Player Piano

Anyone who had a heart

One of Stephen Cox's sarcophagi (Interior Space: for Cheops)
at Houghton

I have returned to Houghton Hall of an evening.  It is delicious summer - panamas and linen, chambray and crepe - the style doesn't matter, it's how you carry yourself, darling.  So, though initially I feel that perhaps my faded jeans may be inexcusable, I begin to think I could, just, maybe, fit in.....

Anyway, I am not here for the craic.  Nor to flaunt.  Nor to engage.  I am here, seriously, for Illia Ovcharenko to test my hearing aids with his digital dexterity (and pedal power.....)

Reflections on a country seat

Illia Ovcharenko is a Ukrainian pianist, currently living in Hanover, who recently won the Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, which seeks to identify the Complete Artist....

Under the auspices of King's Lynn Festival (Artistic Director, Ambrose Miller) and with the cooperation of Lord Cholmondeley for the use of Houghton Hall, it is a magical evening.   

A quickly executed oil painting of Illia and his audience (photography was not permitted)

On another occasion I might have said that the interval, with chardonnay libations, was the high spot of the evening, given the chance to roam at will amongst Stephen Cox's stones and the enchanting environs of one of England's grandest country houses (constructed in the 1720s for Britain's first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole)......  But (There is a but?  Ed) Yes, but, this is a concert to rival any (Oasis?  Glasto?  Ed). Yes, Ed, this is a concert to rival any.  

For a start, I was misled.  I mistook the piano for a Player Piano, and thought that perhaps we were to be subjected to rolls of punched paper honky tonk.  But, yes it was an innocent mistake - it was a Pleyel Piano, as grand as anything by Bechstein or Steinway.....

Manufactured using the skills built up over 210 years of existence and experience, Pleyel grand pianos are synonymous with French excellence in instrument making. Characterised by a romantic sonority which is the Pleyel hallmark, these instruments offer pianists unparalleled musical expressiveness.

Secondly, the setting was non pareil.  No Glastonbury Yurt could match the elegance of this room - from the decorations on the walls and mantelpieces to the views from the windows.  A perfect room for withdrawing, a perfect space for performance....

And the programme was out of the top drawer, too.  We started with Beethoven's Sonata  in B flat (Les Adieux), and then heard Liszt's transcription of the second movement of Beethoven's 7th symphony.  And then tripped toward the interval with Etudes by Schumann which took their theme from that same symphony by Beethoven.  I was spell bound as the notes spilled from the instrument, miraculously spun by the several hands and multiple fingers (or so it seemed) of the artist.

Outside the sun had begun to lapse into Lincolnshire and the evening reigned calm.  I saw the landscape as a continuation of the sculpture, or vice versa, and fell to wondering about the genius of creativity that gives us music.  

And I returned to photograph the shapes thrown by the artistry of Stephen Cox, my ears still full of Beethoven's astonishing deafness.  And I noticed how these converging slices of stone create a representation of an aorta, reminding me of the essence of life that is the circulatory system.  Dismiss this as spurious mental meandering, but as I have just got back from a serious consultation about my own sensitivities with a renowned cardiologist, I think I am entitled to some poetic licence.....

The aorta of life  (in stone)

We return to our seats, and Illia plays three pieces by his Ukrainian hero, Sergei Bortkiewicz, a composer to think of along with Chopin, and then, demonstrating his mastery of the piano, Illia finishes with Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor, and I am struck by how this concert seems to fill all four dimensions.  The sound reverberates around the room, touching the lights, fluttering in the breeze that breathes through the open windows.  It is all around us, coming at us from different directions, totally different from the playing of music from a disc, in stereo or Hi Fi, this is in front of you, above, below, behind and beside you.  And then there is the fourth dimension.  Illia could be Beethoven, or Liszt, or Bortkiewicz....  The composers are revived and they play their music through Illia.  Time becomes meaningless as we experience an infinitely expanded present....

Illia Ovcharenko exits, stage left

You may well think this is over the top (You said it, Ed) but believe me I was overcome.  And, after the encore (a Chopin Polonaise) and after the applause had sputtered out like an exhausted candle, I made my obeisance to the piano.  But the piano was silent.  It was just a piano.  A Pleyel.  Not a Player. 

There are times when human ingenuity confounds.

And then, driving home, a lipstick sunset stains the sky behind the spire of St Mary's, and I fade to nothingness, my heart (which seems to be functioning adequately) filled with gratitude that there is love in the world.

Life would be flat without music. It is the background to all I do. It speaks to the heart in its own special way like nothing else. 

Ludwig van Beethoven

Note (Me neither, Ed):

Hermann Minkowski exploited the idea of four dimensions to discuss cosmology including the finite velocity of light. In appending a time dimension to three-dimensional space, he specified an alternative perpendicularity, hyperbolic orthogonality. This notion provides his four-dimensional space with a modified simultaneity appropriate to electromagnetic relations in his cosmos. Minkowski's world overcame problems associated with the traditional absolute space and time cosmology previously used in a universe of three space dimensions and one time dimension.

Wikipedia

Summer In The City

Time Loops

No sun will shine in my day today 

The high yellow moon won't come out to play

I said darkness has covered my light

 And has changed my day into night, yeah

Where is the love to be found?

Won't someone tell me? 'Cause life 

Must be somewhere to be found 

Instead of concrete jungle 

Where the living is hardest 

Concrete jungle

Man, you've got to do your best, oh, yeah

Bob Marley

Concrete Jungle

Am at the Photographers' Gallery, where there is an exhibition of photographs by Dennis Morris entitled Music + Life which highlights Morris’ early documentary work in the multicultural neighbourhoods of post-war London but also captures the spirit of some of the most pivotal moments in 20th-century culture, from the soulful vibrancy of reggae to the rebellious energy of punk..... His candid photographs of Bob Marley, both on stage and off, along with the raw, chaotic world of the Sex Pistols, illustrate his unique ability to capture the personalities behind the music, (from the Photographers' Gallery website).

It's only a tenuous connection - a coincidence perhaps, but when Dennis Morris first hooked up with Bob Marley I also met the great man. On April 28, 1973, Bob Marley and the Wailers came to play in the Great Hall at Lancaster University on their Catch a Fire tour.  I was helping my friend Terry with his band, who were the support act that night, and we spent quite some time in the dressing room, with Bob and Bunny and Peter Tosh and their record playing and a lot of strangely pungent smoke.  Although they had yet to reach the heights of international stardom that was to come, they had a buzz about them, a confidence that they knew where they were going, and they were enjoying themselves.

Trouble was, that, although I was then a very keen amateur photographer, I didn't have my camera with me at the time [A minor oversight, no?  Ed].  I wonder now whether or not Dennis Morris could have been there?  He, like me, would have been a hanger-on, although he was already an accomplished photographer..... 

Here are some photos I took that year:

Brother and sister, Moss Side, Manchester

Moss Side, Manchester

Hattersley County Comprehensive School

Hattersley County Comprehensive School

Hattersley County Comprehensive School

And here is one Dennis Morris took of Bob in Jamaica a year or so later.....

Strange how time loops back and forth, with memory and coincidence entwined.....  

But:

It's all in the something or other.....

I emerge into the stupor of the London streets.  It is hot,  It's the city.  I need a loving spoonful:

Hot town, summer in the city

Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty

Been down, isn't it a pity?

Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead

Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

There is indeed a stifled listlessness on the air:

Pollock's Toy Museum, once a colourful and entertaining spot in Fitzrovia (founded in 1956 in Covent Garden, it moved here to take over what had been an Italian cafe in 1969) is now fading into history, since it closed in 2023 (though still exists in pop-ups in Croydon and Leadenhall market) (Never mind the Pollocks?  Ed)

Even the mural in Whitfield Gardens (off Tottenham Court Road) seems exhausted.....

And Edward Burra's ladies waiting for a bus to Tate Britain are decidedly drained:

But at night it's a different world

Go out and find a girl

Come on, come on and dance all night

Despite the heat it'll be all right

Yes, well.... Maybe not? Better to keep cool with a little water feature:

Or take a pew  and relax with friends in a street cafe:

Cool town, evening in the city

Dressing so fine and looking so pretty

And babe, don't you know it's a pity

That the days can't be like the nights

In the summer, in the city

In the summer, in the city

The Lovin' Spoonful

Summer In The City

I wander back down past the now closed Photographer's Gallery, and then up Argyll Street, where only a couple of weeks ago Eva Perón entreated me not to cry for her silver (Not sure you quite understand?  Ed).  Apart from a bare handful of similarly dissolute campesinos or barrienses that night was mine.  Now the crowds are etched into a platinum frieze and gawp in silent homage:

Yes, the city has melted and been moulded into eternity. There is no where to escape to, but, wait a minute, sweet Cynthia (the moon goddess) Erivo calls me from above the rooftops (with Herbie Hancock on piano at the 2025 Grammy Awards):

Fly me to the moon

Let me play among the stars

And let me see what spring (summer?) is like

On Jupiter and Mars

In other words, hold my hand

In other words, baby, kiss me.....

Etcetera

Bart Howard

Fly Me to the Moon

Man, you've got to do your best, oh, yeah

Dublin c1973

London 2025

Heatwave

Salt, and the path to the sea....

I have seen you looking up, burning in your loneliness

Arthur Miller

The Crucible

A moth on my glass door.  The wings extended in an attempt to ventilate and cool.  The creature perplexed  by the glass.  Where to go?  How to deal with this infernal heat?

Another Moth was caught in the heat of publicity this week, the moth that trod the salt path, treading the ups and downs of the south coast path, beating back the illness that threatened his life, chasing away a nightmare, hoping for a dream.....  The heat is on.

Hollyhock

The heat has been getting to me, too.  Everything is dry, including me.  Heat has never been my summer favourite - winter, OK, yes.  A log fire and thick clothing, the glow of burning oak logs and the warmth of wool - these are the stuff of luxury.  But the actinic singe of the highest of suns blazing down on an unprotected pale skin is not for me.  

Don't misunderstand.  I love the sunshine.  I love time on a beach, with a loved one, dipping in and out of the refreshing waters, then taking a while in the shade while the waves scrawl across the sands, just a shell or two away.  That's fine with me.  

But unrelenting ultraviolet baking is too much.  When the land is cracked and even the nettles are dying.  This is no fun.

It is seen in nature too. The colours have bleached a little and the structure of the plants is more straggly. Here rosebay willow herb reaches up to an ambiguous blue sky:

And here the mischievous ragwort mimics the sun and shines like fool's gold for a week or so, before it recedes into a downy nothingness in the fields, the cinnabar moths having taken flight:

As the creeping thistles have already begun to spread their whispy seeds:

The sun is boiling high, while a few clouds tease out shadows but offer no respite.

The river Ingol is but a trickle:

These are the dog days, associated since ancient times with the period in which the Dog Star, Sirius, a star twice the size of our sun and twenty-five times more luminous, can be seen in the morning sky.

And in these hot, dry days, the freshness of spring has evaporated, and we are left with the tough, straggling plants that do their darndest to attract flying insects to their blooms, like viper's bugloss:

And this is, (I think) common cat's ear, (though it could be rough hawkbit?)

The ox-eye daisies are exhausted,

As are the poppies, pale and frayed, their petals bruised by the wind:

Crane's-bill, or wild geranium, tangles with the withered grasses,

While the brambles struggle to remain in flower long enough to attract the bees:

The trees, also, despite their deeper root systems, are working hard to ensure their survival.  The black alder coned seed pods are already browning and desiccated:

An ash tree has vast bunches of keys, perhaps desperate that at least some may grow, and grow without die-back:

And in the woods, the floor is strewn with sweet chestnut catkins, too early, methinks.  Will there be fruit this year?  Perhaps, because 2024 was a mast year, when the trees produced far more fruit than the pigs, squirrels and jays etc could consume, they were already going to conserve their energies this year?  Anyway, I think the drought has taken its toll:

Anyway, it's hot - too hot - and I don't need Martha Reeves and the Vandellas to tell me about a Heatwave.....  Suffice it to say it's cooler by the sea, so I take my own pinch-of-salt path [It's all true!  Ed] past the parched grasslands and unusually short crops:

Down to the sea, the cool grey sea, shining like burnished pewter in the evening sun:

Or the posterised sea:

Or the solarised sea:

Nothing, perhaps, is quite how it seems, or how we want it to be, but there's nothing quite like bathing in cool salty waves when the sun is hot.  My salt path is between me and the sea, and that's how it will remain.

But in the still cool of the night, I may share it with my moth - if he's still there....

 

Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines

Shakespeare

Sonnet 18

Shadow on a beech