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| The Hall filling up; the choir seated and the orchestra entering one by one |
Some time ago, I wrote myself a bucket list. I am not ill – but there are some things I wanted to do, see or hear before old age ravages me.
At the risk of sounding like the end scenes of Bladerunner,
I have stood on Earth and looked at three other worlds in the sky at once – and
even held a piece of Mars in my hand. I’ve
seen chunks of the Earth’s mantle, raised to the surface (and I have got small
pieces of peridotite and eclogite). I’ve
seen art by both da Vinci and Dalí with my own eyes. I’ve seen high mountains from the air and the
ground. I’ve snorkelled in a
crystal-clear sea. I’ve seen DNA through
a light microscope and viruses though an electron microscope, and I’ve seen huge
spots crossing the sun through a telescope.
I’ve seen a comet in the night sky, and watched satellites crossing the
firmament. And you know what? I have marvelled at each and every one of
those things.
One of my main passions, though, is classical music. At one of the junior schools I went to (RAF Luqa,
in Malta), there was a classical piece playing every morning as we went into
assembly, with the name of the piece on a board. Thank you, teachers!! A few years ago, I thought about which pieces
I most wanted to see performed live, and I’ve taken the opportunity to see and
hear them.
For ease of getting to major concerts, I tend to go to
London, to the Barbican and the Royal Festival Hall. I bought the LP of Dvorak’s New World
Symphony (remember the Hovis ad?) out of my pocket money when I was about
thirteen and The Planets (Holst) not long after. Yes, I bought LPs by Mud, Suzi Quattro and
Gary Glitter (in his pre-notoriety days!!) as well, but the musicianship of the
classical works captivated me.
Carmina Burana is amazing live. If you’re British and of a certain age,
you’ll know it – ‘O Fortuna’ was the music for the Old Spice ads. You don’t realise the subtlety of the
orchestration, though, until you experience it. I’ve loved Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an
Exhibition since I first heard it, in spite of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s
ruination of it. The Great Gate of Kyiv just
has to be heard live. I saw both of
these at the Royal Festival Hall. Oh,
and you know they’re great concerts when you hear people quietly singing bits
of the music they’ve just heard as they’re leaving the building!
Over at the Barbican, I heard Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on my
first visit there. It was one of those
‘by candlelight’ performances, and the combination of that and the period
costumes did come across as a bit cheesy.
The performance, though, was spot on.
Some of the orchestration is pure sound effects – a barking dog and
falling rain for example. I was last
there to hear Gustavo Dudamel conducting the LA Philharmonic performing
Dvorak’s New World Symphony – two bucket list ticks in one – both the symphony and
the conductor. I’m not a fan of
Brutalist architecture, by the way but I do like the Barbican as a venue. I love the rooftop conservatory as well, but
that’s a story for another time. I’m
there next at the start of next month, for a Classical Pride concert. I’m really looking forward to that!
Away from London, Peterborough Cathedral has hosted some
wonderful events, as well as having superb Lay Clerks and choirs in its own
right. Beethoven’s 5th
Symphony was high on my bucket list, and I heard it there, along with
Gershwin’s Symphony in Blue and Sibelius’ Symphony number 3 (which I was
hearing for the first time – I deliberately didn’t listen to it at all
beforehand so that hearing it live would be my first experience of it, and I
certainly wasn’t disappointed).
The acoustics of the Cathedral are a wonder in their own
right, and one of the best performances I’ve ever heard was Rachmaninov’s
Vespers and All-Night Vigil. The basses
hitting and holding the low notes sent shivers down my spine. The pre-interval piece was Tallis’
Lamentations, superbly done. Tallis’ Spem
in Allium is still on my bucket list – it is an amazing soundscape.
Speaking of soundscapes, they recently hosted a ‘surround
sound’ event with Britten Sinfonia, Joseph Tawadros, and Tenebrae among others
playing in different parts of the Cathedral while most of the attended were
sitting on beanbags or laying on mats.
The highlight of the evening, for me, was Tawadros and the Sinfonia
joining forces for Tawadros’ Constantinople. Hear it if you get the chance!
I’m hearing the City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra there
in a few weeks’ time - Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.5.
I’ve heard the Planets live twice, performed by the London
Philharmonic at the Royal Festival Hall.
The first time, I was really puzzled – there’s a chorus vocalising in
Saturn, and I couldn’t see where the sound was coming from. Other people were craning their necks as
well. A door, stage left from the
performers’ viewpoint, slowly opened as the sound swelled. Holst had instructed that the chorus be
offstage so that the ethereal sound was coming ‘out of nowhere.’ Great stagecraft! The second time, a few months ago, I’d got
one of the cheap, last-minute seats behind the orchestra; it was a great
seat!! You could watch the musicians’
techniques, e.g. the harpists plucking a chord and the damping it with the
flats of their hands, and the physicality of the conducting.
I could go on about other pieces from my bucket list – Perry
Gynt suite, Finlandia, Rach 2 (IYKYK), Fanfare for the Common Man… but I’d be going on long after it would be a
reasonable read.
I do want to highlight Saturday just gone, though – Sir Karl
Jenkins conducting the Royal Philharmonic in his ‘The Armed Man – a Mass for
Peace’ at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. The concert opened
with the Allegretto from ‘Palladio Reimagined’ and included four pieces from ‘Symphonic
Adiemus.’ They were stunningly played,
with the percussion driving the music. I
had booked a seat in one of the boxes this time, so I had a bird’s-eye view of
the orchestra – among other things, it was fascinating to see the physicality
of percussionist Zands Duggan playing the hand drums. The vocals, sung in the
made-up language Sir Karl invented by a (roughly – I didn’t count them) 100-strong
Crouch End Festival Chorus completed the soundscape. These four pieces alone would have made this
the best live music I have ever experienced, but they only took us to the
interval.
‘The Armed Man’ is a masterpiece. Commissioned by the Royal Armouries in 2000,
it is subtitled ‘A Mass for peace.’ As
Sir Karl said, the 25 years since then have not really been peaceful(!).
You do not really expect to hear a Muezzin intoning the Call
to Prayer during a Mass, but here, it fits.
Neither do you expect to hear the screams of the victims of war and its
horrors in a Mass, but in ‘Charge,’ you do hear them, and the sound goes
straight to your heart. Altogether, The
Armed Man is a masterpiece for our time, and I am glad I heard it live as part
of an evening I will never forget, from exhilaration to bathos, from martial snare
drums and trumpets to swelling chorale, to full-blooded percussion to heart-rending
cries to the moving Call to Prayer to masterful solos from mezzo-soprano Kathryn
Rudge. The standing ovation for the
composer and performers at the end of the evening was very much deserved. It
was a bucket list tick in a huge marker pen.
- - - - -
After the concert, I walked across to Waterloo Station with a
couple of other audience members because they didn’t know the way. One of them was heading in the opposite
direction from there, but the other and I were leaving from Kings Cross, albeit
on different trains. As we walked into the station, she asked me whether the
pin badge I was wearing was an LGBT one, and I said that it was. She looked around and then quietly told me
that after her divorce from a heterosexual marriage, she ‘experimented’ for 20
years and had been in a very loving relationship with another woman. I felt truly honoured that she had told me. That, though, is one of the main reasons I wear
a Pride badge: So that others know they are safe to be themselves with me.
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