Nimble Tread

Berzerkshires

I'll be zipping this way and that across the US the next couple of weeks, and sadly won't be in the vicinity of Tanglewood on August 17th when the Tallis Scholars will render Seiji Ozawa Hall into a wood-paneled medieval cathedral.  I've admired the group for some time, but haven't had the opportunity to see them live.  They're UK-based, so I should really get my act together and join an audience.  Maybe this fall.  They'll be performing works by Isaac, Schütz, Hassler, and the ever-mysterious Miserere, by Allegri.  According to legend, a fourteen-year-old Mozart visiting Rome heard the piece during a Wednesday service and, ignoring an early papal ban on its transcription, jotted it down from memory.  At some point in his comings-and-goings, Mozart ran into Dr. Charles Burney, who took a copy of the piece back to London, where it was published in 1771.  The ban was lifted shortly thereafter, which saved Mozart and Burney the hassle of being excommunicated, and allowed Allegri's Miserere setting to become one of the more popular a cappella pieces in the repertoire.

Snuff

I caught the ENO's production of Shostakovich's opera The Nose at the Coliseum last night.  It was well staged, terrifically played by the orchestra (with Gergiev at the helm), and wonderfully acted and sung by the members of the Mariinsky Theatre (formerly the Kirov Opera and Ballet).  The cast was virtually without weakness, and somehow managed to be heard over the music, which was disjunctly percussive and at times very loud.  The opera, based on Gogol's short story, is being staged as part of the ENO's celebration of Shostakovich's 100, which began with The Nose on the 20th, and runs through the 29th.  Still on tap are Moscow, Cheryomushki, Katerina Izmaylova, a mixed programme, and The Golden Age, which was Shostakovich's first commissioned ballet.  You owe it to yourself to make it to at least one of them.

On a separate note, I offer the following from Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia:

The builder of the cabin was a sandy-haired and rather thick-set American, no longer young in 1902, with tapering fingers and a short roman nose.  He had likeable easy-going manners and a mischievous grin.  He must have felt at home here, the country round Cholila is identical to parts of his home state, Utah -- a country of clean air and open spaces; of black mesas and blue mountains; of grey scrub breaking into yellow flowers, a country of bones picked clean by hawks, stripped by the wind, stripping men to the raw.
He was alone that first winter.  But he liked reading and borrowed books from an English neighbour.  Sometimes in Utah he would hole up in the ranch of a retired teacher.  He especially liked reading English mediaeval history and the stories of the Scots clans.  Writing did not come easily to him, yet he did find time to write this letter to a friend back home:

Cholila, Ten Chubut
Argentine Republic, S. Am.
August 10, 1902

Mrs. Davies
Ashley, Utah

My Dear Friend,
I suppose you have thought long before that I had forgotten you (or was dead) but my dear friend, I am still alive, and when I think of my Old friends you are always the first to come to mind.  It will probably surprise you to hear from me away down in this country but U.S. was too small for me the last two years I was there.  I was restless.  I wanted to see more of the world.  I had seen all of the U.S. that I thought was good.  And a few months after I sent A-- over to see you, and get the Photo of the rope jumping...another of my Uncles died and left $30,000 to our family of 3 so I took my $10,000 and started to see a little more of the world.  I visited teh best cities and best parts of South A. till I got here.  And this part of the country looked so good that I located, and I think for good, for I like the place better every day.  I have 300 cattle, 1500 sheep, and 28 good saddle horses, 2 men to do my work, also a good 4 room house, wearhouse, stable, chicken house and some chickens.  The only thing lacking is a cook, for I am still living in Single Cussideness and sometimes I feel very lonely for I am alone all day, and my neighbours don't amount to anything, besides the only language spoken in this country is Spanish, and I don't speak it well enough to converse on the latest scandals so dear to the hearts of all nations, and without which conversations are very stale, but the country is first class.  [...]  The summers are beautiful, never as warm as there.  And grass knee high everywhere and lots of good cold mountain water, but the winters are very wet and disagreeable, for it rains most of the time, but sometimes we have lots of snow, but it don't last long, for it never gets cold enough to freeze much.  I have never seen Ice one inch thick...

The dead Uncle was the Wild Bunch Gang's robbery of the First National Bank at Winnemucca, Nevada, on September 10th, 1900.  The writer was Robert Leroy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, at that time heading the Pinkerton Agency's list of most wanted criminals.  The 'little family of 3' was a  ménage à trois consisting of himself, Harry Longabaugh the Sundance Kid, and the beautiful gun-moll Etta Place.  Mrs. Davies was the mother-in-law of Butch's greatest friend, Elza Lay, who was languishing in the pen.

JDF

I still haven't decided whether or not to do some serious schedule juggling in order to catch Juan Diego Florez at the Proms this week.  For those of you not on the fence, there are still some tickets to be had for that concert (which is on the 25th) and most of the others as well, including at least a score of shows by lesser-known artists.  And let's not forget the option of the ol' £5 prom. 

Interminator

Folks in these parts seem to have settled into full-summer mode a bit early this year.  We still have a couple of weeks until August and its traditional exodus, but the city's already begun to clear out, and a lot of the people still around seem shiftless as good ol' Jughead Jones.  Fortunately, musicians are an assiduous bunch, and the London concert calendar is as bountiful as can be, with the Proms serving as the de facto flagship to the armada, its sheets adorned with promotional spiel and easily spotted in Tube stations near and far.  Opera and ballet, though, are another story.  The former is still available at a high level, though that will soon change; the latter, however, is in short supply, which can lead to unfortunate scarcity-induced experiences, like my going to see the London Studio Centre's Images of Dance performance at the Peacock Theatre the other night. 

The performers were students, and I'm not about to start picking on students, especially as they made a good effort.  I will, however, mention the fact that the programme took forrrrreeeeeevvvvveeeerrrrr to complete.  It came in at a cool three hours, and I half expected ushers to start walking the aisles hocking coffee and smelling salts, like peanut vendors at Yankee Stadium.  I'd have embraced that had it happened.  Instead I had to wrestle whatever comfort I could from my seat, which had roughly the dimensions of your standard coach airplane apparatus minus the headrest, and hope that I could hold it together for the rest of the performance.  Adam Cooper had a hand in one of the night's pieces, and I remember passing a few pleasant minutes contemplating whether or not I'd rather be in the audience of his current Guys and Dolls production -- starring the thankfully inimitable Patrick Swayze -- or stuck watching a quartet of dizzy ballerinas pirouette themselves with about the same precision as Lou Costello with an inner ear infection.  After some careful thought, and bearing in mind my general disregard for musicals, I went with the Images of Dance thing.  But it was really close.

Canta

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's death is terribly sad and woefully premature.  She was a terrific singer, blessed with a beautiful voice, and, aged only fifty-two, could certainly have put it to good use for years to come.  Her reasonably thorough bio can be found here, and her recordings, particularly her disc of Bach cantatas, another of Handel arias, and a DVD version of Theodora, will stand as reminders of how remarkable she was while she was still here.

Succinctly

I went to the Royal Opera's Turandot rehearsal today, and I left feeling mighty disappointed.  The singing was mediocre at best, and after Hei-Kyung Hong's phenomenal performance as Liù last year, expectations were high.  Elena Kalessidi, this season's Liù, is a warbler, and not particularly well suited to the part.  Her rendition of signore, ascolta made me physically uncomfortable, and her acting followed suit.  Ben Heppner was a somewhat wooden and muffled Calaf, which was unfortunate, and Georgina Lukacs was adequate as Turandot herself, but it was hardly enough to lift the production.  A lot can happen between today and the opening night, and I imagine the finished product will be presentable, but I don't expect many people will be gushing over Tundorat 2006.
Happy 4th of July to my American friends and family.

1st of July

Happy Canada Day everyone!  Owing to today's football match and the high hooligan presence that comes with such an event, London's authorities decided that yesterday would make a better Canada Day than today, so a few hundred Canucks found themselves drinking Moosehead in Trafalgar Square and pretending that it was really July 1st.  A bit sad?  Absolutely, but I don't see them handing over the Square to the Americans for the Fourth of July, so I guess it's better than nothing.  England's playing Portugal today, and if they lose I imagine there will be some cars in flames come supper time.  I see this as a golden opportunity for some up-and-coming performance artist to make his mark.  All he'd have to do is make a sign that says "England Loses in World Cup 2006," hang it on a lamppost near the riot, and prepare himself for the adulation that would doubtless come his way.  Remember, you heard it here first.