I find myself at the BBC on a Sunday afternoon, helping a friend with an
internet project.  He grumbles, "This PC only has only 64k RAM..  Grumble..
only Word 7, not 97..." He wouldn't get his project *started* without my
help!  Anyway - I've enjoyed many concerts since I moved to London nearly
two years ago, but can seldom write about them for the Moderated List.
This afternoon, I have more time to reflect and report on London's
cornucopia of classical events.  Last week, for instance..

 [Monday, 10 January: Leonard Bernstein "Mass" - London Choral Society]

Bernstein composed Mass in 1971 for the opening of the John F.  Kennedy
Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.  It requires a large pit
orchestra, two choruses plus a boy's choir, a Broadway-sized cast (with
ballet company), marching band and a rock band.  Its musical styles range
from opera and oratorio to homespun ballads and brash Broadway melodies,
via jazz, 12-tone doodlings, a Hebrew Kaddish and Lutheran chorales!

Its critics have sniped:  "the greatest melange of styles since the ladies'
magazine recipe for steak fried in peanut butter and marshmallow sauce"
(New York Times), "West Side Story meets Vatican II" (Mark Pappenheim) and
"Mass:  the Musical" (Robert Craft).

Me - a good Catholic boy? I like it!  And give the CD a whirl when I'm
feeling sacrilegious.  I regret missing a rare British performance in
Birmingham in 1992, so I anticipated the London ceremony at the Queen
Elizabeth Hall.  This performance underplayed the theatrical elements of
Mass and gave it as a traditional concert, with a mob of performers crammed
onto the QEH platform.  I felt sorry for everyone acting, singing, dancing
and playing on the small stage, and realised that an in-the-round setting
would be more effective.  I suffered no spiritual pangs as the Celebrant
wrestled with his faith, and just enjoyed the music's audacity.

Mass overview at:
http://www.leonardbernstein.com/studio/element.asp?FeatID=12&AssetID=24

 [Wednesday, 12 January:  Minkus "La Bayadere", Martinu "Sphinx", Stravinsky
"Rite of Spring" - English National Ballet]

I shelled out for a rare ballet show because I wanted to see the "Rite of
Spring" in its natural element.  Stravinsky dismissed Nijinsky's original
1913 choreography with comments like "knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas
jumping up and down." In Kenneth MacMillan's 1962 choreography, over forty
fit boys and girls in skin-tight outfits capered about like baboons in
fantastic synchrony below an inkblot sun.  Tamara Rojo threw herself around
the stage as the sacrificial virgin, and the Rite ceased as the company
flung her corpse into the air on the very last note.  The theatre's dry
acoustic and the orchestra's hell-for-leather playing made the score even
more thrilling than ever.

The Rite was the climax of a progressively exciting evening.  Earlier,
Glen Tetley's "Sphinx" used Martinu's tense Double Concerto for 2 string
Orchestras, Piano & Timpani.  It featured the Sphinx herself, the dog-god
Anubis and Oedipus, the man who solves her riddle, with a great deal of
erotic wrestling.  Ludwig Minkus' "La Bayadere" was an ossified example of
Marius Petipa's 1870s choreography - all tiptoes, tutus and improbable male
crotches.  I have no appreciation of the difficult disciplines of classical
ballet.  I teased my balletomane friends by commenting, "The music sounds
very old-fashioned for Charles Mingus..."

ENB Site: http://www.ballet.org.uk/

 [Thursday, 13 January:  Berlioz "Romeo & Juliette" - London Symphony
Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis]

I've written before of how much I enjoy this work - "play the last minute
or so of 'Juliet's Funeral March'.  A procession of flutes and violins
toll quarternote E's an octave apart, while the strings nag with dissonant
foreboding below.  Such atmosphere from such simple means!  The score's
felicities are countless, and I hear premonitions of composers to come.
For example, two minutes into the Love Scene Adagio, solo horn and cellos
start a melody which has Rachmaninov's ardour in a nutshell."

Colin Davis' conducting was as ardent and imposing as the score deserved,
even though I prefer Berlioz's music more hyperactive, jumpy and nervy -
John Eliot Gardiner's recordings supply these qualities in extremis.
Daniela Barcellona (mezzo), Kenneth Tarver (tenor) Orlin Anastassov (bass)
were the young soloists, Tarver especially vivacious in the Queen Mab
scherzo.

An announcement before the concert begged the audience to restrain their
expectorations, as the concert would be recorded for a "LSO Live" CD
release.  Naturally, the snorters, coughers and sneezers redoubled their
efforts during the quiet parts.  Colin Davis recorded his second "Romeo &
Juliette" on Philips only a few years ago, exquisitely played by the VPO.
Even so, I trust the LSO will show those Vienna boys how to *really* play
it..

LSO site: http://www.lso.co.uk/

The music's romantic lingerings evaporated on our journey home on the
London Underground train.  A plump young office-worker, dozing in his seat
nearby, suddenly gushed rose' wine and diced carrots like a lavish Italian
fountain.  The splatter and the smell scattered everyone to the other end
of the carriage, rivulets of rose' threatening to reach us as we clustered
holding our noses.

London!

James Kearney
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