Nimble Tread

Horton Hears a Who

Edward Everett Horton was a comic actor from a bygone era, and veteran of over thirty films including Top Hat, Holiday, Arsenic and Old Lace, and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World.  Some of you may be more familiar with him as the narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.  He was a graduate of Columbia, grandson to Edward Everett Hale, prodigious practitioner of the on-screen seven-second delay, and, as of today, has been dead for thirty-five years.   

Big Finnish

If anyone should ever wonder what an air violinist would do with an actual instrument, they need look no further than the young Finnish soloist, Pekka Kuusisto.
Opting to stray from the standard formal attire - he wore a black long-sleeved t-shirt, and a pair of black pants so long they broke more times than the Diana Memorial Fountain - Kuusisto sashayed onto the St. John's, Smith Square stage ready to play Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64. And play it he did, bringing a whole new meaning to the tempo marking allegro molto appasionato.  Kuusisto has a habit of lurking about his corner of the stage, drifting hither and thither as the moment strikes him, all the while hunched over like a long-time lumbago sufferer. This mien is shattered when he's forced to produce anything speedier than an eighth note, at which point Kuusisto the Performer hits the scene: feet are planted, listening faculties are turned off, eyes are fixed on the audience, and a look of feigned concentration adorns the face.  These theatrics naturally require a considerable effort and, as one man is only capable of so much strain, something's gotta give; in Kuusisto's case - at least last night - it was the music.  I'm happy to say he calmed down a bit during the andante movement, but was back in fine form for the allegretto and allegro molto vivace.  In fact, at one point he reached such heightened levels of vivace that I expected him to start playing with his teeth, and was genuinely disappointed that, for an encore, he opted to play a Bach minuet - surprisingly beautifully, I should add - instead of setting his violin on fire with lighter fluid and trying to conjure the music gods from its charred body. 
What's particularly unfortunate about Kuusisto is that it's very easy to see how he could be a fine violinist, and even easier to see how he must have been remarkable before being bitten by the showbiz bug. There were a few moments, especially during his encore, where he shed the sloppiness and glitter, projecting the charming image of a young violinist playing in one of his first concerts.  Now that was a pleasure to see - and lovely to hear.  I can only hope that he rethinks his performance philosophy before it's too late: you don't come across many violin performances with laser lightshows.
Fortunately, the evening was saved by the London Chamber Orchestra. I happen to like the LCO, and for reasons that go beyond my crush on one of its violinists.  They're a young orchestra, and are fun to watch in the same way that Darcy Bussell and Jonathan Cope were fun to watch last season in the Royal Ballet: they're all very good at what they do, but somehow manage to project an amateurish quality that's nothing short of endearing.  Any difficult passage successfully played is bound to produce some smiles from the musicians, and the entire orchestra seems to swell along with its cresendos, which makes for a much more engaging performance than what you might get from the more stonefaced ensembles out there. 
The LCO typically does better in small venues, and St. John's, with all of its intimacy, shows them in a good light.  After a slightly blown-out Nozze di Figaro Overture - dude, they were cranked up to 11! - they played the pretty, touchingly melancholy, Pavane Op. 50, by Fauré.  They managed to get the slightly disjointed feel needed towards the end, and really made the piece feel in keeping with Thomas Morley's description of the Pavane as "a kind of staid music, ordained for grave dancing."  From there it was on to Grieg's user-friendly Two Elegiac Melodies, Op. 34 - which includes the delightfully scrapy strings pianissississississimo - and finally Haydn's Symphony No. 104 in D, "London," one of the twelve he wrote after being lured to London from the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1790.  Christopher Warren-Green - the LCO's Music Director, and last night's conductor - drew the evening to a close with a fairy dance by Mendelssohn, a speedy little ditty that had St. John's illustrious audience of MPs, investment bankers, and sheepish classical music lovers whistling a carefree tune as they ventured out into the rainy London night, minds refreshed, consitutions suitably constituted for the journey home. 

More a' Comin' From Murakami

It's good to see Haruki Murakami back in print in The New Yorker, though as I type this I find myself wondering why.  Unlike many in my acquaintance, I've never fully warmed to Murakami, and have long had a sneaking suspicion that I've somehow missed the point.  One of my friends once noted that he writes like a twelve year-old with ADD.  I think she said that after reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and I remember thinking that she was on to something, but also felt a bit angry at her for being such a bonehead.  Murakami has a propensity for writing very simple, almost cliché passages that would normally make most readers groan, and then following them up with an idea that is either so brilliant or so far out of the realm of common experience that we instantly forgive him his romantic tendencies.  The trouble, or at least what troubles me, is that he doesn't always manage this.  He'll occasionally turn out a groaner and decide against sending in the calvalry.  Take for example the following paragraph from his September 26th New Yorker piece:

    

The pain that Junpei felt when Kirie vanished from his life was far more intense than he could have imagined.  In the course of a day he would think any number of times, If only she were here!  He missed her smile, he missed the words shaped by her lips, he missed the touch of her skin as they held each other.  He gained no comfort from his favourite music or from the arrival of new books by authors he liked.  Everything felt distant, divorced from him.

I suppose the reason I haven't given up on Murakami is that he's so good at producing what John Updike called the "metaphysical mind-bender."  I like that he manages to sprinkle surreal fairy-dust into typically traditional narrative structure, and I think he's at his best when writing about the interaction between humans and nature.   The parts of  Noreweigan Wood that were set at the jovially-named Ami Hostel saved the novel for me and, despite modest efforts on my part, I've been unable to exorcise the book from my memory.  The Murakami Paradox is a powerful force, and I'm slowly discovering that, as is the case with other such forces, resistance is futile.

PS - My apologies for the title of this post.  It seemed like a good idea at the time. M.

Jazz Manouche

I sometimes wish London were a smaller city.  The vastness of the place is such that intracity travel can act as a major deterrent to one looking to venture across town for a non-essential activity.  I paid a visit to my old neighborhood, last night, and realized that, despite its being in a relatively central part of London, I hadn't been there more than five times since moving away nearly a year ago.  Its centrality was, in fact, one of my reasons for leaving:  it's bustling, there's no doubt about that,  but I'll readily admit that the area has its virtues as well, not least of which is its proximity to Battersea High Street, nesting ground of the bellwether of UK Jazz Manouche, Le Quecumbar. 
Opened a couple of years ago, Quecumbar has the look of a mid-war French bistro, complete with moustachioed Django Reinhardt doppelgangers, some of whom are as fleet of finger as the maître himself.  The bar has live music every night but Sunday, and manages to attract some of the most illustrious performers in the world of Jazz Manouche, or gyspsy jazz.  I used to spend a fair amount of time there, listening to the likes of the Robin Nolan Trio, Pete "Tiger" Sheppard, Nils Solberg, and, most remarkable of all, Moreno.  As a matter of fact, the Moreno concert ranks as one of my greatest musical experiences to date, and that the whole thing actually happened was something of a miracle. 

The word on the street was that Moreno was extremely supersticious, and reluctant to leave France, especially to travel across the Channel: flying was entirely out of the question, as was taking a boat or a train.  How he actually got to London was something of a mystery, and one that nobody seemed too eager to clear up.  I had arrived at Quecumbar incredibly early so as to get a good seat - I ended up an arm's length away from Moreno's rhythm guitarist, Matcho Winterstein - and hobnobbed a bit with the crowd until Moreno turned up with his wife, Marina, the group's singer.  I can't remember the first song they played, but I do know that it was whipped off at something in the neighborhood of 420 bpm.  Both Moreno and Matcho played with cigarettes either hanging from their mouths or nestled between their ring fingers and pinkies, and neither glanced down at his fretboard at any point during the performance.   They played the usual suspects - Minor Swing, Manoir de mes reves, Nuages, the impossibly fast Tiger Rag - but also played a few traditional Romany folk songs, like Julik, which Marina sang in Patrin, and in a raspy mezzo voice. 

Watching a Jazz Manouche guitarist's picking hand is hypnotic.  Unlike most pick-dependent guitarists, whose picking attack changes considerably when they switch from rhythm to lead, most Manouche players maintain the same hand attitude at all times - basically, a loosely-closed fist - the result being incredibly smooth transitions from harmony to melody, a driving off-beat rhythm, and blazing alternate-picking.  There are a lot of people who can play fast, but the best players - like Moreno, Jimmy Rosenberg, Bireli Lagrene, Frank Vignola - actually make smart melodic decisions in their improvising.  Every once in a while you'll hear one of these guys play a note-for-note copy of a Django solo (listen to Jimmy Rosenberg's Limehouse Blues solo from the 2001 NYC Django Reinhardt Festival), but for the most part they're making it up as they go along.  Moreno happens to be one of the best improvisers within the Manouche idiom, and as the evening wore on, he loosened up, taking some chances on chord solos and string-skipping arpeggios that you don't hear very often, especially live. 

Though I'm a bit reluctant to admit this, the highlight of the night was a showpiece that, for lack of the proper term, I'll call guitare à quatre mains.   The idea is that the lead guitarist sits in a chair holding the guitar as usual while his rhythm guitarist wraps his arms around him and plays predominantly first position chords.  The soloist then proceeds to do his thing below the fifth fret.  I won't bother arguing that the act isn't a novelty, but I will say that thanks to inadvertent harmonic augmentations, it's capable of producing some wonderfully colourful chords.  It's also not as easy as it looks.  If you don't believe me on either of these scores, call a friend, try it at home, and see what you get. 

Moreno typically plays in Paris, where manouche is alive and well.  Last I heard, he was playing a weekly gig at a small club near the Centre Pompidou, but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called.  I had the name written down on a piece of paper, along with the name of the authority on gypsy jazz in Paris; I think it goes without saying that I've lost said piece of paper.  So if anyone out there can clue me back in, please don't hesitate. 

Ibsen's Terpsichorean Tendencies

I paid a visit to Covent Garden's Linbury theatre last night for Cathy Marsten's Ghosts, a narrative ballet based on Ibsen's play of the same name.  The dance represented Marsten's first stab at a full-length work, and, its subject matter being what it was, felt very comfortable in the Linbury's cold setting.  The casting was phenomenal: each of the seven dancers seemed physically and dramatically suited to his or her role, the result being a successful evocation of Ibsen's emotionally charged, and occasionally taboo, subject matter. 
Most of Marsten's choreography was exciting to watch.  Her pas de deux were energetic and aggressive, the dancers endlessly intertwining and fending off one another; group numbers presented parallel actions that served to advance the story; character doubling, especially that of Helene, was put to good use, establishing a haunting dissonance that seemed to embody Ibsen's aesthetic to a remarkable degree.  Aside from small touches of symbolic heavy-handedness - a dying Captain Alving spills a glass of red wine down the front of his son, Oswald's, shirt, thereby establishing the continuity of family traits - the only significant drawback of the ballet is the lack of attention it pays to the relationship between Helene and Johanna, the maid and mother to Captain Alving's daughter, Regina.  Marsten has said that she chose Ghosts because of its strong female roles; bearing that in mind, it would seem that she hasn't fully mined the resources at her disposal in that regard.  Still, the ballet is strong, and as it's without an interval, it maintains a focused intensity throughout. 
Matthew Hart was outstanding as Oswald, undergoing a remarkable on-stage transformation from bright-eyed youth to debauched syphilis sufferer through nothing more than strong dancing and equally strong acting.  Clemmie Sveass and Charlotte Broom complemented each other famously as Helene Alving the Elder and Younger respectively, and Christopher Akrill was a sneering, Willem Dafoe-esque, Captain Alving, bawdy and louche from start to finish (his, not the ballet's).  This group inhabited a cold world where dispirited individuals and their ghosts coexist, and from which life seeps slowly and painfully.  What's remarkable is that this cast has given the draining vessel a pulse.

The Manifest Beast Head

My friend Adam sent me these pictures of Katrina the other day.  Whoever took these has a screw loose, there's no doubt about that, but he did quite the job of capturing the frightening scale of the hurricane.  I couldn't believe these when I first saw them: some of the colours and formations are unearthly, almost mythical; as a matter of fact, one can easily see how a natural phenomenon can inspire someone of an unscientific disposition to chalk up whatever they were seeing to a supernatural force.  I've been a subscriber of NASA's Earth Observatory for a few years, and have seen some amazing pictures, but these are the most surreal earth-bound natural event pics I've seen for a long time.

Arrivederci il scrittore

Giancarlo Neri's thirty-foot-high sculpture, The Writer, is about to make it's way back to Italy after spending a relaxing summer on Hampstead Heath.  Neri, a former pro soccer player, created the thing as a tribute to the loneliness of writing - which is kind of sweet if you think about it - but I have to say that I won't miss having a huge desk and chair plunked down in one of London's nicer landscapes.  I feel it bears mentioning that the chair is empty, which would seem to imply that its typical occupier, to wit the writer, has escaped the forlorn and torturous writing desk for a night on the town.  Also, I can think of more desolate places to write than Parliament Hill.  Still, I wish the sculpture a pleasant journey, and would like to send it on its way with some words writ by Virgil, himself a lonely writer:

“Et quacunque viam dederit fortuna sequamur.”
(“And whichsoever way thou goest, may fortune follow.”)

More From Mutter

Last night's Mutter's Mozart concert, the second in the series, was better than the first.  For starters, the audience was bigger, which always helps.  (I was amazed to see Barbican staff giving out free upgrades to people with balcony tickets on night one.  It was a very nice gesture, no denying that, but the fact that the house was empty enough to allow it was incredible.  It happened again on the third night.)  ASM seemed to be in a better mood, and Lambert Orkis was verging on punch-drunk, flipping pages with brio, and joking around in the hand gesture department to the point where I thought he'd attempt to shoot a key a la Chico Marx.  The program included another five sonatas, K376 (F), K481 (E flat), K379 (G), K304 (E minor), and K454 (B flat), the latest of which, K481, was written in 1785, making it a contemporary of Le Nozze di Figaro.  To my mind at any rate, the standouts were really K304 and K454, but I got a kick out of K379's Thema: Andantino cantabile, though mostly because I'm a sucker for pizzicato.  K304's second movement was beautiful, blending an almost contemporary sounding harmony with the runs and trills more typically associated with Mozart; it was a lovely little minuet, and conjured images of a couple romantically treading the boards after seeing their guests out.  K454 was huge, at times sounding almost orchestral.  It's Andantino movement was a remarkable blend of hanging tension and swelling release, both of which Mutter played with a level of emotion hitherto unseen.  Lots of notes and some serious fiddling led both the third movement and the concert to a wonderful close.
Tonight's concert was, I'm afraid to say, a bit flat; at least compared to night two.  Mutter and Orkis played well, but neither seemed inspired, and I'm sure the scarcity of audience members had something to do with it.  Hardly a smile, no games, no encore.  English audiences are notoriously "mean" (in the English sense) when it comes to applause, but to dish up an amazing rendition of what may well be Mozart's best violin sonata, K526 (in A), and receive nary a brava, bravo, or bravi is too much to be borne.  Also on the program tonight were K296 (C), K377 (F), K306 (D), and K302 (E flat).  K296 has an amazing third movement that for some reason always makes me think of swimming and hunting (neither of which is a pursuit I favour), and Orkis played it particularly well.  I spaced out a bit during K377 owing to my attempt to decipher a phrase that appeared early in the first movement - the person sitting next to me probably thought I was playing air piano, but I was in fact well beyond that on the geek scale, using my fingers for arithmetic purposes.  K306 and K302 were beautifully played, particularly the Rondeau in the latter, and even more particularly ASM's parts in that movement.  As I mentioned before, K526 was remarkable, giving us thoughtful variations on themes both major and minor, and producing what was by far and away the most intricate relationship between violin and piano of any sonata played these last three nights.  It was the perfect end to a special concert series.  It's just too bad more people weren't there to hear it.

Hello Mutter

Last night’s concert at the Barbican was the first of three that Anne-Sophie Mutter will be playing with Lambert Orkis this week to promote the violinist’s new CD, Mozart: the Violin Concertos.  They offered an all-Mozart program that focussed its attention on five violin sonatas he composed between 1778 and 1781: Violin Sonata in A, K305, Violin Sonata in C, K303, Violin Sonata in E flat, K380, Violin Sonata in G, K301, and Violin Sonata in B flat, K378.  Three of the five sonatas, K301, K303, and K305, were written during Mozart’s six-month sojourn in Paris, and are believed to have been influenced by the commercial success of Joseph Schuster’s recently-penned violin sonatas.  Like Schuster, Mozart showed signs of straying from the norm in these three sonatas, promoting the violin to a more prominent role alongside the piano, and establishing a sense of interplay between the two instruments.  Though this new relationship is in somewhat short supply in these sonatas – the violinist mostly serves to accompany the pianist as he tickles his way through charming right hand runs – it’s far more prevalent in the later works presented on the bill.  The first movement of K378 opens on the violin and then weaves a beautiful relationship between keyboard and bow: the two alternate phrases, take turns at minimalist accompaniment, float off on tangents, and dazzlingly hold hands as they run up to crescendos.  The sonata’s second movement is open and airy, coloured by fluttery trills on the piano that set the scene wonderfully for the clever Allegro to come, itself a blend of overlapping runs, fast-paced interplay, and a playful build up to the finale, played in unison. 
    These sonatas are very jolly, and therefore give the impression of great ease on the part of the musicians.  This is especially true of Mutter and Orkis, both of whom are exceptionally gifted and, as they’ve been playing together since 1988, complement one another famously.  Orkis has played with virtually everyone under the sun – from Mstislav Rostropovich to Anner Bylsma – and is a founding member of the Kennedy Center Chamber Players; and Mutter, well, what hasn’t been said about her?  A lot has been made of her prodigious gifts, both physical and musical, but the fact remains that she has an incredible purity of tone, and an equally outstanding feel for her instrument.  Perhaps most impressive about last night’s concert, though, was the fact that Mutter, the headliner and doubtless the one people had come to hear, seemed happy to assume a subordinate role, often doing nothing more than playing sustained intervals, and sometimes doing nothing at all. 
Virtuosi typically favour fireworks; after all, how better to showcase extreme technical prowess?  Mutter’s certainly capable of that, but as was proved last night, she’s also alarmingly adept at listening to her fellow musicians and contributing to the piece as a whole.  I would hope that anyone in last night’s audience who doubted this, or who questioned her touch and versatility took some time to reconsider their views after hearing her team up with Orkis on K380.  It’s a piece that seems tailor-made to Mutter’s musical idiom.  The first movement takes her from playing angelic glissades to demonically reedy minor intervals in the span of six bars, and also showcases her timing in melodic exchanges with the piano; the second movement opens with Mutter coaxing from her violin the breathiest sound I’ve ever heard produced by a stringed instrument – a tone that would have made Stan Getz smile – and then proceeds to create the richest soundscape of the night; finally, Rondeau: Allegro begins with a sweet interplay between the two players that segues into incredibly smooth transition from major to minor modes and back again, which lays the foundation for a return to jollity and a neat finale to the sonata. 
Judging by the post-performance murmurs, many had been converted to Team Mutter over the course of the evening, and I imagine the same will be true of these next two nights.  Based on all available evidence, it would seem that she’s running out of people to win over.  Poor thing.

Travellers' Club

I paid a visit to the Travellers' Club today under the auspices of London Open House.  Not having been inside a gentlemen's club before (at least not of the Pall Mall variety), I wasn't sure what to expect, though I had a mental image of stuffy octogenarians half dead in leather club chairs reading newspapers and harumphing at anyone who dared make a peep (fellow film wonks would do well to think of Fred Astaire in the opening scene of Top Hat).  What I found strayed somewhat from this formula - the members, apparently aghast at the prospect of running into a lady in their club, had made themselves scarce.  The club chairs were there though -  but there was no mistaking the  place for anything but what it is. 
The interior's a far cry from what I hear one finds at White's, and there was more pink involved than I'd have expected of such an establishment.  We didn't get to see any of the member bedrooms, but we were taken into the smoking room, the dining room, and the library, which was my favourite room by far.  The floor space was littered with Victorian furniture, the walls adorned with oil paintings and prints, some of which carried surprisingly illustrious pedigrees: two portraits of Lady Emma Hamilton by Romney and four eight-foot-high copies of Irish portraits, all painted by a young Angelica Kauffman while she was still cutting her teeth top, the list.  Funnily enough, the Kauffmans actually represent a rare instance of copies being worth far more than the originals, and, to my mind at any rate, were by far the best part of the tour. 
I asked our tour guide, Peregrine, to tell me the average age of the club's members, and after some hemming and hawing, he said that it wasn't as old as I thought.  I'm not sure how he knew this, but I wasn't looking to push the matter as he seemed infinitely troubled by the notion that the hoi polloi - including many hoi polloi-ettes - had somehow infiltrated his club.  His distress was only aggravated by the questions he got from my fellow openhousers.  Most "couldn't give a toss" about the library's Grecian frieze, and were far more interested in what the restaurant was serving for dinner, how much one had to dish out for annual dues and, to Peregrine's avian horror, the steps one had to take to become a member (he responded: "be put up for membership").  On the whole, it was a fun visit, and for one brought up in the absence of a feudal system, I found the club to be a charming, though woefully out of touch and sexist connection to London's past.  Also, how often do you get to see a gout stool?