Concert & Live

The Coughing Debate

2012-01-10T00:36:00.000-08:00

A woman was dying of consumption. We shouldn't have been looking, but it was gripping nonetheless. 'Cessarono. Gli spasmi del dolore. In me rinasce m'agita Insolito vigore! Ah! io ritorno a vivere.' And with those words Violetta breathed her last. Despite the hideous illness with which La traviata ends, last night's performance at the Royal Opera House was dominated by the sound of the audience's coughing. Like an empathetic bus-load of consumptives, the auditorium rang with the sound of hacking. And, more or less, it only occurred during the quiet bits (of which there are a lot in Act 3).

Although La traviata provides the most ironic instance of bronchial barking intruding on the music, it isn't the worst. The slow and steady Arabian Dance in The Nutcracker often prompts such spasms and I remember an awful instance during the final bars of an LSO Mahler 9. My friend, sitting next to me in the Barbican, railed loudly against the offending cougher during the applause. So, why do people cough during classical music?

The short answer is nerves or, more bluntly, a lack of concentration. They feel on edge. The silence and focus required by these performances has a bizarrely reverse effect. Attention is brought back on to uncertain members of the audience and they feel the need to act out. Bronchial emissions are the mid-performance equivalent of the entrance and curtain call applause. We somehow feel bereft when silenced by the very thing that has, supposedly, brought us in the first place.

Genuinely 'ill' responses, the winter cold or (heaven forbid) consumption, are incredibly few and far between. What dominates is the arid open-mouthed cough, without a hand or scarf or jumper placed in front of the mouth. It echoes (as one BBC National Orchestra of Wales concert programme used to tell us) at the same volume as a mezzo forte note on the horn. It's like adding a whole new level of orchestration to the work or, as in last night's performance, placing Violetta in a ward of hundreds of consumptives.

It's noticeable that where concentration is largely much better - at Wigmore Hall for instance - coughing is minimal. Although the inter-movement cough, alas also prevalent at Wigmore, is a particularly odd phenomenon, these sounds chime with the New Zealand-born musicologist Christopher Small's theories about audience behaviour. Like clapping, it allows us to fill the auditory space. Having been wowed (or bored) by what's been performed, we feel the need to make our own noise. Concert halls (and opera houses) seem to claim one-way conversation; audiences insist on two-way dialogue. Candidly, people just don't know where to stop. Clearly, nothing is sacred anymore.

But then concert halls and opera houses were built as social spaces and audiences rightly react to their environments in a fashion similar to the way they would in a restaurant or bar. They've paid for the privilege and want to react accordingly. But the coughing thing presents a particular challenge. For one, it's incredibly annoying and invades the space of other members of the audience. But not only do we have to try and hear 'above' it, we also need to address why people actually feel on edge or lack the concentration required by a 35-minute stretch of music. So, it's not why do people cough, but why do they go at all? As ever, it's about music education.

Ermonela Jaho as Violetta and Stephen Costello as Alfredo
In The Royal Opera's production of La traviata
Photograph © ROH/Catherine Ashmore

Heroism Personified

2012-01-07T02:10:00.000-08:00

Your head might explode in the final track of Slavic Heroes. Bombarded by treacly tones and the lush eroticism of Szymanowski's Król Roger, this is heady stuff indeed. But it's just one of many such treats on Mariusz Kwiecień's new recording. Recital discs can be hit and miss. Too heavily themed and they appear gimmicky. Without a clear subject, they are vague vehicles. Here language is the only link. But from the familiar passages of Eugene Onegin to rarities by Smetana, Moniuszko and Dvořák, Kwiecień shows that he is truly a voice to reckon with.

For the first time, Harmonia Mundi has extended is production outfit to the UK. A surprising choice, then, to go to Poland. But if talent and quality are the only criteria, they have chosen well. The Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra (under Łukasz Borowicz) provides a luscious soundscape. Given the weight and wealth of Kwiecień's voice, they are placed prominently in the mix. The sound is occasionally a little too velvety, as there's more steel in this music than the recording lets on.

But it's a tiny price to pay for the bounties it affords. After the anaemic anti-hero of ENO's recent Onegin, Kwiecień is sex personified. The sheer lyrical arrogance of his dismissal of Tatyana breaks your heart. And, as if playing the opera for real, his Act 3 aria is palpably neurotic. Yet he can just as easily turn his hand to the spirited aria from Moniuszko's Haunted Manor or the vast otherworldliness of Szymanowski. I cannot wait to hear Kwiecień performing these roles live. Click here to order a copy.

18 Centuries of Wow

2012-01-06T00:38:00.000-08:00

The new incarnations and offshoots of Tate and the Gulbenkian aside, most of us weren't alive when the major galleries of this world celebrated their 10th anniversaries. Great collections stand the test of time. Many tramp through their hallways, gawp at their splendours and amass their postcards in a desperate attempt to relive the experience. The Neue Galerie in New York is a little different. It opened in 2001 and has since made a massive impression on Museum Mile. Presenting cross-cultural exhibitions, cabaret, lectures and its own fantastic collection of fin-de-siècle art, it has become one of the go-to exhibition spaces in New York City in just a decade. The catalogue for its 10th Anniversary exhibition is a hefty testament to its ability to punch above its weight.

Like Henry Tate, who laid the foundations for the British gallery's vast collection, the Neue Galerie built its leading range of Austrian and German paintings around one man's vision. Ronald S. Lauder (the son of Estée) amassed his precious collection through years of seizing rare opportunities. One of his providers was a singularly brilliant dealer called Serge Sabarsky (honoured by the museum in the name of its glorious café). The rest is history. Klimts were bought for eye-widening sums and displayed with great panache in the Neue's chic 5th Avenue home.

For their 10th anniversary, the Neue Galerie has broadened that remit. They've been led from the top. Lauder's collection stretches some 16 centuries back before Klimt was even a twinkle in his mother's eye. Medieval art works, Old Masters, Armoury, Picassos and Post-War German painting all rub shoulders with the more familiar elements of the Neue Galerie collection. And until 2 April, you can see this all displayed in its galleries.

For those of us unable to travel to New York, Prestel has issued a 500-page tome in response. Not only is it good for upper body strength, but is a remarkable testament to one man's taste, wealth and generosity. Accompanied with essays by leading writers in all the fields of Lauder's taste - no mean feat - this is a great book. There's a sense of celebration that runs through the volume (and, no doubt, the exhibition). The single reason that a catalogue and exhibition as important as this one can exist is down to that one man's munificence.

As the Liechtenstein family closes the doors to its collection in Vienna (claiming lack of public interest) and tax payers' support becomes increasingly precarious we cannot take such big gestures for granted. And although it would be a terrible shame if the European subsidised model waned, Lauder and the Neue Galerie present a truly impressive version of the philanthropist's vision. Get to New York if you can but, if you can't, this 10th Anniversary catalogue is a veritable keepsake. Click here to order a copy.

You cannot dream things lovelier

2012-01-04T14:20:00.000-08:00

Michael Head is an unaffected composer. Eschewing the harmonic twists of Warlock and, thankfully, Vaughan Williams' modish modality, his songs offer heartfelt utterances from a cluttered century. The great achievement of Hyperion Records new release of 27 of his songs is that they are delivered with untrammelled sincerity. It is a rich and rare disc.

Head will never turns heads. He's a moderate conservative, with a varied taste in poetry and a ballad-like approach to form and sound. While his contemporaries went into the dark recesses of the English psyche, the younger Head preferred a more relaxed and melancholic vein. Roderick Williams is the perfect protagonist for his tales. His fond remembrance in 'Limehouse Reach' and the open appeal of 'Lean out of the window' are a genuine joy to behold.

While Head attempts a more astringent sound world in 'The Viper', it can feel somewhat ersatz when compared with Britten's contemporaneous work. But there's atmosphere aplenty in Catherine Wyn-Rogers' Three Songs of Venice. Her and Williams' ease of communication matches Head's style perfectly. Ailish Tynan is perhaps a little too skittish with occasional blurs in diction, though she too sings beautifully.

Throughout, none of the singers overstates their case and Christopher Glynn is the model of coherence and care at the piano. Collectively, they are great exponents for this handsome list of songs. From the parlando ease of the Margaret Rose poems 'Star Candles' and 'The little road to Bethlehem' to the bravado of 'Tewkesbury Road', this is a great testament to an unpresuming gem of a composer. Click here to order a copy.

In praise of the Hawelka

2012-01-04T08:28:00.000-08:00

There are hundreds of Kaffehäuser, but for many the Café Leopold Hawelka (or just the Hawelka for short) has a special claim. It's been untrammelled by the snares of modernisation (though the recent addition of free WiFi is certainly a boon). Although immaculate, it wears its history on its slightly grimy sleeve. The posters that crowd the wall range from the bang up-to-date to the faded glories of the late 20th century. The telephone booth has the whiff of John Le Carré and the strong smell of Hausblend permeates across the dark space. All in all, atmosphere is everything at the Hawelka.

It was a great sadness, then, to hear on arriving in Vienna last week that Herr Hawelka had died. His 100 years of life witnessed everything from the collapse of the Empire, the attrition of the Great War, the establishment of a Republic, the rise of the Nazis, his own time in the Wehrmacht, the battle of Stalingrad and a return to a broken Vienna. Leopold had opened the café before the war, but it was only in 1945 that the place really hit is stride. Just a stone's throw from Stephansplatz, it would become the haunt of the disgruntled artist, the conductor, the playwright, the office worker and the tourist.

Sitting in the Hawelka last week, there was a sense of continued history, despite Leopold's absence. After the death of Frau Hawelka, Leopold began to take a slightly more back seat attitude to the café, though his presence on the morning shift (or in the photos on the walls) often belied a handover. You might be pushed to imagine that among the throngs of regulars are the geniuses of tomorrow, but there is something timeless about the great institution. As we sat there drinking another glass of Averna, Hawelka's legacy seemed primed to continue for a century after his death.

Click here to read an obituary of Leopold Hawelka (1911-2011) from the 30th December edition of the Daily Telegraph.

Returning Home?

2011-12-31T01:46:00.000-08:00

It's strange about seeing a picture out of context. I often go into the National Gallery to view Britain's only Klimt - a 1904 portrait of Hermine Gallia. But at the moment you can't see it in London, because it's come to Vienna to be displayed alongside other Klimts and Josef Hoffmann artefacts in an exhibition at the Unteres Belvedere. Seeing it in, what are for me, foreign surroundings was strange. I half expected to walk out of the room onto Trafalgar Square. Of course, it is a return home for the painting. Klimt 'belongs' in Vienna. Like those Aciman 'Shadow City' moments, whenever I see the painting in London it reminds me of Vienna. Seeing it here in Vienna, reminded me of London and the glories of the National Gallery. Loans. Restitution. Returning pictures to those to whom they belong. Adele Bloch-Bauer. The Elgin Marbles. How tedious it would be if all art works were back in their places of origin (largely because they wouldn't be in public collections where people could see them). But there's still a strange tug of the that location on the picture in its new home and vice versa. The 'Beethoven Frieze' also seemed out of place in the Belvedere (although it's officially in their collection). The Secession must surely feel bereft of that masterpiece created for its spaces. But these are just my own projections of homelessness.

Blasts from the Past

2011-12-30T20:00:00.000-08:00

Angelo Soliman is like Humpty Dumpty. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put him back together again. But the Wien Museum has attempted reassembly with its latest exhibition. Ironically, such a process has to divide myth and reality. Who was he? A West African slave, brought to Vienna through Sicily, Soliman became a trusted and respected figure in Enlightenment Vienna. After his death, however, he was exhibited in the Imperial Natural History collections as an exotic. As immigration arguments in Austria reach new intensity, the Wien Museum's Soliman exhibition offers historical guidance.

Soliman begins and ends with a cliché. No Austrians had been to Africa. It was a place where enormous monsters roamed the earth and the people wore fantastical clothing. It was 'other', sexual and ornamental (all depicted in gloriously un-PC imagery). By the time that slaves had arrived in Vienna, the distance between origin and orientalism had only widened. Despite expectation, Soliman gained a relatively privileged position in Viennese society. Normally, once an African slave hit puberty, they were cast out to fend for themselves. And although pictures show him as a dwarf or child servant, he was an adult in service to both Prince Lobkowitz and later the Liechtenstein family. He's depicted in the latter Prince's retinue as he goes to woo a wife and the bill for Soliman's uniform lies next to that picture (in one of many brilliant bits of intense research evident in the exhibition).

Winning a huge amount of money by gambling, Soliman married, bought a house and became an independent man (and was fired by the Liechtensteins for breaking contract). A page from a Masonic Lodge guestbook reveals that he spent time with Mozart. He was the quintessence of Enlightenment thinking. And the Liechtensteins asked him to work with them again towards the end of his life. But after his death, the Enlightenment figure became the exotic cliché once more. Soliman's body was placed in a ludicrous savage's costume and displayed for all to see. Whether as revenge for 'inappropriate' assimilation or for curiosity's sake, Soliman the reality disappeared.

To tell this story, an exhibition needs clarity and space and curator Philipp Blom and his team guide us deftly through cliché to reality (and back again). The final section of the exhibition - linking the racial stereotypes of Soliman's lifetime with those of more recent decades in Vienna - perhaps overstates its case. But it offers an essential bridge to the present day and a final film installation where black Viennese residents talk about their stories and the tolerance (or lack thereof) around them. Have we learned from history? The hushed but powerful question hovers over the exhibition. With immigration debates still raging between the SPÖ and FPÖ, Soliman offers an essential blast from the past.

Winter Dreams

2011-12-29T01:31:00.000-08:00

"Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories." Or so An Affair to Remember reminds us. And there is certainly a pervasive chill over the Kunsthistorisches Museum at the moment. The Wintermärchen exhibition offers a vast collation of images inspired by the darkest and coldest months of the year. While there's plenty of cheer against the elements, by the 20th century a more dangerous elision of man and his environment has returned.

Winter has its own mythology. The nativity, an old man warming his hands by a fire with a well-stocked table, the feasts, the slaughtered pig. From the clock faces of the medieval period to Joseph Beuys' own invented self-mythology, the season has created its own images and codes. The exhibition is a grand unlocking of those signifiers and, although it is somewhat crammed with examples, the simple chronology invites further investigation.

The work of the Breugel family dominates the early part of the exhibition, not only by their inherent drama, but through the vividness of their depictions. As the medieval period gives way to the excesses of the 16th and 17th century, the harshness of those canvases - not least the brutal slaughter of the innocents - turns to Rubens and his fecund feasts. Here a corpulent bean king stuffs his face.

Perhaps the most ostentatious work on display is the two sleighs from the late 18th and early 19th century. Gilded gliding fantasies with harnesses studded with bells, winter provided just another excuse to show off. And although they cannot compete with Turner's apocalyptic depiction of Hannibal crossing the Alps, David's picture of Napoleon following in his footsteps seems like a polite society portrait next to these golden playthings.

The real chill sets in after such glitzy glamour and Monet's gestural canvases offer more existential frigidity. Rivers burst their banks and water, ice and snow become one, distinguished only by the smallest shift in brush stroke. And there's an aesthetic cool to Carl Moll's picture of his studio on the Theresianumgasse. Placed in the top right-hand corner of the canvas, the studio appears like a fevered imago in a desolate white waste. Just the kind of place that you'd find Joseph Beuys' 'Schlitten'. Like Schubert's Leiermann, Monet, Moll and Beuys appear trapped in their frosty landscapes. And its with that deathly chill that you leave this dizzyingly encyclopaedic Winterreise.

Dead Opera

2011-12-28T01:29:00.000-08:00

Ariadne auf Naxos is set in the house of the richest man in Vienna. As entertainment is provided, things go horribly wrong. But it's all entertaining and ultimately rather moving. In Peter Konwitschny's production of From the House of the Dead (performed at the Wiener Staatsoper for the first time) the setting is the same and performers are provided. Sadly, neither entertainment nor emotion are on the menu.

Rather than Dostoevsky's Siberian prison camp, Konwitschny has transported us to an oligarch's flat - the frontcloth projections suggest today's Vienna. The brutality of the gulags is seemingly akin to the ferocity of high-end bad behaviour capitalism; Goryanchikov becomes the group's bullied plaything. But once the (apparently) Marxist point is made, the concept has nowhere to go. It railroads over the libretto, provides all-too-liberal translations and bars access to an already difficult piece.

Janáček's 1928 opera needs all the help it can get. In it, he often bypassed linear narrative in favour of reflective tableaux. It's open-ended nature troubled the composer's students when they discovered the score after his death (erroneously suggesting it was incomplete). But given a clear production, the opera can pack a terrific punch. Konwitschny ignores the warnings. He places his entire cast in black tie and pumps out skewed translations to support his vision. The effect is woefully misleading. And given that Patrice Chéreau's production started at the Wiener Festvochen (in a co-pro with the Holland Festival), it's perplexing as to why the Staatsoper has opted for this arrogant, cynical nonsense.

For all the posturing on stage, the musical performances remain strong. Franz Welser-Möst drives a hard bargain with the Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper. A ferocious overture prepares the ground for harsh exchanges and vivid colouring. Only a passing criticism would be that the musicians make light work of Janáček's complex textures; we should feel the effort involved in producing that caustic sound world. Nevertheless, it makes for a rich listening experience.

Sorin Coliban uses that strong orchestral bedrock to project his poetic Goryanchikov. It creates a lyrical counterpoint to the brutality of the opera. Similarly touching is Christopher Maltman's Shishkov. His is a voice in its prime. He offered only a cameo here, but we need to hear Maltman stretched by more diverse repertoire. Herbert Lippert shone as Skuratov, leading an impressive ensemble and strident chorus. Yet however hard they tried, nobody could overcome Konwitschny's die-hard cynicism. Janáček wrote that you could not 'extinguish the spark of God' in these characters; the current production at the Staatsoper is a deeply unappealing attempt on the opera's life.

Merry Christmas from Entartete Musik

2011-12-25T01:31:00.000-08:00

After a month of Tchaikovsky on the blog, it's high time I wished all the readers of Entartete Musik a Very Merry Christmas. It's been a great year for readership, with over 50,000 hits on the main site per month. The most popular posts this year have been the reports on Mahler's death 100 years after the event, an interview with the Berliner Philharmoniker's principal clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer, a preview of the Wagnerian elements in Melancholia, a review of Bernard Herrmann's string quartets, reports from the BBC Proms of Norrington's tendentious Mahler 9 and Brian's 'Gothic' Symphony and the daily posts from The Nutcracker Advent Calendar. There are currently nearly 1200 'fans' of the blog on Facebook and over 1300 followers on Twitter. The top-ten countries for visitors are United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, France, Canada, Italy, Spain and Australia, with many individual readers living in London, Vienna, New York, Berlin, Madrid, Buenos Aires and Chicago. Please keep returning to the blog, commenting, sending through suggestions; it's as wonderful to hear about your passions as it is to share mine. Next week I leave for Vienna once more, when there will be many reports from the Kaffeehausen, exhibitions about Klimt and Hoffmann, Winter Pictures at the Kunsthistorichesmuseum, From the House of the Dead at the Staatsoper, Die Fledermaus at the Volksoper and lots more besides. Have a great Christmas and I look forward to a truly degenerate 2012.

from The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker

Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 24 - Final Waltz and Apotheosis

2011-12-23T23:00:00.000-08:00

We reach the end of our journey. For the final moments of The Nutcracker Petipa asked for a 'grand general coda' with '128 bars of very brilliant and fiery music in 3/4'. Therefore like Act 1, Act 2 also ends with a waltz. But unlike the final bars of the first act, this dance is back in the original B flat major tonality. Everything has come full circle. The penultimate movement's D major (the key, of course, of the second movement in the whole ballet) provides a tertiary modulation back home. Tchaikovsky's waltz is a summation of everything that has occurred in the Kingdom of Sweets. Its metre recalls the Waltz of the Flowers, while its emphasis on the second beat of the bar harks back to the Sarabande rhythms of the Spanish Dance. Again, those minor key colours come through all the time, but like the coda of the pas de deux, jeopardy is kept firmly at bay. After the initial waltz theme, Tchaikovsky has a series of characteristic episodes: double reed woodwind are followed by the celesta and flutes, with a more heroic brass section perhaps recalling the Russian Trepak. The waltz theme returns in yet more outspoken fashion presaging more variegated harmonies and Tchaikovsky's ubiquitous hemiola. In the original ballet, of course, this was a depiction of the world of The Nutcracker as it ends - the Nephew has been released from the wooden toy and returned to the Kingdom of Sweets. In modern productions this tends to be a last hurrah before a swift departure for Nuremberg, where Clara is found asleep under the Christmas Tree and Hans-Peter is reunited with his Uncle Drosselmeyer. The music for the Apotheosis was originally intended to depict 'illuminated fountains' and the celesta returns for those luminous water drops. But by recalling the earlier melody that accompanied Clara's trip over the Sea of Lemonade, Tchaikovsky did perhaps intend to indicate another journey. Whatever conclusion a production chooses, there can be no doubt about Clara's (and our) glee as the score ends in a resolute B flat major.

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Ricardo Cervera as the Nephew in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 23 - Coda

2011-12-23T00:44:00.000-08:00

After both the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince have dazzled with their respective variations, the pas de deux concludes with a virtuosic show stopper for them both. Gone are the grave harmonies and the eerie desiccation of the celesta. This is a genuinely happy and glorious conclusion. Tchaikovsky was asked to provide 'still lively music in 2/4 - 88 bars' and although he exceeded his brief, writing 102 bars, Petipa's description couldn't be more apt. There is a bouncing accompaniment on top of which Tchaikovsky places another descending melody. The emphasis on the ninth note in the scale lends a heartfelt quality, but the harmonies are otherwise simple. The first phrase moves to the dominant and the second phrase moves back to the tonic; it's just like the foursquare clarity of the overture. The presence of the submediant (next to the dominant in the scale) gives a slight minor tinge, but it too is understated. Such a move, however, does preface more chromatically inflected harmonies. There is a brief moment in E minor, there are diminished chords and all the richness of the composer's palate. Whereas before these harmonies portended emotional truths or elements of danger, Tchaikovsky quickly moves away through runs and sequences to more traditional tonal ground. This is a dance of resolution and it ends with a dazzling (if abrupt) cadence in D major.

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Yuhui Choe as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 22 - Variation II: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

2011-12-22T01:18:00.000-08:00

This dance is one of the most famous musical moments in all ballet. Tchaikovsky choice of the celesta (heard first as Clara and Hans-Peter's arrive in the Kingdom of Sweets) proved an ingenious one. Sugary but tart, its prissy bell-like notes later came to dominate the highly sexualised world of post-Wagnerian opera. Strauss, Schreker and Korngold used the instrument to excess. It speaks of an 'other', something artificial perhaps, or here, framed in that earlier 'jeopardy' key of E minor, something more deathly. This is the quintessence of ballerina delicacy. The Sugar Plum Fairy represents untouchable femininity or, for Petipa the music should sound akin to 'drops of water shooting out of fountains'. Tchaikovsky favours unresolved streams of dissonance. Flattened subdominant and dominant notes act as precarious lynchpins within the context. The Fairy and Prince's descending scale becomes a rather forlorn bass clarinet solo (then passed elsewhere in the woodwind) and the response to the dominant (itself rather short and sharp in appearance) is a stream of diminished chords in first and second position. Everything seems to hover around the tonic rather than endorsing it. After a stream of diminished and minor seventh arpeggios, the tune returns one octave higher and the dance ends with a rapid coda, highly reminiscent of the snowflake music.

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Sarah Lamb as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

The Magic of Fritz Wunderlich

2011-12-21T01:26:00.000-08:00

To be honest, I'm one of those people who cannot stand the queeny opera bore. 'Well, my dear, she wasn't Birgit Nilsson, now, was she?' Well, given that I was 3 when Nilsson retired, I can't testify. Thdre's a sickness in endlessly comparing what is now with what had gone before. But what's really irritating is how right those heritage queens can be. Fritz Wunderlich is a case in point. The tenor had been dead for 15 years by the time I was born, so I really had no connection whatsoever with his life or career. But during an intensive period of work on Schubert, countless people urged me to listen to his recordings. And how addictive they are.

My latest dependency is on this re-released boxed set of opera highlights. Recorded not as complete recordings, but as bleeding chunks, they offered showcases for Wunderlich's talents. We are treated to his Pinkerton, Rodolfo, Don Ottavio and Lensky (among others). The icy tenderness of 'Che gelida manina' and Lieder-like 'Dalla sua pace' are pretty wonderful, but cannot prepare for the finest recording of Lensky's Act 2 aria on disc. Like Toby Spence in the recent ENO production of Eugene Onegin - see, modern singers can do it - Wunderlich perfectly expresses unfulfilled ambitions. This isn't someone ready for death, but a man on whom death has been forced by convention. The foggy murmur of Bayerisches Staatsorchester strings and an improvisatory clarinet solo weave around his entirely destroying rendition. Perfect. Click here to order a copy of the boxed set.

Day 21 - Variation I: Tarantella

2011-12-21T00:34:00.000-08:00

For the shortest day, the shortest track. As is customary in a classical pas de deux, both dancers perform a testing variation. Tchaikovsky, like Drigo and Minkus before him, tended to emphasise contrastingly masculine and feminine characteristics within those variations. Here Petipa asked for 48 bars in 6/8 time for the cavalier. Shifting into B minor, the movement is distinguished by a flowing dialogue between various instruments in turn. Given the showcase that Petipa intended (and Ivanov realised), with great leaps and turns for the Prince, Tchaikovsky obliges with a steady crescendo and the dialogue between the instruments creates a breathless counterpoint to the dance. The music moves into D major and Tchaikovsky introduces the tambourine - part and parcel of the southern Italian tarantella - but the tonic proper is insistent, the bass inflexible and the variation ends with a brusque cadence in B minor. It brilliantly sets up the Sugar Plum Fairy's variation in E minor.

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Steven McRae as The Prince in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Through the eyes of a child…

2011-12-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

We grow up with The Nutcracker. We change. And it changes before our eyes. While writing my piece about the score for The Guardian, I needed to remind myself that it wasn’t all about death, E minor and eternity. So I took the opportunity to go and see the matinee on Sunday 11th December with my nephew in tow. He will be six in February, so he was probably one of the youngest members of the audience. Despite his age, he was completely gripped.

The magic for him began on entering the auditorium. ‘It’s so beautiful.’ That duck-egg blue ceiling, the descending lighting panels, the elegant sweep of the curtains and the sight of 2256 people all there to see the same thing are hugely impressive for a 5-year-old (and a 30-year-old). It reminded me of the first time I went to Covent Garden on 27 December 1988; I’ve been hooked ever since.

Act 1 of The Nutcracker prompted a series of questions. ‘Who’s he?’ ‘How do they make him fly?’ My stock response of, ‘It’s magic,’ was immediately frowned upon. Boys are pragmatic creatures; they need real answers. So as soon as the query was satisfied, my nephew resumed his concentrated pose. And you could see his eyes widen further when the Christmas tree shot up in size. ‘How do they do it? Is it as tall as my house?’

For a first time ballet goer, he was rather acute. He could spot the ‘mouse’ mime actions, he picked out the snowflake patterns in Ivanov’s choreography and when, in Act 2, Hans-Peter re-enacts the story of how he and Clara came to be in the Kingdom of Sweets, my nephew was the first to hear the recurrent musical motifs. Not bad for a kid who’d never heard the score or seen the ballet.

And it was those musical details that dominated my talk to a Year 12 group at Beaumont School in St Albans last week. It’s a seriously impressive local comprehensive. Admittedly it’s got a good catchment area in a predominantly middle class town, but they were, far and away, the sharpest 6th-form class I’d ever met. They really understood that while you could enjoy the ballet on my nephew’s terms – he later cited the death of the Mouse King as his favourite moment – there was perhaps a bit more going on.

We looked at the whole of the first act in the score, but we spent most of the time on Clara’s glorious pas de deux with Hans-Peter in the forest. That aching C major tune, replete with crunchy subdominant minor chords, invites further investigation. I asked the class for a list of adjectives. ‘Intense… emotional… romantic…’ And then one girl, hesitant at first, suggested it was about sexuality. ‘Is she growing up? Is Clara changing?’ Life reflected art, reflecting life. Perhaps The Nutcracker really is about eternity after all.

Day 20 - Pas de deux (Intrada)

2011-12-20T01:02:00.000-08:00

Building on the emotional impact of the Waltz of the Flowers, Petipa asked Tchaikovsky for an opening to the pas de deux that was 'intended to produce a colossal impression'. Obliging as ever, the Intrada is a passionate outpouring. True, we may be watching a Sugar Plum and a Cough Drop (as the original Prince's name translates), but Tchaikovsky couldn't resist suggesting something infinitely more profound. The melody may just be a descending scale - shades of Swan Lake again - but the harmony completely revolutionises that simple device; it becomes an elegiac melody. And although it starts in G major, it's not long before we've shifted to that pervasive key of E minor. This pas de deux mirrors Clara's first moments with Hans-Peter in the forest. The harp is present as it was there, but while Clara's longing found voice in an ascending melody, it is inverted here; a reflection shows things in reverse. The second section is less grandiose, with an oboe and clarinet duet representing the dancers on stage. But the next passage, marked 'incalzando' - increasing in both speed and warmth - is charged with emotion. A dominant pedal is firmly expectant of E minor and things are yet more candid in the final bars, as the brass takes over the melodic duties. The presence of a flattened seventh in the tonic proper (G major) moves us briefly into C minor, out of which Tchaikovsky snatches back the tonic. The Intrada ends triumphantly.

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Sergei Polunin as The Prince and Sarah Lamb as the Sugar Plum Fairy
in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 19 - Waltz of the Flowers

2011-12-19T00:05:00.000-08:00

After the pithy dances of the Divertissement, Petipa wanted a Grande ballabile in the style of the waltz from The Sleeping Beauty. Tchaikovsky provided one of his most inspired compositions. Picking up the tonality from the previous movement, the A major introduction becomes a dominant preparation for the waltz. Thematic ideas are introduced here in a dialogue between woodwind and harp. The first waltz theme seems to be in equal four bar phrases, with the string accompaniment answered in kind by the horns. A three-bar phrase follows, with further two-bar phrases creating a wonderful sense of acceleration. The final five-bar phrase with a tumbling chromatic line leading to the cadence soon puts the breaks on. Throughout, Tchaikovsky keeps us guessing by alternating the textures and lengths of phrases (unlike the repeated four-bar waltz themes of Johann Strauss II). A second descending theme is delivered passionately on the strings in a constant ebb-and-flow between music and emotion. At one point, Tchaikovsky shifts into B minor. While the initial oboe melody manages to evade its grasp, the cellos and violas are caught and become more outspoken in their 'Pathétique' tones. Like the 'Waltz of the Snowflakes' in the first act, which rocked between E minor and its relative major, the 'Waltz of the Flowers' vacillates between tonic and its relative minor. The mirror images between the first and second acts become clearer all the time. As before, however, Tchaikovsky is careful not to overcloud our view and, after a brief hemiola, we're back to the original theme. The final passages are delivered with great zeal, as the strings sail up to a passionate counter-melody and the brass come to the fore. The waltz ends with a dazzling sequence of hemiolas, quickening the harmonic pace right up to the final cadence.

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Elizabeth Harrod as Clara, Alastair Marriott as Drosselmeyer and Artists of the Royal Ballet
In the Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Václav Havel (1936-2011) R.I.P.

2011-12-18T22:10:00.000-08:00

The poet-playwright-president Václav Havel has died. A thorn in the Soviets' side, a cheerleader for democracy and a self-effacing hero for Czechoslovakia, he was, more or less, the picture of what our leaders should be. While the great Milan Kundera felt it necessary to distance himself from Havel during the collapse of communism - seemingly unable to differentiate between the great ideal and the terrible reality - Havel came to power when his country needed him most. You can read The Guardian's obituary of Havel here.

Last night, before a performance of Rusalka at the National Theatre in Prague, the Artistic Director Ondřej Černý appeared on stage to deliver these words of tribute:

Václav Havel has died. The greatest spiritual authority of our young democracy has left us for ever. An extraordinary human, a true citizen, a great politician, a splendid playwright. Undoubtedly the greatest figure this country has had since the time of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. One it has given to the world. His bust, unveiled at the National Theatre on this anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, on 17 November, will for ever remind us of his unpretentious yet magnificent legacy. And serve as a constant source of inspiration in our lives. Now it is up to us.

Day 18 - Mother Gigogne

2011-12-18T01:47:00.000-08:00

Many productions cut this number, depicting the legendary Mère Gigogne. She is usually called Mother Ginger in English, though the name translates as 'nesting', not unlike a matryoshka doll. She has also been called Mère Cicogne, the French for stork, emphasising her baby-carrying role. Whether ginger, nesting or stork, Petipa intended a link with the character from the marionette theatre tradition, instantly recognisable by the 32 children who burst out from under her voluminous skirt. He wanted a ternary form dance from Tchaikovsky where a 'leisurely and very accented' 2/4 section moves into a slower 3/4; the 2/4 then returns 'but in a somewhat faster tempo'. This is a French-dance through-and-through and the composer employed the folk tune 'Giroflé-Giroflá' for his theme in the first section. As with the majority of the dances in the Divertissement, the phrasing is relatively equal and the harmonic language moves seamlessly between tonic and dominant. However, the textures are yet brighter with an excited semiquaver accompaniment running through the violas and clarinets. Thrown accents in the tutti repeat of the theme give rhythmic variety before arriving at the second section. Tchaikovsky settles into a bouncing 6/8 and then the ferocious 2/4 returns with even more jagged syncopations. It's a great shame that many modern productions do not use this music, as it represents Tchaikovsky at his most gregarious.

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Ricardo Cervera as Hans Peter (in the Russian Dance)
In the Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Tchaikovsky's 'In Memoriam'

2011-12-17T02:01:00.000-08:00

There's always something more lurking beneath the surface. There must be some reason, other than me being emotionally unstable, that I cry every time I see The Nutcracker. Those vertiginous harp cadenzas, the longing sigh of Clara's pas de deux with Hans-Peter and the brooding B minor in the cellos during the Waltz of the Flowers get me every time. But Tchaikovsky initially loathed the idea of the ballet and found it impossible to commit any musical thoughts to paper. But something radically changed and, like The Queen of Spades and the 'Pathétique' Symphony, the shadow of death hangs over the score. While it's important not to forget the surface, Tchaikovsky's soaring melodies demand further attention.

It's the basis of my article in the Review section of today's Guardian. You can read it on page 15 of the review section. Or you can click here to read it online.

Day 17 - Dance of the Reed Pipes

2011-12-17T01:43:00.000-08:00

Although the Dance of the Reed Pipes has no expressed national sentiment, Petipa asked Tchaikovsky for a Polka - a Czech 2/4 dance. It was to for up to 96 bars, with girls 'playing on little fifes made of reed, both ends of which are stopped with a piece of gold-beater's skin'. Called Mirlitons in French these were folk instruments prevalent in Central Europe. Petipa may have intended to continue the Slavic theme in these Divertissements. Whatever the local colour, Tchaikovsky responds with great delicacy. Pizzicato strings support the flutes' two-bar-phrased tune, which spans longer chromatic stretches towards cadences. The movement has a broader harmonic palate and the cor anglais gives a melancholic touch. As ever, these shadows are short-lived and the melody returns with violins providing a bouncing counter-melody. The brass dominate the second section, sitting uneasily in F# minor (an implied dominant of the relative minor of B minor). It feels that the music will resolve into B minor proper, but Tchaikovsky steers us back into D major for an elegant restatement of the tune. Far from the frenetic polkas of Dvořák or Strauss, this is a very elegant dance.

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Iohna Loots as Clara and Artists of the Royal Ballet in The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 16 - Russian Dance

2011-12-15T23:37:00.000-08:00

Tchaikovsky is back closer to home with the final national dance in the sequence. The Trepak - a rapid hop in 2/4 time - was danced by the Cossack tribe predominant in the Ukraine. It is a men-only dance and Ivanov's choreography mimics the famous prisiadka technique, where the men kick out their legs from a squatting position. This is one of Tchaikovsky's most exuberant movements, framed in a bright G major. It has breathless phrases, first two 2-bar bursts, followed by a 4-bar build towards the cadence point. The theme is then repeated by the whole orchestra before moving into a second section in the dominant. Scurrying runs in the lower strings (including the unusually frisky double basses) give a wonderful burst of energy. And there's an excited swing to the syncopated to-and-fro before the repeat. Tchaikovsky finally runs away with a bold stringendo.

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Iohna Loots as Clara, Ricardo Cervera as the Nephew, Paul Kay and Michael Stojko
in the Russian Dance of The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 15 - Chinese Dance

2011-12-15T00:40:00.000-08:00

Tchaikovsky was then asked to provide a dance 'in the Chinese taste' representing tea, thereby going deeper into the Asian continent. For the 'European' Russians of St. Petersburg, the far reaches of that enormous landmass on which they were perched provided a strange 'other' in an already exotic culture. This is a humorous movement, with all the chinoiserie you could expect - pentatonic scales and filigree decoration. But having already written two triple-time dances, Tchaikovsky ignored Petipa's instructions for a third and cut his 48-bar count down to 32. The dance is like a whistling kettle, with a bassoon bass pattern and trilling flute solo. Pizzicato strings add to the 'too hot to handle' tone before the flute plays its theme again, now in inversion. Throughout the dance, Tchaikovsky keeps to equal two bar phrases, providing a solid basis for Ivanov's slapstick choreography.

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Iohna Loots as Clara and Artists of The Royal Ballet in the Chinese Dance in The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 14 - Arabian Dance

2011-12-14T04:45:00.000-08:00

For his next entertainment, Drosselmeyer conjures the exotic perfumes and coffee of Arabia. Tchaikovsky obliges with sultry tones. Petipa had asked for 24 to 32 bars of 'charming and voluptuous music'; the composer created 102 bars of wonderfully erotic music. The rocking accompaniment is played by muted strings, on top of which the woodwind and then upper strings weave their melodies. While the other national dances are fast and foursquare, this movement sounds a note of eerie danger in the Kingdom of Sweets. Like Strauss's Salome and just over a decade avant la lettre, Tchaikovsky's Araby is the stuff of high-Orientalist imagination. The dance is all suggestion, texture and orchestration. Harmonically, it's relative static, with the G-D drone continuing throughout. The melody is coloured by 'Arabic' ornaments and reaches more passionate heights in the middle section. But like many of Drosselmeyer's tricks, this is the stuff of consummate artifice.

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Laura McCulloch, Ryoichi Hirano and Johannes Stepanek in the Arabian Dance
in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 13 - Spanish Dance

2011-12-13T02:34:00.000-08:00

And so begin the entertainments for Clara and Hans Peter in the Kingdom of Sweets. First up, a Spanish Dance representing Chocolate. Tchaikovsky had written a similar set of Divertissements in the third act of Swan Lake (albeit without the culinary links), so Petipa needed to give very few instructions, just 'in 3/4 from 64 to 80 bars'. Here, Tchaikovsky's Iberian showpiece is less agressive than in the earlier ballet, with a Sarabande-like emphasis on the second beat. It is cast in relatively simple terms, rocking between the tonic (E flat major) and the dominant. A cheeky trumpet tune, with a counter melody in the clarinet (evoking hot chocolate), gives way to a tutti statement of the initial theme. Tchaikovsky uses the 'local colour' of castanets and a second theme is played by the strings (related in shape to the original trumpet melody). That melody returns in thirds before a chirruping plagal cadence.

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Artists of The Royal Ballet in the Spanish Dance
in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Tchaikovsky's Harmonic Language

2011-12-12T02:55:00.000-08:00

Throughout this month's daily posts on the music of The Nutcracker, I've pinpointed Tchaikovsky's various harmonic tricks. This is not the music of the everyday and the Russian composer works hard to underline the extraordinary nature of his tale. While the overture echoed standard harmonic practice, with perfect cadences (moving from the dominant - chord V - to the tonic - chord I) and neat modulations from tonic to dominant and back again, the rest of the score plays faster and looser within those parameters. One of the main ways in which Tchaikovsky colours his musical canvas is by favouring the relative minor (sharing the same key signature as the major - G major and E minor for instance) rather than the dominant as a secondary key centre. It happens all over the score, but one particularly noticeable is in the middle of the Waltz of the Flowers. Although performed at the height of the Sugar Plum Fairy's Act 2 festivities, this heart-on-sleeve passage comes across as particularly forlorn. The waltz is in D major, but this theme is in B minor, the tonality that dominates Swan Lake and the 'Pathétique' Symphony. While the dominant has a musical logic, the relative minor has a subtler flavour and casts its own melancholic shadow.

Even within major tonalities, Tchaikovsky alters the mood with the use of certain chords. He frequently uses the flattened submediant (the sixth note in the scale, but flattened by a semitone). In Clara and the Nutcracker this creates a really dazzling final cadence as the Christmas tree reaches its full height.

The proximity to the dominant, which would be E major here, creates one level of surprise. The second is that F major isn't part of A major. It's a chromatic and somewhat alien harmony within the overall tonal structure of this part and implies some kind of mediant transition (such as are prevalent in Tchaikovsky's symphonies and the music of Brahms). It's like the glitter that falls from the fly tower in the Royal Opera House's production. Something extraordinary is happening on stage and in the score.

Within the 'In the Pine Forest' movement, Tchaikovsky opts for a darker harmonic surprise. He settles on a minor subdominant. We're in C major here and the normal subdominant would be F major. If there was a cadence from that back to the tonic it would be a plagal cadence, like a standard 'Amen'. But the flattened of the A natural in that F major chord to A flat makes it all the more poignant. It's a passing colour at first, followed by a perfect cadence with a consoling 4-3 suspension (in bar 10).

You'll note that F minor is quite closely related to A flat major (the triad shares two notes - A flat and C natural). At the climax of Clara's dance with Hans Peter, that harmony gives the final cadence a newly heightened quality. It's passionate, almost erotic. And here it's coloured by an even more extreme F sharp in the bass (following by the chord II7b, Ic, V7(9) and I).

Rather than proffering foursquare harmonic formulas in the ballet, Tchaikovsky constantly surprises. These are just a few examples of his sound world and how, through various chromatic sleights of hand, he grabs our attention. And the more you listen, the more you realise that the score has an other worldly quality.

Day 12 - Clara and the Prince

2011-12-12T01:48:00.000-08:00

By the time that Clara and Hans Peter arrive in the Kingdom of Sweets, Marius Petipa has gone into overdrive describing its vistas and the Sugar Plum Fairy's retenue. The great candied Princess is announced by the celesta, her signature instrument. Tchaikovsky found this new type of keyboard glockenspiel when he was in Paris in 1891 and employed the machine as soon as he could. It was the perfect sound to describe sublime artifice (coupled with a flutter-tongue technique on the flutes and piccolo). Although Ernest Chausson had used the celesta in his 1888 composition La tempête, Tchaikovsky was the first to bring it to Russia. As Clara and Hans Peter arrive, the music begins to reverse its modulations. Having moved from C major into E major (via E minor) at the end of the first act, Tchaikovsky shifts back into C major during this passage. The Sugar Plum Fairy and Prince approach and a solemn descending motif appears on the bassoons, trombones and lower strings. A swift 6/8 dance comes next, teetering on the edge of E minor and then into A minor. This introduces Hans Peter's recollections of what occurred in act one. The battle music returns in ever more vicious tones, as he mimes the events to the Sugar Plum Fairy. But after a glorious surging run in the strings, a lyrical theme tells of Clara's triumph, shifting through A flat major to E flat major (all the time coloured by flattened subdominant harmonies). In the original scenario, the Sugar Plum Fairy brings out a table of preserves for the courageous pair. Tchaikovsky seems to move away from E flat, only to confirm the tonality as we prepare for the various national divertissements.

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Iohna Loots as Clara and Ricardo Cervera as the Nephew
in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 11 - The Kingdom of Sweets

2011-12-11T01:30:00.000-08:00

After the emotional highs of the first act, Act 2 begins in a more sober fashion. Still in E major (the key in which we left the Land of Snow), Tchaikovsky conjures an ululating soundscape. Petipa described the scene in detailed terms: it was to have 'the most fantastic décor', with gold and silver everywhere; and 'at the back of the stage fountains gushing lemonade, orangeade, orgeat [a French barley water], and currant syrup.' Petipa's only specific request was that Tchaikovsky make his music grandiose as the curtain rises. This passage is relatively straightforward harmonically speaking. The risk of the previous act has dissolved into a gentle to-and-fro between tonic and dominant. The orchestrations are, however, equally glittering. And when the curtain rises (during a harp cadenza) the charming melody is interspersed with giggling runs in the piccolo. When chromaticism does embellish that simpler palate, it is to indicate excitement (in the vein of Aurora's arrival in The Sleeping Beauty). With Rossini-like precision, Tchaikovsky builds to the arrival of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Her unique celesta sparkles on the surface, with the melody now played in harmonics by three violins. Clara's hesitation is expressed in the final cadence's complex resolution through another flattened submediant chord (this time with an added seventh), before the music rests in E major. Clara is home.

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Artists of The Royal Ballet in The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

A late muse

2011-12-10T04:29:00.000-08:00

As well as Tchaikovsky, I've been spending the week with Mozart and Brahms. The 18th Austrian master has beguiled me with his piano sonatas... like his symphonies they act as as biography in music, bearing the hallmarks of location, time and utility. Christian Blackshaw starts a journey through the lot at Wigmore in January. And then Brahms took over. I've been writing liner notes for a new recording of the F minor Piano Quintet - an ambitious and often aggressive work - and the Clarinet Quintet. Richard Mühlfeld (pictured left) must have been an extraordinary musician. In 1891, when he and Brahms met, the German-born composer wrote not only this great autumnal quintet - gently rocking between major and minor tonalities - but also the trio. So good was their working relationship that Brahms not only wrote two sonatas for Mühlfeld, but he gave the clarinettist all the royalties from performances of the works written for him, as well as his pianist's fee whenever they performed the pieces together. After publication, Brahms handed over the manuscripts of both sonatas. Oh to have heard him play...

The Best of 2011... in Films

2011-12-10T02:18:00.000-08:00

1. Weekend directed by Andrew Haigh

The great gay film of the decade. Reality and tenderness combined. And who knew that Nottingham could look so serene?

2. Wuthering Heights directed by Andrea Arnold

Narrative liberties gave birth to the moodiest but most accurate distillation of this book on film. Terrific performances and eye-widening shots of a very bleak Yorkshire.

3. Michael directed by Markus Schleinzer

Hardly the comfort choice, this sober look at imprisonment and paedophilia confirmed Austria's place on the feel-bad stage. But its pacing and punch were second to none this year.

4. The King's Speech directed by Tom Hooper

The best use of Beethoven in film and a surprisingly tender portrayal of the weight of responsibility. Colin Firth gets stronger film by film, while Geoffrey Rush managed to contain himself and give the performance of his career.

5. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy directed by Tomas Alfredson

Never once pandering to blockbuster signposting or moralising, Alfedson's film version of le Carré's classic offered a strong alternative to the BBC originals. Casting Firth made the guessing game a little obvious, but the drama never dimmed.

6. The Dirk Bogarde Season at the BFI

Loved and loathed in equal measure, Bogarde nevertheless made some seriously impressive films. While Death in Venice will always dominate, the ever-contemporary Victim and Accident were the highlights of the season.

7. Loose Canons directed by Ferzan Ozpetek

A charming dose of Italian sunshine from Italian-Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek.

8. Die Jungs vom Bahnhof Zoo directed by Rosa von Praunheim

Documentary at its most incisive. Exposing the bitter world of underaged male prostitution in Berlin and the impact on the lives of those who buy and sell.

9. Deep Blue Sea directed by Terence Davies

The mainstream polish of this adaptation puts it outside the best of Davies, but the performances are terrific and Davies is the master storyteller of post-War repression.

10. Mahler auf der Couch directed by Percy and Felix Adlon

On screen for the first time in the UK (at the Jewish Film Festival), this is a highly intelligent composer film. Eschewing the excesses of the late Ken Russell, the Adlons clearly know their subject.

The Christmas Turkey

Just one look at Spielberg's computer generated Tintin told me to steer clear.

The Best of 2011... in Art and Exhibitions

2011-12-10T01:41:00.000-08:00

1. Richter at Tate Modern

Variety and virtuosity in one artist. Public commentary and private tenderness... he really is the best alive today. The exhibition is running until 8 January. Go now.

2. Adolf Loos at RIBA

Incredible insight into the development and workings of this radical architect. The RIBA collections are an untapped resource. Beautifully presented, though under-celebrated.

3. Watercolour at Tate Britain

A wonderful sweep across a genre. Although recent work would claim radicalism, the most daring pictures came from the English romantics.

4. The Birth of Modern at the Neue Galerie

Popping over the Atlantic to relish cross-cultural display. Britain may have great spaces and world-class collections but we segregate our culture. This exhibition placed the art and architecture in the context of thought, literature and music. It proves to be a much more invigorating experience. British curators, take not.

5. Islamic Art at the Kunsthistorisches Museum

This exhibition of rarities from a Kuwait collection underlined how much still awaits discovery in the Middle East. Exquisite artistry and artefacts.

6. The reopening of the Great Midland Hotel

After years of neglect it is wonderful to see George Gilbert Scott's masterpiece back in use as a hotel. Although the decoration needs the patina of time, it is a triumphant resurrection.

7. Art nouveau in Brussels

One of the great open-air museums... wandering through the suburb of St Gilles with Horta, Brunfaut and Hamesse. Vision and change.

8. The Magritte Museum in Brussels

A museum dedicated to the king of Belgian art. Superb lay-out and lighting, with contextual displays and, of course, Magritte's dizzying vision.

9. The Cult of Beauty at the V&A

The closest we came to a cross-cultural exhibition in the UK. However glorious the content, it was cramped and lacked the finesse of last year's Diaghilev.

10. Gauguin at Tate Modern

Included for its two contextual rooms. Gauguin is an artist of wavering quality, but the best was terrific.

The Christmas Turkey

The National Gallery's approach to opening the Leonardo exhibition. Why not run it through the night and capitalise on the success, rather than letting eBay entrepreneurs cash in.

The Best of 2011... in Books

2011-12-10T00:59:00.000-08:00

1. Alibis by André Aciman (FSG)

When has a book of essays ever embraced so much? References to lavender and the Langsamer Satz are just part and parcel of Aciman's poetic prose.

2. The End by Ian Kershaw (Allen Lane)

The German perspective in the last year of the Nazi regime. The troops may have be dying on the front, but the mechanism and machinations of the Nazi state continued to roll. Brilliant narrative history.

3. Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig (Peirene)

A late entry on the list. Shape shifting storytelling. Chilling but wonderful.

4. A Singer's Notebook by Ian Bostridge (Faber)
I've become less convinced by Bostridge as a singer as time goes on - though he was extraordinary in the LSO's War Requiem in October - but he's an increasingly wonderful writer. The Standpoint columns in this collection are eminently readable.

5. The Mahler Album (Abrams)
Every known photograph and picture of the great man. The cult of celebrity in all its glory.

6. Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems 1964-2001 by W.G. Sebald (Hamish Hamilton)
The death of Sebald in 2001 was a horrendous loss to contemporary writing. But as some of the byways of his output reach English translation for the first time, it's like he's still here. These poems are extraordinary, as you'd expect.

7. Gustav Mahler by Jens Malte Fischer (Yale)
Although de la Grange's four volume biography is a must-have, Fischer places his protagonist in greater context. And it's a really good read.

8. A Wicked Company by Philipp Blom (Basic Books)
The skill of a narrative historian is to take you into familiar terrain and render it unfamiliar but graspable. Blom is the master of the historical kaleidoscope. Urgent and personal, his style draws you deftly through the French 18th century and its incredible philosophers.

9. By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham (FSG)
Death in Venice Revisited. The emotional and cultural stagnation of our world captured in prose. A great read.

10. Neue Cuisine by Kurt Gutenbrunner (Rizzoli)
An Austrian chef, with a New York food empire. Yet for all Gutenbrunner's success, this is a touching and personal volume. Shades of Nigel Slater and beautifully illustrated with pictures from the Neue Galerie collection.

The Christmas Turkey
Jeffrey Deaver's Carte Blanche. The simpleton's James Bond.

The Best of 2011... in Recorded Music

2011-12-10T00:35:00.000-08:00

1. Mahler 9 with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra (Accentus on DVD)

After a recent slew of disappointing Mahler 9s - Norrington, Salonen, Zinman, Gergiev - this is a masterclass. No hype here. Abbado rules.

2. Complete Beethoven Symphonies with the Gewandhausorchester (Decca)

Can a recording live up to the live experience? Not quite. But there is some seriously brilliant playing on this set. It's infectious and I haven't been able to turn it off.

3. Passion and Resurrection with Polyphony (Hyperion)

Ēriks Ešenvalds Passiontide cantata dominated the early part of my year. Luscious and controlled singing from Polyphony and a seriously impressive Carolyn Sampson make for the most moving disc of 2011. Sublime.

4. Schubert Piano Works with Paul Lewis (Harmonia Mundi)

Although Lewis impressed at Wigmore Hall in June, I wasn't wowed. But in the privacy of the recording studio, Lewis takes wing. The schizophrenic Drei Klavierstücke are benchmark performances.

5. Schwanengesang with Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis (Harmonia Mundi)

'Der Doppelgänger' is my track of the year. The pugnacity of the dynamics and Padmore's fevered performance are indicative of this hugely impressive disc. I hope Padmore and Lewis continue to perform and record together. Their Schubert cycles are a wonder.

6. Brahms via Schoenberg with the Berliner Philharmoniker (EMI)

Rattle has recorded Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1 before. His Birmingham performance is cerebral and committed. But placed next to Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms's Piano Quartet, the work takes on a beguiling post-Romantic sheen in Berlin. Glorious playing, as you'd expect.

7. Brahms Symphonies with the Tonhalle (RCA)

Like Chailly's Beethoven or Haitink's Brahms at the Proms, Zinman polishes these symphonies and they come up gleaming. The Tonhalle strings may not quite have the warmth you want and the 2nd Symphony is forced, but 1, 3 and 4 are exemplary.

8. Mahler 3 with the Bamberger Symphoniker (Tudor)

While 'bigger' orchestras bulldoze their way through Mahler, Nott's Bavarian band create respectful and revelatory new discs. This 3 is no exception. If you're looking for a new Mahler set, you've found it.

9. Strauss Waltzes with the Philharmonics (Accentus)

Kaffeehaus music shouldn't be this good. Although the camera work lacks imagination (not a consideration for 8 of the other choices here), the performances are winning. Real abandon and colour brings these Second Viennese School arrangements zinging to life.

10. Complete Wolf Lieder - Vol. 1 (Stone Records)

As part of the Oxford Lieder Festival, Artistic Director Sholto Kynoch has embarked on the first complete Wolf recording project. The singing and highly sympathetic accompaniment on this first disc promises much.

The Christmas Turkey

There is genuinely no disc that hit my desk that really exasperated this year and many more could have been included in a top 20 list.

The Best of 2011... in Live Music

2011-12-10T00:10:00.000-08:00

1. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at Glyndebourne

An emotional body-blow. Gerald Finley's Sachs was the performance of the year, with Johannes Martin Kränzle's Beckmesser an immediate second. David McVicar's production was a total treat. No posturing, no polemic, just honest storytelling with the power to wow. As Eva placed a crown of flowers on Sachs's head in the final bars, I was helpless.

2. The Complete Beethoven with the Gewandhausorchester

Masterpieces played by a masterclass orchestra. Like McVicar's Meistersinger, Chailly eschewed point-scoring to deliver fresh insightful performances. The orchestra of the year.

3. Mahler 4 with the Berliner Philharmoniker

Rattle's troupe came to London with two Mahler symphonies, Stravinsky and Schubert in tow. Although each concert was exemplary, their Mahler 4 was the most sincere. The finale's claim that 'Kein' Musik ist ja nicht auf Erden' [no music on earth compares with ours] is clearly the orchestra's maxim.

4. Il trittico at the Royal Opera House

Again, Antonio Pappano proved that Puccini is what he does best. A brutal Il tabarro and genuinely funny Gianni Schicchi were to be expected. But the clincher was the triptych's searing Suor Angelica. Richard Jones trod a brilliant middle line between sentiment and cynicism.

5. Brahms 4 with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Proms

Bernard Haitink made you feel that the finale of Brahms 4 was the beginning of modernism. Torrid but beautiful, this was extraordinary playing. The best of the 2011 Proms.

6. Miah Persson at the Oxford Lieder Festival

Persson was the highlight of Glyndebourne's Don Giovanni but it was the clarity of communication in her Oxford Lieder Festival recital that really wowed.

7. Mahler 1 with the Budapest Festival Orchestra at the Proms

Ivan Fischer's band came a whisker away from being my Proms highlight. After their hell-bound Liszt, this Mahler 1 moved from pacific heights to dejected lows with daring colour and panache.

8. Pelléas et Mélisande at the Barbican

Natalie Dessay gave us a 40th birthday present... her husband Laurent Naouri as Golaud. And with Simon Keenlyside as her ardent lover this was a seriously impressive semi-staged performance.

9. Salome at the Salzburg Easter Festival

Although Stefan Herheim's production was decidedly perverse, there were musical joys aplenty. Emily Magee combined the 16-year-old coquette with Wagnerian vocal chops while Stig Andersen charted Herod's gruelling lines with Lieder-isch lightness of touch. The Berliner Philharmoniker, again, proved perfect.

10. Roderick Williams at Wigmore Hall

Communication and candour is key in Lieder. And Roderick Williams has it in bucket-loads. You'll be able to relish his Schumann Kerner Lieder next year when the concert is released on Wigmore Hall Live.

The Christmas Turkey

Roger Norrington's abusive performance of Mahler 9 at the Proms. Proving a point, scratching his nose, picking his ears and ruining one of the great masterpieces of all time.

The Best of 2011

2011-12-10T00:02:00.000-08:00

The tree will soon be trimmed, so the papers must be filling with the year in review. And it's been a good one. There have been a few cultural casualties along the way and over-hyping. Sadly, reduced funding has led to more conservative schedules, but there are a bevy of highlights... this is a thoroughly Entartete Musik list. Nearly everything in the list has been featured and/or reviewed on the blog over the course of the year. There are notable absences and I've suggested a Christmas Turkey for each category.

So here it is... the best of 2011 in Live Music, Recorded Music, Books, Art and Exhibitions and Film.

Day 10 - Waltz of the Snowflakes

2011-12-09T23:43:00.000-08:00

‘Snow is falling,’ Petipa said, ‘Suddenly thick, light, white snowflakes begin to move’. Although dainty and pretty, Tchaikovsky’s choice of E minor here (an easy but significant slide from the previous C major) underlines the pervasive tension in the score. And although it settles into a waltz, the metre and harmony are similarly ambiguous. Hushed string chords introduce the waltz proper, which is built over an unstable accompaniment, complete with hemiola (the feeling of two in the bar in a 3/4 context). A growl of brass melts into a pizzicato dance followed by an affecting wordless children’s chorus in the relative major. There’s a brief section in B minor before the waltz returns with the voices. But the more aggressive streak comes to the surface in what Petipa described as a ‘snowball’ broken apart by a gust of wind. The first waltz concludes with another forceful hemiola and a double harp cadenza. The snow begins to fall ‘in thick flakes […] illuminated by electricity’. And rather than the second whirling waltz that Petipa requested, Tchaikovsky goes into a rapid 2/4 dance as the snowflakes begin to charge. Although the children’s voices return, they cannot restore the relative major; E minor is resolute. Suddenly, the music gives way, there is a rising bass line and the first act ends in a dazzling E major. Jeopardy has turned to joy and Clara and Hans-Peter glide off to the Kingdom of Sweets.

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Artists of The Royal Ballet in The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 9 - In the Pine Forest

2011-12-08T23:46:00.000-08:00

Tchaikovsky composed one of his most heartfelt melodies for the moment when ‘the Nutcracker turns into an enchanting prince’. Cushioned by two arpeggiating harps, this new theme is pregnant with hope. Occasionally it veers towards that 'jeopardy' key of E minor, but continues growing nonetheless. The melody (played first on the cor anglais) is given a further emotional tug by the use of an F minor chord (or a related diminished chord two - as Irving Berlin used in White Christmas) placed over a tonic pedal; it creates a real ‘crunch’ harmony. Clara is coming to terms with her feelings for Hans-Peter - Drosselmeyer’s nephew - who has been released from the Nutcracker. Sighing falls of a fifth and a slow but steady crescendo create an impression of burgeoning sexuality. Here, Tchaikovsky shrugs off the claims of ‘children’s ballet’. Echoing the C major tonality of her parents at the party, Clara is becoming an adult. The theme grows and grows until it is joined by a thrilling counter melody – comprised of a descending scale (a motif that will come to the fore in the second act) – and an enormous final cadence using an expressive flattened submediant (based on an A flat major chord within a C major context). Suddenly, after this great outburst, Clara and Hans-Peter are surrounded by snow.

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Ludovic Ondiviela as Hans-Peter and Elizabeth Harrod as Clara
in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 8 - The Battle

2011-12-07T23:52:00.000-08:00

Tchaikovsky doesn’t let the paint dry on that sparkling cadence before the ominous scratches start again. A battle has broken out between the mice and Fritz's toy soldiers, who are led by the Nutcracker (now raised to human height). Petipa was incredibly detailed about how he wanted the fight to unfold. Two bars for a sentry, two bars of silence, a gunshot, two bars of fright and further sections for awakening, alarms and getting into formation. From these notes Tchaikovsky wrote a fluid musical drama, moving through that ‘jeopardy’ key of E minor (pitted as far away from the home key of B flat major as possible) into a highlx chromatic D minor and finally A minor. This tonal impermanence mirrors the danger of the situation. It may be a toy battle, but the squally oboes, boom of the tam tam and tremelando strings are truly ominous. You can hear a premonition of Shostakovich in the melée. The Mouse King's arrival is announced by an ugly braying fanfare. He weakens the Nutcracker's attack. The battle builds until we hear the moment when Clara, seizing her opportunity, hits the Mouse King over the head with her slipper. He falls, the mice disappear and the music slumps into that ‘adult’ key of C major.

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Artists of The Royal Ballet in The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Reliable Narrator

2011-12-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

Alois Hotschnig is a writer with a vivid eye. Everything in Maybe This Time appears to be normal. Scenes are recognisable. The narrator has a familiar voice. It could well be one of us. But over the course these short narratives, the perspective slowly changes, reality slips away and a more bewildering actuality begins to emerge. Like E.T.A. Hoffmann seen through a prism of Michael Haneke, these tales constantly surprise.

It would be easy to equate Hotschnig's false realities with a distrust of his country. And while there are flashes of local colour and pervasive Gemütlichkeit, the malaise is a global one. Our individuality is eroded every day and these stories are ones in which the subject and the object constantly merge. The perception of who controls the narrative in 'The Same Silence, the Same Noise' is a case in point. A man watches and reports on his neighbours' every move. Convinced that they're ignoring him, he becomes obsessed. Slowly his life fuses with theirs. But while he watches them, we read about him. Whose privacy is really invaded?

Similar issues arise in 'Then a Door Opens and Swings Shut'. An old lady keeps a collection of dolls, but when Karl visits he realises that all the toys represent people from the area. Most chillingly, he is presented with a toy version of himself. The elision of the storyteller and the events he tells become one and the same thing. Reality may be the springboard to these stories but the destination is always unsure. In 'The Beginning of Something' the narrator addresses the dichotomy.

Into whose story had I fallen, I wondered. The story had as little do with me as the smell. Just as I didn't fit here, so nothing here fit me, except for the notes, and I had no idea what I should do with them. I had covered them like everything else. The sentences were not to be trusted.

Sentences are the basis of Hotschnig's art. He listens to the conversations around him, filling notebooks with mundane fragments. The impulse for every bit of story telling is found in the everyday. And what is so marvellous about this new publication is that Tess Lewis's English translation feels that instant and fresh. For texts that surprise at every single turn, you need to cling to the translation's linguistic clarity. But what happens within those readable paragraphs is the stuff of nightmare. This is bargain basement horror. Hotschnig does something much more daring; he changes our perception of reality. Click here to order a copy.

Day 7 - Clara and the Nutcracker

2011-12-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

The guests begin to leave. Clara’s lullaby for the Nutcracker – still in C major – dominates, now accompanied by harp and triangle. It is given further emotional clout when heard on a lone cor anglais against a shiver of strings. Slowly but surely the house is closed up for the night. A sudden cadential shift through E major within the overriding C major tonality gives Clara’s seemingly childish attachment to the doll broader significance. These evocative mediant and submediant cadences appear throughout the score; clearly, traditional resolutions will not do. All is still in the house, though Tchaikovsky resolutely avoids settling on the root position chord. A shift through various tonal centres – first A flat major – confirms that restlessness in what Petipa described as ‘mysterious and tender music’. Harp glissandi and trilling woodwind accompany Clara’s return downstairs. She has come to reclaim her Nutcracker. But the more malevolent murmurs we heard throughout the party scene come home to roost in the following musical landscape. The clock strikes midnight and Clara’s childhood home begins to change. She can hear mice in the skirting boards – depicted in vivid colours. But their scratchy music soon dissolves into a more longing theme. Initially insecure, the theme builds through the orchestra as the Christmas tree grows and grows in ‘48 bars of fantastic music with a grandiose crescendo’. This is not just the music of Christmas fantasy; we witness Clara herself change through its great swathes of searching strings. Eventually finding its home in A major, the Christmas tree reaches full height with a dazzling final cadence.

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Gary Avis as Drosselmeyer in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Things Turn Out Differently

2011-12-06T00:01:00.000-08:00

Until recently, Walter Arlen was a totally unknown quantity… at least in Vienna, the city of his birth. Kicked out by the Nazis after the Anschluß, Arlen fled to America where he became the pupil of the composer Roy Harris. Arlen eventually settled in Los Angeles, then a hub for Central Europeans in exile. He studied at UCLA and later worked as a musical academic at Loyola Marymount University. But the daily grind couldn't match his talent and every evening he would go home to work on his music (some of which he'd brought from Vienna). In among this emerging body of work was a collection of striking songs.

Bridging the gap between the Lieder tradition of his homeland and the desiccated beauty of Ives, Barber and Copland, these songs are the music of exile. They have no geography; their texts, from the Song of Songs, Shakespeare, St John of the Cross, Rilke and Miłosz, speak of diverse taste as much as of Arlen's longings. But rather than sharing his feelings of displacement, Arlen hid the songs in a drawer. Only Marni Nixon, the 'voice' of The King and I, West Side Story and My Fair Lady, was allowed to sing them.

A chance meeting in 2005 between Arlen and the record producer Michael Haas finally brought this extraordinary music out of hiding. Michael has worked for years to re-establish repertoire forgotten or lost in the atrocities of the Nazi period. And his multi-award winning Entartete Musik series on Decca was the inspiration for the title of this blog. With the financial support of the Vienna-based exil.arte, Christian Immler, Rebecca Nelsen (pictured above with Arlen) and Danny Driver recorded a selection of these 'hidden' songs in July and August 2010. The disc was released on the Gramola label last month in Vienna, launched at a special ceremony at the Volkstheater.

The city that rejected Arlen in its blackest period is welcoming him back; restitution clearly comes in many forms. There's now a square named after him in the district of Ottakring, where Arlen's family had its department store Warenhaus Dichter (aryanised after the Anschluß). Blind, physically frail, but mentally pin-sharp, the 90-year-old Arlen return to Vienna for the recording sessions. Unable to read his scores, Arlen was hearing many of them for the first time. Correcting harmonies, suggesting weightings within chords, Arlen hadn't forgotten a thing. And I sat in the room overlooking the Belvedere Palace gardens as soprano Rebecca Nelsen began to sing; Arlen was transfixed. His music has returned to at least one of its homes. Click here to order a copy of the CD.

Day 6 - Scene - Grandfather's Dance

2011-12-05T23:42:00.000-08:00

Modulating back into A major, Clara and Fritz thank their Godfather Drosselmeyer for the toys. The music is a lilting 6/8 andantino. But when the children realise that the toys are not for playing with, the music shifts into a more serious vein. Clara is mollified by another gift – a toy Nutcracker – and the music cadences neatly into D major. She dances a gentle polka and asks Drosslemeyer what the toy is for. He explains that you can crack nuts in its mouth; Fritz wants to play too. His aggressive music – complete with rattle - used in Haydn and Romberg's Toy Symphonies, Tchaikovsky tells us in the score – interrupts Clara’s caring dance. Fritz finally gets hold of the Nutcracker, breaks it and throws it to the ground. Clara is distraught. Having had enough of their bickering, Herr Stahlbaum commands another dance, the Grossvater. As before, this stately triple-time is in C major and Tchaikovsky employs a variant of the tune for ‘Drei Reiter am Tor’ from Des knaben Wunderhorn. Not only has Herr Stahlbaum silenced the children, but he re-establishes a more foursquare harmonic language.

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Artists of The Royal Ballet in The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Iolanta - the Nutcracker's bedfellow

2011-12-05T06:47:00.000-08:00

When The Nutcracker premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in December 1892, it was accompanied by an opera called Iolanta. Tchaikovsky had first read the play on which it was based back in 1883, but the decision to set the text (with a libretto by his brother Modest) only came when the commission for The Nutcracker arrived. But why, when the ballet is a perennial, has the opera nigh disappeared?

Some eight years ago I came across an issue of The Russian Messenger that featured a one act play by a Danish writer Henrik Hertz translated by F. Miller, entitled King René's Daughter. The story had charmed me by its poetry, originality, and an abundance of lyrical scenes. I then made up my mind to set it to music. Due to various obstacles, however, it was only last year that I could realize my decision.

Set in 15th century France, Iolanta is a blind princess, but has no idea that she is quite alone in her affliction. She has been promised in marriage to the Duke of Burgundy, but he is ignorant of her condition. A physician promises that the only way she can be cured is by truly longing to see the light from which she has been protected. The Duke of Burgundy arrives but he is in love with someone else and it is his friend Vaudemont who falls in love with the strange princess. Realising that she cannot tell the red and the white roses apart, Vaudemont uncovers her disability. 'What is light?' she asks. 'It was our creator's first gift to the world.' The King is appalled that Vaudemont has revealed his daughter's affliction, but the physician insists that the impetus for her remedy has been found. In order to cure her, the King tells Iolanta that Vaudemont will be killed if she is not cured. But Iolanta regains her sight and the couple are rightfully reunited.

This strange, Pelléas et Mélisande-like tale (avant la lettre) elicited contrasting music from Tchaikovsky. The sombre colours of the overture - with sighing cor anglais and bassoon - speak of spiritual deficiency in the kingdom, while Tchaikovsky captures love of Iolanta and Vaudemont in gloriously longing tones. Although composed at the same time as The Nutcracker, the opera has a markedly different sound world to the ballet. But that idea of restoration and new life runs through both pieces. In the ballet, Clara becomes an adult, changed by her love for the Nutcracker/Nephew. At the end of the opera, Iolanta is finally able to see (and to love). As in Eugene Onegin, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and even the depressingly pessimistic Queen of Spades, love remains the redeeming force in Tchaikovsky's world.

The composer was initially pleased with Iolanta, despite the arduous trial of getting two separate works ready for the stage. And after the premiere he said that,

Yesterday the opera and ballet enjoyed a great success. The opera in particular was to everyone’s liking ... The productions of both the opera and ballet were superb.

But it wasn't long before the press, much like after The Queen of Spades, began to criticise opera and ballet alike. Tchaikovsky was clearly pushing forward into new territory. We will find out what he might have meant by The Nutcracker, but Iolanta similarly represented an innovative stream. Rather than external drama, Tchaikovsky depicted internal longing. But that change from kinetic drama to inner tension had not been instilled in the Russian critical mind. Wagner had only just arrived in Russia by way of an 1889 Ring cycle. And although Iolanta has some fine music, it cannot compete with the sheer magic of invention in The Nutcracker. When Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker was first performed at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1992 it was performed with Iolanta. Rather than letting performance history decide, you can judge for yourself by listening to Gergiev's expert Mariinsky recording (available on Spotify).

Day 5 - Arrival of Drosselmeyer

2011-12-05T01:37:00.000-08:00

According to Petipa, Drosselmeyer’s arrival required ‘very serious, rather sinister and even droll music’. And after the tonal clarity of what has gone before, these recitative-like passages feel contrastingly insecure. But when the children realise that Drosselmeyer has brought toys, the mood lightens and the tempo increases. Clara and Fritz Stahlbaum are presented with their gifts (accompanied by a return to the initial Drosselmeyer theme). In the original scenario, Clara was given the head of a cabbage while Fritz had a large pie. Their confusion at these odd gifts is indicated through some harmonically puzzling music before Drosslemeyer reveals the dancing dolls underneath. There is bizarre malevolence to the score here, echoing the twisted chromaticism of Carabosse in The Sleeping Beauty. The mazurka for the first two dolls is scored for two clarinets and two bassoons. Its lurching theme eventually gives way to a stuttering waltz with thrown accents disturbing the underlying metrical emphasis. A short transition pasages introduces two militaristic dolls, who perform a ‘diabolical dance’. The A major tonality gives way to the relative minor and the music becomes increasingly aggressive, with scampering runs in the strings.

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Gary Avis as Drosselmeyer, Brian Maloney as Harlequin and Bethany Keating as Columbine
in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Day 4 - Children’s Galop and Entry of the Parents

2011-12-04T00:45:00.000-08:00

At this point in the score, Petipa requested a whole series of national dances. There were to be Chinese, Spanish, Italian, English, Russian and French dances – none of them particularly long – followed by a gallop for the children. Petipa intended to build a parallel between the party at the Stahlbaum’s and the famous Divertissements of the second act. That plan was clearly dropped – though sketches for the English gig survive. What remains is just the Children’s gallop (in the same key as their march). The music shifts into C major and a statelier triple-time dance for the adults (with more than a hint of Wagner’s own music for the city of Nuremberg). But if the grownups seem a little serious, Tchaikovsky soon launches into another dance, this time in 6/8 time and in F major (implying a circle of fifths in the key sequence). Although the dance has equal phrase lengths, they trip ahead of themselves. Howard Blake was clearly influenced by this passage when he came to write the Dance of the Snowmen in his score for the 1982 cartoon. Drosselmeyer suddenly appears at the end of the dance, which ends with a dramatic interrupted cadence.

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Elizabeth Harrod as Clara in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

The Dark Arts of Birmingham's Nutcracker

2011-12-03T00:41:00.000-08:00

Birmingham Royal Ballet's Nutcracker celebrates its 21st birthday this year. For over two decades Peter Wright's production has wowed audiences, notching up over 400 performances. Its popularity knows no bounds and this year it will come to the O2, playing to 20,000 people a night at six performances between 27-30 December. I caught up with it at its original home at the Birmingham Hippodrome where it was great to see that its charms haven't faded.

Every Nutcracker has magic, but Peter Wright really goes the distance with his highly textured BRB production. This is the dark arts Nutcracker. Drosselmeyer is a shaman-like figure, conjuring entire worlds from his bag of tricks. Having produced the ballet for the ROH in 1984, this 1990 show was a radical rethink and many of the ideas found their way back into Wright's 1999 revision of The Royal Ballet production. John Macfarlane's designs move from the shadowy melancholy of Fanny and Alexander into a bright abstract realm. It's weird but entirely wonderful.

Rather than the redemptive tale on offer at Covent Garden, this is an extended dream. The Nutcracker does not come back to life but is an agent for Clara's nocturnal fantasy. She longs to be a ballerina and Drosselmeyer grants her wish by turning her into the Sugar Plum Fairy. Despite the lack of conclusive emotional punch, the production has a balletic logic of its own. Wright occasionally has to stretch the meaning of Tchaikovsky's score and adds a passage to cover Clara's transformation, but there's choreographic and theatrical joy aplenty.

The Christmas Tree is like a triffid with Clara cowering under its branches. There's no mouse king; these are grotesque rats and King Rat's reappearance in Act 2 brilliantly links the narrative of both acts. As well as offering new takes for seasoned Nutcracker lovers, Wright creates a vivid tale for wide-eyed first timers.

And it's dance terrifically. Angela Paul was a charming Clara, with winsome smiles and beautiful extensions showing that she was already the ballerina of her dreams. It's a shame that, while the Nutcracker changes into a Prince, Wright replaces Clara with another Sugar Plum Fairy. By doing so, he undermines her transformation. But when her variation is danced with such candied precision as Laëtitia Lo Sardo did on Thursday afternoon - amazingly, her debut - the benefit far outweighs the drawback. Although technically assured, only Matthew Lawrence's slightly passive monarch disappointed.

But if you're looking for an vivid theatrical treat, Peter Wright and John Macfarlane's production is unbeatable. The radical shadows of its turn-of-the-century look gives a Freudian note to the production. But, as with the darker passages of Tchaikovsky's score, Wright never overplays his hand. For all the darkness on display, there are wonderful bursts of childish glee. Like Clara, you'll cry to dream again.

The Nutcracker is in Birmingham until 11 December. Click here for more information.
The production runs at the O2 between 27 and 30 December. Click here for more information.
Photos © BRB/ Bill Cooper

Day 3 - March

2011-12-03T00:24:00.000-08:00

As Clara snaps out of the reverie, Herr Stahlbaum strikes up a march. Petipa asked Tchaikovsky to compose another 64 bars of music here. While Tchaikovsky exceeds the numerical brief, he perfectly conjures the party atmosphere. It is a nimble trot in G major - note how Tchaikovsky is keeping the dramatic pace up by his constant but logical sequence of keys. As in the overture, Tchaikovsky plays on our expectations, by varying the phrase lengths and changing the cadential consequences of the music. Alternating between brass and strings, Tchaikovsky seems to imply a masculine versus feminine sound world. But a child-like tone is created by its relatively high range. A darker quality comes to the fore in the middle section – couched in E minor, the tonality that will dominate the snow scene at the end of the act. Although truly nefarious sounds are always kept at bay, Tchaikovsky’s sound world is never simplistic. The march theme returns in more exuberant colours.

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Iohna Loots as Clara in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

The Original Story (and other inspirations)

2011-12-01T23:55:00.000-08:00

Photo from Here

Oh Nuremberg, Nuremberg, dear native town he who still knows thee not, place of renown though far he has travelled, and great cities seen as London, and Paris, and Peterwardein knoweth not what it is happy to be still must his longing heart languish for thee for thee, Oh Nuremberg, exquisite town where the houses have windows both upstairs and down!

Although we immediately associate The Nutcracker with Imperial Russia, the story has its roots in German Romanticism. E.T.A. Hoffmann, who wrote Nussknacker und Mausekönig, was an amazingly cross-cultural man. He was a poet, a writer, a composer and a critic. Today we know him primarily through the stage works he inspired, such as Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann and the ballet Coppélia. His story of boy imprisoned in a wooden Nutcracker has all the supernatural and mechanical hallmarks of his style. And by locating the story in Nuremberg, a glorious medieval confection of a city – celebrated in Wagner’s 1868 opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg – Hoffmann recalls the city’s heritage as a clock and toy-making hub during the Holy Roman Empire. It’s a world where magic isn’t wholly unbelievable.

But as well as that supernatural element, Hoffmann wanted to create something homely and tangible. The tale was written in 1816, at the beginning of a period later called Biedermeier or Backhendlzeit (the time of fried chicken). Revolutions in France and the consequent Napoleonic campaigns had destablised the authority of century-old Empires. But after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the defeat of Napoleon’s troops at Waterloo, a period of insurrection and change came to an end. Rather than prompting mass-liberalisation of politics and culture, the old guard became yet more reactionary. Censorship was rife and the emerging middle class was put back in its box. Things, by default, became more domesticated, so The Nutcracker begins at home. This is a family tale.

The story reached the choreographer Marius Petipa’s hands in French. It had been translated by Alexandre Dumas, who wrote The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers and whose son would later write La Dame aux camellias (the basis for La traviata). After the success of The Sleeping Beauty in 1890, the Director of the Imperial Theatres Ivan Vsevolozhsky wanted a new ballet from Tchaikovsky and Petipa. It would be placed on a double bill with a brand new opera (coming hot on the heels of The Queen of Spades, which had been dropped from the repertoire). Moving away from Hoffmann and Dumas, Petipa conceived his own scenario, binning a huge flashback sequence and focussing on a more linear narrative. And he split the story between two very separate acts. The first was a quest narrative focussing on Marie (now called Clara), who follows her heart and saves the Nutcracker in battle. Her escapades in the Christmas Tree were probably inspired by Charles Dickens' short story about this new festive innovation in Britain. The second act was a more static dance show, situated in the Kingdom of Sweets.

Tchaikovsky wasn’t hugely impressed with the task at hand and, after Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty (both of which had been taxing projects), he felt that the story was too slight. Since its unsuccessful premiere in St Petersburg, subsequent dramatists and choreographers have sought to link the two acts more successfully. In the 1984 production for the Royal Opera House (revised in 1999), Peter Wright returned to the tale's Hoffmann roots. By contrasting the domestic ease of the Stahlbaum household with Clara’s emerging womanhood and Drosselmeyer’s dark magic, the story is emotionally grounded. There’s still magic aplenty, but by returning to Drosselmeyer’s workshop in the final bars – where the Nephew, released from the spell, greets his long-lost Uncle – Wright gave The Nutcracker the emotional charge it requires.

Day 2 - The Decoration of the Christmas Tree

2011-12-01T23:46:00.000-08:00

The curtain rises on the Stahlbaum’s family home. Petipa asked Tchaikovsky to write 64 bars of peaceful and tender music to accompany the decoration of the Christmas tree. Although outwardly calm, the music (in D major) has an inner buzz. Chromatic shifts and a throbbing bass line build on the excitement of the overture. Ever-shorter phrases compound the enthusiasm, building to a louder statement of the theme, complete with rumbling timpani. A more conversant passage between the woodwind sounds pleasantly social. After those 64 bars, this builds to another climactic version of the melody, answering Petipa’s request for ‘sparkling music’ as the tree lights are illuminated (eight bars). It’s nine o’clock in the evening and the following music accompanies the children’s entrance. The harmonic language becomes increasingly complicated, escalating over a number of bars (many more than Petipa’s requested 24) to an abrupt halt. ‘Astounded and delighted’ the children look up at the glorious Christmas tree. A vertiginous harp cadenza and rocking oboe theme creates an eerie haze over the scene. Everything is not as domesticated as it first seems.

Today's Track on Spotify.
Click here to order a recording of the complete ballet.

The Christmas Tree, The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson

Norah Jones - Live at Chicago Theatre, Chicago, 8 May 2007 (CD & Covers)

2011-11-17T12:53:00.000-08:00

Download

CD1

01 come away with me

02 those sweet words

03 thinking about you

04 be my somebody

05 rosie's lullaby

06 cold cold heart

07 the sun doesn't like you

08 not my friend

09 i've got to see you again

10 sunrise

11 sinkin' soon

CD2

01 my dear country

02 dead air

03 daru oda intro

04 little room

05 banter

06 wish i could

07 i'm gonna get you yet (dixie cups)

08 until the end

09 broken

10 creepin' in (w/ m ward)

11 hands on the wheel (w nelson)

12 encore applause break

13 painter song

14 don't know why

15 the long way home (waits/brennan)

Marianne Faithfull - Live at The Paradise, Boston, 20 October 1990

2011-11-16T10:14:00.000-08:00

Download

01 Truth, Bitter, Truth

02 The Blue Millionaire

03 So Sad

04 Times Square

05 Witches' Song

06 Tenderness

07 Brain Drain

08 Blazing Away

09 Wild Horses

10 Why D'Ya Do It?

11 Boulevard Of Broken Dreams

12 Working Class Hero

13 The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan

14 When I Find My Life

15 Broken English

16 Guilt

17 Falling From Grace

18 She Moved Through The Fair

Midnight Oil - Live at Camden Dingwalls, London, 27 June 1985

2011-11-12T12:50:00.000-08:00

Download

Only The Strong

Written In The Heart

Minutes To Midnight

Sleep

No Time For Games

Short Memory

Read About It

Kosciusko

US Forces

Best Of Both Worlds

Jimmy Sharman's Boxers

Power And The Passion

Back On The Borderline

Don't Wanna Be The One

Armistice Day

The Doors - Live at The Roundhouse, London, 6 September 1968 -SBD-

2011-11-11T13:09:00.000-08:00

Download

CD1

01 Five To One

02 When The Music’s Over

03 Back Door Man / Crawling King Snake

04 Spanish Caravan

05 Wake up

06 Light My Fire

07 The Unknown Soldier

08 Promoter's Comments

CD2

01 Five To One

02 When The Music's Over

03 Wake Up

04 Light My Fire

Jay-Z & Kanye West - Live at Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, 30 October 2011

2011-11-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

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1-Intro

2-H•A•M

3-Who Gon Stop Me

4-Interlude

5-Otis

6-Welcome To The Jungle

7-Gotta Have It

8-Where I'm From

9-Jigga What, Jigga Who(Originator 99)*

10-Can't Tell Me Nothing^

11-Flashing Lights^

12-Jesus Walks^

13-Diamonds From Sierra Leone(Remix)

14-Public Service Announcement*

15-U Don't Know*

16-Run This Town

17-Monster

18-Power^

19-Made In America

20-New Day

21-Hard Knock Life(Ghetto Anthem)*

22-Izzo(H.O.V.A.)*

23-Empire State Of Mind*

24-Runaway^

25-Heartless^

26-Stronger^

27-On To The Next One*

28-Dirt Off Your Shoulder*

29-I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)*

30-That's My Bitch

31-Good Life^

32-Touch The Sky^

33-All Of The Lights(False Start)^

34-All Of The Lights^ >

35-Big Pimpin'

36-Gold Digger

37-99 Problems

38-Interlude

39-No Church In The Wild

40-Lift Off

41-In Paris

42-In Paris

43-In Paris

44-Encore

45-Outro

* - Jay-Z without Kanye West

^ - Kanye West without Jay-Z

Subvasion aka Guts Pie Earshot & L.N/A - Brasserie Lorraine, Bern, 22 October 2011

2011-11-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

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Papa Roach - Crazy In Amsterdam 2001 -SBD-

2011-11-01T00:17:00.000-07:00

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01. Between Angels And Insects

02. Interlude

03. Broken Home

04. Tight Rope

05. Walking Through Barbed Wire

06. Crazy (Seal Cover)

07. Last Resort

08. About Infest

09. Infest

10. About Broken Home

11. Broken Home

12. Dead Cell

13. Blood Brothers

14. Between Angels And Insects

15. Snakes

16. Last Resort

17. About Last Resort

18. Binge

19. Revenge

20. Never Enough

# Tracks 1-7

2001-01-25

Paradiso

Amsterdam

# Tracks 8-17

2001-10-01

Melkweg (Old Room)

Amsterdam

# Tracks 18-20

2001-10-01

Melkweg (Old Room)

Amsterdam

U2 - Achtung Baby Deluxe Edition 6 CD

2011-10-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

Download part1

Download part2

Download part3

Achtung Baby

CD1-1 Zoo Station 4:36

CD1-2 Even Better Than The Real Thing 3:41

CD1-3 One 4:36

CD1-4 Until The End Of The World 4:38

CD1-5 Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses 5:16

CD1-6 So Cruel 5:49

CD1-7 The Fly 4:29

CD1-8 Mysterious Ways 4:03

CD1-9 Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World 3:52

CD1-10 Ultra Violet (Light My Way) 5:30

CD1-11 Acrobat 4:30

CD1-12 Love Is Blindness 4:23

Zooropa

CD2-1 Zooropa 6:31

CD2-2 Babyface 4:01

CD2-3 Numb 4:20

CD2-4 Lemon 6:58

CD2-5 Stay (Faraway, So Close!) 4:58

CD2-6 Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car 5:20

CD2-7 Some Days Are Better Than Others 4:17

CD2-8 The First Time 3:45

CD2-9 Dirty Day 5:24

CD2-10 The Wanderer (Starring Johnny Cash) 5:41

Über Remixes

CD3-1 Night And Day (Steel String Remix) 6:58

CD3-2 Even Better Than The Real Thing (The Perfecto Mix) 6:37

CD3-3 Mysterious Ways (Solar Plexus Extended Club Mix) 7:01

CD3-4 Lemon (The Perfecto Mix) 8:56

CD3-5 Can't Help Falling In Love (Triple Peaks Remix) 4:35

CD3-6 Lady With The Spinning Head (Extended Dance Mix) 6:08

CD3-7 Even Better Than The Real Thing (V16 Exit Wound Remix) 3:19

CD3-8 Mysterious Ways (Ultimatum Mix) 5:01

CD3-9 The Lounge Fly Mix 6:28

CD3-10 Mysterious Ways (The Perfecto Mix) 7:06

CD3-11 One (Apollo 440 Remix) 5:03

Unter Remixes

CD4-1 Mysterious Ways (Tabla Motown Remix) 4:27

CD4-2 Mysterious Ways (Apollo 440 Magic Hour Remix) 4:26

CD4-3 Can't Help Falling In Love (Mystery Train Dub) 8:29

CD4-4 One (Apollo 440 Ambient Mix) 5:07

CD4-5 Lemon (Momo's Reprise) 4:08

CD4-6 Salomé (Zooromancer Remix) 8:02

CD4-7 Even Better Than The Real Thing (Trance Mix) 6:47

CD4-8 Numb (Gimme Some More Dignity Mix) 8:47

CD4-9 Mysterious Ways (Solar Plexus Magic Hour Remix) 8:14

CD4-10 Numb (Soul Assassins Mix) 3:57

CD4-11 Even Better Than The Real Thing (Apollo 440 Stealth Sonic Remix) 6:42

B-Sides And Bonus Tracks

CD5-1 Lady With The Spinning Head (UV1) 3:53

CD5-2 Blow Your House Down 3:30

CD5-3 Salomé 4:31

CD5-4 Even Better Than The Real Thing (Single Version) 3:40

CD5-5 Satellite Of Love 4:00

CD5-6 Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses (Temple Bar Remix) 4:48

CD5-7 Heaven And Hell 5:02

CD5-8 Oh Berlin 4:31

CD5-9 Near The Island 2:46

CD5-10 Down All The Days 5:36

CD5-11 Paint It Black 3:20

CD5-12 Fortunate Son 2:40

CD5-13 Alex Descends Into Hell For A Bottle Of Milk/Korova 1 3:37

CD5-14 Where Did It All Go Wrong? 3:56

CD5-15 Everybody Loves A Winner 5:12

CD5-16 Even Better Than The Real Thing (Fish Out Of Water Remix) 4:09

Kindergarten - The Alternative Achtung Baby

CD6-1 'Baby' Zoo Station 5:34

CD6-2 'Baby' Even Better Than The Real Thing 3:43

CD6-3 'Baby' One 4:35

CD6-4 'Baby' Until The End Of The World 4:31

CD6-5 'Baby' Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses 5:15

CD6-6 'Baby' So Cruel 6:07

CD6-7 'Baby' The Fly 4:45

CD6-8 'Baby' Mysterious Ways 4:03

CD6-9 'Baby' Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World 4:12

CD6-10 'Baby' Ultra Violet (Light My Way) 5:49

CD6-11 'Baby' Acrobat 4:27

CD6-12 'Baby' Love Is Blindness 7:17

Coldplay - Live at Plaza De Toros De Las Ventas, Madrid, 26 October 2011 -SBD-

2011-10-30T07:03:00.000-07:00

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01 Hurts Like Heaven

02 Yellow

03 In my place

04 Major Minus

05 Lost

06 The Scientist

07 Violet Hill

08 Paradise

09 Up in flames

10 Til Kingdom come

11 Politik

12 Viva la vida

13 Charlie Brown

14 Life is for living

15 Clocks

16 Rehab_Fix you

17 Every teardrop is a waterfall

Coldplay - Live at U.A.E., Norwich, 27 October 2011 -FM-

2011-10-30T06:57:00.000-07:00

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Mylo Xyloto

Hurts Like Heaven

Yellow

In My Place

Major Minus

The Scientist

Violet Hill

God Put A Smile Upon Your Face

Paradise

Up in Flames

Viva La Vida Play Video

Charlie Brown

Clocks

Fix You

Every Teardrop is a Waterfall

Melanie C - Live at Hugenottenhalle, Neu-Isenburg, 25 October 2000

2011-10-29T23:55:00.000-07:00

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Something Happen

Northern Star

Be The One

Closer

Independance Day

I Want You Back

Why

If That Were Me

Feel The Sun

Going Down

Ga Ga

Suddenly Monday

Never Be The Same

I Turn To You

Paul McCartney - Live at the Bell Centre, Montreal, 26 July 2011 (3 CD & Covers)

2011-10-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

Download

1. Hello Goodbye

2. Junior’s Farm

3. All My Loving

4. Jet

5. Birthday

6. Sing the Changes

7. The Night Before

8. Let Me Roll It

9. Paperback Writer

10. The Long and Winding Road

11. Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five

12. Let ‘Em In

13. Maybe I’m Amazed

14. I’m Looking Through You

15. I Will

16. Blackbird

17. Here Today

18. Dance Tonight

19. Mrs. Vanderbilt

20. Eleanor Rigby

21. Michelle

22. Something

23. Band On the Run

24. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

25. Back In the U.S.S.R.

26. I’ve Got a Feeling

27. A Day In the Life/ Give Peace a Chance

28. Let It Be

29. Live and Let Die

30. Hey Jude

ENCORE SET 1:

31. Lady Madonna (alternate source)

32. Day Tripper (alternate source)

33. Get Back (alternate source)

ENCORE SET 2:

34. Yesterday (alternate source)

35. Helter Skelter (alternate source)

36. Golden Slumbers/ Carry That Weight/ The End

Pink - Live at Festhalle, Frankfurt, 25 March 2009

2011-10-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

Download

Highway to Hell (Intro - AC/DC-Cover)

Bad Influence

Just Like A Pill

Who Knew

Ave Mary A

Don't Let Me Get Me

I Touch Myself (Divinyls-Cover)

Please Don't Leave Me

One Foot Wrong

U + Ur Hand

Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely)

So What

Family Portrait

I Don't Believe You

Crystal Ball

Trouble

Babe I'm Gonna Leave You (Led-Zeppelin-Cover)

Sober

Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen-Cover)

Funhouse

Crazy (Gnarls-Barkley-Cover)

Get The Party Started

Glitter In The Air

ZZ Top - Live at Harrah's Casino, Cherokee, 4 September 2011 (CD & Covers)

2011-10-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

Download

01. Got Me Under Pressure 04:43.59

02. Waiting For The Bus 02:54.35

03. Jesus Just Left Chicago 04:29.50

04. Pincushion 05:08.33

05. I'm Bad I'm Nationwide 07:24.74

06. Future Blues (Willie Brown cover) 03:44.27

07. Cheap Sunglasses 04:07.63

08. Heads In Mississippi tease 02:03.32

09. Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix cover) 03:54.38

10. Brown Sugar 05:03.57

11. Party On The Patio 03:21.11

12. Just Got Paid 07:28.58

13. Gimmie All Your Lovin' 04:30.70

14. Sharp Dressed Man 04:46.12

15. Legs 06:25.51

Encore Break

16. La Grange/Sloppy Drunk 06:47.67

17. Tush 03:53.11

Queen - Live at Nepstadion Stadium, Budapest, 27 July 1986

2011-10-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

Download

One Vision

Tie Your Mother Down

In The Lap Of The Gods...Revisited

Seven Seas Of Rhye

Tear It Up

A Kind Of Magic

Under Pressure

Another One Bites The Dust

Who Wants To Live Forever

I Want To Break Free

Impromptu

Brighton Rock Solo

Now I'm Here

Love Of My Life

Tavaszi szél vizet áraszt

Is This The World We Created?

(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care

Hello Mary Lou

Tutti Frutti

Bohemian Rhapsody

Hammer To Fall

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Radio Ga Ga

We Will Rock You

Friends Will Be Friends

We Are The Champions

God Save The Queen

Bobby Womack - Live at James L. Knight Center, Miami, 30 May 2009

2011-10-23T12:22:00.000-07:00

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No Setlist

Prince - Live at Carolina Coliseum, Columbia, 12 December 1981 -SBD- (CD & Covers)

2011-10-22T12:50:00.000-07:00

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Download FLAC

1. Uptown

2. Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?

3. Sexy Dancer

4. I Wanna Be Your Lover

5. Head

6. Dirty Mind

7. Do Me, Baby

8. Controversy

9. Let's Work

10. Partyup

11. Jack U Off

Huey Lewis & The News - Live at Monterey Jazz Festival, Monterey, 17 September 2011 -FM-

2011-10-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

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1. introduction

2. instrumental/Don't Fight It

3. Got To Get You Off My Mind

4. Free

5. Respect Yourself

6. -talking

7. Soulsville

8. I Want To (Do Everything For You)

9. Never Found A Girl

10. Little Sally Walker

11. Heart Of Rock "N" Roll

12. -talking/band introductions

13. Sixty Minute Man-acapella

14. -more band introductions

15. Curious Mind

16. Just The One (I've Been Looking For)

17. I Want A New Drug

18. ?

19. Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You

20. Never Like This Before

encore:

1. -dj's talking

2. The Power Of Love

3. ?

Duran Duran - Live at Nokia Theater, Los Angeles, 27 September 2011

2011-10-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

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01. Overture - Return To Now

02. Before The Rain

03. Planet Earth

04. All You Need Is Now

05. A View To A Kill

06. Blame The Machines

07. Come Undone

08. Safe (In The Heat Of The Moment)

09. The Reflex (Remix)

10. Girl Panic! (Extended)

11. Tiger Tiger

12. Careless Memories

13. Leave A Light On

14. The Man Who Stole A Leopard

15. Notorious

16. Hungry Like The Wolf

17. (Reach Up For The) Sunrise

18. Encore Break

19. Ordinary World

20. Wild Boys

21. Rio

Britney Spears - Live at Arena, Malmo, 11 October 2011

2011-10-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

Download

CD1

01. Intro

02. Hold It Against Me

03. Up N' Down

04. 3

05. Piece Of Me

06. - Video Interlude Pt. 1 -

07. Big Fat Bass

08. How I Roll

09. Lace And Leather

10. If U Seek Amy

11. - Video Interlude Pt. 2 -

12. Gimme More

13. (Drop Dead) Beautiful

CD2

01. Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know

02. Boys

03. - Video Interlude Pt. 3 -

04. Baby One More Time

05. S&M

06. Trouble For Me

07. I'm A Slave 4 U

08. I Wanna Go

09. Womanizer

10. - Video Interlude Pt. 4 -

11. Toxic

12. Till The World Ends

Prince - Herdade do Cabeço da Flauta, Super Bock Festival, Lisbon, 18 July 2010 (CD & Covers)

2011-10-15T21:55:00.000-07:00

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CD1

1. Instrumental - Venus De Milo

2. Let's Go Crazy

3. Delirious

4. Let's Go Crazy (reprise)

5. 1999

6. Little Red Corvette

7. Take Me With U

8. Guitar

9. Nothing Compares 2 U

10. Cream

11. U Got The Look

12. Controversy - I Know You Got Soul

13. Sexy Dancer - Le Freak

14. Controversy - Housequake

CD2

1. A Sós Com A Noite (with Renato Neto and Ana Moura)

2. Vou Dar De Beber À Dor (with Renato Neto and Ana Moura)

3. Kiss

4. Purple Rain

5. Forever In My Life

6. Dance (Disco Heat)

Pete Doherty - Live at The Academy, Dublin, 14 September 2011

2011-10-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

Download

01. Flophouse

02. Dont Look Back Into The Sun

03. Arcady

04. Beg Steal Or Borrow

05. For Lovers

06. Time For Heroes

07. The Ha Ha Wall

08. The Good Old Days

09. Music When The Lights Go Out

10. The Last Of The English Roses

11. Sheepskin Tearaway

12. What Katie Did

13. Lady Dont Fall Backwards

14. East Of Eden

15. Cant Stand Me Now

16. Where's My Medication?

17. Stranger In My Own Skin

18. Albion [Ft. Alan Wass On Harmonica]

19. Fuck Forever

Kasabian - Live at Astra, Berlin, 1 June 2010 -FM-

2011-10-10T12:55:00.000-07:00

Download

01. Fast Fuse

02. Shoot The Runner

03. Underdog

04. Where Did All The Love Go?

05. Swarfiga

06. I.D.

07. Cutt Off

08. Reason Is Treason

09. Julie And The Moth Man

10. Thick As Thieves

11. Take Aim

12. Empire

13. Clubfoot

14. Fire

15. Vlad the Impaler

16. LSF

Radiohead - Live at Tweeter Music Center, Mansfield, 13 August 2003 -SBD-

2011-10-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

Download

01 intro

02 2+2=5

03 sit down. stand up

04 paranoid android

05 kid a

06 backdrifts

07 morning bell

08 my iron lung

09 where i end and you begin

10 sail to the moon

11 the gloaming

12 climbimg up the walls

13 creep

14 like spinning plates

15 go to sleep

16 scatterbrain

17 the national anthem

18 there there

19 audience

20 lucky

21 a punch-up at a wedding

22 airbag

23 everything in its right place

24 audience

25 no surprises

26 idioteque

Hugh Laurie (Dr House) - Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, San Francisco, 1 October 2011

2011-10-08T12:25:00.000-07:00

Download

No Setlist

Prince & The Revolution - Live at First Avenue, Minneapolis, 14 August 1984 (CD & Covers)

2011-10-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

Download

01 - Controversy (jam)

02 - Let's Go Crazy

03 - Delirious

04 - 1999

05 - Little Red Corvette

06 - Computer Blue

07 - Darling Nikki

08 - The Beautiful Ones

09 - When Doves Cry

10 - Baby, I'm A Star

11 - Purple Rain

Prince - Live at Arena Santa Giuliana, Perugia, 15 July 2011 (3 CD & Covers)

2011-10-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

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CD1

01 Stratus

02 The Question Of U / The One

03 We Live 2 Get Funky / Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic

04 Crinsom & Clover / Waiting In Vain

05 When Will We B Paid ? / People Get Ready

06 Little Red Corvette

07 The Look Of Love

08 Empty Room

09 Colonized Mind

CD2

01 Foxy Lady

02 Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) /America

03 Controversy

04 Sexy Dancer / Le Freak

05 Play That Funky Music

06 Alphabet St. / Kissing My Love

07 Shhh

08 Make You Feel My Love

09 Purple Rain

CD3

01 Dance (Disco Heat) / Baby I’m A Star

02 The Bird / Jungle Love

03 A Love Bizarre

04 Cool / Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough

05 Sometimes It Snows In April

06 If I Was Your Girlfriend

07 Kiss

Orchestral Manoeuvre in The Dark - Live at Electric Ballroom, London, 8 December 1979

2011-10-05T05:15:00.000-07:00

Download

Messages

Bunker Soldiers

Mystereality

Julia’s Song

Red Frame White Light

Almost

Electricity

Waiting For The Man

Statues

Amy Winehouse - Live at La Zona Rosa, Austin, 16 March 2007 -FM-

2011-10-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

Download

01. Addicted

02. Just Friends

03. Back to Black

04. Wake Up alone

05. Tears Dry On Their Own

06. He Can Only Hold Her

07. You Know I'm No Good

08. Me & Mr. Jones

09. Love Is a Losing Game

10. Rehab

11. Valerie

Prince - Live at HP Pavilion, San Jose, 19 May 2011 (CD & Covers)

2011-10-04T05:20:00.000-07:00

Download

CD1

01 Intro

02 1999

03 Little Red Corvette

04 The Beautiful Ones

05 The Glamorous Life (inc. Soul Sacrifice)

06 Take Me With U

07 Raspberry Beret

08 Cream

09 Cool (inc. Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough)

10 Let's Work

11 U Got The Look

CD2

01 Make You Feel My Love

02 Purple Rain

03 Let's Go Crazy

04 Delirious

05 Let's Go Crazy (reprise)

Sampler Set

06 When Doves Cry

07 Nasty Girl (instrumental)

08 Sign "O" The Times

09 The Most Beautiful Girl In The World

10 Darling Nikki (instrumental)

11 Love Bizarre

12 Black Sweat

13 Hot Thing

14 I Would Die 4 U

15 If I Was Your Girlfrien

16 Kiss

Oasis - Live at Lee's Palace, Toronto, 19 October 1994 (CD & Covers)

2011-10-04T04:34:00.000-07:00

Download

01. Rock 'n' Roll Star

02. Columbia

03. Fade Away

04. Digsy's Dinner

05. Shakermaker

06. Live Forever

07. Bring It On Down

08. Up In The Sky

09. Slide Away

10. Cigarettes & Alcohol

11. Married With Children

12. Supersonic

13. I Am The Walrus

Prince - Live at Hop Farm Festival, Paddock Wood, 3 July 2011 (CD & Covers)

2011-10-02T23:53:00.000-07:00

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CD1

1. Intro

2. We Live 2 Get Funky

3. Let's Go Crazy

4. Delirious

5. Let's Go Crazy (Reprise)

6. 1999

7. Little Red Corvette

8. Nothing Compares 2 U

9. Take Me With U

10. Raspberry Beret

11. Cream

12. Cool (Incl. Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough)

13. Let's Work

14. U Got The Look

15. Make You Feel My Love

16. Purple Rain

CD2

1. Kiss

2. Controversy

3. Play That Funky Music

4. Controversy (Reprise Incl. Housequake Chants)

5. Everyday People (Feat. Larry Graham)

6. Come Together

7. I Wanna Take You Higher

8. If I Was Your Girlfriend

9. Dance (Disco Heat)

10. Baby, I'm A Star

Body Count - Live Los Angeles 1993 (CD & Covers)

2011-10-02T07:06:00.000-07:00

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1. Body Count's In the House

2. Necessary Evil

3. KKK Bitch

4. Street Abandon

5. Brother

6. VooDoo

7. There Goes the Neighborhood

8. Evil Dick

9. Murdered by Death

10. Bowels of the Devil

11. Born Dead

12. Moma's Gotta Die Tonight

13. Body Count Anthem

14. CopKilla

Avril Lavigne - Live at Carling Academy, Glasgow, 27 May 2008

2011-10-01T12:20:00.000-07:00

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girlfriend

i can do better

complicated

my happy ending

i'm with you

i always get what i want

instrumental

give it up

hot

losing grip

bad reputation (dance)

everything back but you

runaway (avril on drums)

mickey (avril on drums)

the best damn thing

i don't have to try

he wasn't

boyfriend (remix)

sk8er boi

Avril Lavigne - Live at The Hammersmith Apollo, London, 21 September 2011

2011-09-25T06:31:00.000-07:00

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1, Black Star

2, What the Hell Play

3, Smile

4, Sk8er Boy

5, He Wasn't

6, Airplanes/My Happy Ending

7, I Always Get What I Want

8, Alice

9, When You're Gone

10, Fix You (Coldplay Cover)

11, You Were Here

12, Unwanted / Musical Piece

13, Girlfriend

14, Don't Tell Me

15, I'm With You

Encore:

16, Complicated (with no singing)

Eminem - Live at Lollapalooza, Chicago, 6 August 2011

2011-09-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

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1.Intro

2.Won't Back Down

3.3 AM

4.Square Dance

5.W.T.P.

6.Kill You

7.No Love

8.So Bad

9.Cleaning Out My Closet

10.The Way I Am

11.Fast Lane

12.Lighters

13.Airplanes Pt. II

14.Stan

15.Sing For The Moment

16.Like Toy Soldiers

17.Forever

18.Space Bound

19.Nate Dogg Tribute Medley

20.Till I Collapse

21.Cinderella Man

22.I Love The Way You Lie

23.I Need A Doctor

24.Banter

25.My Name Is

26.The Real Slim Shady

27.WIthout Me

28.Not Afraid

29.Encore Break

30.Lose Yourself

brickcitystl

2011-09-22T01:09:00.001-07:00

brickcitystl

The Specials – Live at Paradiso, Amsterdam, 14 September 2011

2011-09-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

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01. [intro]

02. Do The Dog

03. (Dawning Of A) New Era

04. Gangsters

05. It's Up To You

06. Monkey Man

07. Blank Expression

08. Doesn't Make It Alright

09. Rat Race

10. Hey, Little Rich Girl

11. Stupid Marriage

12. Concrete Jungle

13. Friday Night, Saturday Morning

14. Stereotype

15. Man At C&A

16. Do Nothing

17. A Message To You Rudy

18. Nite Klub

19. Little Bitch

20. Too Much Too Young

21. Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)

22. [encore break]

23. Ghost Town

24. [encore break]

25. You're Wondering Now

Bon Jovi - Live at Zepp, Tokyo, 11 September 2002 -SBD- (CD & Covers)

2011-09-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

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CD1

01 Hook Me Up

02 Livin' On A Prayer

03 You Give Love A Bad Name

04 Everyday

05 Born To Be My Baby

06 Just Older

07 Undivided

08 Bounce

09 The Distance

10 Wanted Dead Or Alive

CD2

01 Keep The Faith

02 Captain Crash & The Beauty Queen From Mars

03 I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

04 Bad Medicine

05 Intro

06 Joey

07 Blood On Blood

08 It's My Life

09 America The Beautiful

U2 - Live at Espace Balard, Paris, 25 October 1984 (CD & Covers)

2011-09-18T02:01:00.000-07:00

Download

Clik on FileServe logo to download quickly

CD 1:

01. 4th Of July

02. 11 O'Clock Tick Tock

03. I Will Follow

04. Wire

05. MLK

06. The Unforgettable Fire

07. Surrender

08. Two Hearts Beat As One

09. Seconds

10. A Sort Of Homecoming

11. Sunday Bloody Sunday

CD 2:

01. Electric Co.

02. Bad

03. October

04. New Year's Day

05. Pride (In The Name Of Love)

06. Party Girl

07. Gloria

08. "40"

U2 - Live at The Summit, Houston, 6 April 1994 (CD & Covers)

2011-09-17T01:19:00.000-07:00

Download

CD1

01. Zoo Station

02. The Fly

03. Even Better Than The Real Thing

04. Mysterious Ways

05. One

06. Until The End Of The World

07. Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses

08. Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World

09. Angel Of Harlem

10. Satellite Of Love

CD2

01. Bad

02. All I Want Is You

03. Bullet The Blue Sky

04. Running To Stand Still

05. Where The Streets Have No Name

06. Pride (In The Name Of Love)

07. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

08. Desire

09. Ultraviolet (Light My Way)

10. With Or Without You

11. Love Is Blindness

Rakim - Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, 27 July 2008

2011-09-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

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01- Intro 02:09

02- My Melody 02:26

03- It's Been a Long Time 01:14

04- Heat It Up 01:51

05- Don't Sweat the Technique 01:04

06- I Ain't No Joke 03:58

07- In the Ghetto 01:53

08- I'm Back 01:52

09- Microphone Fiend 03:13

10- Move the Crowd 03:04

11- Paid in Full 02:48

12- Juice (Know the Ledge) 02:06

Cut Chemist - Live In Session On KCRW, Santa Monica, FM, 29 August 2011

2011-09-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

Download

01.(=Intro=)

02.Sound Of The Police West Side

Gangsta Cut Chemist Remix (Tune-Yards)

03.(=Interview=)

04.Un Canto A Mi Terra Cut Chemist Remix (Quantic)

Day In Day Out Cut Chemist Remix (Nat King Cole)

05.(=Outro=)

Shaka Ponk - Live at Arênes De Nimes, Nimes, France, 23 August 2011

2011-09-11T00:56:00.000-07:00

Download

01. Intro

02. Shiza Radio

03. Reset After all

04. Hombre Que Soy

05. Twisted Mind

06. Sex Ball

07. I'm Picky

08. Prima Scene

09. How We Kill Stars

10. French Touch Puta Madre

11. Te Gusta Me

Rickie Lee Jones - Nakano Sun Plaza Hall, Tokyo, 7 February 1985 -SBD-

2011-09-10T10:04:00.000-07:00

Download

Chuck E.'s In Love

Pirates

We Belong Together

The Real End

Under the Boardwalk

Magazine

Juke Box Fury

Woody and Dutch On the Slow Train To Peking

On Saturday Afternoons In 1963

Nelly Furtado - Get Loose Open Air, Wiesbaden, Kurhaus, 9 July 2008

2011-09-08T12:47:00.000-07:00

Download

I'm Like A Bird

Turn Off The Lights

Powerless

Do It

Wait For You

Explode

Try

Say It Right

Give It To Me Part I

Give It To Me Part II

Glow

Forca

Promiscuous

Somebody To Love

No Hay Igual

Maneater

All Good Things

Michael Jackson - Memorial Mix Bootleg 2009

2011-09-08T06:35:00.000-07:00

Download

01 .Opening

02 .History

03 .Beat it

04 .Get on the Floor

05 .Pyt

06 .Wanna Be Startin Something

07 .Billie Jean

08 .Smooth Criminal

09 .Dont Stop Til You Get Enough

10 .Thriller

11 .Say Say Say

12 .Black or White

13 .Bad

14 .Dangerous

15 .The Way You Make Me Feel

16 .Tabloid Junkie

17 .In the Closed

18 .She Drives Me Wild

19 .Blood in the Dancefloor

20 .Remember the Time

21 .Scream

22 .Who is it

23 .Man in the Mirror

24 .You Rock My World

25 .Unbreakable

26 .They Dont Care About Us

27 .Give it to Me

28 .For All Time

29 .Cry

30 .Will You Be There

31 .The Girl is Mine

32 .Heal the World

33 .Break of Dawn

34 .Privacy

35 .Weve Had Enough

36 .The Lady in My Life

37 .Keep the Faith

38 .Earth Song

39 .Dirty Diana

40 .Stranger in Moscow

41 .You Are Not Alone

42 .Gone Too Soon

The Offspring - Live at Arenes De Nimes, France, 23 August 2011

2011-09-07T12:50:00.000-07:00

Download

01. Intro

02. All I Want

03. You're Gonna Go Far, Kid

04. You Will Find A Way

05. Come Out And Play (Keep'Em Separated)

06. Have You Ever

07. Staring At The Sun

08. Original Prankster

09. Bad Habit

10. What Happened To You

11. Hit That

12. Kristy, Are You Doing Okay

13. Why Don't You Get A Job

14. Americana

15. Gone Away

16. Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)

17. (Can't Get My) Head Around You

18. The Kids Aren't Alright

19. "Encore"

20. Hammerhead

21. Want You Bad

22. Self Esteem

Kid Rock - Live at Gexa Energy Pavilion, Dallas, 2 September 2011

2011-09-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

Download

1.American Bad Ass

2.God Bless Saturday

3.You Never Met A Motherfucker Quite Like Me

4.Lowlife / Keep Your Hands to Yourself

5.Cocky

6.Slow My Roll

7.Midnight Rider / Cowboy

8.Lay It On Me

9.Care

10.Somebody's Gotta Feel This

11. Fist Of Rage

12. I Am The Bullgod / Forever

13.Sugar

14.Flyin' High

15.Forty Intro

16. Forty

17 Jam Including Cat Scratch Fever

18.So Hott

19.Love The One You're (with Sheryl Crow)

20.Picture (with Sheryl Crow)

21.Bawitdaba

22.All Summer Long

23.Rock N Roll Jesus

24.Only God Knows Why

25.Born Free

Sheryl Crow - Live at Gexa Energy Pavilion, Dallas, 2 September 2011

2011-09-05T12:47:00.000-07:00

Download

1. Our Love Is Fading

2. A Change Would Do You Good

3. Can't Cry Anymore

4. Real Gone

5. Steve McQueen

6. My Favorite Mistake

7. All I Wanna Do/Stuck In The Middle

8. If It Makes You Happy

9. Soak Up The Sun

10.Everyday Is A Winding Road