Ring Cycling

It would be interesting to work out how many miles I cycled during this last week that I've spent in London. I visited Wandsworth, Maida Vale, Camden and Southwark, and much in between: rather satisfying, to be seven days in London without a freedom pass, but still paying nothing to get around. The chief hazard I identified was not from buses or lorries, but those fellow cyclists who zoomed past at twice my speed.

It's hard to imagine that 2013 will bring me a greater musical experience than the Proms Ring Cycle, which reached its conclusion last night in a packed and hushed Albert Hall. Too often in the theatre applause breaks out the second the curtain falls, without any savouring of the drama: Barenboim though held us spellbound, not just throughout the five and half hours of Götterdämmerung, but for a good few seconds following the final bar of music.

"It ain't over till the fat lady sings" goes the saying; which while true enough on Saturday, can't be said of this Götterdämmerung. Nina Stemme's physique gives no inkling of her vocal power - a superb Brünnhilde; and matched by the best Siegfried I've come across: Andreas Schager - a great actor with a heroic voice. How rare is that!

"Don't you get bored with seeing The Ring so often?" I'm asked. Far from it! Each time there's something you haven't noticed before. One of my favourite themes is that describing Freia's essential contribution to the vitality of her fellow Gods. "Golden apples grow in her garden," sings Fafner. But the same theme occurred last night when Hagen described his blood as "obstinate and cold" (in contrast to the "pure and noble" blood of Siegfried). And Brünnhilde's refusing Waltraute's request to give up Siegfried's love (or rather its token) is accompanied by the music first heard in the opening scene of Das Rheingold to illustrate the renunciation of love in very different circumstances.

Nobody goes to Götterdämmerung for the jokes, but those of us standing tightly-packed in a stuffy Proms arena could be forgiven for a snigger at Siegfried's words to an off-stage Hagen: "Come down! It's airy and cool here."

From left, my photograph shows Margarita Nekrasova (1st Norn), Schager, Anna Lapkovskaja (Flosshilde), Stemme, a sombre-looking Barenboim, the great Waltraud Meier (2nd Norn and Waltraute), Mikhail Petrenko (as at Cardiff in 2006, a Hagen to be feared - he received a pantomime "Boo!" at his curtain call), the ROH Chorus Director Renato Balsadonna, Maria Gortsevskaya (Welgunde), Aga Mikolaja (Woglinde) and Gerd Grochowski (Gunther).

ValhAlbert

I toyed with the idea of shutting myself in my study at home, and listening to the first Proms Ring Cycle on Radio 3, but I'm glad I decided otherwise: it's memorable, to put it mildly, being in the Albert Hall with so superb an orchestra, under a conductor who knows the score backwards (and for all his jewishness is self-evidently a Wagner lover), and a magnificent cast.

After Das Rheingold on Monday, the comment from next door was about how they might have acted more. I didn't mind that - though it was a bit uneven (some acting more than others). I particularly liked Loge in an MCC tie evoking the Ashes: "Spür' ich lockende Lust sie aufzuzehren." ("I am strongly tempted to burn them up.")

After last night's Die Walküre there could have been no such complaint, surely, about lack of drama. Notung was - hinted Sieglinde - embedded in Henry Wood's bust; the dead duly lay down and the sleeping were carried off (which was a pity, as Loge's ring of fire - summoned by Bryn Terfel with three first class stamps of his patent leather shoes - ran round the orchestra and a bare stage).

But no carping allowed! This was quite simply the best Die Walküre I've ever heard.

The velodrome

I'm in London for a celebration of the life of Adrian Cave. It took place this afternoon in a large lecture room, part of the recently-opened Oil Tanks at Tate Modern. One of Adrian's last projects, he helped in designing its access with elegance, much recalled as his thing at the packed meeting. Its affectionate spirit was summed up by a grandchild's quite brilliant "performance" of Albert & the lion.

The gloomy Oil Tanks themselves were showing video instalations, the magic of which continues to elude me. No doubt I suffer from late onset ADHD.

Before leaving Bankside, I sampled Tino Sehgal's Unilever Series effort in the Turbine Hall. You hardly expect to see two-dimensional framed pictures in that giant space, but this "show" is the exact reverse of what one gets in a conventional gallery. It's a Whiteread experience.

A room full of Rothkos, for example, sees people looking at the walls in silence: Sehgal has us standing or sitting in the Turbine Hall, looking at one another: "us" includes Sehgal's animators, who are liable to come up to one and engage in random conversation. Thus I had the joy of discussing sea bathing off the English coast with an attractive young lady, who broke away as suddenly as she first approached me, only to go and stand 20 yards off. I waited where I was a little longer, wondering whether I was now entitled to walk up to someone in my turn, and what I should say; but I became distracted by the realisation that the Turbine Hall floor would never quite recover from being dug up by Doris Salcedo for her 2007 Unilever show.

En route from Paddington, I paused by the Serpentine Gallery. This year's Pavilion is another sombre affair: a subterranean chamber, with stepped seating finished in dark grey cork to match large mushroom-shaped stools which comprise the only other furniture. The "space" is covered by a flat disc, its surface covered by an inch or so of water. Eleven of the columns below the disc are supposed to characterise each of the eleven previous Serpentine Pavilions, but you could have fooled me.

Avoiding buses because I feared Olympic traffic congestion, I have been riding a Boris Bike for the first time. The sponsors' name has attracted the odd graffiti artist, as can be seen from my photograph. Renting is easier than in Paris, but the biking isn't such fun, certainly when rounding Parliament Square and crossing Westminster Bridge - a bit hairy, dicing with all those buses. Even on the bike route through Hyde Park, it was tricky, being so hugely busy: in Beijing (according to our friend Edward, who came to see us the other day - he's been living there), people are moving from bikes to cars, in London it seems to be the other way about.

The Boris Bikes are low-geared, so it's warm work on a day such as today has been. I arrived at the Albert Hall from Bankside very hot and sweaty just in time for the Prom, and - standing in the packed Arena - spent most of the first half mopping my brow. It was the great B Minor Mass: the Guardian critic gets it just right - four stars. "When counter-tenor Iestyn Davies sang his solos," he writes, "his extraordinary tonal richness and imaginative phrasing combined into something truly unforgettable."

Best of the Proms?

Yes, tonight it's Prom 69 (out of 74). It has to be the finest classical music festival of all, and this year I seem to have heard most of its offerings, thanks to Listen Again. Of many special moments, there is one that stands out: that's the Mahler symphony no. 1, performed in Prom 63 - I don't have a photograph of that number!

It came at the end of the first of two concerts last Friday given by the Budapest Festival Orchestra. I reckon I know this symphony pretty well, but I have never heard it sound as beautiful as in the performance conducted by Iván Fischer. The thunderous brass of the opening bars of the last movement was matched by a glorious, shimmering pianissimo at the work's opening.

The orchestra would have been exhausted by the evening's end: it went on to give the late-night crowd 90 minutes of encores, played without rehearsal: pieces were selected by audience ballot from a list of some 250, printed in the programme which each ticket-holder was given. A risky but wonderfully innovative approach to music-making!

Music for cats

I spotted this front door when we were biking through Eardisley a few years ago.

We listened to the first part of last night's late evening Prom in bed; and I Listened Again (on my new Pure Evoke Flow bedside radio - a great acquisition, this) early this morning, still in bed. What magisterial solo Bach playing by Nigel Kennedy, particularly in the D Minor Partita! And he's an Aston Villa supporter. Cats apparently made up at least part of the large Albert Hall audience: Kennedy seemed to think so anyway: "It's wonderful," he said, "to see all these cats here."

A fuddy-duddy question nags me: why is my enjoyment of such sublime musicianship tainted by the artist's voice and words failing to match up to Received Classical Musician Speak? How much better, even than RCMS, to let the music speak for itself!

August reviewed

Today's post is stimulated by our good friend Martin Smith writing from holiday in America. (What he says is in italics, followed by my comments.)

My, what an August…

- Oil and commodity prices plummeting/£ going the same way/Darling in a panic – are we approaching a bottom?

From my very local, "at home" perspective, my bank balance is healthier for not having had to buy €€€ to holiday in Europe. I'm glad to be paying less for petrol; though food in the shops doesn't seem to get any cheaper. (Reports say we are cutting back on buying organic products; but as Sir Terry Leahy recognises in an article in today's Guardian, "People's values do not change simply because the economy is going through a bumpy patch.")

I'm not sure Chancellor Darling can actually be said to be panicing, just because he gives one unusual - and surprisingly refreshing - interview from his holiday fastness. But it will need a miracle for Labour to recover in the opinion polls. I'd be inclined to agree with the suggestion that, as Gordon is going to lose the next election anyway, he should go for broke and bring to fruition all those radical ideas which induced people to vote New Labour into power - and which he's shelved because he now thinks they would damage his prospects of reelection.


- Beijing Olympics twice as interesting as expected. Brits did amazingly well, but did you see that Stanford got 24 medals, eight of them gold?!

Guess where M. Smith went as a post-graduate student! I'm solidly in favour of the Olympics as a means of bringing people of all the nations together; but as a spectator sport I found them a turn-off. Give me a half-decent football match any day!


- US politics approaching fever pitch – Obama riding high, McCain thwarted by Gustav, and backing a gun totin', creationist anti-environmentalist woman as VP. Please God let Obama win.

Hear, hear! From this viewpoint, the two sides seem very ill-balanced: it's hard to see what can be said for McCain as President, let alone the extraordinary Palin as Veep. We had a neighbour here recently, with her family "over on vacation" from the Mid-West - solidly creationist: even as a fellow-Christian, you just don't know where to start in on the discussion.


- A month of rain in UK and of sun here (sorry)

Actually, it hasn't been that bad, in Cheltenham at least. It could certainly have been warmer, and dryer - but at least those who wanted to watch the Olympics haven't felt guilty about being inside. The fruit and veg. have been prolific, nor have we had to water the garden! And we've certainly saved on sun screen.

To Maestro Smith's list, I would add:

- For the first time in history, the Northern ice cap can this Summer be circumnavigated. And as Oliver Tickell says, "With melting ice, more sunshine is absorbed rather than reflected back into space. The result is more warming, and more melting. In turn this increases the degassing of methane from Arctic bogs, lakes and thawing permafrost - and methane is a powerful greenhouse gas in its own right, 70 times stronger than CO2 over 20 years."

- The Russian army went into action beyond its country's borders for the first time since the invasion of Afghanistan, and it did so against an Orthodox country with deep cultural and human ties to Russia.

- Every night at the Proms seems to be better than the last. There have been great visiting orchestras, but none better than the dear old BBC Symphony Orchestra, at least on the evidence of their Verdi Requiem on Sunday night. Superb conducting by Jiří Bělohlávek, and the best lyric tenor I've heard since Fritz Wunderlich - the 30-year-old Joseph Calleja. (Listen Again - quickly - if you missed it.)