Posted in Classical on Jan 31st, 2009 No Comments »
Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending’ is the most popular piece of classical music in England today. I say ‘England’ for it means nothing to the Welsh, and the Scots despise it. But its evocation of the beautiful English countryside (and there is none more beautiful), its nostalgia for that ‘England’ of the heart - a heaven that is England in all true English hearts - and its fragility are all the English would know. As if the flickering note of the bird might so easily be extinguished by some rude blast from the real world.
When I first came down to London, in the late 1960s, I lived in a one bedroom hovel in East London, whilst toiling daily trying to drum some appreciation of the finer things into the heads of the skinheads and bovver boys of Dagenham. An uphill struggle. I played this to them once. My classes were normally rowdy, but when they heard this you could hear a pin drop.
Hugh Bean plays it, with the New Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult - the recording that quietened my noisy class.
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Posted in Country Music on Jan 29th, 2009 1 Comment »
Here, by special request from an avid listener in the North of England, is John Hiatt singing his own song ‘Icy Blue Heart’ from his album ‘Slow Turning’. In Hiatt’s world love doesn’t come easy. Beauty and selfishness seem to go together, freezing out altogether the possibility of love, leaving them both desolate.
It’s a tough, hypnotic, masculine song, delivered hard and straight.
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For my ‘Morning Has Broken’ Anthology. A Spring Morning - here in a slight but charming song by Gustav Mahler. Piano trills echo the birdsong in the branches of the linden tree.
‘The linden tree taps at the window, branches heavy with blossom; Get Up! Get Up! Why do you lie there dreaming? The sun is up already! Get Up! Get Up!’
Lucia Popp sings this delightfully, sunlight in her voice, accompanied by Geoffrey Parsons.
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Posted in Classical on Jan 22nd, 2009 No Comments »
This song, perhaps more than any other, makes me feel English. Not British so much, but English. ‘British’ isn’t enough. It doesn’t capture what I feel about myself and the country I live in. Many people are British, yet despise the country. Some of them have tried to blow me up.
Sometimes, like here when I’m listening to Kathleed Ferrier, who, like me was born in Lancashire, in the North of England, I feel it distinctly, something seeping in my brain along with the sound of her unique and lovely voice . English that’s not a passion. That’s not a flag. It’s hardly an expression of pride - though pride is there somewhere, dimly. Englishness evoked in the sound of this voice, or the smile on that young girl’s face, or in that gesture – say, the half smile and vague wave of the hands (so different from the cynical Gallic shrug) that means ‘let’s not take it so seriously’
Like English summer rain. That starts falling apologetically, unsuspected. Not heralded by the fierce build up of a Mediterranean storm after weeks of fearsome heat.
Soft, not threatening.
Just like this song.
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Posted in Classical on Jan 22nd, 2009 No Comments »
Before I started this blog I did a trial run where I posted a few pieces on a trial site just to see how it would work. One of these pieces was the slow movement from Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. It’s so good I’m reposting it here.
I can’t understand why Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto is not more widely popular. It is easily the equal of Bruch’s First Violin Concerto, which is done to death, and much better than any of the Russians since Tchaikovsky. This is from a BBC broadcast from Cheltenham, England on 7 July 2007. I had switched on the radio for want of something to do, just in the silence before the opening of the heavenly slow movement. Enough to bring tears to a stone.
Here, from that concert, is the English teenage violinist, Chloe Hanslip, playing that slow movement. It has never been played better.
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Posted in Popular Song on Jan 18th, 2009 3 Comments »
English readers of a certain age will forever associate the BBC Light Programme’s record request programme, Family Favourites, with the aroma of Sunday dinner - roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots and gravy. It was hosted by Jean Metcalfe in London and Bill Crozier in Germany. There were occasional excursions to Cyprus, Aden and Singapore with a local guest presenter. The programme ran from the early 1950s and throughout the sixties, but it is from the fifties that I remember it most. The selection of songs was pretty standard - favourites were Ella Fitzgerald singing ‘Evr’y Time We Say Goodbye’, Kathleen Ferrier ‘What is Life?’, a Chopin Waltz (the ‘Minute’ Waltz usually) or Prelude (’Raindrop’), a concession to modernity with one of the more polite rock’n'roll records - such as Elvis’s ‘Teddy Bear’ or Cliff Richard’s ‘Living Doll’ - and Perry Como singing ‘Magic Moments’.
‘With a Song in My Heart’ was the theme tune, and forever coupled in my memory with the theme tune of the programme which immediately followed it - a raucous version of ‘Somebody Stole My Gal’ for The Billy Cotton Band Show.
This is Andre Kostelanetz and his Orchestra.
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From Beth Nielsen Chapman, written after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, this is a song of hope - and fear. She places hope in God and his angels to care for her before she goes to sleep. Like Hansel and Gretel, lost in the wood, praying for angels to guard them, two at their head, two at their feet. There is fear here too, its undercurrent deep in the music, but in the last verse, when the piano shifts sideways into a new major chord, hope is there too.
‘Now I lay me down to sleep, the troubles of this world released. The promise of tomorrow keeps angels by my side.’
It’s simple, artless - and very moving.
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Posted in Popular Song, Rock on Jan 13th, 2009 No Comments »
“Extraordinary how potent cheap music is”.
This is Noel Coward’s celebrated remark about popular music. It’s true too. An instant bridge with others, in our nostalgia for lost youth, lost love, for the good old days.
Here’s mine, with no apology. It was 1965. I was 19, she was too. I was going to love her forever - now I can hardly recall her face.
Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders.
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Posted in Popular Song on Jan 12th, 2009 2 Comments »
This is Ray Noble’s classic, and deceptively simple, arrangement of his own tune, recorded on 21 April 1934. The melody is played three times. First played successively by the piano, answered by strings, then by the saxophone, answered by the piano, then muted horns followed by the saxophone once more. The second time it is sung - perfectly - by Al Bowlly. In the thirties he was the nearest to equal Bing Crosby in singing ballads, and in some songs, like this one, was without equal. He sings the song straight, but he gives slight additional emphasis to some words ‘thought’, ‘very’, and is just shy of the beat, which adds to the aching quality of the vocal. The third time it is played by the whole band, a heart tugging mini crescendo, followed by a little violin interlude at the end, vocal again for the last four bars, over piano, and out.
It is incomparable.
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Posted in Jazz on Jan 11th, 2009 1 Comment »
A tune composed by Bix Beiderbecke and recorded by him, with his Rhythm Jugglers, in 1926 as a jaunty, medium tempo number originally in 3 sections. The first section, a verse, is a preliminary to the second, a 16 bar variation followed by a reprise of the verse theme. The third section is the chorus, and the most distinctive – a bitter sweet melody starting with two four note rising arpeggios, then descending to “blue” Aflat and a trill, followed by a repeat, a variation and a reprise. Bix’s recording, despite his tender cornet, seems to our ears stiff and inflexible - and archaic. Since then there have been many recordings of his tune.
At a memorial concert for Louis Armstrong at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on 28 November 1971, Davenport Blues was played as a duet by Alex Welsh on cornet and Fred Hunt on piano. It is played slow. They omit the first two sections and focus on the third section, the chorus, the most memorable melody. I don’t want to repeat here what I have said elsewhere on this performance, other than to reinforce the opinion I expressed there that this version, by Welsh and Hunt, is the finest ever recorded.
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