longeur was punctuated by forced guffaws. Forced, that is, by necessity. We were there. There was some silly and funny business (funny voices; funny walks; smut). We’d paid our money. We might as well laugh. Well, that’s how I felt.

Because this is the Bell Shakespeare, everyone except for Marcus Graham in the title role played multiple parts.

John Gaden had the most of this. He can be funny (as another has commented) reciting the telephone directory, but I felt that he was hardly taxed by a kind of hammish comedy which he can lay on by the yard as a funny old gent. He is capable of more interesting work than this. He did carry off a very silly hat with memorable aplomb.

Everyone’s had sport with Marcus Graham, who at the end of the play, whether by reason of grief or age, all of a sudden bungs on a totally new accent. Some have mentioned Olivier, others Peter O’Toole as the original: I thought it was Edward Fox (in his apparently type-cast from life blimpish ancient mode).

It’s early in the season, which probably means it is too early to judge the effect of reviews from the attendance, which struck me as pretty healthy for a Tuesday night. I was also struck by the proportion of the audience which seemed to be made up of groups of women rather nicely dressed up for a night at the theatre. I didn’t spot any equivalent male groups.