Writing and thinking

 

I’m off, writing stuff longer than postcards for a while.

Toodle pip.

 

(BTW I just passed 600 blogposts. Phew.)

Complacency and the Death of Phil Hughes

The complacent response of the media to the death of Australian batsman Phil Hughes, not least from the BBC’s Jonathan Agnew, is perhaps to be expected. “It’s all part of the game,” seems to be the most common reaction.

The felling of Hughes in Sydney by a fast, rising ball highlights the appalling design deficiencies of protective helmets.

I was there in 2002 at the WACA in Perth when England’s Alex Tudor was poleaxed by a 90mph delivery from Brett Lee. It was sickening. Poor Tudor was never the same again.

That one went through the front of the visor, whereas the Hughes blow struck him on the completely unprotected back of the head. Both injuries happen not frequently, but on a pretty regular basis.

It seems that helmet manufacturers are more concerned with turning out a product that looks cool than with real effectiveness. Perhaps the death of Hughes will prompt the cricketing authorities and those manufacturers into producing something that’s actually fit for purpose.

What Charles means is…

Stimulated by some photographs of the early days of Saatchi & Saatchi, the first meeting of the Garland-Compton board with them after the ‘merger’ in 1974 came back to me.

At the head of the table at 80 Charlotte Street was Charles Saatchi. On his right brother Maurice and on his left Tim Bell.

It fell to Charles to speak to us. He mumbled for five minutes or so. I don’t recall anything that he said – I’m not sure that I could decipher a word of it. Not his thing at all.

Silence fell over the room. What had we got into? This seemed like a visit from Cosa Nostra.

Then Tim spoke up.

‘What Charles means is that Saatchi’s is the fastest growing, most creative advertising agency in Britain. And our intention, together with you guys, is to become the biggest, most creative agency on the planet.’

Oh, well that’s all right. And that’s what happened.

 

Immigration and UKIP

Dennis Skinner, the Beast of Bolsovcr, says it like it is about immigration and UKIP:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30141159

Never thought the day would come when I'd be cheering him on.

Trolls ‘R’ Us

 

Confronted by the latest trolling scandal, Sophie said to me: ‘Of course, we just used to shout at the radio or the tellie when people said things that annoyed us.’

 

And it’s true that the situation has been transformed by the availability via social media of direct access to the targets.

 

So, while threatening dire retribution on some public figure is horrible in all circumstances, at least in our own lounge rooms no one else is affected (aside from our own immediate family, who know already what loud-mouthed bigots we are).

 

Getting to Yes in Europe

David Cameron talks about reforming the European Union and getting a better deal for Britain. But it seems that his only negotiating skill on view is to use “strong-arm” tactics ‒ grandstanding, making unilateral demands and threats ‒ and then to appear surprised that other countries are failing to fall into line.

If he were to make any progress at all, on any of the issues that matter, he would have to build alliances founded on mutual interest and mutual trust. This could only be achieved behind closed doors, not in open session. In reality, he seems to have no friends in Europe at all and minimal leverage.

The fact that he seems either unwilling or unable to build these alliances suggests that his real agenda is to create a situation where Britain’s exit from Europe is inevitable.

If this is not the case, perhaps a basic course in negotiating skills would be appropriate. I’d suggest starting with a close reading of Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes*.

*Getting to Yes: Negotiating an Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William Ury

White Horse – Number 1

I wrote about the new management of our local pub in King’s Sutton (or gastro-pub I should say), the White Horse, not so long after they moved in and transformed the place – food, drink, service, value, ambience etc.

I walk past just about every day, and we go in to eat there with pleasure on a fairly regular basis, so it’s become clear that business has steadily grown under the watchful eye of front-of-house Julie and chef Hendrik.

What I hadn’t realised is that they are already Number 1 on Tripadvisor out of no less than 147 eateries in the Banbury area. What a gift for our lovely country village.

Slooshying Schubert

Richard Sykes writes to me in response to my question (following the Schubert Project at the Oxford Lieder Festival):  "Where were all the students in this great city of learning...?"

Roger, have you read A Clockwork Orange? Alex, reformed by the drugs and aversion therapy to which he is subjected, finds that his musical tastes have changed:

"It was like something soft getting into me and I could not pony why. What I wanted these days I did not know. Even the music I liked to slooshy in my own malenky den was what I would have smecked at before, brothers. I was slooshying more like romantic songs, what they call Lieder, just a goloss and a piano, very quiet and like yearny, different from when it had been all bolshy orchestras and me lying on the bed between the violins and the trombones and kettledrums. There was something happening inside me, and I wondered if it was like some disease or if it was what they had done to me that time upsetting my gulliver and perhaps going to make me real bezoomy."

I rather suspect that this is Burgess reflecting on his own experience of evolving musical tastes and the ways in which we experience some musical revelations only as we age. Certainly that was my experience with Lieder. As an Oxford undergraduate I loved "classical" music, and attended concerts in the city. But I would not have seriously considered attending a Lieder recital. Now, in my late 40s, something has happened inside me, few things give me more pleasure, and I love to slooshy Lieder in my own malenky den and in Oxford's malenky concert hall too. In years to come, I'm sure some of those students will, too.

So good to be reminded of the extraordinary polymathic Anthony Burgess, who regarded himself as both composer and writer, although his compositions have rarely been given airtime.

I came to lieder rather earlier than Richard Sykes – in my early twenties ‒ but if I’d been a student in Oxford before connecting with the genre, I’d have missed out too.

My own epiphany came when I bought Saga’s 1966 recording of Janet Baker singing Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. Still essential listening. Here she is with pianist Martin Isepp in Schubert’s ‘Der Musensohn’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSbNiy5aoxY 

 

 

The Last of Schubert

To the final concert of the Oxford Lieder Festival. My ninth in the series ‒ a mere sampling of the 109 events on offer over the past three weeks.

It’s been a magnificent achievement, including all of Schubert’s 650-odd songs ‒ the first time this has been done in Britain. And not just concerts, but also masterclasses, family events, study days, lecture-recitals, socials and so on.  

It has been the brainchild of the excellent accompanist Sholto Kynoch, who recruited the finest singers and pianists, old and young, organised the whole thing into brilliantly-conceived programmes, recruited a band of cheerful helpers, performed personally in many of the events, and was around meeting and greeting throughout. What a stunning achievement.

My own special memories?

The young Swiss baritone baritone Manuel Walser singing Schlegel settings and the even-younger Slovenian soprano Nika Gorič singing Schlechta; the Swedish mezzo Maria Forsström singing Schiller; Schubert’s Octet, brilliantly played by the Principals of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; from the older generation, Sir Thomas Allen singing Winterreise and the great Dutch bass Robert Holl singing Mayrhofer settings.

And, in the final concert yesterday, the seventy-something year old Sarah Walker, melting hearts with a superb all-female chorus in one of Schubert’s Serenades, and the last thoughts of Schubert in the Heine settings from Schwanengesang, sung with profound stillness by Jonathan Lemalu (above). Lastly the intimate playing of clarinettist Mark van de Wiel in “The Shepherd on the Rock”.

But… where were all the students in this great city of learning? Just a fiver for them on the door. Conspicuous by their absence.

How's your German?

 

I am currently steeped in German Romantic poetry – in particular Schiller, Schulze, Mayrhofer, Hölty, Heine, Müller and the Schlegel brothers ‒ preparing for concerts in Oxford filled with Schubert’s settings of their work.

 

This brought to mind one of those forks in the road that confront us from time to time. I was working very happily for Garland-Compton in its pre-Saatchi days, running our biggest client, Rowntree.

 

They had recently taken over a leading competitor, Mackintosh’s, and the brilliant, glamorous young Tony Mackintosh had become leader of their merged European division.

 

Tony would sweep into our offices in Charlotte Street, brought there in his black-chauffeur-driven white limo, a vision, all blue jeans and fur coat. The latter he would hand immediately to our receptionist, she on the verge of meltdown, and ask for me.

 

It was all very 1969.

 

In due course, Tony summoned me to his offices – not in Halifax or Norwich or York, where the major factories and offices were (and are), but in a fine Georgian house in Park Lane, Mayfair. There he invited me to leave the agency and join his team in a senior marketing role. I was flattered, of course, but turned him down ‒ graciously, I hope.

 

At one point in the meeting, we discussed European languages. The plain fact is that, although I have some words and phrases in most of them, I am reasonably fluent only in English.

 

“How's your German?” he asked.

 

“Well, I’m familiar with a good deal of Romantic poetry,” I said, “but I’m not sure that the vocabulary would be very useful in marketing meetings.”

 

Here’s a sample, useful in recent days in Oxford: Abendstern (evening star); Einsamkeit (solitude); Abschied (farewell); Klage (lament); Weinen (tears); Heimweh (homesickness); Sehnsucht (longing); Erwartung (anticipation)…

Hurdy-gurdy man in Oxford

To Oxford again, latest in the Schubert lieder recitals. This time it was the wonderful baritone, Sir Thomas Allen, singing the great song cycle, Die Winterreise – the Winter’s Journey.

Schubert set this tragic series of poems by his contemporary, Wilhelm Müller. Although the composer admired Müller’s work immensely, he only set one of his poems as a single song, ‘Der Hirt auf dem Felsen’, the Shepherd on the Rock. But he set two long series by the poet which together established the song-cycle as a major form within music – Die Schöne Müllerin and Die Winterreisse.

Curiously, although I’ve known the Winter's Journey intimately from recordings over several decades, it was the first time I’d heard it in the flesh. And what an ideal introduction this was by Thomas Allen. He brings a lifetime of experience to it, not just of singing and acting, but also of life itself.

The journey starts with a young man, disappointed in love, and ends with him observing an aged street musician, an organ-grinder:

There behind the village,
stands a hurdy-gurdy man,
with stiff fingers,
he plays as best he can.

Barefoot on the ice,
he staggers to and fro,
and his little plate
remains empty for ever.

No one wants to hear him,
no one looks at him,
and the dogs are growling
around the old man.

And he lets everything go on

as it will;
he turns, and his hurdy-gurdy
never stands still.

Strange old man,
shall I go with you?
Will you turn your hurdy-gurdy
to my songs?

Hyperventilating with Lord Carrington

Everyone associates Saatchi & Saatchi with Mrs Thatcher and the Conservative Party, but in fact Garland Compton, in the days before it became Saatchis, pitched and won the business in the run-up to one or other of the previous 1974 elections. Both were effectively won by Labour, so it’s not surprising that there’s no residual memory.

But I recall the pitch. It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. The great and good of the party, led by the terrifying Lord Carrington, were lined up in front of me, waiting for my words of wisdom. I hyperventilated, scarcely able to get a word out.

How on earth did we win the work? I've no idea.

Afterwards, I told one or two people what had happened to me and got consistent advice, best summed up as: ‘You’d probably be better off not doing presentations. Stick to what you’re good at, whatever that is.’

Of course, that made me determined to get better at presenting – and at dealing with my nerves in such scary situations.

Leaving Saatchi

The recent serialisation of Lord Tim Bell’s memoirs in the Daily Mail with its exposé of the ‘backstabbing, booze and screaming rows’*, put me in mind of the difficult time I had had in leaving the firm.

At thirty-one, I’d come to the conclusion that, to get experience as a CEO in the advertising business, I needed to leave Saatchi and Saatchi, the hottest agency on the planet at that time.

I had found another, smaller, agency that was looking for someone to succeed the dashing Rupert Chetwynd as MD. And they wanted me to do that.

Back at Saatchi, I was quite surprised, when I told Tim Bell of my plans, that he didn’t follow my reasoning at all. In fact they wanted me to stay. And so I found myself in the presence of the legendary Charles Saatchi.

What would it take to keep me at Saatchi’s? The offers came thick and fast. Salary increases, trains, boats, planes. Anything you like. Oh, and by the way we’d like you to be managing director.

The problem with that offer was that the agency already had a whole raft of people called chairmen, deputy chairmen, managing directors, deputy MDs and so on. I couldn’t see that becoming MD would have any reality to it. So I declined his kind offer as graciously as I could.

As I was leaving his office, Charles stopped me: “I’d just like to say one thing to you… It won’t be as easy out there.”

How right he was. In those days, winning business at Saatchi’s was a walk in the park.

But how was I to know that?

*http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2777199/The-Saatchis-Mad-Men-look-tame-Screaming-rows-Dirty-tricks-Backstabbing-booze-galore-Just-ordinary-day-surreal-world-ad-land-s-controversial-brothers-LORD-BELL.html

 

Wikipedia and Misia

 

Academics the world over remain sniffy about Wikipedia. Yet it is undoubtedly one of the greatest and most valuable triumphs of the internet.

What prompted this thought was a rekindling of interest in the extraordinary life of Misia Sert. Born in 1872, she was a pianist (her teacher Gabriel Fauré), who married three times. She was a close friend of the impresario Diaghilev and became the cultural arbiter in Paris for several decades.

Proust enshrined her in two ways in his In Search of Lost Time: as Princess Yourbeletieff (sponsor of the Ballets Russes) and as the gruesome Madame Verdurin.

All this one can learn from the Wikipedia entry on Misia, which I note has doubled in length and acquired a dozen footnotes since I last googled it.

Ah well. Academia has been known to give the impression of catching up with the rest of the world – sometimes at a distance of twenty years or so…

Schubert in Oxford

 

How blessed we are, to live near Oxford. Smaller than London, Paris or New York, but nevertheless with so much going on.

This month the city hosts a three-week festival – all the songs of Schubert. Over 650 of them.

It’s an amazing feat, the brainchild of pianist-impresario Sholto Kynoch, who has organised (and performed in) his Oxford Lieder Festival since its inception. Most of the events are at Holywell – not a ‘concert hall’, but an intimate ‘music room’ with ideal acoustics. Opened in 1748, is it the oldest public music venue in the world?  

And the performers this year – a dazzling array of the finest singers of German song, including Sir Thomas Allen, Wolfgang Holzmair, Sarah Connolly, Angelika Kirschlager, Ian Bostridge, Robert Holl and so many more. Plus the finest pianist-accompanists.  

I caught up with it at lunchtime yesterday – a recital of Schubert’s songs to poems by the brothers Schlegel. I was looking forward to the soprano Kate Royal, who was wonderful, as expected, but the revelation was the young Swiss baritone Manuel Walser (above), a pupil of Thomas Quasthoff. What an artist!

Was this his debut in Britain? It seems so. Such a future he has before him.

And I have tickets for several more concerts in the series. Hurrah!  

Things that just ain’t so

 

One of the most popular consultant visuals is the one that divides the topic in hand into things we know we know, things we know we don’t know, things we don’t know we know, and things we don’t know we don’t know. It’s a useful diagnostic tool.

Of course, there’s another category, not captured by the graph, but neatly expressed by the American cowboy Will Rogers (or was it wise Mark Twain?):

It's not the things you don't know what gets you into trouble. It's the things you do know that just ain't so.

Learning from history

 

Some quotes we seem condemned to repeat.

I’m thinking of course of George Santayana’s most famous line ‒ from his 1905 book Reason in Common Sense:

 

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

But hold on. Wasn’t that one of Churchill’s? Or was it John Buchan?

Actually, it was the Dublin-born philosopher Edmund Burke in the 18^th century who wrote:

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.

We happy few in Birmingham

 

To Symphony Hall in Birmingham for the Australian Chamber Orchestra on tour. Perfect programme, brilliantly played.

What could be more delicious than this: one of Haydn’s most scintillating symphonies, the 'Hen', written for Paris; Mozart at his most profound, his last piano concerto, beautifully played by Steven Osborne; a brand new work by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, post-Pendereckian, wonderfully atmospheric in that hall, and with the composer on stage with the band playing an amplified sitar; and Tchaikovsky at his most joyfully ecstatic, his Souvenir de Florence.

The ACO really isn’t just another chamber orchestra. They are world-class and have a very distinct character ‒ energetic yet soulful, standing to play, swaying, absolute unity, all in black. Tremendous audience reaction.

So what’s the problem? The hall was maximum 15% occupied. Maybe less. Acres of empty space.

Had the Symphony Hall marketing and publicity people gone on strike?

Not sunk in yet…

 

That’s golfer Jamie Donaldson’s response to having played the final winning shot for the European team at the Ryder Cup on Sunday.

‘It’s not sunk in yet…’

 

That’s what sportsmen and women say when they achieve some important milestone. All of them. It’s become the standard cliché. And usually in answer to the same question, ‘How does it feel…?’

But what does it really mean?

‘I’ve been working very hard and don’t know how to access my feelings at this point’?

‘I don’t have any feelings now, but I might later’?
‘That’s such a stock question, so here’s a stock answer’?

When they say it, I always wonder how it will be different when it has finally ‘sunk in’, and how they might recognise that that moment has arrived..

When it finally has 'sunk in', is the feeling usually better or worse than in the immediate aftermath? I suppose the expectation is that it will be better, but, for example with silver medal winners, research shows that it’s worse – and probably, sadly, from the outset.

How do I feel about this blogpost, now that it’s written? It’s not…  

 

Why so many Great Aussie Singers?

 

Last Tuesday Tony Locantro and I did a joint talk to the Recorded Vocal Art Society in London entitled ‘More Australian Singers on Record’.

‘More’ because this was Tony’s second go with them – he had previously done the premier division Aussie singers (Nellie Melba, Frances Alda, Florence Austral, Peter Dawson, Joan Hammond, Joan Sutherland and so on).

This time around we featured a new range of singers, many of them just as good as the first lot, but who had been substantially forgotten (including the first recording of a female singer in Britain, Syria Lamonte in 1898, the popular radio baritone Clem Williams, and two discs which may well be unique: one of Australia’s most successful composers, Alfred Hill, singing his own most famous song, ‘Waiata Poi’, and the great baritone, Harold Williams, in a rousing Cobb and Co song, ‘Old John Bax’).

As is usual on such occasions, I was asked why it is that Australia has produced such an amazing and continuous line-up of terrific vocalists. And, as usual, I responded, ‘Well, I don’t really know.’

Is it because there was not so much to do by way of entertainment before the advent of television, so that people had to make their own? Although the population was quite small, Australia had the highest per capita ownership of pianos in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Is that a relevant factor? Did singing become compellingly fashionable as a social asset? Was vocal skill seen as a way of escaping from poverty? Is the climate in some way relevant?

Did the extraordinary success of Nellie Melba provide a major sustaining role-model? Or was it perhaps connected with the vowel sounds produced by Australians and the resulting embouchure? That was the theory of the great teacher of so many successful young Australian singers in Paris, Mathilde Marchesi. Maybe all of these were factors in the rise of outstanding singers over a century and more.

When our set of four CDs, ‘From Melba to Sutherland’, is published in a few months’ time, you’ll be able to answer that question for yourselves!