What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part II)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part II)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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23 October

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part II)

On Tuesday 28 October at 7.30 p.m., pianist Freddy Kempf is due to give a recital of works for solo piano by Beethoven, Schubert and Tchaikovsky


I first heard Freddy Kempf in chamber music as part of Cambridge Summer Music Festival some years ago, when he played a programme in the hall at King’s College – Tchaikovsky’s titanic Piano Trio in A Minor, Op. 50, and also Dvořák's Trio No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 90 (B. 166).

The power of the music, transmuted and transported by the energy of the young players, was instantly appealing. It seemed that he must be related to the German pianist Wilhelm Kempff (though the difference in spelling of the surname had gone unnoticed), whose recording of a selection of Preludes and Fugues from Book I of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (Das Wohltemperierte Klavier) had been such a feature of my late teenage years (and, of recent years, Kempff's recordings of the Schubert Sonatas for Piano (in a boxed set, also from Deutsche Grammophon - @DGclassics)):

However, whereas other on-line pieces make no mention of the connection, a biography by Robert Cummings states that Freddy is Wilhelm Kempff's grandson. (The name, however spelt, actually relates to the German word ‘kämpfen’, meaning 'to fight' or 'to struggle' (as, unfortunately, also in Mein Kampf).)

Five years ago, Kempf gave a Liszt and Beethoven recital at The Corn Exchange in Cambridge (@CambridgeCornEx), where one highlight was the so-called Dante Sonata (properly Après une Lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata, published in the ‘Deuxième année: Italie’ of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage), where the passion and drama were patent, as well as Liszt and Kempf’s musicianship.


His Corn Exchange recital on Tuesday is as Artist in Residence, and includes the late Piano Sonata in A Major (D. 959) by Franz Schubert, written, with two other Sonatas for Piano (D. 958 and 960), in 1828, the last year of his life. (There is also an earlier Sonata in A Major (D. 664, Op. Posth.), which is thought to date to the Summer of 1819, and which, as with D. 959, was not published in his life-time.)

By contrast with Winterreise, Op. 89 (D. 911), the proofs of whose second part* the dying composer famously corrected, and which was published on 30 December 1828 (Schubert had died on 19 November), these works did not appear in print until 1838 to 1839. Possibly in the same way as Beethoven’s late piano works, in which Piano Sonata No. 27 (in E Minor, Op. 90) is sometimes grouped (also on Tuesday's programme), these sonatas of Schubert’s were not easily assimilable to begin with, although now much cherished.

Favourite recorded interpretations of Schubert have included Maurizio Pollini’s of the Wanderer-Fantasie, and Alfred Brendel’s of the D. 664 sonata. Very recently, though, Imogen Cooper’s three-CD all-Schubert release of live recordings has coupled the last three sonatas with other repertoire, where, in the Sonata in A Major, we can hear the same fragmentation (and use of an advanced approach to modulation) as in parts of the composer’s late string quartets (probably most clearly in its final movement (Rondo : Allegretto – Presto), which feels to be the heart of the work).

Or even the disintegration of music and meaning of Winterreise, from where we can look down the decades to texts and settings such as, for example, Georg Büchner’s and Alban Berg’s.


The joy of the recital that Freddy Kempf is bringing us, with these late (or, in the case of the Tchaikovsky (the Grand Sonata [in G Major], Op. 37), at least mature) compositions of stature and breadth, is that it gives great scope for them to find synergy in each other, and for the pianist to discover new truths in them with which to present us.


End-notes

* The first part of Winterreise had been published on 14 January (1828), just as Wilhelm Müller's texts appeared in February and October 1827 (each part containing twelve poems).


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Report from Scarborough Jazz Festival : Nigel Kennedy, John Etheridge and Band

A reminiscence of Nigel Kennedy and John Etheridge’s Saturday-night gig at Scarborough Jazz Festival 2014

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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21 October

This is a belated reminiscence of Nigel Kennedy and John Etheridge’s Saturday-night gig at Scarborough Jazz Festival 2014 (on 27 September)

Delayed because the towering headache that heralded the following morning, which cannot unjustly be imputed in part to the great volume of the previous night, has seemingly erased detail, whose return has been awaited in vain…


Some pairings must always seem to be a mixture of characteristics, such as Beauty and the Beast.

If one talks more about Kennedy than about Etheridge, it was not simply that the latter was, to audience right, side on, but that his exuberance was in his music, not in projecting a persona (or, even, in the likes of touching clenched fists to celebrate playing a number).

For John Etheridge seemed present in his playing from the start, whereas Nigel Kennedy, over two sets of around fifty minutes each, put on a show, but he did take a while – most of the first set – ‘to get going’…


The reasons were several-fold, but revolved around the fact that, however much he seemed to look for it, he was missing not so much a spark, for he was seeking to spark off John Etheridge in (respectfully) combative mode - which the more relaxed Etheridge graciously entered into :

So, Kennedy was tossing up a riff for Etheridge to respond or reply to : as can sometimes be the case with such duelling, this all seemed more for Kennedy’s benefit than anyone else’s, chuffed at being again with a musician whom he clearly admires, but doing little enough for the jazz with it.

Likewise, the aerobatic twists and turns in the air, on and around the violin, seemed like a classical virtuoso going through the paces, not a jazzer getting into his groove – it was impressive, not because it had a context, but because Kennedy wished it to impress, yet it lacked a meaning, a content :

It lacked what Kennedy was so far missing bringing to the set, although he had already prominently mentioned Stéphane Grappelli (albeit at a time when Kennedy was side-lining the importance of Yehudi Menuhin to, and in, how his musicianship and talent have developed) :

It was almost as if, for this gig, Kennedy had to regress to his precocious years, yet more - as if we needed it ? - so that we, too, could be reminded of who he is, where he came from, etc.

At least twice, a female voice called out Grappelli’s name from the balcony, and, although Kennedy first acknowledged it, and then said that the woman was repeating herself, he still needed to invoke what he had been taught, making a tune swing. Hate Grappelli’s tone for its sugariness as some may, no one can deny that he had swing, not to mention panache, grace, charm, and real cheerfulness.

Kennedy’s approach was fine in itself, but it meant that, in the non-electric set, one only had joy of a lovely little duo with Etheridge, and a closing ensemble piece, in which he was not just playing, but playing with swing.


Before the gig, someone had been saying that the first set was going to be acoustic, the second wild and noisy. As it turned out, this description was correct, but, as it is, only similar such generalities are now available here to give any account of it :

* Everyone, except the drummer (Mark Fletcher*), went electric, beyond the mere sense of having a pick-up for their acoustic instruments – so violin to electric violin (Kennedy), acoustic to electric guitar (Etheridge), and upright bass to electric bass-guitar (Yaron Stavi).

* It was certainly passionate, inspired, very loud, but debatably not any more jazz (certainly, at some times) than some of those whose tracks they covered, probably amongst them Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix**.

* Still, the same discussion has circled around the music of Frank Zappa – and to no more gain, or effect – so one should merely observe that the gig certainly swelled the attendance at Scarborough that night, and that everyone appeared to have a good time : the acclaim for Etheridge, Kennedy, Kennedy’s guest violinist (Omar Puente*) and the band was undeniably great.


As festival director Mike Gordon had prudently commented in the Festival booklet, We are over the moon to have such an outstanding international star appearing at our festival – I think it’s a real coup’…


End-notes

* Named here thanks to the review of this gig from Yorkshire Coast Gigs.

** The name King Crimson is lurking cranially in some connection, but that may easily have been a credit given by Dennis Rollins’ Velocity Trio (or even by Henry Lowther and Nathaniel Facey) – though this nice review of Velocity Trio, also from Yorkshire Coast Gigs, mentions Floyd having been in their set…


#Confused

#MaybeEveryonePlayedFloyd ?


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IC)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IC)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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17 October

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IC)

On Friday 17 October at 7.30, Cambridge Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) hosts the first in its annual Cambridge Classical Concert Series

The programme for Friday has Natasha Paremski (@natashaparemski) as soloist in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (@rpoonline) under the conductorship of Fabien Gabel

According to the score, Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) wrote his Rhapsody between 3 July (Franz Kafka’s birthday (in 1883)) and 18 August 1934 - which seems a reasonably short time, but see what follows.


Rachmaninov and Brahms

Some people like to see it as something Russian – as if pigeon-holing helps* – that Tchaikovsky’s response to success was often introspection and melancholy, or that, on the other hand, Sergei Rachmaninov was sensitive to new works of his being poorly received. (So much so that, around the turn of the century, he lost faith in his powers as a composer, but seemed to find help through hypnosis from, and conversation about music with, Dr Nikolay Dahl, an amateur musician.)

Neither composer can have been helped by the fact that the standards to which we have become accustomed to-day, not only of musicianship and of time and space to prepare works for performance, but also of seeking more to be objective in reviews of concerts and new music, did not always obtain, even at the turn of the nineteenth century. Well into the twentieth century, indeed, as well as having to make a living / become accepted as a composer, since Rachmaninov was still performing in the winter of 1942–1943 (in support of war relief) – it is thought that it was partly because of it that he died, on 28 March 1943 (in Beverly Hills, California).

The length of time that Brahms took to write his Symphony No. 1 (in C Minor, Op. 68) has been mentioned elsewhere in writing about the relatively short gestation of his Symphony No. 2 (in D Major, Op. 73) : essentially, a question at that time of seeming cramped, or inhibited, in the symphonic form, by feeling himself to be in Beethoven’s shadow.

The further link with Rachmaninov is that some premieres of Brahms’ works suffered equally for lack of orchestral preparation, not to mention the entrenched hostility of some critics : if, though, we were still paying regard to what they wrote after the first performance (in Leipzig) in January 1859, we would not be listening to Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1* (in D Minor, Op. 15). (In it, he affected to transmute material from a predecessor to the Symphony No. 1.)

As many will know, Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Op. 43) is indeed rhapsodic in nature. Yet by way of what could potentially have been episodic, because it consists of a set of twenty-four variations on the theme from Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 in A Minor (itself a Tema con Variazioni), but made effortlessly flowing.

And the piece comes with much musical / numerical resonance with, amongst other comprehensive compositions, Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (Das Wohltemperierte Klavier) Book I (BWV 846–869) and II (BWV 870–893), Chopin’s Preludes (Op. 28)**, as well as his own two sets of Preludes (Opp. 23, 28) : in total twenty-three, which, with the early Prelude in C Sharp Minor (from the Morceaux de fantaisie, Op. 3), cover all the major and minor keys***.

The Rhapsody is famously complete with Rachmaninov’s favourite evocation, the theme of the Dies irae, and the inestimable, graceful beauty that is variation XVIII. Not uniquely amongst his compositions, it cries out for dance, and the ballet is where, new to his work, it was first heard : the sophistication of the orchestration, the inventiveness of the inversions and transmutations, the subtlety of the transitions, must have thrilled Baltimore in 1934 at its world premiere, and its first British performance in Manchester in 1935…


Michael Kennedy’s trusty third edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music**** (though, for some purposes, one would not refuse the donation of a new edition…) rightly calls it one of his finest works, for it is simply glorious – energetic, lively, thoughtful, passionate, but also abstracted, and slightly matter of fact in a tongue-in-cheek way.

So that is certainly something to relish in the coming season !


End-notes

* Or helps anything – other than further viewing someone different as ‘other’, whereas one could try to understand him or her.

** Plus two sets of twelve Études, Opp. 10, 25.

*** There is also, of course, the so-called Revolutionary Prelude, in D Minor.

**** Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IB) - uncorrected proof

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IB)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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16 October (updated 17 October)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IB)

On Friday 17 October at 7.30, Cambridge Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) hosts the first in its annual Cambridge Classical Concert Series

The programme for Friday has Natasha Paremski (@natashaparemski) as soloist in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (@rpoonline) under the conductorship of Fabien Gabel

According to the score, Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) wrote his Rhapsody between 3 July (Franz Kafka’s birthday, in 1883) and 18 August 1934 (which seems a reasonably short time, but composition was not always so).

It was first performed on 7 November that year, with Leopold Stokowski conducting The Philhadelphia Orchestra, and Rachmaninov playing the solo part, and they then recorded it on Christmas Eve (please see Rachmaninov and others, below).

Also in the first half is Schumann’s ‘Overture’ to Manfred, Op. 115, and, in the second, Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73.


Rachmaninov and I

When I started at university, I began to get to know the works of Rachmaninov through a friend – some of which maybe I had maybe heard in passing, in that casual way of cliché because of David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945), itself a sort of brief encounter with compositions that, on closer listening, had a lot to offer (a view that has come to Sergei Rachmaninov more generally in the intervening years).

My friend played piano well (he had – or was to have –some impressive teachers), as well as having dedication, technique, enthusiasm and interpretative powers. So, through him, I came to love Rachmaninov’s principal Concertos for Piano (and soon bought a recording of the whole set) – as well as, at some stage (and amongst other works), the Symphony No. 2 (in E Minor, Op. 27) when he was developing / sharing his passion for it, and the B Flat Minor Sonata for Piano (No. 2, Op. 36) during his learning it…

Yet, in the days after the close of the first Lent Term, when I was spending a few days in a friend’s flat on my way home (via London), I had no notion that meeting up with another new friend from university, to go to favourite places of hers (such as The National Portrait Gallery), would introduce me to the work on this programme :

For the suggestion of going to the ballet and sitting ‘in the cheap seats’ (since we were undergraduates) seemed as good an idea as any – and there proved to be a lot of music on the bill (possibly also a ballet based on The Enigma Variations* of Elgar ?). But the obvious highlight, for dance, score and dazzling execution, was the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, and being enthralled by :

* The unfolding of the variations (from the famous statement of the theme, as used for The South Bank Show)

* Possibly realizing that this was Rachmaninov (we may not have troubled with a programme) ?

* Knowing Rachmaninov’s trademark use of Dies irae theme – and hearing what he did with it here (first in Variation VII)

* The sumptuous, tender variation (Variation XVIII**), along with how the principal male dancer interpreted it

* Even spotting that Rachmaninov was using inversion here as part of his compositional repertoire


Rachmaninov and others

On which, for those who learn aurally, The Proms 2013 – in the person of Steven Hough – gives examples in a very good, brief introduction.

Or one can, again via YouTube, hear Rachmaninov himself in the beginning of the work (seemingly conducted by Stokwoski – taken from the recording made with the same forces as for the premiere ?)…



Coda : Please look here for a connection, of sorts, between Brahms and Rachmaninov (plus a plethora of further Opus Numbers !)…


Post-concert Tweets :

The high-point for @THEAGENTAPSLEY of @rpoonline's concert to-night at @CambridgeCornEx was @natashaparemski's Paganini Rhapsody ->
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 17, 2014

-> A piano-driven performance gave the music breathing space, with rubato, pauses, and an to opening Variation XVIII that built from it !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 17, 2014

End-notes

* Properly, Variations on an Original Theme for Orchestra (‘Enigma’), another Op. 36.

** An Andante cantabile, in D Flat Major.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IA)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IA)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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14 October

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IA)

On Friday 17 October at 7.30, Cambridge Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) hosts the first in its annual Cambridge Classical Concert Series

Full details of the concert (and piece about the other two works) can be found here, but, during the second half, we have this one work, which has been known to me for decades (but I have never before tried to write about) :


Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) : Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 [more than fifty years earlier, in 1877, but otherwise as with Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini : started in the summer, and first performed later that year – please see below]


We start, logically enough, with the genesis of his Symphony No. 2, at the end of the nineteenth century…


Brahms on holiday

According to the conductor Hermann Levi, Johannes Brahms began work on the symphony in the summer of 1877, when he was staying at Pörtschach [am Wörthersee]¹, and the work was ‘ready in his head’ by the end of September (with the first movement on paper).

It was given its first performance on 30 December that year, in Vienna under Hans Richter. To a friend, Elisabet von Herzogenberg², he described the first performance in these terms :

The musicians play my new work with crêpe around their arms because it sounds so mournful. It will be printed on black-edged paper.


The reason being, so the story goes, that Brahms ‘amused himself by giving friends the impression that it was gloomy’. Likewise, he reportedly told his publisher Fritz Simrock that it was ‘so melancholy that you will not be able to hear it [sc. listen to it ?]’.


The Agent Apsley on holiday

Brahms came into my musical life in my mid-teenage years, jostling – just amongst the Bs – with Bach, Bartók, Beethoven for my attention (wasn’t quite ready for something of the proportions of Bruckner 6 then…).

All four Brahms symphonies (ranked in my head, usually, as 2 / 3 / 1 / 4 – or, sometimes, 3 / 2 / 1 / 4) were staples in my diet. Along with (because of pairing³ ?) his Tragic Overture (Tragische Ouvertüre), Op. 81, and Academic Festival Overture (Akademische Festouvertüre), Op. 80 (though I only now spot the contiguous Opus Numbers), and the piano concertos⁴.


So, when I was away with my parents, Symphony No. 2, or No. 3, might very well be in the car’s cassette-player – possibly as something of home when away ? At any rate, I was happy (even if not my family ?) to become very familiar with those affordable Classics for Pleasure recordings : The Hallé under James Loughran.

And, from the sleeve-notes, I had this received wisdom about Brahms and that joke (though, before conceiving this piece, I never troubled to relate it to what I think that this symphony sounds like)…


Back to the trickster

The typical photographic portraits of Brahms (of which that above is not one) do not encourage us to believe that, at the age of 44, he could have been a prankster. That said, appearance not infrequently belies the facts, e.g. with the eccentric looks and talented reality of George Bernard Shaw, so maybe this account of Brahms having played a joke on his friends is a misconception ?

First, though, we really need to see where this symphony fits with the others !


All four Brahms symphonies

No. 1 (in C Minor, Op. 68) – started in 1854 (or 1855), and at least fourteen years in the making (though Brahms said that it was twenty-one years)

No. 2 (in D Major, Op. 73) – 1877, Pörtschach¹

No. 3 (in F Major, Op. 90) – 1883, Wiesbaden

No. 4 (in E Minor, Op. 98) – 1884–1885, commenced in Mürzzuschlag (now in Austria, within north-east Styria)


The struggle to write that Symphony No. 1 (and an earlier one, in D Minor, subsumed in the Piano Concerto No. 1 in that key) ! Yet contrast it with the fluency with which, within six months or so each, Brahms was then able to write Nos 2 and 3 – what an immense gift it must have been for Brahms that No. 1 freed him from having been looked at as the beneficiary of what Beethoven left behind him...

(Perhaps it also freed Brahms from the heights of self-criticism that had him destroy so many earlier compositions ? Even if, however, the way in which he had intended to pay tribute to Beethoven, by overtly using thematic (and even rhythmic) material in the symphony, was held against him (as if he had plagiarized) – ‘Any fool can see that !’ is what he is said to have retorted to a friend who remarked on these affinities.)


That joke in context

Some commentators have seen this, second, symphony as ‘the most happy and serene’ of all four (and, hence, Brahms’ words as a jest). In any event, Symphony No. 1 had not been performed until 1876, and then we see Brahms – away from Vienna just the following year – start Symphony No. 2 and have it performed, all within the bounds of 1877. However, need that happy release, to be able to write symphonically with such comparative ease, mean that the symphony itself must be ‘happy and serene’, as claimed ?


My unchecked recollection is that the description is more accurate of Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 (in F Major, Op. 90) than of this one. Here, the opening (and longest) movement, an Allegro non troppo, pitches minor and major keys against each other, and, despite a dance-like, motile quality to the writing, feels what Radio 3’s Sean Rafferty might characterize as triste :

For it commences with what I hear as a somewhat melancholy opening theme on the horns (which, inevitably in symphonic form, Brahms brings back several times) - albeit lightened by the flute, when it makes its second intervention during the opening bars. So also, in the supposed tellings of the ‘joke’ quoted above, the words ‘mournful’ and also ‘melancholy’ appeared (NB : though in translation from German).

When a sense of lightness first comes, it may not feel like the waltz that it comes to hint at, and – with the transparency of the strings and the overlay of flute-notes – maybe we place ourselves in an Alpine meadow ? How settled we are there depends on one’s perception of, and reaction to, the saw-tooth arpeggios, uncomfortable harmonies, and, in the lower strings, almost Jaws-like disquieting depths.

Quite apart from which, as the movement cycles around itself, there are, when flute and oboe are not spinning cheerful arabesques, the cascades of droplets of notes, which, at first, fall in separate streams, and lead us to the phlegmatic-sounding horns, with notes in and over from the flute : this passage, and what follows from it, feels little like ‘happy and serene’, but instead over-tired, anxious and presciently modern music for its time.


In the shorter second movement (marked Adagio non troppo), the horn-calls, which are part of feeling tristesse, are joined by the restrained, moody reediness of clarinets, oboes and bassoons. Despite the pleasure of and beauty in an elegiac, stately, even sinuous theme introduced at the beginning, under-currents of questioning, hesitation, and doubt are here :

They are in the contributions made by those instruments (along with low brass), even if amongst suggestions – as in the first movement – of brighter possibilities. For the movement has an ebb and flow to it, as of the tide raking back down the shore. At the end, after a pause, the main theme returns, now eerily well-nigh incantatory, with timpani and clarinets in their chalumeau register – further pauses punctuate a repeated, unresolved chord, before bringing in a blazing, but momentary concord to conclude.


The Allegretto grazioso (quasi andantino) opens with a small group of players, as if it were chamber music. We have flutes again, and, in stating the theme, there is yet more tonally ambiguous solo writing for principal oboe, before it gives way to lively, accented rhythms, passed around the strings (with the delicacy perhaps sounding a little like the ballet-music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), with whose career that of Brahms overlapped (1833–1897)).

Although, when the tutti come, they are radiant, the movement is also marked by its use of dissonance, with only a limited development section (befitting a Scherzo). When the first theme recurs finally, oboe and flute principals, who have been key players throughout, are to the fore and, in a very brief coda, contribute elements to the muted closing chord.


The closing movement is – and not wholly in comparison with all that has gone before – passionately triumphant. However, despite being an Allegro con spirito, it also is not exclusively so :

A sinuous quality has been noted already, and it is present in the way in which the main theme seems to weave in and out, in and out, as picked out quickly by the flute, before being given a full-throatedly exuberant treatment. One, however, that stalls, after bass-notes from the strings.

Before a second theme is introduced, we have brief contributions from clarinet (to serve whose needs Brahms was to bring himself out of retirement and write so spectacularly later on), horns, oboe and – with pizzicati – flute : amidst all these woodwind elements, we continue to have, absent the tutti, centres of passing tonal uncertainty, bird-like swoopings of the principal flute and oboe, and rallentandi, full of expansive Viennese grace.

When Brahms reaches unequivocally for the major, it is accompanied with swirling, ecstatic woodwind, and builds to crashing / churning moments of rhythmic intensity, which yet die back to woodwind and pizzicato upper strings. Thus, eased by those gracious slowings-down, we cycle around, until Brahms builds up to a bell-like closing statement of the theme, with tuba, trombones and trumpets, and in which there are excited rapidly and descending runs, yet fractionally held back by caesuræ. And even in the penultimate chords, there are subtle modulations – as if we might not, after all, make it to D Major…


Joke or no ?

Not meant to duck the issue (as I have now stated my opinion), but the answer to whether we think that Brahms was serious, or joking, largely now comes down to interpretation – if hearing the symphony were not, that is, already an interpretation : by an orchestra under the musical direction of a conductor.

On this occasion, of course, it is to be the RPO working under the baton of Fabien Gabel – and maybe they can help us, with subtle shifts on the night, do various things :

* Notice detail (those flute, oboe or horn parts ?)

* Hear the effect of different emphases

* React to variations in the tonal, textural, rhythmic, or emotional landscape

* Even the simple matter of a transition between movements : via YouTube (as I did, for this piece), watch Leonard Bernstein, with The Vienna Philharmonic, run the last two movements together, without a break…

Happy listening !


End-notes

¹ Who was, amongst other things, a pianist, singer, composer, teacher, and music publisher, as well as the wife of an Austrian composer (Brahms, though he adopted Vienna, was German).

² A lakeside town, and established summer resort, in the far South of modern-day Austria.

³ And a few of his twenty-one Hungarian Dances – possibly the three that he orchestrated himself (and only another three of them were his original compositions)… ?

⁴ Though not the violin concerto – possibly because I had a practice of listening to the Tchaikovsky concerto every day without fail ?


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part I)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part I)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 October

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part I)

On Friday 17 October at 7.30, Cambridge Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) hosts the first in its annual Cambridge Classical Concert Series

The series opens with the excellent Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (@rpoonline), again as The Corn Exchange's Orchestra in Residence (reviewed here, at the end of the previous series (earlier in the year), when Nicholas Collon conducted them in an all-British programme of Elgar, Britten, and Vaughan Williams…)


The programme for Friday is as follows:


First half

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) : Manfred Overture (please see below for a more accurate title) [mainly written in 1848, but first performed in 1852]

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) : Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 [apparently written in July / August 1934, and first performed that November]


Second half

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) : Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 [more than fifty years earlier, in 1877, but otherwise as with the Rachmaninov : started in the summer, and first performed later that year – please see below]


Extra : Please look here for a further connection, of sorts, between Brahms and Rachmaninov (plus a plethora of other Opus Numbers !)…

This posting – much delayed by the exigencies of trying to write up The 34th Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest) – looks essentially at the reasons why we have the Overture as an isolated piece, whereas those about the Brahms is now linked here, and about the Rachmaninov here, are more personal responses (plus some more music history)


If one stops to investigate the phenomenon, it is remarkable that some pieces achieve a life beyond the work for which they were written :

Not so much in the case of a lovely aria, such as the famous ‘Erbarme dich’ (in Bach’s St Matthew Passion, BWV 244) or Gluck’s equally well-known ‘Che farò senza Euridice’ (from his Orfeo ed Euridice (from 1762)), where it is obvious that the strength of the writing has given birth to a lovely expression of feeling – although it is probably still best understood (first of all, at least) in context.

No. One has in mind, say, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 – or, as the Germans more style it, Ouvertüre zu Coriolan (Overture to Coriolan). The question of naming apart (though as true of the Manfred Overture in this concert), the music was written in 1807 for Heinrich Joseph von Collin's drama Coriolan.

Here, nothing suggests that there was any other incidental music. The complete works of von Collin (Gesammelte Werke, in six volumes) appeared between 1812 and 1814, and are still in print (so presumably still studied), but what really seems to survive with any life is the Overture*.


In the case of Schubert**, maybe his incidental music to Rosamunde*** (Op. 26, D. 797) has survived a little better. Yet the production, withdrawn after two nights, scarcely deviated from his other general lack of success in writing for the stage. Regarding this programme’s piece by Robert Schumann, it is, yet again, an extract – seemingly surviving largely on its own.

The ‘Overture’ is taken from Manfred : Dramatic Poem (with Music) in Three Parts (in the original German, Manfred. Dramatisches Gedicht in drei Abtheitungen), Op. 115, and is a setting of the dramatic work of that name by George, Lord Byron (published in 1817), mainly written in 1848.

Pictured is the title-page of the edition of Manfred that was prepared by Clara Schumann, Robert’s wife (and then widow), and it indicates that it had pretensions to be amongst his greater vocal works. Despite Hugo Wolf’s apparent appreciation for Manfred (Wolf lived from 1860 to 1903), its availability as a score (although modern scores are of the 'Overture' alone) and even as a recording, and the fact that academics are still writing about it (and, inevitably – it appears – with Schumann, his mental state at the time of writing it), the focus remains this ‘Overture’.

Curious creature, @thekatiederham - in introducing Lunchtime Concert, interchangeably pronounced Wolf as if written Wölf, @onradio3now...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 12, 2014

Can I guess, though, that Schoenberg may creatively become Schonenberg, @thekatiederham @onradio3now... ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 12, 2014

The result, seemingly, is that the whole Manfred is not allowed to stand alongside compositions such as Liederkreis, Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und -leben (all earlier, being from 1840).


So it is does not even seem, after all, that this 'Overture' was separated from its musical home quite in the same way as for the other works considered above : they were attached to something that has not really survived, whereas this piece, by being picked out as the best part, has been severed from the body of Manfred and kept alive before us on the concert platform...


End-notes

* Likewise, to stay with Beethoven, his score to the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43 – the Overture is certainly in the concert repertoire, but what about the rest of the score (maybe only on Radio 3 (@BBCRadio3), where it has been broadcast), let alone the ballet itself ?

** If one does not check, Schubert (1797–1828) may seem more contemporary with Schumann (1810–1856) than with Beethoven, but Schubert’s life in fact much overlapped with that of Beethoven (1770–1827), since Schubert died before he was 32, and Schumann lived for more than 25 years beyond him. (As is well known, Schubert both felt himself in Beethoven’s shadow (as did Brahms (1833–1897), and was one of the great man’s torch-bearers.)

*** In full, the play Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern [Countess of Cyprus], by Helmina von Chézy.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Answers to a quiz for World Mental Health Day : The British* Patient

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)11 October

'Treating' The British* Patient

A quiz for World Mental Health Day (#WMHD2014 on 10 October), about patients’ rights, was inspired by re-watching The English Patient (1997) earlier in the week : here are the answers to the quiz. (That said, the answers are all The Agent Apsley’s and so - necessarily - is any responsibility for any mistakes or misunderstandings in writing them : unless, that is, you fail to offer a correction…)


A suggestion for reading : by all means read it all through, but why not focus on the answer to a question where you felt that a right had been outlined ?


Which of the following are rights of a patient in a psychiatric unit (in England & Wales*) when detained under section 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (as amended), headed ‘admission for assessment’ ? :


1. To be placed in a unit within 25 miles of home

Sadly, this is not a right, as recent news stories have highlighted, and even a patient being detained somewhere at that distance could effectively cut him or her off from most visits :

In rural Cambridgeshire, Huntingdon used to have its own units for adult and elderly mental health, whereas the provision for the town and its area is now located in Peterborough. A bed only being found initially at a distance (sometimes now hundreds of miles) is not a new phenomenon, but it is one that has been made more likely, and is so affecting more people, by reductions in both the numbers of units and the provision of accommodation (i.e. the capacity for which funding exists, irrespective of how many people the unit could hold (and even have been built for), if enough nursing and ancillary staff, supplies, etc., existed)


2. To see a psychiatrist within 3 hours if distressed

Since, as one might have been led to believe, psychiatric units are therapeutic, such a right might seem plausible.

However, even if the movement that gave us Patients’ Charters promised such a standard of care, or an NHS Trust itself committed to provide it, nothing under the Act itself gives this entitlement : seeing a psychiatrist within a specified time would not derive from being on section 2, but have to be a matter of Trust, or ward, policy.


3. Not to take medication, if offered twice already and refused

Although section 2 of the Act is headed ‘admission for assessment’, and section 3 ‘admission for treatment’, there is nothing to choose between them in this respect :

There is no general right not to be treated, i.e. not to take prescribed medication - which, if the patient repeatedly refuses when offered, can be given against his or her will.

This will either be by single injection (if the original medication exists in injectable form, failing which something similar), or, for anti-psychotic medications (properly called 'neuroleptics'), a long-lasting (depot) injection (to avoid the need for multiple forced administrations).


4. To take a walk in the ground for up to an hour, if the staff are told first

When on section, even such a simple thing as this depends on it being granted by the person who, at the time, is the Responsible Clinician** (RC), who can authorize (or rescind) it - for the starting position is that one is not allowed to leave the unit at all without permission.

If the staff have not been told that a person is granted ground leave, but he or she still goes for a walk, he or she is considered to be absent without leave (is this the Army ?) and can be brought back by force – if it were a longer walk, it might be interpreted as trying to abscond (is this HM Prison ?), and the police could seek out him or her and oblige his or her return.

And - cynically speaking - the unit is easier to manage, and there is less work and documentation, if patients are not, as they should be, encouraged to exercise and be physically active : RCs do not need to grant permissions that have to be checked, and it is easier to carry out the regular head-count (is this Colditz ?)


5. To have family or friends visit outside visiting hours in the first two weeks of the admission

This, too, might sound reasonable, but it is not a right that is given by falling under the Act (although the Code of Practice may have something to say about what is good practice) :

If the NHS Trust, or the manager of the unit, makes such a facility available, all well and good. (Likewise, the visiting hours themselves are determined at that level.)


6. To drive, as long as one’s partner is present

The Mental Health Act is silent about this (and it could be just as relevant to someone not detained under it, an informal patient).

Unfortunately, all too often, consultant and other staff are also silent, failing to ask themselves – by enquiring of the patient and / or his or her family whether he or she drives – whether the patient’s family realizes that his or her diagnosed (or suspected) mental-health condition needs to be reported to the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority), and that it is appropriate to recommend to them whether he or she should be allowed to drive.

The DVLA then contacts the consultant for medical evidence, and makes a decision about maintaining, limiting, or revoking the driving licence, based on the diagnosis and what the consultant reports.


7. To go home on overnight leave at least once per week

Leave is sometimes called section 17 leave, because that is the section of the Act under which the Responsible Clinician** (RC) can choose to grant it. That will be a clinical decision, and, since RCs are cautious beasts (as they are still largely consultant psychiatrists), granting leave is never going to be tied to how long the patient has been admitted :

Not least on the common assumption that, if in doubt, it is better for the patient to be on the unit, rather than on leave at home (even if that is 'the least restrictive' option - and a noisy ward, with other patients who are 'high', may not do someone much good who is very depressed).

However, in practice, there will be a correlation between the length of the admission and the length and frequency of leave granted, if the patient is considered to be ‘getting better’ : so, patients can be directed to the fact that leave is being given more often, and for longer, if questioning what the consultant thinks of his or her state of mind.


8. To vote in local and national elections

One can find a summary of the position, under the sub-heading ‘Patients in psychiatric hospitals’, on Citizens’ Advice’s Advice Guide web-site.

As to the law, Acts of Parliament other than the Mental Health Act 1983 have legislated on this topic. Most recently, section 73 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 has taken the trouble to abolish the so-called common-law rules about ‘mental state’ and ‘incapacity’ (s. 73(1)).

Also, the Representation of the People Act 2000 amended the 1983 Act of that name, to specify that, if registered to vote, there is a right to vote. Practically, though, one would not only have to get to a polling-station in one’s registered constituency, but also not be ‘subject to any legal incapacity to vote’ (s. 1(1)(b) of the 1983 Act (as amended)) : practically, then, staff on the psychiatric unit will not let one’s family take one to vote, if one has been determined to lack capacity.


9. To choose to be treated, on the NHS, by another psychiatrist who is employed by the same NHS Trust

If one credited that provisions in the Health and Social Care Act 2012 signified anything, such as the duty (under section 4) on the Secretary of State for Health to ‘have regard to the need to reduce inequalities between the people of England with respect to the benefits that they can obtain from the health service’, one might believe in a right to a second opinion, or even a choice of practitioner.

Or one can read NHS England’s web-site for what it similarly has to say about the much-vaunted principle of parity of esteem (under the 2012 Act), but one will probably search more successfully for a chimæra than in the 1983 Act for the right to choose who has oversight of one’s psychiatric care…


10. To specify that one would never, whatever the consequence, wish to have ECT

Yes, one has the right to make an advanced directive to this effect (as section 58A, sub-section (5), of the Act acknowledges (s. 58A(5)).

That said (and, again, despite that so-called parity of esteem, as discussed in answering Q9), one has less comfort in this than one might think, for, as Stephen Weatherhead (@SteWeatherhead) and The Agent (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) have suggested, the Act also stipulates (in s. 62(1), in the cases specified by paragraphs (a) and (b)) that the directive sometimes does not even signify :

For section 62(1A) says ‘Section 58A above, in so far as it relates to electro-convulsive therapy by virtue of subsection (1)(a) of that section, shall not apply to any treatment which falls within paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (1) above’ :

Which means, as those paragraphs tell us, treatment ‘which is immediately necessary to save the patient’s life’ (para. (a)), or ‘which (not being irreversible) is immediately necessary to prevent a serious deterioration of his condition' (para. (b))…


11. To see a mental health advocate about any matter of concern

Under section 130A of the Act, the role of Independent Mental Health Advocates (IHMAs) was established (as inserted by the Mental Health Act 2007), and there is national provision for IMHAs (and their establishment and regulation).

Prior to the 2007 Act, but not in name, IMHAs already operated in some places, because advocacy services were already funded : they had protocols and agreements with psychiatric units that allowed these proto-IMHAs to see patients on units, and, because it was not IMHA, they were not limited (as IMHA requires) to addressing rights and concerns arising under the 1983 Act.

To answer the question, then, whether one has a right to see an advocate about ‘any matter of concern’, e.g. whether one can be dismissed for having been sectioned, depends on whether IMHA and general advocacy have been funded in one's locality. Only if so, and then not wholly because of the Act, could a patient raise any concern with an advocate.


12. To spend at least two hours per week, as a total duration, in conversation with one’s primary nurse

By now, the overall pattern may have emerged, so one may not be surprised that the Act would not require this amount of contact-time.

Which is not to say, whether or not directed to do so by a Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), an NHS Trust could not have made that promise, or a manager of a unit made that part of its operational rules…


Those are The Agent's Answers (as at 11 October (updated 15 October))

It may be open to question whether any rights that are talked about were actually given by the Mental Health Act, or exist despite someone's being detained under one of its sections - the most common mistake of which there was already evidence is to believe that section 2 differs from section 3 regarding treatment under compulsion.

Probably the closest that we come is, with Q8, the changes that finally allowed someone to vote when on section 2 (whereas those in hospital because of the Act's criminal provisions are treated along with this government's attitude towards the prison population, hated for seeking to invoke the right to vote as a Human Right), provided that the person is not determined to lack capacity, though (as in Q10) there is this rather empty victory of advanced directives being acknowledged, but not always being binding (which feels as though one hand gives, the other takes away again)...

However, it was generally intended to challenge with these questions : the fact that, almost certainly, none of them embodied what one could call an absolute, unequivocal right for a detained patient.



End-notes

* Scotland has its own Mental Health Act, so this is only applicable to the law of England & Wales.

** Prior to 2007, this person was the RMO, or Responsible Medical Officer : most RCs are still psychiatrists, however, although the intention of the Mental Health Act 2007 was to widen eligibility for the role.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

A quiz for World Mental Health Day : The British* Patient

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 October

The British* Patient

Inspired by rewatching The English Patient (1997) earlier in the week, here is a quiz for World Mental Health Day (#WMHD2014 on 10 October) about patients’ rights...


Which of the following are rights of a patient in a psychiatric unit (in England & Wales*) when detained under section 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (as amended), headed ‘admission for assessment’ ? :


1. To be placed in a unit within 25 miles of home

2. To see a psychiatrist within 3 hours if distressed

3. Not to take medication, if offered twice already and refused

4. To take a walk in the ground for up to an hour, if the staff are told first

5. To have family or friends visit outside visiting hours in the first two weeks of the admission

6. To drive, as long as one’s partner is present

7. To go home on overnight leave at least once per week

8. To vote in local and national elections

9. To choose to be treated, on the NHS, by another psychiatrist who is employed by the same Trust

10. To specify that would never, whatever the consequence, wish to have ECT

11. To see a mental health advocate about any matter of concern

12. To spend at least two hours per week, in total, in conversation with one’s primary nurse




Answers, as at 11 October, are here...






End-notes

* Scotland has its own Mental Health Act, so this is only applicable to the law of England & Wales.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)