Michael Henderson

Saturday

Michael Henderson

Worshipping at the shrines

So far as Robert Craft is concerned, Stravinsky represents a mine of limitless resource. Having spent the last 23 years of the composer’s life serving him as fan, friend, conductor, associate and general reviver of spirits, virtually as a member of the family, he remains the most loyal of servants, righting every wrong, fighting every battle and keeping the flame aglow. He has even arranged to be buried alongside Stravinsky and his second wife, Vera, in Venice, for, as the composer told him, ‘we are a trio con brio’. So the question must be asked: is the old boy worth it? When he died in 1971 Stravinsky was widely considered to be the most famous ‘serious’ musician in the world (Lorenz Hart gave him a name check in Pal Joey), and the greatest composer.

Michael Henderson

In praise of Haitink

There was a unique event in Amsterdam last week, and the music-lovers who heard it felt a special glow. Bernard Haitink returned to the Concertgebouw, the orchestra with which he will forever be associated, and which he first conducted 50 years ago, to celebrate his ‘golden anniversary’ of music-making with a pair of symphonies by the ‘house’ composer, Gustav Mahler. Since orchestral life became organised 150 years ago, and the conductor assumed a more prominent role than mere time-beater, no person has worked with an ensemble for 50 years, so it really was a celebration. The programme Haitink conducted in November 1956, when he stood in for Carlo Maria Giulini, featured, somewhat improbably, a Cherubini Mass and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Saturday

Michael Henderson

Czech mate

For a man who was told by Neville Cardus not to bother leaving Australia to find his true voice in Europe, Charles Mackerras has prospered to a degree that must have been unimaginable when he was growing up playing the oboe in Sydney. A knight of the realm, a Companion of Honour, and a recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society gold medal, Mackerras was recently given a lifetime achievement award by Gramophone magazine in recognition of his services to the musical life of his adopted country. Few conductors have his range, and few are regarded more highly by musicians, in the concert hall and the opera house.

Saturday

Michael Henderson

Ken Dodd: still happy at 78

More than 50 years after his debut, the Squire of Knotty Ash plays 120 shows a year, each lasting five hours. He tells Michael Henderson what comedy is — and quotes Aristotle There are certain goals in life that one might accomplish, given the time and the will: climbing the Matterhorn, say, or sitting through the Ring cycle in a week (both need a head for heights). There are other things one might do in dreams, like scoring a century at Lord’s. But one thing every person sound of mind and body can and should do before they die is catch Ken Dodd, the once-and-forever king of comedy, working his magic on stage. This month, as always in October, he’s in Blackpool.

Saturday

Michael Henderson

The madness begins

Overture and beginners, please. This is it, for real, and mercifully the hysterical months of jingo-jangle jibber-jabber are stilled and silenced into concentration today when, at long last, the England football team plays the first of its three qualifiers in the World Cup against Paraguay in Frankfurt. To reach the sudden-death knockout stages in a fortnight’s time, England also need, as they say, ‘a result’ against Trinidad & Tobago in Nuremberg on Thursday, and against  Sweden in Cologne on Tuesday week. The strident tedium of the trailers has been excruciating. Now all shall be revealed. Will the defence dither and drift? Has the once dagger-sharp Lampard refound his edge; Gerrard his appetite; Owen his speed off the mark?

Thursday

Michael Henderson

I hate football so much these days that I can hardly bear to report it

The message was brief and the writer got straight to the point. 'I'd just like you to know that you are a fucken cocksucker,' it read, 'and that your article on Leeds supporters was a load of absolute fucken bullshit. You're a stupid fucken predjudice [sic] half-wit.' After more of the same (yawn) it was signed 'Angry and dangerous'. If you were looking for the authentic voice of the football supporter, at the start of another season, Mr Angry would make a fair representative. No matter what the well-scrubbed 'experts' tell you on the telly, no matter how seductive are the endless puffs on Radio Five Live, the game relies for much of its support on the kind of illiterate who sent that email. He was not alone. Another message read: 'What a load of bollocks you sad t**t.