The Glory Glory Glory Tree - Cheryl Frances-Hoad

One of my best memories from last year's festival was hearing the extraordinary pianist/composer Kit Armstrong introducing and playing Ligeti Etudes in Old Malton Priory to what turned out to be a rapt and enthusiastic audience. I think the key was that before he started, this quiet man spent a few minutes explaining what Ligeti was trying to do. That guidance gave people something to hang on to as Ligeti's strange and brilliant sound-world was conjured around us.

I was lucky enough to chat with Kit after the concert, and took the opportunity to ask him what I fondly thought to be interesting and informed questions about Ligeti and about composing in general. Kit is a kind man, and essayed a few responses in my direction. But in truth, there was a gulf – Kit's a bona fide genius (probably the only one I've ever met) - and eventually he looked at me and said: 'You know, it may be that I hear music a bit differently from you'.

It may be.

One of the most exciting aspects of this year's festival promises to be the contribution of our composer-in-residence Cheryl Frances-Hoad. She comes garlanded with plaudits and her talent has been fostered by some of the brightest luminaries in the modern composing world. Our first introduction to her music will be the debut of her Ryedale Piano Concerto at the opening concert, inspired by the geography and (I suspect) history of the place.

But is she any good? What's her music like? Will Ryedale like it? Just how modern is it?

Answers first, explanation afterwards. Oh, she's good, and at her best, devastatingly so. But yes, she's 'modern' in ways which can be challenging. Will Ryedale like her? We shall see – but I'm starting a campaign right here (and have already lobbied Chris Glynn) to engineer an extra performance of her work during the festival because I have a feeling it could be one of the truly unmissable events of this year, or indeed any year. My first piece of advice to those attending the concert is. . . . buy the program and read it. It will probably help a lot.

I have done my homework, downloading her album of chamber music 'The Glory Tree' and putting in some serious hours of listening. I must confess that after a few days, I remained slightly baffled: she claimed her chief influences were Ligeti, Prokofiev and Britten (if I remember correctly), and to my ear, there's plenty in there from Bartok, Takemitsu, Ades – but a series of 'influences' doesn't necessarily add up to compelling music.

Actually, I couldn't really understand what she getting at. This issue of understanding is, and has always been, key to the experience of new music, but it's an aspect we tend to ignore. That's not surprising: for the most part, we don't think much about what music is doing, we just enjoy it. But throughout history, audiences haven't come equipped and ready to understand genuinely new music. It involves work, and – let's face it – most of us don't come to concerts ready to roll up our sleeves. Consequently, throughout history the rejection of new music has been a revolt against the work of understanding. For example, faced with the wild explorations of the Hammerklavier, Beethoven's contemporaries reached for the easiest conclusion – that he had gone mad. Something along the same lines has greeted most composers we are now comfortable with. Even Puccini reckoned the Rite of Spring was evidence Stravinsky could be measured for a straight-jacket.

But with understanding can come great rewards, and and so it was for me with The Glory Tree. The Glory Tree is a five-movement work for soprano and chamber ensemble, and I long, genuinely long, to hear it in Ryedale – preferably somewhere like Gregory's Minster in Kirkdale. At first the piece struck me as vertiginous, but this was a case where the program notes really helped. For in The Glory Tree Frances-Hoad takes Old English poems of the 6^th to 8^th century which are traditionally interpreted as religiously inspired, and re-conceives them as shamanistic utterances. The five movements then follow the shaman up to heaven, across the sea, down to hell, with movements transitioning between these places. With this to guide you, this 'difficult' music becomes quite clear, and fully capable of raising the hairs on the back of your neck, sinking you into worlds of great transient beauty, and even leaving your somewhat breathless. This is it, you realise, the genuine 100% proof hard stuff of music. Can there be a better place for it than Ryedale?

Just the place for Anglo-Saxon shamans

Choices, Choices. . . .

Time and the Ryedale Festival booking office wait for no man, so this morning has been make-your-mind-up time: how are the Taylor family going to pick their way through the Festival?

It's not easy. There's the programme, in its Queen of the Night blue wrapper, and slap in the middle, the list of possibilities, all 37 of them, not double counting for Sledmere or triple for  Castle Howard.

Let's be honest, it's probably physically impossible to go to all of them, and in addition, the 'Total Payment' row at the bottom of the page is a reminder that there's the budget to consider as well.  During the early years, I'd binge-book, and then forgive myself when I discovered I simply couldn't shift my bones for a particular concert. But the years have brought wisdom, or perhaps just caution, and now my wife and I edit and winnow, and winnow and edit until we think there's a fair chance we'll be able to manage our portion.

Because if the eyes are greedier than the stomach, then this year's  programme is the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet at the Mandarin Grill.  Has Ryedale ever seen such a gathering of musical talent? Have the choices ever been tougher?

Well, I'm not going to disclose all my preferences, and quite a few concerts pick themselves, but here are a few hints. . . .

• Question, what could be better than a concert by Ukranian violinist Andrej Bielow? Answer, lots of concerts by lots of  Andre Bielows, so thank God (and Glynn) that he's bringing his quartet, the Szymanowski, with him. Fun fun fun! 
• I've not heard Alexandra Silocea, the young Romanian pianist, but good grief, look at the programme she's offering at her Coffee Concert at Hovingham on Wednesday 17th.   Mozart, Debussy, Liszt and then finishing with Beethoven (The Waldstein).  Looks worth missing half a morning's work for that.
• Last year, people were raving about Mahan Esfahani's harpsichord recital. I missed it, but take a look at this: that's how you drive a Bach prelude right through to the end! This year he's offering what the programme calls 'a rarely-heard sonata by van Wassanaer, the so-called 'mystery composer' of Holland.
• A couple of years ago, the tenor Thomas Hobbs stayed with us for a few days, so we got to know his voice pretty well, and a beautiful thing it is too. Now look at the programme of English song he's involved in at Duncombe Park on Saturday 20th July: Purcell, Elgar, RVW, Howells, Britten, Flanders & Swan.  All the guys in the band, in fact.
• And then there's Chi-chi Nwanoku. Look, there's no shame in savouring a name like that. But wait, it gets much better than that: when she got fed up with sprinting, she became one of the country's best double-bassists, helped found the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, was awarded the MBE for services to music in 2001, and, and, and . . .  now she's coming to the Ryedale Festival. 

Call My Bluff for Music Lovers

This is slightly off-topic, but surely worth the time of any music-lover.

I was member of the  team that won last year's Ryedale Book Festival's Literary Quiz, and, as you would imagine, with such eminence comes an appropriately large burden of responsibility.  I boast - the team was merely asked to compile a literary quiz for World Book Night (no, me neither), to was held last week  in the Sun Inn in Pickering.  Anyway, my team-mates did most of the work, but I am proud to have introduced a 'Call My Bluff' round.

Actually 'Call My Bluff' is something the Taylor family does to pass the long winter evenings: we enjoy the mix of the abstruse and the invented.

So here's my Call My Bluff question for music-lovers, to be done (as a test of your iron self-control) without benefit of internet or dictionary. What is a serinette?

a. A small barrel organ used for teaching singing birds.
b. A French word for silk weaver.
c. A 17th century Italian dance.

Don't all tweet at once.

Answers next time, when I will also reveal the unlikely link between Ryedale, the amazing pianistic Labeque Sisters, who will be making Sledmere ring on Thursday July 18th,  and the differently-amazing violinist Viktoria Mullova.  I can confidently assert that you won't find the answer to that one on the web, no matter how hard you try.  

And We're Off!

And so it's off to St Peter's, Norton, for the concert launching the 2013 programme. First we have a concert - this year by the Gould Piano Trio - and then this year's Festival Programme is introduced by Artistic Director Chris Glynn, and the physical programmes distributed. For me,  this is where the long run-in to summer really begins. If the launch concert is here, can July be far behind? 

The Gould Piano Trio took us through a programme of Haydn, Arensky, Beethoven and Shostakovich. The Haydn was everything you'd expect: witty, tricky and energetic.  Haydn just won't rest until he's twisted round every unlikely corner. Well, that's what I hear now in the 21^st century – what must they have thought in the 18^th? (Now there's a question: is Haydn more easily heard breaking conventions now or in the 18^th century? Discuss. )

Then came a trio by Anton Arensky. I've not met this Arensky before, but thought his Op 32 Trio sounded like something Vaughan Williams or Howells might have produced after a night with the vodka and bevy of gypsy girls. No stint of melody, shall we say. By happy chance, as the slow movement faded out, the dusk chorus was alive, and produced a particularly fine  blackbird counterpoint. John Cage would have approved (and so would Celibidache).

The second half began with Beethoven's cello/piano variations on a theme out of the Magic Flute – and cellist Alice Neary reminded us she had been part of the opera orchestra for the Festivals Cosi van Tutti some years ago.

But the musical highlight of the evening was surely the Shostakovich Trio #2. Deeply emotional stuff this – harrowing at times too, since this was in part, Shostakovich's musical response to the discovery of the Holocaust atrocities. I loved it, cold and bleak and tragic and wintry as it was . . . it was still the real tabasco. The Trio invited us to view the opening movement as painting a journey through the Soviet Union. This was inspired: those wild keening high notes on the cello conjuring up the dreadful lonely cold, and later the discovery of a chuntering rhythm shunting the music along like, yes, cattle trucks. Difficult to listen to this now and not think of Steve Reich's 'Different Trains.' 

It remains a great mystery how music can explore such pain and yet leave you uplifted and smiling. But there it is.

Finally, it was Artistic Director Chris Glynn's turn to shepherd us through the programme. I'll write enough about the programme later, no doubt. I recommend that you download it from here. But more important on this night was the welcome absence of the St Peter's Spider.

Some of us will remember the moment a few years ago when, as the  Artistic Director began to speak, something of imposing Amazonian appearance got to the red carpet, flexed its eight sinister legs and. . . legged it for the door. (It reminded me of the time a hairy crab got loose on the Shanghai-Hong Kong flight and we all ended up crouched unmanned on our seats as the air hostesses cornered and  eventually captured this tasty but terrifying delicacy.) On this occasion, if I remember correctly, panic was averted when a ram-rod backed man sprang to the rescue, cupped it in his hands and escorted it to the door. 'Seen worse in Malaya', I think I heard. 

So here's a photo of the Gould Piano Trio. Quite possibly they are  expressing their relief that the  St Peters Spider kept away. Or maybe not - I could be mistaken.  

Introduction and Exposition

So there I was, inoffensively letting the Ryedale Festival committee meeting carry on before my lazy gaze, when unbidden from my lips I heard 'We should have a blog. Why don't we have a blog?'  Eyes down, I got on with pencilling in the noughts in the set of Johnny Minford's festival accounts, but gradually became aware that the talking had stopped.  And as I glanced up, I heard Robin Andrews: 'Thanks Michael. Ann, can you make a note of that please - Michael's going to write us a  blog.'

As others before me have discovered, Robin is a man who gets things done. In this case, me. So welcome to Ryedale Festival Counterpoint.  

I'm not sure how our great musicians would have regarded this development.  As Gustav Mahler pointed out: 'If a composer could say what he had to say in words, he wouldn't bother trying to say it in music.'   Beethoven was  probably agreeing when he said:  'Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend'. (A bit late quartets, that?). And there's not much help from Stravinsky either: 'I haven't understood a bar of music in my life. But I've felt it.'

Perhaps music-loving writers could be more help?  It depends. 'When words leave off, music begin' says  Heine. Thanks for that helpful advice, Heinrich. And it gets worse: 'Hell is full of musical amateurs' says George Bernard Shaw. Actually, that's got to be wrong, don't you think? Did GBS never sing in a choir? Did he never pick up a fiddle and scratch out a carol at Christmas?  

Thank God for the French, or at least for Victor Hugo. He's my man, and what he said deserves the quote-box treatment, for it is this blog's manifesto:

"Music expresses that which cannot be said, and on which it is impossible to be silent."