QUATUOR ÉBÈNE: FOUR INTO ONE GOES DAZZLINGLY

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 In my half a century of musical life, I have really not been very eclectic. I became a ‘singing’ man in my teens, and my career has been entirely spent around vocal music of all kinds.  Singing it and then (and now) writing about it.

But it’s never too late.

Four years ago, I came to Berlin and I met Paul Hankinson, pianist and mega-musician. I hauled him off to the opera and musicals, and in return he led me, like Dante, into the world of instrumental music and concerts. I didn’t know quite nothing (brother John used to play fiddle and chamber music and I was a fair pianist) but to all intents and purposes I was a novice. And a novice with opinions. Often uninformed … I like this composer, don’t like that one. Poppycock.

Well, the experiment has been a rousing success. We have attended some splendid concerts (some with just a leetle vocal music) in the past couple of seasons, but last night was an acid test. A whole evening – yes, a whole evening -- of a string quartet. For the first time ever. Mozart, Bartok, Schumann. Will I get bored in the tenth movement? Start coughing in the quiet bits?

This tale has no suspense. I had what can only be described as ‘a beautiful evening’ at the Kammermusik Salon of the Philharmonie, a delightful intimate space, in the hands of the Quatuor Ébène. These four young Frenchmen are already celebrated in their field – so I was shocked to find the room not full – but they give the most wonderfully un-starry performance. Warm personalities, no posing … I felt that if I were a zillionaire they could come and play in my living room. They led me in confidentially to this unfamiliar music, and then gave me a treat …

The Mozart was a joy. The team played so tenderly. The instruments were so warm. Never showy-loud or strident. So much wonderful, gentle playing. The second movement was glorious, perhaps my favourite section of the whole evening.

I got a shock when the Bartok started. Ouch! The dramatic, super-vigorous opening movement left me rather stranded and lost. It was so different to what I’d just heard. But I picked up my breath in the second part, and the third movement simply blew me away. A rather camp pizzicato portion led to a finale which rather returned to the style of the opening and left me thinking, ‘this piece needs more than one hearing’.

And then came the Schumann. Well, all I can say is my mind didn’t wander for an instant throughout the whole lovely piece. And it gave me my nirvana of the night in its third movement when the viola sang forth with ... well, Paul says it went A.. B.. C A... G G .. or did he say A B C A G F# E E D# ..

And then it was over. Well, not quite. The boys gave, as an encore, a sweet arrangement of the old Johnny Mathis ‘Misty’ (which by the way, fellers, has nothing to do with Broadway) to send us all – even the man who kept yelling ‘bravi’ punctiliously in my ear – all away in the relaxed and enjoyful mood in which they’d kept us all night.

So, now I know. Chamber music and string quartets don’t have to be four-square, super-classical, mechanical, dull …  it’s all in the way you play it. I’ll go back to this friendly, warm, tender group any day. I’m a convert.

Lead me to the next one!

'Flaming Agnes'

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This season hasn’t exactly been my best horsey time. I went to New Zealand thinking I was going to watch four or five of my babies race regularly over the summer, and one by one they fell by the wayside. Or had to be spelled. Or patched up. The only Gerolsteiner joy came from the excellent form of Wendy’s Mikie (Fifteen C) who won at Motukarara, and the flash in the pan by our Gerolstein-bred Seppl who won for someone else in Australia.

But there was an answer. They say, ‘they never run well when you are there’, and I am living witness to that. Of my 46 wins over the last 15 years, I’ve been in the relevant country for few and on track for less. And it looks as if it may be that way again. I flew out of New Zealand 31 March with a seasonal record of 3 starts: all unplaced.

And it began. The soft-boiled egg colours came out of the cupboard. New baby Thomas went for his first learner’s heat. 

Dearly beloved Fritzl, who won his last start … in February 2011 … has come back after injury and retirement and he ran a delicate 3rd on the same day. Could he really make it back to the races? (Wendy is known as the trainer who brought Kotare Atom back twice, after broken legs, to win!).

And then there is Agnes. Sister to the beautiful but problematic Elena de Gerolstein (1 win). Agnes is a big girl. Lanky. So we didn’t ask her to race till her 4 year-old season. She qualified impressively, fouled her first race up utterly, and ran promisingly for 6th, before Wendy decided another year would help her. So Agnes went into the paddock, where she ran into a post in an earthquake, and Lord knows what else on other occasions: one accident after another.

Eventually she got to the workouts and the races and ran horribly. Vet check. Virus. Expletive.

Fixed. Off to Addington. This time it was her sulky that was in the wars. One who shall not be named locked wheels with her, and she came back with an expensively bent cart and another 0 in the form line. Could it get worse? Yes.

Next up, she drew a splendid 5 at the barrier. She was standing perfectly when no 6 decided to do a rodeo act. Now, in civilised countries no 6 would have been immediately scratched or put on a third row, but New Zealand is notoriously limp-wristed about start matters, and by the time no6 was sent to the outside Agnes was in tatters. 'They were SCREAMING at me!'  'No they weren’t, dear, it was no 6'. She was so frightened (as big girls often are) that when the tape finally flew she looked left and right, said ‘is it real this time?’ and missed away. Another zero. And to add insult to ill-management ... was number 6 condemned to two trials before racing again? No. Limp-wristed. But Agnes was apparently (noone told us) given a starter’s warning. Sometimes my respect for the stipendiary stewards is sorely tested.

With five noughts to her credit, it became difficult to get her a start, in spite of some fine trials. Akaroa turned her down twice (well b**** you Akaroa) while including horses that had finished lengths behind her at the workouts. But my beloved Rangiora came to the party, and last night – at 2.45am Berlin time -- Agnes lined up in a rather hot maiden 2600m. $1.80 favourite Gotta Go Grunter with three starts for three seconds. Agnes thirteenth favourite of the fifteen starters at about 100-1.

This time all the horses behaved properly, went away smoothly, and Chris (McDowell) settled my big girl mid-field on the outside as second favourite Stunin Dude stormed intimidatingly to the front. But Chris and Agnes weren’t intimidated. Into the last lap, they followed the equally unintimidated Taranto around, and Agnes went past her poisson pilot and took on the leader. The 100-1 outsider!

Johnny Dunn on Stunin Dude shot a warning look at Chris, but our driver doesn’t shrivel even under the glare of champions and the Gerolstein team stuck a head in front as they came to the turn. And then, disaster.

Stunin Dude failed to take the corner, left its line and pushed Agnes way wide, losing her several lengths, much impetus, and letting the trailing (Pacific Rose) and trailing-trailing (Millwood Chloe) horses through for an inside rails run.

Chris urged her on, and she surged forward – ‘kicked again’ the commentator described it: past Pacific Rose, perhaps to the lead. But in the final metres the economically driven Millwood Chloe edged ahead (she had, after all, run 30 odd metres less than Agnes) and my girl was beaten 3/4 length. The 100-1 outsider. Gotta Go Grunter was back amongst the also-rans. Stunin Dude ended up almost last.

That was a second place that to me was worth a fistful of wins. The real Agnes finally got to show her skills. With enormous help from Chris. Now it is confirmed that, after four years of Wendy’s careful preparation, we have a racehorse.

Unfortunately, we have a racehorse in April. There are only two races remaining this month to which a maiden Canterbury mare can go. All the rest are miserable mobile starts (we don’t do those) or too far away. Harness Racing New Zealand has, alas, absolutely no interest in supporting owners – what do they care that we’ve spent 6 months preparing our horse – they care only for tote turnover, and toys for the boys. Why isn’t there a meeting at Rangiora or Motukarara every week during the autumn and winter? That’s where the horses like to go. Addington is on its way to becoming a 6-horse-race playground for Purdons, Butts and Dalgetys: so let’s have some lovely, big, winter races elsewhere – no mobiles, no miles – real Kiwi racing.

Well, I’m not the man who makes the rules. I should be. I’d make large changes to everything from programming to (especially) the feeble breaking-horses and start-behaviour rules. But I’m too old. And not there enough. So my only ‘out’ is just that. To get out. Which I will soon.

But not till Agnes has finished her career!

The Girls I Left Behind ...

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Not just Wendy and Yoshie...   but Minnie and ChiQi ... who seem to have taken possession of my LaZboy as soon as I'm out of sight!

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My Berlin season is ON!

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The season has started! My season, that is. Tonight I went to my first ‘show’ since my arrival in Berlin. I say ‘show’, but it was – for me -- a rather unconventional starter: not an opera, a concert, a musical … but an oratorio, performed by amateurs in a suburban church, in the lead-up to Easter.

At this time of the year, the churches of Berlin feature major sacred works – the Bach Passions seem to be the most favoured – and tonight I could have, had I wished (and I did), taken in the Mozart Requiem at Templehof. But I chose to go to the Auenkirche in Wilmersdorf where they were performing a piece I’ve been mentioning in my writings recently, but had never heard: Dvorak’s Stabat Mater.

I went with few expectations, but a lot of interest and curiosity.

The church itself is great fun. Late C19th German architecture, lovingly titivated. Though its organ (like all church organs and most roofs) is begging rather embarrassingly for money. Also charging it. We bought seats in the organ loft at 25 euros ($50) each, which gave us the right to a very hard small chair in the front row with a large bar at eye level. I sat bolt upright all night to see over; Paul crouched to see under.

But there was no trouble hearing. The church has a reverberant auditorium. Well, I say ‘no trouble’ but … if you put a sizeable (and sometimes inaccurate) orchestra in FRONT of the singers …especially an orchestra which plays forte to mezzo forte all night, it’s a bit hard on the ears of the audience. And on the soloists. They (for they were professionals) earned their money.

I’m going to start at the end. I went for the piece. And I came out disappointed. I liked the (long) opening ‘Stabat Mater’ with its ditsy little tunes and phrases shaking up the too classical chorus sections, but the choral parts soon became far too samey and old-fashioned, and eventually I became bored. The solos were better, but … well, if you are going to set a text with which Pergolesi and Rossini have made such a huge hit, you really have to come up with something more original and exciting. I was reminded of Elton John resetting Aida.

OK, it may have been partly the performance. The choir of over a hundred (with the usual amount of white hair) laboured willingly. They sang softly (that was nice), they sang loudly, they sang very loudly, but somehow it was just a body of sound, fairly unforgiving in time and tune. And I didn’t hear one word I could recognise between the ‘Stabat Mater’ and the ‘Inflammatus’ (and I’ve got an MA in Latin).

The ghost of Rossini hovered in more ways than one. The ‘Inflammatus’ here is written for contralto (rather than Rossini’s dazzling soprano) and it pales by comparison. Our alto tonight was very competent: but we got good taste rather than Princess Eboli. No flames.

The soloists – two from Magdeburg, two from the celebrated RIAS Kammerchor – were well-chosen and pretty impeccable. My favourite  (and Paul’s) was the bass, Martin-Jan Nijhof, a young man with a lovely creamy bass-baritone voice which reminded me of what I wanted to be 50 years ago. Soprano Anita Bader (like Nijhof, from Magdeburg) produced some splendid, pure sounds in the rather under-used soprano part, and Waltraut Heinrich (contralto) did her best with the ‘Inflammatus’ that didn’t flame. And the tenor. Poor Joachim Buhrmann! A first-rate, if rather dry, old-music-style tenor ... he couldn’t stop himself from twitching his hand, trying to get the inflexible conductor to ….. (censored)

So, all said, I went to hear the piece. It disappointed me.

I expected nothing of the performance, and I got the odd nice surprise. The soft chorus bits in the ‘Stabat Mater’ and above all, a really fine bass singer.

That’ll do.

Thank you, Auenkirche, for letting me (at a price) hear this work.

Do the Rossini next year, and I’ll come back to your lovely church.

A nightmare in the skies

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It’s April: so I’m off to Europe for a spring and summer of music, opera food and friends. And nowadays, since I’ve switched to business class travel, I have even been looking forward to the huge, four-part plane flight with Emirates Airlines.

Wrong.

All started well. Jo from North Canterbury Shuttles picked me up and delivered me to Christchurch airport. Small annoyance, no on-line boarding passes: so I had to wobble to Emirates check-in, and thence to the Lounge (pleasant) and the plane (ditto) and off to Australia.

At Sydney I boarded my first wheelchair (no more wobbling) to go to their lounge (very superior), to relax, sup, write and wait. And wait. And wait. The nightmare had begun.

We finally boarded the plane (what can suddenly be wrong with a plane that self-fixes in an hour?) two hours late. And waited and waited. And then we were told that the flight had been cancelled, due to curfew restrictions. Everybody out. And chaos began. I got to the door, was dumped unceremoniously into my wheelchair by a fat man and shoved to one side while hordes of folk headed off to be rebooked. And I waited and waited and waited. But I never saw the fat man again. Finally Colleen, a fellow passenger, took pity on me, and trundled me off in pursuit of the throng.

Colleen was to turn out to be my saviour over the next hellish hours.

But where were Emirates? Where the Sydney ground staff? You don’t leave an old man in a wheelchair sitting in nowhere land!

Colleen took control, got me to (re)check in, and, and after an eternity, managed to get the one lady of the seven who seemed to be actually working instead of chatting to rebook us for 6am the morrow. Right through to Berlin? I queried. Yes, right through. I just had to pick up my boarding pass at the end of the Emirates flight at Munich. OK.

It was now after 1am. Our flight would check in at 3am. No use taking the proffered bus to an hotel, we’d just have had to turn round and come straight back. The lounge was unavailable (why? And why did we have to immigrate into Australia, anyway …) but there was a coffee shop….

Not for long. A little man told us to get out. The airport was closed. And he meant it. I was trundled by my saviour out into a car park … becoming, by this stage, a mite teary ... and there we sat until 3am. $10,000 for a night in a carpark. Food and drinkless, lavatory and medicationless.

At three, we re-entered the fires of Hell, and struggled to check-in (I’ll swear those seven people were still chatting) and just looked forward to getting back to the lounge! Why did we ever leave it!?

But no. Security didn’t open till 4am. Another hour. So we waited and waited. I should add that we, as business class passengers, and I as a handicapped traveller received, in all this time not one iota of aid. Were it not for Colleen, I would still be there.

6am back on a plane. Where we were 9 hours ago. All the staff bright and cheery (yes, but where were you when you were NEEDED?), I bleary and teary and 36 hours without sleep. I fell into my seat, and shut my eyes. No sleep of course, every few minutes an announcement. In multiple languages. Well, last time this flight was 14 hours of enjoyment. This time it was 14 hours of suffering. NO! I do not want some huge meal! NO! I do not want bubbly reflux-making champagne. No I do not want to hear this or that publicity, or listen to the next man’s murder movie. I want to shut my eyes until Dubai. Or, better, Berlin.

Calvary. And more to come. Something made me look at my ‘revised’ ticket. How long would I have to wait in Munich? And …Where was my Munich-Berlin flight? There wasn’t one. The last Berlin flight of the day left even before we landed. Was that woman evil or just incompetent?

But even calvary had an end. At Dubai, I bid farewell to Colleen (who’d slept, damn her!) and was trundled some more to the rather unattractive lounge and curled up in a corner where, with the help of a kind waiter, I managed to finally get on a slow internet to let everyone know that I woudn’t be reaching the heaven of Berlin’s Katz Orange in time for tonight’s show .. I was stuck in Purgatory. And my Dante had gone to Abu Dhabi!

It was a broken Kurt who got back on another Emirates plane. Some nice person had put me in row 7. I thought it was a consolation prize, but the staff didn’t know about Sydney, and were all keen to hear about the aborted flight. ‘No one tells us these things’ confided the head lad ‘there’s no contact between ground staff and air staff’. TELL ME!!!!!!!

I slept solidly the 5 hours of the flight. Shame. It was the cleanest plane, with the sweetest staff ... and they ordered me (and an entire family of crippled Arabs) a splendid wheelchair with the most splendid driver who trundled terrifically. We negotiated Passkontroll (stern man ‘what are you doing here?’ me: ‘nothing’  sous-entendu ‘what do you think a 70-year old man in a chair is gong to do in Germany? Dance in the ballet?’), customs … and then our next trial. Get me a ticket to Berlin for the morrow.

Teddy the trundler excelled himself. Through terminus after terminus to Air Berlin … ah finally my luck has turned! Two ladies … at ten to ten. What? We’re closed. Come back at 4.30am. But its not 10! Come back at 4.30. Like Hell I will.

Unfrazzled Teddy’s next mission was to get me to the Kempinski Airport Hotel . But the lift was broken. Poor Teddy had to cheerfully trundle to the next terminal… Well, he got me there before 11pm. Got me booked in. And promised to come and get me in the morning and take me to the plane which the Kempinski boys had promptly booked for me on line without problem. I’d stopped tipping since the Sydney fat man: Teddy got the lot!

So here I am, at dawn, after 3 hours sleep, in my nice white bed in Munich. It doesn’t matter that its cost me 215e plus 11e for wifi which doesn’t work properly. Cost? The flight to Berlin from here, bought last minute, cost me over $1000. Ah yes! Lufthansa is on strike tomorrow!

I should have been in my little bed at Invalidenstrasse, after a lovely luxurious trip.  It’s been none of those things. Colleen and Teddy have saved it from total disaster … which is what the next week will be! I hope I didn’t have too many engagements …

My worst flight in sixty years. Not to mention the most expensive.

In Amberley?!!!!!!

We don’t eat out much when I’m in New Zealand. Apart from anything else, there’s nowhere of my er … taste to go, and as Wendy rightly says, her food and cooking is better than most (all?) the local restos. So … after a hard day’s work it’s easier to stay home.

But the other evening … well, it was Wendy’s birthday, and one of my last nights in NZ, and Yoshie had earned a night off the dishes, so we thought: Let’s kill it. Somewhere? Where?

We’ve tried most local places over the years and really wouldn’t repeat many. Well, we settled on the friend-recommended, prize-winning (?) Nor’wester Café in Amberley. Amberley, for God’s sake.

It’s a pleasant place, on the main road. Pleasant staff. And we were early, so not crowded or noisy.

Things didn’t start well. The drinks the girls ordered were ‘off’. If your wine list isn’t available: don’t offer it. Height of amateurism. I was ready to walk. But where to? In Amberley?

I’m quite glad I didn’t. Because I had a nice meal.

I started with seafood ravioli. Yes, ravioli! There were three, instead of the pretentious one offered by posh places, topped by two really delicious prawns and sprinkled with a truly tasty sauce. I would have liked one more yummy prawn, more filling in the ravioli ... and I’d have it as a main course any day.

But my main course kept the standard up. Rare (advertisedly) venison with blue cheese, red onion, spinach, kumara … it sounded too good to be true!  But it was true. The venison looked fabulous, tasted great, and if sliced a bit thinner (thus tenderer for us with false teeth) would have been a triumph. I devoured the accompaniments greedily … except the kumara, which goes soggy in an instant and would have been better pureed … it was very nice.

But, all in all, it was a splendid supper ($200 for three), and if they get their winelist under control … I’ll even go back. With friends!