Culture

William Kapell was an American concert pianist with the looks of a male model and the fingers of a wizard. He played the concertos of Rachmaninov at dashing speed but with delicate precision. He was snapped up by RCA in 1944 at the age of 22 and the world’s leading conductors queued up to accompany him. In October 1953 he toured Australia. On his last night there he visited Jascha Spivakovsky, a pianist who had escaped the Russian pogroms as a child, settled in Berlin and then fled to Melbourne after Richard Strauss warned him that he was on a Nazi hit-list. He spent the war helping fellow émigrés escape. That was one reason he never signed a recording contract. Also, Australia didn’t have a classical label.

By chance, my first night in Havana in 1987 was the night the clubs went dark to mark the death of Enrique Jorrin, the inventor of the cha-cha-cha, whose rhythmic brainstorm had gone global. My grandparents used to dance cha-cha-cha at Latin nights at the Grand Hotel in Leicester in the 1950s. Rubén Gonzalez, Jorrin’s pianist, thought that his death spelled ‘the end of the old music’ and went into retirement, his piano destroyed by termites in the tropical humidity. Another contemporary who didn’t quite make his mark was Ibrahim Ferrer — he’d been in a moderately successful band Los Bucucos. Ibrahim retired at about the same time, for similar reasons to Rubén — the work had dried up.

Walking around central London, I’ve been struck by how many shows Frank Sinatra has been performing in town recently. He played a string of concerts in July at the Royal Albert Hall (which as any schoolboy knows was actually named after Sinatra’s middle name), and he is currently performing an extended summer season at the London Palladium. Quite how Frank is going to cope this Friday evening, when this eternal Sinatra séance requires his spirit to put in an appearance as his life and music is celebrated at the Proms, at the same time as he gigs at the Palladium, I’m not sure.

Watching the Berlin Philharmonic going into conclave to choose a successor to Simon Rattle — after countless hours of secret discussion they have chosen Kirill Petrenko — reminds one of little less than the election of a pope. In both cases the expectation is the same: the organisations are so iconic that they must continue into the future without a hitch and without question. Whatever sort of job they are doing, or have done, they have become too much a part of normal life to be abolished. Why is it that symphony orchestras of any standing are expected to survive indefinitely, where smaller musical organisations, though they may be just as established, are not? What are the long-term prospects for the Monteverdi Choir after John Eliot Gardiner retires?

Saul Hudson, more commonly known by his childhood nickname 'Slash', turns 50 today. It is safe to say that the next 50 years of his life are unlikely to be quite as hectic as the first. The heroin-addicted lead guitarist of Guns 'n’ Roses has settled into a routine of philanthropy and Angry Birds. He is always mentioned in magazines as one of the greatest guitarists of all time. The opening to 'Sweet Child o’ Mine' is routinely voted the best guitar riff ever. But the true extent of his genius — which stretches far beyond his ability to produce a nice tune — is still not fully recognised. Many in fact think he's overrated.

Lucas Debargue, a 24-year-old French pianist, came fourth in the finale of the Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow on 30 June, yet he’s the only competitor anyone is talking about. Why? The main reason is that they’re riveted by his backstory. Have you noticed how we all say ‘backstory’ these days, instead of boring old ‘background’? It’s defined as ‘the things that have happened to someone before you first see or read about that person in a film or story’. Neal Gabler wrote a book called Life: The Movie, about our entertainment-obsessed society’s urge to stretch and squash everything from terrorist attacks to an argument at the checkout into an imaginary plot.

Popular culture is all about the shock factor, especially when it involves female popstars. The late Eighties set a precedent for women making statements in their music videos. In 1989 Madonna broke taboos with an interracial love story, complete with burning crosses and a crying saint. A year later Sinead O’Connor was the first woman to cry in a music video. Since then pop-feminism has produced a steady stream of provocation, from the Spice Girls kicking girl-power in our faces, angry man-hating from Alanis Morissette to the independent women of Destiny’s Child. The noughties were pretty much a romp through string bikinis in preparation for Lady Gaga borrowing an outfit from the butchers in 2010.

The main thing that strikes you as you watch AC/DC whip 70,000 people into a frenzy at Wembley stadium is, of course, how very similar they are to David Hockney. And Peter O’Toole, come to think of it. Not to mention Beryl Bainbridge, Eric Morecambe and Sheridan Smith. What all these people share in common is perhaps the most important quality any artist or performer needs: the ability to take your work seriously without taking yourself seriously. It is very, very difficult to play guitar as well as Angus Young, or to hold an audience as well as Brian Johnson. Watch a pub band cover ‘Highway to Hell’ and you’ll realise just how good the originals are.

I had meant to write a dispassionate account of this year’s Glastonbury, really I had. But I’m afraid my plans were ruined by a chance encounter on the final day with my old friend Michael Eavis — the distinctively bearded dairy farmer who founded it 45 years ago. Rather sweetly he has got it into his head — long story — that I once helped him save the festival. Gosh, I hope this is true because it would annoy so many people: suck on that, all you Guardian readers, you lefty stand-ups, you Greenpeace activists. Every time you go to Glasto from now on you must offer a silent prayer of thanks to the Prince of Darkness himself. ‘You coming to see The Who tonight?’ said Eavis. Usually, I like to leave early to avoid the traffic.

When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that people always did what I requested.’ Power, however, is a mirage that fades as you get close. What Mrs Thatcher saw were the trappings, never the essence. Great conductors might get the glory, but someone else pulled the strings. Behind every power there is a greater force. Behind every conductor, there was Ronald Wilford. It is hard to think of Wilford, who died last week, aged 87, without a sneaking admiration. A self-schooled Machiavellian, a Mandelson of music, he invented a chimera of ‘the great conductor’ and, as president of Columbia Artists (CAMI), sold it at unimaginable profit.

All hail Taylor Swift. How she must give baby boomers the fear. Not just baby boomers. Also those who came next, the Generation Xers, who seemed to define themselves culturally mainly via goatees, apathy and heroin. And my own rather listless, half-generation thereafter, with our bigger beards and binge-drinking. Taylor Swift makes us all look old. Because we are old and the world will be hers. You will have heard about her victory over Apple this week — you must have heard about it, because an opportunity to put Taylor Swift on the front of a newspaper is an opportunity not to be missed, particularly now that Elizabeth Hurley is getting on a bit and Princess Kate isn’t getting out much.

Like a lot of essentially cautious people, I like my music to take some risks, play with fire and damn the consequences. In truth, of course, most musicians are every bit as conservative as the rest of us: they do whatever it is they do and if it sells, they keep on doing it until they drop. Three small cheers, then, for Mumford & Sons, who with their recently released third album took a completely unexpected swerve away from the phony banjo-intensive folk that had made their name and their fortune, into the stadium rock’n’roll they have obviously always wanted to play.

‘I can’t tell you what a thrill it is to get this chance in life,’ said Christine McVie, as the opening jangle to ‘Everywhere’ rang out. Judging by their ecstatic reaction, the audience felt much the same way. Look, I’ll be honest. I’m not going to give you a dispassionately critical review of Fleetwood Mac, together again in their classic line-up — Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and, for the first time in 16 years, Christine McVie. But then, who would give you that? A puritan arrived on a time machine from the 16th century? A shadow minister for work and pensions? Who could possibly be so joyless as to not enjoy the Mac being well and truly back?

Can you ballet-dance to words? How can choreography make any seriously worthwhile addition to a piece of music like Mahler’s vocal symphony Das Lied von der Erde? Kenneth MacMillan’s 1965 ballet Song of the Earth, currently on at Covent Garden, is frequently hailed as a masterpiece, but just as often you read comments by people baffled by it, lost in its length and orchestral density, and in their incomprehension of the German/Chinese verses that provided both composer and choreographer with their narratives. The Royal Opera House authorities believed the exercise shouldn’t be attempted at all, and MacMillan, fresh in 1965 from the huge success of his new Romeo and Juliet (premiered by Fonteyn and Nureyev), quit the Royal Ballet to make it in Germany.

The morning after the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra failed to elect a music director, I took a call from Bild-Zeitung, Berlin’s most popular tabloid, seeking analysis. Later, they asked me to write a full-page op-ed. Now shut your eyes a moment and try to imagine any circumstance in which the Sun would ever shine an inch of space on an orchestral conductor — unless, of course, he or she was snapped pants down by paparazzi in an M4 layby. Nothing will ever convince British tabloids to overcome their class-based scorn for art and, while we may think of German media as less counter-elitist, Bild readers consume no more Beethoven per head than Sun browsers. So why the sudden interest? Because, for Germans, this is existential. In Germany, culture defines nation.

Where were you when you heard that Zayn Malik had left One Direction? No, me neither, but as my teenage daughter reports, an entire generation of female youth appears to have been traumatised by the event. Not that she gives a monkey’s herself, of course, but she says that everyone she knows knows someone who knows someone who really cares, sometimes to the point of genuine distress. We can laugh, and indeed we have laughed, rather a lot, but for these sufferers, the flavour of life itself has been tainted and a Lake Baikal of tears has been shed. One Direction, once the perfect five, are now an eroded four. And the rest of the world looks on and wonders, which one will go next? And can it be soon, please? For there is equilibrium in all things, and especially in boybands.

Alfred Cortot (1877-1962) was in my opinion the greatest pianist in recorded history. If I had to give one reason – and there are many – it would be the spontaneity of his playing. Above all you hear it in Chopin. His twists of rubato and infinitely subtle shading of phrases sound as if they've just occurred to him. There's no better demonstration of that art than the first few minutes of his 1935 Chopin Second Piano Concerto with an uncredited orchestra (probably the LSO) and John Barbirolli. Not only is Cortot on top form, but the orchestra plays a delicious but naughty trick – at one point the violins decorate the melody with a little leap that isn't in the score. Once heard, never forgotten. Today brings great news for everyone who loves that recording.

Tours that start in Mexico have a nasty habit of repeating on one. Of all the British groups touring in the United States at the moment, we were the only one to launch our efforts there. But the upshot is that, two weeks later and safely in New York, I am still directing a sea of unnaturally white faces. I am often asked what happens when someone falls ill on stage. The answer is that they leave it, while trying to give the impression that this is all part of the evening’s entertainment. The resulting sense of unease can be felt by everyone in the room, but is perhaps worst for the conductor, whose job it is to fashion an interpretation out of people whose minds are surely elsewhere.