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?

Birmingham vs Paris: the bottom line

 

My colleague David Walker had been working in both Birmingham and Paris. He spends a lot of his life at airports.

 

‘Paris is so elegant,’ he told me, ‘but the people – so rude.’

 

‘How about Birmingham?’ I asked him.

 

‘Well, it’s completely the opposite,’ he said. ‘The Brummies ‒ so warm and friendly. A delight. But the place itself – nothing to write home about.’

 

‘Here’s an idea,’ I proposed: ‘What if we were to switch the populations over?’

 

‘Oh, God no. Those Brummies in Paris? They’d immediately start double-glazing everything and building conservatory extensions.’

Smokers and lepers

In a somewhat hidden space at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, a video is playing called Bann. It is the work of German artist Nina Könnemann and it features workers in the City of London smoking.

Elegantly dressed, they skulk in shadows and alleyways at the foot of the shiny high-rise office blocks they actually work in.

Watching the video brought to mind a comment I once heard in a focus group in Sydney: “We smokers… we are treated worse than lepers.”

Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump

I used to take friends and colleagues to lunch at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain). The food was good.

But the real reason that I went there was to see this painting, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, by Joseph Wright of Derby. He painted it in 1768.

In it, candlelit, a scientist with wild grey hair, an image that was to become the very archetype, shows to a group of family and friends the effects on a fluttering, panic-stricken white cockatoo of using an air-pump to create a vacuum.   

Will the bird live? The children are frightened – reassured by their father(?). The boy on the left is absorbed in the experiment, but the young couple (extreme left) are fascinated only by each other. Is the seated pensive grey-haired man (extreme right) a second image of the scientist? 

Through the window (top right) we see a full moon. This has been interpreted as a reference to the Lunar Society, a group of men in the English Midlands (centred on Birmingham) engaged in exploring the practical potentialities of science.

They were friends of Joseph Wright and would together be a major catalyst for the Industrial Revolution – among them the pioneering manufacturer Matthew Boulton, Scottish engineer and inventor of the steam engine James Watt, the great potter Josiah Wedgwood and Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles. Another member was Joseph Priestley, who discovered oxygen just a few years after Wright painted this picture.

By the way, the painting has now returned to its proper home, the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.

The Importance of Being Plausible

Walking the canals in Birmingham (more there than in Venice, don’t you know) with friends from Sydney, I was asked by one of them who had invented the vitally important system of locks.

I had no idea. “Don’t think it was the Romans,” was all I could offer.

So I decided to approach the skipper of a passing narrow-boat. He and his crew at that moment had just negotiated their way through another lock (more than in Venice, we can be sure). He looked to me very much the expert, cap set at jaunty angle.

Not fazed at all by my approach, he gave us a rather comprehensive answer. The Chinese were involved, of course. The Babylonians. The Dutch (very flat, Holland). And something about Robert Barron in England, who had invented the “double-acting tumbler lock” in 1778.

I was impressed and said so to our helpful informant, adding: “At least, it all sounded very plausible to me – and plausibility is very important, you know.”

My little jest did not result in any smiles from Mr Jaunty Cap. In fact he gave me a rather odd look.

As we walked away, my wife Sophie said to me: “You do know who that was?”

“No idea,” I responded. “Who?”

“That was David Suchet." Only one of our finest (and most plausible) actors. And a passionate supporter of our canals.

Revisiting Tom Stoppard’s Travesties

I went on a double pilgrimage yesterday.

First to see Tom Stoppard’s play, Travesties. It’s thirty seven years since I first saw it in its first run in London. Although many of its allusions passed me by then, I already knew that it was to be one of the finest works of twentieth century theatre.

Set in First World War Zurich, multi-layered and filled with reference from other works and worlds – Oscar Wilde, Dadaism, Lenin and Marxism, Shakespeare and James Joyce among them – nevertheless it communicated so clearly. And with such constant wit.

It was so wonderful to see it again. A play of great genius. Fine production and playing – rightly focused on the words.

I’ve been lucky enough to catch three Stoppard plays in recent times – The Real Inspector Hound, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (both at Chichester) and now Travesties. Hopefully I’ll see more soon.

The second purpose of my pilgrimage was to visit, for the first time, the Old Rep Theatre in Birmingham. My father used to speak of it, and of its founding director Barry Jackson, with great warmth.

The theatre was built in 1913 and for several decades Jackson presented there pioneering, ground-breaking productions of plays old and new, building a worldwide reputation. Perfect for Travesties, it’s a small theatre, seating just 464. I suppose that was just one of reasons why the Birmingham Rep company abandoned it in the 1970s. But I never warmed to their new venue.

Perhaps they should consider going home.

Inventing lawn tennis: a tale of two majors

With Wimbledon almost upon us, I’ve been thinking about who might have invented the game.

Like so many innovations, it seems to have emerged in two different places at much the same time.

On a croquet lawn in Birmingham, an Englishman, Major Harry Gem, and his Spanish friend, Augurio Perera, started playing a game that combined rackets with the Basque game, pelota. In 1872 they founded the first tennis club at Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

And in 1874 Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, a Welshman, invented a game with similar characteristics that he called “sphairistike” – from the Greek meaning skill at playing ball. He actually patented the net.

Why is it that inventions and discoveries so often appear in parallel?