The next meeting of the Society is tomorrow, Monday 20 November starting at 7:30 as usual. It will be a change to the published programme due to unforeseen circumstances and will be on the subject of modern music. It is the last presentation on this subject by Peter Horwood who has found some gems from the world of recent compositions.
Only £3 on the door and there is ample parking outside.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to make some changes to our programme involving the next three meetings.
On Monday 6th November, Peter Horwood will be presenting Off the Beaten Track in which he takes us on an informal journey along some less familiar musical byways.
On Monday 20th November, Peter again will be presenting, this time the third in his series on 20th Century Music. [This was due to be presented at the previous meeting].
Our final programme this season is slightly changed and will be Christmas Special in which members of the SRMS committee will present a range of pieces with a seasonally appropriate theme.
We look forward to seeing you at these evenings.
The Society’s new season started in September and we have an interesting programme again this year. We have a wide ranging series of evenings including music by Puccini, Gustav Holst, the best of the 20th Century and on why so few composers managed a tenth symphony. We also have two members’ evenings and a Christmas quiz.
You can download the programme here or printed copies will be in the Library, Oxfam (upstairs) and the Tourism Information Centre next week.
The Society meets once a fortnight on a Monday evening starting at 7:30 and we aim to finish at 10 pm. It meets in the Guides’ Centre in St Ann Street although access is from the rear off Friary Lane. Parking is free and it is accessible for people with mobility difficulties.
If you want to speak on the phone then contact Ruth on T: 01722 782387 or M: 07759 785760
At its meeting on 27 March, Robin Lim gave a fascinating talk about this famous conductor. If you did not know anything about his life story, you would assume from his showmanship and conducting history, that he was a quintessential American. Indeed, as Robin explained, he went to some pains to conceal his age and his place of birth, at times claiming it to have been Poland or Pomerania. In fact he was born in the rather more mundane St Johns Wood in London in 1882.
For many older people in the audience and more widely, their introduction to classical music came from the 1940 Disney film Fantasia which was recently reworked and reissued. This combination of film and music was in its day, quiet a feat and getting the sound to emerge from the right (correct) part of the screen required a considerable degree of technical expertise. Stereo was in its infancy at the time and the film was the first successful attempt to bring multi-track sound to the cinema. We sometimes forget today, surrounded as we are by the wonders of technology, that it was not always thus: I can recall seeing Fantasia in Manchester as a child and being enthralled by the sound as well as the animations. Fantasia’s remixed multi track soundtrack is still extant, the original takes prior to the remixing have been lost unfortunately .
Stokowski had a colourful life which included having three wives one of whom was Gloria Vanderbilt as well as a number of affairs including one – it is alleged – with Greta Garbo.
He was keen to promote new music and one piece played was the second movement from Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 – a 1958 recording which sounded amazing considering its age. Shostakovich was lucky to be alive and was only able to leave Russia because his prestige in the West led Stalin to give him permission to leave.
Another interesting item was a recording of Stokowski rehearsing Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony. Tchaikovsky’s parent’s original name was Chaiko as they hailed from Ukraine: interesting in view of attempts to ban his music after the Russian invasion of that country. But I digress.
We heard his impressive arrangement for orchestra of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor played by the Czech Philharmonic. Indeed, all the recordings we heard demonstrated Stokowski’s ability to get the most from an orchestra, particularly the string sections, a point Robin made. On the subject of orchestras, we take for granted the current arrangement of orchestras with strings on the left cellos on the right etc. but this arrangement is down to Stokowski after much experimentation with different arrangements.
He also appeared in films including One Hundred Men and a Girl, (1937) – the mind boggles – as well as Fantasia.
Towards the end of his life, he returned to the UK and decided to live in Nether Wallop, Hampshire, buying Place Farm House in 1972. He had a fatal heart attack in 1977. Local residents recall his strange habit of taking a stroll around the village wearing a sinister full-length opera coat. Another curiosity was his habit of speaking in a curious pseudo East European accent: odd since he was born in London.
A truly interesting evening and Robin had gone to great efforts to research his subject, a point made by the chair in his vote of thanks.
Peter Curbishley
Robin provided an extract written by Michael Draper from the September 2009 issue of Wallop Parish News, reproduced with permission, and some parts of this review were taken from that.
The next meeting is tonight, 13 March 2023, and is a presentation about making recordings during Lockdown. It will be by concert pianist Christopher Guild and this is an extract from his biography:
Born in Scotland in 1986, Christopher Guild studied piano and violin locally before entering St Mary’s Music School, Edinburgh aged 13. He took top honours in the Moray Piano Competition 2001 – he remains the youngest winner to this day. Christopher entered the Royal College of Music in 2005 as a Foundation Scholar and studied for six years with Andrew Ball, gaining a First Class BMus (Hons), and the MMus and Artist Diploma with Distinction. He went on to be the Richard Carne Junior Fellowship in Performance at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance 2012-13.
Christopher teaches at Godolphin School. We look forward to seeing you at 7:30pm
Our next meeting will be this Monday, 27th February, when Jon Hampton will be presenting a fascinating insight into the colourful life of Alma Schindler – a woman who had an immense influence on music and the creative arts. Starting at 7:30 as usual and free parking outside the door.
We hope we will be able to welcome you on 27th February.
This was the title of a presentation by Ruth Barlow which included a range of music popular in that century. London at that time was a rapidly growing city and the largest in Europe. The country was becoming prosperous as a result of the growing empire and people were looking for entertainment which would of course have included music.
Music was also coming out of the great houses and into the public sphere with an ever-increasing number of public concerts. Indeed, it was noted that if you wanted to learn about music you went to Paris or Italy, if you wanted to earn a living, you came to England.
The evening started with a performance of Corelli’s Concerto Grosso No 8 (excerpts) and ended with the last movement of Haydn’s Symphony No 4 nicknamed the ‘London’. This framing so to speak seemed to sum the century up with Corelli’s piece echoing the previous century and Haydn’s symphony, written in 1795, which ended it and gave hints of what was to come.
In between, we heard pieces by Handel, JC Bach, Thomas Arne, and William Boyce. We also heard part of the Beggar’s Opera, hugely popular in its day receiving 62 performances in its first season, on a recording directed by Ruth’s husband Jeremy which must be a first for the Society.
Music from men only ‘catch clubs’ was also performed. Today we would call them rounds but they are centuries old and involve singers coming in one by one singing the same melody. We heard examples by Henry Purcell and JS Smith sung by the Hilliard ensemble.
A sad moment was a Violin Sonata in A major by Thomas Linley, and English prodigy born in Bath who was certainly destined for great things. He was a friend of Mozart and they met and became friends in Italy. Unfortunately, he died at the tender age of 22 thus ending what was likely to have been a successful career.
Altogether a well put together programme and an interesting evening.
Just over a century ago, Finland declared its independence at the time of the Russian revolution in 1917. At the start of the second world war in 1940, they then had to fight a fierce war against Stalin’s Russia who invaded the country with overwhelming force. The Russian general assumed it would all be over in around 12 days but the Russian army, although vast, was poorly led – following Stalin’s murder of thousands of Red Army officers – poorly equipped and the Finns put up a fierce resistance. They were ultimately successful losing only a small piece of territory but, they maintained their independence.
There is something faintly familiar with that story in the current events in Ukraine. Russia invading a neighbouring country with overwhelming force with the hope of a quick victory, being resisted by a much smaller but better led army. So what has this to do with the Recorded Music Society you ask? Living through this period was Finland’s greatest composer, Jean (as he is known today) Sibelius. His music contributed to Finland’s sense of nationhood from the time of independence and subsequently the war against Russia. So in addition to writing brilliant music, he was important giving the Finns a sense of national identity and pride. These things are significant during a time when a country is under threat.
Many of Sibelius’s works are well known and receive a regular airing in concert halls around the world. But like many composers, there is the well known and there is the less familiar. At last nights meeting, we were delighted to welcome again, Simon Coombs, who presented a range of less well known works, combining them with the life of the composer through his nation’s sometimes troubled history.
Sibelius started by studying law but while doing so, joined the Helsinki Music Institute. He was a capable violinist but decided to concentrate on composition and to that end, studied in Berlin and Vienna where he met Bruckner. He returned to Helsinki to compose his first major piece Kullervo. Among the pieces selected by Simon was A Conferment Cantata, A Song for Lemminkäinen, Finlandia, and a number of examples of incidental music. Also an extract from Pelléas et Mélisande and incidental music the the Tempest.
Simon was helped in his presentation by discs produced by Bis Records who have produced recordings by all of Sibelius’s music. Simon ended with some fragments of the 8th Symphony: it is not clear if Sibelius ever finished the work and destroyed it. Members were delighted with the presentation and the curation of the pieces linking it to key events in the composer’s life.
Sibelius’s music was an element of Finland’s struggle to achieve statehood and independence from Russia. It is strange to note that Ukraine’s famous composers; Prokofiev and Szymanowski among others, have not played a similar role in Ukraine’s resistance. Tchaikovsky is of Ukrainian extraction – the family name was originally Chaiko before the move to Russia.
This was the last meeting of the current season and the programme for the autumn is in final stages of preparation.
Peter Curbishley
The next meeting will be on Monday 8th November when Alan Forshaw will present Listening to Beethoven in a different light.
We shall have an interval when we will offer tea or coffee, but you’re welcome to bring your own drink. As before, we ask all attending to follow the Covid safety measures we have in place including signing in and sanitising procedures on arrival, well spaced seating, wearing a mask, minimising moving around and maintaining social distancing.
On 22nd November we shall have a Members’ Evening. If you have a piece on CD of around 10 minutes that you would like to bring and have played at the meeting, please would you let us have details, if possible this Monday so we can draw up a play list.
We look forward to seeing you there.
The next meeting is tonight, Monday 25th October, when Ed Tinline will be presenting: Harmony around the Baltic
He hopes you’ll be able to join him on a musical journey around some of the Baltic countries, enjoying pieces by local composers including Jean Sibelius, Arvo Pärt, Hugo Alvén, and others.
We shall have an interval when we will be able to offer tea or coffee, but you’re welcome to bring your own drink. As before, we ask all attending to follow the Covid safety measures we have in place including signing in and sanitising procedures on arrival, well spaced seating, wearing a mask, minimising moving around and maintaining social distancing.
Copies of the full programme for the season will be available at the meeting.
However please would you note that while the dates of coming meetings are unchanged we have had to alter the running order in November. The amended programme up to Christmas is now:
Our final meeting before Christmas will be on 6th December 2021 when Ruth Barlow will present ‘Classical Music in Animations’ and invite us to join her in an end of term scamper through some cartoons with great classical music, including considering whether Fantasia was Mickey Mouse’s finest hour and listening to Tom and Jerry playing Liszt.
We hope you will be able to come on Monday 25th October at 7.30 and to feel comfortable with the arrangements we plan to have in place.
Salisbury Recorded Music Society 