Martin Kettle's Blog, page 53
October 23, 2017
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orch/Blomstedt review – warmth and wisdom of a 90-year-old master
Barbican, London
A rarely heard Beethoven concerto was bright and captivating, while Blomstedt reached to the heart of Bruckner’s seventh symphony
It remains one of the endlessly debated mysteries of music why the work of some orchestral conductors gets more and more compelling with age. Herbert Blomstedt is perhaps the prime example of this phenomenon in the current era. Now a spritely 90, Blomstedt has come slowly and unobtrusively through a long career in Europe and America to reach cult status, but he has unquestionably ascended to that lofty point now, and a packed Barbican hall was proof that the Swede’s drawing power has never been greater.
Blomstedt and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, itself marking its 275th birthday, gave them what was very much a concert of two halves. Before the interval, there was a rare opportunity to hear Beethoven’s triple concerto for violin, cello and piano, a work better known from recordings than from performances in the flesh. But the rewards of this live performance, in a hall that allows the ear to follow detail and interplay between the soloists so clearly, were captivating.
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October 19, 2017
We are obsessed with Brexit and Trump: we should be thinking about China | Martin Kettle
This has not been, it must be admitted, an exactly stellar week for those of us who continue to make the case for the enduring strengths of liberal democracy. On the contrary, it has felt like one humiliation after another.
In the House of Commons, a vote to suspend universal credit is brushed aside by Theresa May’s government as though parliament counts for nothing. After elections in Austria and New Zealand, mainstream parties are held hostage while populists decide which of them to put in government. Meanwhile, in Catalonia and Kurdistan, ill-judged referendums cause fresh divisions and confrontational responses from Spanish and Iraqi authorities.
Related: UN tells China to release human rights activists and pay them compensation
The thing that matters most is Xi’s uncompromising confidence and ambition
Related: The $900bn question: What is the Belt and Road initiative?
Continue reading...October 17, 2017
Democracy counts: why the average political party lasts for only 43 years
Britain has a tradition of long-established political groupings – but in other democratic countries, the left, right and centre constantly reinvent themselves. Vive la change?
England’s – later Britain’s – parliamentary system has been around in some form since at least the 13th century. So it ought not to come as a surprise that our political parties have proved to be unusually durable, too.
After all, the Conservative party emerged in its modern configuration in the years after the 1832 Reform Act. Labour was founded in 1900. The SNP, in many ways the new kid on the block at Westminster, dates from 1928, and Plaid Cymru from 1925. Sinn Féin is older still, established in 1905. But, by international standards, they are all dinosaurs.
Continue reading...October 13, 2017
Philippe Jordan: the low-key maestro who's taking French opera to new heights
The Music Director of the Opéra National de Paris is to take on a prestigious role at Vienna State Opera. In the week that he brought a Verdi masterpiece back home, we profile a prodigiously hard-working conductor
It is a lifetime since the Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan was dubbed “the general music director of Europe” as he piloted his private jet between engagements in Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg, Milan and London in the 1950s and 60s. That was another world, and no conductor since Karajan’s time, thank goodness, has either sought or acquired such a classical music empire. But if, in its much changed and more devolved musical landscape, Europe does have anything like a general music director today, then there’s a case for saying that the job is about to belong to Philippe Jordan.
The 42-year-old Swiss, who learned his trade at the feet of his conductor father Armin Jordan in Zurich and then of Daniel Barenboim in Berlin, does not conduct much in the UK. That’s not because he is an Anglophobe – on the contrary, English was his first language at home and he has conducted at Glyndebourne and with the Philharmonia. The fact that Jordan’s name is not nearly as familiar here as it ought to be says more about British insularity than about Jordan’s talents. Perhaps significantly, the same unfamiliarity for British audiences also applies to the conductor of his generation to whom Jordan can most obviously be compared, the Russian-born Kirill Petrenko, who is about .
Related: Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra/Jordan – exemplary, persuasive Bruckner, intimate and restrained Bach
Continue reading...October 12, 2017
Pro-Europeans have a champion: her name is Theresa May | Martin Kettle
Theresa May doesn’t do spontaneous. Most of the time, to the delight and profit of the parliamentary sketchwriters’ guild, she is scripted and self-disciplined to a fault. She repeats her lines until the repetition is a form of torture. So how do we explain it if, just once, she strays momentarily off piste?
Don’t get this wrong. Off piste for May is an extremely relative concept. It is not the same as for Boris Johnson. Blink and, in May’s case, you miss it. Most of the time, the vicar’s daughter’s approach to her job seems to echo the words of Lucy Baldwin, wife of the Tory prime minister Stanley, who, when asked at Lord Curzon’s funeral in 1925 whether she was a believer, replied: “I am indeed, and I must tell you that every morning when we rise, we kneel together before God and commend our day to Him, praying that some good work may be done in it by us. It is not for ourselves that we are working, but for the country and for God’s sake. How else could we live?”
In cabinet there are sharp divisions. May and Hammond are on the far better, cautious side
Related: Philip Hammond ‘must be sacked for not supporting Brexit’
Continue reading...October 9, 2017
Invincible no more, Nicola Sturgeon will have to go back to basics | Martin Kettle
She overplayed her hand on Brexit. Now the chest-thumping conference slogans have gone, as the SNP gets down to some old-fashioned deal-making
Just two years ago Nicola Sturgeon seemed invincible. As she took over from Alex Salmond as leader of the SNP following the 2014 independence referendum, thousands of new recruits flocked to the Scottish nationalist cause, turning defeat into victory. In November 2014 she sold out the 12,000-seat Glasgow SSE Hydro, a week after Lady Gaga had done the same.
The Sturgeon tsunami kept on rolling through 2015. In that year’s general election, she was the face of the SNP landslide that captured 56 out of 59 Scottish seats, all but obliterating Labour as well as the Tories and Liberal Democrats north of the border. “If only we could vote for her too,” was a common refrain in radical parts of England.
Related: Signs of burnout at SNP conference: 'I’m not quite sure what we’re for now'
Last year, Sturgeon spoke from a rostrum whose slogan was a chest-thumping ‘Stronger for Scotland'
Related: The Guardian view on the SNP conference: deals and ideals | Editorial
Continue reading...October 6, 2017
Grant Shapps is but the latest in a long line of Tory plotters | Martin Kettle
Theresa May is a weak prime minister after June’s election, but she is in no way unique in facing malcontents who want her out
As a Conservative plotter, Grant Shapps stands on the shoulders of giants. There have been Tory plotters for as long as the Tory party has existed. It is more than 200 years since a member of the Tory cabinet during the Napoleonic wars, the war minister Viscount Castlereagh, fought a duel with another, the foreign secretary George Canning, because of the latter’s plotting (they both had to resign).
Related: Tory ministers privately agree Theresa May should go, says Grant Shapps
A Tory leadership contest can be triggered in two ways: if the leader resigns, as David Cameron did after the EU referendum; or if 15% of the party’s MPs demand one.
Related: Anti-Theresa May rebels advised by plotters who ousted Iain Duncan Smith
Continue reading...October 5, 2017
Yes, May is weak. But do her rivals have the nerve to wield the knife? | Martin Kettle
A generation ago, the historian Anthony Seldon edited a book entitled How Tory Governments Fall. A sweeping survey, it stretched more than 200 years from Pitt the Younger to John Major. I bought the book at the Conservative conference in Bournemouth in 1996 but, confession time, barely opened it. With the Major government already on its death bed, its analysis seemed wholly superfluous to the times.
Related: Theresa May’s conference speech: the verdict | The panel
Related: 'Burning inside me'? The five worst moments of Theresa May's speech
The Tories are divided between those who think May is a goner, and those who think anything else would be worse
Continue reading...August 31, 2017
Theresa May is weak – but she’s still stronger than her critics | Martin Kettle
As a rule, a politician who announces “I’m not a quitter” is not in a strong place. When Theresa May said those words in Japan this week, for instance, the mind quickly turned to Richard Nixon. “I have never been a quitter,” Nixon told the American people in a televised address. The address in question was the one in which he announced his resignation as president in 1974.
History is full of hubris and hostages to fortune from leaders who think they can go on longer than is wise. “This is only the third term we are asking for … I hope to go on and on,” said Margaret Thatcher in 1987. But she didn’t. “I’m starting a job that I mean to continue,” Gordon Brown announced in 2008. He didn’t either. Both Tony Blair in 2004 and David Cameron in 2015 found that pre-election pledges to serve another five years but no further collapsed under pressure. The truth is that a lame duck is a lame duck.
Related: Senior Tories cast doubt on Theresa May's long-term future as leader
Related: Who do you think will be Tory leader at the next election?
Continue reading...RSPO/Oramo/Chineke!/Edusei review – rounded, exquisite, played to perfection
Royal Albert Hall, London
A stellar performance by Renée Fleming and the first appearance at the Albert Hall by the BAME Chineke! Orchestra made Proms 61 and 62 a privilege to attend
Inevitably, the Proms that always command most critical attention and shift most tickets are those that involve premieres, rarities, outsize pieces and, of course, stars. That’s the way of the world. But such special occasions shouldn’t be permitted to eclipse the others. As Esa-Pekka Salonen once wisely said in an interview, it can be just as rewarding simply to give – and to listen to – a really good concert, too.
Salonen’s fellow Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo can always be relied on for really good concerts – it’s partly why he is making four appearances in this year’s Proms, including the last night. And Renée Fleming is of course, by any measure, a star. But the most striking thing about Wednesday’s early evening Prom by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra was not just Fleming’s excellence but the fact that Oramo and the Swedes had arrived with a really imaginative programme and delivered an exceptionally well made concert.
Related: Chi-chi Nwanoku: 'I want black musicians to walk on to the stage and know they belong'
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