Happy Birthday Alfred Brendel!

Well said

"I think great art has entirely progressive aspects within it, elements that are somehow outside the detail of the text or even the political opinions of the person who made it. Art itself, if it is really great, has a progressive aspect that is needed by a society, even if it seems absolutely useless in strictly practical terms. In a way art is a little like the dreams of a society. They seem to contribute little, but sleeping and dreaming are vitally important in that a human couldn't live without them, in the same way a society cannot live without art."

Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini in The Guardian

That was 2010...

As midnight starts chiming around the globe, here's a hastily flung together few lists dipping into the cultural life of 2010. They're highly subjective, not at all comprehensive and I may well scrub the lot tomorrow and start again. It's a mixture of new and old - what I've come across this year, rather than the best of what's new. It's a (blurred) snapshot rather than a scientific survey...

Top three books of 2010

- The Music Room by William Fiennes
- A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
- Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore
(Solar by Ian McEwan, too, if I'm stretching to four)

Top three films of 2010

- A Single Man
- Heartbreaker
- I Am Love

Top three concerts of 2010

- Valery Gergiev and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6
- Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri in Krakow
- Maria Joao-Pires's Chopin Nocturne Prom in the Royal Albert Hall

Top three CDs of 2010
- Schumann's Davidbundlertanze and Fantasy in C from Mitsuko Uchida
- Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony from the RLPO and Vasily Petrenko
- Mozart's Piano Concertos from Imogen Cooper and the Northern Sinfonia

A Simple Medium

Films, perhaps, show us who we want to be, and literature shows us who we actually are. Sitcoms, if they show us anything, show us people we might like to know.
Tom Bissell in The New Yorker, in his profile of sitcom writer Chuck Lorre

The Dragon of Kraków

Meet the Kraków Dragon. A cheery fellow when he's in luminous green garb; a monstrous devourer of cattle and young virgins if you believe the legendary account. I've just finished writing a feature on his home city. This photo didn't make the final cut (well, it is a classical music travel feature), but he's found a home here – along with his scarily identical family – on Becca's Blog.

Beautiful coincidences

I like coincidences. Two days ago a friend recommended to me a BBC Four documentary (‘I never thought I’d say I had a good night in watching BBC Four,’ was his selling line). ‘Beautiful Equations’ does exactly what it says – it takes a look at the role beauty plays in maths. Art critic and artist Matt Collings is an engaging presenter as he investigates Newton and Einstein, quizzes Stephen Hawking on his black hole equations and gets scientists to explain what all those squiggles and numbers are all about. (It's for the general viewer rather than those who know their electrons from their positrons.)

My favourite squiggles were those of the so-called English Einstein, a Bristol-born physicist called Paul Dirac. Working in the first half of the 20th century, and using his own symbolic language, Dirac predicated anti-matter, and was one of the founding father of quantum mechanics. The reason he appeared in this programme was his underlying belief that the pursuit of beautiful equations would reveal the laws of nature. Beauty would be, in the words of Keats, truth, truth beauty. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the 'Dirac Equation' describing wave motions of electrons.

I was intrigued, although baffled by the mathematics. Anonymity was another of Dirac's desires (he had an incredibly literal mind that made social interaction a minefield), but biographer Graham Farmelo has written an acclaimed volume on his life. Time for a quick trip to the shops. I found a copy, and headed to the counter, where a girl in a festive green sparkly dress served me. When she saw what I was buying, her face lit up. 'Dirac. He's my hero!' Slightly surprised, given that I hadn't heard his name until the day before, we got chatting. It turned out that she was a physics student and artist, hence the love of Dirac. But there was another surprise to come.

'The programme talked a lot about the beauty of his mathematics,' I added. The reply: 'Yes, I've got his equation tattooed on my arm!'

Crosby Beach

Staring out to sea, one of the Gormley statues who stands vigil on Crosby Beach. Or the Gormless, as one local walker would have it.

Winter chill

I like the way Sibelius is a seal, Mozart a polar bear and – best of all – Beethoven and Bach are a pair of penguins! Bound to be their real names. I'm sure of it. More on freezing conditions in Liverpool to follow... (though hopefully the conditions planned for a trip this weekend won't be quite so arctic. Polar bears in the Mersey?)

The Paragon, Bristol

The Swallows of Kabul

Harrowing, thought-provoking, unexpected. Kabul, as conjured up by Yasmina Khadra* is, in the words of JM Coetzee 'hell on earth, a place of hunger, tedium and stifling fear.' A slim volume, this book transports you in few, but choice, words to the Afghanistan capital under the regime of the Taliban, where women are stoned to death, hide their faces and bodies under burqhas, and in which no one is allowed to sing, smile or dance. Freedom, responsibility, fate, death and love are a few of the book's themes, explored through the relationships of two couples who lives are crumbling. Day-to-day life in this hopeless place has shrunk their expectations, dimmed an appetite for life. So the choice of a Kabul prison as one of the novel's settings is meaningful. Who are the real prisoners? Those locked up by jailers for crimes real and false, most likely sentenced to death? Or those, nominally free, who are driven to violence, words and acts that would have been anathema to their younger, freer selves? People trapped in a living hell?

*Yasmina Khadra is a pseudonym of Mohammed Moulessehoul, a former Algerian army officer now living in France. The name is that of his wife's.

Rotterdam

Er, note to self. Make sure to press publish.

These photos are from Rotterdam, back in September. The Do Doelen concert hall, the Erasmus Bridge and the Cube Houses (which, I'm assured, people do actually live in).

Just Another Autumn Day

In Parliament, the Minister for Mists
and Mellow Fruitfulness announces,
that owing to inflation and rising costs
there will be no Autumn next year.
September, October and November
are to be cancelled,
and the Government to bring in
the nine-month year instead.
Thus we will all live longer.

Emergency measures are to be introduced
to combat outbreaks of well-being
and feelings of elation inspired by the season.
Breathtaking sunsets will be restricted
to alternate Fridays, and gentle dusks
prohibited. Fallen leaves will be outlawed,
and persons found in possession of conkers,
imprisoned without trial.
Thus we will all work harder.

The announcement caused little reaction.
People either way don't really care
No time have they to stand and stare
Looking for work or slaving away
Just another Autumn day.

Roger McGough

Take-home message: Make the most of Autumn, kick leaves, splash in puddles, smash conkers, admire trees of every awe-inspiring hue, pause a moment to watch the magical morning mist, savour sunsets – and enjoy huddling in for long evenings, telling stories and reading poems in praise of Autumn.