Rebecca West – (Dame Rebecca West (Cecily Isabel Andrews (née Fairfield)) by (Percy) Wyndham Lewis pencil, 1932 ) Rebecca West used her deep understanding of music, to clearer articulate her intellectual ideas. On Agate Eros she wrote, ‘The sense of doom beats behind the frivolity like a majestic theme in the bass.’’ The milieux in [...]
March 7, 2011
H.G. Wells – (Herbert George Wells by Gisèle Freund colour print, 1939 ) In 1926, it had been the writer HG Wells who stood up to the London critics in defence of Stravinsky’s Les Noces. He was passionate about music, and frequently alluded to composers in his fiction, in his Tono Bungay , he noted [...]
March 7, 2011
T.S. Eliot – (Thomas Stearns (‘T.S.’) Eliot by Patrick Heron oil on canvas, 1949 ) NPG: Room 31 Eliot was perhaps the first great poet to take the challenge of Beethoven’s late chamber music and respond in kind. Eliot based his most musical of poems, the Four Quartets, on Beethoven’s genre-busting A minor Quartet Op [...]
March 7, 2011
Joseph Joachim – ( Joseph Joachim by Sir Leslie Ward watercolour, published in Vanity Fair 5 January 1905 Primary Collection) PSS JOURNAL ENTRY: I have just had an ONLY CONNECT moment here in Hannover. I was wondering around the Gartenfriedhof, 300 metres from where Brahms would stay when he was in Hannover working with Joachim. This [...]
March 7, 2011
Lord Leighton – ( Frederic Leighton, Baron Leighton by George Frederic Watts oil on canvas, 1881 Primary Collection) Lord Leighton’s studio in Holland Park was a mecca for the creative community, where one might find Joseph Joachim playing the Bach Chaconne in his multipurpose studio/concert room. This has two stages-one, between an acoustic apse, at [...]
March 7, 2011
Frances Burney – ( Frances d’Arblay (‘Fanny Burney’) by Edward Francisco Burney oil on canvas, circa 1784-1785 ) In the 1780’s Fanny Burney wrote her Diary in a small upper room of her father’s sociable house on Queen Square. She grew up in the ultimate ‘connected’ environment, with a polymath, enthusiast father. What is [...]
March 7, 2011
THIS WEEK: National Portrait Gallery: Only Connect 9 September 2011, 18:30 Free admission My exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, ‘Only Connect’ runs until 27th November. This Friday, I am presenting a ‘Paganini in London’ response to the exhibition, which features portraits of Paganini and his circle in London-Mendelssohn, Lindley, Mori, Cartwright, Dragonetti, Leigh Hunt. [...]
March 7, 2011