ARTS AND MINDS - JOURNALS OF AN ARTS ADDICT 2007-2013

EPISODE 10 APRIL/MAY 2009

ARTS AND MINDS  - JOURNALS OF AN ARTS ADDICT 2007-13

Episode 10  APRIL/MAY 2009

JOHN TUSA

At the Barbican, Sir Colin Davis was conducting the combined orchestras and choruses of the Royal Academy of Music and GSMD (Guildhall School of Music and Drama) in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the ”Choral. Working with them, Colin himself seemed to get some of their  youth.

Friday, March 20. The young play their hearts out with passion, energy and commitment. And the choruses, especially the sopranos, hit the sustained  repeated high notes with ease – why?  They are young and their voices can do it! For the average “ladies” of the average symphony chorus, it is far more of a push!!  Even the great Philharmonia Chorus in Otto Klemperer’s day found those notes tough. And Colin?  He keeps it simple, giving the shape, the pulse, the drama but not expecting the “young” to be able to “over phrase” or over interpret. Afterwards Colin is alone in the Green Room with his usual whisky. But very satisfied. It is a pleasure to tell him how good it and he was. Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, the Principal of the Royal Academy,  tells us that Colin Davis has been working with the Royal Academy of Music for twenty years – the Beethoven symphonies,  the three da Ponte operas, next a Bruckner cycle !!  And in all that time he has not taken a fee!

I joined the board of the British Museum Trustees in  2000.  The  nine years that followed were an intense learning experience for me as the BM lurched from one governance crisis  to another. It  built the magnificent renewal project that is Great Court and ended with one of the most effective leadership teams in the museum world: Niall FitzGerald,  the business leader as Chairman, Neil MacGregor, academic, as Director

Thursday, March 26.  My BM Farewell dinner, hosted by Niall and Neil and with a goodly turn out of fellow (former) trustees and wives/partners to see us off.  Helena  Kennedy gives a fulsome assessment of my career and talents (sic), then I do my resume of high and low points of my nine years as trustee.  Being recruited by the then Chairman, Graham Greene, over coffee at the  Garrick – no selection process there;  hideous Saturday morning meetings under the warring duumvirate of Robert Anderson and Suzanna Taverne; the ride to Aldeburgh, the awful American fund raiser, the smoothly arrogant French Museum director, the Jacuzzis/saunas (not!) at the Amsterdam Radisson. It had them rolling in the aisles and none of it made up.  I ended by saying that being a Trustee was an education, a diversion, a drama, but above all, “always, always a privilege!”

One of the unexpected, unpredictable hits of the recent musical world had been  the creation and emergence of the Simon  Bolivar Youth Orchestra, young  classical musicians recruited in the most deprived areas of Venezuela. What players they became.  Michael Lynch, the South Bank director, got us in to the first of their  concerts at the Festival Hall.

Tuesday, April 14. It is a glorious effervescent riot – Bartok “Concerto for Orchestra” and Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony.  With a dozen double basses and eight horns, what – as they say - is there not to like? The quality of the orchestra is astonishing. Don’t get carried away; it is not the Berlin Phil, the Vienna Phil, or the LSO.  And Dudamel is a good conductor, natural actions, fluid, strong beats where needed, and gets some extreme speeds when he wants. Their party piece finale is where the lights go out, they take off their jackets, put on Venezuelan “bomber jackets” and swing into Latin American tempo with trumpet twirling,  cello spinning,  and every other piece of stage action.  Finally, they bundle up their jackets and throw them into a delirious crowd.  I fail to get one - mighty miffed.

Some thoughts. If our National Youth Orchestra tried to do a “British version” with “Union Jack”  bomber jackets, it would be acutely embarrassing. But we do not need Venezuela’s pioneering “La Sistema”; we have a huge youth orchestra tradition but it is built on a very narrow audience and school and social base.  How do we widen it?  My belief is that New Labour will never be able to get over “classical music-elitism” as a deep hangover that undermines their commitment to serious music in schools.

Throughout this time, the vast, ambitious new campus for Central Saint Martins College at University of the Arts London was being steadily constructed on the previously derelict lands north of Kings Cross and St Pancras. It was a huge risk, financial as well as institutional. It took a large amount  of my time as Chair of the University Governors.

Monday, April 20. I visit the UAL site at King’s Cross.  It is huge!  The Granary Warehouse open floors have great oak beams and cast iron pillars and columns.  Grand spaces. And the ground floor “avenue” between the two old railway sheds will be – again – a dramatic space. Work is on time, ahead actually, and crystallising by the week.  The square in front, running down to the canal will be a real London space. And we will be the first London landmark building seen by Eurostar travellers as they emerge from the tunnel into St Pancras.

Each year, the Clore Fellowship Programme sifted through several hundred applications for the year long leadership course and whittled them down to just 30. It was profoundly revealing about how the young thought about arts leadership.

Wednesday, April 29.  Another day of Clore Fellowship interviews. The women are brilliant, the men hardly there! One panellist said: “That’s because men don’t believe they need to learn!  They know it all already!”  Another panellist:  “Remember, the arts are less well paid. A decade ago, the men were going into banking; women went into the arts. This cohort is now showing through and doing so strongly!” Questions they get wrong: “When do you stop being a team player and become a leader?”  All of them say that leadership is “collegiate”, “consensual”, “cooperative” etc but of course once decisions are needed, then you become a “leader”.  It has been a near universal response.  Gwyn Miles, the Somerset House director, leaned back laughing and said: “How can we get it so wrong?”  The answer seems to be that is the way it is taught on leadership courses – but not on the Clore!

I have always admired the American choreographer, William Forsythe. When I interviewed him for BBC Radio  Three, I was struck by his observation: “The body teaches you a tremendous amount about the world.  The body itself is an organ for listening.”

Thursday, April 30.  William Forsythe’s Tate Turbine Hall event with some 14 dancers moving between 200 wire-suspended, lead-weight pendulums. It looks beautiful but the movement is disconnected. Isn’t that the point? Not necessarily. The movements are the random, jerky movements of people with Asperger’s.  An interesting idea – why should such movements not be turnable into dance?  Good idea – mine, I think - except that those do not seem to be what Forsythe is exploring.  So the dancers writhe from one end of the Turbine Hall to the other.  Will the random jerkiness – improvised too – evolve into something more resolved?   After 70 minutes we realise that it runs two hours.  We slip out and sadly do not regret it. 

The ”Cheek by Jowl” company is one of the most fearlessly innovative theatre companies in the country.  Its director, Declan Donnellan,  is relentless in his fertile re-interpretations of accepted classics.

Friday, May 1.  “Cheek by Jowl’s” stripped down, urgent, dramatically delivered version of Racine’s “Andromaque”.  It’s in the reconfigured GSMD theatre that has now become the GSMD/Barbican Centre Silk Street Theatre.  A good space, twice the size of the old Barbican Pit. The doors between the Guildhall School and the Barbican, adjacent institutions in the same building, are unlocked at last – after years when I was told that “security” demanded they be closed!! Some battles are won only later! The show – Racine in French – is a sell out.  It is  good to  remind ourselves that there are ways of writing plays other than those formed by Shakespeare and the Jacobeans.

Is there a better place to be than London on a Spring Bank Holiday weekend? Especially with cultural riches on offer. They are never to be taken for granted, even if they are not necessarily of the greatest.

Saturday, May 2.  Glorious Spring weather, we would be glad of it in June!   To Tate Modern for Rodchenko and Popova.  I love their grace, their ingenuity, the subtlety of their colours, the rhythm and balance of their shapes.  And their theory/ideology are hilarious if also self-deluding: “We are abandoning the subjective”.  Self-defeating too: “We are part of the machine age”. And very rigid, as when Rodchenko designs a welfare centre “stripped of the usual bourgeois distractions” – ie comfort, mess, fun – and replaced with clean design, spare colours, clear lines.  Well, three cheers in one sense but the sense of sheer dogmatism is  overwhelming.  It is funnier than sad but it is sad too.  Who were they kidding?

Sunday, May 3.  The pleasant but interesting  Bank Holiday mediocrity wears on!  Stephen Frears has asked us to the cast and crew preview of his latest film, “Cheri” at the Lycee in South Kensington. It is a pleasant, rather mechanical, “periody” recreation of the Colette story. But the characters are incredible when unattractive: the useless, indulgent ‘Cheri’ himself  does not get deep treatment from Rupert Friend. Michelle Pfeiffer conveys neither the blowsy style of a former courtesan, still less the moment when she has “grown old” and Cheri abandons  her.  It is not helped by a rather literary script by Christopher Hampton.   

The once Hungarian, now international, Takacs Quartet has long been at the pinnacle of chamber music performance. If evidence was needed that the classical music world is highly competitive, the Wigmore “lost”  the Takacs to the South Bank Centre  for some years.  This performance marked a welcome ”return”.

Monday, May 4.  The Takacs Quartet at the Wigmore at a BBC lunchtime concert.  Haydn op 77 is tight, graceful, not exaggerated, deceptively natural, a mature joy – Haydn really is for grown ups.  Their Bartok Four is magisterial, each movement clearly sculpted, delineated, total authority.  In the Green Room, we really butter them up but the leader, Edward Duisenbeer, says “We love playing here” as if there was no problem whatever. Also “We’re too old to play the (Bartok Quartets) all in one day!” Tho’ once, he says, when they did, the tension was so huge that a woman screamed after Bartok Three! 

We are fortunate to live in the heart of the greatest cultural  city in the world. But, though this is an unfashionable view, excellence in London spreads through the entire nation, it is a catalyst. But it is not a reason for neglecting arts funding elsewhere in the nation..

Tuesday, May 5.  Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at Covent Garden.  The Russian, Semyon Bychkov, conducts, the orchestra and house love him. At the third act start, the band applaud him before taking their own bows!  Unseen in 59 years of going to Covent Garden.  He conducts in a very fluent, plastic, romantic way  which gets the piece just right;  very human, very acute psychologically.  A fine “new-ish” helden tenor, Simon O’Neill, with a strong, silver, heroic, tone.  The running joke of the evening is that every time we meet (Sir) Norman Rosenthal, he says “Oh yes, but Johan Botha was much better! This is the second cast!”   Well, we have heard Botha and he is strong, serviceable, but lacks Simon O’Neill’s lyric top.  But you won’t persuade  Norman – about anything.

The arts and culture world was full enough of real issues, real dilemmas, major disagreements. Once it was a positive relief to experience a true storm in a tea cup. I was at its centre and thought it funny.

Thursday, May 7.  Back at UAL, a great row with the Chapman Bros, known as the provocateurs of modern art,  true “naughty boys”.  Some Wimbledon Art School students are raising money for their degree shows by asking artists to contribute something – say, an old catalogue – to auction.  The letters asking them to contribute went out under my name, as Chairman of UAL Governors.  The Chapman Bros replied to the student by scrawling in moderately offensive language all over my letter.  Much official University consternation: “ The ‘Chairman’s letter’ has been defaced!”   When I see it, I say: “But it is a work of art, an authentic Chapman Bros work.  Leave it, it is the only time I will feature on a Chapman work!”  Someone has already put in a bid for it. The worst thing the Brothers did was not to “deface the Chairman’s letter” but to be rude to the organising  student!  Once the Brothers had been “told off” by the college head, Chris Wainwright and the dean, George Blacklock, they were all sweetness and light.   The price for the “defaced letter”/work of art is now some £1.7k. I briefly consider buying it. It is a joke but not funny enough at the price!

Given  the number of times Annie and I had visited Afghanistan over the years for Rory Stewart’s “Turquoise Mountain Foundation“, of which I was a Trustee,  anything dealing with events and history there was of particular interest.

Saturday, May  9. All day at the Tricycle, Kilburn for Nicholas Kent’s extraordinary cycle of ten new plays about Afghanistan from 1842 to the present.  Each play is set at a moment of history and explores character, relationships and dilemmas. They chart the key incidents of the 150 year drama but do so through ideas, exchanges and tension.  The lessons?  That invaders/occupiers fare badly; that Afghans are stubborn, independent, factional, traditional and always prone to civil war; and that now the fear surrounding the possibility of Taliban return governs behaviour, determines choices. Outsiders are frustrated by their own wish to “do good” but their inability to see the problems associated with doing it. A day of sadness and almost heartbreak.  Above all, the subtlety of the editing, the knitting together of the patchwork, the sense of a whole made from  intense fragments.

“Pets love prizes” and judging by their frequency so does everyone in the arts culture and of course the media. How can this be explained? These professions are mainly well paid, often very well paid. But we also want recognition, a rather different commodity?

Monday, May 11. To the Sony Radio Awards dinner, where the whole of my BBC Radio Four “1968 Day by Day” season has been shortlisted.  In the event we get a Silver, the Gold going to somebody worthy. But the fact that the ambition and intellectual scope of “1968 Day by Day”” did not get the Gold is really ludicrous.  I comfort the executive producer, Jane Ellison, by saying that intellectually the series represented a vast ambition and was an incredible success. The whole awards event is a bear garden. Chris Evans hosts the proceedings but picks up two Golds too!   Distinctly odd, that.

Tuesday, May 12. Another evening, another set of awards.  The Royal Philharmonic Society at the Dorchester hotel, a more sedate affair but not dull. It exudes warmth and quality. Charles Mackerras, the veteran conductor,  hands out the awards; he is enough to make anyone feel happy.  Dame Liz Forgan, former chair of the Arts Council, gives the main speech. How did she get exposed to classical music?  Her eccentric grandfather played her Wagner’s “Tristan” Prelude at the age of 6.  That was it, she was hooked. “Had I had to play “Frere Jacques” on a penny whistle at school, I would have turned to street crime!”  So her message about introducing children to classical music was: “Chuck them in at the deep end, and above all, never apologise!” 

For us at the Wigmore, Thomas Qasthoff’s acceptance of the RPS Gold Medal was the high point. He praised the Barbican for his residency there. But of the Wigmore and its director, John Gilhooly, he spoke of his vision, the importance  of what it stood for.  It was an encomium of encomiums.

The “Bushmen” was the long standing BBC External Service’s cricket club and, more controversially, a “men only” dining club. When I became managing director of the World Service in 1986, I refused to join or attend the dining club until they admitted women on equal terms. I never joined as a member. In due course, I was ready to  attend as a guest.

Wednesday, May 27.  Dinner with the Bushmen at the Savile Club, my first for, I am told, 16 years!  I told the Chair, Ann Theroux, that I didn’t want to indulge in a fest of nostalgia.  But she prevailed on me to do my “BBC Values” piece that I first gave to the former Harkness Fellows. It went down well and sparked off interesting discussion.  Michael Cockerell, the “Panorama” reporter said that in the Birt years, if someone referred to the DG as “John”, you watched your words; if they said “Birt” you knew you were safe; if it was “John Birt”, you thought twice. He asked me what kind of DG I  would have been?  I said more pragmatic, less managerially driven, far more people oriented, with a clearer articulation of values that would explain what the BBC was and why it did what it did. A big laugh when I said that I should have  told “Dukey”  where to shove the little “Halcyon Days” enamel box which he gave me as a consolation prize for not being interviewed for the DG opposition.     

A bigger laugh when I tell the story of Annie and the Board of Management dinner. She had had to sit next to Birt once at such an event and when the next invitation came said “No Way!”  I said, “I’ll ring up the assistant secretary, Towyn Mason to make sure you are decently placed!”  I do so.  Slight pause at the other end.  “You know John, you’re not the first person to ring and ask me that!”

3.029 words  6 September 2024