Tag Archives: music

Hearing pieces of music that triggered distant memories

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IT IS CURIOUS how hearing certain pieces of music can sometimes revive memories hidden away in the back of one’s head.

Last night, I attended a concert by a percussion ensemble held at London’s Royal College of Music in South Kensington.  The first work performed was a rendering of the overture to Rossini’s opera “The Thieving Magpie”. It had been arranged for percussion (including marimbas) by Clara Smith, and sounded remarkably similar to the original orchestral version. Hearing it, reminded me of the Academy cinemas in Oxford Street, which, sadly, closed forever in April 1986. In the 1970s, I used to attend these art-house film theatres regularly, seeing films that were too obscure to go out on general release in the UK. Before the main film started, it was preceded by a screening of a cartoon, usually one made in one of the Soviet Block countries in Eastern Europe. One of these cartoons, which I remember seeing many times, had as its background music, the overture to “The Thieving Magpie”. Hearing the overture last night at the concert, revived pleasant memories of attending screenings at the Academy.

After the concert interval, we were treated to a performance of “Six Marimbas”, a piece by the minimalist composer Steve Reich (born 1936). I love his compositions, and have attended several concert performances of his music. Hearing the “Six Marimbas” reminded me of my first encounter with Reich’s music. That was in June 1986 at the Union Chapel in London’s Islington. For some reason that I cannot recall, I attended a concert held there as part of Reich’s fiftieth birthday celebrations. And the composer was there, and performed. I remember watching him performing his “Clapping Music” (first performed in 1973). He was one of the duet making this music. I had not thought about this concert until the marimbas began playing his music last night.

That hearing music can trigger memories is not unusual. Much has been written about music and memory, but how it is that a particular tune can unlock memories is far from having been satisfactorily explained.

Trying to handle Handel at London’s Barbican Centre

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LAST NIGHT WE attended a concert performance of “Serse” by Friedrich Handel (first performed in 1738) at the Barbican Hall.

The music was beautifully performed, the singing was great, and the acoustics excellent. The surtitles were quirky and colloquial, rather than faithful translations of the Italian.

Despite all the positive aspects of the performance, I felt something was lacking. That was not only the scarcity of acting but also something else. I think that attending the performance live at the Barbican Hall was only slightly better than hearing a recording of this piece played on a good hifi system.

Finally, I must mention that the number of toilets at the Barbican is totally inadequate to cope with the vast audience that attends shows in the hall.

20 June 2026

A church in London: twice destroyed and twice recovered

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FOREST FIRES ARE often spontaneous and followed by new growth and renewal. London has been destroyed by fire twice (not spontaneous!), in 1666 and in 1940, and each time it has undergone regeneration. After the earlier conflagration that destroyed many of the city’s churches, new ones were built to the designs of Christoper Wren (1632-1723). One of these churches, which was damaged by bombing and fire in 1940, and restored to its former glory after WW2, is St Lawrence Jewry.

The church was first built in the twelfth century (c 1136), close to London’s Roman amphitheatre and the early mediaeval Jewish ghetto. It was destroyed during the Great fire of London in 1666. A new church, designed by Wren, was constructed between 1670 and 1677 on the site of the first church. This spacious, lofty church was destroyed during the Blitz on 29 December 1940. And in 1957, it was restored by the architect Cecil Brown to Wren’s original design. Like the legendary phoenix, it rose from the ashes.

The church stands near London’s Guildhall, and hosts regular lunchtime concerts on Tuesdays. We attended one today, 16 June 2026. The Norwegian baritone Jan-Magnar Gard sung lieder and other songs accompanied by the pianist Niall Townley. Both these accomplished musicians are postgraduate students at the Guildhall School of Music. It was an enjoyable experience hearing them perform within the well-maintained, beautiful, almost square nave of the church, under its decorative ceiling.

St Lawrence Jewry was so-called because of its proximity to the place where Jewish people were permitted to live and trade. Not far from the church, in a street called Old Jewry, there is an interesting memorial plaque. It reads:

“The Great Synagogue stood near this site until 1272.”

King William I (1066-1087) is believed to have encouraged Jewish people to migrate to Britain. However, English prejudice and agitations against the Jews increased gradually until it reached a peak in the thirteenth century. For this reason, the synagogue closed in 1272. And soon after 1290, Jewish people were expelled from England. It was not until the 1650s during the Commonwealth of England headed by Oliver Crowell that they began returning to this island.

A peculiar mission in the wilds of Russia

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THE AUTHOR SOPHY Roberts made several quite arduous trips to various parts of Siberia. Her aim was to find pianofortes that had, in various ways and at different times in Russia’s history, found their way to cities and very remote places east of the Ural mountains, in Siberia. Her book, “The Lost Pianos of Siberia” describes her adventures and some of the pianos she found.

What made the book interesting for me was not so much the pianos themselves, but what Ms Roberts wrote about Siberia: its history; the people she met; and the landscape she saw. She also described early travel accounts of this vast often snowy part of Russia. Furthermore, she provided interesting insights into the Russian piano making industry that flourished both before and after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Illustrated with photographs and maps, this book is both fascinating and a compelling read

Kandinsky, Chicago, music, and visual arts

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AT THE EXPRESSIONIST exhibition, currently showing in London’s Tate Modern until the 20th of October 2024, I was suddenly reminded of something that I did in the last three months of 1963. During those months, my father was a visiting academic in the economics department of the University of Chicago. I spent that period as a pupil in the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School. It was in that time that President John F Kennedy was assassinated.

Once a week, we had a lesson during which the teacher played us a recording of classical music – some Beethoven, for example. Each of us students were given a large sheet of white paper and some coloured crayons. While the music was playing, we could draw whatever the music inspired us to do. I cannot recall what I drew, but I do remember these lessons.

Kandinsky and his siblings

Today, the 15th of July 2024, we visited the Expressionist exhibition at the Tate Modern. In one small room, there was music by Arnold Schoenberg playing in the background. There was also a photograph (taken about 1888) of the artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) playing chamber music with his two siblings. Opposite the photograph, I saw a framed painting created by Wassily Kandinsky in 1911. It is called “Impression III (Concert)”. He painted it after hearing a concert of music by Arnold Schoenberg. This painting was his response to the music.

It was seeing this painting by Kandinsky that reminded me of our music-inspired art sessions in Chicago back in 1963.

A Parsi fire temple and a Russian in a street in Calcutta

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ANYONE WHO KNOWS Calcutta well might wonder what made us stroll along Ezra Street. We had just left St Andrews Kirk (completed in 1818), where we heard the start of a Sunday service in Nepali, when I realised we were not far from Ezra Street. The Street is named after a trader David Joseph Ezra (died 1882) of Baghdadi Jewish heritage. But that is not why we visited the street.

My wife’s sister-in-law was brought up in number 48 Ezra Street in a house that my wife remembered as having been a glorious, picturesque old building. We wanted to see what, if anything, was left of the residence.

The ruined agiari

On our way along the street, we spotted a board that read “Rustomjee Cowasjee Church”. We entered the building and saw nothing that looked remotely like a Parsi fire temple (agiari). Instead, we found ourselves in a series of dimly lit chandelier and fancy lamp showrooms. We asked about the “Parsi Church”, and were shown the way to it. By the way, it seems that if a place of worship is neither a ‘mandir’ nor a ‘masjid’, then it is described by locals in Calcutta as a ‘church’ – be it a church, a synagogue, or an agiari.

The agiari behind the lamp shops is no longer in use. It is falling to pieces and unsafe to enter. It stands behind a verandah whose roof is supported by sturdy pillars with Doric capitals. It must have been magnificent in its heyday. We saw two plaques – one in English, and the other in Gujarati. Although it is in a poor condition, Kolkata Heritage has listed it as a ‘Grade 1’ monument. It was built in about 1839.

Number 48 Ezra Street has been demolished and replaced by an unattractive new building. Outside its main entrance, there is a memorial plaque in English. It records that the Russian adventurer, linguist, musician, writer, and translator, Gerasim Stepanovich Lebedev (1749-1817), opened a theatre on the site of number 37 Ezra Street, which faces number 48. His theatre was the first in Calcutta to employ Bengali actors and actresses. The first performance was in November 1795.

According to Wikipedia:
“Lebedev lived in Calcutta (now Kolkata), then the capital of British India, for about ten years. During his stay, he started to learn Hindi, Sanskrit and Bengali from a local schoolteacher named Golokhnath Das. In exchange, Lebedev had to teach Das violin and European music. With the support of a Russian doctor, then practicing in Calcutta, he was soon established as a musician. Tickets for his musical programmes were priced at Rs. 12. Lebedev was the first person to use Indian tunes on Western musical instruments”
The British colonial authorities became unhappy with Lebedev being in India, and expelled him in 1797. Eventually, he returned to Russia, where he was employed by the Russian Foreign Ministry. But before reaching his native land, he stopped off in London, where he published his “Grammar of the Pure and Mixed East Indian Languages”.

Although we saw nothing of the house in which my wife’s sister-in-law lived during her childhood, our stroll along Ezra Street allowed us to discover the well hidden remains of a Parsi agiari as well as introducing us to the Russian indolgist, GS Lebedev.

An Albanian conductor and a wonderful orchestral performance

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ONCE AGAIN, OLSI QINAMI has conducted the London City Philharmonic Orchestra superbly. Last night (the 28th of October 2023), they performed Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto number 2 and Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” in the Victorian gothic St James church at the Lancaster Gate end of Sussex Gardens.

Olsi Qinami was born in Albania. At the age of six, he began studying the piano. Then, he studied in Tirana’s Lycée Artistique “Jordan Misja”. Later, he studied at London’s Royal College of Music and also at both the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris. A website with his biography (www.olsiqinami.com) noted:

“Olsi continued his studies with Paavo Jarvi at the “Jarvi Conducting Academy”, Riccardo Muti at the “Riccardo Muti Opera Academy” with Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini, “Orkney Advanced Conducting Course” with Alexander Vedernikov & Charles Peebles and “the Royal Northern College of Music Advanced Conducting Masterclasses” with Mark Heron. He also studied with, Jorma Panula, Michalis Economou, Marco Guidarini, Stefano Ranzani, Alexander Vedernikov, Daniele Rossina, Roland Çene, Petrika Afezolli, Bujar Llapaj, Howard Williams, Neil Thomson and others.”

This impressive education has certainly paid off, as we experienced last night at the concert.

Both works were played superbly. The piano soloist Angela Szu-Hsuan Wu played what seemed like a technically challenging piece by Rachmaninov with great verve and skill, and deserved the tumultuous applause that followed the performance. After a short interval, the orchestra increased in size, getting ready to tackle “The Rite of Spring”. Olsi mounted the conductor’s stand to face an enormous orchestra. Before commencing the performance, he said a few words about the many challenges that Stravinsky’s work poses the orchestra playing it. For example, he explained that within the approximately 40 minutes that the “Rite” takes to perform, there are well over 400 changes of time signature (measures of rhythm). Then, he asked a horn player to play various versions of a tune that Stravinsky had composed in various versions of his work. After that, the orchestra performed the great work. It was an exhilarating performance. Under Olsi’s direction, the orchestra had the audience spellbound. In such a complex piece of music, so much could have gone wrong, but in Olsi’s hands nothing did.

Listening to music played ‘live’ is so much more satisfying than even the best quality recorded music. The three-dimensional spatial appreciation of the sound in a concert hall, or in the case of last night, in a church, can barely be reproduced with the best of hi-fi equipment. As with live theatre, when attending live music, the audience is somehow intimately engaged with the energy and enthusiasm of the players. After a great performance, such as last night’s concert, I am left feeling both exhausted and exhilarated. Last night’s concert performed by the London City Philharmonic orchestra with Olsi Qinami was no exception to this. If you have not yet experienced Olsi conducting, then it is high time that you get to one of his concerts.

A tree, a composer, Midsummers Night Dream, and the Barbican in London

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BURNHAM BEECHES IS an area of woodland not far from Slough and Windsor. Rich in beech trees, it was purchased by the Corporation of London in 1880. The German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) visited Britain several times between 1829 and 1847. While staying in England, Felix enjoyed spending time in Burnham Beeches. It is said that there was one old beech tree under which the composer liked to sit. Legend has it that it was in the shade of this tree that he gained inspirations for some of his compositions including some of the well-known “Incidental music to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’” (composed 1842).  In January 1990, when the tree was about 500 years old, it fell over during a storm.

Part of the fallen tree was presented to the Barbican Horticultural Society. Like Burnham Beeches, the Barbican (a post WW2 development in the City of London) is managed by the Corporation of London. The remnant – part of the tree’s trunk – stands on a section of the elevated walkway not far from Barbican Underground Station. Next to it, there is a plaque detailing its history and its probable connection with the composer.

What I have described so far appears in many websites detailing the curiosities of London. However, not one of them mentions that there is yet another fragment of this tree within the barbican. This piece of the dead tree is smaller than that on the walkway, and can be found, somewhat hidden by vegetation, within the Barbican’s magnificent conservatory.

I wondered what had attracted Mendelssohn to Burnham Beeches. In an article by Helen J Read, published by the Buckingham Archaeological Society on its website (www.bucksas.org.uk), I learned that Felix was often a guest of Mr and Mrs Grote, who lived close to Burnham Beeches. They often entertained musical and literary figures. Amongst their many guests was the Swedish singer Jenny Lind, who first performed in London in 1847. The singer also had a favourite tree, which, like Mendelssohn’s, was destroyed in a storm.

Regarding Mendelssohn and his tree, Ms Read wrote:

“Mr and Mrs Grote also entertained the composer Felix Mendelssohn. His favourite part of the Beeches was a mossy slope between Grenville Walk and Victoria Drive, at that time covered with pollarded trees. Many maps mark this area as Mendelssohn’s slope, and it is thought that the music for Puck and Oberon from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was inspired by this area. After Mendelssohn’s untimely death, Mrs Grote erected a headstone in his memory but the headstone was removed  … 

…  There is no specific mention in the earlier maps or guides of any particular tree favoured by the composer, but a plaque was later erected on an old pollard tree. The tree blew over and the plaque was moved to one nearby until the storm of 1987, when this tree lost all its branches.”

Judging by what Ms Read wrote, it seems to me that there is a possibility that the fragments of tree, now commemorated at the Barbican as being Mendelssohn’s Tree, might not be remnants of the one beneath which he sat. Even if these bits of timber are not from his favourite tree, they make a charming memorial to a composer whose music gives pleasure to so many people.

Playing the music of Thomas Tallis without much feeling

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JUST AS A PHOTOGRAPHER should try to capture what he or she feels about a subject, rather than attempting to copy it slavishly, I feel that good musicians should not only reproduce what is in the composer’s score but also express what they feel about it and what it means to them as they play.

Last night, the 19th of June 2023, we attended a concert of music by Thomas Tallis (c1505 – 1585) performed by the Tallis Scholars at Cadogan Hall (see photograph) in Sloane Square. As far as I could tell, the choir sung well. But I felt for most of the concert they were concentrating on accuracy more than anything else – the result seemed sterile to me. It was only during the final piece “Spem in allium” that the performer’s music sprung to life magnificently – it was an uplifting performance of this piece.

Parasol in the palace: art and architecture

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WHEN I SET off for Venice a couple of days ago, I doubted whether I would enjoy the Biennale as much as my wife and our daughter. How wrong I was. I have been enjoying exploring the artworks housed in a number of different places around the city. Some of the shows are in pavilions specially designed for Biennale exhibitions. Others are in places adapted, mostly temporarily, for use during the art festival. For example, the Nepalese and Armenian shows are in what look like disused shop premises. Others are in far grander edifices.

Today, we visited an exhibition housed in the courtyards and rooms of a huge palace, which is home to a music conservatoire (located close to Campo S Stefano). The exhibits (sculptures, paintings, and videos) were created by members of a group of artists within the fold of the Parasol Unit art foundation. The artists in the show are: Darren Almond, Oliver Beer, Rana Begum with Hyetal, Julian Charrière, David Claerbout, Bharti Kher, Arghavan Khosravi, Teresa Margolles, Si On, Martin Puryear, and Rayyane Tabet.

The show in the conservatoire is wonderful. The building itself is a fantastic architectural sculpture with a myriad of neo-classical decorative sculptural details. The works of art, which are in total contrast to the architecture, harmonise interestingly with the environments in which they have been placed. Photographs cannot do justice to this exhibition; it has to be experienced in person.

Although this show will be amongst my favourite exhibitions in the 2022 Venice Biennale, it is not alone in being magnificent. I am glad that we have come to Venice for this artistic bonanza.