Music to my ears
What the classical world has been listening to this month
William Sitwell Journalist
I first heard Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 when I saw a school performance of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, with Dominic West as Salieri. What struck me about the symphony is just how much rhythm there can be in classical music – I used to put it on very loudly at home and play along with it on an eight-piece drum kit. The first bar captures you, and it’s a piece with such energy, verve and vigour. It still means a lot to me.
Walton’s film score for Henry V shows him at his most naturally brilliant. There’s a recording in which Christopher Plummer narrates the dialogue alongside the score, and one of my favourite moments is when the brassy music gives the sense of a chubby, jovial Falstaff dancing and falling around the place in an inn. The music then changes as young Hal delivers his devastatingly savage speech in which he dispenses with his old friend – it stirs the heart like nothing else.
The first time I came across the band Coldplay was when they performed ‘Yellow’ on Jools Holland’s TV show many years ago. On Spotify, I’ve been listening to them play the song at a concert in Buenos Aires. What it so poignant about it is that you can hear the whole crowd sing along in English and then Chris Martin, the lead singer, talks to them in Spanish – the crowd goes wild. I particularly love Coldplay’s early stuff, which was a bit more raw than their later material.
And also… I’ve just finished reading Michael Caine’s first autobiography, What’s It All About? The first half deals with his childhood growing up in Elephant and Castle, the fact that he was a soldier in the Korean War and the years and years of struggles he had to become an actor. It is just brilliantly told. I would recommend it to anyone.
William Sitwell appears in Part 2 of Our Classical Century on BBC Four
Madeleine Mitchell Violinist
I went to see Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, an opera I hadn’t seen before, at the Royal Opera House recently. It seemed quite balletic, and then I realised it was from 1890 and that The Nutcracker was written the following year. Mozart opera is probably my favourite music, and there were references to it in The Queen of Spades. It doesn’t have the big romantic sweep of Eugene Onegin, but I found it gripping and chilling.
A couple of weeks ago, I was given a special set of Brahms recordings. It’s Toscanini’s Brahms cycle with Jascha Heifetz playing the Violin Concerto live with the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York in 1935. They keep it moving but they are so much on the same wavelength that it’s thrilling. You get the feeling of line and sometimes of dance. There are these magical fleet-footed moments. And that Heifetz sound soars – it’s sublime!
I never tire of listening to Bill Evans’s album Portrait in Jazz.
The first chord of ‘Come Rain or Shine’ gets me every time as it’s so subtle and interesting. My other favourite track is ‘When I Fall in Love’. The reason I love Evans so much is a lot do with the chords and the sophisticated, intoxicating rhythms. When I was a kid I
used to love sitting at our upright piano, experimenting with chords, finding interesting ones which had a particular sound.
And also… When I’m on tour I’m more likely to be found in an art gallery than at a concert. I have eclectic tastes, from Vermeer to Matisse to Hodgkin. I recently revisited the Turners at the Tate. I especially like the late, abstract translucent paintings. They’re from round about the 1840s, and the bold colours are so beautiful, as is the light. I get so much from just looking at them. It’s a pure visual connection.
Madeleine Mitchell’s album of Grace Williams’s Violin Sonata is released on 1 March on Naxos Alexander Ullman Pianist
I’ve been thinking lately about breaking rules in performance and how to push boundaries. The pianist Vladimir de Pachmann was such an eccentric and one of the earliest to make recordings of his work; his recording of Chopin’s G-flat Etude is very funny. He talks throughout the performance and even after he’s played the first page, he apologises and starts again. It’s what I listen to when I want to be reminded to record things with more freedom.
This idea of transcending tradition is also obvious in Art Tatum’s performance of Chopin’s Waltz in C sharp minor. He doesn’t even play the right notes; he just makes it up. He even said himself that there’s no such thing as a wrong note. Both Rachmaninov and Horowitz claimed he was the greatest pianist alive, and his technique is so unusual – no other classical musician can play like him. He’s got such freedom of thought. Although these two interpretations are almost unnecessarily extreme examples about pushing boundaries, I want to challenge myself in a similar way. I want to feel uncomfortable.
Wilhelm Furtwängler’s interpretation of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 is one of the most special recordings I’ve ever heard. Because he’s leading the orchestra as well as playing, you get the sense that you’re listening to a musician rather than a performance. It’s the antithesis of an ‘authentic’ performance, because it’s very Romantic in style. The cadenza is a moment of pure genius – everyone must listen to it! And also… I’ve been to so many ballets in the last year. Choreographer Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake at Sadler’s Wells follows my ‘rule-breaking’ theme. The allmale cast is such a bold approach. Ullman’s debut disc of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Stravinsky will be reviewed in a future issue
Rachmaninov and Horowitz claimed that Art Tatum was the greatest pianist alive