Music
Distracting themes
Peter Phillips
t is a moot point whether our interna- tional festivals have a strong identity of their own. No doubt for the organisers there is a sense of local tradition, of doing things a little differently, of making an effort to present a new perspective on what is familiar. Every festival wants to find fresh new talent and give it its first oppor- tunity, so that for ever after they can claim to have launched that group on its career. Almost every festival I have taken part in claims to have done that for the King's Singers. I sometimes wonder, incidentally, where these talented groups actually make their living from day to day, once they have been 'discovered' and passed over for newer and younger talent. The answer must be abroad: there's so much of it, and all the foreign festivals seem to be so glamorous that all our best musicians must make epic careers there without our even hearing about it.
So what is the difference between the festivals of Bath, King's Lynn, Greenwich, the City of London, Brighton, York, Ches- ter and Edinburgh? They seem to be united in presenting a different concoction from the same ingredients. They all insist on having artists of the front rank, who are asked to give recitals to fit in with the chosen theme of that year. All these artists cost far more than their city councils can believe possible, whose burghers are con- vinced that it is only in their city that artists dare to ask for so much; but in fact it is the same throughout the country, and rather worse abroad.
Then there is this business of festival `themes'. Some of these are in themselves imaginative, but since all the festivals have them these days, they tend not to disting- uish one festival from another. Venice (or the Carnival Spirit, or Music for Saint Mark's) is one of the current international favourites. A festival built around this theme will inevitably have a performance of the Monteverdi 'Vespers', brass music by Giovanni Gabrieli, madrigals by a host of minor composers and an excuse for a masked ball and fringe dancing around the streets. Every festival has its fringe, and most these days have jazz, cinema and commedia dell'arte. None would deign to put on a Beethoven symphony, being too down-market, unless the theme happened to be Early 19th-century Bonn, which it never is.
Of course the detail which really does change is the venue itself. Since Mon- teverdi's 'Vespers' sound much the same whether they are performed in Wells Cathedral, York Minster, Chester. Cathed- ral, or any of the larger parish churches in these festival towns, this change is not in itself important unless the festival has a strong local following and can show that for these people, who will not travel anywhere else to hear it, the performance has offered something out of the ordinary. Behind the razzmatazz of festival presenta- tion, this is surely what matters most, but there seems to be something rather parochial-sounding about saying so.
There are obvious ways for a festival to set itself apart. It may choose to specialise in a particular repertoire, for instance modern music at Cheltenham, or early music at York. Or its character may come from using just one hall, like the Proms (where, admittedly, nothing sounds quite the same as it does elsewhere). But for those that wish to remain broadly based, it is time to adumbrate the old truth that there is no substitute for good programme planning and encouraging the best from the artists you admire. Themes are a chimera, and often unnecessarily restrict- ing: what people want are interesting programmes, played as well as possible. Under Sir William Glock, for instance, the Bath Festival could be relied upon to produce for every member of the audience, whether an experienced concert-goer or not, concerts so shaped that the music and its performers were shown off in a new perspective. This was done with the mini- mum of framework: in the end the crucial ingredient was Sir William's own percep- tion of music and musicians. He said his festivals had 'threads' rather than themes; but in effect these were no more than prompts to his own memory, hardly adver- tised. The end result was a subtly idiosyn- cratic mixture.
The present Bath Festival (until 7 June), under Amelia Freedman, has the usual array of fine performers, giving a familiar balance of new and old repertoire within the context of Russian music and Italian influence on it during the 19th century. I suspect the original intention was to con- centrate on Russia, but the Soviets would not come up with any money to support it, or indeed very many groups (the Moscow Virtuosi cancelled at a week's notice), where the Italians were more forthcoming. So all the performers have been asked to fit into this rather ungainly construction, when they would probably much rather be left to their own inspiration, encouraged by. some sympathetic and knowledgable prompting from the organisers.
Although I have no doubt that the Bath Festival will be thoroughly enjoyable, as these festivals always are, they will have to • try harder if they wish to influence, as they once did, the pattern of modern music they play. Perhaps the Bath Festival or any of the other festivals I mention have no ambition to take on so much; yet they should not allow themselves to take the easy way out. These themes can become a distraction from organising good concerts.
Previous page
