Glass - for Advent

I am writing this while listening to the Meistersinger relay from the Met. on Radio 3. The nearest church to my hotel in Nürnberg - when I was there in April - was St Martha’s, used as the rehearsal room by the real Meistersinger. It was officially closed, but I sneaked in through the sacristy to peak at the stained glass, much of it as early as the late 14th Century. (Here's John the Baptist, 15th Century.)

St Martha’s had escaped lightly in World War II, but just over two months after my visit, fire engulfed the entire church: providentially its windows had been removed pending renovation work.

Glass of another sort was on the bill of the concert I went to on Thursday night at the Pittville Pump Room. As the centrepiece of their programme, the estimable Carduccis played Philip Glass' Quartet no. 3. Others in the fullish house loved it, they told me, but I was left cold. I could have coped with it as the backgound to a film - for which it was originally intended - but coming after the well known Mozart D minor, its major key Andante played magically, it seemed to go nowhere, and to take twice (rather than half) the time of Mozart in doing so.

After the interval, the Carduccis tackled one of the masterpieces of the repertoire, Beethoven Op 132, its 20-minute slow movement wringing the heart. Once over, you are led to think its all going to be plain sailing, only for a wrestling match to develop - as far from music of the 18th Century as you can imagine. A thrilling performance!

70th Cheltenham Music Festival

"Do not bid me remember mine end," urges Falstaff in Henry IV Part 2. Ignoring his example, I reflected this morning that the Adagio sostenuto at the heart of Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" might do quite well for my funeral. Only, at 15 minutes (more or less minimum), it's of course grotesquely too long.

In Steven Osborne's performance, however, this was far from the case. Never have I found myself taking this sonata so seriously. It was the climax to a majestic recital - early Schubert and lateish Beethoven, all written within about a three-year period. The packed Pittville Pump Room responded appropriately, and we emerged into the sunlight to enjoy a picnic on the grass with friends - and afterwards a wander over one of forger Forbes' bridges across the lake towards a source of rather good ice creams.

Takács +

Graham Mitchell was the guest bassist with the Takács Quartet this evening, for a performance of the Dvořák String Quintet. I much enjoyed it! Not a work I remember ever hearing before, it took away the slight feeling I had after Rusalka, that Dvořák could be a bit of a bore.

Mind you, it was helped along greatly for me by having a seat close enough to be able to watch the eye contact between the players: a performance like this doesn't happen by accident, you realise.

Before the interval they had played Janáček's first quartet, which Edward Dusinberre introduced for us: as introductions go, it was a model, and it was lovely to hear the great man's speaking voice, as opposed to the voice of his violin. But what he said took away from, rather than added to the enjoyment of this wonderful piece, I found.

What made me happiest all evening was the sublime Andante of Mozart's E flat quartet, K 428, a perfect illustration of that unique Takács sound. Aren't we lucky to have had them in our midst so regularly these past three decades!

Lucas (2)

"The solo singing was wonderful. As Jephtha, James Gilchrist offered... virtuoso bravado..." So today's paper describes (with 5 stars) Tuesday night at the Barbican . And yesterday's Cheltenham lieder recital by that same tenor might, I feel, be described in similar terms.

It could be three years since I attended a Music Society event at the Pittville Pump Room, I'm rather ashamed to say. (Their programmes deserve more loyal support.) And I wasn't really looking forward to last night's mixed bag with any great relish, having been critical of a programme Gilchrist gave at our July 2012 Festival.

As it turned out, I was taken aback not just by the beauty of his voice, but the confidence and variety of tone he brought to his performance - settings of Shakespeare, Byron and Heine by Wolf, Mendelssohn(s), Loewe, Liszt, Grieg and Schubert in part one, and a glorious Dichterliebe after the interval.

The link to my illustration? Tenuous: Gilchrist started adult life as a doctor, and the portrait is supposed to represent another such, St Luke. It's one of the images in a garish-looking East window dating from 1850 in the Norman church I visited on Wednesday, All Saints, Salperton. The glass, "possibly" - Pevsner - by David Evans, is much eclipsed by two splendid late Kempe windows in the South wall.

Eamonn McCabe

I would love to be a witty photographer like Eamonn McCabe, former photo editor of the Guardian. He showed some examples of his art in the Pittville Pump Room this evening, the annual "big" talk put on by the Camera Club. "Alas poor Yorick!" was the Guardian's caption for a shot of a bald-headed goalkeeper cradling the ball.

A good raconteur, McCabe spoke with enthusiasm and wasn't too techy. So he went down well with me, if not with the nerdy fraternity. Great images of course, charting his development from gigs groupie to sports photographer to portraitist. "There's something about loners," he said. "What makes them work?" Solving that question seems very much the key to McCabe's success.

Co-operation

This warm and sunny morning, Thomas and I walked up through Pittville Park to the Pump Room - once again gloriously uncluttered by marquees: his musician Godmother (Imogen Cooper) had kindly left us tickets for her recital with mezzo Christianne Stotijn.

What a lovely programme! A testing trio of Schubert songs was followed by Benjamin Britten's Winter Words. After the interval, a delicious Schubert Imo-promptu, and then two further cycles: more Britten and Mussorgsky. Finally, the bonne bouche - a song by Tchaikovsky.

I enthused about La Stotijn last time she was with us here, accompanied by Julius Drake (was it really four years ago?): my enthusiasm has increased after today's peaches and cream performance, particularly seeing and hearing the rapport she has with Imogen.

David Noton

Cheltenham Camera Club attracted a large number of us - both members and (like me) non-members - to Pittville this evening, for a slick presentation by landscape photographer David Noton. My effort at a photograph to record the occasion shows Chairman Michael Krier introducing David before his talk.

David's portfolio records beautiful places all round the world, and he cleverly brought Google Earth to bear in order to show us where he was off to next. So rapid and distant were his various moves across the planet that I couldn't help wondering what his carbon footprint must amount to.

The point he rammed home was that good landscape photography comes first from careful selection of the location, and then hanging around early and long enough to catch the moment. It also helps to have state of the art kit, no doubt. And the knack of communicating your enthusiasm to a large audience - in return for your £700 fee.

For me, David's landscape images looked a touch unnatural: I like mine somehow more spare, more abstract. The real thrill came when he showed us his portraits.

Full houses at Pittville

The Pump Room was full both this morning and yesterday afternoon - all to the good for the Cheltenham Festival finances. And for the first time after a lengthy gap, we once again get free tea or coffee included in the ticket price - though seeing how much they have gone up, it's just as well.

This morning's programme opened with the Escher String Quartet playing mid-period Mendelssohn (32 minutes, but it felt longer). Piano prodigy Benjamin Grosvenor - only one day out of his teens - then gave us Gaspard de la nuit: this must be hard enough to play at the best of times, but made more so when a phone goes off: this happened four times - does anyone else harbour murderous thoughts as I do on these occasions?

After the interval, the five performers combined to give us the Brahms Piano Quintet, which will surely have sent our royal patron off to lunch in a good mood: I was wondering why police were there directing traffic before the concert.

Yesterday's event that I attended was altogether more unusual: the period instrumentalists Florilegium combined with the Arakaendar Bolivia Choir to give us a nicely varied programme of Bolivian baroque pieces. From the first entry by the choir, processing to the stage, it was clear we were in for something different - a sound we don't get from European singers, even those open-throated Bulgarians.

Not everyone was rushing back to watch Federer v. Murray: an impressive percentage of the audience stayed for the post-concert discussion: Piotr Nawrot SJ and Ashley Solomon (Florilegium's director) gave a riveting account of how it has all come together. Hearing these newly-discovered religious settings removed, at last, the nasty taste left by Swayne's Missa Tiburtina the previous morning.

Leamington

It's not much more than an hour away, yet we hardly ever go to Royal Leamington Spa, as they like it to be known. I was there yesterday for a meeting about the Heritage Open Days, a national celebration of our heritage and culture - construed in the widest sense. 50 countries now take part, we were told. At the time, I mentioned that a sub-set of domestic properties calling itself Cheltenham Eco Homes took part in the HODs weekend for the first time last September: we were encouraged by the public response to repeat the process, and are now calling ourselves Cheltenham ECOHAB - standing for something like energy conservation opportunities - houses and (other) buildings. A colleague and I thought we should tap into what's going on during the HODs in other places - hence the trek over to Warwickshire. The "organiser forum", led by a couple of lively young London ladies, was well attended, and included a tour of the Pump Rooms and the integral Art Gallery & Museum.

Leamington has got it together in a way which puts Cheltenham to shame: it's a tribute to the energies and vision of I guess just one or two people, one certainly being our guide who started as a typist there 20 years ago and now seems to run the place. This unusual royal coat of arms is up in the main hall, not as large or elegant as the Pittville Pump Room, but well used for chamber music, I note from the bumf.

King's place

I refer of course to the King of Melody, Franz Schubert, and his place at the heart of our affections, particularly these nine days starting today, when his music (spirit indeed) will monopolise the Radio 3 schedule. I type this listening to Imogen Cooper playing the D major sonata D 850, relayed from a venue with nearly the same name as my heading. (I can't bring myself to type it because of my apostrophe fetish: I would only say, what an appropriate location the Grauniad chose a few years ago for its new offices.)

What is it that's so special about Imogen's playing? I guess it's the vulerability. Now, at double Schubert's age when his body gave up, her touch seems more tender than it once was - very much in tune with the inner world of a composer, who lives on.

During the concert interval this evening, we heard some spoken word about Schubert: the delightful brogue of that fine lieder singer Ailish Tynan contrasted with the quavering, only slightly accented voice of the 86-year-old Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, by whom I was first introduced to the intensity of Schubert's music. And then Imogen's own voice, as always so warm, and full of love for her (and our) hero, nay King.

Rehearsal photographs rarely flatter the artist: this one taken in the Pittville Pump Room in 2003 is no exception, but it conveys something of the whole-body concentration that Imogen brings to her always memorable performances. As Alan Rushbridger wrote in 2009, "Long may her moment in the sun last."

Martinů

We took our Japanese student lodger along to the Cheltenham Music Society's concert last night, at which the Martinů Quartet played - not Martinů, but Smetana, and also (as an encore) a scherzo from a quartet by the little known (here at least) František Škroup. This second part of their programme we generally thought preferable to the first: Mozart K.590 and Beethoven Op.135. Not that there was much wrong with, in particular, the Beethoven: it's just that - having heard the Takács last month - we are currently feeling spoilt where pieces in the mainstream repertoire are concerned.

The quartet's cellist reminded me of someone: when I woke up this morning, I realised who it was, seeing a photograph of Elizabeth Gateley, my great-grandmother as a young, rather severe-looking bride. Not a musical lady, though, at least so far as I know, and certainly not Czech.

Takács Quartet

Once more, the Cheltenham Music Society has triumphed, in securing the Takács Quartet for their tour's only UK out-of-London recital: recognised as one of the world's leading ensembles, last night they played for a packed Pittville Pump Room audience Haydn's "Lark", Britten no. 3 and Dvořák Op. 51. Could the programming possibly have been influenced by all three works being led off by the second violinist, Károly Schranz, 60 this year? Whatevs.

Talking to Alec Hamilton beforehand, I learnt that he "suffers" Haydn. Poor man! How else can you account for Beethoven? There are a couple of bars in the first movement of the "Lark" and more than a couple in the last movement that pre-echo even late Beethoven.

And without Beethoven, no Britten: his intense last quartet formed the meat course last night. The soaring violin of the Ostinato 2nd movement even outmatching in its eloquence the leader's role in the "Lark" opening.

You can still hear the Takács playing the Haydn and Dvořák (at the Wigmore on Monday) via the iPlayer for five days more. They look and sound like a happy bunch. With their talent, they are as generous as Bill Gates says he would have all the American Presidential candidates be - but some hope there!

Also on Monday, the young Russians making up the Atrium Quartet were broadcast live. Catching up with them on the iPlayer, I admired their early Beethoven in particular: a different sound, but gripping. This quartet is one to watch out for.

Carducci concert

At this morning's Cheltenham Festival recital by the Carducci Quartet, I sat next to a Sixth Form pupil from Dean Close: it is the quartet-in-residence there, a great boost to the school's budding string players, much as the Tewkesbury Abbey "residency" is for the school's young singers.

The programme included the European premier of a Festival commission, Arlene Sierra's Insects in Amber. I am not greatly in favour of programme music, such as this was, but I have certainly endured less pleasant quarters of an hour at previous Festval premiers. The performances of Shostakovich's 8th Quartet and Dvořák's American were excellent, and sent me off in a good humour.

Normally, we are in the cheap seats at the back of the hall - excellent acoustics there - but today I was able to sit close enough to take a photograph (at the end of the new work) because we were the guests of the Summerfield Charitable Trust: it had made the Quartet a grant in the past. The Trust was launching an initiative, seeking to add to its endowment by entertaining a cross-section of the town's lawyers and accountants, so we all went on to a jolly lunch in the Royal Box at Cheltenham Racecourse - one of the perks from Edward Gillespie having taken over as the Trust's Chairman.

Floreat Boesch

I photographed the great Austrian baritone, Florian Boesch in relaxed mood at lunchtime, after his taxing recital in the Pittville Pump Room. Taxing, yet he seemed just as relaxed on stage as off, in spite of the demands of his programme of Loewe, Schubert and Mahler songs.

As three years ago, when he stunned us with his Schwanengesang, members of the audience were on the edge of their seats for much of the time: in particular, the eight Loewe songs were brilliantly characterised. (I knew none of them.)

Cheltenham's own (it seems) Roger Vignoles was the excellent accompanist. But why were there so many empty seats? What is it about even the best lieder recitals that turns our concert-goers away?

Steven Osborne

Thomas has fairly recently been at work on Steven Osborne's website, so we of course made a point of crossing Cheltenham to hear him play this evening for the Cheltenham Music Society, at the Pittville Pump Room.

And what a performance he gave! Schubert's three last piano sonatas - rarely heard together on a single evening surely (though the composer himself so performed them on one celebrated occasion). Exhausting even to listen to, let alone to play - and with what a combination of energy and finesse!

Danish maestri

Here are the bright stars who make up the Danish String Quartet, playing an encore at the end of a taxing programme at the Pittville Pump Room. My neighbour confided that she doesn't approve of encores after a major work such as what made up the second half yesterday evening - Beethoven Op 127. Nor does she like quartets "without a pair of clean shoes between them." (The four did indeed resemble, not so much a string quartet as a pop group.)

However, I was in no position to strike up an argument with someone so kind: I turned up at the box office just a few minutes before the concert, but before I could buy myself a ticket, she had thrust one into my hands and wouldn't hear of my paying her for it. When my other neighbour likewise thrust a spare programme in my direction, I realised it was my lucky evening.

And very good it was too, to hear such uninhibited playing, particularly in early pieces by Nielsen and Thomas Adès, which made up the first half. When it comes to the Beethoven, I'm spoilt by having the Hungarian and the Lindsays' recordings and also (since Gloucestershire Libraries' giveaway sale the other weekend - incomprehensible!) a boxed set of performances by the brilliant Takács.

Cheltenham Music Festival 2010

Christopher Cook, our Music Festival Chairman, welcomed us to the elegant surroundings of the former Daffodil Cinema this evening for the launch of next year's programme. But there were no moving pictures alas.

Instead, Festival Director Meurig Bowen gave us a quiz. Which is the odd one out of the four composers whose anniversaries will be celebrated next year, Schumann, Wolf, Gesualdo or Chopin? I said Chopin, because all the others wrote music for the voice. He said Chopin too - but for a non-musical reason: he was the only one who was not "odd". (Well "mad" was the word he used actually.)

The mooted programme comes across as excitingly varied - which is what Meurig has led us to expect. Nothing stereotyped here! Let's hope those with deeper pockets than me will ante up what is needed in the way of sponsorship, as the economic outlook is bound to cast doubt on the level of box office takings.

But Meurig left the best news of all to a private aside to me after his speech: for the first year in decades, we shall be able to walk out of the South doors of the Pittville Pump Room and be able to admire the gracious prospect of the Park - rather than the ugly profile of the catering marquee. Three cheers for that! It looks like the successful end of a very long campaign that I (along with a few others) have been waging!

Festival finale

Although the Cheltenham Music Festival doesn't end till tomorrow night, I've been to my last event now - a performance by the Australian String Quartet this morning: they put across their compatriot, Peter Sculthorpe's Quartet no 8 well - an interesting piece - but overall did not appear quite to be in the medal category from where I was sitting. The competition has however been fierce in Cheltenham, these last 14 days. Perhaps they were a bit handicapped by playing with a guest cellist.

Last night there were a couple of hiccoughs at the end of Christianne Stotijn's recital, with Julius Drake, but overall that was definitely a medal performance: this 31-year-old mezzo certainly deserves to be going places: the opera stage, I'd hope, with a voice so full of drama and power to colour the phrases. "Das Mädchen fing zu weinen an," she sang in Mahler's celebrated Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen - and we could have wept too I guess, at that and also at other moments during the evening. Great stuff, and great too to be reminded of how difficult it is to sustain a recital of this intensity by the young singer's reluctantly-admitted frailty.

So, a big thank you to Meurig Bowen and to all those who have been responsible for providing us with such a musical feast during this year's Festival!

The art of the quartet

Cheltenham Music Festival is certainly celebrating quartets this year: eight ensembles from round the world are playing for us, and superannuated instruments that have no doubt made up string quartets in the past have been painted for a special exhibition - most of it to be seen in the Summerfield Gallery, part of the University of Gloucestershire's Pittville Campus in Albert Road - round the corner from the Pump Room where the musicians perform.

The brainchild of Festival Director Meurig Bowen, the decorated fiddles and cellos make an appropriate accompaniment for the hilarious Hoffnung cartoons, which form the main show in the Gallery. Some surprising artists have taken up the challenge, including our local MP, Martin Horwood. My illustration shows Bob Devereux's violin on the left, Peter Granville-Edmunds's next to it (his illustration compares the wrecked instrument with a bombed out facade in I think Dresden), and then Mila Judge-Furstova's splendidly adorned cello - even painted on the inside.

But Meurig has run into some flak from the The Strad - see his blog. An interesting question, whether or not painted violins are art! They will be auctioned for charity next year - which doesn't necessarily make them art of course. I would never buy one myself, but they are fun to see exhibited, especally alongside many hundreds of painted violin cutouts, on show in the centre of town in various locations - part of another of the Festival's enterprising education projects.

Yesterday Quatuor Diotima gave the UK premiere of Matthias Pintscher's Study IV for Treatise on the Veil, the most curious work I have heard for a long while: not a single note of music as we know it! In the composer's programme note, he writes intriguingly: "I often find myself wishing that I was able to draw directly onto the sound of the instruments like a painter."

"Sweet little bell"

Elizabeth Watts was the soloist in a delightful lieder recital at the Pittville Pump Room this morning, the first of this year's Cheltenham Festival. Her voice is indeed bell-like, perfectly suited to the "Spring" songs of Schubert which she put together to form a cycle filling the first half of her programme. She reminded me of the young Margaret Price - indeeds she even looks a little bit the same.

After the interval, Elizabeth sang Barber's Hermit Songs and six of Britten's folksongs. It was the Barber that hit the spot for me, the often naive words being brought wittily and poignantly to life by this fine young singer.