http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss en wilmutweblog@mac.com Roger Wilmut Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:29:09 +0000 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:29:44 +0000 iBlog 1.4.6 Roger Wilmut Wilmut's World Wide Weblog : Roger Wilmut wilmutweblog@mac.com Wilmut's World Wide Weblog Arts & Entertainment http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091119092858/index.html The 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.

A recording of the concert will be broadcast next Tuesday, November 24th, on Radio 3 at 7 p.m. - lacking the surtitles to give the meaning, and the visual aspects, it can't be as effective but should still be worth hearing. ]]> Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:28:58 +0000 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091119092858/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091118092835/index.html Channel 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. ]]> Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:28:35 +0000 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091118092835/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091113094239/index.html I'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. ]]> Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:42:39 +0000 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091113094239/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091103093312/index.html Yesterday 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. ]]> Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:33:12 +0000 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091103093312/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091029084847/index.html Another 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. ]]> Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:48:47 +0000 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091029084847/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091024102055/index.html It'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. Bill 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. ]]> Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:20:55 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091024102055/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091016104122/index.html Yesterday 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. ]]> Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:41:22 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091016104122/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091006095154/index.html When 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. ]]> Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:51:54 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20091006095154/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090923092435/index.html Rachmaninov'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. ]]> Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:24:35 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090923092435/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090917103031/index.html Progress: 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. ]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:30:31 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090917103031/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090908112615/index.html Even more 'silly season' old jokes:

'Do you serve lobsters?'
'We serve anybody, sir.'

'You know, my nephew was very ill - they rushed him to the hospital and they operated on him just in time. Two days later he would have got better without it.'

'The little girl played something on the piano - "The Maiden's Prayer" by Sousa - Cohen said, "Say, Levitski, what do you think of her execution?" - I said, "I'm in favour of it".'

    ]]> Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:26:15 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090908112615/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090902091137/index.html Working for the BBC for 46 years has left me with many anecdotes, but of course a lot of them require an understanding of the technical equipment and the broadcast procedures and make no sense to civilians. This one is only mildly technical:

I was involved in the design of a special desk for sports and news programmes, with more facilities than usual. One new facility was that there was a small mixer on the announcer's desk in the studio, so that he could record an interview by himself while we got on with something else in the control cubicle. This was enabled by pressing a button on the mixing desk in the cubicle, which broke his microphone away from the main desk and routed it to his small mixer. When he had finished he had a button to press to return things to normal - obviously you wouldn't want the main desk to be able to break into what he was doing, particularly if it was on the air at the time.

A neat idea: but I never saw it used, and I'm not sure it ever was. After a couple of years the announcers complained that it was in the way and it was removed.

Two years or so later I went in there one morning to make a straightforward recording. We couldn't get the microphone to work. We did all the right things, even switched the desk completely off and on again - no luck. In the end we called maintenance and moved to another studio.

Maintenance subsequently said it was a faulty chip: I'm not sure I believe this. What I think happened was that the original button to break the microphone away from the main desk, which was still in place, had been pushed by accident. Once done, there was no way of getting it back because the button to undo this had been taken away with the announcer's mixer. The only cure was for maintenance to go into the desk and unwire things.

Fortunately this happened at a time when no serious consequences followed. However I can think of an excitable sports producer who might very well have pressed this button by accident in the middle of a live transmission.... and this accident had been waiting to happen for two years. ]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:11:37 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090902091137/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090828084943/index.html Yet more 'silly season' old jokes:

'We had two windmills on our farm, but we took one of them down. We found we didn't have enough wind for two'.

'We found out that white horses eat more than black horses, so we got rid of the white horses'
'That's silly - why should the white horses eat more than the black horses?'
'We tried every way to figure it out, and we couldn't figure any reason, unless it was because we had more of the white horses.'

'He said you were't fit to associate with pigs, but I stuck up for you.'
'That's right - always stick up for me. What did you say?'
'I said you were.'


    ]]> Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:49:43 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090828084943/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090820083754/index.html When I was a BBC Studio Manager I had to spend quite a lot of time just sitting around in studios waiting for something to happen. As we had a feed of various foreign TV stations I spent some of this time watching them (this was quite some years back, and the Russian one really did send reporters out into fields to interview people about their tractors... and there was an inordinate amount of folk dancing).

The slickest station was Turkish, though its programming was a bit limited - early every evening they had a game show called Amiral Batti - 'Battleships' with an electronic display - and you haven't lived until you've watched a James Bond film dubbed into Turkish.

However what I noticed most was their habit of overlaying trails on programs - right in the middle of films they would run a banner showing FM radio frequencies, for example. At that time British TV stations were keeping trails and adverts separate from programmes, but I suspected that where Turkey led we would eventually follow.

All too true. Not content with placing shouty (and often facetious) voiceovers over the end credits of films, several channels, the BBC ones included, now shrink the credits to run a trailer in a separate frame, thus rendering the cast list unreadable (but finishing it time to let you read all the obscure technical credits). Recently Virgin 1 has taken to having a little cartoon character appear in the bottom of the screen with a placard trailing a future program; this does nothing for any dramatic tension being built up in the program. And 'five' recently polluted a film with a pop-up banner and a miniature actress posturing on top of it.

All this is in addition to the on-screen logos which have been spoiling films and serious programmes for years, BBC3 included; in many cases these are brightly coloured and sometimes animated. TV channels claim that viewers like them.

It's plain that the TV executives have the attention span of moths and no respect whatever for the programmes they transmit. Now I'm retired I no longer see Turkish TV; I don't feel I'm missing anything but it might be an interesting pointer into what irritating and intelligence-insulting techniques are likely to be added in future to undermine the effect of the relatively few intelligent TV programmes transmitted these days. ]]> Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:37:54 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090820083754/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090811112759/index.html More 'silly season' old jokes:

'I know a man who eats nothing but Chinese food'
'Why is that?'
'He's a Chinaman'

'Where were you born?' 'Liverpool' 'What part?'
'All of me' 'Have you lived there all your life?'
'Not yet' 'Any great men born there?'
'No - only babies'

'How long has your father been in his present position?'
'Three months' 'And what is he doing?'
'Six months'

'What sort of pudding is this?'
'College Pudding'.
'Which college?'
'Just a moment - (nibbles at it) - Eton.' ]]> Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:27:59 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090811112759/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090805085141/index.html Prior to 1968 all theatrical performances in the UK had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain's Office for censorship: his officials would use the 'Blue Pencil' (it really was blue) on anything they didn't approve of - usually sexual or lavatorial references. This could include the stage directions - in one sketch in Beyond The Fringe they famously changed 'Enter four outrageous old queens' to 'Enter four aesthetic young men'.

Music-Hall wasn't exempt: solo performances weren't censored but sketches were, and some of the objections look pretty silly today. The Crazy Gang had this exchange deleted:

'BESSIE' (NURSE): That reminds me, you want your castor oil.
'WILLIE' (IN BED): When I've had my castor oil, can I get up?
'BESSIE': Will you be strong enough to get up?
VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: He won't be strong enough to stay in bed.

In a Leon Cortez skech a small boy whispers in his father's ear and is told 'It's over there' - this was cut: in a Nat Mills and Bobbie sketch these lines were objected to: 'You know what we men are, we're born hunters' 'Yes, and you're none too careful what you do with your bows and arrows'.

So it's agreeable to be able to report one occasion when the Lord Chamberlain's Office must have been asleep: this Leon Cortez routine from his 1939 show 'Appy 'Arf 'Our was passed without demur:

'Met a nice girl this morning, she'd been out shopping with her arms all full of parcels. What struck me was the way she was dressed all in the latest fashion - tightly cut jacket - striped skirt, with a hip pocket just like us men. Crossing the road she dropped her handkerchief. I picked it up and said, 'Excuse me, madam, you've dropped your handkerchief'. She said, 'It's very nice of you to pick it up - I've got my arms full of parcels - would you mind putting it in my pocket?' I put it in her pocket, and I've never felt such an ass in all my life.' ]]> Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:51:41 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090805085141/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090730091158/index.html This time of year used to be known as the 'silly season' in the newspaper business, because there wasn't any real news going on and papers tended to be filled with insignificant and sometimes plain daft stories. This year there's quite a lot of news, but my life is being fairly quiet, so this blog is going to indulge in a few instances of silliness, taking advantage of its author's research into music-hall and thus Old Jokes.


'Are your relatives in business?'
'Yes - in the iron and steel business'
'Oh, indeed?'
'Yes - me mother irons and me father steals'


'If I had a rabbit in a hutch, and I bought another rabbit, how many rabbits would I have?'
'Why, two, of course' 'No, ten'
'You don't know your arithmetic'
'You don't know my rabbits'


'My sister went to India and came back a princess.'
'Oh, that's nothing, my sister went to Egypt and came back a mummy.' ]]> Thu, 30 Jul 2009 09:11:58 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090730091158/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090725112940/index.html I had an odd visitor yesterday. There's a jay - sometimes more than one - who visits my garden quite frequently. Yesterday morning I came down to find one sitting in a fixed position on my patio, only about eighteen inches from the patio door.



Rather to my concern it ignored me completely and stayed rigid, though obviously alive. Several times during the course of the day it keeled over and got up again, put its head on one side and went comatose, then lurched over and pulled itself upright again. At times it lay on its side, alive but obviously comatose. I didn't see that interfering with it would help, and it might make matters worse if I tried handling it, so I left it alone. When we had some rain it managed to haul itself into a corner to get a bit of shelter. It was either sick or crapped several times. I did put some water and a few biscuit crumbs out for it but I don't think it showed any interest.

When I popped out to investigate at 7 p.m. it had moved itself several feet along the kitchen wall, though it didn't react to my presence at all. At 9 p.m. it had gone: no feathers lying about so hopefully not a fox.

My best guess is that it had got drunk on fermented berries - there have been reports of birds doing this, and all too often it kills them. I've seen no sign of a corpse, so I'm hoping that it came to and staggered off - presumably clutching its head and muttering 'never again'. Today I've seen a couple of jays flying about - one looking rather bedraggled - so though obviously I can't tell, I'm hoping it made a full recovery. ]]> Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:29:40 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090725112940/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090721114529/index.html Another in an occasional series of 78rpm record labels. As well as the standard designs for their labels, record companies sometimes designed special labels for individual recordings.



This record was, as the label states, recorded in 1927 in New Zealand during a Royal visit: although electrical recording was widely established by then it seems it hadn't reached New Zealand - or perhaps electricity wasn't available wherever this recording was made.

The singer is a well-known Maori performer of the time, Ana Hato, and the song, 'Waiata Poi' was written by Alfred Hill in 1904: it became popular for a time in England where it was known by line from the chorus, 'Tiny ball on end of string': the words are given here.

Click here to listen to the recording: the duration is 2m 30s and the file size is 1.7 MB. ]]> Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:45:29 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090721114529/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090716112325/index.html The satellite channel G.O.L.D. is currently working its way through the famous political comedy sitcom Yes Minister. We're still only in the first series and already we've had episodes based round proposals for a National Database giving Civil Servants access to everyone's personal details; a national Identity Card; and giving Government the right to snoop on everyone's telephone calls and letters in the interests of national security (there was no email in 1980).

And what are three of the biggest political hot potatoes this Government is pursing at the moment, 19 years later?

A national Identity Card.

An act giving government officials the right to snoop on everyone's telephone calls and email in the interests of national security (though admittedly only their existence, not, at the moment, their content).

A National Database (linked to the ID card) giving Civil Servants access to personal information and medical records.

In Yes Minister these proposals were effectively sat on. Probably no such luck in real life. ]]> Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:23:25 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090716112325/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090711100819/index.html When one sees that a piece of music is receiving its UK premiere one tends to expect discordant modernity. Not this time, however: yesterday evening's concert at Cadogan Hall, given by the Royal Philhamonic Orchestra conducted by Young Çhil Lee, began with Arirang by Jae Eun Park. 'Arirang' is a traditional Korean song which also became a symbol of resistance to the Japanese occupation of Korea in the first half of the last century.

Here it was presented in a set of orchestral variations: the style is romantic - a cross between Debussy and Hollywood: the use of orchestral colour is skilful and the piece is attractive but forgettable.

The rest of the concert was more conventional. Dima Tkachenko gave a spirited performance of Tchaikovsky's very demanding Violin Concerto: a slight tendency to pull the tempo about and very occasional slight inaccuracies didn't detract from a lively and skilled performance.

The concert finished with Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony in a warm and involving performance, the hall's splendid acoustic adding to the composer's distinctive Russian tone colouring. ]]> Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:08:19 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090711100819/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090705090737/index.html I don't know whether any attempt is made to teach English grammar in schools these days: but even if so it can't be helped by the spread of peculiar usage by TV reporters. I suspect what happens is that one reporter makes a slip of the tongue under stress, and others hear it and think it's correct and start using it. It started with simple mispronunciations; communal instead of communal, inventory instead of inventory, and so on.

However some odder things have been cropping up over the last couple of years. Collective nouns have always been a problem - 'The Government are' instead of 'The Government is' - but I've heard a number of cases where a singular or plural verb - is/are, has/have and so on - has been applied not to the noun to which it belongs, but to the most recent noun.

I heard a particularly blatant example of this a couple of days ago:

'This is only the second time that the changes to the double jeopardy rule has been applied'.

- 'has' deriving incorrectly from 'rule' because it's the most recent, rather than the correct 'have' related to 'changes'.

The result is of course grammatical (and logical) nonsense, but it's not an isolated case. Is it a slip of the tongue? A minuscule attention span? Or does the reporter think he's speaking correct English? I suspect that nobody thinks it matters any more. They're wrong. ]]> Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:07:37 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090705090737/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090702144415/index.html The tower of the London Coliseum dominates St. Martin's Lane and the surrounding area: the theatre was, improbably, built as a music-hall - the auditorium is huge and doesn't seem at all suitable for this. It was subsequently a theatre for musicals, a Cinerama cinema, an ordinary cinema, and finally (and most suitably) became the home of the English National Opera, who perform in English. (The photo was taken in May 1969, shortly after the ENO moved there under its previous name of Sadler's Wells Opera). A few years ago it was refurbished, including air-conditioning in the auditorium - something I was glad of yesterday evening, given the current heat-wave.

I was there to see a revival of the late Anthony Minghella's production of Puccini's Madam Butterfly. One of the most famous of all operas, it tells the story - loosely based on fact - of a American sailor, Pinkerton, stationed in Nagasaki, who enters into a contractual 'marriage' with a young Geisha. Though he is affectionate to her, he makes no bones to the American Consul that he regards this as temporary and will eventually marry a 'real' American wife. Nowadays he would be called a sex tourist: and worse, considering that his 'wife', Butterfly, is fifteen. Tragically, she falls in love with him, and when he is reposted to America seriously thinks he loves her and will return. Of course, when he does, he has an American wife and Butterfly has his child. Devastated by his abandonment, she commits suicide.

Many productions glamourise Pinkerton, and gloss over his behaviour: here, in a good if slightly strained-sounding performance by Bryan Hymel his callousness came over well, together with his apparent (though probably temporary) remorse at the end. Judith Howarth gave an affecting and convincing performance as Butterfly. The production is visually striking, with the use of black-clad and veiled dancers to move sliding panels: and Butterfly's young child of three is unusually represented by a puppet in the Japanese manner, with three operators holding it - they are clad in black and in Japanese puppet theatre the convention is that they are invisible. The puppet gives a much better and heart-rending performance than the usual bemused ten-year-old of most productions.

Occasionally the visual elements seemed a little intrusive - a mimed dream with a dancer as Pinkerton and another, small, puppet as Butterfly during the prelude to Act 2 scene 2 while Butterfly waits for Pinkerton to arrive: but on the whole they add to and don't clash with the spirit of the opera. ]]> Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:44:15 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090702144415/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090626093052/index.html Fritz Lang's first sound film, M (1931), is one of the great classics of cinema: even today it is riveting, with a gripping plot and a star-making performance from Peter Lorre. So it would seem a little foolhardy of Joseph Losey to remake it in Hollywood in 1951: however you have to remember that few people in the USA would have seen the original on its first release, and by 1951 the only place to see it would be specialist film clubs (if you were lucky).

Losey knew the original and wasn't all that keen to make a new version: he would have preferred a complete rewrite to take into account the changed nature of criminal gangs from 1930s Germany, and the change in attitudes to child-killers - by 1951 regarded as mentally ill rather than purely evil. However the censorship office insisted that he could not write a new version, only remake an established classic. He was never entirely happy with the result (which was banned in many states and often censored in others).

It was shown yesterday evening as part of a Losey season at the National Film Theatre. In the event the film stands up well on its own, even though it's nowhere near as good as the original. It's not by any means a shot-for-shot remake, but it does stick quite closely to the original plot. In Los Angeles, a serial child-killer (David Wayne) is eluding the police, who are under considerable political pressure to catch him. Their policy of raiding premises used by known criminals is disrupting criminal activity to the point where the local crime boss decides that his gang should catch the killer themselves. Bookies runners, small time street crooks, and a large taxi firm tied up with the gang, are all pressed into watching out for the killer.

Eventually he is spotted making off with a small girl: the gang pursue him and he holes up in the Bradbury Building (a large and ornate business premises which has been a favourite film location, most notably in Blade Runner). The gang break in and search the building: they find him and take the girl home (in the original he didn't have a child with him) and drag the killer to an underground car park where a sort of mock trial takes place in front of the gang leaders and a mass of petty criminals. The killer makes an impassioned plea on the grounds that he couldn't help his actions; the criminals are about to kill him when the police arrive and arrest him.

Despite Losey's reservations the criminal underworld is portrayed quite successfully, even though it may not be the way things actually were; the plot is updated to include the use of a television appeal by the Police Chief and the use of radios in the taxis, and the seedy atmosphere of the scruffy end of Los Angeles is well conveyed in Ernest Lazlo's photography. Wayne's performance, like Lorre's, creates some sympathy for the character, though the final scene does become a little over-wrought.

Inevitably the film is completely overshadowed by the original, which is now much better known (and has been issued on DVD though its availability is now limited), and it's very rarely shown; but it's good enough to be seen more often. ]]> Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:30:52 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090626093052/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090621094652/index.html An ex-colleague who has been working on the BBC World Service Persian transmissions tells me that his efforts are being jammed. Nothing new under the sun... when I worked in the Bush House BBC Control Room in the 1960s the 'Cold War' was still on and the USSR routinely jammed our short-wave transmissions in Russian and other Eastern Bloc languages.

To do this they had huge transmitter sites which broadcast noise on the same frequencies to blot out our transmissions. This worked well enough for cities, but for the more isolated areas it was more difficult for them to provide a strong enough signal and it was often possible to hear what we were saying - just.

One trick listeners used to use dated from German jamming of British broadcasts in World War 2: use two radios, tuned to different frequencies carrying the same transmission, and spaced like what we would now call a 'stereo pair'. This causes the transmission to appear to be in the centre, with the noise on the sides, and that makes it easier for the ear to separate the sounds.

With 'glasnost' and the subsequent fall of the USSR this all stopped. In the present case it seems mainly to be the television service which is being jammed - presumably by jamming the uplink to the satellite: I don't know what they are doing with the radio transmissions. But it's all part of a depressingly familiar pattern: jam incoming transmissions, control the news on your own media, restrict foreign journalists, blame the BBC and the British Government for any disturbances, and beat up, and then fire live rounds on, your own people. This upheaval is unique in the use of Twitter and the spread of videos taken on mobile phones, so trying to suppress the evidence isn't working. I'm not about to make any political predictions: but it's evidently going to get worse before it gets better. If. ]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2009 09:46:52 +0100 http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/iblog/C1221370065/E20090621094652/index.html