"Arts and Minds" episode 20 October 2010 to January 2011 "Journals of an Arts Addict 2007-13"

“ARTS AND MINDS” SUBSTACK EPISODE 20 – OCTOBER TO JANUARY 2011 (JOURNALS OF AN ARTS ADDICT 2007-13)

JOHN TUSA

A visit to Wexford; politics and music, engaging but not Verdi. I tell John Humphrys how I would change the BBC. How Neil MacGregor’s elegant insincerity fought off government museum budget cuts. BBC bureaucracy almost stymies the publication of the British Museum’s “History of the World in 100 Objects”. How Viennese exiles kept British culture alive at the BBC by loving it. Jonas Kaufmann at Wigmore; is he really a lieder singer? The pleasures of commissioning a piece of furniture. “Dignity in Dying”: Five things to do before I die; Five things I would like to be remembered by. Cultural policy in China: “Dictation combined with indifference”. Culture in Hong Kong: filled with ”human doings not human beings”. How Hong Kong’s elite view mainland Chinese: “badly behaved and crudely dressed”. A question for me in Hong Kong: “Which girl friend are you seeing tomorrow night?”

Friday, October 15. Another invitation from David Davies, the banker,

to the Wexford Opera. With a newly built opera house and far sighted artistic leadership, it has become gem of musical quality. The guests are fun too.

How serious a politician is the Northern Ireland Secretary, Hugo Swire? His wife, the savage memoirist, Sasha, daughter of John Nott, with whom I was at Trinity, says to Annie only half jokingly, that “I am the real politician not Hugo!”. When we reach Wexford and Hugo jumps onto the luggage trolley as it is wheeled to the hotel lift, I say to Sasha:“That’s no way for a serious politician to behave!” She replies “ He’s not a serious politician!” Truth is Hugo is very funny. He regales us with a hysterical account of trying to keep up with Cameron on a jog – he is very competitive - and being reassured by a security man “not to worry they have a de-fibrillator in the following car!” One of these days, he will be caught out being funny about Cameron by a journo and he will be finished. Being driven in the British Embassy armoured Jag by Brian Driscoll, who was driving the embassy car when Christopher Ewart-Biggs was blown up by the IRA, was just part of the weekend atmosphere. Wexford’s streets hum with Gardai and British security.

Saturday, October 16. Wexford first night of Mercadante’s “Virginia”. A spirited mid C19 piece, full of tunes, ensembles and opportunities for fine big singing. The star is the young Venezuelan conductor, Carlos Izcaray, with a real sense of style, and the right flick of the wrist to get the phrasing sharp. Others liked the young and big - in every sense – lyric soprano – Angela Meade. Some of us thought that she must get rid of at least two stone if she is to be taken seriously. And Mercadante? Clever, accomplished, often sounds like Verdi but as Nicholas Payne said: “His trouble is that Verdi was a contemporary and did it all far better!”

Tuesday, October 19. Today’s funding drama is that BBC World Service, historically funded from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office budget, is to be put onto the BBC licence fee’s books. I argue, on Radio Five Live, that this truly declares the BBCWS’ independence from government and in any case the FCO has not always been a good custodian of the BBCWS. Of course, BBCWS funding must now be ring fenced within the BBC.

Wednesday October 20. The ”Today” programme sends a radio car to me at 7 am for a pre-rec interview with John Humphrys. He lets me range widely, bowling a series of slow “long hops” to be despatched to the boundary. What would I cut in the BBC? Most of “compliance” activities, make editors and controllers edit and let them comply in the fullest sense. Most of marketing. Cut salaries as I warned a year ago. I duck what networks I should cut but I could have said “Merge BBC 2 and 4, savagely reduce BBC 3, and look at the BBC radio digital networks.” Had I been really naughty, I should have criticised the BBC move to Salford! But back to Humphrys. Did I say the BBC “had it coming”? No, but they faced management salaries that were too high and management layers that were too thick. Now, I add, they sack the Deputy DG at a huge salary and then don’t replace him? So what was he doing ? I feel better for saying it.

Friday October 22. I am very tired so spend the whole day at home clearing mind, desk and office and feel all the better for it. Saturday we catch up on Stephen Frears’ new film “Tamara Drewe”, rather lukewarm-ly reviewed with phrases such as the “ultimate feel good movie”. In truth, it is a subtle and very funny English comedy of manners with a dark undertow of tragedy to it, satirising characters and types of behaviour rather sharply, acted with brilliant, satirical understatement by such as Roger Allam and Tamsin Greig. It does not wear its sleeve of “seriousness” heavily or not at all but is serious nevertheless. A real joy and (re-) discovery perfect for an autumn afternoon.

Monday, 25 October. Stunning performance of Messiaen’s “Quatuor pour le fin du temps” in the evening. Paul Watkins’ almost solo cello movement is rapt, intense, mesmeric. Leila Josefowicz’s violin playing of the final movement ending in the etherial stratosphere is breathtaking. In the Green room afterwards, the composer Colin Matthews says Leila recently played his violin concerto – the premiere – from memory! “She is a real musician not a wet tee-shirt babe! She only wants to play modern music, she commissions it and does the big concertos to make money!” She seemed a true musician to us too. And a full house for Messiaen on a Monday.

Wednesday, October 27. The British Museum launches Neil MacGregor’s book of the “History of the World in 100 Objects”, a radio broadcasting tour de force. As we go in to the lecture theatre for the launch, there is Barry Cunliffe, a BM trustee also trustee of English Heritage. How have the current budget cuts affected them? “A disaster, we have lost a third of our grant, and will have to sack 4-500 staff – we’re taking the organisation apart and having to re-build it from scratch.” So what happened? Barry: “Well, the national museum directors got in to see Cameron and said if the proposed arts funding cuts were applied the museums would have to introduce admission charges! Cameron gave in. English Heritage’s chairman then tried to see Cameron but wasn’t allowed to!” Later, over supper, Neil Macgregor confirms the story: “Well, we did say to the prime minister that if the cuts went ahead, we might have no alternative but to introduce admission charges!”, said in his best silky tone of (insincere) regret!

The BBC commissioning and production contingent is out in force. I rehearse with Jane Ellison and Mark Damazer the time when the Museum – instructed by the Trustees – wrote to the BBC that if it insisted on claiming the rights to all the programme material, the BM would not be part of the project! Incredibly, each time the project moved onto a different medium – ie the web – the BBC lawyers raised the same objections that the BBC cannot “share” rights. As the editor Jane Ellison said: “We had to fight it through the BBC four times for the same project in different platforms!” Mark Damazer commissioned the series and explodes: “We are now having to argue it through all over again over putting the programmes out on CDs.” The BBC at internal war with itself.

Thursday, October 28. The BBC throws a memorial for the former Controller of Radio Three, Stephen Hearst, a secular celebration in the BBC concert hall. The five speakers act wholly true to form. Humphrey Burton – on film – is ludicrously self-aggrandising; Colin Nears, Leslie Megahey and above all, John Tydeman, are warm, witty, loving, perceptive and respectful. The final speaker – why? – is Alan Yentob, who is ill-prepared and reads, badly, an extract from Pepys’s diary which he said Hearst loved. It was lazy, offhand and arrogant. “Tyde” is on great form afterwards with further Hearst/Martin Esslin stories. (Imagine the Austrian accents.) Esslin: “Stephen, we have this very good play but in one scene the main person takes down his trousers, takes his John Thomas and puts on a preservative!” Hearst: ” No, no, Martin, he does not put jam or marmalade on his John Thomas ; he puts on a condom!” Tyde says the Viennese mafia – Hearst, Esslin, Keller, Fischer – actually cared for British culture more than the British themselves. Some drunken talk of “Who, will be the next to go?!” I say “Celebrate the living. Throw a Music and Arts party now!’”

Sunday, October 31. A huge Wigmore evening, the return after five years of the opera star singer du jour, Jonas Kaufmann. At Covent Garden, you would pay £200 to hear him; here just £40 top price. We will not price our top tickets beyond the wallets of the loyal Wigmore audience. We will not become the “Glyndebourne of Wigmore Street”. Kaufmann sings “Die Schone Mullerin”, one of the great tests of a song singer. He has a rich, ringing middle voice, a resonant baritonal quality lower down and then? Well, he has three solutions to the true tenor high notes – the first is to give it the full-blast operatic tenor sound; the second, singing softly, is to croon; the third is an odd mezzo-voce, slightly husky though trying to be expressive. Make no mistake, the voice is powerfully expressive, the understanding of words is total, the ability to tell the story magnificent. But this manufactured high note is a real drawback. I last heard Kaufmann sing lieder at Edinburgh five years ago. I decided that he was a dramatic story teller and noted the exact same uneasy “join” between middle and upper registers! What it is to be right! The long awaited verdict of the historian of the voice, Richard Stokes, is: “I don’t care for what he does with his voice. But I have never heard the words better understood or better expressed!” And a final word from Gilhooly: ”It is a very idiosyncratic voice, probably not a true lieder voice. But he is a fantastic communicator.”

Tuesday, November 2. British Museum reception for the “Egyptian Book of the Dead”. I congratulate Niall Fitzgerald, the Chairman, over the way that the Serota/MacGregor axis confronted Cameron over admission fees and got the museums’ share of the Treasury cuts reduced. Niall says: “Ah yes but what about this? We needed to get Treasury permission to release £40m of BM reserves for the North West Wing development. We needed it in four weeks. Jeremy Hunt said it was difficult or nigh impossible.” Niall then chose his words carefully: “‘I must tell you, Jeremy, that if we cannot get that money released in the time needed, the country will lose the greatest museum director we have ever had and possibly one of the greatest in the world!” It worked; the Secretary of State “blinked”, the balances were unfrozen, a ghastly Treasury shibboleth anyway, just another way of keeping control over institutions.

Tuesday, November 16. A red letter day – the furniture maker, Rod Wales, delivers our specially commissioned console table. It is in burned oak, then deeply polished and varnished leaving a high gloss to its blackness. Its real distinction is some narrow slots at each end, painted in a deep red, like Japanese lacquer. The table is both quiet, simple looking and complex but the real coup is its balance and sense of proportion. It fills the space we set for it in a perfect harmony, yet truly filling the space by only partially filling it physically. That is proportion for you.

Saturday, November 20. ENO first night for Raskatov’s version of Bulgakov’s “A Dog’s Heart”, a savage satire on the Soviet attempt to create the “new man” of the future society. What happens when a dog has key human organs transplanted into its body? According to Bulgakov, It becomes a vodka-swilling, foul mouthed, uncontrolled, uncivilised parody of a human being. At one moment of deepest disillusionment, a character says: “The trouble is that it has a dog’s heart!” The professor who did the transplant observes: “ No, it’s heart is man’s”. Simon McBurney conjures up one of the most brilliant productions of opera ever seen, not elaborate but ingenious, effective, dazzling and realising the biting political satire with total success.

Thursday, November 25. To chair the “Dignity in Dying” seminar at St Thomas’s, using the arts in easing the passage of the terminally ill and the demented. Lucinda Jarrett, a Clore Fellow, is the heart behind it. People who work in this area are so admirable, so dedicated, so positive. One group is called “Dying Matters”, with the strap line, “Let’s talk about it!” They want people to state publicly five things they would like to do before they die, and five things for which they would wish to be remembered. Why not my own first cut now? So, “Five Things to Do”? See Clore Fellowship its tenth year; See University of the Arts through to 2015; make a major radio series; write a new book of essays; publish my BBCWS diaries; look after and relish the grandchildren. Then: “Five Things to be Remembered by”? Much harder. I loved my wife, children and grandchildren; I gave BBC World Service a new lease of life; I revived the Barbican; I spoke up for the value of the arts; I steered the Wigmore to historic stability. Let others judge if they can be bothered.

Saturday, December 11. Wagner’s “Tannhauser” at Covent Garden conducted by Semyon Bychkov whose performance of “Lohengrin” was one of the events of last year. Two things stand out – Jasmin Verdamon’s choreography of the opening “Venusberg” scene with girls in black knickers, white tops and long black shifts hurling themselves around the stage with boys in dinner suits who steadily lose almost all of their clothes. The movement, the exhilaration is rampantly sexy. Then there was the baritone, Christian Gerhaher! He stands very still, relaxed, almost indrawn, mid stage with tremendous concentration. He sings Wolfram’s Act Three song to the evening star with unearthly simplicity and unaffected beauty. When he came on at the final curtain, there was a huge roar of approval; he looked startled as if he did not fully realise what he had done. It was glorious. A star was born. Afterwards, backstage he still looked bewildered at what he had done.

Thursday January 13, 2011 The British Council had devised two days of discussions and breakouts with some forty middle ranking Chinese arts administrators in Shenzen. The agenda was totally familiar: “leadership versus management”, “what is Cultural Policy” and so on. How does it work in China? Chinese cultural policy is top down – just like any other national policy. Does this mean that there is government support for the arts and culture? No, but they tell them what they should do. (This was called the ‘double-edged sword’: government dictation combined with indifference !) China is very new to the creative industries. They lack a creative professional core; the consumption market, audience to you and me, is very limited. “We need a quality audience to consume and appreciate.” In that order. And a real stinker: “The core of culture is to serve politics!” Surely the opposite, well everywhere else in the world: “The core of politics is to serve culture”. And how’s this: “If artists follow government, they will not starve!” Of course they won’t but neither will they produce art.

Sunday, January 16. The course on cultural leadership with Hong Kong University starts, a very different world. The air is thick with apercus. “Hong Kong is filled not with human beings but with human doings!” One person gives this advice to his fellow Hong Kong-ers: “ Ask yourselves the question ‘ To be or not to be?’ Not ‘To do or not to do!’” Also: ”Hong Kong’s besetting sin is exchanging name cards! But they never look at your name! Only at your title or position!”

Lars Nittve, ex-Tate, ex-Stockholm Modern, comes to talk. (He is planning the new Kowloon Museum). On the difference between national traditions of museology. Who are museums for? Germans and Swiss say: “We are for the artist!” The British say: “We are for the public!” The Swedes say: “We negotiate the moment when the public meets the work of art!” Neat and perceptive. And how do you survive in today’s troubled times? “We should celebrate uncertainty and instability”.

Tuesday January18 Dinner with my former Cambridge contemporary, the creative designer and jeweller, Kai-yin Lo. Kai-yin is now a grand HK lady big in fashion, design, jewellery. “I was not a good student at Cambridge. I am self taught and became an expert on Chinese furniture, Chinese palaces and houses, the way they are organised, the way they are laid out. I have written standard books on these subjects. But academics never recognised me. I have no PhD. Why? Because my books do not have enough references and sources. I wish I had collected Chinese imperial furniture more. I started early but then the big money came in and now it is beyond me. Now I have to go to a reception at Louis Vuitton in Canton Street. Why not come?” Why not? Canton Street, Kowloon-side, is “brand alley” with the great European fashion names in glitzy stores, side by side, Ferragamo, Chanel, St Laurent etc etc. Queues of young Chinese (mainly from the Mainland) stand in front of printed signs saying: “We apologise that due to pressure of people in the store we must ask you to wait a few minutes!”

The party Kai-yin takes me to is thrown by Yanna Peel, a very tall – aren’t they all – Russian whose husband is a big private equity person and who devote their time and money to contemporary art. She is fluent in English, very charming and pretty clever. Yanna is launching a book: “Ah, I must look at Kai-yin’s shoes! They are always wonderful!” The thesis of her book, “Art for Baby”, is that even the very young can respond to colour, but line and subtlety are beyond them. So they can appreciate Damien Hirst, Julian Opie, Gary Hume and Murakami who display the approved qualities in her book. There are works by the quartet on the walls all belonging, at a guess, to the Peels. The Hirsts are dull, the Murakami rather interesting. The thesis of the book seems to offer a very double edged kind of approval; these artists paint the kind of works that babies can respond to. So is their appeal to adults, too, infantile, their very absence of complexity constituting their appeal? It strikes me too that there is an identikit list of artists who the “serious, moneyed” collector must have on their walls. Still, I drink their champagne, the other guests are almost impossible to “read”, so let’s not be too inverse snobbish towards people with money. What would we say if they did NOT spend money on contemporary work!

Wednesday January 19. My other date from old times was Director General of RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong) Cheung man-yee, who I knew from my time at BBC World Service. Man-yee is waiting for me in the Red Room of the very luxurious Hong Kong Club. She is poised, elegant and full of the inside track. “Hong Kong is all about land, who owns it, who can buy it. The whole point of West Kowloon (cultural centre) is who will be able to buy the land” (19% of the site will be up for sale). On the Hong Kong Club: “ We have very strict rules. We don’t like the mainland Chinese! They are very noisy, very badly behaved and dress extremely crudely. So we do not let them in!” On me: “And now which girl friend are you seeing tomorrow night?”

3,363 words 13 May 2025