Music

Last weekend my iPad sucked me deeper into Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony than I thought possible. Deutsche Grammophon and Touch Press have released an app devoted to the work that rendered me slack-jawed with wonder, like a Victorian on his first visit to a cinema. The app gives you four complete performances of the Ninth: by Ferenc Fricsay with the Berlin Philharmonic (1958); Herbert von Karajan with the same orchestra (1962); Leonard Bernstein with the Vienna Philharmonic (1978); and Sir John Eliot Gardiner with his preposterously named Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (1992). Icons for the performances are next to each other, and the gentlest touch will transport you to and fro. The technology is a marvel.

Every new product, whatever it is, needs a bit of ‘buzz’, and indeed vast numbers of people around the world make a decent living trying to generate that ‘buzz’, while the rest of us spend much of our time trying to ignore it. Last week, though, much chatter was to be had in music-loving circles about the new single from Daft Punk, a French duo who make dance music and dress up as robots whenever they play live. I bought their 2001 album Discovery, which was awash with references to old soft-rock hits of the late 1970s, and was so influential you could hear blatant steals from it on countless chart hits from the subsequent decade.

Being an English pianist must be a lonely calling at times. There is no native tradition like the ones that, say, German or Russian musicians are heir to, so many superb pianists have been unjustly overlooked. It used to be said of John Ogdon that, had he been born Ogdonski, in Minsk rather than Mansfield, his profile would have been greater. Perhaps; but would he have been a finer musician? If you were born in Huyton, the son of a docker, the odds against gaining international recognition are greater still. Yet, in his 42nd year, that is where Paul Lewis stands today as he approaches the final furlong of a three-year survey of Schubert.

When you can do anything you like, what do you do? In Bryan Ferry’s case, the answer seems to be ‘make a 1920s instrumental jazz record out of some of my old songs’. I have to admit that the mere idea of The Jazz Age (BMG), which is credited to The Bryan Ferry Orchestra, appealed to me not at all, and it seems that I wasn’t alone in this, for the record, released just before Christmas, reached only number 50 in the charts and may end up selling something adjacent to Bugger All. The first time you play it, it’s essentially a parlour game. Which one is ‘Slave To Love’? Is that really ‘Virginia Plain’? What on earth have they done to ‘Love Is The Drug’?

I’ve just been reunited with a man whose pungent and patronising views on great composers have haunted me for more than 30 years. His name is Gervase Hughes, and I’ve discovered from Wikipedia that he was an upmarket travel agent who died in 1984. I had no idea, because I knew him only through his book Fifty Famous Composers, published as a Pan paperback in 1972, which mentions his short career as an opera conductor but not his main source of income, which was apparently ‘offering European tours in Rolls-Royce cars’. I lent Fifty Famous Composers (an expanded edition of The Pan Book of Great Composers, 1964) to a friend when I was at university, explaining that it was the wittiest and wisest introduction to the classical canon ever written. He promptly lost it.

I haven’t heard the David Bowie album yet, but the Amazon order is in and Postie has been alerted as to the importance of the delivery. How often these days do any of us feel so excited about an imminent release? The ten-year gap between Bowie albums might have something to do with it, but the 30-year gap between decent Bowie albums is probably more relevant. And all this is down to the excellence of the single. Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet wept the first time he heard ‘Where Are We Now?’, and I was blubbing well into the song’s third or fourth week on Radio 2.

The question of who is going to buy EMI Classics took up most of 2012 and seems destined to run well into the new year. Given that the catalogue in question is probably the most extensive ever put together, containing priceless recordings from the earliest days of so many great artists that it would be otiose even to start listing them in this confined space, you might think that here was the sale of the century let alone of the year. In fact, no one seems to want it. The reason for putting such a property up for sale is that Universal, which already owned much of the music industry, last March began negotiations to acquire EMI as well.

Is there anything more essential to one’s well-being than the sound of an English choir at evensong? Is there, for that matter, any word in our language more beautiful than ‘evensong’, with its evocation of architecture, music and the Anglican liturgy? This is the season to reflect on such matters. On Christmas Eve, Cambridge once again becomes the centre of the world for two hours as the choristers of King’s College celebrate the famous festival of carols and lessons and two days before, in St John’s, Smith Square, the choir of Trinity College will perform Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment. Moreover, they will be singing from memory.