Passacaglia and Fugue

Book Review: Kompromat, by Stanley Johnson
I hesitated over this one in the work book sale, as I wasn't sure I had the stomach for it, but in the end decided to "feel the fear and do it anyway". After all, it's a charity event, and this season's charity at work is Alzheimer's UK, so it's a good cause and no money goes to any member of the Johnson family.

In the introductory "Author's Note" it is stated that "Kompromat is, to use an old-fashioned term, An Entertainment". In other words, there is no pretence to higher literary ground. ( Spoilers )

Where the book does score, though, is on making you reflect on the "democratisation" of information via the Internet. Twenty years or more ago, there were a limited number of media outlets, and whilst they could provide a wide range of views and opinions, one could in general be fairly confident about the provenance of their information, and that factual errors would not go uncorrected. But when anyone can put out any story and watch it go viral from within an echo chamber to the wider world, it's inevitable that many people will exhibit confirmation bias. (I'm not suggesting that anyone is immune from confirmation bias, but I'd like to think people should in general be aware of the possibility of it and try to control for it.) Indeed, the current state of affairs seems to be that many people don't care about "truth" if what they are given fits their existing beliefs - including the closing down or drowning out of opposing points of view. The Internet is a genie that's out of the bottle, and it's not going back in. Ultimately, I suspect those who have chosen not to hear warnings about fake news will be the ones who suffer most as a result, but if fake news continues, then they will always have someone else to blame. In my darker moments, I think about that term in the Drake equation about the length of time a civilisation exists, and I wonder if opposing groups, discarding evidence and shouting their views at each other angrily without listening, is how it ends.

Book Review: A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman
I'm behind on book reviews. This had been on my to-read list for a while when it turned up in the work book sale; when I discovered Reading Film Theatre is showing the film adaptation this term, it was queue-jumped to discover whether I would want to go and see the film. I think I probably will.

( spoilers )

Book Review: The Making of the British Landscape, by Nicholas Crane
Although I recalled being a little underwhelmed by Crane's biography of Mercator, I decided to give this one a go when I saw it in the work book sale. I'm pleased I did, because I found it quite well-matched to my expectations and also informative. Crane starts at the end of the last ice age; there's probably not much meaningful that can be said about "Britain" before that time. For some thousands of years after that, Britain was a peninsula attached to the European mainland by Doggerland. Hardy explorers were the first immigrants, moving north as the glaciers retreated. In parallel, Crane tracks the emergence of life in the Fertile Crescent, with the emergence of agriculture. It reinforces what a backwater Britain has been for most of recorded history.

Successive waves of migration brought technological developments across Europe and into Britain, with occasional evidence of structures remaining. Henges are something of an oddity, not much occurring elsewhere. Tin mining was probably the only innovation that was exported out of Britain. Solar fluctuations were a major hazard, causing little ice ages and depleting food supplies. About a third of the book is taken up with 8000 years of pre-Roman Britain.

The Romans did a lot of deforestation, but they were by no means the first. Britons were somewhat indifferent to Roman civilisation, and let it crumble (or made better use of the readily available stone) when they departed. Londinium was something of an exception, emerging without planning as a commercial centre with a bridge over the river and an adjacent port. Crane frequently uses archaic place names and reveals how they have mutated into modern ones. Angles and Saxons migrated into Britain, which declined, though outposts such as the Northumbria of Bede and Cuthbert were beacons of civilisation. The Viking period demanded more effective defence, and a return to urbanisation, sometimes too little too late. The Norman conquest overwhelmed Britain with European technology again, like the Romans had done, but there were still hazards such as plague that would cause abandonment of settlements from time to time.

The final third of the book focuses on the period from the seventeenth century to the present day, and although the Industrial Revolution occurred across the country, towards the end the book becomes increasingly London-centric. Britain again became an exporter of technology and the owner of an Empire; this period is now ending or has passed too, it seems. The book predates the Brexit Referendum, but it's not difficult to see from this book that history suggests a period of decline lies ahead.

I pass Old Oak Common depot on the way to work every day. Sometimes I'm getting a little extra shut-eye, but sometimes I look out of the window, and one day, a few months ago, I saw a banner advertising an open day at the depot just outside Paddington. I decided it would be something a bit different to do, and bought myself a ticket for the event, which took place yesterday. Billed as celebrating 111 years of the depot, and featuring "Legends of the Great Western", it was in fact something of an inflection, with the imminent introduction of the IET electric trains on the Great Western line, and the re-purposing of the site to function as the depot for the Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) trains.

The website proclaimed "We expect demand for this event to be high" and the directions for getting to the depot suggested "we expect queues to form in two directions". They weren't wrong. After catching the train in to Paddington and backtracking along the Bakerloo Line to Willesden Junction, I found myself shortly after 10am in a slowly moving queue. There were some disturbing people who knew the Up and Down speed limits as we crossed the bridge over the West Coast Main Line, which also passes nearby. There was also the guy who worked for Network Rail who observed the irony that he has to fly from London for meetings in Edinburgh because the train is too slow and expensive. All in all it was a half-hour shuffle to get through the gates.

Once inside, the main attractions were, obviously, the locomotives, mostly from the BR diesel era but with some older steam locomotives, and one, very special, visitor: 60163 Tornado.

Those who take these things more seriously were constantly jostling for photo positions, and didn't hold back from instructing others to "get out of the way". For the most part, I think it was good-natured, though obviously some would have preferred access to the site without the inconvenience of other people. At the modern end of the spectrum, there was one of the new Class 800 series, Queen Elizabeth II. I do feel there's something missing. Just painting the name on the surface feels a bit indifferent from a polished nameplate, but that's the modern rail system for you. We weren't allowed inside, so it remains a mystery for a little while longer.

All in, it was a fun few hours, and we were lucky with the weather.

I was uncertain how popular Prom 54 would be, and I was pleased to be twelfth in the queue, although I knew this wouldn't necessarily mean a spot on the rail. For once this summer the afternoon was pleasantly warm. The queue did fill out considerably later on.

We were due to move up at 5:15 and go in to the Royal Albert Hall at 5:30, with the concert starting at 6:30. There was a lack of progress and information, and nothing seemed to be happening. Finally, the queues were moved up to the doors, but the process stalled again. Security sensibly decided to run the first few people, including me, through the bag search, and I was then able to read the notice: the concert would be delayed by 15 minutes "due to the late arrival of the orchestra's instruments". Well, that's a new one! We assumed they must have been stuck at Heathrow (though, objectively, there's equal odds they could have been stuck at Milan).

Finally, at about 6pm, we started moving in. As we descended into the bowels of the Hall en route to the Arena, I could hear (but not quite recognise) dark, brooding, bass music. Were the orchestra still on the stage rehearsing at this late hour? It turned out they were, and as I ascended the stairs into the Arena, I finally recognised the music: We were entering the Hall to the march The Pines of the Appian Way from The Pines of Rome, the final scheduled piece of the concert. What a privilege to enter in this way, especially into this British simulacrum of the Colosseum! As a signal event, it reminded me of the "swans" flying over the Royal Albert Hall prior to the Fifth Symphony in the Sibelius cycle of 2015. As the orchestra rehearsed the music, we correspondingly rehearsed our applause, genuine but perhaps with a hint of irony. I found myself comfortably on the rail; some of the people in front must have headed for seats, or to the left-hand side of the Arena (conventionally the front row splits 50-50 between season ticket and day Prommers, but it's not always observed, and this season's changes due to building works have made it particularly unworkable).

Adhering to its revised schedule, the concert proper began with the Filarmonica della Scala Milan conducted by Riccardo Chailly and violinist Leonidas Kavakos in Brahms' Violin Concerto. It was a fair but not brilliant performance. At points the tempo was slowed right down, an interesting interpretation but one that did not add anything particular, in my opinion.

The second half programme was the reason I'd picked this concert: two of Respighi's Roman tone poems. I saw the full trilogy in 2014, just before I had a holiday in Rome, and it was good to take this opportunity to revisit The Fountains of Rome and The Pines of Rome. Fountains has always seemed to me to be the weakest of the trilogy, so I was pleasantly surprised as I found the orchestra really did bring it to life. Pines, on the other hand, has always seemed to me to be the strongest, so would the orchestra fulfil its potential? They certainly did. You always wonder whether a "native" orchestra "feels" the music of its compatriot composers better; on the evidence of this performance, I'd incline favourably to the theory. Fresh, energetic, reflective - they were all of these. The birdsong fitted seamlessly with the orchestral playing, and the recapitulation of the Appian Way was just as spectacular as the rehearsal, in this perfect venue for such brash music. I could see the orchestra had the music for the overture to La forza del destino on their stands - presumably prepared as an encore - but the delay to the start of the concert had thwarted it; it seems the curse continues.

I was surprised to find myself second in the queue for Prom 42 on Wednesday for the first of a pair of concerts featuring Saint-Saëns among others. In fact, although I had expected to recognise some of the pieces without knowing them by name, it was a concert, themed around French evocations of the near and far east, of music almost all new to me. Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth began with Saint-Saëns' overture from La princesse jaune: an opera a few years earlier than The Mikado but sharing the fascination of the time for all things Japanese, though in this case the opera is more about the fascination itself, rather than being a story of Japan. Next, ballet music from Delibes' Lakmé, which I had expected to recognise at some point, but in fact it seems the suite doesn't touch upon any of the really well-known themes.

Les Siècles is a period-instrument orchestra, and for this concert they were playing on late nineteenth-century instruments. It was, therefore, appropriate that the piano wheeled on to the stage was not the usual Royal Albert Hall Steinway, but instead a late nineteenth-century Bechstein. Cédric Tiberghien was the soloist for Saint-Saëns' Piano Concerto No. 5 (Egyptian), another work I'd expected to be more familiar than it turned out. This seemed a bit of an oddity, with multiple styles; the name refers to the sections in the slow movement, but the last movement looks forward to ragtime. I hesitate to use the word "timeless", but I mean it rather literally, because overall the piece pulls in so many different directions it seems ancient and modern all at once. There was no doubting Tiberghien's skill, though; and he rounded off the first half with an encore of Debussy's prelude La Puerta del Vino.

Unusually, the piano remained on stage, as the second half began with another piano-orchestral piece, Franck's Les Djinns, which had a more conventional sound although a less conventional form. The remainder of the concert was orchestral only: more theatre music with excerpts from Lalo's Namouna, before finishing with the one piece I actually did recognise: Saint-Saëns' Bacchanal from Samson and Delilah. If you're the castanets player in the orchestra, this is your big chance. Of course it went down a storm. Conductor François-Xavier Roth insisted on a short speech, about the exploration of other cultures and the folly of building walls, and the concert concluded with one of the more unusual encores I have seen: an arrangement of Daft Punk's Get Lucky, or so the BBC Proms Twitter feed tells me.

I antipated a longer queue on Thursday, and I was right, although I still found myself in the second row for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's concert with Charles Dutoit. This time the theme was French and Spanish, beginning with Falla's El amor brujo. Mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d'Oustrac certainly gave an earthy cantaora voice to the songs; among the orchestral numbers was the well-known Ritual Fire Dance. Joshua Bell was the violinist for Lalo's Symphony espagnole, a concerto in all but name; another new piece for me, and well-received in the hall. Unusually, orchestra and soloist joined forces for an encore at the end of the first half: the Meditation from Thaïs by Massenet. It obviously destroys any illusion of spontaneity, but combining the available musicians in this way is a nice touch.

The second half of the concert began with a presentation of the Royal Philharmonic Society (unrelated to the orchestra) Medal to Dutoit, before moving on to Saint-Saëns' Symphony No 3 (Organ), with organist Cameron Carpenter. Unlike the Lalo, this really is more symphonic, although the organ is important when it's heard. I enjoyed the performance, although somehow the timekeeping had gone awry and the concert finished fifteen minutes late, enough for me to miss my anticipated train home (I had no plans to stay for the late night Prom).

Friday's concert was again popular: a performance of Mahler's Symphony No 2 (Resurrection). The BBC Symphony Orchestra were conducted by Sakari Oramo, and joined by soprano Elizabeth Watts and mezzo-soprano Elisabeth Kulman, and the Bach Choir and BBC Symphony Chorus. Oramo announced that the performance would be dedicated to the memory of Jiří Bělohlávek, the former chief conductor of the orchestra who died earlier this year. Oramo was animated and demonstrative throughout. Technically, there were one or two wobbles in the early stages, but they didn't mar the drama of the first movement. I did feel, however, that the pace of the remainder of the symphony, and the final movement in particular, was on the slow side, and consequently it often lacked energy. Maybe some of that was me: I was promming for the third consecutive night, and it appears I also felt the last movement was on the slow side in 2006; however, the concert finished 10-15 minutes later than expected, so I don't think it was just me. But even so, if Mahler 9 will always be modern music, then I think Mahler 2 will always be dramatic and exciting music.

I knew the Proms yesterday would be popular, with an all-Rachmaninov evening concert followed by a late-night Prom of his All-Night Vigil. Even so, I was a bit surprised that, arriving around mid-day, my raffle ticket was 101.

To make best use of the intervening time, I headed off to Dulwich Picture Gallery for their Sargent exhibition. The exhibitions at Dulwich aren't blockbuster-scale, but they can get quite crowded; fortunately, although popular, there was plenty of space to move around. Indeed, I wondered whether there were more people in the restaurant and cafe, and in the park grounds, than in the gallery itself. Most of the pieces in this watercolour exhibition are from Sargent's trips to Europe: Venice in particular, but also other locations in Italy, France and Spain; there are a few pieces from the Near and Middle East, and the US as well. I found the landscapes and cityscapes more appealing than the final room on portraiture. Among my favourites were: the Spanish Fountain; The Church of Santa Maria della Salute, Venice; Constantinople; the desecrated Gates of a Chateau, Ransart; the sultry Siena; and the ethereal San Vigilio.

I was back in good time for the concert. After an unusual hiatus to allow season ticket holders to enter at an increased rate, I still found myself about a third of the way towards the front. Occasions like this make me realise how fortunate I am when I'm further forward. But even such adversity can have advantages: stewards asked us to make way, as the concert began with a procession through the centre of the Arena by the Latvian Radio Choir with their first liturgical chant; beginning in the infinite distance beyond the entrance to the stalls, they passed through the interior of the Arena before disappearing below the stage. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conductor Thomas Dausgaard and pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk were already on stage, and launched straight into Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3, reputedly one of the most difficult in the repertoire. Gavrylyuk had the piano under control, though in profile his facial expressions veered between rabbit-in-headlights and Dr Evil. I hadn't really expected him to give an encore after that, but he produced a piano version of Vocalise.

The second half began with more chant by the choir, this time up in the gallery. Again the orchestra followed immediately with Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 2. It's a piece I enjoy listening to, but I find it difficult to stand listening to; combined with a misjudgement of meal-times through the day, I found myself sitting out a few passages. There are longer symphonies, and longer symphonic movements; but I think the difficulty with this one is the lack of footholds, it's difficult sometimes to know where you are. In the circumstances I don't feel able to judge the performance, but the audience reaction confirmed it was well received. The advantage of an earlier finish - I had never intended to stay for the late-night concert - was that I was able to walk across Kensington Gardens and get an earlier train back from Paddington.

After obtaining raffle tickets for Prom 29, yesterday we adjourned to the Natural History Museum, swapping one queue for another. At least the queue on the Queen's Gate side of the NHM moved quite quickly. It's several years since I have been there, and some things have changed - notably the blue whale skeleton that has replaced "Dippy" - while others have stayed the same. Charles Darwin seemed unmoved. On the whole I felt there could have been more signs saying "Museum" and fewer saying "Shop", "Cafe" or "Restaurant".

We found ourselves in the second row of the Arena for Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina. Mussorgsky worked on this opera in the last few years of his life, and it was left incomplete; various hands have, over the years, assembled versions or fragments of it, including Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel and Stravinsky together, and Stokowski. On this occasion, it was Shostakovich's orchestration; an interesting choice for him to work on, given that the whole plot is one of political and religious intrigue, and that the first scene features the dictation of a denunciation to a scribe; but he did produce this version during the Khrushchev thaw, so maybe its themes were in vogue, or at least officially acceptable, at the time.

Despite the surtitles - an innovation at the Proms - it wasn't easy to follow the plot. To be fair, this is intrinsic to the story; knowing more about Russian history doubtless helps. Given Mussorgsky's original work was written during Tsarist times, I assume the Tsar is Good, and therefore the Boyars are Bad. But it's not always clear-cut, everyone claims to be reforming against the other lot, and the Priest Dosifey keeps springing up out of nowhere, always with an opinion.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Semyon Bychkov did a good job; to be honest, I only recognised a few fragments, in particular Dawn on the Moscow River from Act 4; but the tragic ending was striking and spectacular. Among a hard-working cast and chorus, I'd single out mezzo-soprano Elena Maximova (Marfa) and bass Ante Jerkunica (Ivan Khovansky) for their particularly strong voices. It was a long concert, and a late journey back, but we were relatively fortunate with the Sunday evening trains.

Book Review: Reality is not what it seems - The Journey to Quantum Gravity, by Carlo Rovelli
This is a clever and interesting book, but if you struggled with A Brief History of Time, I don't think this book is for you. Rovelli's style is at points florid and pretentious, though this may be a feature of the translation. He first reviews the science of Ancient Greece, before proceeding through Newton and Einstein. After discussing quantum mechanics, it's on to the fundamental purpose of this book: how to resolve the approaches of general relativity and quantum mechanics in describing the universe. They are both experimentally verified to very high standards, yet are incompatible. Rovelli makes the argument (for me, not wholly convincingly) that time does not exist as a fundamental entity; like temperature, or "up" and "down", it is a property that emerges at a macroscopic layer.

There were some new discoveries for me in this book: Rovelli's explanation that spacetime is the field of gravity (rather than that the field of gravity permeates spacetime) is good, and goes beyond many popular science books which simply explain that gravity is "different" when it comes to unifying the fundamental forces. Yet, there is a missed opportunity here: the presented self-referential nature of spacetime and gravity ought to trigger the word "Gödel", but it doesn't, possibly because of a fear that would cause the end of physics, just as it might have been feared to cause the end of mathematics. One would also expect some mention of quantum entanglement, and this is also missing, although in the chapter on information the concept rears its head, unspoken, and again the opportunity is left untaken. Overall I am left with the feeling that this is a good and useful book, but that given its depth it nevertheless has some unexpected limitations.

Book Review: Hallelujah Junction - Composing an American Life, by John Adams
I picked this up a while ago in a work book sale, but it sat on the shelves waiting for the right moment. I decided, with Adams' music featuring in the First Night of the Proms, that it was now time.

It makes for an interesting read. Adams traces his roots back to the dance hall Winnipesaukee Gardens, in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, where his maternal grandparents had a troubled relationship; his parents ended up in modest circumstances and his childhood was comfortable but basic. From an early age he was interested in music and played the clarinet, showing enough talent to take lessons and eventually play orchestral parts. He also liked the idea of conducting in particular. Conventional classical music training in the eastern US in the mid twentieth-century was focused very much on twelve-tone serialism, which did not much appeal to Adams, who was steeped in jazz and interested in rock and roll as much as classical music. Despite offers of further tuition, he eventually decided to spread his wings (or at least, a rickety Volkswagen camper-van) and head west.

Through the seventies Adams made a career mostly as a conductor and concert organiser; a few of his own works, such as Shaker Loops and Harmonium started to make his reputation. He goes on to describe the collaboration with Peter Sellars and Alice Goodman that led to Nixon in China, which became one of his most successful works, and The Death of Klinghoffer, which has always been one of his most controversial. Later chapters in the book go into some depth, creatively and bureaucratically, as well as musically, on several works; Adams also ponders the creative process in general. He has an easy writing style, and acknowledges problematic works as well as success. The foreword to this edition notes the 2012 performance at the Proms of Nixon in China as one of his career highlights; I'm glad he thinks that, because, having been there myself, I agree.