25 August 2013

Hello - now, I don't want to make you all jealous but I'll take that risk: what’s your favourite phrase? One of mine is without doubt this one (which I had a few days ago at Heathrow Airport): ‘Due to overselling of seats on your flight, you have been upgraded to business class’. Yes, how sweet is that! My other two favourites are: ‘…and here at Old Trafford it's 6-1 to City’ and ‘we’ve put on more encore shows as they’ve been selling out’. What are yours? New York went well: I particularly enjoyed a visit to the Avery Fisher Hall to hear the wonderful Louis Langree with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and Isabelle Faust playing violin. It’s funny how these things work out – I have (almost by chance) been listening and re-listening to Mozart’s 5 violin concerti and, in New York for a screening, I was offered a ticket to this concert and lo and behold it’s the Violin Concerto no 5. It’s not my favourite of the five but it’s lovely of course. The programme notes make a fair point that ‘Mozart’s fifth and last violin concerto, composed just eight months after the first, caps what must be the most remarkable process of artistic growth ever recorded in a set of contemporaneously composed works.’ After the interval, Louis Langree and the orchestra played a fine rendition of Beethoven’s 5^th. The only thing I found strange is that he – like so many other conductors – walked straight out and crashed straight into those famous chords without a pause of a beat – or even letting the audience prepare themselves and stop coughing. It’s almost as if conductors want to get those chords out of the way as fast as possible. Maybe it’s me but I’d hold my hands aloft until there was total silence in the hall. The screening had been earlier in the day – IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN – and it was completely sold out (part of the Mostly Mozart programme). The film – screened off digibeta – looked absolutely gorgeous and sounded super. To any film-makers out there, what ever you do, don’t finish and relese your film until you’re confident you can sit and watch it five years later and still love it (or feel you couldn’t have done any better). The audience were very enthusiastic and the Q&A and DVD signing afterwards went on for a good hour. Hopefully next year they’ll show Haydn which deserves much more distribution than it’s had. It was nice at the screening to have people coming up to say they’d seen and enjoyed the Manet and Munch film – and were looking forward to Vermeer on October 10th. Not so nice were the reports of half-empty cinemas…I really need to double our efforts to get folk to fill those empty seats. I mean, who could not be thrilled to see Vermeer’s paintings in HD on the big screen? When you look around and see the multi-million dollar Hollywood films filled with gunshot and gore....Sure does make you wonder…. Then travelled to Toronto for a Q&A of Manet hosted at the excellent Cineplex cinema chain. Very enjoyable and the film, screened off blu-ray this time, looked stunning. I've been working on Vermeer and know that it going to look really great too. He really has to be one of the greats. I've been reading a fantastic book I'd like to recommend - KANDAK by Patrick Hennessey. It's among the best books I've read about Afghanistan - and there is a rapidly expanding genre of Afghan-lit to choose from. Every so often, when I can tear myself away from the emails and paintings, I day-dream about going back to Mir's village and sharing one of those delicious Kebabs with him ....