Dreaming of Gerontius

I went to a performance of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius on Saturday, at Birmingham's stunningly-restored Town Hall. The performance was by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Ex Cathedra Choir. Jeffrey Skidmore conducted and the soloists were Anna Stéphany, Adrian Thompson and Roderick Williams ('welease Wodewick!').

Gerontius was premiered at the Town Hall in 1900 - disastrously. This massive oratorio - a weird but moving take on Christian spirituality - was delivered late to the choir, who didn't rehearse properly, and whose director died four months before the first night.

This performance, however, went more than smoothly. Despite not having the slightest trace of religious or spiritual sentiment in my mean and crabby body, I was profoundly affected both by the music and its performance. The choir and orchestra - a 'period instrument' outfit which is for a piece only a century old - played with a lightness of touch which brought out all the sublety thought not to exist in Elgar, whose crusty 'Victorianness' hides (like Tennyson before him and Vaughan Williams later) a more radical core.

Mark's already told me that classical music is dead, but he's an ignorant poseur on this matter. It was disappointing that I was basically the youngest person there by several decades, barring some unwilling or precocious kids. There's a terrible air of smugness in UK classical music which sees a lot of bow tie wearers resentful of all efforts to popularise the art form - unlike Italy, for instance, where it's cheaper and equally acceptable to see an opera as it is to watch Juventus.

Anyway: Saturday's performance was an absolute triumph.

Poetry please

In case I haven't previously plugged it, run free in the Poetry Archive: huge numbers of poets reading their own work, going back as far as Tennyson and taking in Ginsberg and Langston Hughes along the way!

One of those perfect days

Just a quick hello as I have a quiet five minutes. I've spent the day with Neal, Dan and Georgie, Dan's social worker. Well, girlfriend. We had a wander round my mother's lovely garden, pursued by hens, and then around the Dorothy Clive garden, nodding sagely while Dan and Georgie named various flowers and stuff. I took a few good pictures, including several of a very obliging rabbit, and ate wonderful ice-cream. I'll post some when I get back to the office. 

Then it was off to a antiques craft village (Dagfields Farm), where I managed to spend £30 on books in very little time, despite not having a working cash card yet… it's hard to resist two beautiful 1895/1896 pocket editions of Tennyson ('Locksley Hall' and Other Poems, 'The Spinster's Sweet-Arts' and Other Poems), another Left Book Club edition (Ruth Gruber's I Went to the Soviet Arctic, 1939), Susannah Radstone's Sweet Dreams, about sexuality and gender in popular fiction, a Moomins book I now realise I already have, a good Faber edition of Selected Poems of Louis MacNeice, John Christopher's The Year of the Comet and an M. John Harrison novel I hadn't previously seen, The Committed Men. 

Best of all, I hardly scraped the surface of the place and will have to return again, and again, and again…

Death is in my sights today

Firstly this week, sympathies to Demented Demon (he's a nice chap, despite the monicker). His grandfather died alone in hospital recently, and on when the death certificate appeared did it become clear that he'd died of C. difficile.

It's a times like this when some really good poetry might help; when the rationalities are simply too cold. I suggested Tennyson's In Memoriam, though perhaps some Larkin or Hardy might suffice. Above all, my favourite poem about young men coping with death is 'Poem', by Simon Armitage,

Simon Armitage, ‘Poem’.

Frank O’Hara was open on the desk

but I went straight for the directory.

Nick was out, Joey was engaged, Jim was

just making coffee and why didn’t I

come over. I had Astrud Gilberto

singing ‘Bim Bom’ on my Sony Walkman

and the sun was drying the damp slates on

the rooftops. I walked in without ringing

and he still wasn’t dressed or shaved when we

topped up the coffee with his old man’s scotch

(it was only half ten but what the hell)

and took the newspapers into the porch.

Talking Heads were on the radio. I

was just about to mention the football

when he said, ‘Look, will you help me clear her

wardrobe out?’ I said, ‘Sure Jim, anything’.

Recommendations?