Mercoledi Musicale

Claudio Abbado: 1933-2014

It was August of 1969 and I was on my second trip across the Atlantic in three months and my first visit to Salzburg and the summer festival. I was there for a week - a very full week of operas and concerts. There was opera every night and lieder concerts most afternoons. It was meant to be a feast of music and I wasn't going to miss a morsel. The cast lists were a roll call of many of the big names of the time: Adam, Alva, Zylis-Gara, King, Berry, Bjoner, Evans, Freni, Ludwig, Kraus, Ghiaurov, Stratas, Prey, Janowitz, Gedda et al. And on the podium: Karajan conducting Don Giovanni, Böhm conducting Fidelio, Ozawa, in his operatic debut, murdering Cosi and Claudio Abbado showing us how Il Barbiere di Siviglia was meant to sound.

He had debuted as an operatic conductor at Salzburg the year before with the same production and between him and director/designer Jean-Pierre Ponnelle they had created a Barbiere that was, for its time, revolutionary.  It was to be the first Rossini opera in a collaboration that shed new light on La Cenerentola and L'Italiana in Algeri.  His work on the operas of Rossini culminated in the brilliant revival of  Il Viaggio a Rheims at Pesaro in 1984.  Previously I had posted that encore to end all encores, a moment of musical joy: Viaggo, Pesaro 1992.

Since his death on Monday much has been written in tribute to Claudio Abbado and many clips have been posted featuring his Mahler, Verdi, Schubert, Stravinsky and Mozart.  I thought I would remember him with the first piece of music I ever heard him conduct:  the Overture to Il Barbiere di Siviglia.   And from the looks of it this video may have been made around the same time I first saw him.

Unfortunately I missed the chance to see the legendary Boris Godunov at Covent Garden in 1983. I stood out on Bow St one April evening my five pound note discretely held but visible - a sign that you wanted a ticket. Sadly no one was in the mood or seemed to have the need to sell that evening. It was one of the few times I had been disappointed in my attempts to get a last minute seat at the Royal Opera. Though I had many of his recordings and had listen to many of his performances on radio I was not to see him conduct in person until April of 2008. After a period of illness and absence from the opera house he returned to the Teatro Valli in Reggio-Emilia, where his son Daniele was artistic director, to conduct Beethoven's Fidelio. As I wrote at the time it was one of the most exciting evenings I have spent at the opera in many years - I was simply overwhelmed.

He appeared with his Orchestra Mozart during the concert season March 2010 at the Academia Santa Cecilia.  The programme was Mendelssohn and Mozart with a Mozart encore.  It was a glorious evening - perhaps not as emotional as his Mahler, Beethoven or Verdi  but he gave us the "Italian", Violin Concerto K216 and the "Jupiter" as I had never heard them before.

After his bout of cancer and other health problems he seemed to have returned to a full and active schedule with his Mahler Youth Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Orchestra Mozart.  My dear friend David records so much of it in his blog post and in the wonderful obituary he wrote for the Guardian.

The man was loved, respected and revered but most of all loved.  And I'll let David have the final words: Though we'll hugely miss him, there's nothing to regret: no-one lived a fuller life, one so much longer than illness would have led anyone to expect.

 REQUIEM aeternam dona ei, et lux perpetua luceat ei. 

Requiescat in pace.

January 22 - 1506: The first contingent of 150 Swiss Guards arrives at the Vatican.

Mercoledi Musicale

For some strange reason  - perhaps good marketing by the Austrian Tourist Board - Vienna is linked emphatically with New Year's and celebrations of seeing out the old and bringing in the new.

But perhaps it is not so strange - Vienna is the birthplace of so much of what was new in the 20th century.  And much of the history of Europe and the Western world in that century can be traced to the Imperial City of the Hapsburgs.  Modern music, art, philosophy, psychiatry, political and economic theory have many of their roots in a city known for living in the past.  The roots of two devastating World Wars that defined much of the century can be traced to the capital of one of the last dynastic Empires.

Now lest this sound like the beginnings of a rant against Vienna and all the gemütlichkeit associated with the city,  I will say that it has become one of my favourite cities in the world.  It took a long time for that affection to develop - there is always a certain melancholy about the city and Austria is a country that I have had a love-hate feeling for since my first visit in 1969.  But develop it has: I love Vienna and I love all the schmaltz that goes with it.  And as always one of my, and it appears some 50 million people in 90 countries, New Year's traditions is to listen to the Wiener Philharmoniker New Year's Day Concert.  

This year's concert was a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the start of the First Great War.  Well known for his Peace activism, particularly in the Middle-East,  for the second time in five years Daniel Barenboim was asked to be the guest conductor.  As always it was a more than enjoyable way of spending the first day of the new year.  

Marta Eggerth and her husband, and often singing partner, Jan Kieprua in one of their international successes: Zauber Der Boheme (The Charm of La Boheme).  They often appeared together on stage in Lehar's The Merry Widow - Marta estimated that she had sung the part of 2,000 times in five languages. 

As one Viennese music tradition continued on January 1, 2014, a treasured exponent of that tradition had passed from the scene only a few days before.  Marta Eggerth was the last link to the great Austro-Hungarian tradition of operetta as created by Lehár, Kalman, Stolz, Straus and Sieczyński.  Her remarkable career - a debut at the age of 11 and a final appearance on the stage in 2011 at the age of 99.  Her longevity can be attributed to many things - she said she never drank anything other than the odd glass of Tokay for medicinal purposes - including a rock solid technique, a god-given voice and the good sense to use it for what it could do.  And what it did it did without parallel even at the age of 80 in this clip from a New York concert.  Of course the voice is not what it was - how could it be, voices like people age but this one aged like the Tokay she loved.  It may not all be there the way it once was but what you hear is the authentic voice of the Vienna of the waltz, the polka, the csárdás -
gemütlichkeit as no tourist brochure or website could capture it.  Marta Eggerth sings Rudolph Sieczyński's Wien, du Stadt meiner Träume.

But it would be unfair to base her fame on a clip from her advancing years. Here is the young Marta - a much beloved international movie star - in 1936 singing that most Viennese of Strauss waltz songs Donanuwalzer (The Blue Danube).

Yes the style of singing is dated by today's standards but as Laurent said earlier this morning when we were listening to several recordings by Marta: they really don't make voices like that anymore, do they?  And I had to agree with him: b y any standards there are no voices like that today. 

January 1 - 1773: The hymn that became known as "Amazing Grace", then titled "1 Chronicles 17:16–17" is first used to accompany a sermon led by John Newton in the town of Olney, England.

Mercoledi Musicale

Goodbye Dear Heart

Canada and music lost one of its bright shining stars yesterday.  Rita MacNeil, whose story is a familiar one to most Canadians of my generation, died yesterday.  She was a gentle loving person with a voice of silver and a heart of gold.  She released 24 albums between the first in 1975 and her most recent in 2012.  Eight of those albums went Platinum and 2 went gold.  She was proud of the fact that at 42 she was voted "Most Promising Newcomer" but even more proud of the relationship she had with her audience - they loved her and she repaid that love 10 fold.  No video could ever capture the honest love fest that was a Rita McNeil concert.

Back in 1990 I was working at Ottawa airport for Air Canada and the particular day that I have in mind I must have been working as an assistant agent on flight 113.  The flight started in Halifax, came through Ottawa and continued on to Calgary and Vancouver.  Most of the passengers had disembarked when I got a call from the In-Charge flight attendant.  He said:  I've got Rita (he didnt' have to say Rita who) on board and she'd like to get off.  She doesn't want a wheelchair, she just wants to stretch her legs and needs a bit of a hand.   Well he didn't have to say much more - I was down at the aircraft in record time and next thing I knew I was escorting Ms McNeil to the departure lounge.  She was wearing one of her kaftans - she once joked that it showed her figure to its best advantage - and her signature big floppy purple hat.  We chatted as we came up the jetway - she had just had an operation and was headed for Calgary for the first of a series of concerts out west.  In the lounge a few people approached her shyly and she - almost as shyly - chatted and signed autographs.   Come boarding time I took her down to the aircraft and mentioned to her that I had spent Christmas that year in Cairo with my partner who was working there.  I told her that we had played her Christmas album and that it really made us feel that we were home and just a bit homesick.  She squeezed my arm and in that soft voice said:  Well dear heart, for me that makes the recording of it all worthwhile.  She said thank you and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

Here she is on George Stroumboulopoulos in December 2012 as she started another cross country tour.

And I know many people are posting Working Man as a tribute but if anything tells Rita's story it has to be her anthem Flying On Your Own.

Goodbye Dear Heart, everything you did was worthwhile.

17 April -1397: Geoffrey Chaucer tells the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. Chaucer scholars have also identified this date (in 1387) as the start of the book's pilgrimage to Canterbury.

The Trumpet Shall Sound

Another great that I grew up listening to left us this morning.

Maurice André spent part of his youth working in a mine until his father, an amateur trumpeter, encouraged him to study with a family friend. His almost 300 recordings helped spearhead the resurgence of interest in Baroque music that surfaced in the 1960s. Though he retired a few years ago his performances are still very popular - and with reason.  Commenting on this video of the Allegro from the Haydn Trumpet Concerto, captured in Heidelberg with the Muncher Philharmonik, someone said: ...he looks like he has just come down for breakfast, found an orchestra in his garden and picked his trumpet up to play. The right balance of effortlessness and indulgence.  His performances were always like that.

The trumpets are sounding a bit sweeter in the heavenly realms today.

26 February - 1917: The Original Dixieland Jazz Band records the first jazz record, for the Victor Talking Machine Company in New York.

For Whom the Belles Toll

As the year drew to a close another great talent of the late 20th century was lost - cartoonist and illustrator Ronald Searle died on December 30 at his home in France.  He first created his infamous Belles of St Trinian's while a prisoner of war working on the Burma Railway in Changi. 

In an interview with the Guardian's Steve Bell he described his time there:

"I desperately wanted to put down what was happening, because I thought if by any chance there was a record, even if I died, someone might find it and know what went on.  At times I was so ill that I couldn't draw at all. You're doing 16 hours a day rock breaking and you're exhausted. You come back and have a bowl of rice. You have no light, but you have fire, a big fire keeping the mountain lions away, and snakes perhaps, and by the light of the fire, I made the drawings. I didn't have a watch or anything, so you just lie down in the tent until you were dragged out the next morning to go back to the rock breaking. And so all these drawings, some of them very bad, were all I could do in a state of exhaustion."

Ronald Searle: A Life in Pictures

Steve Bell

The Guardian March 9, 2010

After is return from the war his anarchical gang of schoolgirls brought him recognition and success including, in 1954,  the first - and best - of a series of films based on their riotous behavior.  Featuring the magnificent Alistair Sim as the addled head-mistress Miss Fritton and her gangster twin brother Clarence it also starred Joyce Grenfell, George Cole, Hermione Baddeley, Sid James and in her first film Barbara Windsor.  It was followed by four other movies though none ever quite lived up to the fun and frolic of the first.

In these two clips we see the staff and young "ladies" of St. T's at their finest, or at least as good as they will ever get:

But Searle's fame wasn't to rest of his naughty schoolgirls - he output was to include cartoons, travel books, the adventures of Molesworth, his particular take on his beloved cats, advertisements and commemorative medals were all to bear the distinctive spiky style of Searle's pen.  I was particularly miffed when I discovered that somehow in all the moves I've lost - sold? given away? - a hysterical look at the history of The Hudson's Bay Company  that he and Kildare Dobbs created to celebrate the 300 anniversary of that august institution.  Amongst the illustrations was a less than happy Queen Victoria, in her lap a pile of beaver pelts and on her face a look of regal distaste - all captured with a few strokes from the pen of a master.

Victoria and Albert show an atypical ebullience in "Always With It" a cartoon Searle did in 2007 to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of London's V and A. 

Today's Guardian has a slideshow highlighting some of Ronald Searle's work and his life here.

03 January - 1987 - Aretha Franklin is the first women inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

They Just Keep Leaving Us

Last evening, just before going to bed, I did a bit of quick surfing and over at Parterre Box read the sad news of the death of the great American opera singer Shirley Verrett. She was a singer I loved but only saw twice on stage - once in I believe in 1969 at Covent Garden in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice conducted by Georg Solti and then in 1972 in San Fransisco in a rare revival of Meyerbeer's L'Africaine with Placido Domingo. But I did have many of her recordings in my collection - including an album of duets with Montserrat Caballe which ranks as one of the great recordings of the late 20th century as does the La Scala recording of Macbeth which was one of her greatest triumphs - and heard her on Met broadcasts.

She was an artist much loved by both her audiences and her colleagues and once she had retired worked tirelessly with students to pass on her knowledge and experience. She was a diva but never a prima donna, her work was known, like the lady herself, for its honesty, integrity and passion.

Here she is in Che faro senza Euridice, Orfeo's expression of grief at the loss, for the second time, of his beloved Euridice recorded a year or two after those Covent Garden performances.



Sadly they did not record the devastating recitative that leads into the aria as I recall her cries of Euridice! Respondmi! tearing at the heart. Another moment that I can still see in my mind's eye if though it were yesterday was when Euridice (the lovely Spanish soprano Pilar Lorengar) placed her hand on Orfeo's shoulder to be lead out of the Elysian Fields - Verrett's whole body gave a shudder of joy and her face became alight with the happiness of being reunited.

No doubt yesterday she entered Elysium with the same joy and happiness.

06 novembre - San Leonardo di Noblac

Mercoledi Musciale

Last week one of the great singers of the late 20th century died, though sadly dementia had stilled her voice for the past 15 years. Maureen Forrester was an incredible talent and an incredible person. Larger than life on stage and off she had an wonderful sense of humour and inspired sense of the dramatic. She is a singer I grew up on - her's was the first performances I saw - on television back in the days when CBC did classical without apologizing - of many of Mahler's great pieces including this performance of the 4th movement (Urlicht) of his Resurrection Symphony (Symphony #2). I have heard others do it since but this one remains the benchmark. The rather strange conductor is the equally incredible Glenn Gould. Two great talents.

Primeval Light

O red rose!
Man lies in greatest need!
Man lies in greatest pain!
How I would rather be in heaven.
There came I upon a broad path
when came a little angel and wanted to turn me away.
Ah no! I would not let myself be turned away!
I am from God and shall return to God!
The loving God will grant me a little light,
Which will light me into that eternal blissful life!

When she was head of the Canada Council I dealt with her often at Ottawa Airport - she was always warm, friendly and understanding - and often a little self-deprecating in her humour. One day I finally got up the nerve to remind her a party we were both at years before in Toronto. My friend Greg and his partner Robert threw a Canada Day fete at their apartment on Avenue Road. We use to have such silly piss-elegant affairs in those days. As I recall that one was an afternoon event with "hats for ladies" and "decorations to be worn" - and there were actually a few of our friends who could and did wear their medals. Maureen Forrester lived downstairs from them and came up to join us - wearing a hat and her Order of Canada. As I recalled the champagne flowed and at the climax of the party, Walter McNutt, a well known organist, choir master and composer, sat down at the baby grand - yes it was that sort of apartment - and struck up the first few chords of O Canada. We all began singing with this rich warm contralto voice leading us as we hymned our home and native land. Completely impromptu we let her solo on the second verse and then all came together for the refrain. I am ashamed to say none of us knew the third verse. We both had a chuckle - and when she chuckled you knew it - when I said I told my friends I had sung with Maureen Forrester.

She was a singer with a remarkable ability in a wide range of music - from Bach to Handel right up to Sullivan - of Gilbert and. Her comic timing was perfect and her sense of drama made her more serious roles some of the most intense portrayals I have ever seen. A combination of her and Jon Vickers in the Confrontation scene of Pique Dame still remains in my memory.

Here she is singing one of her first operatic roles - Gluck's Orfeo. The grief stricken Orpheus, having lost his Euridice to death a second time, asks: Che faro senza Euridice - How can I live without my Euridice?



Sung the way it should be and the way she sang everything - perfect diction, clean style, perfect technique and heart ... most of all she always sang from the heart.

23 giugno - Santi Martiri di Nicomedia

Another Great Leaves the Scene

In the only scene I remember from Mork and Mindy, Mork (Robin Williams in what I'm sure was one of his trademark ad libs) explains to Mindy that in Ork people "age backwards, sort of like Lena Horne."

If anyone was ever ageless it was the divine Lena.



She was a fighter and lived to see much of that fight rewarded. Now she can rest.

10 maggio - San Cataldo

And Another Passing

Mercedes Sosa, a national treasure in Argentina and much loved throughout South and Latin America is the latest of what seems to be a passing parade of greats. She died today in Buenos Aires.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me two beams of light, that when opened,
Can perfectly distinguish black from white
And in the sky above, her starry backdrop,
And from within the multitude
The one that I love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me an ear that, in all of its width
Records— night and day—crickets and canaries,
Hammers and turbines and bricks and storms,
And the tender voice of my beloved.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me sound and the alphabet.
With them the words that I think and declare:
"Mother," "Friend," "Brother" and the light shining.
The route of the soul from which comes love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me the ability to walk with my tired feet.
With them I have traversed cities and puddles
Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains.
And your house, your street and your patio.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me a heart, that causes my frame to shudder,
When I see the fruit of the human brain,
When I see good so far from bad,
When I see within the clarity of your eyes...

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me laughter and it gave me longing.
With them I distinguish happiness and pain—
The two materials from which my songs are formed,
And your song, as well, which is the same song.
And everyone's song, which is my very song.

Thanks to life
Thanks to life
Thanks to life
Thanks to life

Violeta Parra

It seems the world becomes a less brighter place to often these days.

Many thanks to Soror for posting this wonderful performance on YouTube.

05 ottobre - Santa Faustina Kowalska

Mercoledi Musicale

I'm a day late with this - which is why it has yesterday's date at the bottom. The parade of passing greats just seems to go on and on. The renowned Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha died yesterday at the age of 86. She gave her last concert in 2003 at the age of 80, thus ending a 76 year career. Her first performance was at the age of 5. This performance of "La Campanella" is almost a brilliant as the woman herself.


I have many of her recordings and only wish I could have seen her live.

29 settembre - San Michele et angelli