Grade 1 Violin

  A while ago Andrew and I were invited by Atholl Swainton-Harrison, General Secretary of IAMA (International Artists Management Associatuion) to a dinner to mark our retirement after 53 years in the business. Always happy to have a free dinner we gladly accepted. Then by stages things gor complicated. The first sign of trouble was when Atholl mentioned the dinner would follow a general meeting of IAMA members from all over the world but we would be guests of honour. Then, Atholl suggested the assembled agents might be interested in a panel discussion of our experiences. We could hardly refuse. Next, we learned that we would not be alone on the panel; Lydia Connolly, a senior figure at Harrison Parrott who Andrew knew slightly but whom I had never met. The session was to be moderated by Helen Sykes which was a relief.  Nonetheless, Andrew said in anticipation that this was going to be the worst night of his life and wondered what we were going to say. I replied; no problem - w...

  Far the most absurd moment in opera that I know of was seen not, alas, by   me, but by my friend Nicolas   Nabokov   in Berlin, in the early 1920s. It was during the years of inflation, when there was much poverty and a great dearth of food in Germany. The opera was   Götterdämmerung .   Nabokov   described the moment when Brünnhilde’s faithful Grane, played by an emaciated and  evidently starved carthorse, appeared on the stage; a foot away stood Hagen, with a long tow beard suspended from his chin. The horse suddenly lunged forward, whipped off Hagen’s beard and devoured it in one gulp. This apparently stopped the performance; while the feeble old horse was being hurried off the stage even the solemn German audience could not contain itself.  

 I have only met Gergiev once. That was in 1986 before he was Gergiev as it were. I was backstage at the Kirov Opera as it was then following a performance of Evgeny Onegin. The conductor was Yuri Temirkanov, Musical Director of the opera in those days. Gergiev was his downtrodden No. 2. Temirkanov made sure he gave him only the 'Kleinscheiss' to conduct. When Temirkanov moved to the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Gergiev got Temirkanov's job at the theatre. This meant that at that stage he was conducting more or less everything for the first time.   Returning to my one and only meeting with this person, I remember him skulking in a corner, nobody speaking to him. A tall lowering presence. The story of how he made a name for himself is one of the most spectacular trajectories in the musical world and needs no elaboration from me. He is obviously very talented in his way and an operator second to none. It is tragic that he has pursued a course of late which, let us say is mo...