Tue - December 22, 2009Avatar he
most expensive film ever made: the most hyped film ever made: 'the film which
will change cinema forever'.... James Cameron's Avatar has finally arrived at the BFI IMAX
in 3-D and I saw it there yesterday
afternoon.Everyone must know the general plot idea by now: paraplegic ex-marine is linked to an artificially created alien body on a far-away planet so that he can try to persuade them to move away from the massive tree they live in which is blocking access to a valuable mineral coveted by a greedy mining company. Ten years in the making, and driving computer-generated images (CGI) to its limit, the film creates a beautiful alien world of jungles and mountains, populated by blue humanoid ten-foot tall aliens. The basic plot, stripped of the technology, is that of any number of Hollywood films where a white man falls for a Native American princess, joins her tribe, and has to contend with her father the Chief, a wise woman, and a jealous brother: he joins with them in the struggle against greedy whites who want them dead or off the land. (The final struggle itself turns into more of a parallel with the Vietnam war - military technology against a primitive but dedicated guerilla army). Despite their alien-ness, the natives are actually quite close to Native Americans in their behaviour; the film also contains hints of Cameron's own Aliens, Lord of the Rings, Ursula LeGuin's novels and some of the Ghibli Studios' animated features. It's to its credit that it manages to combine all this into a believable story and hold the attention for a long running time of 2 hours 40 minutes - certainly it kept the audience, largely of young adults and some quite young children - rapt and quiet throughout (and off their mobile phones). Most of the film takes place in the CGI alien environment, with sophisticated motion-capture technology used to create the aliens from the performances of real actors. This tops all previous attempts: even the facial expressions are realistic and convincing and one quickly accepts the characters as real. The environment itself is highly detailed and completely convincing, though some of the indigenous animals are on the edge of seeming artificial. Some of the 'stunts' as the aliens leap off cliffs, ride flying animals and swing through huge trees are, again, on the verge of looking too impossible and too much like a video game, although they are explained by the innate abilities of the aliens and are mostly just about convincing. The film is released in various print types: this was 70mm blown up to IMAX stock and shown in a squarer-than-usual ratio of 1.78:1 (ordinary cinemas will see it in 2.35:1, the usual Panavision ratio, flat or in 3-D but I must say I prefer the 1.78:1). On the huge screen the 3-D is very effective. For the most part they've cracked the problem bedevilling many 3-D films of the actors appearing too small - this happened in a few shots but mostly even the big close-ups looked realistic. They've also wisely avoided the chuck-things-at-the-audience syndrome - this happens very infrequently, with the 3-D being allowed to speak for itself and add realism. Despite the length and the spectacular and rapid-moving action I didn't feel any eye-strain from it. Did I like it? - yes, it was thoroughly enjoyable, if a little long, and even in 2-D would be well worth seeing. Is it a major technical achievement? - I would say so: it's certainly raised the bar for 3-D and CGI - I've seen a lot of 3-D films but never one so convincing. Will it change the face of cinema the way Star Wars did (and not for the better)? - possibly, though the story is basic enough and the design is not so much innovative as simply capping anything of this sort done before. 3-D isn't yet widespread and it remains to be seen whether it can ever become the standard, given the need (so far) for glasses and the inevitable technical difficulties in making it widespread. Will I buy the Blu-Ray when it comes out? - very probably, although with a smaller screen and no 3-D it may not stand up nearly as well. Should you go and see it? - definitely, in an IMAX cinema if you can and certainly in 3D - if nothing else it's a special experience. Posted at 09:55 AM by Roger Wilmut | |  Wed - December 16, 2009Smart radio - the Pure 'Sensia'  e've
had smart cars, smart phones, and now Pure have come up with a smart radio. This
rugby-football-shaped device is an FM, DAB and Internet radio with its own
internal speakers and a 3.5mm jack for connecting headphones or your
hifi.The difference from previous devices of this sort is the inclusion of a touch-screen, providing information and navigation: this is most use with internet radio, where long lists of stations can be involved: the list can be scrolled in the same manner as an iPhone or iPod Touch, by a sharp movement up or down of your finger. Individual stations can be selected by a tap (actually a tap and hold for about half a second as the whole process is a little slow). Station information is displayed, and in the case of DAB some stations transmit slides which are shown in the top right pane. Click here to read the complete review with screenshots. Posted at 10:49 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Sun - December 13, 2009Polish joke aving
to deal with all those Polish names in my last post reminded me of a joke which
I used to tell to members of the BBC Polish Service (a different member each
time, of course) - and get a laugh from
them.A Pole goes into a British optician for an eye test. The optician sits him down, asks him to look at the chart, and asks 'Can you read the bottom line?' The Pole says, 'Read it? I know him!' Posted at 01:11 PM by Roger Wilmut | | Sat - December 12, 2009A touch of Polish esterday
evening's concert at Cadogan Hall was given by The
Symphony Orchestra of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic in
Białystok (hereinafter referred to as the orchestra) conducted by
Marcin Nałęcz-Niesiołowski
(hereinafter referred to as the conductor). The orchestra, previously known as
the Białystok Philharmonic, is the leading orchestra of the Białystok
area of Poland, and has undertaken numerous foreign
tours.Most of the music performed was of course Polish or Polish-related. The opening item was a little known piece by Elgar, the Symphonic Prelude Polonia (Op.76), composed in 1915 to support Poland's struggle for independence after World War 1. It runs about 15 minutes and draws on Polish traditional melodies as well as compositions by Chopin and Paderewski; as you would expect it's well orchestrated and though it's minor Elgar it's an interesting work. The orchestra produced a warm and colourful sound. The next two works were by the Polish composer Mieczysław Karłowicz (1876-1909): as it happens I'm familiar with his work - I came across one of his compositions on a second-hand Polish LP I bought many years ago (for the music on the other side), and this encouraged me to listen to and purchase some of his other works when the opportunity arose. His Eternal Songs is a Symphonic Poem for orchestra in three movements - Eternal Longing, Love and Death, and Eternal Being. The orchestral colour is very effective; the first movement is sombre, the second begins and ends quietly but with a convincing storm in the middle, and the third is triumphant though over-reliant on repetitive phrases in crescendo to build up tension. Though it's not a great work the conductor and orchestra brought out the best in it. Karłowicz's violin concerto - which I know well from a couple of recordings - was performed by a young violinist, Charlie Siem, born in London in 1986 and carving out a rising career for himself. The work is lightweight but very attractive, with a memorable main theme: many of its passages are complex and difficult and Siem played them effortlessly - I felt he was bowing too hard in the opening section, and on a couple of occasions the intonation on very high notes was slightly off, but apart from that it was a convincing and engaging performance of a work which deserves to be better known. Nothing Polish about the final work, Schumann's Fourth Symphony: it was tautly and energetically played with the final movement taken at a cracking pace - faster than usual, but with a precision and fire which made it seem entirely justified. The hall was only about one-fifth full, which was a pity: the performance deserved better apprecation but it's always difficult to bring audiences in to unfamiliar works, no matter how good they may be. Posted at 09:52 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Fri - December 4, 2009Gypsies, a concerto, and paintings at the RFHhree
well-known works yesterday evening at the Royal Festival Hall, with the
Philharmonia Orchestra under veteran conductor Lorin
Maazel. First up was Kodály's Dances of Galanta, based on
Hungarian Gypsy tunes; Maazel got a particularly warm and colourful sound from
the orchestra.Second up was one of the two most popular piano concertos - Tchaikovsky's First (the other being Rachmaninov's Second); personally I think there are many better concertos around, but this one has plenty going for it. The soloist was Simon Trpčeski, who happily avoided the over-brilliant approach often favoured for this concerto; occasionally I thought the first movement a little restrained, but the third was played with a fine combination of fluidity and fire. The final item was Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's piano work Pictures at an Exhibition. This consists of ten sections based on paintings by Vitor Alexandrovich Hartman, which were shown in an exhibition in 1873 shortly after the painter's death. Some of the paintings have since disappeared, but Mussorgky's colourful representations of them have always been popular. Ravel orchestrated the work in 1922; on the whole I'm suspicious of orchestrations of piano pieces (Les Sylphides, orchestrations of Chopin pieces, is horrible) but Ravel was a master of orchestral colour and added to rather than detracting from the work. Maazels' performance brought out the excitment an vividness of the work splendidly and received a fully justified ovation. Irrelevantly: technology on the train home - I was listening to an iPod and reading Vanity Fair on a Sony reader; the bloke sitting next to me was using an iPhone and a Blackberry... where will it end? Posted at 09:09 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Thu - November 26, 2009Bluebeard and a sacrifice artok's Bluebeard's Castle is one of the seminal
works of the 20th Century. At first sight it's a simple telling of how Judith
married Duke Bluebeard, and on arrival at his castle gets him to open locked
doors leading to a torture chamber, an armoury, a treasure vault, a garden, a
rich landscape, a gloomy sea - and a room with three previous wives, still
alive. There is much emphasis on blood - on the weapons, on the flowers; and the
tension and dread in the music indicates much deeper meanings. Bluebeard is
secretive; Judith very demanding about opening doors. Is she the villainess? Or
is he? Should she allow him privacy about his past? Should he reveal everything
to her? It becomes an exploration of the very fabric of marriage, and offers no
answers.The new English-language production by the English National Opera, which I saw yesterday evening at the London Coliseum, takes a different tack. The 'castle' is behind and ordinary door under a street-lamp; its interior emerges as a cellar. The armoury consists of toys, the treasure vault as a couple of tatty costumes and a few jewels; the 'domain' consists of nine children of increasing ages, first seen on bunks and plainly frightened of Bluebeard. The starting point for the concept would seem to be recent news stories of women held in captivity for years in ordinary houses - in particular the Fritzl case. It's an interesting interpretation, though occasionally at odds with the text; Bluebeard behaves more like a child at times, capering as he shows off the things he was initially reluctant to reveal (which got a laugh from the audience - intentional or not, this did nothing to aid the tension building). At the end his previous wives, their abdomens stained with blood, lie on the floor while he prepares to violate Judith with a sword. The demanding parts were well sung by Clive Bayley and Michaela Martens; there are points in the production which could do with attention but it's a valid way to find a new interpretation. As the opera runs only an hour a companion piece was necessary; usually it's another one-act opera but in this presentation the second half was a ballet; Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring performed by the Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre. The original intention was to present a primitive rite in pre-history in which a sacrificial maiden finally dances herself to death. This production is in (relatively) modern dress, with something of an Irish tinge to it, suggesting perhaps a modern pagan cult. Though it had some effective moments, much of it is clumsy, verging on risible. When the male dancers dropped their trousers and lay face down on the floor, their hips heaving rapidly, the audience laughed and I found myself irreverently speculating about knot-holes. I suppose a valid try at a new interpretation, but 4/10, could do better. Posted at 09:48 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Thu - November 19, 2009A different Fausthe
London Philharmonic Orchestra is running a season of concerts celebrating the
music of Alfred Schnittke (1934-1988); yesterday
evening's concert at the Royal Festival Hall, conducted by Valdimir Jurowski,
was particularly interesting as it included the UK Premiere of excerpts from his
opera Historia von D. Johann Faust (The History of D. Johann Faustus)
first performed in 1994 in
Hamburg.The first half of the concert consisted of Haydn's Symphony No. 22 ('The Philosopher') and The Prelude and Good Friday Music from Wagner's Parsifal - perhaps chosen to refect Faust's occupations as a Philosopher and a Doctor of Divinity before his dabblings in the black arts. Both were well played, the Haydn being notable for the use of natural horns (no valves) as originally used by Haydn. The excerpts from The History of D. Johann Faustus amounted in fact to a shortened version - Act 1 almost complete, sections of Act 2, and Act 3 complete, performed continuously and running around 70 minutes. Schnittke drew his libretto not from the obvious source, Goethe, but from a book of stories about Faust published in 1587. The story is presented in a fairly naïve manner compared to the depth of Goethe's (or Marlowe's for that matter), though effectively. Faust dabbles in the black arts, raises an evil spirit, Mephistopheles, and contracts for him to serve Faust for twenty-four years after which Faust must serve Mephistopheles. Faust later attempts to repent but is threatened with a terrible death and forced to sign a new contract. His eventual death is described in gruesome detail: the author seems less concerned with the effect on Faust's immortal soul. The opera is actually something between an opera and an oratorio, having a long narrative section to begin with and some subsequent narration. The chorus act like a Greek chorus, mostly commenting on the events rather than being a part of them. Mephistopheles is represented by two singers: a counter-tenor representing his urbane and seductive side, and a soprano representing the savage character beneath this. The presentation was semi-staged, using the narrow space in front of the orchestra and with the singers moving into the choir stalls and into the main auditorium at times. Modern dress was used - Mephistopheles (the tenor) began in a suit but ended in a jacket, tights, and high heels; Faust did his research and made his contract on a laptop. The vocal lines are wide-ranging and angular; the orchestration has a romantic colouration coupled with modern atonality. There is a little, though not highlighted, use of electronic instruments within the large orchestra; at the end the female Mephistopheles sings threateningly through a deliberately over-amplified microphone as specified by the composer (the singers used subtle amplification with radio microphones throughout, necessary because of their use of different areas of the stage and the dense orchestration). The work is dramatically effective, with strongly drawn parts for the protagonists and effective use of the chorus to comment and sing a Moral at the end (echoed by the main characters, though not with sincerity by Mephistopheles). It was well performed by Stephen Richardson as Faust, Markus Brutscher as the Narrator, and Andrew Watts and a dangerously seductive Anna Larsson as Mephistopheles; though not well known it's a work which deserves wider performance. Posted at 09:28 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Wed - November 18, 20093D on TV hannel
4 is currently having a '3D' week, consisting of two documentaries, a magic
show, and three fairly bad films. It's not the first time they've demonstrated
3D television - some twenty-five years ago they broadcast the film Fort Ti
in 3D using the red/green glasses method. The result wasn't terribly
convincing.I've been interested in 3D for many years; I saw the 3D films at the Telekinema at the Festival of Britain in 1951, and I've seen several of the famous Hollywood 3D films of the 1950s, including Kiss Me, Kate and House of Wax as well as a couple of modern 3D films at the IMAX cinema; so I was interested to see what sort of a fist Channel 4 would make of it this time round. The method used in the films I mentioned above uses Polaroid glasses to separate the left and right images. This isn't possible on television, so it's back to coloured glasses. This time, in an attempt to maintain colour images, the glasses are amber (left) and a darkish blue. The theory seems to be that the colour is picked up in the left eye, and the right eye - which sees a darker image with little colour variation - adds the 3D effect. It sort-of works, but not well. I have a particular difficulty in that my left eye is weak, so that my brain is used to taking most of the information from the right eye. As a result I saw a darkish blue range of colours, and found the fact that the left eye was brighter disturbing. However the 3D effect worked reasonably well. I tried turning the glasses round the other way: this gave me a better (though far from perfect) sense of the colour, but of course scrambled the 3D information. Most of the 3D material in the documentary I watched was shot during the 1953 coronation procession, though the completed film was never released. There was also some 3D film of the young Queen boarding a boat for a journey on the Thames. The 3D was very effective in shots where there were people close to the camera, or even in the longer shots where there were people (some of them having climbed up lamp-posts) in the foreground. There was also some modern material of Buckingham Palace and a recent garden party in its grounds; again, long shots were not very effective but some of the closer ones worked well. There was always a tendency for ghost images to appear on each side of an object, caused by breakthrough of the other eye's image - the colour filtering is never going to be perfect, and of course every television has a slightly different colour balance. Another difficulty is that when setting up projected 3D the distant images must be two-and-a-half inches apart, no more - the average distance between eyes: if they are further apart the eyes are being asked to diverge, which is impossible and causes double images and eyestrain. This has to be set up for each individual projection; but of course on TV this can't be done. The distant images on my 40 inch screen were about an inch apart, so I imagine they aimed for two-and-a-half on the biggest available screens. Of course on a smaller TV the result will be to make everything appear closer and smaller. It was an interesting experiment, and didn't give me as much of a headache as I feared it might (though I would be hesitant to watch a feature film this way); but it's not the future of 3D television - the results aren't nearly good enough for that and the whole system is inherently flawed. New processes are under development, but they will involve expensive new sets and dedicated transmissions: so don't expect it any time soon. Posted at 09:28 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Fri - November 13, 2009Cyrano dances 've
seen Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac as a TV drama, three
films (four if you count Roxanne), an opera - and now a ballet. As it's a very verbal
work, with much clever wordplay and an emphasis on the importance to the heroine
of romantic language, it's not an obvious choice for a
ballet.Yesterday evening I saw the Birmingham Royal Ballet's production of Cyrano at Sadler's Wells; premiered in 2007 it has choreography by David Bintley and music by Carl Davis. Though I wouldn't describe either as outstanding, they are effective enough. The plot, though moderately complicated, isn't involved enough to sink the ballet (complicated plots and ballet don't really go together well), and the amosphere of the play is well evoked. Bintley sticks very closely to the plot, with all the famous sequences represented. The duel-while-composing-a-sonnet in Act 1 is, reasonably enough, converted to a duel to a waltz in several sections, with good comic invention, though inevitably the string of nose-orientated insults that Cyrano uses as a demonstration of what is insulter might have said doesn't come over well. The sequence in Act 2 where Cyrano delays his enemy by dropping on him from a tree in disguise and claiming to have come from the Moon is rendered as a genuinely funny comic dance, with Cyrano wearing a glass globe, stolen from a nearby lamp, over his head - anachronistic but effective. Wisely, Bintley doesn't attempt to convert the play's key scene purely to dance: Cyrano takes the place of his young and inarticulate rival to woo Roxanne - who is on her balcony and cannot see who it is in the dark - for him. The choreography mimes flowery speech, with suitable hand gestures, breaking only into actual dance at the end. On the whole the ballet hangs together well and is enoyable; it catches both the comedy and the tragedy effectively. It's quite long, and I did wonder occasionally whether one or two of the ensemble pieces which don't actually carry the plot forward might have been better cut - though there is a hilarious dance in which a baker and his assistants parody the 'Rose' adagio from Sleeping Beauty with loaves and tarts. Davis's music is lyrical and carries the plot and atmosphere well, though it's not particularly memorable. Robert Parker danced a lively and sympathetic Cyrano, Elisha Willis made a young and attractive Roxanne, and Iain Mackay danced Christian, Cyrano's slow-witted rival. Posted at 09:42 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Tue - November 3, 2009Height and depthesterday
evening I saw the latest Disney/Pixar animated feature, Up
, in 3D on the huge screen at the BFI IMAX cinema at Waterloo, London. There
have been a plethora of animated features recently, but Pixar still stand head
and shoulders above the others for the quality of their content and the
animation. This is possiblly their best yet. The story is complicated: an
elderly man who had hoped to go exploring with his wife but never managed to do
it before she died, whose home is threatened by developers, and who is about to
be forced into a care home, attaches thousands of balloons to his house and
flies off to South America - collecting, to his annoyance, a dim-witted small
boy, a completely looney twenty-foot-tall bird, and a daft dog with a collar
which enables him to speak. Once there he gets into conflict with his childhood
hero, a disgraced explorer who disappeared from sight decades ago... this is an
over-simplification (don't ask).The underlying theme is how the elderly man, who is a depressed curmodgeon who just wants to be left alone, learns to take responsibility for others. It's skilfully scripted (if perhaps a trifle too long at 102 minutes) and beautifully animated. The use of 3D is subtle: up to now the tendency of 3D films has been to shove things into the audience's face for effect - Up does this only a couple of times and makes restrained use of the technique which blends into the overall effect. I wish more films would adopt this approach: the trailers for forthcoming 3D films contained a succession of things being thrown or poked at the audience - I can't answer for people with more normal eyesight, but my eyes take a noticeable moment to react and converge when this is done, which doesn't help, although I can see 3D perfectly well. The trailers are a useful warning to keep off these films! Perhaps, just as moving pictures themselves, sound, colour and widescreen all settled down to being something normal, 3D will eventually be just another accepted technique. It would be nice if they cleaned the glasses occasionally, though. Posted at 09:33 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Thu - October 29, 200978rpm label design (8) nother
in an occasional series of 78rpm record labels. 78rpm records often had
colourful labels as a way of drawing attention to themselves in shops - there
were no illustrated records sleeves, just brown paper cases with a cut-out to
show the label and sometimes an advertisement. 'The Winner' (later issues were
labelled as 'Edison Bell Winner') was a one-and-sixpenny cheap label first
marketed in 1912 by the British company Edison Bell: it was run by J.T.Hough who
had in the 1890s managed to acquire the rights to market Edison phonographs and
appropriated the name Edison Bell over the unsuccessful legal attempts of the
American Edison company to stop him using it. The 'Winner' records were
extremely popular and sold in their millions for twenty years: but competition
from other cheaper labels such as Eclipse (sixpence) drove the company out of
business in
1933. This is an early example of the label, a maudlin song about the sinking of the Titanic on 15 April 1912, which from the lyric appears to have been issued as a fund-raiser. The circular stuck-on stamp is the copyright fee of one half-penny. You can hear the other side of the record, 'Stand To Your Post', in episode 9 of my podcast 'The Sound of 78s'. Click here to listen to the record : the duration is 2m 50s and the file size is 2MB. Posted at 08:48 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Sat - October 24, 2009Undergroundt's
an alarming statistic that 80% of British silent films have disappeared forever
- usually because after initial release the negatives and prints were melted
down for their silver content. Of the surviving films many are in poor
condition: one such up to now has been Anthony Asquith's Underground (1928), which includes sequences
filmed on the London Underground railway. I saw the BFI's print of this in 1983,
but even by the time they acquired a print and made a preservation in the late
1940s the condition had deteriorated
sadly.Now at last digital restoration techniques, and the discovery of a better (though incomplete) print in Brussels, plus the two surviving reels of the camera negative and one other battered original print, have enabled a restoration to remarkably good quality, which was given its word premiere yesterday evening at the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the London Film Festival. Asquith is now better known for his later sound films, which include Pygmalion and The Importance of Being Earnest, but even by 1928 he was an imaginative and innovative director, and the film is an excellent example of how good his work could be. The plot is simple enough: Underground porter Bill (Brian Aherne) and shop-girl Nell (Elissa Landi) meet by chance in the Underground and quickly fall in love. Nell is pursued by Bert (Cyril McLaglen), a worker at the Underground's power station, despite her lack of interest. Bert persuades Kate (Norah Baring), a girl who is infatuated with him, but in whom he shows no interest, to falsely accuse Bill of molesting her - Nell initially believes this. When Bert abandons her she pursues him to the power station, threatening to expose him: he kills her. Meanwhile Bill and Nell have been tracking them both down, and there is a chase: Bert is arrested and Bill and Nell reunited. The two leads give excellent and very natural performances - Landi is particularly good, and even in the somewhat over-heated finale the eye-rolling is kept within limits (Kate goes mad in classic film-acting style). However the real fascination of the film is its use of location work. Despite the title only a few relatively short sections are actually filmed on the Underground, but even with what must have been considerable technical difficulties they give a fascinating glimpse of the platforms and escalator (where Bill and Nell first meet) at Waterloo station. (There are also scenes taking place on a moving train, though I suspect these may be a studio set, albeit a very convincing one). There are also intriguing glimpses of London streets, and the final chase takes place round Lots Road power station (though again some of the interiors are sets). These sequences alone make the film valuable for its documentary material. The presentation was accompanied by live music from a small improvisational group called the Prima Vista Social Club. I've learned to be wary of live scores, having had two films wrecked in the past by totally inappropriate scrapings and plinkings: but the music was directed by Neil Brand, the foremost pianist for silent films at the National Film Theatre, who has a clear understanding of what silent films require. No attempt was made to replicate the rather limited scoring common at the time (usually incorporating great chunks of Liszt and Mendelssohn) but the result was entirely suitable for the film, and supported it rather than distracting from it. The hall was packed, and the audience clearly enjoyed the film, which stands up very well and needs no apology after eighty years. Posted at 10:20 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Fri - October 16, 2009The Slav world and the New Worldesterday
evening's concert at the Royal Festival Hall was given by the Philharmonia
Orchestra conducted by Leif Segerstam - looking, as usual, like Father
Christmas but certainly conducting with a romantic
fire.Russian music in the first half: after a lively performance of the Overture to Glinka's opera Ruslan and Ludmilla, Nicola Benedetti was the soloist in Glazunov's Violin Concerto. Glazunov tends to be dismissed as a lightweight composer, but this concerto is a fine work: although a pianist, Glazunov apparently learned to play the violin in order to understand it better for this concerto (though I doubt he would have been able to learn to master its technical complexities). The prominent music writer Hans Keller ranked it with the Brahms as a first-class example of a violin concerto written by a pianist: and though I have to say I don't think it compares with the Brahms it certainly stands as an attractive and impressive work, though perhaps its brevity (21 minutes) tends to exclude it from serious critical consideration. It consists of two linked movements, the first starting in a dark tone and becoming romantic; the second is a set of variations on an attractive melody, involving not only some very difficult passages for the soloists but some complex orchestration which could easily turn into a scramble - though not here. Nicola Benedetti was playing an almost 300-year-old Stradiviarius (the 'Earl Spencer'); on the basis of this concert it has a particularly warm and rich tone - the opening passage sounded almost like a viola; altogether a splendid performance of a concerto which deserves to be heard more often. The concert finished with Dvořák's 9th Symphony, 'From the New Word', composed in 1893 while on a visit to America. He was fascinated by both the Negro and American Indian music (though he had difficulty telling them apart and thought they sounded like Scottish music!). The symphony, though there are melodic nods to the style of Negro Spirituals, is more Bohemian than American. Of course it's a well known work - I'm very familiar with it as I bought what was probably the first LP recording of it in 1954 (conducted by Enrique Jorda): of course this can make one expect performances to sound the same as the performance one grew up with, which is hardly reasonable; but apart from a couple of moments which I though were over-expressive I found it highly enjoyable and well performed. However familiar a work from records is it's always useful to hear a live performance and this gorgeous symphony is always worth a listen. Posted at 10:41 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Tue - October 6, 2009Formal Attirehen
I joined the BBC in 1961, working in the Control Room at Bush House, a certain
formality of dress was still expected. If you look at pre-war films of the BBC
even engineers were wearing suits ; by 1961 this was no longer expected but even
in Control Room (where we had no contact with the public or contributors) we
were expected to wear jackets and ties. Indeed a memo came round every summer
about not wearing open-necked shirts, couched in terms that made me want to take
my tie off immediately.When I became a Studio Manager in 1968 the general rule was that you should dress neatly, if not formally; though it was suggested that men should have a tie available in case they were asked to handle a programme including a visiting dignitary such as a foreign Prime Minister. Ladies were expected to wear skirts - trousers were allowed only on night shift. As the years went on things were relaxed; nowadays people are simply expected to be reasonably tidy. Even Engineering Department became more relaxed. However some years back, when some formality was still demanded, one member of the Maintenance staff was told off for not dressing smartly enough. The next day he turned up in a kilt - he was Scots and the kilt bore the tartan of his Clan which he had a right to wear, and which was to him the correct formal dress. He wore this for some weeks: his bosses didn't like it, but there wasn't a thing they could do about it. Posted at 09:51 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Wed - September 23, 2009Rachmaninov and Shostakovich achmaninov's
second Piano Concerto is one of the most popular pieces in the repertoire: this
doesn't mean it's easy to play - indeed it make huge technical demands on the
pianist. Just getting your fingers round all the notes is an
achievement.Yesterday evening at the Royal Festival Hall it was performed by Hélène Grimaud with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy: Ms. Grimaud certainly got her fingers round all the notes without apparent strain, but the first two movements were performed in a rather plodding manner, lacking the fluidity which the work needs (which Rachmaninov himself achieved stunningly but which, to be fair, escapes most other pianists) and slightly too slow throughout. In the final movement, which requires more sparkle, the performance did come alive and here she was much more convincing. The other work in the concert was Shostakich's 8th Symphony. Composing as he did in a poisonous atmosphere of political interference and professional jealousy, his works often have hidden meanings. The surface cheerfulness of the 5th Symphony, for example, is apparent as despair to anyone with musical sensibility; and the terrifying march in the Leningrad Symphony (No.7) was seen as a representation of the Nazi invasion by the commissars, but with the entire orchestra forced to play the same simple tune over and over is plainly a comment on totalitarianism. So with the 8th Symphony (1943): ostensibly both a celebration of the victories of, and a mourning for the dead of, the Second World War, it was also intended as a requiem for the many 'disappearances' of dissidents in the 1930s. From a sombre start to a harsh militaristic climax, the first movement leads on to moments of reflection and a 'scherzo' of furious urgency. The militaristic passages intrude from time to time, but in the end peace descends: not so much with celebration as exhaustion. It's not an easily approachable work, but the performance led us through it convincingly: Ashkenazy held the difficult journey together well. Posted at 09:24 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Thu - September 17, 2009Quality counts
rogress: you would think that the quality of
everything - audio, television, cinema - would keep on getting better as time
goes by. I've seen silent films made in the 1920s with stunningly high quality:
and you can usually tell 1960s black-and-white films by the scruffy quality of
the photography. The 1960s 70mm epics such as El Cid put many modern
films to shame (when you can find a print). I've got fifty-year-old LP records
which are a joy to listen to and several modern CDs which set my teeth on edge
(though the reverse is also
true).Audiences are generally unreliable assessors of quality. A friend, who had at one time been a projectionist at a couple of minor cinemas in South London, said that audiences would often blame faults in the actual movie (bad editing, badly recorded sound, unintelligible plots) on the projectionist: but blame projection faults (out of focus, or the rack-line between frames visible) on the director. However this was some years back: and one of the interesting developments of the DVD era - and home cinema setups with large flat-screen TVs - is that people have started to demand high quality: and this has led to painstaking restoration of many old films which had previously only available in poor quality prints: in particular some of the rare silent films which have been digitally restored with great care from original camera negatives and look as if they had been photographed yesterday: and the recent advent of Blue-Ray restorations has made them available to the domestic user in stunning quality. Now that is progress. And satellite channel TCM shows excellent quality prints of classic films... and plasters its wretched logo over them (and they're not alone - 'five', More4, ITV3, BBC4...). That isn't progress. Posted at 10:30 AM by Roger Wilmut | | Entries 2006-7 | Entries May-Dec 2007 | Entries 2008 | Entries 2009 |
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Published On: Dec 22, 2009 12:02 PM |
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