14 February 2008
I would like to know what this tune is.
[Later] It turns out to be the first movement of Delius's suite 'Florida'. Some knowledgeable people on a classical music newsgroup told me. By chance it also happens to be an oboe tune, though I've never played it.
[Later still] Another person points out that the tune also appears in Delius's opera Koanga as 'La Calinda', which is certainly where I heard it. This name is very familiar. Delius evidently borrowed it for the opera from the 'Florida' suite.
Boxing Day 2003
The FT a while back had a review of a performance at the Porgy and Bess Jazz Club, Vienna, by the First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra. The review read:
You may want to reconsider telling the kids not to play with their food: they may become virtuosos and support you in your old age. The members of the First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra did not heed the warning and are now promoting their second CD with a series of concerts throughout Europe.
The orchestra's instruments consist entirely of fresh vegetables, minimally abetted by some kitchen gadgets and a power drill. Before a show, the nine orchestra members go produce shopping and spend about four hours honing their particular devices.
Carrots play a major role: some are hollowed out and made into flutes capable of mean trills; others are lined up like a xylophone; a few are grated. Gourds are slapped, peas and celery snapped, leeks are used as drumsticks on pumpkins. Perhaps the prettiest instrument, the gurkophon, is made from a cucumber with a carrot mouthpiece and a red pepper bell.
Is this all pretentious nonsense? Not on your life. The music is unique, fascinating and bizarrely charming (as are the players). The repertory is specifically devised for live performance and is largely percussive, although the instruments capable of tone can sing out with unexpected beauty.
Amid the gurgles, slurps and thwacks are snatches of melody that might be made by Andean flutes or whales. One work was generated by a computer and transcribed for vegetables ("This is not easy," explained the deadpan narrator).
The group even offers covers of songs by electronic pop bands Kraftwerk and Radian. When guest artist Franz Hautzinger added his trumpet to the ensemble, it seemed an alien invasion. After a literally smashing rendition of "Automate", a concerto for 18 tomatoes, the orchestra served up a damned fine soup made from the detritus of the performance (plus coconut milk), permitting the audience to heighten its sensory gratification.
Larry L Lash
[The orchestra's website, www.gemueseorchester.org, is well worth a visit.]
Sunday 23 December 2001
The Independent yesterday had a review of a new CD from Mulatta Records (www.mulatta.org). The players were the Thai Elephant Orchestra which was formed following the success of groups of painter-elephants in Thailand. The Indie went into some detail about how you set about founding and training such an orchestra, beginning with the premise that the elephants have to actually want to play music (imagine trying to force a reluctant elephant to play the piano). The second problem is what instruments they should be encouraged to learn. Flutes were tried with conspicuous lack of success: the animals merely bit them in half. Guitar-like instruments were easily trampled underfoot. Percussion was more to their liking and to their capabilities, as long as the drums and cymbals were suitably strengthened. But giving elephant-sized drumsticks to elephants, even tame ones, and encouraging them to bash just the xylophones and tambourines and nothing else must have caused some sleepless nights among the teachers. The Indie gave the orchestra a cautious welcome.
Saturday 15 December 2001
There was an unforgettable moment during the celebrity concert broadcast on TV from Covent Garden, with a galaxy of operatic stars including Cecilia Bartoli. Another soprano, beginning to show her years and emphatically overweight, came on to sing her piece, from Andrea Chénier. She wore a cloak over an all-enveloping gown and looked about five feet tall. The first phrase of the song, as translated by the subtitles, ran: 'If my body is the price of his freedom, take me.' At the last two words she opened her arms and the cloak out wide and revealed just how enormous she was. It reminded me irresistibly of Groucho Marx, trying to woo the large Margaret Dumont, saying passionately: 'I love you – all of you!' Sopranos should perhaps choose their pieces with more thought to their risibility.
Wednesday 17 October 2001
A neighbour has found a superb joke by Paul Hindemith. It consists of a piece for string quartet named Overture to the 'Flying Dutchman' as Played at Sight by a Second-Rate Concert Orchestra at the Village Well at 7 o'clock in the Morning. One of the violins seems to have one string tuned a semitone too high, all have problems with the difficult bits, and when one of them drifts off into a Johann Strauss waltz, the rest thankfully follow, only getting back to Wagner for the fearful coda. It's hilarious.
Sunday 23 September 2001
The Covent Garden Rigoletto yesterday evening was a marvellous production. What a romp! It must be the first time the ROH and BBC have shown such a full-frontal orgy in prime time. The singing too was superb: the Gilda, Christine Schäfer, was ideal. I wonder if she has sung Cherubino or Octavian.
I'm halfway through the Ring cycle for the umpteenth time. The end of Die Walküre is just stunning music, nostalgic, sad, proud, the end of an era. The Vienna Phil play with such sophistication and refinement for Solti that no other orchestra can touch them. The London orchestras lack the collective artistry somehow, even for Colin Davis, and the American orchestras sound merely slick, without the feelings being engaged. Now for Siegfried!
A few weeks ago I managed to find (on Amazon in the US, not the UK one) the Wanda Landowska '48' CDs. I only had a faulty set of vinyls, so was for ever getting up to change discs. (The fault came in the last B minor fugue, when Bach sets out to destroy one's sense of pitch and key in a way that Wagner would have been proud of. But with the fault on the disc added to Bach's efforts, the piece was quite unbearable.) She was an incredible player, with fingers of cold steel.
The other day I found a cutting from the Radio Times of May 1983. It reads as follows:
9.25 Stereo
The Shagbut, Minikin and Flemish Clacket
Schola Polyphonica Neasdeniensis
Peter Weevil and John Throgmorton (shagbut)
Tatiana Splod (minikin)
and H.G. Hogg (Flemish clacket)
Introduced by Hugo Turvey
Hucbald the Onelegged (of Grobhausen, fl. 1452)
Instrumental Rondo: Haro! Poppzgeyen ist das Wieselungenslied
(First broadcast in 1968)
It was billed to last ten minutes, virtually all of which was occupied with attempts at tuning the various instruments in the intervals of heated sotto voce arguments. Who says the BBC has (had) no sense of humour.