Where has the week gone at Vftp Int’ Headquarters?

Well, to be honest, the first half of it was given over to recovering from last week, which turned out to be pretty damn draining, and getting out in the sunshine with the kids. Beyond that, there still seemed to be an endless, relentless stream of deadlines. Tonight, I just finished auditioning the final edit/master of the next Orchestra of the Swan CD, Spring Sounds-Spring Seas, out in June on MSR records. Three world-premieres on that one!

But, tomorrow, it’s back on the road (assuming there is any petrol to be had), for a busy weekend in Manchester. Then, next week, I’m off to Kent for a week with the Kent County Youth Orchestra, who are going to play Tchaik Six so intensely that audience members’ hair may spontaneously turn white in the Finale.

Before I head north, two quick thoughts-

1-     A new kind of Gál for Ken. I’m conducting Gál’s fantastic and witty Divertimento for Winds on Saturday with the winds of the Lancashire Chamber Orchestra. It’s the earliest Gál work I’ve done as a cellist or conductor. Because he had such a long life, it’s easy to think of the works I’ve done from the 1930s like the Violin Concerto or the Serenade for String Trio as “early” works, but these are the work of a mature master in his 40’s.  In fact, the most important sea-change in Gál’s development as a composer occurred in the late1920’s, when he began to distil his harmonic language from something rather lush, ripe and post-Romantic towards the ever-more subtle and sophisticated vocabularly that he continued to refine until his retirement in the 1980’s. To put it simply, early in his career Gál probably used more adventurous sounding chords than one finds in his later music, but the later music is more harmonically complex, sophisticated and nuanced. Still, the language of the early music is quite seductive, and it’s still obviously the same composer, with the same unique wit. The LCO winds are a very, very good team these days, so I’m sure it will sound wonderfu on Saturday. Also on the program is Haydn’s Symphony no. 83 in G minor, a work of jaw dropping genius and audacity, Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue for Strings and the Mozart Piano Concerto no. 23 in A major with soloist James Dick. Jimmy, who I know from many summers at the Round Top Festival, is a great artist and a former protégé of Clifford Curzon. There’s hardly a pianist alive with a more direct connection to Schnabel, so you can bet it will be Mozart of high intellect and refined elegance.

2-     A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about critic Rick Jones’ less-than-enthusiastic response to my talk (waffling) from the podium a the Cadogan Hall on February 29^th. The story has been picked up by writer Gavin Dixon on the Gramophone website. Dixon points out:

“One the whole, the reactions have been positive, so it is unlikely that the episode is going to shut Ken up any time soon. But the fact remains that he is one of only a few orchestral conductors working in this country who does talk to his audience. So are we missing out? Could other conductors be providing us with musical insights we might otherwise miss?”

Indeed, although I may tone it down from time to time, I don’t see myself shutting up in the foreseeable future. Fortunately,Dixon comes out in favour of the podium rap:

“But if it’s done right, the podium introduction can enrich the concert experience, offering information on the music and increasing the sense of communication between the stage and the stalls. Kenneth Woods seems to have got the balance right. His advice to aspiring podium talkers: be brief, warm, avoid jargon, and most importantly of all, don’t take yourself too seriously.”

But when to rap? The received wisdom is exactly as Gavin Dixon suggests:

“So perhaps the podium talk is the right thing for some events, new music performances and premieres say, but not for others.”

However, I made a conscious decision to talk at the Cadogan Hall before the Elgar String Serenade. Why? Surely such a well known and often-heard piece needs no introduction?

Well, it certainly needs no introduction, but I often think familiar works need a re-introduction from time to time. I often like to pick a piece like the Elgar or even Beethoven 5 and take the time to draw the audience in to what we hope to bring to life in the upcoming performance.  Conversely, maybe sometimes a premiere can benefit from being heard with completely open ears, and save the talk for a post concert talk.

At the end of the day, some of my best raps have come before chestnuts like the Elgar (although I would only give that  particular rap a 5.2/10). Some of the worst raps have come before pieces I love dearly- it’s easy to lay it on too thick when you’re madly in love with a score. My way of working with an audience depends on the kind of ease and informality that comes from speaking off-the-cuff, so there are bound to be off nights. When you’re on, however, it’s amazing how far you can take an audience. I did a talk from the podium before a Schumann 3 not long ago that was all about the use of the perfect fourth in the piece, with live demos from the orchestra- pretty technical stuff, but somehow, I managed to draw the audience in and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Other nights, you see the first yawn and cut your losses!

I’m putting the finishing touches on my lecture “Shostakovich in Leningrad” (taking place this Sunday at The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. Details here). I’m currently finalizing the portion of talk on Mravinsky, and have found some very interesting material.

Conductor Alexander Polyanichko played in the violin section of Mravinsky’s Leningrad Philharmonic  in the 1980′s. His description of his indoctrination into the orchestra’s way of working is worth repeating here:

“When I first came to rehearsal the musicians asked me:”Do you know how to play in this orchestra when Mravinsky’s conducting?”

This sounded strange, and I asked; “How?” And they said:

“Neither fast nor slow, not quiet, not loud, not well, not badly-

Just identically to everybody else.”"

You can bet I’ll be hoping this is a mindset I can instill in some of the orchestras I work with

Here’s an announcement for a conducting workshop that caught my eye- one for barque specialists who want to master the art of directing from the keyboard. Maestro Bicket is a great musician, so I’m sure those who sign up will learn a lot. It’s about time there was some conducting training available that focused on the challenges of early music.

Are you a harpsichordist who aspires to be a musical director? Not sure how to pursue your dream? These are not often-asked questions, nor do they have obvious answers, unlike, for instance, do you want to be a concert pianist, or violinist, or flautist? (Answer: start at an early age, study with a respected professional, spend hours upon hours alone in a practice room, etc).

Directing an orchestra from the harpsichord is a unique multi-disciplinary undertaking, combining conducting and communication, a keen sense of physical movement and its effect on music making, artistic vision and authority.

And it requires a forum in which to be able to practice. With the realisation that aspiring young directors lack opportunities to receive guidance and hone their skills, Harry Bicket and The English Concert will stage their second directing Master Class 25 –29 June 2012, in the intimate surroundings ofLondon’s Foundling Museum Picture Gallery. Four apprentices will be hand-picked by Bicket and put through their paces to learn first-hand the nuances of this specialist field.

Applications close 30 March: For more information and to apply go to http://englishconcert.co.uk/masterclass/index.php

Rick Jones, long-time chief classical music critic for the London Evening Standard, has published a review of Bobby and Hans volume 2  on his blog , Words and Music. You can read the whole thing there (CD reviews are along the right hand side of the blog). A short sample follows:

“A defiant spirit courses through this [Gal’s} Brahmsian fourth symphony, composed in 1975. The first movement’s theme has a raised ‘Lydian’ fourth, resembling the Simpsons’ signature. It’s a sinfonia concertante with solo parts for violin, cello, flute and clarinet. Played here by the excellent Orchestra of the Swan under Kenneth Woods (see left) it casts the twentieth century in a new light, one of obstinate cheerfulness and determined optimism, a refusal to be bowed by contemporary events, which may in the end be more useful to mankind than the pain of defeat. The finale, Buffoneria, plays up to this clownish refusal to be gloomy in an irrepressibly jaunty rondo. The work is not without sadness: the slow movement is a melancholy dialogue on loss between violin and cello, the flute and clarinet now silent, having been active as the tragicomic figures of Harlequin and Columbine in the wistfully capricious scherzo. Schumann’s C major symphony shares the Gal’s combative spirit, as it was written in the 1840s when the composer was battling depression. In his own words it represents the ‘power of resistance of spirit’. Woods conducts it with profound romantic feeling, the repeated statements never repetitive, the conscious striving never self-conscious. It may yet prove to be a landmark…”

Mr Jones has also shared some reactions the concert the Orchestra of the Swan gave in Cadogan Hall the other day in this blog post. He liked the concert:

“The Swan orchestra’s strings glow, the viola barking his hungry rhythm prominently, in Elgar’s Serenade as the big conductor Kenneth Woods surprises us with the agility in his movement and the lightness in his beat.”

But he didn’t like my rap from the podium:

“He disappoints by picking up a microphone at the start of the concert and adding nothing to our enjoyment. Say something perhaps at the end when we have started to enthuse, but not the start. Who goes to a concert to listen to a conductor waffling? Violinist Tamsin Whaley-Cohen was eloquent enough without a script as she freed the captive in Vaughan-Williams’ The Lark Ascending.”

Happily, the music won the day:

“The dark chords of the same composer’s Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis glowered out of the age of persecution and Britten’s Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge showed us the subtlety of expression which this fine orchestra is capable of…”

“Waffling” is a new one for me (I actually laughed out loud), but I’m, of course, aware that many people don’t like talking in concerts- it’s not something I necessarily look forward to as a listener, believe or not. On the other hand, I’ve seen tons of audience research over the years that, on balance, if you do it with some care, which I try to, more people come to concerts and more concert-goers support their orchestras as donors. It’s also something I get mountains of feedback from- it’s something that is discussed enthusiastically by some members of the audience almost every time I conduct. I tried not talking at a concert with my regular band in Guildford last year, and I got a lot of complaints. Ultimately, we have to make sure we’re looking after the needs of newer listeners, and doing it without dumbing down our programing. Someone with the vast breadth of knowledge that someone like Mr Jones has obviously doesn’t need, or want, a guided tour to works he already knows well- hopefully what was said was useful for some of the less experienced listeners.  When I speak in a concert I try to remember that people don’t come to be educated, they come to be entertained- what I say should ultimately help them enjoy what they hear. I also hope that perhaps it can be a way to humanize the relationship between performer and audience members.  The most important thing is that he seems to have enjoyed the music and not let my chat get in the way of listening with open ears- full props to him for that. The music is the most important thing, and I take his criticism as a pertinent reminder to be vigilant that I don’t do anything on the podium that comes between the listener and the music. Next time, perhaps I’ll keep in shorter.

What do you think? Is silence golden, or do you think musicians should be making more effort to connect with listeners?

Apologies to regular Vftp readers frustrated by the quiet state of the blog- it’s been a very, very busy patch here. The good news (well, depends on whether you look forward to or dread new content here) is that I’ve got quite a backlog of things for the blog that just need writing down, so March  should be a vintage month here.

In the meanwhile, here are few quick tidbits and brief thoughts I wanted to share.

1-     Business first. I’m conducting a wonderful program on Wednesday the 29^th  at the Cadogan Hall, London with the Orchestra of the Swan and violinist extraordinaire, Tamsin Waley-Cohen. Britten- Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Vaughan- Williams- Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, Elgar- String Serenade and Vaughan Williams- The Lark Ascending. We’re not doing it in that order- can you guess what the concert order will be? I hope folks in and around the London area will be tempted to come- it’s a great hall, a great soloist and a great band playing some great tunes. The Tallis Fantasia is an astounding piece, and the Britten just leaves me speechless. What a genius!

2-     Earlier that day, we’re having a little party to launch the second volume in the Orchestra of the Swan Schumann/Gál series. The disc is on sale from March 19^th, but you can already pre-order it (if we don’t sell these discs, we can’t keep making them). This recording combines the Schumann’s Symphony in C major (the third one he wrote, but they call it No. 2) with Gál’s Fourth, written in 1973, a moving and virtuosic sinfonia concertante for violin, cello, flute and clarinet and chamber orchestra. We recorded the disc in December, so we’ve all been burning the candle to get it ready- a special thanks is merited for our producer Simon Fox and the four wonderful soloists: David Le Page, Chris Alan, Diane Clarke and Sally Harrop

3-     Last week, as part of a cello/piano recital in London,  I played a new arrangement of the Mahler Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony for cello and piano made by the great American pianist, Howard Karp. My duo partner, pianist James Lea, and I are both keen Mahlerians, so we thought we would give the new arrangement a shot. It is not easy- the cello gets all of the tunes, which sounds like a  great deal until you realize that even if you play sehr langsam, there’s not a lot of time to jump from a low cello part to stratospheric first violin line. Still, it was very rewarding and challenging to play. Howard’s arrangement doesn’t change a note of the Mahler’s original. I’m a big fan of artistically-minded arrangements that give us a chance to experience  familiar works in fresh ways. Now James and I  just need to perform it 50 or 100 times until it feels completely natural.

4-     Mendelssohn’s Third Symphony (actually his fifth- he and Schumann were close, and apparently none of these guys could keep track of how many symphonies they’d written at any given time) is a mind-shatteringly great piece of music. I’m getting rather desperate to record the Mendelssohn symphonies. After Bobby and Hans, I hope we can  move on to Felix and ________ (suggestions welcome. A composer named Oscar would be ideal). Anyway, I absolutely loved rehearsing and conducting the piece last month, and had all sorts of discoveries I wanted to share, but suffice it to say, you should spend more time with Mendelssohn- he was truly touched by the divine spark. A good intro is the fantastic new DVD of Charles Munch conducting the Boston Symphony.

5-     Next week, I’m conducting my first Bruckner Fifth. This is up in North Wales with the ever-bold Wrexham Symphony (How bold? We’re doing Bruckner 5 as an intermezzo in the midst of a complete Mahler cycle. Mahler 3 is to follow in November). I’ve been dying to do more Bruckner for many years, but it’s been a hard sell. However, once this Fifth went in my calendar, the Bruckner problem was simplified (that’s a musicology joke for those of you not in the know)- I’ve now also got a 2^nd and a 7^th planned for next year. That means for the first time, I have 3 Bruckner symphonies in my schedule, but only for about 10 more days, so if someone could please engage me for another Bruckner symphony right away, I can keep the mojo rolling. I would really like to do the Ninth, which is where my Bruckner path originated- especially with the new Finale. Bruckner 9 remains the piece I’m most likely to blow a speaker listening to.

6-     There are some absurdly good scores on my desk right now. Let’s face it- in this business, the hours suck, the travel sucks and, unless you’re Simon Rattle, the pay sucks, but it’s still a great job. I’m looking up at my “current programs” shelf and seeing Mahler 6, Tchaik 6, Brahms 2, Dvoark Symphonic Variations, Cello Concerto and the Water Goblin and many other goodies. When you can sit down and ask yourself “Mahler 6 or Bruckner 5? Which should I start with?” you really shouldn’t be bitching about anything else.

7-     Dvorak’s Water Goblin needs a good blog post sometime before the concert next week (we’re doing it before the Bruckner). The question is whether you can build a great piece from an intentionally lousy and irritating theme? Dvorak has, but how does the performer keep the audience’s interest in material that is calculated to annoy?

8-      I hope that I can get some proper Bruckner blog posts written before or around next week’s concert. I’ve celebrated my recent Bruckner-boom by going out and buying a whole stack of studies and biographies that I never got around to reading before. What have I learned from all this research? Well, I have learned that Bruckner scholars are, almost without exception, even nuttier than Mahler scholars.  If you know anything at all about Mahler scholarship, you know that is a very, very scary thought with which to end a not-very-substantial blog post.

The composer Felix Mendelssohn made many visits to the British Isles during his short life, yet it is little known that he stayed in North Wales for several weeks in 1829, visiting many of its famous beauty spots. But fact can indeed prove stranger than fiction, since few would guess that his presence in Wales would one day connect him with one of the great Victorian works of children’s literature and Britain’s production of chemical weapons during World War II.  Here Peter Davison explores a web of connections which reveal how history and culture, time and place can often be extraordinarily intertwined:

Incongruities are a commonplace in our contemporary world, because our values are uncertain and we look back at certainties of the past with some envy.  Modernity can be ruthless towards our heritage. A bypass carves its way through some green countryside or some ugly skyscraper obscures an architectural masterpiece.  Such contrasts provoke discomfort – rather like seeing a moustache drawn on the Mona Lisa; a thoughtless violation of good taste carried out in the name of progress. Yet the past can also be a tyranny – where wounds never heal, grudges become ingrained and change is stubbornly refused. The new can certainly help us to bury the past or build upon it constructively. We are in a creative tension with those who came before – in awe of them – admiring what they did and with what conviction they have believed. We treasure their legacy, but must not be hostage to it.

Awkward historical juxtapositions can be instructive, because they show us our ambiguous response to the past.  I had this experience in an unprepossessing corner of North Wales the other day. I was in a small village called Rhydymwyn on the main road between Mold and Denbigh. It is a quiet place set among low wooded hills, surrounded by flowing streams and lush farmland. You would probably not stop there under normal circumstances but, if you did, you would find a modest plaque on a wall which states that, in this valley in1829, the composer Felix Mendelssohn stayed as a guest of an industrialist called John Taylor at nearby Coed Du Hall. It was here that Mendelssohn composed Three Caprices for piano to entertain Taylor’s daughters. Two of the works were inspired by the flowers growing in the fields around the house, while a third, known as “The Rivulet”, depicted the flow of the picturesque River Alyn – otherwise known as the Leete – which passes through Rhydymwyn.  The same plaque tells us that Charles Kingsley, author of the 1863 children’s classic, The Water Babies, also frequently walked in the vale, albeit some years later.

This plaque looks inconsequential, but it hints at an extraordinary web of unlikely connections which has Rhydymwyn at its centre. Most controversially, in 1939, at the start of the Second World War, when the village still had a railway, a huge factory complex was built there by the government.  The complex was to be the site of Britain’s first chemical weapons’ testing programme and also a major centre for research into the possibility of atomic warfare., ICI , the company which manufactured mustard gas for addition to standard shells, was based not far away in Merseyside. Moving nasty substances the thirty miles to Rhydymwyn was thus quick and cheap to do. It was in this very network of buildings, tunnels and bunkers where the mustard gas canisters were tested. In addition, top scientists were gathered there to research the possibility of making an atomic bomb. While no weapon was ever developed at the site, much of the research carried out was handed over to the American scientists working on the Manhattan project.

The factory complex has long since become disused and is now a Nature Reserve. While many of its buildings remain, there is evidently no threat to public health and, over time, this sorry phase in the history of Rhydymwyn will no doubt be forgotten. But it is sobering to realise that such dark deeds were carried out right next to the same serene waters, green fields and steep wooded banks which had inspired Felix Mendelssohn’s music and Charles Kingsley’s imaginative story of social conscience. Where they had found beauty and hope, child-like wonder and tranquillity, a century later and this innocence had been lost. Weapons of mass-destruction were being created, tested and planned just a few hundred yards away. It reminds me that Goethe’s favourite oak tree, where he had conceived many idealistic and creative thoughts, ended up inside the confines of Buchenwald concentration camp.  The tree was a justified casualty of American bombing, but such incongruities tell us just how morally bankrupt European culture had become after two centuries of so-called enlightenment.

While the contrast could not be more marked between the creative artist and the munitions factory, there are perhaps some seeds of that grisly future lurking in the background of Mendelssohn’s visit to Coed Du and Kingsley’s famous book. Mendelssohn’s host, John Taylor was a mining engineer, and the whole area around Rhydymwyn is riddled with quarries and open mines, some of them still working today. These appear like great stone gashes in the hillsides. Huge lorries rumble along quiet lanes filled with precious rock. The sound of large explosions can be heard from time to time disturbing the peace. Indeed, mining and quarrying have been undertaken in that part of Wales for hundreds of years, and the weapons’ centre was itself built on the top of old mine-workings. Mendelssohn we know was taken to meet some miners and picnicked with them. We can conclude that despoiling the land for profit was happening back then, much as it is now, and many became rich from it. Yet Mendelssohn could still idealise the landscape in his music without any sense of irony. The full consequences of the industrial revolution and its associated technological developments were not known in his day. Industrialisation was a brave new world, harnessing Nature’s resources for Man’s progress and well-being. Those at the cutting-edge of these developments, like John Taylor, were optimistic, affluent men, well-placed to value and support someone with Mendelssohn’s creative gifts.

Charles Kingsley shared much of this optimism about the future with Taylor. In The Water Babies, the fallen waif, Tom, is redeemed through faith. His life is turned around so that he is able to become “a great man of science” who “can plan railways, and steam-engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth”. For the Victorians, science and religion together could transform society’s losers into winners. It seems a reasonable proposition, but its naivety would be dramatically revealed when, less than a hundred years later, the full consequences of industrialisation, especially in the field of weaponry, had become visibly monstrous. Mendelssohn’s little Caprices for piano suddenly seem banal in this context, just as Kingsley’s optimistic narrative does. The 20C demanded a much more brutal musical sound-track and a more gloomily realistic narrative. Not surprisingly, after such heady idealism and happy delusion, what followed felt ironic; a beautiful dream which had turned into a terrible nightmare.

There is yet more to this. Charles Kingsley had read an advance copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859). Rather against the tide of opinion among the clergy, he was open to many of its ideas, but in The Water Babies (1863), he chose to satirise those who interpreted it too dogmatically or as an anti-religious text.  He could perhaps foresee the dangers, if these new ideas were taken too far, and he was right. The Nazis used Darwin to give their sense of racial superiority a spurious scientific justification. Yet The Water Babies reveals just how complex such matters can be, as it casts casual aspersions on Jews, Blacks, Catholics and the Irish.  Even an enlightened Christian man like Kingsley could not escape the prejudices of his age. He believed that white Protestants like himself were naturally superior to all others. Perhaps the lesson which Rhydymwyn teaches us is that all societies have blind-spots, and it is only when these lead to catastrophic consequences that those failings are finally recognised. Real human progress is hard won – not by technological advancement and naïve optimism, but by the hard lessons of experience and history.

 But there is one more strange connection. In The Water Babies, Kingsley also satirised the famous controversy between Owen and Huxley known as “The Hippocampus Question”. In a nutshell, this was a discussion derived from Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Owen disputed that there was no evidence of any similarity between the brain of the gorilla and the human being, while Huxley argued that the human brain was obviously similar in origin. Kingsley mocked both sides, calling the debate “The Great Hippopotamus Question”. This concern with what makes our brains work and how they have developed may seem like a side-show, until you realise that the house where Mendelssohn had stayed in the 1829, Coed Du Hall, is now a private hospital for people with serious brain injuries and mental disabilities.

It is an unusual property of the River Alyn that in dry spells it disappears underground, filling the intricate network of caves and dark passages beneath your feet. After a period of heavy rain, the river soon resurfaces and becomes once more the chattering brook of Mendelssohn’s “The Rivulet”.  That might be a metaphor for the history of Rhydymwyn, which is at first glance like many other Welsh villages but, which has in fact gathered around it striking examples of mankind’s Faustian contradictions. Visions of beauty, social conscience and healing have emerged side by side with ugly and horrific interventions in Nature. If you are ever in that part of the world, why not take a look. What a story it has to tell! Two centuries of dramatic history, asking the central questions of European culture are hidden there, while its river flows on and on, even if occasionally it seems to disappear.

For injured contaminated persons

Over the last five or six years, I’ve gradually been building up a rather nice library of orchestral parts, all marked with my bowings and any special requests (such as “on the string”: I haven’t yet tried writing in things like “stop glaring, you are making me uncomfortable” or “order me a pizza since you are tacet in this movement”) . I’ve focused on the most central standard works- starting with quite a bit of Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart, all the Schumann symphonies, a couple of key Mahler works and working my way out from there. This weekend, I’m bowing my brand-new set of parts to Brahms 2. I’ve been holding off on investing in the Brahms because there is a new Critical edition currently in preparation under the editorship of Robert Pascall.

I bought and put into use Pascall’s parts for Brahms 1 last year, to generally good reviews. However, there are frustrations with the publication of both works. Pascall’s edition was made for Henle, but the orchestral materials are distributed and printed by Breitkopf.

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From the February 3, 2012 Surrey Advertiser:

Surrey Mozart Players on top form for Electric Theatre performance

Those who ventured out to the Electric Theatre last Saturday were in for a real treat. The Surrey Mozart Players under their charismatic conductor Kenneth Woods has gone from strength to strength in recent years.

This was borne out in a gripping performance of Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony in which the wild, stormy nature of the country that inspired it and the composer’s own driven personality shone forth.

There were dramatic moments, a magnificent brooding quality, some finely played melodies, some deft playing in the Scherzo, but above all it was the pointing of the wind players which impressed.  And under Woods’s brisk direction the sometimes self-satisfied tune which concludes the symphony sounded anything but.  It was rather bold and stirring in the lower strings.

For a performance of Gustav Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder the instrumentalists were joined by the fine young Baritone Marcus Farnsworth, who conveyed the meaning of the five songs quite beautifully.

Mahler, an admirer of Mendelssohn, used the accompanying instruments sparingly, but very effectively, in all five songs.

The poems matched the intense, wistful, and nature-loving mood of the composer.  There is a spine-chilling moment in the third song Um Mitternach where the word “Herr” (Lord) is repeated to different harmonies here, and in the final incomparable Ich bin der Welt, the instrumentalists were on top form, with some lovely sounds from the cor anglais at the end.

Hans Gal, who spent the latter part of his long life in Edinburgh, was a admirer of Mahler.  There are indeed suggestions of the older composer in Gal’s Triptych, a symphony in everything but name. It is a pleasantly conceived extrovert, and workman-like piece, which received a tremendously energetic performance from the orchestra. Such a successful evening bodes well for the Surrey Mozart Players’ next appearance at the Electric Theatre on Saturday March 24th.

Shelagh Godwin – Advertiser 3/2/2012

One might think that having a blog would mean never having to bottle up a rant. Sadly, I’ve found that the opposite is true- when you never know who (if anyone) is reading or why, it’s best not to carelessly let fly with whatever is bothering you. Better  to save the controversial stuff for the memoirs, when one’s career is in its autumn and you aren’t putting your children’s education at risk with an ill-advised diatribe.

However, I’ve finally been persuade to break my no-rant rule by a recent run of problems with the ups and downs of facilities management. So- this is my health warning- if you are rant averse, read no further!

Playing music well is not easy, so it’s a pity when musicians have to overcome basic problems with lighting or heating. Maybe I’ve just been unlucky of late, but 15 years ago, I never, ever seemed to encounter snafus of this kind, but lately, it’s become all too regular a phenomenon.

Now, I can guess what some of you are saying- typical conductor, thinking that everyone else’s job is easier than his, and not recognizing what the challenges are in providing a professional standard of lighting, stage setup or climate control.

Well, actually, I have a little story I can share that might explain why I’m not the most patient person in the world when it comes to lighting problems.

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