Arrangitis

First concert last night since I don't know when. Was away a lot and some of the Filharmonija offerings were not that interesting.

So it was the Camerata Klaipeda with their leader/founder Vilhelmas Cepinskas, the pianist Guoda Gedvilaite, and the violinist (and leader both of the Camerata Klaipeda and the Kremerata Baltica) Dzeraldas Bidva, with a light to middling programme.  The Camerata Klaipeda is a very young orchestra, with very few, if any, players older than 30. It generally plays without a conductor, though if Cepinskas plays the solo, he makes some attempts at conducting. Otherwise Bidva leads it, very ably indeed.

It started with Chausson's concerto for violin, piano and string quartet, arranged for string orchestra. This is one of those French pieces which I hate, very melancholic, with not that many ideas, going no-where in particular. The first movement was called 'décidé'; the music might have been with that one motif, but it did not really come across. Quite often I could not hear the violin soloist over the rather metallic-sounding piano. The piece filled the first half completely, and I was glad when it was over. And contemplated going home.

But I am glad I did not!  The second half was rather a mixed bag; starting with Chopin's Andante spianato and Grand Polonaise, arranged (?) for piano and the orchestra, who occasionally threw in a few chords. Seemed a bit of a pointless arrangement. The Chopin could have been played with a few more rubatos - it was played rather strictly according to the beat.

This was followed by Ysaye's short symphonic poem 'Exile' (apparently he spent part of the first world war in London), written only for violins and violas. The viola leader had a wonderful tone and lots of interesting passages. The piece was all right.

Then we had Paganini's 9th and 24th caprices, arranged for string orchestra. A cynical soul might say - so it takes a whole band to play this solo violin piece? The first arrangement worked better, I thought, though the second one had a few rather funky moments. 

Gershwin's two pieces for two violins and string orchestra, arranged by Bidva and played by himself and Cepinskas, plus the bassist in the front row, were wonderful. The two soloists had a lot of fun and Cepinskas in particular was really good at the jazzy sounds (he said something about Grapelli when talking about this piece).

Finally they played a Moldovan dance, 'Hora' with some awesome fiddling by Cepinskas, and a small tete-a-tete with a young female violinist, as part of the dance's story.

And of course encore after encore, all quite funny. The band really plays with loads of energy and enthusiasm. I was trying to compare them in my mind with the Lithuanian chamber orchestra - and failed to do so. I hope the Camerata Klaipeda gets lots of engagements at home and abroad.

Season ticket for the Berlin Philharmonic!

You may be thinking - has he come into money? Is he going to fly to Berlin for every concert? Has he moved to Berlin??

Nothing of the sort! I've bought a season ticket for the digital concert hall, which will transmit every Berlin Phil concert via the internet, live, and it can be watched on the computer, or linked to the stereo, or whatever. Complete with closeups of conductors, soloists, you name it. Brilliant or what?

Now all I need to work out is how to wire up everything to avoid having to peer down my laptop.

Sod's law of course suggests that I will be in some country with poor internet connections....

Brinkmanship or a real danger?

Here the Baltic Times reports that following the proposed budget cuts in the state's austerity budget responding to the economic crisis, the Vilnius Capital of Culture may, er, not happen.

This is the new government under Mr Kubilius, the conservative prime minister, who I have seen in at least one concert (before his temporary corruption-related downfall), and maybe even in two, in the nearly 8 years I have lived in Vilnius. The proposed cut is 50% of the year of culture funding (total state funding was supposed to be 40 million LTL or about 11.7m Euros, not exactly major stuff).

It seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face; I don't want to repeat the figure, which I have repeated ad nauseam, about the economic impact of the Edinburgh Festival on the economy of that city - where it brings in many times what is spent in subsidies. If the year of culture crashes, it will be such an embarassment! Surely it is an investment into the future popularity of Vilnius and Lithuania as a tourism destination, and goodness knows when the chance will come round again.

But maybe people are playing political games. Let's hope so. The organisers of the Heifetz violin competition to take place between 9 and 15 January must be having hysterics at the moment.

Lessons learnt...

1. Get thee to the Filharmonija on time!  On Wednesday, the evening of my return, I thought I had left the house early enough to slide across the ice to the Filharmonija - but got there, it seems, too late. 19.03 their time, 18.58 on my watch - and the computers were off and no ticket could be sold (even though the lady was still tidying up her cash desk). Are those computers shut off centrally on the stroke of 7 pm?

2. Check the programme. So last night I togged myself up and wandered over to the Filharmonija for the usual Saturday night concert, not knowing what was going to be played, but ready for a surprise. This I did get - just as the box office lady was about to print out a ticket I clocked the words 'Frank Zappa' on the concert heading. 'Nej tak' as the Swedes said to atomic energy.  Another nice evening stroll.

Add to that tonight - the Filharmonija's booklet mentioned a chamber music concert, not one I would have wanted to rush to for a pressing need, more for a sense of duty.  But something stirred in my memory - last night I had not seen any posters for this concert in the box office. I checked the website - right enough, the concert is cancelled.

You need to watch them like a hawk!

Worthy of Agatha Christie!

In the venerable, though perhaps not as venerated as it was once, Burgtheater of Vienna, the show must go on... even after an actor cut his throat on stage!

It was part of Schiller's Mary Stuart, when the actor, Daniel Hoevels, had to act a suicide on stage. Unfortunately it was a real knife that came to his hands, not a safe prop knife. The audience applauded the very realistic (and very real) gush of blood, only realising that something had gone wrong when he did not get up for his applause.

Was it an accident? Was it planned? The busy criminologists of Vienna are on the case. Read all about it here.

Dip Mus (Open)

Passed my second music course - not as well as I had hoped, but only 3% got the top mark. So that's ok. Now I gather I could use the above letters after my name, should I be so inclined....(I'm not).

How to take care of your violin....

as they do in Australia, reported here..

Colonic Irrigation!

Noooo, not mine!

Jackie Kay, it seems, has written a wonderful poem about Maw Broon and her new health kick. See here. Glad it's the top story in Scotland on Sunday today.

Geringas sick?

According to Lietuvas Rytas, David Geringas has cancelled a couple of concerts in Vilnius due to sickness. Let's hope it's something trivial and that he will get better soon. (A few years ago he did play a concert just after having some bug, and it was not so good. Probably made the right decision).

The replacement in the State Symphony Orchestra's concert on Friday is young Lukas Geniusas, the pianist. Not sure about that....

The beat of the feet

Here the Guardian reports that movements by people, including their heartbeats, can create power. (In the case of the heartbeat this could be used to power pacemakers, removing the need for regular battery-replacement operations - hmm - but the pacemaker is there to stimulate/manage the heartbeats?).

Makes me wonder about creating powercells to harvest the power created in concert halls. Presumably acoustic vibrations could also be converted into power? You could then link it to the hall's lighting system and the light might go up in the Symphonie Fantastique and shrink in Bach's solo cello suites (no-one performs those from sheet music anyway).

Then in the Vilnius Filharmonia you could place power harvesting cells under the seats - people are noisily shuffling their feet all the time. In the place where people meander during the interval, under the entrance doors and the doors into the toilets (as they already do in old people's homes where sensors check if they are moving about (and thus alive)). Never mind the conductor's rostrum, into the timps (so they could tastefully light up from the inside....). You could place tiny cells into the right-arm sleeves of string players, windblown generators into brass instruments....

People using keyboards (roughly the whole world, counting computer keyboards) could use gloves with sensors....

If only I could have heard her!

Diana Galvydyte, tonight's soloist of the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra's concert at the Filharmonija, conducted by the venerable Juozas Domarkas.

The Lithuanian Ms Galvydyte is quite young, and rushed off to the Menuhin School in 2000; though now she's a student at the Royal Academy in London. Nearly four years ago she won third prize at the Heifetz competition which took place in Vilnius, playing the Prokofiev concerto. She's good at contemporary music, if you can call Prokofiev that.

Tonight's programme was more conventional; Chausson's Poème, a popular and very languid piece, and Wieniawski's 'Fantaisie brilliante' on themes from Gounod's 'Faust', a bit of auditory cheesecake, usual vehicle for violinists to show off their skills, including the compulsory fireworks using harmonics and so on. When Ms Galvydyte played solo, she produced a beautiful sound, warm, though with rather non-varying vibrato (maybe it was the period of music that she chose, but at that period vibrato was still more used as an ornament than continuously - listen to Joseph Joachim's recordings). Intonation was perfect, everything was beautiful, almost too beautiful - at the opening of the Wieniawski there was a place on the G-string which she could have played roughly, like 'dirty'.  It needed a bit more personality, and more dynamic contrast. Unfortunately, when the orchestra joined her, we could only see her play, not hear her. Whether it was the 'fault' of a rather limited projection or of the conductor not keeping the band under control, I could not say.

This was followed by Durufle's requiem, written in 1947.  I may have to revise my theory that only composers in countries that have no wars write peaceful music; could not really say that about France (the peace stuff, I mean). Then again, I wonder if it had something to do with it being written just after the war, trying to get some peace into the place.  It is a highly conventional piece, almost romantic (50 years after its time?), though it has interesting moments, including something like Gregorian chant in places, and including a harp (played by the very young Agne Keblyte), an organ and a celesta. There were as many, if not more, wind players on the stage than string players, whose sections were very slimmed down. Some of the sounds just drowned - I heard the celesta once, the organ now and again, and occasionally the harp. It's something about French 20th century music, of this style, that you just get a carpet of sound, rather than themes going round the orchestra. Sometimes it sounded like a guddle, though.  The piece was supposed to contain a baritone soloist, who I never saw, not even when at the final bows - the mezzo, Jovita Vaskeviciute, sang very nicely - she has an amazingly dark voice; is she really a mezzo?  I don't really know the piece, so don't know if the band played well, or the interpretation was right, or not - the violas again had a nice solo, and the solo cellist (the chap who plays in Musica Humana) did a wonderful obbligato accompanying the soloist in her one aria.

Lots of French music over the last week or two; does not do me any harm.  Now I am off to Tbilisi - I see the opera house is planning some charity events for children displaced by the conflict (you know which one I mean). One day someone will think of doing charity events for the old people displaced by the conflict, or those who have picked up a psychiatric illness as the result of the conflict. Would they get as much money for these groups?

No Muti for Mutti

Apparently Riccardo Muti and the Philharmonia Orchestra (London) were supposed to play at Prince Charles' 60th birthday bash this Thursday. 

Alas, himself and Themselves (Mum and son) could not agree on the music - it was 'too long, complicated and inappropriate'. Yes, well, what would you expect. Rocks and hard places?

Recently, at Vienna airport, I was closer to Mr Muti than I would ever be in a concert hall. He was on one side of the glass wall (for the Zurich flight), I was on the other (Astana flight). He is very good-looking, and quite wee - would have fitted in well with the Royal Family.

A weekend of Indian music

will take place in the Mokytoju Namai (Teacher's House) in Vilnius from 20 - 22 November, starting at 18.30 each day. I know, I know - I should go, having studied some of the music in my course this year. Then again....maybe I will go to one....

I see that most of the musicians on the first evening are Lithuanians, or at least non-Indians. This guy Anatolijus Lonomosovas (not quite a Lithuanian name) is very involved in Indian music (and in all three concerts); I wonder if it is his effort that started this.   For a country that is so 'differentphobic' it's amazing how much interest there is in this music - whenever there is such a concert, it's packed out. The length of some of these pieces, and relative lack of musical interest and structure, unless you know what you look for, is quite challenging to the average person who might be more used to pop music. (There is a structure in Indian music but you probably need to know about it).

Silk isn't as smooth as this!

Håkan Rosengren's clarinet sound, that is. It's just, wow! A totally seamless transition from nothing to pianiss-issimo to louder - the clarinet was just breathing! No strident notes here.

On Saturday night he was playing two (too short) pieces in the Filharmonija with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra in a programme of French and Swedish music, conducted by the talented Robertas Servenikas.

Started with a very nice Rhapsody by Debussy (you know me, I was not much of a Debussy fan) which gave the impression of 'a month in the country'. Beautiful, melodic, not just shimmering stuff like you would normally expect from Debussy. This site suggests that by the time Debussy wrote it, he had 'outgrown his youthful rebelliousness' - I'd say. A very pleasant piece, sounding quite romantic, and very beautifully played indeed.

Ernest Chausson's, no, not the Poème for once, symphony in B-major followed, starting with what sounded like a church hymn; heavy brass, large orchestra sound, as the French liked it during that period (think Berlioz).  It was its first performance in Lithuania; the violas had some lovely moments, as they had done last week - they really are lucky in getting music like this. So did the cellos, but they did not produce the viola group's lushness. (I noticed a new cellist in the group - Ruta from the St Christopher Orchestra - is she subbing or did she need a change?).

Rosengren joined the reduced orchestra again for Martin Willert's piece 'Hallucination', written in 2003 - and the Swedish composer was in the audience. It seemed tailor-made for Rosengren's soft, gentle sound, making huge demands on his technical skills - how does he do that, playing two notes at once (one a kind of harmonic, presumably)? Overall, it was a very slow piece and the 3 movements played as one kind of blended into each other, so it was finished kind of before it had begun (probably lasted 10 - 15 minutes).

Finally Hugo Alfvén's Swedish Rhapsody No 3. He lived from 1872 to 1960; this piece was written in 1931, but clearly Schoenberg had passed him by; it is thoroughly romantic in style.  I sometimes wonder if countries that do not have wars or internal conflict produce more peaceful music. Adorno might agree with me, I think. This piece was a bit like  Grieg's Holberg suite with lots of folk melodies, but played in one movement; with some  'grotesk' moments, it says in the programme notes. I did notice something like a donkey braying - midsummer night's dream memory? Also that a sopranino saxophone plays a solo at the beginning and end. Did not notice that one, but did notice how beautifully and lightly the violins played - they got it just right.

Glorious Papa Haydn!

On a slightly life-changing journey the other day, involving 8 hours on a bus there and back, my Ipod suddenly decided to stick to my complete set of Haydn symphonies, recorded by Adam Fischer and the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra. Sounds like a life-time project, no?

Haydn is amazing! One tends to think of him as a lesser Mozart (some of his early string quartets are a bit dull for the viola), but the amount of imagination, surprises, developments, and new ideas that have gone into his symphonies (when you listen to 8 hours of them, one after the other), really is amazing. Considering he wrote at a time when music was only getting inventive, in terms of surprises and contrasts (baroque music tended to have one 'affekt', ie mood, per movement); though on the other hand Haydn did live a loooong time, during which music changed greatly. 

If you ever plan to get stuck somewhere for a long time, get these CDs.  The band plays with amazing enthusiasm, refinement and delicacy - imagine making this recording, of 104 symphonies!

My only problem is, I don't know how my Ipod got stuck on this - I would like to repeat this with other composers. Usually it stops at the end of a CD, or it shuffles around, but some mysterious click happened as I put it in my pocket, and I've enjoyed non-stop Haydn ever since.... 

Bags of enthusiasm!

One can never accuse Algirdas Vizgirdas, the director of Musica Humana, of lack of enthusiasm - he bounds onto the stage like the cat that got the double cream, produces encores at the drop of a hat and generally wheedles his crew into playing more, and more, and yet more.

Tonight was the second concert in a series of celebrations of Vivaldi's 330th birthday.  Surprisingly, it was in the Filharmonija at 7, rather than, as usual, in the Lutheran church at 6 - where I might have rushed to, had I not looked at the website at the last moment.  The Filharmoija's stalls had the audience tastefully sprinkled throughout it.

It was all Vivaldi, then, 8 pieces, plus 3 encores - one before the interval! I made a point of standing up and leaving after the second encore in the second half, and the band, who had been playing standing up, were also much in the mood to go.

It was a nice mixture of pieces, though; a few I did not know, which helps. Seems some Vivaldi is played all the time, and some not at all. There were three 'symphonies', 3 movement pieces (and you thought Haydn was the Papa of symphonies, no? - but he wrote 4-movement symphonies!).  They were nicely played, though some of the contrasts could have been greater. Also there was some breakneck speed - edge of seat stuff. 

Ieva Prudnikovaite sang Psalm 126 (in 8 movements); for a prayer I thought some of the introductions were a bit brisk (Vivaldi's fault, not the orchestra's).  She has a very dark and rich voice, and I wondered how it might have sounded sung by a boy.  She followed it by an aria from the 'Gloria' where I wish I could have understood the words better - I am quite good at liturgical Latin, but the 'qui sedes at dexteram Patris' always ended up a bit of a mumble.  Got the 'miserere nobis' though.

Then there were three concertos; the first was for violin 'and its echo' (RV 552). Here the group went a bit over the top, with planting the echo just outside the stage entrance (with the stage manager wandering about behind it). This did not do much for the sound quality - though again, which echo has a perfect sound quality. I thought the player on the stage was a bit uncertain rhythmically and in intonation, just slightly.  And in the slow movement the 'echo' could have ornamented her version of the same line; I know it's not exactly the function of an echo, but it would have made the movement more interesting. Overall, this is rather a dull piece, with a very pedestrian first movement.

Very young Simona Vaitkeviciute then solo'ed in the concerto for piccolo and orchestra - we all know it well. I've heard it live twice before; once with Evelyn Glennie and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra in a vibraphone (or marimba) version, the last concert ever under Saulius Sondeckis, and another time with Michala Petri on recorder and the St Christopher Orchestra quite a few years ago.  I would have expected Ms Vaitkeviciute to play it from memory; I mean, how many piccolo concertos are there in the whole repertoire?  But I think she might have been nervous, seeing as at the end she shot off the stage without thanking the conductor or first violinist. She played totally securely and nicely, though. Maybe there could have been a bit give and take in terms of tempi, particularly in the slow movement, but generally it was fine.

Finally Robertas Beinaris, without whose solo no Musica Humana concert happens, played the oboe concerto RV457 (in F major).  A concerto which I had never heard before, and which sounded a bit odd - but with amazing virtuosity. Beinaris held a long, very high note in the second movement - it was to die for. 

And then all those encores.  

I was a bit surprised to see a bassoon in the band, playing along in everything, including symphonies and concertos requiring string orchestras plus harpsichord only (poor harpsichord, it was audible once). The bassoon stuck to the bass line, I think, which is a justified use, though not, I would have thought, in a string orchestra. All seemed a bit pointless. Did he just want to have a go?

Grim, grey, depressing

....that's what the UK was between 1945 and 1951, according to David Kynaston's wonderful tour de force 'Austerity Britain' which had been lying around half-read for about a couple of years. One of the benefits of smoking are the frequent breaks from other things, and for reading....

It's an amazing book, all 632 pages of text. The amount of research that has gone into it is amazing - I was extremely impressed at how he had got hold of all those personal diaries, until I discovered that people used to send their diaries to the Mass Observation.  It's an amazing resource of bits and pieces of insights into people's lives. And lives is mostly what this book is about; the impact of rationing, housing shortages, lack of everything including heating after the war, but also some politics and economics. It's so interesting reading about some young up-and-coming politicians, eg Arthur Scargill (no politician, no?), Jim Callaghan, the young Harold Wilson whom someone promised not a very great future.  There are the battles over the establishment of the welfare state, the nationalisation of industry, the building of houses (flats) and demolition of old slum-type housing (read that and you understand slum clearance), the experience of the first post-war blacks in England (all 1500 of the new arrivals by the time the book finishes, and the fear of being over-run).

And you thought that sociology only came into being into the 1960s? Wrong - apart from Mass Observation, there was a chap called Ferdynand Zweig who seems to have talked to every worker under the sun during the period, and lots of others.  Many of the fears of the late 1940s still exist, like of the young ones, of crime and disorder - 'with this deterrent [capital punishment] gone, no woman will feel safe in London after dark'....following nationalisation, there were 'too many men walking about in hats' (ie management) - what would those people say now, when they see the health service... 

The funniest thing is the language - jeez, how English has changed over the last 60 years - you mark my words!

The pianist and the pineapple

The Filharmonija was only half-full tonight. Shame - they missed a great performance! Even worse - the concert was broadcast throughout Europe, but thankfully only on radio.

The Lithuanian National Symphony orchestra, under the delightful Modestas Pitrenas, started with Barkauskas' Konzertstück No 2. A fantastic piece in three parts, which opened with a blast of an ascending motif by the trumpets which was then passed around the very large orchestra, including two ...xylophones (metallophones? could not see). This was followed by a more lyrical middle section; the end had a different ascending melody, more of a scale, but which still resembled the first motif. A great piece for opening a concert!

Edvinas Minkstimas then joined the orchestra for Bartok's third piano concerto. Very Bartok, opening with a vaguely familiar folk melody; the second movement made me think of a Sunday evening in a village, with the sun slowly going down, some of the village people singing a hymn in a village church....The final movement seemed more 'modern', moving some way away from folk music.  I wondered what Adorno might have thought of it, and whether he would have approved - he was not really into incorporating 'folk music' into Serious Music. Minkstimas played beautifully - the orchestral forces had been reduced, and I wondered if that was a good idea. The first violins sounded a bit lacklustre at the beginning of the first movement, and did not seem to match the pianist's energy.

Finally Prokofief's fifth symphony. It reminded me of Russian film music (which I love - Shostakovich's 'The Fall of Berlin' is quite something else). This could have been a story of a young man from a remote village who goes into the city to work in a factory - the second movement (which I know quite well) could have been a wonderful setting for him looking wondrously all of city life, from thousands of people doing gymnastics in a park to the relentless and ever-faster pace of factory work. The third movement might have been him returning to the village, but with city ideas and finally, at the end of the last movement, he might have realised that life will never be quite as it was, and he might be suffering a never-ending conflict in his soul, trying to combine his village outlook with the pressures of city life.

The orchestra came into its own in this piece, with particularly the viola section in the second to fourth movements pouring lashings and lashings of warm dark chocolate over the rest of the orchestra. Welldone, Arunas! The standing ovation was well-deserved!

Apologies....

So for the last fortnight in Vilnius we've had wall to wall contemporary music concerts - but how many did your correspondent visit? No more than two....

Sorry about that, folks. I've been frantically busy with writing, rewriting and yet again rewriting a statistical report on Georgian children in children's homes, with a deadline of yesterday - and it's still not finished. Apart from an unexpected plenitude of medical appointments, studying a statistics course and a course on identity with writings by French philosophers and psychoanalysts that make my eyes meet in the middle.

Also, the fact that I now buy standing room tickets, which are not always available in advance, means that I do not have a pile of tickets looking at me reproachingly, forcing me to go out. And in particular I also resent paying those 3 LT for bilietai.lt who these days have a monopoly on selling tickets for some events.

Then again, last Saturday I was all ready to go to the Filharmonija, when I looked at the website and found that there was no concert. Anywhere in Vilnius. It was 1 November, when all Lithuanians, including musicians, visit the graves of their ancestors - and most of these graves seem to be in villages.

Will do better.

Ananiashvili

I did not realise that Nina Ananiashvili, the inspired director of the Tbilisi State Ballet Company at the Opera House there is still dancing at the American Ballet Theater (sic) - she is well into her 40s.   That explains all the kind reviews her company received when they toured the US earlier this year.  But here it says that next year she will give her farewell performance with the main role in Swan Lake.

Given her history both with the Bolshoi and the ABT (a wonderful company who I saw at the Met some years ago doing a modern 'Cinderella') she has a huge amount of credit abroad. If she now manages to bring her young dancers up to standard (and the signs are good) life for her dancers could become very exciting indeed!