Russian monarchs

Spotted in a Bristol window…

Bartók's Violinists (1)

Bela Bartók was a pianist – and a pretty darn good one at that – but he also had a bit of a thing for the violin. While his own experience could furnish him with the necessary knowledge to write everything from pedagogical exercises (Mikrokosmos) to dazzling showcase pieces (the Piano Concertos) for the piano, he turned to others for inspiration when it came to the violin. Behind each of the Hungarian composer's violin works, then, you're likely to find a real person, a tantalising story, enshrined in music.

It started with Stefi Geyer. Bartók was infatuated with the young violinist, and in 1907, when she was 17 and he was 26, wrote her a Concerto. Spilling the beans about the intensity of his feeling for her in his letters only seems to have served to make her run…

Here's a taste of her playing:



And here's the lushly Romantic, rarely played First Violin Concerto that Bartók penned for her. The first movement was, he wrote, 'the idealised Stefi, celestial and inward'; she herself described it as a portrait of 'the young girl he loved'.

Road rage à la francaise

It’s a la mode, at the moment, the ‘velo’. Boris bikes in London, vélibs in Paris (shame Bristol, the UK’s ‘No. 1’ cycling city has ditched its scheme). But hopping on to a free bike isn’t without its perils. The obvious challenges of the free-for-all Etoiles roundabout aside, there’s the two-wheel version of road rage to contend with: Velib vitriol, let’s call it. Queuing up outside the Hotel de Ville for the Impressionists exhibition (free, fantastic, for more, check back here), a little vignette amused me. An impeccably chic French woman in her 40s, clothed in a little black coat and sporting little lunettes, tottered in on her unwieldy vélib. Alas, no space to be seen. As she wobbled up and down the row of bikes, hoping, perhaps, that one of the parked cycles might disappear, she made the fatal mistake of not checking behind her. Et allez, hop, a cyclist zipped out of their space, et voila, another - zut, alors - someone else! - nipped in. Eagle-eyes and a killer instinct are, clearly, necessary accessories for any Parisian cyclists, ones this rider, for all her elegance, didn’t possess: ‘I’ve been waiting for ten minutes!’ she shouted, practically hitting the unchivalrous usurper with her handbag, '10 minutes!’ (All the while notching up the euros, if she was already over half an hour.) ‘I’m not scared of you,’ he flashed back (Yes, he did actually say this). ’10 minutes!’ Cue flurry of French abuse. The queue, at that point, moved on; the Velibtriol faded into the distance.

Thought

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Graham Greene

Happy Birthday Brahms

Here's the Poco allegretto from his Symphony No. 3, performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Fürtwangler.

Scenes from Paris (1)

The Kiss in the Musée Rodin. The French sculptor's famous depiction of the tragic lovers Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malaesta is, simply, stunning. I've never seen any of Rodin's sculptures 'in the flesh' before. And it does feel like these marble and bronze masterpieces are, somehow, alive. Walking around the Parisian home of his sculptures – a house and gardens – it doesn't seem too ridiculous a flight of fancy that, perhaps, when your back is turned or after the key is turned in the gate lock at night and darkness has fallen, the sculptures draw breath, step off their plinths and go for a saunter and a steak-frites.

Ferrier finale

The Kathleen Ferrier Award finals are this evening in the Wigmore Hall. Three cheers for the fantastic Yshani Perinpanaygam, who'll be accompanying soprano Elena Sancho in them. I'll be crossing fingers they win! I should add in a disclaimer that as I know Yshani this is a biased post, but it's not needed as she's such a wonderful accompanist, and her playing speaks for itself… Good luck!

Lieberson

Peter Lieberson, the American composer, has died. I'd only recently discovered his work, led to it through the incomparably sublime voice of the great mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, whom he married in 1999. His luscious settings of five love poems by Pablo Neruda were composed for her – Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs shimmer in this music, although there's a flavour of their South American heritage too – and their story is poignant. As the singer traces the tale of love from first flush to death do us part, the knowledge that Hunt Lieberson was battling breast cancer at the time of their writing is hard to forget. Tragically, she died in 2006. In this extract, recorded with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under James Levine, Hunt Lieberson sings 'Amor mio, si muero y tu no mueres':

My love, if I die and you don't, let's not give grief an even greater field...this meadow where we find ourselves, O little infinity! We give it back. But Love, this love has not ended, it is like a long river."

Paris in the Springtime

The countdown to my trip to la belle France begins. Time for a little Ella…

Moonlight

XIX

The moonlight when it shines on the grass,
I don’t know what it reminds me of...
It reminds me of my old maid
Telling me fairy tales.
And Our Lady dressed as a beggar
Helping mistreated children...

If I can’t believe they’re true anymore,
Why does the moonlight shine on the grass?

(3/4/1914)

From The Keeper of Flocks by Alberto Caeiro

Tomorrow's Tangle

This is a temporary photo taken on my phone, to be replaced by a hypothetically better one from my camera this weekend. There's a wonderfully evocative gate – if a gate can be such a thing – in Bristol that opens on to stone steps winding up the hillside slopes of Cliftonwood to the summit of Clifton Village. Made of iron, the archway's now so rusty it looks like it might shiver and crumble if you dared to touch it. Amid leaves and curls runs a motto beginning 'Tomorrow's tangle' and continuing with I know not what, thanks to the loss of various letters. Google has helped me fill in the gaps: 'Tomorrow's tangle to ye windes resign' – wise words, oh yes – comes from Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. His version of the Persian verses were published in the 19th century. I wonder who made this arch in Bristol and what inspired them to choose this line of poetry as an adornment?

Le mépris

I watched Jean-Luc Godard's Le mépris this week. This 1960s French classic unfolds slowly, but it's beautiful. Set against a backdrop of exploring what cinema is and how to make a film, the crux of the plot is a tragic love story. Although that makes it sound more dramatic than the action turns out to be: in essence, this film depicts the moment two people fall out of love, what happens when the magic has gone. Godard is spot on in his observation and, for that, the film's moving and memorable.