In the last years his life, the great composer, violinist and swordsman, Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770), seems to have laboured at a set of ca. 30 sonatas for solo violin. The resulting manuscript is most significant cycle of works for violin alone after Bach, a wonderfully evocative sequence of pieces laced with quotes from Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Liberated. [...]
January 13, 2010
A blue tram, with a broken windscreen, rattles and sparks its way past my table. Finding a decent cup of coffee in this city of dust and dry bread seems to have acquired a disproportionate importance. I persuaded the café owner to turn off the soft porn he was watching in favour of some anonymous [...]
January 13, 2010
Beypazar Although it was only April, the midmorning sun seared the back of my neck as we climbed to one of the escarpment that that cuts through the ‘Knight’s Market’ or Beypazar. For the town turns out to be constructed in the midst of a geological cataclysm, a lunatic cleft in the rocks-‘a savage place, [...]
January 13, 2010
Beethoven and Josef Mayseder Joseph Mayseder- E Flat Major ‘Konzertirend Sonate’ AllegroMoltoAdagioRondo Allegro Ludwig van Beethoven-A major Sonata Op 47 (Kreutzer/Bridgetower) Adagio Sostenuto/PrestoAndante con variazionePrestoPresto Peter Sheppard Skaerved-Violin (Stradivari 1734-’Habeneck), Aaron Shorr-Piano “Monday the 16th May (1803)…in the evening with Kuhnel and Tomasini in the Wieden Theatre. Lodoiska by Cherubini…there I met for the first [...]
January 13, 2010
I first heard Rochberg’s Violin Concerto when I was a ten year old, in the classic Stern recording. From the first outburst from Stern’s fiddle, the ‘great barbaric yawp’ which begins the concerto, I was transfixed, and terrified. It suddenly dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea what went on in the world [...]
January 7, 2010
Diary Entry Ky’iv 17 4 2000 This morning, I went with Natalya, my translator, to the ‘Lavra’ Monastery, the shrine of the ‘Cave’, where the golden onion-domes and crosses of the Pechersky monastery blazed a brilliant welcome over the banks of the Dnieper, visible for miles around from the fields and forests. Fearladen mysticism, the [...]
January 7, 2010
SOUNDBOX Tuesday January 12th 1230pm String Gallery, Royal Academy of Music Museum, Royal Academy of Music, Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5HT (02074805145) http://www.ram.ac.uk/ The Exploded Bow (A preview) The Bow in use over timeAny bow bears the marks of its usage, from the constant fraying away of the bow hair, to the less recognised indications [...]
December 27, 2009
Moses One of the most instantly recognisable, and most imitated of Pagnini’s show pieces, has become known as the Moses Fantasy. This work has inspired imitations by composers from Lindley to Martinu. Our understanding and knowledge of the piece was totally refracted through modern practice, and most particularly, the redefining of Paganini, which accompanied his [...]
December 27, 2009
Coffee, Libraries, Losses and Gains. 27-12-09 I have found myself the perfect cup of coffee, in the old market quarter of Sarajevo, the Bašaršija. It’s early in the morning, and I am sitting outside at a pavement table, as the sun begins to warm the paving stones. It is going to be a hot [...]
December 26, 2009
Calumnies Violinists have often been assumed to be feckless wastrels. In 1802, Wilhelm Triest wrote a pen-portrait of this popular cliché, one which Paganini seemed far from anxious to contradict, but maybe to uphold, perhaps pre-empting the adage that ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity.’ Triest’s list of the common solecisms of the debauched [...]
January 25, 2010