What's in a name?

Karita Mattila's new home workout DVD – now available from stores across the country! Weight loss on Mattila's four-point plan guaranteed – or your money back!

Joking aside, though I haven't listened to it, I'm sure this is an excellent disc. Kaija Saariaho's Quatre instants were written for Mattila and she has championed them ever since (unlike many performers who commission works, perform them once or twice, then conveniently forget about them). Given her acclaimed performances in the operas of Leoš Janáček, I imagine her voice is well suited to the music of Dvořák and Rachmaninov. Silly cover art for what is probably an excellent release.

Coming up with suitable cover art presents a wealth of challenges. The choir I sing with is about to release a CD of contemporary choral music, but what to put on the cover is an sensitive issue and can have a very real effect on what people buy and what they don't. Like, I imagine, the majority of people, I'm a sucker for judging a book / bottle of wine / CD by its cover. How can we make this disc different from all the thousands of other discs of contemporary choral music? The cover art serves as a calling card for the product as a whole. What to name one's disc is another minefield. A friend is currently recording a disc of kannel music (what's a kannel, I hear you ask!) That, of course, is part of the problem. This is an instrument with few exponents, so the title of the disc must both enhance the mystique of the instrument, while making it seem accessible to a wider audience. Tricky.

Oh! My recording of Britten's Billy Budd has just arrived from Amazon! Odd cover art: a man (presumably Billy) tied to the helm of a ship, the whole image airbrushed into something that could be from a collection by Pierre & Gilles. Hmmm... a bit homoerotic. Great cast, though. I'll have to sign off now and listen to it immediately. Review to follow – watch this space!

My sentiments exactly, Mr Ravel!

I was lucky enough to get a ticket to Thursday's dress rehearsal of Kaija Saariaho's new opera Adriana Mater at the Finnish National Opera; the official première was last night. Having followed Saariaho's music for the last thirteen years, and having attended three performances of her previous opera L'amour de loin, there was really no question as to whether I was going to like this piece or not. Saariaho's music is captivating, agonisingly beautiful, at times visceral and violent, and Adriana Mater is no exception. For those with Finnish, here is Helsingin Sanomat's review.

The intricacies and subtleties of the music and staging require too much thought to post about right now, but perhaps I'll return to this subject at a later opportunity. I'm compelled to post regarding a conversation I had last night with K, who had just come from the première. K is himself a formidable and experienced musician, whose opinions I don't take lightly. For me, this fact makes his assessment of the opera all the more alarming. I described the opera as "häkellyttävä" (astounding, astonishing), to which K replied that that would certainly be an appropriate term. After I said that I had expected nothing less from Saariaho, it turned out that his comment was meant sarcastically. "How so?" I asked. "Well, for a start, it's badly written, badly orchestrated, and the orchestra doesn't get to play any melodies," he replied. For a moment, these comments rendered me speechless. Of course, people can disagree on the merits of any given piece of music, and I love a good argument as much as anyone, but in this instance, K's argumentation is, in my opinion, so fundamentally flawed that it has driven me to afford it deeper consideration.

Admittedly, I haven't examined the score very closely but, having a knowledge Saariaho's previous music, I think it's fair to say that melody is not and has never been a defining feature of her aesthetic. According to K, the players find the piece "boring". Do they feel cheated because they don't get to play grand melodies, I wonder. Perhaps more than concert music, isn't opera all about the audience, about the experience of listening to an orchestra while being visually stimulated by what is happening on the stage? Boring or not for the musicians, Adriana Mater is a highly successful piece of music theatre precisely because it engages the audience, which for me is a more relevant criterion by which to judge the music than whether the musicians enjoy playing it or not.

When I asked K to give an example of how the piece is "badly orchestrated", he mentioned a section in the clarinet part which requires a high c#4. "How can a player be expected to produce this note night after night?" he asked. A quick look on Google reveals fingering charts for all the notes up to d4. Agreed, these pitches are at the upper reaches of the clarinet's altissimo register, but you can't call something badly written just because it's difficult. If you claim to play the clarinet, you play the whole clarinet, not just the easy bits.

Performers are notorious for taking the path of least resistance when it comes to new music. Too often one hears performers claim that certain techniques are "impossible", when what they mean is that they are difficult, outside the boundaries of standard technique (agreed), the implication being that these techniques actually involve some practice. At a new music workshop a few years ago, the cellist who played my piece came up to me later in the evening and told me that I shouldn't write microtones because they're very hard to produce. Well, cry me a river! I replied by explaining that, as a string player, I know exactly how difficult (or not) it is to produce microtones on a string instrument. To give a more extreme example: Brian Ferneyhough's music is "difficult", but if you decide to perform it you then take on the responsibility of learning it properly. That this is a revelation to some professional musicians is surprising to say the least.

This whole conversation – and writing this post – reminds me of the exchange between amputee pianist Paul Wittgenstein and Maurice Ravel regarding the latter's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (commissioned by the former). Wittgenstein wanted to rearrange some aspects of the piano part claiming famously that "performers must not be slaves!" Ravel's answer was simple and to the point: "Performers are slaves." The day composers allow performers' whims and, dare I say, in some cases, laziness to dictate what can and can't be done with their instruments will be the day all progress in the field of musical expression grinds to a halt.

Filth and Wisdom

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the cinema, Madonna goes and does it again. Not as actor (for which we may be eternally thankful) but as director (groan). Like most people who haven't been at the Berlin Film Festival this week, I haven't seen this film, so I can't give any first-hand reaction to it. Judging, however, by the reviews, including this one by Peter Bradshaw in today's Guardian, I seriously wonder what it's chances are of ever being put on general release.

Ms Ciccone / Mrs Ritchie is a perplexing, vexing figure. Her music is bland in the extreme, yet it is touted, particularly to young gay men, as if it were the pinnacle of expressive art (note to self: try not to sound too much like Peter Giles...) Her use of Abba's music in a recent single was, in my opinion, utterly unforgivable and serves merely to underline the vacuousness and sheer lack of any originality that characterises Madonna's career. Her acting career was abysmal (Swept Away and The Next Best Thing rank alongside Crossroads as possibly some of the worst films I've ever seen). And so forth and so forth...

Now we have her directorial debut bearing the vaguely Austenesque title Filth and Wisdom. Peter Bradshaw's one-star review certainly doesn't spare the wrath. But really, in a related article, Madonna states: "I have always been inspired by the films of Goddard [sic], Visconti, Passolini [sic] and Fellini and hope that I may one day make something that comes close to their genius." The audacity of this statement leaves me speechless.

I'm pleased to note that the Guardian refrains from referring to Madonna as the Queen of Pop - I mean, who ever said she was the Queen of Pop? I could name a whole list of people manifestly more deserving of that title, but whose careers have suffered by virtue of actually being able to sing without the intervention of modern audio technology [Peter Giles alert!!!] - and settles for the far more apt Queen of Reinvention. I'm also indebted to Julie Burchill for many laughs in her numerous columns on the Immaterial Girl herself (two good examples of which can be found here and here). All I can say is that if the film is ever released in Finland, I will go and watch it and attempt to post an objective review here, but until then, let's not hold our collective breath...

Prejudice and Pride

Reading through Peter Giles' interesting history of the fall and rise of the counter tenor (entitled – what else? – The Counter Tenor) I was struck and a little disappointed by his attitudes to any music other than 'classical'. (Here I use inverted commas just as he does to refer to any other form of music). Had the following opinions been published in, say, the 1920s, one could almost understand them, though his level of animosity towards musical development would still have seemed rather alien to our modern sensibilities. The fact that these opinions were published in 1982 makes one wonder why his publisher didn't suggest he dilute his vitriol. Here is a typical example:

The whole world of serious music is itself the subject of incredible prejudice. It is ignored good-naturedly, or scornfully dismissed as irrelevant by a now sizeable and growing proportion of the general public, who know nothing of any tradition before Elvis Presley and care less. (Giles 1982:3)

And...

So we have a fascinating situation: on the one hand a tradition legitimate and honoured, successor to the Romantic, Classical and Baroque, going back to Renaissance and Medieval times, but hidebound in many matters. Next to it, another tradition, recent and clearly illegitimate, artificial, of mammon, in many ways barbaric, all too prey to the whim of the moment and the wave of the manipulator's chequebook; but at least utterly free to go where it will within its limited abilities and 'cultural' boundaries. The first is the undoubted arena for, surely, the ultimate in vocal and instrumental technique, for mankind's most profound musical experiences and statements. The second, for the most part and with the exception of the art form 'jazz' and certain musicianly groups like 'Sky', comprises ephemera perhaps more of interest to the sociologist than the true artist musician. (Giles 1982:4-5)

The irony that these comments and countless others like them appear in a chapter entitled 'Prejudice and the Status Quo' will surely be lost on nobody. Neither, indeed, is the irony of two lengthy citations, both written in the 12th century, in the following chapter on the development of organum singing and the rise of the Paris Notre Dame School. It would appear that Giles in fact part of greater, not to mention highly legitimate, tradition of moaning about the development of music, a tradition stretching back a thousand years.

Whence hath the Church so many organs and musicall instruments? To what purpose, I pray you, is that terrible blowing of belloes, expressing rather the crashes of thunder than the sweetnesse of the voyce? To what purpose serves that contraction and inflection of the voyce? [...] Sometimes, which is a shame so to speake, it is enforced into a horse's neighing: sometimes the masculine vigour being laid aside it is sharpened with the shrillnesse of a woman's voyce: now and then it is writhed and retorted into a certain artificial circumvolution. (Aelred of Rievaulx, Speculum Charitatis, 1123)

As Giles points out, "John of Salisbury was also worried by much of what he heard":

The very service of the Church is defiled, in that before the face of the Lord, in the very sanctuary of sanctuaries, they, showing off as it were, strive with effeminate dalliance of wanton tones and musical phrasing to astound, enervate, and dwarf simple souls. [...] When this type of music is carried to the extreme it is more likely to stir lascivious sensations in the loins than devotion in the heart. (Policraticus, trans. John of Salisbury, 12th century).

And he wasn't even talking about Elvis Presley...

Crash Course in Finnish History

Given that this blog claims to be a "review" of sorts, it seems fitting to begin 2008 with a review of a film I saw this evening, namely the latest film by Finnish director Lauri Törhönen, Raja 1918 ("Border 1918").

The film is set during the Finnish Civil War of 1918, a year after Finland had declared independence from Russia. In a nutshell, the war was between the "Whites" (the national guard) and the "Reds" (the Bolsheviks). The film follows the young Captain Carl von Munck who is sent to the newly established border to make sure that undesirable elements (Russians, Jews, Bolsheviks) are kept out of Finland. Of course, ther's also a romantic subplot between von Munck and the local school teacher Maaria Lintu, who, it transpires, is hiding her Bolshevik fiancé from the firing squads. [The "tragedy" motif in the soundtrack was presumably a quote from Im Treibhaus, the third movement of Wagner's Wesendonk-lieder and a study for the beginning of Act III of Tristan and Isolde.]

Anyway, back to the film! I was most impressed by the script. In less than a hundred years spoken Finnish has changed radically and this script preserves a level of formality that younger audiences are unused to hearing. The actors delivered the antiquated dialogue convincingly.

However, far more interesting (almost than the film itself) is what the film tells us about Finnish history. Some Finns have a difficult relationship with their nation's history. To give, in my opinion, a telling example: in the July 9th edition of the New Yorker music critic Alex Ross wrote an extended piece about Jean Sibelius, Finland's "national composer". The article goes through each of the seven symphonies in considerable detail and, by way of offering the reader some context to the Eighth symphony, which Sibelius eventually destroyed, Ross explains that:

Then, in 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, and Finland became part of a chess game between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Early in the war, Finland was applauded in the West for its hardy stand against the Soviets, and Sibelius was more popular than ever. In 1941, though, Finland aligned itself with the Germans, partly because Fascist elements had infiltrated the government and the Army, and partly because the Nazis would have taken over the country anyway.

[Alex Ross, New Yorker July 9th 2007]

The above sentence provoked a letter of response (which I can't locate for the purposes of quotation) from none other than the Finnish ambassador to the US who dismissed Ross' summation of events as essentially untrue and proceeded to tell readers just how hard "my people" had fought for "my country". Though Finland's relationship with Nazi Germany is well documented (most recently in Prof. David Kirby's book A Concise History of Finland), it is common in Finland to claim that there was no relationship whatsoever (the fact that Marshal Mannerheim and Hitler were on such good terms that, in 1942, the Führer paid Mannerheim a surprise visit on the latter's birthday seems easily forgotten).

Similarly, Swedish historian Henrik Arnstad caused a furore here when, in an article in Svenska Dagbladet, he suggested that "the entire Finnish foreign ministry should be sent on a crash course in history" – again in reference to the systematic denial in Finland of any dealings whatsoever with the Third Reich. [For those with Swedish, the article can be read here.] The outcry over Arnstad's book and his subsequent articles speaks volumes about a nation still not at peace with its past.

Raja 1918 thus marks something of a departure for Finnish cinema: in gruesome detail, the film points out that the ethnic cleansing that took place in the early 1940s has its roots in the rise of nationalist sentiment during the Civil War. The film attempts to demonstrate how easily concentration camp style "quarantines" were set up along the new border and how people were only allowed into the country if they looked right (ie. didn't look Russian or Jewish) and could pronounce Finnish words without an accent. Towards the end of the film, there is even a scene in which a visiting German officer and another high-ranking Finnish officer are discussing how easy it would be to attack Russia as a unified force and that their primary objective should be to move the Finnish border beyond St Petersburg, fortify their "indigenous people", thus creating a "Greater Finland" (Suur-Suomi). Though this is 1918, the sentiment is clear.

There are numerous works of fiction on the subject of the Finnish Civil War (two recent examples being Leena Lander's Käsky and Asko Sahlberg's Tammilehto, neither of which are available in English), but with subtitles on a DVD this film will – and should – reach a much wider audience. Highly recommended – even for members of the Finnish foreign ministry.

Leave our music alone!

I recently wrote a customer review of a recording of Walton's sublime Viola Concerto for Amazon. I was a bit worried that they wouldn't publish it, as it is rather harsh. Violinists (Vengerov included) should keep their hands off our music, or, in the words of William Primrose, they "should be shot". Here is the full review, including the bits I borrowed from other reviewers, which the Amazon staff deleted...

Leave our music alone!
When oh when will violinists learn to leave our music alone? To quote from another reviewer: "I was left speechless and wordless [...] you will notice things you never heard before in this concerto however well you know it." I am always left speechless at the audacity of many violinists, who seem to believe that they can simply pick up a viola and play it - I was under the impression that this took years of practice and dedication. [Here I must add that Nigel Kennedy is an exception to this principle: his recording of the Walton Viola Concerto is superb.] I know this concerto very well indeed, and the list of things I had "never heard before" is far too long to outline here.

Mr Vengerov is clearly an exponent of that insipid Romantic school of violin playing - eschewed by most serious artists - whereby an almost hysterical use of vibrato and grimacing through every cadence is apparently the only way to reap artistic dividend, or to compensate for the lack thereof. That said, no amount of throwing oneself around the stage can save this truly shocking rendition of a wonderful, important piece of music. Walton was first and foremost a modernist (something Kennedy fully understands in his recording), and there is no place in this concerto for gushing Romanticism, even less so for such sloppiness (tuning, bowing etc) and disregard (contempt?) for the sound qualities of the instrument as are displayed here. I couldn't agree more with another reviewer: stick to the violin, playing the viola is not a circus act.

I am less well acquainted with the Britten concerto, though I have no hesitation in concluding that better recordings must surely be available. A quick glance through Amazon reveals a Decca re-release with Mark Lubotsky conducted by the composer - I rest my case.

The sheer Britishness of it all...

Having lived outside the UK for most of the time that has passed since Princess Diana's death, it's interesting to revisit that moment in history from a foreign context, almost as an outsider. Sitting in the cinema this evening, I was struck by the notion that perhaps only Brits can truly appreciate the significance of the British monarchy, and thereby also fully understand what it is that makes this film such a towering piece of cinema.

As another reviewer has pointed out (on Amazon), Elizabeth II is omnipresent, permeating every facet of British society, and it is in its very attention to detail that "The Queen" triumphs. At first I was taken aback by the striking similarity between the actors and their real-life counterparts: Helen Mirren (who deserves the Oscar for this, perhaps her greatest performance) is frighteningly like the Queen in every respect, right down to pronouncing "Diana" with the stress on the first syllable - something only the Queen does. Michael Sheen's Blair was spot on too: that nervous chuckle, the grin, the walk. James Cromwell is uncannily like the Duke of Edinburgh...

I'd forgotten that these events took place almost immediately after New Labour's accession to power, and thinking of things in these terms sheds new light on the significance of the public reaction. The Tories had finally been kicked out of Westminster, there was a great sense of expectation, of change, and the questioning of the monarchy's relevance seems to go hand in hand with that new-found optimism. The film reminds us that Blair at least set out to be a "moderniser", and the Queen even asks whether he is "planning to modernise us".

Whether or not what happened during that week can be called "modernisation", it certainly shook the very foundations of the institution of the monarchy in Britain. I found it interesting how often people in the audience here laughed at what they saw. Yes, some of it is comical, but it's important to remember that the Royals really are like this; one of the many strengths of the film is that it never descends into parody and caricature. All in all I found watching "The Queen" a truly visceral experience - the likeness of the actors, the real archive footage, the sentiments of the time, the hysteria - and wept through much of it. I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps it's something to do with our shared humanity, the unifying power of grief, and the sheer Britishness of it all.