Sunday, June 24, 2012

There's no such thing as a free lunch

No, but there’s a free weekend of concerts by the BBC SSO every June, and there’s always something to enjoy. This weekend was no exception, so let me tell you all about it.

It’s always difficult to park in the Merchant City, more so if you don’t have the change to use the machine in the High Street car park. I arrived in the area late, as it was, but too late to go round the block twice and along Bell Street and back up High Street again, and that’s where I found myself with fewer than ten minutes to go until the start of the concert. At this point, the rain had abated.

Thanks to my tardiness, I had to sit upstairs, four seats from the aisle. I was also too late for a little comfort break, so by the time the 2012 ‘Listen Here!’ curator, BBC SSO Artist-in-Association Matthias Pintscher, turned to face the orchestra, I was already in distress.  The fire alarm in work had sounded for thirty minutes only four hours earlier, and my ears had barely recovered when the almighty mess that is the Second Movement (’Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut’) from Charles Ives’ ‘3 Places in New England’ had me almost weeping with agony into my sleeve. I am not familiar with Ives’ work, but at least I know that I’ll have to listen at home with one hand on the volume control. To complete Part I, American violinist Jennifer Koh gave us a fine performance of Bartok’s second Violin Concerto, but I was still to be convinced that I’d made the correct decision in leaving the house. By the time Part II, and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, was over, I was relieved, in more ways than one, and resolved to remain in the hall for Part III.

Scott Mitchell, the well-known RCS accompanist and chamber music coach, delved into the realms of the plinky-plonky with John Cage’s ‘Seven Haiku’ which, thankfully, only lasted three minutes. A typical theatrical SSO performance then followed, with trombones, horns and flutes sprinkled around the Choir Stalls and Balcony for Charles Ives’ ‘The Unanswered Question’, before Scott Mitchell returned to play Robert Schumann’s ‘Kinderszenen, Op. 15’ and this, like the Dvorak, was one of the rare truly beautiful moments in the evening. The wandering minstrels returned to delight us with Giovanni Gabrielli’s ‘Sonata pian e forte’, which isn’t what you think (the former means one choir, the latter the two reunited), before the marathon session ended with a small orchestra playing Aaron Copeland’s ‘Appalachian Spring’ (which features the clarinet in the Shaker melody ‘Simple Gifts’, of course). That was that, at nearly 11pm!

One of the many things I love about the BBC SSO is the chance to participate in an event along with the orchestra. Last year, it was the orchestra and massed choir, conducted by the delightfully enthusiastic Andrew Manze, performing ‘Pirates of Penzance’. This year, it was the efficient German Matthias Pintscher's take on Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Concerto Grosso’ for string orchestra. Now, what on earth could this poor excuse for a clarinettist find to do in a string orchestra? Well, it’s not such a quantum leap when you consider that, as a former member of the Glasgow Fiddle Workshop, I’ve got a violin; not that I would know what to do with a violin and a violin part. Once I had stuffed tissue paper in my shoes to dry up the rain that had settled there, it was time to take my seat. I tried, I really did but, like my desk partner, who was about 9, I was floundering from the start, in spite of the fact that all my notes were on open strings. However, I enjoyed it, and fulfilled another ambition along the way. The bucket list hasn’t got much left for me to do.

I had a wee snooze after I got home, so I had to rush to get to the Saturday evening concert, too. This time, it was easier to park, and easier to get a seat, though the audience turned out to be larger than anyone expected. This was the ‘modern’ night, entitled ‘New German Mythmakers’. A touch of the plinky-plonky, again, with the opener; Aribert Reimann’s 1993 work, ‘Neun Stȕcke fȕr Orchester’. This was followed by Hans Werner Henze’s 1993 composition ‘Sinfonia No. 8. This jarred less than the first piece, and even though I’m not able to hum or whistle any of it, it wasn’t bad, for a modern piece, and I’ll need to look out for the episode of BBC Radio 3’s ‘Hear and Now’ that will feature it. After the interval, American cellist Joshua Roman was the featured soloist in Matthias Pintscher’s ‘Reflections on Narcissus’ from 2005, which was actually worth hearing again, especially the movement were Roman appeared to play harmonics the whole time. This wasn’t the last of the 28-year old virtuoso, as he gave a recital after the concert in which he played J.S. Bach’s ‘Suite No. 3 for Solo Cello’.

Finally, this afternoon’s concert, and the lighter side of the orchestra, in a programme entitled ‘Around the World in 80 Minutes’. Conducted and presented by Stephen Bell (presumably to avoid a repeat of the high jinks of last year, when Jamie MacDougall and Billy Differ had the audience fighting back the tears with their double-entendre double-act), this was billed as a family-friendly concert, and there was a whole host of bored children sprinkled throughout the auditorium. Beginning with Malcolm Arnold’s ‘Scottish Dance No. 1’, the SSO took a trip around the world from Scotland to Norway (Grieg), Paris (Cole Porter), Spain (Albeniz), Germany (Mendelssohn), Austria (Johann Strauss II), Italy (a Neapolitan miscellany arranged by Gordon Langford) and the Czech Republic (Dvorak). That was just the first half. After the interval, Russia (Tchaikovsky), China (Tan Dun), Australia (Grainger), Mexico (Sydney Torch arrangement), Canada (Bob Fanon), USA (Copeland) and finally back to the UK with ‘Great Songs of Great Britain’ arranged by Bob Farnon, the Canadian who made Guernsey his home. And that was that, all over for another year, and there’s only one more event to attend in Glasgow before the summer, proper. More about that next weekend.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Between Baroque and a hard place

Vivaldi, Corelli, Locatelli, Geminiani; Baroque stars. Close your eyes, and you’re transported to late-17th/early-18th Century Venice; open them, and you’re in St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, with its uncomfortable traditional pews digging into your spine. The last concert in this season’s RSNO Chamber Series, coinciding with the West End Festival, was an extravaganza of lesser-known Baroque pieces, interspersed with short, tasty morsels from an even more obscure composer, Uccellini, whose works have been unearthed by no less than Andrew Manze. Led by violinist David Chivers, the ensemble consisted of four violins, two violas, a cello, a double bass, a harpsichord and a baroque guitar, alternated with a bass lute called a Theorbo. What a wonderful sound and what better way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon?

Saturday, June 16, 2012

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain


Two weeks ago, I was wandering around Perthshire in short sleeves. A couple of weeks before that, I could be seen without a jacket, in Glasgow, for the first time in anyone’s living memory. Since I returned from holiday, however, the sun has been very elusive, indeed. The heavy rain and high winds would grace any November, but it’s flaming June, for God’s sake. I’m not a sun worshipper, but even I know that this is summer, and something has gone badly wrong with our weather.

Four weeks from now, I will be spending a couple of days in London for a pathetic attempt at a 50th birthday treat. On the Saturday night, I will head to the Royal Albert Hall for only my second visit to the Proms, for a concert performance by the John Wilson Orchestra of ‘My Fair Lady’, but unlike that frantic night in August 2006, I will stay over and take it easy. I’ve no idea what I’ll be doing the rest of the time, but it will have to be very cheap, as I’ll be heading off on my proper holiday a week later.

In keeping with the theme of Eliza Doolitle and ‘Enry ‘Iggins, I set out for Byres Road, and Oran Mor’s ‘A Play, A Pie and a Pint’ series, for an hour-long version of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’, on which the musical ‘My Fair Lady’ was based. It was sold out. Due to roadworks elsewhere, I’m not driving up Byres Road on the way home at night, and it’s always difficult to stop there for any length of time, so I couldn’t go in before today. I could, of course, have purchased a ticket on-line from Ticketweb, but they were adding a £1.56 booking fee to a £12.50 ticket. It probably wasn’t very good, anyway.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

School's out for summer

It’s Tuesday. It’s almost 7:30pm, and I’m at home, starting to type this. Term has ended for the orchestra, and summer is upon us. I’m bored.

I know that I may not go back, I may not want to go back, but I get a buzz from just being there. I had never played in any sort of ensemble when, at 45 years old, I took my seat that Sunday in November 2007. I was scared; no, more than scared, I was paralysed with fear. My anxious fears had not been bid/bade subside when we started for real in January 2008, and when term finished around ten weeks later, I was disappointed to find myself, as one of its plentiful supply of clarinets, rotated out until after the summer. Luckily, I was able to play in our first concert in December of 2008, and have played in all six subsequent musical extravaganzas, the most recent of which took place last Saturday.

It’s been a tough few months. Some complicated, but interesting pieces were jettisoned, leaving us with only four (equally complicated, but interesting) works to play in the concert (plus a surprise encore). If any of the grannies in the audience had indulged in a sweet sherry or tawny port prior to taking their seats, they’d have been reaching for their heart pills by the final cymbal crash of our opener, the utterly bonkers ‘Colas Breugnon’ by Kabalevsky. Luckily for them, the orchestra had a rest for about half an hour while some of its members who had formed into small ensembles played the pieces they had been working on.

The orchestra returned after this long interlude to play (I think) the longest piece we’ve ever played; the Fourth Movement of Brahms’ Symphony No. 1. In the hands a professional orchestra, this would last just over fifteen minutes. I’ve no idea how long it took us to get through it, but I was relieved when we had, and headed for the toilet.

The second half followed the same format; orchestra, ensembles, orchestra. We got through Holst’s 'Somerset Rhapsody’ without major incident. I’d be surprised if anyone in the audience would know it, anyway, so we’d have got away with it. One of the ensembles, the entire percussion section, performed a delightful piece written by one of their number, and this set us up nicely for our finale, ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’ from ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ by Mussorgsky (arranged by Ravel). When it was over, there was a hint of a ‘whoop’ from someone in the audience, but before they could get carried away, we hit them between the eyes with Sousa’s ‘Washington Post’.

That was that, and this is, well, this. I’ve got lots of thinking to do over the summer, and decisions have to be made, and that’s before I have to try to get back in. When I think of what the orchestra has given me, you’d think it would be easy to say yes, but it’s complicated.

Friday, June 08, 2012

So which way do I go to get out of here?


Before SatNav in cars, and GPS and Google Maps on mobile phones, it was possible to go out for walk and get lost. I know, it happened to me on numerous occasions. Even if I knew the general direction I was going in, I still managed to get confused, or was indecisive or impatient, and so would take the wrong route just to keep going. After one particularly nasty incident during a thunderstorm, someone who loved to dispense wisdom told me that I should be chastened by my experience. He meant my trip out into the hills, but I was certainly chastened by my experience with him. I’m not sure I know the words to describe him, and it would be difficult for someone as inarticulate as me to do so without resorting to profanities, but when I think of him, I not only see a person who, frankly, was not worth one iota of my attention and time, but I also see a common thread, a pattern.

He wasn’t, and still isn’t, an isolated case; I appear to be drawn to people who take me for granted, or treat me like something they’ve stood in. In other words, people not worthy of my attention and time. If any of you are reading this, why don’t you look in the mirror and ask yourself what you have to do to be a better person? While you’re doing that, I’ll ask myself why I should have to do anything special in order to be afforded even a little common courtesy.

When you’re out walking, and you arrive at a crossroads, you’ve got a choice to make. It’s usually a matter of left or right or forward, but there are other options. You could go back the way you came or just stay rooted to the spot. It takes a lot of courage to choose to go forward, to approach the unknown, and it takes a lot of time to build up enough courage to take that first step. Trouble is, when you get there, there’s this terrible feeling of déjà vu. It might take a short time or a long time, but it eventually dawns on you that you’ve been here before, that everyone is the same, whatever coat they wear.

It takes courage to go back, too; back to the life you had before everything changed, back to something long acknowledged as imperfect, unwanted, unwarranted. It takes courage to admit that something akin to being dead, emotionally, is preferable to the slightest cut turning into a gaping wound.Sometimes, though, there’s nothing else for it, no alternative but to retreat inside your protective cocoon. I was dead for a long time, and I will be for a long time to come, but even the faintest light from a distant, spellbinding object can be difficult to extinguish.

Well, again I’m at that crossroads now; left or right or straght ahead into the unknown, back to what I don’t want, or stay where I am and be insulted, disrespected and scraped off the sole of someone's shoe. So which way do I go to get out of here?

Thursday, June 07, 2012

The Transit of Venus 2012


The last time there was a Transit of Venus, in 2004, I didn’t have broadband. I shudder to think what the early hours of Wednesday morning would have been like had I remained a Luddite. For this Transit, the last until 2117, I was monitoring the live webcast from the Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii on one computer and, on the other, the feed from the Mount Wilson observatory in California. The UK wasn’t going to be able to see anything, in theory, until sunrise on Wednesday, by which time, the planet would be about to reach the point of Interior Egress, where it starts to cross the solar limb for the second time (i.e., where the edge of the disk of Venus just crosses the edge of the disk of the Sun). Under twenty minutes later, at 05:54 BST, Exterior Egress would occur, then the Transit would be over.

I don’t have suitable equipment for solar viewing, so a little improvisation was called for. To view the 1999 Solar Eclipse, I projected the image on to a piece of A4 paper sellotaped to the wall of the building I worked in. 


With me in charge of the camera, I cajoled a couple of my colleagues into holding a monocular at a suitable angle, or securing it to the departmental tripod. Back then, you could have fun like that during working hours.

I returned from holiday late on Tuesday afternoon and dug out some sheets of card, a piece of tinfoil (no, not to make a hat!), sellotape and scissors. I made a pinhole viewer 



and, in case that didn’t work, I attached a piece of card, rather clumsily, to my trusty old monocular to cut down shadows. 



I selected suitable clothing, and set two alarms; one for 03:45 BST and one for 04:00. All I had to do was wait.

It didn’t occur to me that I would be able to watch this phenomenon via the Internet, and this is where Twitter came into its own. I follow a number of accounts associated with astronomy, including Dr. Lucie Green, a solar physicist, and Pete Lawrence, a renowned solar imager and co-presenter of ‘The Sky at Night’. I also follow NASA, and they announced that there would be a live feed from Mauna Kea. There were also links on NASA’s page to a number of other sites, and I settled on the webcast from Mount Wilson. It was difficult to follow both at the same time, especially as the two computers were about 10 feet apart, so I turned the sound down on both and just watched the event unfolding. I also took photographs from the screens.

I have no idea about solar images. I think this Mauna Kea picture is Hydrogen Alpha.



And this, from Mt. Wilson, is a white light, or continuum, image.



Of course, I may be barking up the wrong tree.

The most exciting part is the time between Exterior Ingress and Exterior Ingress (the opposite of what I mentioned earlier), after which the entire disk of Venus is within that of the Sun, then it’s a slow crawl East to West to get the other side (but, if I'm right, it’s not really a straight line, and the angle of the arc is different depending on where you are). After I watched it move away from the edge (or solar limb, if you wish), as in the Mt. Wilson image, above, I went to bed.

The weather forecast wasn’t favourable, and Glasgow has an average cloud cover for June of 75%, so I wasn’t surprised when I looked out of the window at 03:45 and couldn’t see the sky. We had 8 days of clear nights before I went away, and the weather in Perthshire was pleasant, to say the least. Typical, bloody typical. Undeterred, I went out at 04:30, and drove up the hill to a spot with a better take-off to the East than at home. I sat in the car with the intention of waiting until 05:30 then scurrying over to the site in time to set up. A fox appeared, then the rain, and it was obvious that my efforts would not bear fruit.


At 05:55, I made my way back to the car, and headed for Tesco. What else was there to do at that time in the morning?

So, what did I learn and/or what do I have to do now? Let’s see:

  1. I need to find a more secluded spot for observing, as a patch of green opposite a row of houses is neither private nor safe.
  2. I think that the pinhole viewer will have to be tested with the sun early in the morning on a nice day to see if it works. If so, a pinhole projector could be built out of cardboard boxes for viewing the sun to look for sunspots.
  3. Similarly for the monocular.
  4. There are designs on the Web for a sun funnel to be used with a telescope. Again, the sun, and sunspots, could be projected using this method, perhaps in conjunction with my reflector, which will have to be modified, first.
  5. I'm not very good at this. 
I’ll not be around in 2117, so I guess that’s it.