5/32 Short Films about Glenn Gould - Gould Meets Gould

Glenn Gould. An endlessly intriguing character!

Music and Matilda.

Imagine a girl of four years and three months going into a library and telling the librarian that she would like to read a book. To be more precise, ‘a really good one that grown-ups read. A famous one.’ How do you think the librarian might reply? In Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Mrs Phelps considers picking out ‘a young teenager’s romance’ but, to her surprise, finds herself ‘instinctively walking past that particular shelf’. Instead the ever-optimistic librarian chooses Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations. Four and a quarter year old Matilda enjoys the book, and begins to tackle volumes by other classic authors. Wading her way through a formidable array of books, she comes across Ernest Hemingway: ‘Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don’t understand,’ Matilda comments. Mrs Phelps reassures her literary protégée, ‘ …don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.’

Seems a pity to waste words. These didn't go into a short interview to celebrate Dahl Day 2007 that I recently did, but I think Mrs Phelps put her finger on the importance of not 'dumbing down'. Being able to approach words and music however you want is one of the best things about both arts.

London

 

Cameo Role

Wigmore Hall, Sunday 9th September 2007. All the Russian greats were there: Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and Kissin. Though of course the first three were in musical form, the latter in a rather more tangible incarnation. Kissin played his cameo role to perfection, and who doesn't like a bit of celebrity-in-the-audience spotting? There was also a healthy dollop of Russian superstition. Boris Berezovsky, pianist of the Makhtin/Berezovsky/Kniazev piano trio explained that, just as the repertoire of that night (Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Rachmaninov) was due to be recorded, their record company went 'spectacularly out of business'. So in order to ward off future bad luck, a change of programme was in order. Out with Rachmaninov and in with Tchaikovsky, who according to Berezovsky is 'another Russian composer'.Well said. Bridget Jones would be proud.

Let's make an opera...

I was excited to read that Ian McEwan, of Atonement fame, is writing a libretto for an opera, with music to be composed by Michael Berkeley. From descriptions of music in certain of his books, Ian McEwan's affinity with music is clear: "[the] guitar starts out alone with a languorous two-bar turnaround, a simple descending line from the fifth fret, tumbling into a thick chord which oozes into a second and remains hanging there, an unresolved fading seventh...." (from Saturday). Browsing McEwan's website, I discovered that he had already collaborated with Michael Berkeley, producing an oratorio entitled "Or Shall We Die?".

Soundtrack.

Currently listening to Joshua Bell's album The Romantic Violin (or should that be the romantic violin?) Oh to be a violinist, tugging away at people's heartstrings.