SOUND JUDGEMENT
THE LATEST CLASSICAL ALBUMS REVIEWED AND RATED
ELGAR VIOLIN CONCERTO / VIOLIN SONATA
RENAUD CAPUCON, LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA / SIR SIMON RATTLE, STEPHEN HOUGH
HHHHH
This is an absolutely wonderful coupling of two of Elgar’s most heartfelt works, and all concerned deserve the utmost credit for putting the music before their own self-projecting. This has not always been the case with the soloists in Simon Rattle’s previous recordings of the Concerto, and I have heard far too many overblown accounts of the Sonata which blow away its fragility. On this recording the concerto’s opening tutti has the most understated but appropriate portamenti in the violins, never overdone or selfconscious, and Renaud Capucon’s entry is grippingly grieving, heralding a deeply personal, heartfelt response to this most personal of violin concertos. His delivery is busy, but also with the space lovingly to caress a phrase. Collaboration between the soloist and Rattle’s London Symphony Orchestra is shapely and flexible, with subtle dynamic delicacy. Particularly affecting is the delivery of the finale’s many moods, culminating in a dignified unfolding of the heartbreaking reminiscences of the lengthy cadenza, before the conclusion’s wonderful defiance.
This is a triumph of sociallydistanced recording under lockdown, and Rattle in his senior years is becoming as great an Elgar conductor as one of his recent LSO predecessors, Sir Colin Davis. Perhaps Rattle would give us an Elgar Third Symphony to equal Davis’ ineffable recording. Capucon wears a totally different hat in order to capture the intimate atmosphere of the Violin Sonata; this is private grief, not something to be overblown in a symphony concert.
The opening is arrestingly understated, Stephen Hough’s piano accompaniment equally unflashy, and this thrusts the wonderful second subject into such natural relief. There is a gently febrile quality in the second movement Romance, Hough playing with so much unforced detail, and in the finale Capucon affects nothing grandiose, but instead soothes us with reflective reminiscence.
A bonus comes with the absorbing insert-note by the English Symphony Orchestra’s principal conductor Kenneth Woods, founding artistic director of the Elgar Festival.
Christopher Morley
‘IF THIS was to be our last album I would consider it an exclamation point,” says rock star Dave Grohl. “Some people might consider it a question mark. But for me it would be a drop-the-mic moment for the band.”
The 52-year-old drummerturned-frontman is talking about Medicine At Midnight, Foo Fighters’ recently released 10th album. Of course, this is not the veteran outfit’s final release – or at least we hope it isn’t. Instead, it is a celebration of 25 years’ hard touring and 10 albums of anthemic rock.
For their latest outing, Dave and co have incorporated the music of their youth. It is the music that makes them want to move – Little Richard, Elvis, Sly And The Family Stone, even Let’s Dance-era David Bowie and disco. While this may seem surprising to some, it made total sense to the band.
“Knowing it was our 25th anniversary and our 10th album, I thought it would be a good idea to really start the party now,” an ever-enthusiastic Dave explains.
The Foos, as they’re affectionately known by fans, began work on the record in late 2019, decamping to an expansive 1940s house in a Los Angeles suburb.
Sessions progressed quickly, despite vague mumblings about the property being haunted – untouched guitars would suddenly detune, mixing desks would reset themselves overnight.As the process went on, the band realised they were writing songs that were more upbeat, more disco even, although they retained their trademark stadium-ready rock sound. Dave says that during the process he kept the festival crowd in mind.
The bubblegum choruses of “na na nas” on Making
A Fire and the soaring riffs of
Holding Poison sound ready-made for the live circuit. But as well as delaying the album, the pandemic also ensured these songs will remain purely for home listening, at least for now.
“I felt like it was time for us to be the DJ at the biggest party we have ever had,” Dave chuckles. “And of course that didn’t happen.
“We have stumbled into real luck over the last 25 years. It is not often that we have just hit a brick wall. “We have kept the forward motion for a long time. This is the first time in the band’s career that we had to just turn the key and shut it down. That felt strange.”
Dave spent lockdown in Hawaii with his wife, Jordyn Blum, and their three daughters. What was meant to be a short holiday before the band jetted off on a world tour turned into a months-long break. Dave was grounded for the first time in some 30 years.
“I felt really fortunate to have a lot of time with my family, making sure that everybody is healthy and safe,” he says.
“I have been on the road for 30 years, so having 12 months of being at home was something new to me. “And I have got to be honest, I was really into it. People would ask me, ‘Don’t you miss being on tour?’ Of course I felt obligated to say, ‘Yes, that is the love of my life.’ But deep down I really was happy with being immobile for a little while.” Medicine At Midnight is unique among the Foo Fighters’ back catalogue because of its special guest – Dave’s eldest daughter, Violet, 14, who sings backing vocals on Making A Fire.
After school, Violet would do her homework while the band worked on the album in their LA residence. One day, the band’s producer, Greg Kurstin, asked her if she wanted to lay down some backing vocals. She nailed it in two takes. Living up to his reputation as the nicest guy in rock, Dave is the doting father about it.
“She was singing along to Amy Winehouse in perfect pitch and perfect cadence and inflection when she was four or five years old,” he gushes. “So I knew she had it in her and over time she has really grown to become a musician.”
Despite its feelgood vibe, politics is baked into Medicine At Midnight. Dave was raised in a political family – his father, James, was a journalist and political consultant, his mother, Virginia, a public school teacher. He grew up in
Washington DC, within spitting distance of the Pentagon and White House.
Waiting On A War, the album’s most overtly political track, expresses the sense of impending Armageddon he felt as a boy – and feels again now living in an America reshaped by Donald Trump.
“We’re digging ourselves out of a hole right now,” he offers when asked about the state of his nation. Dave has always been clear on his political views. The Foos performed their hit Times Like These during a special concert on the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration, with Dave dedicating their performance to his mother and “all of our unshakeable teachers that continue to enlighten our nation’s kids every day”.
It was, unsurprisingly, an emotional experience. “Having them ask us to play a song I wrote 18 years ago about a time in my life where I was at a crossroads, not sure which way to go, but felt the need for some kind of rebirth – I felt like I needed to start again.
“That is what Times Like These is about. It is not a political song but it does apply to what is going on in America right now.”
Instead of performing live in Washington DC, Dave watched himself perform from his home in Hawaii (the song was pre-recorded due to Covid-19 measures).
“I would have loved to have been there,” he sighs. “Instead I was in Hawaii on the couch in a tie-dye T-shirt, drinking a beer, watching my band perform at the inauguration. It was surreal!
“But (it was) also a very emotional moment. I was incredibly honoured to be involved in a moment like that. To me it seemed like a turning point... Thank goodness.”
“It’s funny,” he says in closing. “I sometimes liken it to seeing your life flash before your eyes as it is happening.
“I just have to pinch myself and roll with it. I wake up every day, no matter how good a day or bad a day, and can’t believe I get to live this life. It never wears thin.”
■ Medicine At Midnight by
Foo Fighters is out now.
EVEN on a Zoom call Priyanka Chopra Jonas looks every inch the Bollywood/ Hollywood star – oozing class, from her royal blue and black leopard-print silk shirt to her warm, intelligent conversation.
She has so many strings to her bow, it’s difficult to know where to start – former Miss World, actor and producer, social media sensation, Unicef goodwill ambassador and humanitarian, named as one of Forbes’ Most Powerful Women.
She was also a guest at Meghan Markle’s wedding to Prince Harry, but I’ve been instructed not to ask about that today.
And, of course, as fans will know, she’s also the wife of singer-songwriter and actor Nick Jonas. Last year, lockdown enabled the couple to settle into their new home in Los Angeles and spend five months together.
“We got a new dog, and it was almost like nesting. It’s time I don’t think I would have had with my husband because my career is insane, as is his,” she explains.
The couple met via social media in 2016 – he direct messaged her on Twitter after seeing her starring in the TV series Quantico – and they finally met in person at the Vanity
Fair Oscars after-party in 2017, marrying in a lavish three-day celebration in Jodhpur in 2018, featuring both Hindu and Christian ceremonies.
“My husband is a very calming influence on me,” she says. “He is a very mature, introspective man. He makes me feel a sense of strength because he always pushes me to be more, to be ambitious – and I haven’t experienced that before except with my parents.”
She has lived a superstar lifestyle for so long, was it strange hunkering down like the rest of us in lockdown? “Lockdown made me start caring about my wellness, working out and eating great. There was a lot of streaming movies, comfy clothes and ordering in great food from various places.”
Spending those months together, what did they learn about each other? “That he’s very neat and I’m not, that he loves to eat at the dining table, and I don’t,” she says wryly. “But we are totally compatible. A lot of people have had adverse effects of being stuck together for a long time, but we still really like each other.”
For now, though, she’s living in a rented house in Notting Hill, London for a year, while filming the rom-com Text For You and Citadel, a thriller series with Richard Madden.
Work takes her around the world although she spends much of her time between Mumbai, where her family and friends live, and LA, the marital home and the first she has bought in 15 years.
During lockdown, she also finished her autobiography, Unfinished, charting her life, from her peripatetic childhood in India to her teenage years of education in the US and her return to India, where she entered the world of beauty pageants, winning Miss India, then Miss World, which opened doors for her in the movie world. To date, she has appeared in more than 60 films produced in India and the US.
The daughter of military doctors whose work often took them away,
Priyanka spent some of her teens being educated in the US, where she fell victim to racist bullies in one school.
“I wanted to be invisible, which is so opposite to who I am by nature. I love being the centre of attention. It killed my spirit, my confidence. It made me a shell of myself,” she recalls now.
“The racist comments made me so aware of my ethnicity, something I didn’t even think about. It made me acutely aware of the fact that I was different.”
As a result of the experience, she returned to her family in India, then two months before her 17th birthday won a local beauty pageant. So began her road to success, first as Miss India and later as Miss World.
“It changed my life completely,” she explains. “I grew up really quickly. I went from being this high school girl with dusty knees from a small town in India to wearing a crown and talking to heads of state and having an opinion on the world that matters at 18. I recognised this opportunity was a gateway to a career.”
Bollywood came calling but, she explains in Unfinished, her acting career was almost stopped in its tracks when sinus and breathing problems led her to have a polyp removed from her nasal cavity in what was supposed to be a routine operation, but which led to disaster when the bridge of her nose collapsed.
When the bandages were removed, she was horrified, she recalls.
“My original nose was gone. My face looked completely different. I wasn’t me anymore. I felt devastated and hopeless,” she writes, although she didn’t come out about it publicly at the time.
Following the polypectomy she had several corrective surgeries, garnering accusations of ‘Plastic Chopra’ in newspaper articles.
She explains: “With the book, I try to tell my version of that. Maybe all of the people who have referred to me with really vile names, maybe they’ll see the humanity behind how traumatic it actually was, specifically when you are in a profession where your job pretty much is about your face and physical appearance.”
She was dropped from two big movies that were to have launched her career – after the producers heard rumours she looked different post-surgery. The producer of a third movie she’d been signed up for changed her role to a supporting one. “I’d had these gates of heaven opened for me, then slammed in my face,” she recalls.
“I didn’t look in the mirror for days. I wouldn’t want to. I felt helpless, I felt the permanence and burden of it, and the opportunity that dazzled in front of me was now gone – and not for something I did.
“It was terrifying. Thankfully both my parents were doctors, thankfully my dad was a surgeon, thankfully he knew what to do and got alternative measures, thankfully I kept a little bit of good work and people still took a chance on me.”
“Now I’m on the other side of 35, as a woman I have reached a place where I’m content with who I am. I have the ground beneath my feet. I feel strong and stable and have confidence in what I bring to the table. And it only took 20 years to get there!” she says, laughing.
Today, she says she wants to hone her skills as an actor and producer, and to use her public profile to be a platform for a variety of causes. She’s been a Unicef goodwill ambassador for 10 years, is an advocate of multiculturalism and runs her own education foundation.
She has made no secret of the fact that she and Jonas, who is 10 years her junior, want children. At 38, does she feel the biological clock ticking? “I’m a believer in destiny and I don’t like to challenge it,” she says. “I’ve always been fond of children and I would love for it to be a big chapter in my life, but if you want to make God laugh, tell Her your plans. I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed and be grateful for whatever we get.”
My original nose was gone. My face looked completely different. I wasn’t me anymore. I felt devastated and hopeless Priyanka on the disastrous routine operation that led to her nose collapsing