Damian Thompson

When we describe music as ‘sublime’, what do we mean? For the Romans, sublimis signified greatness beyond measure. In the 18th century, Englishmen looked to The Spectator for clarification. Joseph Addison, in his Essay No. 339 of 1712, suggests that the sublime often achieves greatness without stirring up ‘pathetick’ human passions. The example he gives is Milton’s description, in Paradise Lost, of the Messiah looking down on his new Creation, ‘when every Part of Nature seem’d to rejoice in its Existence; when the Morning-Stars sang together, and all the Sons of God shouted for joy’. Whether a composition is sublime is essentially a matter of opinion.

All my life I’ve wanted to be able to write confidently about orchestral performances and I think I may have cracked it. So forgive me while I show off for a paragraph. In the last movement of Bruckner’s Seventh, Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra capture the jauntiness of the opening theme; there’s a twist of Haydn amid the grandeur. But it takes a long time for the brass and woodwind to settle down, and when Bruckner gathers his forces for a climax the conductor leans heavily on the gas pedal, as if he’s nearly missed a turning. No such problems with Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, where from the first bar the sheen of the violins tells you that every twist of the score has been mapped out, not to say ironed out, well in advance.

Record companies: if you insist on sending CDs to my home address without so much as a covering note or a press release, well, that’s just fine by me. West Hill Radio Archives, I can’t say I’d heard of you, but the discs of Toscanini and the BBC Symphony Orchestra that landed on my doormat last week were a lovely surprise, in more ways than one. Toscanini refused to allow these concerts at the Queen’s Hall in June 1935 to be recorded, but thank goodness HMV ignored him. In the case of Elgar’s Enigma Variations the result is a revelation.

Do you have a mysterious and slightly embarrassing musical blind spot? One of mine is for Dvorák, whom I don’t need to be told is a great composer. Maybe it was overexposure to the New World Symphony as a child; or maybe I’m unreasonably irritated by his Czech bounciness, just as some people write off Vaughan Williams because he reminds them of that jibe about the ‘cowpat school’. Anyway, it’s a problem. One way to tackle a blind spot is to listen to a superlative recording of a work by your ‘difficult’ composer. So, a couple of weeks ago, I bought a CD of Dvorák’s Cello Concerto played by Pieter Wispelwey and the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Ivan Fischer.

If you want to make yourself unpopular with a classical musician, bring up the subject of performance anxiety. You can ask soloists how they remember tens of thousands of notes, so long as you make it sound like flattery. But don’t ask how they do it in front of an audience of strangers and critics without dying of fright. Because some of them nearly do. And they don’t like to talk about it — their own nerves, that is; other people’s are fair game. The world of classical music can be as Darwinian as the tennis circuit. Memory lapses are not forgotten. The Wigmore Hall holds a special terror, because it’s often the venue for an artist’s first big recital.

Eternally fresh. That’s how Grieg’s Piano Concerto is described by programme notes, Classic FM, etc. Though, to be honest, eternally stale is nearer the mark. No 19th-century warhorse has been submitted to such regular thrashing since it was written in 1868. In the early days of the Proms, where I heard it last week, they would sometimes schedule it twice in one season. Don’t get me wrong: the work is a masterpiece. Edvard Grieg’s only masterpiece, indeed, which is sad, considering that he composed it at the age of 25 and produced nothing of comparable stature in the remaining 40 years of his life.

What was it Sir Thomas Beecham said about Stockhausen? ‘I’ve never conducted any of his music, but I once trod in some.’ So far as I know, Beecham never commented on the work of Pierre Boulez, but I’m sure his verdict would have been the same. Both composers adopted a modernist language that is politely described as ‘uncompromising’. Until his death in 2007, Stockhausen stoutly maintained this refusal to compromise (except on the question of accepting subsidies, always a flexible principle for the avant-garde).

Here’s a strange thing about Johann Sebastian Bach. Here’s a strange thing about Johann Sebastian Bach. You can be devoted to his work, love it more intensely than any other music, yet never get round to hearing some of his most awe-inspiring compositions, or even know what you’re missing. There are dozens — literally dozens — of pieces of 24-carat Bach whose names are known only to professional musicians and scholars and are barely represented in the recording catalogue: you might find two good digital performances of them, maybe three. Bach wrote at least 400 Church cantatas, of which half are missing.

In the first week of September, the Scottish composer James MacMillan sat in the ‘composition hut’ in the backyard of his Glasgow house, finishing the music he’d been commissioned to write for the Pope’s Mass at Westminster Cathedral. In the first week of September, the Scottish composer James MacMillan sat in the ‘composition hut’ in the backyard of his Glasgow house, finishing the music he’d been commissioned to write for the Pope’s Mass at Westminster Cathedral. ‘I’m enjoying it — oh, the triumphalism!’ he wrote on his blog. He wasn’t kidding. Two weeks later, as the small, frail figure of Benedict XVI processed into the cathedral, a fanfare sounded over his head.