Chineke! plays Shostakovich

Chineke! plays Shostakovich
Royal Albert Hall

There has been a reprise of the clement weather this Friday, after a couple of days of sketchy showers. Cycled in to work again, and managed a 5k run afterwards. Not bad!

Tonight at the BBC Proms we have the Chineke! orchestra, which is an orchestra of all ethnically diverse musicians. A good concept, one which I'm all for. In Britain, we have made great strides in the last few years, in the recognition that we have not done enough to champion diversity, particularly in the notoriously exclusive realm of classical music. Though let us not kid ourselves into thinking that our job here is done and we now rest on our laurels. To once again give my tuppence to the topic of classical music and inclusivity: have a flick through your programme for this evening's entertainment and it will give the game away. I'll wager my hundred-grand Steinway that the advertising features will comprise preparatory and boarding schools, cruise holidays, and retirement flats on the King's Road going for two mill. I cower to wonder who the target audience for these ads is, but it's nobody I know. There's plenty of money in Formula 1 and premier league football, but their sponsors are limited to the likes of Burger King and Carlsberg.

In other news, I have now (provisionally) ordered my ticket to the Last Night of the Proms! Not over the moon about resorting to ViaGoGo for a profiteering £211, but I snatched the best resale price I've seen so far. There's no hope for me in bagging a ticket on the day, because I'll be sitting on a bus when the Promming tickets go on sale (assuming they do that for the Last Night?), with only a temperamental phone signal to rely on. Similarly, I don't mind losing the money if I save myself the embarrassment of roaming outside the hall begging anyone who'll lend a sympathetic ear to me:

    'But I've done this thing where I listened to every Prom and blogged about it!'

    'A likely story... Officer, can you help us over here please?!'

    So a re-sale ticket it is - just hope for no nasty surprises when I arrive at the Royal Albert Hall on the night🤞

I should probably get onto the music, shouldn't I?

The first piece is by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Now, I have heard of this chap before. I *think* it was from watching Lenny Henry's BBC documentary on Black classical music [Black Classical Music: The Forgotten History] a couple of years ago. I'm sure I recorded it on DVD when it was on - must root that out again sometime soon. This piece, The Bamboula, has something regal about it. Don't misunderstand me, it's not 'ceremonial' as such, but... sterling? Really, really like this. Absolutely terrific!

The second piece is Fanfare for Uncommon Times by Valerie Coleman. This one is much more modern, having been composed during the covid lockdowns. The woodwind and strings have left the stage, we are told, with just the brass and percussion left on - so that doesn't bode well. But it's not too bad, you know. As I'm listening I'm trying to think of where I was first introduced to this instrumental style. It comes to me - Hetty Wainthropp Investigates!

Next up it is Visions of Cahokia by James Lee III. Not so keen on this one when it opens, but it gets better. Much better! Builds up brilliantly, and there's a light suspense to it in my mind, even if it wasn't  the composer's intention.

After the interval it is the Shostakovich which, once again, is a rather unpleasant listen. But that is not to say the music itself is inherently unpleasant. The Radio 3 presenter sums it up as 'Forty-eight minutes of terror, two minutes of triumph.' I am completely on board with this assessment, even clocking when the triumphant part kicks in at the end!

I had already become a casual fan of Shostakovich over the last few years, via the ditties that get played on Classic FM. This BBC Proms run has snagged my curiosity of him, and I'm keen to learn more. Alexander Armstrong always sounds giddy when he announces a 'Shostakovich' [I can hear his voice now], and I am beginning to understand why.

Shostakovich’s ‘Lady Macbeth’

Shostakovich’s ‘Lady Macbeth’

Royal Albert Hall

It's Monday, and I'm even more tired than usual. Managed about three hours sleep last night, so after work today I'm not in the mood to do much bar laze about in the house. I catch another hour or so of sleep, and and head back downstairs to arrange some food for myself. Picked up a few nice meals-for-one at the Cook shop in Heswall yesterday, so there's not much in the way of cooking to be done - I can allow the microwave to take the strain. The day overall has been overcast, and today for the first time I've sensed a subtle flavour of autumn, as opposed to late-summer (and not just because it's September 1st). Not too long now before I'm sitting here with a hoodie on.

I turn on the kitchen radio just a few minutes shy of 19:30. and it's not until a minute or two after this time that I realise I'm late to tonight's Prom at the Royal Albert Hall - it started at 18:30! It's the kind of sinking heart attack you face when you realise you've overslept and are going to be rolling into the office an hour late with your shirt flapping out. Even ten years ago, such sloppy punctuality might have put the kibosh on my all-Proms ambition. Fortunately though, we now live in an age that allows us to restart the show from the top, even in real-time when it is still going out live. So it is that I instruct BBC Sounds to take me back an hour, and it duly saves the day.

Tonight we have Shostakovich’s The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Now, I am aware of the Shakespearean Lady Macbeth and, as I recall, she was a bit of a shit. So why would someone of Shostakovich's calibre be composing for her? I ask ChatGPT for some help, and it lets me know that this isn't so much Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, but rather it's someone called Katerina, who is monikered as such (I think in a display of irony) on the author's part. It's all from a novella by Nikolai Leskov. While Katerina commits adulterous and murderous crimes and the like, the point being made is that it is the repressive society surrounding her that has ultimately pushed her to it. This is what Stalin didn't like about Shostakovich's Lady Mac, and my mind now is starting to think back to what I dubbed 'Shostakovich on trial' at the Proms, just a few weekends ago, when we heard his fifth symphony by heart. Overall, the impression I'm getting from Shostakovich is that he is capable of both jollity and subtlety, and he does a sterling job of both. Basically, he does what he wants. And this (for now, anyway), cements my leaning towards the idea that his fifth symphony was a clever hoax.

Now I will move on to my thoughts on the performance itself. It's being sung in English, and this gets me to thinking. Bland sentences like "I came to ask you for a book" suddenly don't sound so exotic. There's something that deceives one into feeling more cultured and sophisticated when listening to opera in a language unintelligible. Fortunate, then, that all the dramatic vibratos make sure I still don't understand what's going on. [Prommers at the hall have surtitles to help them, I gather].

A few times I hear derisory 'ha!, ha!, ha!'s', in a sharp staccato fashion. I can't stop my mind travelling to The Laughing Policeman by Charles Penrose. At first I think it's yet another case of me wandering to inappropriate elements; but, in way, it couldn't be more appropriate. 

The second half starts - is this the wedding of Katerina and Sergey? That it sounds like a grotesque circus fanfare could be another confirmation of the Shostakovich witticism I mused on earlier.

Pekka Kuusisto and Katarina Barruk

Pekka Kuusisto and Katarina Barruk
Royal Albert Hall

A fairly regular Sunday routine. The food shop and laundry for the week ahead has been done. I have been trying to clean the house up, and it now looks like a pigsty. 'A Place for Everything, and Everything in its Place' - well, that is the opposite of my current situation. One of those where it will need to look worse, before it looks better.

Otherwise, it is the last day of August, and I cannot help but feel melancholic at the thought of the summer slipping away from us. I have seen and heard a few flocks of Canadian geese flying away over the last week or two, and every time it puts me in a blue mood.

This evening's Prom I play on the kitchen radio, although for tea I'm only having a ready-made butty. [nice than it sounds - M&S deli range]. This afternoon I picked up a craft stout from the Bow-Legged Beagle on Telegraph Road in Heswall, and a Pistachio and Caramel Bar from the M&S there. [Yes, I have succumbed to the pistachio/Dubai chocolate craze this year, being a chocolate lover.]

I look at the roster for tonight's Prom and sigh to myself. It's a mixed bag of tunes which, for me, means it's going to be difficult to document it all. Much easier when it's a long symphony or something like that. I fear also that I am going through a bout of mental fatigue - with the Last Night of the Proms just under two weeks away, I can almost taste freedom from the chains of my own project. But the show must go on, and I transport myself once again to South Kensington via Radio 3.

Tonight it's the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, and a vocal performance by Katarina Barruk who, according to the BBC website, is one of the few remaining speakers of the Ume Sámi language. 

I once visited Norway. It was around April 2017. I went on a long-weekend expedition to Tromsø (and as far out as Kilpisjarvi in Finland), on what was a fruitless quest to see the Northern Lights. [As it happened, I had slightly greater success in Runcorn last summer.] One thing I did take away from that trip was a love of Norway; it's people and culture [and Smash! (not the mash) - if you know, you know!].

On to the music itself which, for my own coherence, I need to pool together for it to make sense:

The first vocal performance I can only describe as 'abstract,' but it's only because the language deviates so far from my own mother tongue. Haven't been too enamored with Michael Tippett's tunes so far, and this one doesn't break the rule. But I know instantly when the Phillip Glass starts - who could mistake those repeating string whirls?! The Kendall, Bach, and Shaw all blend into one, so it must have been all right. The Avo Part I almost miss, but it blends neatly into the Shostakovich. And the Shostakovich is as dark as my stout. It sustains the feel throughout. If it's about human injustice, he did it justice. If that makes sense?

We are treated to a very unexpected ukelele and whistling encore. It takes me a few moments to catch myself on but, is that John Lennon's Imagine? It is! What a lovely nod to my home county. As it progresses, some of the audience hum along. Words then emerge! May we all live as one.

Tromsø, 2017

My house, 2025

Shostakovich’s Fifth by Heart

Shostakovich’s Fifth by Heart
Royal Albert Hall

I delay listening to this Saturday evening Prom, instead opting to fill the time slot by watching the televised Anoushka Shankar Prom from earlier in the week. One I enjoyed profoundly. I did intend to listen later in the evening, but I was too tired.

So it is that I start listening on Sunday afternoon, the first forty minutes in the car as I drive back from my parents' house, where I usually stay on a Saturday night.

It's not so much music, but a dramatic performance by a troupe of actors, that opens the show. Now, I should mention that - prior to listening - I have no idea of the background of Shostakovich’s Fifth. So what's going on here?! Sounds like it's 'Shostakovich on Trail,' with an undercurrent of political espionage, and a desire for censorship. There's a lot of disdainful talk about his Lady Macbeth (which I gather we'll be hearing later in this Proms 2025 season). Some speculation as to whether he blended some sort of secret codes into his composition.

"Your business is rejoicing!" we hear. Was he being coerced into something?

["We absolutely DO NOT approve of Mahler!", they also exclaim ---- I'll give them that one.]

The final line from the performance is one that rings in my head as being a philosophy applicable to life at whole: "The truth is, we'll never know". But what they are talking about here, I think, is whether Shostakovich was serious with his Fifth, or was he having a laugh? I ask ChatGPT if it can provide me with some background of the piece in very simple terms, and it confirms roughly what I was thinking. 

It's been a glorious day, so for the second half I sit out with a bottle of lager from Aldi, and a packet of Red Leicester Mini Cheddars, with the programme spilling out of my JBL mini, which I picked up for a song from Tesco Heswall with the aid of Clubcard points, about ten years ago. Still going strong.

And so to the music, and tonight it's the Aurora orchestra, undertaking the Herculean task of performing an entire symphony by memory. Very well it's done, too!

Opens quite depressingly, and this it sustains. If the 'D Major' ending is triumphant, it's weak.

Me, personally? It's got to be a sneaky farce. Why? Because if this is a straight and serious composition, then he wasn't very good at it.

Shostakovich, Ravel, and Walton

I had to watch this broadcast in a hybrid manner: when it began at 8pm I still had another hour left of my return coach journey to Liverpool. Fortunately I have a generous data plan on my phone, so watching live on my tablet was not a problem, as long as the signal held up on the motorway. Luckily it did, so I was able to watch the first hour live. I caught up with the rest on iplayer when I

got home.

Tonight’s prom opened up with what I’d call a ‘jolly romp’ of Shostakovich. I have no idea if proper music aficionados would share my interpretation, but that’s what it was to my ear. Very pleasant indeed, and I’ve always paused to listen to this suite when it gets played on the radio.

Next up was the inspirational Nicholas McCarthy, playing Ravel’s piano concerto for left hand. I was glad to learn of the history of the piece, having being composed by Ravel specifically for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during the First World War. 

It was great to hear McCarthy’s enthusiasm for opening up classical music to a broader audience, which he spoke of during his interview after the performances.

The Bournemouth symphony orchestra blasted out the show with William Walton’s epic and energetic symphony no. 1.

I only wished I could have still been in London to have witnessed this prom live. Alas, my Monday is calling!