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18 June
This is a review of A Pierre Dream : A Portrait of Pierre Boulez at Aldeburgh Festival on Wednesday 17 June at 7.30 p.m.
Actors with placards, at times a little too noisy on their castors, protested not student issues from the late 1960s, but with the face, image and message of Boulez, in this unbroken evening, dedicated to his music and his (often literary*) influences.
At times, he was heard translated, possibly when he spoke in French more (or his English had not been so strong**, or he resisted talking in it ?), but very often not. And his face, whether in stills or footage, spilled onto – or was caught on – assemblages or groupings, or discrete arrays, of placards***, along with pages from his scores, or shots of places, or even images that were redolent of natural growth or of the rain. (One can taste the production a little here.)
Soprano Anna Sideris adeptly gave us Improvisations sur Mallarmé I and II (from Pli selon pli : Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui… (Improvisation I) and Une dentelle s’abolit… (Improvisation II)), and Charlotte Betts-Dean Le marteau. Elly Condron, credited as a speaking actor (and all in white – as a Muse ?), was clear, definite, and, deliberately, a little cool and detached in rendering English translations of French texts for his Mallarmé and René Clair settings (in Le marteau).
From excerpts of the intimate sound of piano**** (or doubled piano) to pieces for eleven players or more, such as Dérive 2 or Le marteau sans maître, writer and composer Gerard McBurney’s staging ranged over Boulez’ work, thought and utterance in this intense show. Hearing, and re-hearing, his texts and instrumental and vocal settings, his voice changed, but was always Boulez, just as he changed from his arrival in Paris to contemporary footage.
Do not take one's word for it : this review in The Times now Tweeted :
End-notes
* Proust, Mallarmé, and René Clair.
** Striking up a conversation with him at Aldeburgh Festival’s Boulez at 85, with a friend who wanted to know his thoughts about Keith Jarrett (after enquiring about, which he denied, the influence of Messiaen’s teaching, thought to have been heard in works that he conducted the night before), one can testify to his English.
*** The fact that they were non-speaking actors, or that there were screens on the stage that acted as verbal prompts, was not sufficient to explain how they knew where exactly to be : no doubt there must have been tape-marks, of positions, on the floor.
**** Incises, Structures, Notations, and, with flute (which, it seems, Jean-Pierre Rampal rejected), Sonatine.
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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10 January
The Times (in an article entitled Cathedral defends showing ‘debauched film of Christ’s life’) reports as follows regarding Bath Film Festival's (@BathFilm's) screening of director Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), based on the book by Nikos Kazantzakis (and with score by Peter Gabriel) :
Members of the congregation have protested that the 12th-century Gothic Cathedral is to be used for an “appalling film” that “tackles the theme of debauchery”
Are they thinking, maybe, of another Scorsese film, Taxi Driver, which certainly does 'tackle' that theme, and appals in its literal sense (from Old French appalir to turn pale) ? Have they seen it, or are they like the protesters (placards saying 'Down with this sort of thing') penned by Arthur Matthews and Graham Linehan in Father Ted, who made more popular, through interest and intrigue, a film that they had not watched, The Passion of St Tibulus from 1995 ?
The appendix of the 1996 edition of Scorsese on Scorsese* (one in a Faber & Faber series to which The Agent is addicted) is devoted to the film. Here are some quotations from a statement that Scorsese made at a press conference :
When I read Kazantzakis's book, I didn't have the feeling that it would be deeply offensive to anyone, especially because I know of my own intent.
[...]
Among the boys who I knew when I was in the seminary, one is now the head of an order in Chicago called the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, and happens to be a great fan of Kazantzakis's book. And I know that the book is used in seminaries as a parable to argue about and discuss. This is how I hoped the film would be received.
[...]
A black minister wrote a letter to the New York Daily News, saying he loved the film, was going to use it as a study guide in discussion groups, and that he felt most of the people talking about the film had not seen it. He said they adhered very much to the word of the Gospel, but not to the spirit.
After the event, read more here about it and the film, if you wish...
End-notes
* Faber & Faber, London, 1996.
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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11 May
Work in progress… - beware of a bumpy landing !
I have just read a review of Troyka’s debut album in 2009, which maybe I can import into this blog – it appears on the BBC web-site, and was written by Martin Longley.
If I can, I hope to draw on it to make some comments about the panel discussion (plus Q&A) that took place under the title ‘Music journalism in the 21st century’. It comprised four male contributors, amongst them the jazz critic of The Times (broadcaster Alyn Shipton (@AlynShipton), who also chaired the session), The Financial Times*, and the deputy editor of Jazzwise.
The fourth (who had written for The Birmingham Post) was the only one prominently introduced as blogging (and, yet, who talked fairly little about his blog, other than the freedom that it gave him to write about what he wanted, when not earning a living) :
All wanted to peddle a message of ‘If it was good enough for me…’ and ‘I had to work my way up’, littered with boasts of their writing and editorial skills and like kudos. In a way, of course, the typical defensive speech of those occupying posts that they don’t intend – wish, maybe ? – to vacate : Don’t bother to climb the greasy pole – if you do, I’m the resident bear at the top, so mind your neck !
Therefore predictable, and predictable that they would ‘take a pop at’ those whose blog postings extend beyond, as the case might be, the 375-, 500- or 1,000-word limits to which they have to work, or whose content (they believe = opinion ?) is not a review, but opinion.
It’s as if they (wildly ?) assume that the bloggers couldn’t do what they do – and write a 500-word review to deadline – to save their lives, just because the bloggers choose to do something else, for whatever reason – and, if people read what bloggers right instead, who is to say that they are wrong (except that it might endanger further the position of those paid to pen tight, tidy, and possibly tired traditional accounts of gigs or releases).
So much for the chaff. The grains were the usual ‘tips of the trade’ of Someone I’d once met said… or They asked me if I’d stand in when X was sick, and I’m still there 300 years later, the positive face of the negative slant previously given :
They approached me because they knew me, they only knew me because I do this sort of thing, and I only survive doing this sort of thing because I’m brilliant, which they wisely recognized.
I laugh, but it’s just like Hollywood stars (whether in their own eyes or not) who tell an audience :
I met Tom Hanks two years before, and then we were out of contact, but he rang me out of the blue when I’d just finished in The Cherry Orchard off Broadway and said he wanted me for the part of Scrooge
[Hanks did not happen to mention that he had not got Mel Gibson or Hugh Grant to take the part, or that Hanks’ agent had suggested approaching The Star because (if it genuinely was Hanks’ ‘shout’), at least, of industry-driven Factors a, b and c - more likely, The Star knew all of this, and this is the agreed concoction for the PR world that is ‘celebrity’ interview…]
Continued… (not in this posting, maybe in order not to offend the critics’ tender sensibilities !)
End-notes
* Or was it The Sunday Times ? (I didn’t take notes, and I forget which.)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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21 April 2013
Dear Bruce Baxter
Forget it, Susan Tomes !
You have always been the best, but your new all-Mozart recording is just blinding.
The music critic for The Times called it revelatory, but, for me, its effect is very shiny and totally chic - not at all redundant.
I know that you treasure these epistles, and I am more in awe of you than ever, but I remain your number-one fan
Juliet
