An interview with George Walker

July 2021 reviews for The Times

Awakening Shadow
5 July 2021

Generally in an opera there are a few elements I would expect: characters, a story and at the very least some dramatic spark. So I’m still struggling to work out in what sense Luke Styles and Benjamin Britten’s Awakening Shadow is, as it was billed, a chamber opera. Just to clarify, this isn’t a recently rediscovered work by the long-dead Britten resurrected by Styles. Awakening Shadow is a stitching together of Britten’s Canticles, five intense, individual works on religious themes written over four decades.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/awakening-shadow-review-a-disappointing-new-chamber-opera-inspired-by-britten-jjnxbkcp3

Cendrillon/Acis and Galatea

13 July 2021

Rossini turns Cinderella into a moral fable, Massenet conjures sumptuous fairytale magic. Pauline Viardot gives us a salon entertainment that charms and delights, its three swift acts taking Cinders from rags to riches, daydreams to true love in little over an hour. Viardot may only recently be coming back into vogue, but she was revered in her lifetime, as Berlioz put it, as “one of the greatest artists in the history of music”. She sang, she played the piano, she hosted artistic soirees and, after retiring from the stage, she focused on composing. Two hundred songs and several operettas later, Viardot reached Cendrillon, which had its premiere in 1904 when she was 83.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cendrillon-acis-and-galatea-review-musical-delights-in-a-pair-of-buxton-operas-l9s9tqshc

The Return of Ulysses

14 July 2021

For some of its season this year, Longborough Festival Opera has decamped from its lovely opera house to a bright red big top located on an adjacent field. Once inside there’s a sense of the outdoors: a breeze ruffles part of the set’s shimmering silver foil fringe curtain; light aircraft buzz overhead. The stage is in the round. We are close enough to see the looks in the performers’ eyes; we are totally enveloped by the thrilling power of their voices.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-return-of-ulysses-review-longborough-fields-a-superb-cast-for-monteverdi-lsq9x77vh

June 2021 reviews for The Times

Handel's Amadigi at Garsington Opera
21 June 2021

Anyone staging Handel’s “magic” opera Amadigi needs a few tricks at the ready. In her new production for Garsington Opera, the director-designer Netia Jones puts on a winning show. The work’s supposed weaknesses — the plot is tissue-thin; there are only four main roles whose string of da capo arias leave long stretches with little interaction — become strengths. Not least, the small cast makes this baroque rarity ideal for Covid times; it’s also being staged by English Touring Opera this autumn. They’ll have to work hard to match Jones’s inventiveness; she gives us visual spectacle yet focuses on the central human drama.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/amadigi-review-handels-magic-opera-casts-its-spell-tpjjm3jst

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla

24 June 2021

The words were poignant, the singing was superlative and the connection between performer and audience was almost tangible. Reader, I’ll confess: as Mahler faced death and God in his song Um Mitternacht, the music shifting from profound sombreness to glorious surrender, tears came to my eyes.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cbso-grazinyte-tyla-review-the-mirga-magic-is-back-f2wcb528r

BEAM/Britten Sinfonia

28 June 2021

If you’re watching BEAM, there’s a good chance that you know Nadine Benjamin as one of Britain’s fast-rising star sopranos. But who is she really? That’s a question Benjamin’s impactful autobiographical music-theatre piece, subtitled Everybody Can Stand In Their Own Light, explores over 70 minutes with still photos, video projections, lighting design and the collaboration of a number of individuals, including the excellent Decus Ensemble and music director Jan Rautio.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beam-review-soprano-nadine-benjamins-searingly-honest-look-at-her-life-vhrkr7qgl

May 2021 reviews for The Times

Alice Coote, Philharmonia/John Eliot Gardiner
10 May 2021

Alice Coote singing Britten’s Phaedra is a remarkable thing to behold. It’s hard to imagine a more fearless performance of this one-woman cantata based on Racine, telling the tragic, transgressive tale of a woman who lusts after her stepson, then seeks absolution through suicide by poison. There’s nowhere to hide: the composer’s final vocal work is an intense, compact drama. And every note and word the British mezzo-soprano sang was utterly clear.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/philharmonia-gardiner-review-alice-coote-is-a-remarkable-phaedra-sf6tw0w2q

London Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle

10 May 2021

More than a year has passed since the London Symphony Orchestra last performed in its Barbican home, when Antonio Pappano conducted Britten and Vaughan Williams that spoke of sorrow and war. So much has happened since then. The LSO’s chief conductor, Simon Rattle, is off to Munich and Pappano is to take over his LSO post. The ambitious London concert hall project has been shelved. And the pandemic has sharpened our focus when it comes to music exploring the meaning of life and death, works such as Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lso-rattle-review-song-of-the-earth-finds-real-power-at-the-end-g7zfmscnq

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Collon

27 May 2021

Until its summer series began last week, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra hadn’t played to a live audience in Symphony Hall since the start of the pandemic, save one concert in November. For the orchestra’s second programme back home the conductor Nicholas Collon kept those patient concertgoers in mind. The “deep connection” struck by Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony with the Soviet audience at its 1937 premiere inspired him, he explained in an affable introduction.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cbso-collon-review-emotions-run-high-for-shostakovich-gc6hhrfmh

Ensemble Marsyas

31 May 2021

In reality, a trip to Italy may be tricky for a while yet, but there’s nothing stopping musical flights of fancy abroad. Ensemble Marsyas gave us a flavour of Rome with its Handel programme at the Wigmore Hall, culminating in the delicious cantata Amarilli Vezzosa (Il Duello Amoroso), written during the composer’s formative Italian sojourn. Just imagine the Roman palace in which it had its premiere in 1708 (or google Palazzo Bonelli); no quarantine necessary.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ensemble-marsyas-review-delightful-musical-flights-of-fancy-from-handel-sg2w0x3lh

Notebook: 1 January 2021

1 January 2021. I don't buy into the whole new year, new you spiel but, boy, am I glad to turn the page on 2020.  I even have a new diary, though I haven't dared open it yet. I haven't quite forgotten how life diverged so wildly from the one planned on paper last spring. Maybe this year I'll only write things in using pencil.

Sometimes it's the tiny, silly things that count. Slightly rushing so that I could be the first in the pool, the first to slip into the water today. It was warmer than I expected, the steam rising off the surface and blurring the faces of swimmers gliding and splashing along, identifiable by their various bright swimming caps.

I didn't actually feel like swimming today.  Then I remembered that it could be taken away suddenly and soon. Bristol is still in Tier 3: we can meet outside in sixes, we can swim in outdoor pools. But that will change if we move up into Tier 4. Our minds are strange, aren't they? Nothing else had altered, but knowing that swims could be in short supply did make me more grateful to be able to go today. And as always, as soon as I'm in the water, I can't remember what I was worrying about.

Old year, new year

And so farewell 2020. The year in which we stepped through the looking glass into a strange new world. I'm not sure we can ever go back. Only forwards, wishing that 2021 brings us peace, hope and joy.

Long Covid: Week 18

Belated update. Week 18, but written about mid-week 19. Words and sentences feel hard to grab out of my brain at the moment. When tired, I seem to have developed mild dyslexia. Letters sometimes add themselves up in the wrong order. I don't know the name for thinking of one word and saying another, but there's that too. I'm measuring the recovery of my mind in crosswords. Those quick crossword books. Finding answers to clues. Dragging dusty words from the clogged-up corners of my memory. Now I'm measuring it in reading too. One novel a week ago, now more. This week Nell Stevens's Bleaker Island; Maggie O'Farrell's The Vanishing of Esme Lennox; Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman. The words must be coming back. Steps are coming back too: up to 5,000 now in day. Of course, there are the lingering symptoms: nerve pain, tinnitus, inflamed (I think) ribs and abdomen, burning sensations, thudding, pulsing head, acid reflux. Fatigue, too, is a constant now. A phone call, trying to concentrate for an hour is exhausting. Coordination. I've just spilt a cup of roiboos tea. Although, anyone who knows me will tell you that this occurrence is nothing to do with Covid. That's my old clumsy self.

Long Covid: Week 17

It's the middle of week 17. Relapses seem to be an integral part of Long Covid, and sometimes it can  feel hard to trust small victories. Or as if celebrating them might jinx them. But, hey, I'm happy that this week I've been able to walk 2,500 steps each day, divided into a groups of several hundred steps. I've not needed a daytime nap. I've read a whole book from cover to cover (Rosamund Lupton's Three Hours. Totally gripping). I drove round the block. There's no way I'd have been able to do any of these things even a week ago.

(Ongoing symptoms, if helpful for any fellow Covid Long-Haulers: nerve pain, dry throat, a new mouth ulcer for a day, memory loss, sore joints and feet, stinging and tired eyes, sudden spasms of pain, a freezing right foot, can't lie on my left side (told you this virus was strange), problems regulating body temperature, insomnia, fatigue, tinnitus, and thudding in my head.)

Signs and symptoms of long-haul Covid (Week one)

I don't think I would usually fancy reeling off my medical history in a public space, nor would anyone be interested in reading it, but this feels different. Long-Haul Covid, as I think it's being called, is new to the world. I hope sharing my experience might be helpful for others going through it, even simply if it's to know that you're not alone. That became my mantra as I lay in bed ill. Isolated. But not alone. The sheer scale of this illness must mean that there will be scientific research. The medics will begin to understand how to treat it. We will get better. I can recommend joining one of the online support groups – on Facebook or Slack – too. I certainly felt relief after doing so.

Week One (Days 1-7)

Coronavirus was everywhere in the news. Wash your hands, then wash your hands some more. There were two official symptoms, high temperature and a new dry, continuous cough. So when I had uncontrollable shaking one Sunday afternoon, a cold sore, a small nose bleed, and mouth ulcers, it didn't really cross my mind that it was Covid-19. Even when I had diarrhoea the next day, I thought, well, that's horrible and odd, and carried on with life. It was the following evening, Tuesday 17 March, that the high temperature and fever hit. Oh. I woke early the next morning, breath rasping and short, with a dry cough. Heart racing. A bat fluttering in my chest. 

The symptoms came in waves. It was disconcerting. How ill am I? Am I imagining this? I felt better, sat up  at a desk for an hour, and was then totally exhausted. As if my muscles couldn't hold me up. Was that possible? 

That evening I sat on the sofa to eat soup and bread, and realised I couldn't taste it. Wholemeal crumbs in my mouth, like eating sawdust and cardboard. More energy the next day, but also a cough that felt as if would rip open the tissues in your chest because they were so dry. Heart racing when I walked up the stairs. I spent Friday lying in bed. At some points awake but so tired that I could barely reply to an email. At others, feeling well enough to talk on the phone. At yet others, asleep. 

Covid-19 messes with your mind.

On the Saturday, my birthday, I woke up determined to enjoy the day despite being ill and in isolation alone. I got in the shower, and felt as if I couldn't stand. Chest pain. Turns out I had low blood pressure on standing. Anxiety. I actually hadn't been feeling anxious before then. I knew I wasn't in a high-risk category, nor did I have any pre-existing health conditions. Friends organised a Zoom online – ah, remember when Zoom was new and exciting – for my birthday. I joined for a while, but could barely hold my head up. It felt so heavy.

By the Monday I thought I was feeling better, and joined a gentle Yin Yoga class online. I couldn't lift  my arms over my head, or lean forward. My entire back felt as if it had been dried out into a crisp, and that moving would scrunch and tear it. Still not well, then? 

But remember… it's a fever and a cough. 

A temperature again on day six. It went. I'd been given medical advice to go outside as soon as my seven-day isolation ended, to help cope with the anxiety. I did, just along the road a little, by myself and without seeing anyone. Back home. I hoped that would be the end  of it.

Kindness

Before I write about illness, I want to say something about kindness. I wouldn't have got through the last few months of Covid in lockdown without it, and it's still remarkable to me how kind people have been. I feel lucky. Neighbours who I didn't know before who have done my shopping, picked up prescriptions, taken me to the doctor, checked how I was doing. The friend who brought me soup and left it on my doorstep every day, who for weeks brought me meals to reheat because I couldn't stand up for long enough to cook. Friends who came and stood outside the window to talk through the glass when I was twice in isolation. Who have come to visit with gifts from their gardens. Who have sent cards, flowers and food. Who have simply showed up and smiled. My family, who have been there whenever I needed, with support of all sorts. The paramedics and GP who put themselves at risk of infection and came into my home to assess me. The doctor who literally went out of his way to get the right antibiotic, the neighbour who lent  me a new thermometer, the physios running free post-covid recovery online classes. Thank you. I'll have forgotten too many specifics – ah, short term memory loss is one fun feature of this virus – but not the incredible power of human kindness. That'll stick.

Mild

Mild. Even the word sounds gentle, with its soft consonants. Unthreatening. Covid would be mild for most. I hung on to the word. Reassuring, a comfort blanket. Mild is a sniffly cold, a sore tummy, a light haze of headache. That sort of thing.

Don't be fooled. What started out as mild Covid-19 back in March soon escalated for me. Thankfully – and I am so thankful for this – not to hospital admission level. More of that in another post. But Covid mild is not in the same league as even a seasonal flu.

Does mild cover an illness that lasts 102 days – and counting? Having to crawl along the floor to get water because I was too weak to stand? A heart pounding as if I'd been running a 10K, but all I'd done was lie down and breathe? Hallucinations, rashes, blinding headaches, pain all over my body, memory loss, days of sleeping for 12 hours? 

It seems that coronavirus is not simply either mild or severe in the sense that the initial public messaging suggested. There's a version somewhere in-between that causes debilitating symptoms that drag on and on. I have no idea why, nor is there any official medical guidance yet. The government has been slow to address this issue.

Mild, this illness is not. Mysterious, that's the only certainty I have.

100 days of Covid-19

At the start of the year, I was planning a rare trip to Singapore to visit friends this June. 'But I'll wait to book the flights,' I naively said in January, as the country started to impose restrictions. 'I'll just see what happens with this coronavirus thing'. We both thought it would blow over. Of course, we all know what actually happened. And here I am, 100 days after falling ill with suspected Covid-19, still not feeling better but inching forward along the path to recovery. The closest I've got to Singapore is watching Michael Portillo in his pastel outfit touring on TV. Sadly, I've got to know Covid-19 rather better. Another friend suggested blogging about it might be therapeutic. Maybe it'll also be helpful for others who have the virus. Because it turns out this is not simply a seven-day illness for lots of people. Here goes.