Martin Kettle's Blog, page 63
September 9, 2016
How May put grammar schools back at the heart of Conservative thinking
For Cameron, the Tory preoccupation with selection showed it was backward looking. His successor sees it differently
Two months after the change of regime in Downing Street, nothing has marked the difference between the Conservatism of Theresa May and the Conservatism of David Cameron more sharply than the question of grammar schools.
This week the grammar-school-educated new prime minister put educational selection back at the heart of Tory educational thinking for the first time since the 1970s – albeit in a very different way from the past. Yet her Eton-educated predecessor once defined himself by insisting that there would be “no return” to selection at 11 and no new grammar schools.
September 8, 2016
If Sports Direct can change, why not all our workplaces? | Martin Kettle
When Theresa May talked about industrial strategy, reform of corporate governance and workers on boards this summer, her words came completely out of the blue. She wasn’t responding to a hot issue in British politics. She wasn’t jumping aboard a populist or media bandwagon. Few in her party cared about these issues at all. In almost every serious respect the issues were as dead as dodos in British politics.
Related: Theresa May's plan to put workers in boardrooms is extraordinary
British companies have too often been run by people who think management know best and that employees know nothing
Continue reading...Staatskapelle Dresden/ Thielemann review - Trifonov sparkles in Mozart
Royal Albert Hall, London
Daniil Trifonov’s Mozart sparkled with virtuosity while Thielemann’s sensationally well-played Bruckner required more suppleness
Comparisons are inescapable. After two Proms this week of Mozart piano concertos and Bruckner symphonies from Daniel Barenboim and his Berlin orchestra, here was Christian Thielemann and his revered Dresden orchestra also with a Mozart piano concerto and a Bruckner symphony.
The result – with apologies to the sensitive – was a score draw. Dresden was better in the Mozart, Berlin ultimately won out in the Bruckner. Dresden’s great advantage in the former was Daniil Trifonov’s sparkling and virtuosic account of Mozart’s C major concerto, K467. The sheer elan of Trifonov’s pianism, abetted by a full-size orchestra and attentive accompaniment from Thielemann, meant the concerto reached out into the huge spaces of the Albert Hall in ways that more fastidious accounts struggle to match. Trifonov’s unapologetic approach was embodied in his own first and third movement cadenzas, which had Profokiev-like zip, but he spun the Andante with a limpid touch, too. Appropriately, his encore was a Prokofiev transcription.
Continue reading...September 7, 2016
Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim review – leisurely Mozart, exalted Bruckner
Royal Albert Hall, London
Daniel Barenboim’s subtle touch in a Mozart piano concerto and the immense solitariness of Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony stood out in this final-week Prom
For his second Mozart concerto and Bruckner symphony pairing of the final Proms week, Daniel Barenboim matched two relatively neglected works in each category. It made for a particularly fruitful piece of programming, and the intellectual heft of the performances underlined that these Staatskapelle Berlin concerts have been far more than just a Daniel Barenboim show.
Mozart’s penultimate piano concerto, in D major, K537, has long been a Barenboim favourite. Conducting from the keyboard, speeds were leisurely, but Barenboim was utterly engaged, savouring the work’s dynamic contrasts and the solo part’s many opportunities for competitive interplay with the orchestra. His preferred choice of Wanda Landowska’s grandly conceived first-movement cadenza brought operatic echoes, but it was the subtly varied manner in which he weighted his keyboard touch that made the strongest impression.
Continue reading...September 6, 2016
Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim review – fresh and engaged on every page
Royal Albert Hall, London
Daniel Barenboim’s rich playing illuminated Mozart’s C minor piano concerto and his conducting dug deep into Bruckner’s Fourth
Daniel Barenboim is such a tireless musician and public figure that there are evenings where he can seem to be winging it. But not in this first of two Proms with his outstanding Berlin orchestra. Barenboim must have played Mozart’s C minor piano concerto K491 dozens of times, and conducted the Fourth Symphony of Bruckner almost as often. But there was nothing routine about these performances, which were fresh, engaged and exploratory on almost every page.
Even when he conducts from the keyboard, as he did in the stormy and dark-hued concerto, Barenboim’s approach to Mozart reflects the early 20th century’s emphasis on the didactic role of the soloist. The weight and rich tone of the playing was unashamed, though there was still liquid lightness in the hands, too. Speeds were leisurely, allowing Barenboim room to explore the nuances of the piano writing. He played his own Beethovenian cadenza in the first movement and introduced some decorations of his own in the slow movement.
Continue reading...September 5, 2016
What has David Davis told us about Brexit? | The panel
Related: David Davis - backed by Boris Johnson and Liam Fox - sets out Brexit plans - Politics live
Continue reading...September 1, 2016
Theresa May will lead us into a bleak future – outside the single market | Martin Kettle
In a famous eulogy published following his death in 1881, the Times wrote of the 19th-century Tory prime minister Benjamin Disraeli that he “discerned the Conservative working man in the inarticulate mass of the English populace, as the sculptor perceives the angel imprisoned in a block of marble”.
Can Disraeli’s admirer Theresa May already discern the shape of her Brexit deal imprisoned in the block of marble too? This week’s cabinet meeting at Chequers gave us some clues about the Britain the prime minister sees in her mind’s eye. A briefing stressed that curbing migration is a red line, and that Britain is not interested in an off-the-shelf deal with Europe but a bespoke one. Nevertheless it is still far from clear, perhaps even to May herself, what will emerge once she has finished with her hammer and chisel.
Related: Restricting immigration will be at heart of Brexit deal, Theresa May says
All the choices that follow from Brexit are difficult – and many of them are very bad ones indeed
Related: Has Theresa May really thrown in her lot with the Brexiteers? | Jackie Ashley
Continue reading...August 31, 2016
Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra/Jordan – exemplary, persuasive Bruckner, intimate and restrained Bach
Royal Albert Hall, London
Pairing Bruckner’s ninth symphony with Bach’s intimate Cantata No 82 was a daring but successful choice, with Christian Gerhaher an eloquent soloist
Bruckner looms large in the final stretch of this year’s Proms, with Daniel Barenboim and Christian Thielemann at the helm next week in three of his middle-period symphonies. But this Bruckner mini-festival started at the end, with an outstanding account of the uncompleted ninth symphony by the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, under the baton of the music director of the Paris Opera, Philippe Jordan.
Jordan flies under the radar in the UK by comparison with next week’s superstars. But his account of the ninth symphony was out of the Brucknerian top drawer. It had exemplary clarity of texture – important with Bruckner’s complex harmonies – eschewed unwritten meaningful pauses and built inexorably across the three extant movements. Perhaps the opening movement could have been given a little more room to breathe, but by the time Jordan reached the grinding orchestral discords near the end of the slow movement – which were followed, as written, with an immensely meaningful pause – the more potent for its singularity, this performance had found its own persuasively authentic way to lay bare the doubts and struggles that underlie so much of Bruckner.
Continue reading...August 25, 2016
On left and right, our politics is now dominated by nostalgic gestures | Martin Kettle
If only we could bring back grammar schools, say Tories. If only we could renationalise the railways, laments Labour. And this yearning to return to the past seems hardwired into the human brain in lots of other ways, not just in politics. The blue-remembered hills where life seemed simpler, summers more summery, winters more wintery, people more trusting, children more childlike, sport more sporting, and where pop music was simply better than today, have us all under their spell in different ways.
That’s certainly true of the BBC, which with an uncanny feel for British retrophilia has embarked on a project to remake classic comedies that feels like a well-timed tribute act for post-Brexit Britain. Whoever thought that the camp smut of Are You Being Served?, the liberal naivety of The Good Life or the racial edginess of Till Death Us Do Part could find a new niche in 21st-century Britain? It’s as though the most important invention in modern technology is the rewind button.
Continue reading...São Paulo SO/Alsop review – Montero makes heavy weather of Grieg
Royal Albert Hall, London
Marin Alsop led the São Paulo Symphony in bright, idiomatic performances of the Brazilians Nobre and Villa-Lobos, but there were longueurs elsewhere
Marin Alsop has raised the standards and profile of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra to new levels in recent years, but this Prom, midway through a short European tour, sometimes felt like a date too far in a crowded schedule, which also included a late-night Prom of Brazilian popular music.
Alsop’s energy on the podium is unflagging and her driving performance of the Brazilian composer Marlos Nobre’s crisply rhythmic Kabbalah was a promisingly idiomatic start to the evening. But with both Alsop and the soloist Gabriela Montero making unduly heavy weather of the Grieg piano concerto, things sagged. Montero’s tendency to slow the phrasing, particularly obvious in the opening movement, was the chief culprit, but it added up to a performance that never really took wing. Anyone who heard Martha Argerich re-energise another warhorse concerto, Liszt’s First, in the same hall last week could hardly fail to notice the contrast. Montero’s encore, a witty improvisation on Land of Hope and Glory, had the panache that her playing of the concerto had lacked.
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