Sunrise and skeletons

More Brendel this weekend, this time courtesy of the Cheltenham Music Festival. Possibly my favourite moment from the pianist's fascinating lecture-recital exploring character in Beethoven's piano sonatas came when he turned to the Waldstein Sonata. The piece is also known in French as 'L'aurore', meaning the dawn. One misguided German critic, Brendel recounted, misheard this nickname, calling it instead 'L'horror'. Cue Brendel's performance of the opening, with its pp repeated C major quavers, with his teeth bared, chattering in time with the repetitions like a clanky skeleton.

Here's Brendel playing the third movement of the Waldstein (I couldn't find the first, or the skeleton impression, I'm afraid).

Alfred Brendel

After a weekend spent in Plush, Dorset, to write about a festival set up by pianist Alfred Brendel's children, I've been having a bit of a Brendel moment.

Here's the master with Schubert's Impromptu in G flat major, Op. 90 No. 3.

A concert of sylphs or elves

French composer Erik Satie once wrote a piece called Vexations, in which it's suggested to the pianist that the theme might be played 840 times. Somehow that title hung over me as I headed to Bath for Joanna MacGregor's Chopin Mazurka-fest.

OK, time-wise, performing all 58 Chopin Mazurkas isn't such a herculean task, fitting into, ehem, a mere three hours. Performing them's one thing; how about listening to them? Surely wall-to-wall Polish-folk-dance-inspired piano miniatures on a Sunday morning would be too much of a good thing? Even, dare I suggest it, a bit boring? Coffee was needed.

Caffeine consumed, the Chopin-listening began. In an unbroken flow, with no room for applause, Joanna MacGregor launched into this consuming musical world. As her programme jottings noted, the pieces range from 'wittily joyful', to 'plangently melancholic', 'robustly merry' to 'wistfully delicate'. Played in chronological order, what was most telling was that, once Chopin had got over the initial teething period in this form, they were remarkably stylistically homogenous. Not much of a journey, but the whole was a refreshing experience.

Over to Berlioz: 'There are unbelievable details in his Mazurkas; and he has found how to render them doubly interesting by playing them with the utmost degree of softness, piano in the extreme, the hammers merely brushing the strings, so much so that one is tempted to go close to the instrument and put one's ear to it as if to a concert of sylphs or elves'

Canonic Chopin

'If the mighty autocrat of the north knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in the simple tunes of Chopin's mazurkas, he would forbid this music. Chopin's works are canons buried in flowers.' Robert Schumann

Off to hear the complete Chopin mazurkas in Bath – all 58 over three hours. Heaven or hell? I'll let you know later on…

A is for Arditti, B is for Beethoven…

… and C is for catastrophe.

Oh dear. The Arditti Quartet did not come through triumphant with its recent performance of Beethoven's Grosse Fugue at the Bath Music Festival. The scrappy first note set the tone; the poor ensemble and tuning scuppered the piece. So much for hearing a performance bringing out the modernity of Beethoven's testing, puzzling string masterpiece. This just brought out the under-rehearsal. Seemed they'd saved their bowing hours for the Birtwistle, Dausapin and Schnittke that followed.

Bristol by boat

Gender equality

French fact. (Best look away now unless you like details about grammar.) As you probably know, French has masculine and feminine nouns. You have to make all your adjectives (and for other reasons sometimes your verb endings) agree in order to create sentences with harmony of the sexes. There is rhyme and reason to how you go about doing this, but not always. Why, for example, do you write 'la petite fille' for granddaughter, with an 'e' added to 'petit' to make everything agree, but do you leave 'la grand mere' without an 'e'? In fact, grande-mere means 'tall mother' not grandmother. Turns out 'grandmere' is a verbal relic, a hangover from the candlelit days of medieval French, when words stuck close to their Latin ancestors. And in Latin there was a group of adjectives (in the third declension if you must know) that don't make all the genders match up. Grand's great-great-great-[repeat as necessary] grandmother's etymological ancestor came from this set of nonconformist adjectives. So there you go. Spread the word. Go on, do.

Conundrum

Oh Beethoven. A crescendo through a tied note on the piano? How am I meant to play that?

Vincent in London

Vincent Van Gogh. Something of a magical charm, those three words, judging from the hordes at the latest exhibition of his work in London. It's ended now; I just managed to sneak in on the penultimate day. Thick skin and pointy elbows were needed, and tactics, especially if you're impatient (like me) and believe the worst way to look at a picture is as one of a four-deep crowd (guilty again). A quick scout round, and then I made a beeline for the three or four paintings that stood out for some reason. Here's the first, one of my favourites. Fishing boats at sea has a Japanese flavour that becomes even more apparent in the four ink versions he drew for friends. Face to face with this tableaux, the sea looks wild, the wind strains in the sails. 'The Mediterranean sea is a mackerel colour: in other words, changeable,' wrote Van Gogh, 'You do not always know whether it is green or purple, you do not always know if it is blue, as the next moment the ever-changing sheen has assumed a pink or a gray tint.’

New recipe

So, we've got Cameron flapjack combined with Clegg carrot cake. I've never tasted a carrot flapjack. Have you?

Winning an election? It's a piece of cake

... and we made The Times! With a group of friends, at Bristol's Tobacco Factory last night, watching the General Election debate, I realised (as did everyone else) that we'd been infiltrated by reporters and photographers. My clue? A card handed round saying 'Guys, I'm from The Times, if you mind me taking a photo of you, put your hands up now'. Not exactly Sherlock Holmes stuff. The Bristol Evening Post was there too.

Martin Fletcher of The Times tapped away at his laptop throughout the debate, looking up whenever a cheer or laugh burst forth, smiling when the newspaper-sponsored cakes – carrot cake Clegg, Gordon Brownies and Cameron flapjacks – were passed round (all the carrot cake had gone by the time it got to our corner. Shame), and rushing to the front of the room to do a straw poll at the end of the debate. Little did he know that some of the laughs related to leadership bingo – three cards with the words most likely to pop out of the contenders' mouths. My team got all of our phrases – no problem with 'hardworking families', 'deficit', 'billions' – apart from 'a future fair for all', surprisingly hard to come by.

Enjoy Martin Fletcher's words here:

Never mind the opinion polls. The customers in the café-bar at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory had no doubt who the tastiest candidate was in last night’s debate: Nick Clegg.

Asked to make their choice based on the leaders’ performances, ten of them selected a piece of the café-bar’s carrot cake bearing Mr Clegg’s picture. Four opted for a “Gordon Brownie”, and only one chose a ginger and orange flapjack adorned with David Cameron’s likeness.

This thoroughly unscientific survey, generously sponsored by The Times, marked a significant swing to the Liberal Democrats. Before the debate the café-bar had sold seven Gordon Brownies, four Tory flapjacks and only two Lib-Dem carrot cakes.

“It’s obviously Nick Clegg,” said Anna Barclay, 30, a photographer, when asked who she thought had won. “He comes across so well on telly. He’s a natural.”

“Clegg was the most reasonable and credible,” agreed Charles Mitton, 34, a Mencap trainer. “Brown didn’t do too badly, but Cameron seemed to be trying to get out a lot of party slogans. I just thought he was bland.”

Just across the Avon from the studio, the Tobacco Factory seemed as good a place as any from which to watch the politicians spar. Imperial Tobacco used to manufacture cigarettes in the huge old red-brick building. It now contains a theatre, restaurant, studios and small businesses. No chains are allowed — even the bar spurns big-name beers in favour of a local micro-brewery. Its watchword is independence, albeit of an arty, alternative, leftish sort. As Shakespeare’s The Tempest played in the theatre upstairs, customers packed into the room below to watch — intently — the political drama unfold.

Unlike the studio audience, they could make their views clear — laughing when Mr Clegg accused the Tories of joining a bunch of “nutters” in the European Peoples Party, cheering when a questioner asked about sustainable transport, snorting when Mr Brown cited his use of trains to campaign to underscore his green credentials.

“Yeah,” someone shouted when Mr Brown urged less dependence on oil. They nodded their heads in approval as Mr Clegg suggested that British support for America should be more critical. They “oooh-ed” sarcastically as Mr Cameron denounced Labour “lies”.

This was the first time that the café-bar had advertised a political debate on its pavement blackboard, rather than Six Nations rugby or Wimbledon. It proved just as gripping. Not a person left before the end.

Mr Clegg did not have it all his own way, however. Paul Anning, 38, a project manager with a bank, backed the Prime Minister. “I think Gordon Brown is more believable and has depth to his answers because he’s been at the front end of it,” he said. “I think Cameron has no substance. He’s just trying to grab headlines. There’s no meat on his bone.”

Wendy Brandl, 65, a retired therapist previously leaning towards the Liberal Democrats, thought that there was no clear-cut winner, just an obvious loser: Mr Cameron.

The debate over, The Times did a rather more scientific straw poll. Mr Clegg got 21 votes, Mr Brown five, Mr Cameron three. For the Lib-Dem leader it was a piece of cake.

General Election debate in Bristol!

Clegg, Cameron and Brown are heading to Bristol. The Arnolfini, to be precise, home of contemporary art. Last time I was there, I saw a man icing a chair, another going up and down the stairs – two steps forward, one step back, a shoe connected to a fan representing the artist's travels in India, and a box of popcorn, on top of a table, hiding a hand... Pictures are below, for proof. Will the political trio make anymore sense? Let's hope so! Oh, and the General Election debate is definitely happening there tomorrow, although when I wandered over there at lunchtime today, a charming Sky security guy wouldn't tell me whereabouts in the gallery exactly. No TV screens to broadcast it either; but, he assured me, there'll be a stunning illumination of the Arnolfini tonight.