Music and Politics

During my lifetime, I have listened to many, many conductors, violinists, singers and pianists. I have always judged them, I hope, on their prowess as conductors, violinists, singers, or pianists. In my early teens, in my school library during the 1950s, I read a book on music by someone called “Bacharach”. Even at an early age I was scandalised that he denigrated Wilhelm Furtwängler -- because he had stayed and worked in Nazi Germany -- and eulogised Arturo Toscanini who had left Italy and found lucrative employment in America (from which he never returned except for visits, despite the fall of fascist Italy in 1944). History has decided the respective merits of Furtwängler and Toscanini. What did Mr Bacharach's evaluation have to do with the respective conducting merits of the German and the Italian?

Music is an art form -- along with painting and ballet -- that transcends frontiers of language, nationality, culture, politics, race and religion. I therefore still -- after over 60 years -- become irate when composers, musicians or artists are pilloried because of their race, religion, politics, or nationality. It still goes on, 60 years later viz the “sage” Norman Lebrecht lambasting the highly talented Russian conductor Valery Gergiev as “Putin's henchman”. Herr Lebrecht may not like Gergiev's conducting (but, usually, I do). But what do Gergiev's politics have to do with his conducting of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique?

César Franck, and Arabella Steinbacher

César Franck's Sonata in A major for violin was written in 1886 as a birthday present for Eugène Ysaÿe. It is a very popular work with violinists and audiences, and genial in nature (as befits a birthday present). Although written during the period when Wagner was all the rage in the musical world, the sonata was written by a Franco-Belgian for a Franco-Belgian, and given its première in Paris in 1886. This should provide a clue as to its character and the way it should be played; the Franco-Belgian school was renowned for elegance rather than brutal power.

I have on my shelves 59 different recordings of the work, starting from 1923 where Cortot and Thibaud give probably the best recording ever of the work, albeit in pre-electric sound. The pair re-recorded the work in 1929; inevitably in far better sound, though the performance lacks a little of the freshness of the original version. Subsequently the sonata became a favourite of Jascha Heifetz, and of Leonid Kogan; the most recent recording I possess is an excellent one by Alina Ibragimova, with Cédric Tiberghien.

In my younger years, I used to play the sonata on both violin, and viola – the work is not technically difficult, for the violinist. Pretty well every violinist one can think of has recorded it over the years, with the many successful performances coming from violinists from the Franco-Belgian school; it does not take too well to the Russian tank style of violin playing. Yesterday I picked from my shelves a 2012 recording by Arabella Steinbacher, with Robert Kulek. Ms Steinbacher is an elegant player, with a lovely sound and an exemplary technique. She does not often feature in any list of the top 10 violinists around today but, as I have remarked frequently, fame is no guarantee of quality, and vice versa. Fame is often more a tribute to a pushy promotion manager. Arabella records for Pentatone and for Orfeo and her recordings are usually a sure choice if you are looking for something beautifully played and recorded. I basked in her playing of the Franck sonata.

Vilde Frang, Ning Feng, and Recording Engineers

I listened off-air to two violin concertos played by the younger generation of violinists: Ning Feng played the Sibelius (with the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Simone Young) and Vilde Frang played the Elgar, with the San Francisco symphony orchestra conducted by Krzysztof Urbanski. Both violinists gave totally admirable performances, with Frang getting a special mention for maintaining the tempos and not lingering in what is admittedly a somewhat over-long concerto (50 minutes). These performances by both young violinists are up there with the best.

What was not up with the best were the performances by the respective British and American recording engineers, particularly sad in the case of the BBC that used to have a great deal of expertise in this area. This new generation of Anglo-American engineers has been brought up on the terminology of popular or entertainment music, where the “star” is spotlit, whilst the “backing group” is relegated to the background. Adjust your volume to listen comfortably to Feng or Frang, and the orchestras recede to Studio B somewhere nearby. Adjust your volume to listen to the orchestras, and the violinists will knock you out of your socks. I find increasingly that to get a realistic balance, one needs to look to recording engineers in Germany, Holland or Scandiavia, where the tradition of Tonmeister appears to live on, and where recording engineers have actually experienced going to symphony concerts and listening to concertos where the soloist emerges from the orchestral sound, rather than dominates it. If anything, the BBC engineers here are worse, since they continually tweak the sound and balance during the performance, so occasionally you get a giant clarinet and a normal violin, then an enormous violin and a distant orchestral string section.

By coincidence, I followed this up with listening to the ever-talented Arabella Steinbacher playing Shostakovich's second violin concerto, where Shostakovich, Steinbacher, Nelsons (the conductor) and Orfeo (the Munich-based recording company) all illustrate just how to record a solo violin well integrated with the sound of a symphony orchestra. There: it can be done.

In Praise of Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich

Growing up during the 1940s and 50s in a musical family, music has always been a special love for me. Right from the start, however, I was never greatly enamoured of “showbiz” music: music that was written to appeal to the People, the Grand Duke, the Emperor, the People's Committee for Correct Music, or whatever. Over the decades my interest in symphonies and operas has waned, whilst my love of chamber music has grown. I love many piano sonatas, many sonatas for violin and piano, many trios. And many string quartets.

String quartets are a special area of affection. Into this almost-ideal medium, many composers have poured out their real feelings for music, away from “showbiz” aspects. Thus I really enjoy, more and more, the string quartets of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert ... and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Shostakovich did not inhabit an ideal environment for a composer of classical music. His chamber music -- and above all his fifteen string quartets -- pours out the depressive-manic reflection of his character, his life, and his environment. Jolly themes become more and more jolly, until they morph into the fixed grimace of a clown. Happy Dmitri plunges from exuberance to deepest gloom within a few bars. It is all thoroughly Russian, and I have a special place in my heart and my emotions for the music of Shostakovich. For me, Russian music is at its most “authentic” (to use a current fashion-phrase) when played by Russians, so I am greatly enjoying Shostakovich's 4^th, 6^th and 8^th string quartets played by the St Petersburg String Quartet, and recorded in St Petersburg in 1999. This is music that connects directly with me, in a way that the string quartets of contemporary composers such as Benjamin Britten or Béla Bartok never can, however admirable they may be on paper.

Shostakovich wrote 15 string quartets (and 15 symphonies). I cannot claim to know the quartets and symphonies intimately, since I came to them relatively late in life. However, like the two violin concertos (that I do know well) and the sonatas for, respectively, violin, viola and cello, I sense that Shostakovich 1-10 is somehow more engaged and passionate, than Shostakovich 11-15. Late Shostakovich is even bleaker than early Shostakovich. The music is often sotto voce, with the occasional anguished howl of rage, or despair. Many of the works end pianissimo, eschewing the traditional grand ending leading to thunderous applause. The long held, pianissimo ending of the third quartet (opus 73, in F major) seems to go on for hours before finally dying. I love it, I am a fully paid-up member of the Shostakovich fan club.

The Music World circa 2019

In the early 1950s, my family in the south of England was visited by two Aunts from The North (my father had seven sisters, and five brothers). The aunts were happy to hear that their young nephew liked music, as did they. They asked me to play something I liked, and I put on my current amour -- Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert songs. They listened intently and then, at the end, one of them said: “Eh, he sings very well ... for a foreigner”.

On my return from a couple of weeks in Vietnam a few days ago, I listened to Tianwa Yang playing Brahms. On a whim, I followed this up with Ning Feng playing Bach. And, this evening, it was Xiayin Wang playing Rachmaninov. I wonder what my Aunts from The North would have made of all of that. Before listening to Xiayin Wang, I consumed with pleasure my master dish: a Thai soup Tom Yum, with assorted fish. In 2019, we live in a different world (even in Brexit Britain).