Francois Leleux Reed Trio @ the RNCM

Francois Leleux Reed Trio

Manchester Chamber Concerts Society

RNCM Concert Hall, 26 September 2011

Another classy concert arranged by the Manchester Chamber Concerts Society, this one perhaps best described as cheery and honey-hued.

Why so?  Well, because the programme of music – which included works by Saint-Saëns, Dutilleux, Jolivet, Poulenc and (unusually) Beethoven – was intended to delight, entertain and amuse rather than to convey profound emotion.  Sometimes profound emotion is not what you want; it can gnaw at and ravage the soul.

Anyway, those aesthetes with a sweet tooth were well served and, let’s be frank, the bassoon is an inherently amusing instrument due to both its appearance and sound.  Like an elephant’s trunk, it is both weird and wonderful.

The musicianship of Jean-François Duquesnoy, brandisher of said bassoon, was superb and his companions, François Leleux on oboe and Emmanuel Strosser on piano, were on a par with him.

Vive le basson!

The Honourable Schoolboy

The Honourable Schoolboy

By John le Carre

Penguin, 2011

ISBN: 9780143119739

This novel, originally published in 1977, is the second in the so-called Karla trilogy and follows on from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

The mole, Bill Haydon, has been rooted out and George Smiley now sits in Control’s chair, ensconced at the head of the Circus.  His immediate task is to appraise the damage done by Bill Haydon and to limit it.  And, besides this, to use Haydon’s fingerprint – the evidence of his snooping and betrayals – to glean some insight into Moscow Centre’s blindspots and weaknesses.  They call it ‘taking back-bearings’ here.  In essence, it is the kind of logic you need when solving retroactive chess problems, of the kind to be found in Raymond Smullyan’s books.

In his quest Smiley is joined by Peter Guillam (here chasing a certain Miss Molly Meakin, and so not at all gay – and she has designs of her own on him, for which refer to the end of chapter 8 – contra the character of Peter Guillam in the film of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), Connie Sachs (a redoubtable soul and an expert on Russian affairs) and others.  At centre stage is Jerry Westerby who is sent East – to Hong Kong, Cambodia and Vietnam- under the cover of being a foreign correspondent.

Let me come clean and admit that I didn’t quite follow the plot; indeed, in places I found it quite perplexing.  But I read on because I was held by le Carre’s world, precarious and peril-ridden.  He writes at one point that ‘silence, not gunfire, was the natural element of the approaching enemy’ and he uses this element too.  Everything is imbued with an anxious, disconcerting silence – the sound of a nuclear holocaust that is perpetually threatened and has been momentarily averted.  The story may bewilder, ultimately, but at every treacherous step of the way the story-telling holds one’s attention.  It is immediate, even though this is now an historical novel as much as it is a novel about spying or espionage.  Our most pressing dangers derive from terrorist organisations, not nation states, although snowyRussia – as the Litvinenko case made plain – is still playing some unsavoury tricks on the world stage.  Old habits die hard.

Le Carre’s characterisation of George Smiley conveys the impression of a man who is a mystery to others – unknown and unknowable – while giving the reader a real sense of knowing him.  A difficult even paradoxical thing to pull off, but le Carre achieves it.  He is described as ‘a failed priest’, perhaps in homage to Greene’s character in The Power and the Glory.  Smiley believes that he needs to be ‘inhuman in defence of our humanity’ but, unlike the aforementioned whiskey priest, his faith is in ‘the West’, democracy, the pigs’ bladders on a stick that sometimes pass for politicians and statesmen.

It is a fine novel, as much romance and redemption song as thriller, and one of several books by John le Carre that have been reissued by Penguin during 2011.  Further details are here.

Top Hat

Top Hat

Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin

The Lowry, 27 September 2011

Summer Strallen in Top Hat. Photo by Alastair Muir

You will hear no complaints or qualms or even qualifications from me regarding this show.

It is superb, indeed the glamour – like an orchid’s tumescent scent – is often overpowering.  There are Irving Berlin’s classic songs such as ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ and ‘Cheek to Cheek’, all consummately performed.  The sets are vividly coloured and have an art deco feel.  And not only is there humour along with the song and dance, but thought has been given as to where it is placed.  At a quarryman’s pace, that’s how surely it proceeds.

All the cast shine and the principals, Tom Chambers and Summer Strallen, radiate high glamour.  Their erotic capital is a safe bet, even considering the state of the current financial markets – so similar to 1935, the year when the original film of Top Hat hit the screens. 

Miss Strallen’s legs in particular are a prize commodity.  She has a lot of leg, more perhaps than one young woman ought or deserves to have.  Her legs when crossed have all the classic elegance of a spiral staircase.  Any shoe, no matter how high the heel, would be an unworthy pedestal to her pins.  You get the drift: it is a glamorous show and Summer Strallen is right at home.

Ten out of ten all around, must be.

Top Hat is at The Lowry until 8 October, further details are here.  Then it tours throughout the UK, details here.

Drive

Drive

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

USA, 2011

Cornerhouse, 25 September 2011

James Sallis’ stylish neo-noir novel is given an equally stylish adaptation with Refn’s fine film.

There are many things to admire about it – the car chase sequences, which are thrilling; the visceral violence, fit for a John Webster play; the variety of LA locales, the protean city writ large; Cliff Martinez’s ominous music, as effective as Tangerine Dream’s score for Thief – but of these it is the performances that stand out.

It is Mulligan, Brooks and above all Gosling who impress most.  Gosling plays a guy who finds human involvement  problematic, but when a family he’s close to is threatened he cannot walk away.  And when the violence falls he finds himself in the midst of it.  Like RJ, he’s travelled on so far he cannot turn around.

Drive is a relentless ride, easily one of the best films of the year.

Portrait of an Hungarian – Part 1

Portrait of an Hungarian – Part 1

Music by Haydn, Bartók and Liszt

Manchester Camerata

RNCM Concert Hall, 24 September 2011

This very enjoyable concert saw Gabor Tackacs-Nagy, Manchester Camerata’s newly appointed Music Director, raising the conductor’s baton for the first time.

For the first work, Haydn’s Piano Concerto no.11 in D major, the orchestra was joined by the splendid Jean-Efflam Bavouzet.  Another Haydon work, the Symphony no.49 ‘La Passione’, ended the evening but by then we had also heard Bartok’s Divertimento and Liszt’s Angelus! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens.  All wonderful stuff, and of these the second movement of Bartok’s work was especially memorable.

It augurs well for future days; and from his short speech, Gabor Tackacs-Nagy seems a personable chap an’ all.

Tomboy

Tomboy

Directed by Céline Sciamma

France, 2010

Cornerhouse, 25 September 2011

A touching and tender film, telling the story of a girl who wishes she were a boy.

The central performance by Jeanne Disson is wonderful and in fact all the children are astonishingly good.  We see the children on screen for about 90% of the time, though it is by no means a child’s film.

In a sense, it’s a film about the social construction of gender and the limited repertoire of gender roles offered by society.  But this makes it seem a rather dry affair, which was patently not the case.  There is the conflict between needing to be your own self and wanting to fit in.  And the angels of acceptance and forgiveness make a belated appearance.

A moving experience – chockfull of humour and sadness, moments of melancholy, charm and affection – and there’s a moral too: honesty is the best policy.  It put me in mind of those two poems in Conversation Pieces about a girl having a boy’s adventure; one by Jane Kenyon, the other by Karen Swenson.

Super Trouper @ the Palace

Super Trouper

Palace Theatre, 23 September 2011

It is not exactly cante jondo, but it does a knock-out job.

In this show, the tribute band perform myriad Abba songs, including the eponymous one.  They are a slick outfit and, if you’re a heterosexual man, you’ll find yourself torn between whether you prefer the blonde or the brunette.  While if you’re a gay man, then you’ll be on your feet to ‘Dancing Queen’ and ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’, showing titanium-strength solidarity with the biddies during the latter song.

On an oblique note, ‘Money Money Money’ would fit well in a film noir: it is full of callous beauty and dreamlike covetousness and a sense of false entitlement.  There is devilishness to it.

No apology is needed and nor is one warranted for this entertaining show.  Nor should Super Trouper pretend to be anything other than what it is.  This is a feel-good show and offers uncomplicated fun, especially fitting for a Friday evening after a long, hard-working week.

Super Trouper is currently touring the UK, tour dates are here.

Rambert’s Seven for a secret… Tour 2011

Seven for a secret… Tour 2011

Rambert Dance Company

The Lowry, 21 September 2011

Photo by Eric Richmond

You sometimes don’t know where to start or what to say when dance is this good: beautiful and accomplished, as irrefragable as Godel’s theorem, perfect.

‘The Art of Touch’, the first work to be performed this evening, was a case in point.  For here the dance arose naturally from Scarlatti’s music, played perfectly on harpsichord by Carole Cerasi.  She can play something wonderful when given light to read the score by!  There was an inevitability about the dance and movement, it gently touched the nerves, which is to say the strings of one’s own soul.

It was a world premiere up next, of a work entitled ‘Seven for a secret, never to be told’.  Quite an interesting nursery rhyme in itself (as they all are, when examined deeply), this one explored the world of childhood.  Dancers donned the persona of  boy scouts, girl guides, the lad from The Jungle Book, perhaps even Nemo of Slumberland fame.  A tartan cape caught the eye:  it was used in a bull fight, but as quaint play not enervating duende.  I thought of Winnicott’s remark to the effect that children love to hide but would find it frightening not to be found.  So would we all.

The final work, ‘A Linha Curva’, was a joyous outpouring, many dancers moving forward in phalanx formation in response to an insistent, oscillating rhythm.  Wave upon wave of them, it seemed like.  They advanced like Roman soldiers but their smiles and open hearts took the place of swords and shields.

All in all, a dazzling display of dance throughout.

The Seven for a secret… Tour is at The Lowry until 23 September, details here.  It then continues throughout the UK until at least the end of December.  Full tour dates are here.

The Philosophers’ Madonna

The Philosophers’ Madonna

Eclectics & Heteroclites 8

By Carlo Emilio Gadda

Translated and Introduced by Antony Melville

Atlas Press, 2008

ISBN: 9781900565448

This obdurate novella is full of pungent, flavoursome prose.

It is the first significant work from an Italian novelist who sought to do justice to the messiness and complexity of the human enterprise, to what some people – who really should know better – call ‘life’.

The Lady referrred to in the title is a fresco on a castle wall and the story, from what one can glean, involves a love triangle of a kind: Baronfo, an engineer and an itinerant collector of books, is courting Maria, the daughter of a noble family who is in danger of being left on the shelf.  But this certain Baronfo has also gone with a lass named Emma and maybe he’s even knocked her up (she has a son, a lad called Gigetto, who takes after Baronfo).  Anyway, Emma is not too pleased and she shows it, as you may understand.

What you’ll want to read The Philosophers’ Madonna for, though, are the digressions: the empire fat and nocturnal muscles between the skeleton of the story.  Such as the theories and speculations of a pneumaticist called Ishmael Digbens, for example: pneumatics here being a branch of metaphysics concerned with the soul and spirit, not a branch of physics whose provenance is air and gases.  Or the story of a Marchesi who gives up his noble title – this little tale perhaps being intended as a counterpoint to The Leopard.  There is also a discourse on the different varieties of witches and the reasons thereof.  It is all due, apparently, to the nature of the contract.  In this case the devil is, quite literally, in the detail.  That gallant fellow, the list, also makes a welcome appearance: here a list of subjects that a convivial bookseller might make reference to, in quaint preamble to a hard sell.

A couple of reasons for gratitude, to end.  Firstly to Antony Melville for a superb translation, at once joyfully idiomatic and full of delightfully complex syntax.  The second Thank You is because The Philosophers’ Madonna has been a jaunty stimulus to seek out the work, and explore the worlds, of Carlo Emilio Gadda, a writer hitherto unknown to me.

Within the introduction Melville quotes Italo Calvino‘s appraisal of Gadda:

He tried throughout his life to represent the world as a muddle, a tangle, or a bungle, in fact to represent without dilution the inextricable complexity of life, or rather the simultaneous presence of the most disparate elements which compete to determine each event.

Now who can say that this was not a noble aim?  On completing The Philosophers’ Madonna, first published incidentally as long ago as 1931, I’ve learned that Calvino wrote an essay about Gadda in Why Read the Classics?  That has already been devoured and his other novels await.

We are Three Sisters

We are Three Sisters

By Blake Morrison

Northern Broadsides

The Lowry, 20 September 2011

If you have some familiarity with the Brontes’ lives and works, and with Chekhov’s Three Sisters also, you will definitely get the max out of Blake Morrison’s play.

Your appreciation of the curate’s speculations concerning the form that future life will take is definitely enhanced by a knowledge of Chekhov’s play, for example, as will be the fate of Tabby, the Brontes’ servant.  So too you’ll enjoy the very end, where instead of Moscow the sisters look to London, their soon to be published novels and posterity for their salvation.

Then, on another tack, there is Branwell, who like Rochester’s wife in Jane Eyre almost dies by setting himself and the parsonage alight.

However, it would be tedious to enumerate all the various echoes and allusions.

What I liked most about Morrison’s play was the character of the Doctor, played by the excellent John Branwell, a plain-speaking man caught in the headlights of a deep emotion, and the empathy for Tabby, the virtue-bejewelled Eileen O’Brien.  A treasure and a half, she is.

There is also Emily, the true genius of the litter, who is given to making gloomy, Gothic pronouncements.  They are a shaft of moonlight, these utterances, awry yet disquietingly illuminating.

We are Three Sisters, a solidly entertaining play, is at The Lowry until 24 September, further details here.  Then it continues its UK tour, full tour dates being here.