LSO playing mahler at the beacon…

I went to the Bristol Beacon last night with my good friend Ed to hear/see the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO)(conductor: Sir Antonio Pappano) performing Mahler’s Symphony no.1 and Walton’s Cello Concerto (soloist: Rebecca Gilliver).
I love Mahler’s music and last night’s performance was wonderfully impressive… so brilliant to witness the sight and sound of a large orchestra at full tilt.
I was less familiar with the Walton piece, but very much enjoyed Rebecca Gilliver’s mesmerising performance.
A really excellent evening.
PS: Somewhat embarrassingly, the last time I was at the Beacon (or Colston Hall as it used to be) for a concert of classical music was in May 2018 – to see the wonderful Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla conduct the CBSO… although I’ve attended other classical concerts elsewhere in the meantime.
PPS: Although Walton’s Cello Concerto isn’t my favourite cello piece, the cello IS almost certainly my favourite classical instrument. It reminded me of the time I first remember hearing/watching Elgar’s ‘Cello Concerto’ played ‘live’. I’d been invited to a special concert at St Hilda’s College, Oxford (I designed some student accommodation for the College during my time working for The Oxford Architects Partnership). The world-famous cellist Jacqueline Du Pré was an Honorary Fellow at St Hilda’s College. She was forced to stop performing in 1973, due to Multiple Sclerosis, and died in 1987, aged 42. The Jacqueline Du Pré Music Building was subsequently built in Oxford and opened in 1995 (St Hilda’s had been one of the joint fundraisers). That concert probably took place in 1973/4 - over 50 years ago (I know!) - and I still have goose-bumps when I recall the sound of the cello that night (the last performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto I attended – at St George’s, Bristol in 2019 – brought tears to my eyes… soft man that I am). I think I need to attend another performance of that Elgar piece before I die! 

january-february 2025 books…

The Perfect Golden Circle (Benjamin Myers): This is our next Storysmith bookgroup selection (albeit that I won’t be able to make our review meeting) – under the theme of ‘weather’. The novel is set in 1989 and, over the course of a hot English summer, two very different men – a traumatised Falklands veteran Calvert and a somewhat chaotic Redbone – set out in a clapped-out camper, under cover of darkness, to traverse the fields of England forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns. Over the course of the summer, their designs become increasingly ambitious and the work takes on something of a cult status (albeit that the men’s identity remains unknown). In many ways, it’s an unsentimental and yet realistic look at our world of today – changing weather patterns; global warming; and sober implications for the planet. The book’s cover/flyleaf is FULL of praise from a whole mass of gushing reviewers. Here’s just a flavour: “brilliantly constructed…”; “understated, plangent loveliness of Myers’s storytelling…”; “a strong, spiritual writer who sees and loves every dewdrop, old oak, soft little animal and buried sword…”. Well, although I warmed to the book towards the end, I’m afraid I didn’t find it particularly convincing… and I didn’t find either of the characters particularly believable. Unlike the army of book reviewers, I wasn’t particularly impressed by Myers as a writer and found many of his descriptions painfully laboured. I could quote lots of examples, but here are just two: “Redbone takes a drink. His throat is a Saharan sand dune, a dead riverbed of boulders. He is so thirsty that he swallows the water as if the lives of his unborn offspring depend upon it. He drains half the flask in a few greedy gulps so that non-existent children might one day live”… and “The owls are so owlish that they resemble a sound effect, a dusty vinyl recording found in the BBC’s audio archives. The tree trunks meanwhile create corridors as if a needle is stuck on the record that is playing continually in an empty office deep in an abandoned building guarded by a solitary nightwatchman for whom retirement cannot come quickly enough”. Really?? The book echoes some of the themes of the excellent BBC TV series ‘The Detectorists’ from 2014 – a secretive pursuit for treasure (or in the book’s case anonymous cult status?) undertaken by some rather strange, quirky enthusiasts… and yet, for me, it failed to really engage me. I found it mildly amusing at times and somewhat irritating at others! In a word: disappointing (although I know I’ll be in a minority).
Sentenced To Life (Clive James): I first read this 10 years ago and have been re-reading the book’s poems as part of my early morning reflections (a couple of pieces each day). The poems were written as if James felt his death was imminent and yet he survived another 12 years (first published in 2007 – he died in 2019)… but I again found his words/reflections/regrets/joys/guilt/memories really quite poignant and insightful – albeit sometimes overly self-pitying perhaps.
Night Waking (Sarah Moss): I’ve read a number of Sarah Moss books (this is quite an early one – first published in 2011) and enjoy her writing, but I struggled to get into this one initially… and came back to it after a 6-month gap. The main character, Anna, is a Research Fellow in History struggling to write without a room of her own… stranded on a Hebridean island where her husband is researching puffins. They have two young sons and Anna’s days are a round of abandoned projects and domestic drudgery – with husband Giles sadly lacking in his ideas of shared parenting due to what he sees as his far more pressing puffin obligations. The book becomes something of a mystery novel when one of the sons finds a baby skeleton buried in the garden. An investigation begins and Anna’s work changes as she endeavours to confront the island’s past while finding a way to live with the competing demands of the present. I ended up really enjoying the book… it’s brilliantly observed and frequently funny (I particularly enjoyed the rather wonderful way Moss was able to mix in the speech of small children and of adults talking to them so convincingly well). I loved one reviewer’s description of Anna as a “furious, self-pitying martyr, self-conscious to the point of satire about her particular niche in the pantheon of middle-class motherhood”!
Night (Elie Wiesel): January marked the 80^th anniversary of the liberation of German Nazi concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz… and this book provides a horrifying portrait of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel was 15 when the Nazis came for the 15,000 Jews of his hometown of Sighet, Transylvania, in May 1944. Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, his mother and sister were murdered within hours, while he was put to work as a slave labourer. Eight months later, the Germans evacuated the camp and forced the survivors on a death march that ended at Buchenwald. Wiesel (now a Professor at Boston University) was one of the few still alive when the Americans arrived in April 1945. We all know about the horrors of the Holocaust but, still, Wiesel’s first-hand account makes the grimmest of reading… one is left with a sense of utter disbelief that man could commit such crimes. The book is disturbing in the extreme and yet, thankfully, also something of a beacon of hope. We must not EVER forget what happened.
Bad Island (Stanley Donwood): I bought this at the £5 Bookshop (Park Street). First published in 2020, this stark, graphic novel is about the end of the world(!) - which seems particularly pertinent at this time when we have Trump talking about ‘drill baby drill’ and the UK government regarding airport expansions as being more important than the environment. The book is a series of single image linocuts, building up slowly into an eons-old narrative of life, evolution and ultimate (self-)destruction. Stark, bleak and but with a powerful message. 

a complete unknown…

Moira and I went along to the Watershed yesterday to see James Mangold’s ‘A Complete Unknown’ – about Bob Dylan’s rise to become one of the most iconic singer-songwriters in history. The 19-year-old from Minnesota arrives in New York in 1961 with his guitar and is destined to change the course of American music.
I recall my schoolboy days in 1962 when, in order to try to look ‘cool’ and ‘keep up with the music scene’ (I’m pretty sure I was the first person to actually discover The Beatles!), I used to subscribe to ‘Disc’ magazine or what later became ‘Disc Weekly’… and so began my fascination with Mr Dylan and his music. “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” 1963 album has always been my favourite.
As my good friend Tony suggested (after he’d seen the film last weekend), watching it was an exercise in ‘nostalgia’… in a very positive way. He was absolutely right. Unsurprisingly (on a Tuesday afternoon!), the vast majority of the pretty much capacity audience comprised lots of old couples in their 70s (like us!) – reliving their youth.
I feared that it would all be very disappointing… a number of people acting out and singing parts of some of my heroes. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I thought the actors were absolutely excellent: Dylan (played brilliantly by Timothée Chalamet); Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro); Pete Seeger (Edward Norton); and girlfriend Sylvie Russo (pictured on the ‘Freewheelin’ album cover photograph)(Elle Fanning).
In the film, Dylan somewhat predictably (and convincingly) comes across as an arrogant, thick-skinned, selfish musical genius. The film includes the time of Dylan’s appearance at the 1965 Newport folk festival – where he rejects the traditional folk traditions in favour of rock and blues-inspired electric guitars… and I can well remember my own disappointment/disbelief of that time. But, hey, music is something of a journey – and Dylan is still going strong despite his 83 years (and thank goodness for that).
I’d strongly recommend that you see this film. It brought back lots of memories.
PS: Of course, I’ve been re-listening to Dylan albums all over again since seeing the film!
PPS: I think my favourite Dylan song is “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”… and its lyrics are featured in Mark Edwards+Lloyd Timberlake’s brilliant book “Hard Rain: Our Headlong Collision With Nature” (published in 2006)… a stunning photographic essay. I absolutely treasure this book. It’s sadly sobering that the book’s major theme – our headlong collision with nature and the pressing issues of climate change, environmental degradation and world poverty – applies even more today than it did then, 19 years ago… and Dylan’s lyrics (which at the time were inspired by the threat of nuclear meltdown) remain scarily prophetic – 62 years later. 

january 2025 books…

The Fortnight In September (RC Sherriff): This is our next Bloke’s book. First published in 1931, it’s a simple account of a family’s two weeks’ holiday at the seaside. The Stevens’ family (mother and father; Mary nearly 20; Dick 17; and Ernie 10), who lived near Dulwich, had always holidayed in Bognor and always stayed at the same guest house. They were an ‘ordinary’, decent family and their holidays were planned by the father (who, every year, made a list of ‘Marching Orders’ to ensure that everything was ‘right’ in advance of their train journey to the coast)(we travelled by Sandwell Coaches’ charabancs), but with the family agreeing a basic itinerary on a day-to-day basis. Although there was something like a 25-year time difference, the book reminded me of our own family holidays in Blackpool each year as a child. My Dad was a list-maker (Ru and I have inherited the trait!) and, like the Stevenses, our holidays included beach cricket games (or to the park when the tide was in), theatre visits, the pier and amusement arcades… and we stayed at the same guest house every year – even after the people had retired. Nothing really happens in this book, except the simple pleasures and the decent ordinariness of (working class) life. The book won’t appeal to many perhaps, but I found it a wonderfully evocative reminder of life as it used to be.
The Last Devil To Die (Richard Osman): I’ve read and really enjoyed Osman’s previous three ‘Thursday Murder Club’ novels. There’s part of me that almost resents Osman’s ridiculous success in everything he seems to touch (but, hey, he’s a hugely talented bloke!) but, I have to admit, I really like his books! If anything, I think this is probably his ‘best yet’. Another clever, intricate storyline – featuring art forgers, online fraudsters, drug dealer and, of course, those wonderful, aged characters (Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron – my favourite is Joyce!) from Cooper’s Chase Retirement Village. Effortlessly (at least that’s how it seems) entertaining and even quite moving (despite the body-count!). I read it within 3 days and found it rather wonderful.
Julia (Sandra Newman): This novel (published in 2023) is something of a re-telling of Orwell’s ‘1984’ (which I’d previously read three times before over the past 50 or so years - the last in 2017)… but, this time, from the very different perspective of the role women were forced to play – something that was clearly lacking in Orwell’s novel. Newman’s version is seen through the eyes of Julia Worthing, who works in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. I found it utterly convincing, complex and disturbing… and, somewhat worryingly (in my view), also a reflection of the world we currently live in – with its powerful (+hugely rich) oligarchs; its fake news; its blatant lies; and its potential ability to control the media/internet (but, so far, no apparent use of torture!?). It all felt scarily authentic and impressively written. Not a book that one ‘enjoys’ exactly… but it’s very difficult not to be hugely impressed.
Cork In The Doghouse (Macdonald Hastings): Another book from the Oxfam secondhand bookshop – largely on the basis that it was another of Penguin Books’ ‘green cover crime series’. It was first published in 1957 (I remember the author when he was a reporter for the BBC’s ‘Tonight’ programme back in the day!) but, frankly, I was very disappointed – it all felt very contrived and (perhaps unsurprisingly) very dated… and yet it probably would have been better to have been set back in the 1920s. Montague Cork is the General Manager+Managing-Director of the Anchor Accident Insurance Company (the author has apparently written a whole series of ‘Cork Adventures’… I personally won’t be reading any others!) and this one concerns a highly-insured pit bull terrier and a group of ne’er-do-wells. I’m afraid I found the book unremarkable and unconvincing.
Three Men In A Boat (Jerome K Jerome): I think this is the fourth time I’ve read this book (the last being in 2020)… somewhat pitifully perhaps, I took it off the bookshelf again on the basis that it provided some guaranteed ‘comfort reading’ at a time when the world seems to have lost its marbles. First published in 1889 (our/Moira’s copy 1969) is the well-known story of three men (and a dog) on a boat, making the journey from Kingston to Oxford along the Thames (and back again). It’s obviously incredibly dated and ‘of its time’, but it really is very funny and beautifully written. All accounts of their journey invariably get side-tracked by recollections of other, often completely unrelated, events – indeed, the first quarter of the book isn’t about things they encountered on their boat journey at all (instead: stories about their various health issues; what they should take with them; how they should pack etc). Some lovely references bemoaning the “pace of nineteenth century life”… and a rather pertinent comment about “people’s changing tastes” and things that had become “unfashionable”: “Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of today always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimney-pieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd?...”. A lovely, enjoyable re-read.