When you have such an excellent cast, there is always a chance that someone will notice...
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Billy Budd crit
I think this has been one of the happiest work related experiences of my life.
Rednote's Concert
This was a great concert; sometimes, all the stars align.
And below; the proof!
Rednote's Concert
And below; the proof!
Red Letter Day
Probably because I seem to be always horrendously busy, I've been very bad at making blog posts, but I thought I'd include the following from a rare day off.
Ocassionally, just occasionally, you get settled periods of cold clear weather in a Scottish winter; days that guarantee that you are not going to have to worry about compass, white-outs, wind roaring in your ears and spindrift exfoliating your face.
In March, one of those weather windows opened, and even more astonishingly I had a bit of time off. The East Coast was fog bound, but we were assured that the west coast was clear. Having stopped for a coffee at Tyndrum in grey mist, I had thought we were going to be cheated, but, as we went round the corner and up the side of Ben Dorian, the mist simply stopped, and ahead of us was clear, crisp blue sky.....
As we raced across the Great Moor of Rannoch, we got more and more excited. The Big Buachaille looked absolutely fantastic.
Our destination was the little Buachaille, and it provided us with one of the most extraordinary days in the hills in recent years. You could see all the way from the Skye Cuillin to the Paps of Jura to the Cairngorms and Schiehallion.
Let the pictures tell a thousand stories!!
Billy Budd
The last few months have been very hectic with work; hence the reason for a reasonably long silence on this post. We are getting towards the sharp end of Billy Budd with Opera North, and I am very hopeful that it'll be a success. It helps, of course, when you have fantastic people around you to make everything work, and a real sense of teamwork.
Despite the claustrophobic nature of the settings for Britten's operas (boats, small communities, isolated country houses) the atmosphere throughout production has been very happy and good humoured.
Good music making is not rocket science; it simply requires talented people; a passion for what they do; a willingness to collaborate; a desire to give of their best; and good material to work with.
New Video
I've posted a new video online of me doing Ross Harris' Violin Concerto wth the Auckland Philharmonia and Ilya Gringolts. It's coming out on Naxos. It's a very difficult piece, with numerous tricky tempo changes and temporal relationships, but it's a really fabulous performance, and really tight.
April/May
The next couple of months sees me totalling up large numbers of air miles with trips to Australia, New Zealand, Rome, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and even Glasgow. All very exciting projects, with repertoire as diverse as Brahms and Bartok, Mendelssohn and Ades, Chopin and Prokofiev, Brett Dean and Hamish MacCunn. There is also an interplanetary journey with Holst, which will be paid for through the air miles I am accruing.....
Herald Article about Role at Royal Conservatoire
German press announcing my appointment as Chefdirigent in Koblenz
A personal tribute to the Sea King (and their pilots).
"August 15 Walker, (25) injured leg on steep path on south side of Ben Vrackie. Rescue by RN Sea King.Taypol S and R. Kinross MRT. 40 [man hours]
August 15 Paramedic descending from above rescue twisted knee and was aided down to a Land Rover by Kinloss MRT."
Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, 2000.
"I'm off," was all he said,not shouted, as he slid down the crumbling gully, gathering speed. Then he simply went airborne before hitting, out of view, the scree slope below. He burst into sight again in a cloud of dust and sulphur.
"Are you alright?" I shouted, partly angry, partly worried and more than partly desperate. It was a silly question.
A very pained no was the reply.
"You stay there .....[as if he was going to nip off for a cup of tea]..... And I'll get help."
I remember the waves of panic. Not only was my friend possibly very badly injured, but, as far as I knew, I was the only one to witness the accident. If I fell off, then no-one might ever know. The gully had become hellishly loose the higher we had gone. The SMC accident report mentions a steep path. There was no path. This was virgin territory, and I could see why. Fighting off the waves, I steadily went higher until, quite soon I seem to remember, there was a way off right onto heather and the open hillside. I recall being incredibly out of breath. It wasn't exertion; simply horror. I met our two girlfriends on the path on the way down, though I had been shouting towards them from a long way off. They had gone up the tourist route; we had looked for a bit of adventure, and certainly found it. I don't remember at all getting down to the lochan, but I do remember seeing with some relief two guys already attending to my friend on the scree slopes about 50 metres higher up.
"Your friend's very badly injured!" was shouted down. Somehow this is the sentence that I remember the best from the whole day; it still chills me. I mistook the concern in his voice for anger, as if the accident was my fault. Until that point, this was my own private dream with people in it that I knew. When a stranger's voice entered it, I knew it wasn't a dream.
"I'll go and get help," said one of the men. "I live in the village. I'll phone." I'd like to say it was the day before mobile phones, but it wasn't. We all had phones, but no-one thought to take them up such an innocuous hill.
When I got to him, I remember my friend looking remarkably pale. His lips were the same colour as his skin, and his eyes had a curiously distant look. We tried to move him, as he was in considerable pain lying on sharp large scree stones. He immediately passed out when we lifted him ,but thank god came-to almost as quickly. I shan't dwell on the injuries. The most serious we were not aware of. The most obvious were, well, obvious. "Injured leg," as the SMC Report mentions doesn't do it justice, and anyway, it was both legs.
I will never forget his quiet bravery and calm. Maybe there is no other way to be. I remember my only determination was that he wasn't going to sleep. We were rather slow to realise that he was getting dangerously cold. It was August, and a reasonably pleasant day, but at 2500ft and being stationery, it doesn't take long to chill. I recall being unusually preoccupied with the weather, and particularly some grumbling clouds to the west. We put as many things on top of him, underneath him and around his head as possible. There was no possibility of dressing him.
Time seems to have contracted over the years. It doesn't seem long now before we could see two police officers, one male, one female, and a rather large gentleman dressed all in green, coming round the lochan. I remember the intense frustration of how totally ill at ease they were on the terrain. They were wearing Dr Martin type shoes, with soles that are better suited not to make indentations on old ladies' shag pile carpets. The male police officer was perhaps not in his first flush of youth. The female officer stayed with the Jolly Green Giant who was taking an absolute age to get to us. It was hardly a surprise; the terrain was horrendous and very loose.
It never struck me at the time that this wasn't the rescue party. I naively thought it was. This was the party to co-ordinate the rescue, but as I assumed this was "the help" I started to get increasingly frantic. I guess because I was in a state of shock, or perhaps because I now just don't remember the detail, I don't think I ever asked the PC "Is there any back-up?" For some reason I think I became aware that the RAF Mountain Rescue Team were training nearby. This elderly police officer, his colleague below and the paramedic were all that I thought we had. I am ashamed that I felt so frustrated at the time. I now realise just how important the police and paramedic were to the situation (the radio link was presumably absolutely crucial) and I apologise for my black thoughts at the time. If memory serves me right, I didn't express my silly concerns to them!
The paramedic never seemed to get any closer. The guy who had run for help had rejoined us, and was carrying the emergency kit-bag. Just a couple of metres below us, the paramedic suddenly started to scream. The police officer went straight onto his radio.
"The paramedic is having some sort of seizure, I repeat, seizure. "
In a moment of gallows humour that my barely conscious friend seemed always to remember, I apparently said, "Christ. That's all we need. The paramedic needs a paramedic."
"I'm no havin' a f***ing seizure!" came a rather strangulated response from the not so Jolly Green Giant. " I've twisted my f***ing knee."
By this point, I'd lost almost all hope. Everything seemed against us. There were spits and spots of rain. My friend had gone a rather unpleasant grey colour, and we seemed no nearer effecting a rescue.
Then everything changed. The policeman's radio crackled with something about HMS Gannet, and then we heard the Sea King inbound. It flew around the hill, then came back much nearer. Then, it started to drift in crab-like towards us. The noise was tremendous; the downdraft very frightening. I was acutely aware of how close the helicopter's rotars were to the cliff face, and the consequences of having 10 tonnes of flying machine above us if those rotars should come into contact with the rock face. Down came a man on the winch with a stretcher,spinning like a 78 record, and the helicopter disappeared off again. His professionalism and calmness immediately put me at ease. The paramedic had bravely crawled to assist us by now, but had had no luck finding a vein. The winchman was completely focused. We were all asked to help lift my friend onto the stretcher; he immediately passed out. For reasons I still don't remember (maybe we were asked to go down by the police?) we left the winchman, my friend, his girlfriend and the male police officer at this stage, and descended towards the lochan. The helicopter came in again. From this angle, looking back up at the cliffs, it seemed even more impossibly close the the wall. I remember thinking that it was an extraordinary piece of flying. I think it was the only time I cried. The sheer selflessness of putting oneself, one's crew and the emergency services in danger in order to help an injured stranger still astonishes me today.
I wasn't party to the conversation of the winchman at that point clearly, but I was told he said, " We're losing him. Ninewells, not Perth," and he advised my friend's girlfriend that there wasn't time to take her with them in the chopper.
Up went the stretcher; I remember the winchman using his feet to push against some of the smaller outcrops. And then, it all went silent as the Sea King wheeled off eastwards. I seem to remember it was 17 minutes to Ninewells, but that might be wrong.
We walked down the hill, dazed and exhausted by the whole experience. The RAF Mountain Recue were waiting, on standby in case the helicopter had failed to gather its quarry. The ambulance was a bit lower, and had got stuck in the mud. The winch on the Rescue Truck was used to shift it, but not after quite a struggle and a distinct burning smell. The cable may even have snapped.
They didn't lose him; neither did we. But it was all thanks to the extraordinary flying of the pilots, the professionalism and bravery of the winchman, the co-ordination of Taypol, the determination of the paramedic and the fly-ability and reliability of the Sea King that resulted in us not losing him. For the emergency services, and particularly MRT and S and R, this is their everyday reality. But for my friend, it is a lifetime.
We thank them from the bottom of our hearts, and salute their bravery, brilliance and skill.
So, as the Sea Kings are retired, I raise a glass, quite literally, to them and all who flew in them.
Berlin
I've just had a wonderful week in Berlin doing concerts as part of the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Hochscülen Wettbewerb. What an incredible standard of musicianship from all involved. A real joy to be part of. The NRW ORCHESTER ZENTRUM were absolutely fantastic, and delivered 2 amazing, spirited concerts which were very well received. Berlin, as ever, was an inspiring city. One really feels the history there.
Just updated Biography
Just updated my biography on my website. I remain the same person.
Why the Scottish Government shouldn't give £1m to golf
I write this from the perspective of someone who loves Golf. I respect its history, am delighted its origins are Scottish, love that it is a game largely free from cheating and drug problems, and where the rules, and sportsmanship, are held so highly. You'll never see a golfer diving in the box.
I am also not anti-wealth. People with outstanding skills, at the top of their game, should be rewarded according to the market. The problem is when the market stops functioning, or has no relationship to the reality of the world around it.
Have you ever heard of Morten Madsen? Probably not. Well, he won 63 000 euros at the Portugal Open for coming joint 4th. He's earned over half a million euros in the last year, and he's currently 191st in the World Golf Rankings.
Not bad for a golfer you're unlikely to have heard of.
Like many golfers, he's probably sponsored. He'll wear branded clothing advertising golfing manufacturers, sun glasses, banks, finance companies, cars or holiday destinations, often simultaneosly. If he's good enough, he'll be paid just to turn up at an event with "appearance money."
Yesterday, I read that the Scottish Government has helped secure the future of the Scottish Open by giving it £1 million pounds of taxpayers money each year until 2020. Prize money for 2015 is £3 million, then it'll rise to £4 million by 2018.
Many will say that that this million pound investment is a good investment. The Scottish Open is a big event, people travel to it, they stay in hotels, they drink beer and then (presumably under the influence of the beer) buy bad jumpers and even more ridiculous trousers.The Scottish Open gives people an outlet to spend their money, which is good for the (service) economy.
I say that Golf can look after itself. There have been a lot of column inches about how the golf world has struggled since the Credit Crunch. As long as there is prize money of £3 million for a single (relatively small) event, there isn't a problem as far as I'm concerned. Something like The Open will have prize money in the region of £5.4 million. There are 51 events advertised on the European Tour website in 2014. The Sponsors include BMW, HSBC, Rolex, Aberdeen Asset Management. Strikes me that Golf might be struggling to increase the prize money at an above inflation rate, but if prize-money was cut by 10%, presumable poor old Morten would only have received 450 000 euros.It doesn't seem to me that professional golf is struggling. It seems to me that it can look after itself.
Others will say that if the Scottish Government hadn't stepped in, the European Tour would have threatened to remove the Scottish Open from the calendar. Here is the real problem. Whether it's banks or Insurance Companies or Sport, governments are threatened, almost blackmailed, by business. How many times have we heard, "You can't increase tax on those who earn over £150 000, or all the talent will leave the country." "If you don't subsidise this event, it'll not happen."
I say, let the Scottish Open leave if it threatens to leave. I think the tour would be poorer off without the event. If golf is struggling, then it shouldn't have to threaten to withdraw events; it should be grateful that the event is happening at all.
I think that tax payers money should be used to the benefit of the tax payer. Schools, hospitals, public services (maybe even the Arts!!)....all the things that we're being told that there just isn't the money for.
But there's enough money to boost the prize money for a golf tournament from £3 million to £4 million, right?
Just had a great deal of fun. Was in a Starbucks in Germany, and, because Starbucks is a multinational, they insist on asking your name wherever you are on the Blue Planet, and then daub it on the side of the cup with a felt tip pen like a piece of urban art. I'm sick of them spelling Walker wrong...I've had Wokke in Portugal, Warcher in Germany and Wauka in Amsterdam. So, I thought, I'll call myself Manure. Then I sat back, and took an absolute age to claim my Venti Latte, and enjoyed enormously the increasingly shrill cries of, "Manure" "MANURE!" "VENTI LATTE fuer MANURE". It was pronounced almost right, if you squinted a bit with your ears.
I'd recommend it to you all.
That's Manure spelt with an M.
A Walking Holiday Part 2 (Revenge of the Sith)
I apologise for my last walking post, which finished mid-stream, was written in complete haste and had a rather obvious lack of spirituality contained within it. This one is no better, but I'll start off with some Goethe. When Faust asks what Nature does, she answers,
"So at the roaring loom of Time I ply,
And weave for God the garment that you see Him by."
After Beinn a Bhuird (pedant) I met up with some teachers from Stewart's Melville. 2 of them, Iain Crosbie and Graham Wilson had taught during my time at the school, whilst Malcolm Garden is a fellow cellist who I knew through many Mahler symphonies, and he has subsequently joined the Classics department. We decided on Lochnagar, and the day started with rainbows and uncertain weather. We bumped into a family extraordinarily ill-clad for such a hill on such a day, and they seemed utterly clueless as to which way the hill was. At the parting of the paths before the slog up to the famous corrie, the father asked which way it was, despite the fact that the cliffs of Lochnagar were clearly keeking over the ridge. It was like standing in Paris close to Mr Eiffel's metal thing and asking, "Ou est le Tour Eiffel?" I felt such a killjoy when I asked, "Are you sure you've got enough clothes to be going up?" I really hate the over cautious killjoy know-it-alls you sometimes meet on the hill. 2 examples. My lovely lady and I did Schiehallion on a beautiful winter's day, and, as is my custom, I like to go up late to catch the setting sun and return by dark....you get the loveliest light, and you see the stars. Anyway, we were constantly hassled by walkers descending who admonished us about going up a hill so late." It'll be dark soon," etc etc yawn yawn bugger off. Example 2 was on the Lairig Ghru when I met a man with the heaviest and most lopsided rucksack I've ever seen. He was clearly struggling, but explained that he had a bivvy bag for possible benightment and a tent for indefinite benightment as well as every other piece of gear known to modern mountaineering. Not only was his day probably miserable and slow, but his risk of injury was probably twice that of someone going light.
It was a real joy to walk with Iain, Graham (both Munroists.....501 and 502 I think) and Malcolm. And, being good teachers, I still learnt some things from them. When I've seen other people's rubbish on the hill, I've had a tendency to tut tut, but perhaps, at best, try and bury or hide the offending item. Iain Crosbie takes a bag with him to carry off other people's detritus. I thought this was highly admirable and I'm going to do the same (carried 2 empty, rusting cans of condensed milk out from Altanour Lodge the next day). If Nature is going to weave the garment, it's up to us to patch up the occasional pulled threads.
Needless to say, the weather really improved, and the ill-equipped family, rather than being found under 6 feet of snow, quite happily made it to the summit (now clear) and presumably back......and they'll moan about being hassled by a holier-than-thou St Bernard.
The paths have been radically improved on Lochnagar, and the descent down the Glas Allt is now a very well drained path; don't remember it being quite as good last time.
The only picture taken all day of the cliffs!!
Teaching is such an important profession, and yet it seems it's not treated at times with the respect it deserves (unlike many other countries). You don't forget a good teacher. They can inspire you in a way which can change the direction of your life. I might not have had the love of the hills which I have, had I not had the chance to experience them through my school's very active outdoor education project.
A Walking Holiday Part 1 (A New Hope)
Last month, I was able to take a few days off and, for the first time in ages, have a proper period in the hills. I had a variety of companions, including no-one (I had the biggest argument with him) and some very good weather (providing I stayed East.....had hoped to get to Fort William, but the forecast was always grim west of the A9. Maybe after it's dualled, the weather will improve). Decided to use the bike wherever possible, and had some big days. Probably averaged 30km on 3 of them.
I wanted to start off in the Monahliath. Hadn't been there for years, and was concerned that I might not get back before the wind turbines march in.The light was mixed, but you still get that extraordinary sense of space. real MAMBA country, and a true centre of Scotland. You could see Glencoe down Loch Ericht and Loch Trieg, the Cairngorms, Ben Wyvis and a lot of the Western Highlands from Ben Nevis area all the way up through Shiel, Affric, Cannich, though I have to admit in that direction, it was a bit fuzzy both visually and geographically.
It must be a nightmare to navigate in a white out on this territory. Really featureless, but the fence posts help.
The next day was a cracker on Beinn Bhuird. The bike came into its own; absolutely eats up the miles up to the path at the top of Glen Quoich (and faster on the way back). The new path up Beinn Bhuird is an absolute joy; great angle, well drained, fairly direct and such an improvement on that horrendous bulldozed track which has almost disappeared. Well done NTS.
It's just such a vast area the summit of Beinn Bhuird, as is the neighbouring Ben Avon. The corries scalloped out of it are really beautiful, though I didn't have time to go over to the ones on the north side. The light had been a bit mixed up until the summit, and then it just became perfect, and you had that enormous and wonderful sense of space and big sky.
You really feel very small in this landscape. It's an absolute joy to walk in.
New Video
New Video talking about the closing concert of the Edinburgh International Festival. In interview with Kate Molleson. Find it on the video page or here: http://youtu.be/MKgslPPyDsY
Review of Naxos CD Walker/Harris/APO
Nice review
Every few years or so, with mind-numbing regularity, the argument is trotted out again, usually by politicians: school holidays are too long, particularly in summer. Today's teenagers are listless and stuck to computer screens, we're told. They're wasting July and August, and may as well be in the classroom, getting even better (allegedly) at sitting tests and doing examinations.
Really? Only recently I've seen three high quality events, all relying on groups of young people voluntarily working in teams from early morning to late evening, in an immersive residential setting lasting up to a fortnight. A fine, varied choral concert and a bristling, innovative production of Shakespeare's Macbeth were the result of the first two projects.
The third produces a concert marking 21 years of the Ulster Youth Orchestra, held on Saturday evening at an Ulster Hall packed with friends, family and supporters. The stage is packed too, with nearly 100 players from schools and colleges all over Northern Ireland, plus music stands and instruments. It's quite a spectacle.
The programme is ideally chosen to give young players a chance to really get their teeth into some proper classical music-making, not the quickfire soundbite selections favoured in 'pops' concerts, which can lose their tang as quickly as a tab of chewing-gum, and aren't much more nutritious.
It opens with an effervescent account of 'Dance of the Comedians' from Smetana's opera The Bartered Bride. It's a performance bubbling with confidence, especially in the scurrying violins of the introduction, the sharp dynamic attack, and tight ensemble playing.
Those impressively high levels of confidence bespeak hours of skilful preparation with sectional coaches. They're evident again in the violins' ripe romantic phrasing of the big tune opening Tchaikovsky's 'First Piano Concerto', the item following the Smetana.
The soloist here is Michael McHale, fresh from his American concerto debut playing Mozart in Minneapolis, with the storied Minnesota Orchestra. McHale is an alumnus of the UYO, and just a decade ago played cello in the desks opposite, where he now commands a concert Steinway.
McHale is one of those musicians who seems incapable of making an unmusical gesture: every phrase has been carefully weighed and considered, and slots naturally into the overall architecture of the piece that he is playing.
That’s not to imply that his approach is somehow calculated or lacking in spontaneity. The animated middle section of the Tchaikovsky concerto’s ‘Andantino semplice’ movement is marvellously puckish in his hands, and the finale goes at a tremendous clip (‘with fire’, as the composer directs), building to an adrenaline-pumped explosion of octaves at its conclusion.
The orchestra matches McHale’s beguiling mix of tenderness and intensity at every turn, with lovely solos taken by flute, cello and oboe in particular.
Part two of the concert is devoted to a selection of numbers from Prokofiev’s great ballet Romeo & Juliet. Already in ‘Montagues and Capulets’ there’s much evidence of the telling preparatory work done by the players in workshops and rehearsals.
The searing dissonances of the opening statement have an appropriately emblazoned quality, while the extreme dynamic contrast with the muted strings that answer is precisely registered. When the main ‘knights’ music kicks in, the violins dig trenchantly into their signature melody, articulating with real bite and character.
That sets the tone for a vividly colourful traversal of the nine movements selected. There are many highlights along the way – the punchy unanimity of the slashing chords launching ‘Folk Dance’; the pliantly executed string tenuti in ‘Madrigal’; the perky swagger the players find in the ‘Masks’ episode.
There is more excellent solo playing too, from first violinist Katherine Sung in particular, who leads the orchestra with decisiveness and clarity throughout the evening.
A sustained crescendo of applause deservedly greets the musicians at the Prokofiev’s conclusion. Scottish conductor Garry Walker seems disarmed, almost embarrassed by it, but he shouldn’t be – his own part in the achievement of this year’s Ulster Youth Orchestra cohort has clearly been massive.
In fact, he is my favourite sort of conductor: unassuming, invariably precise and helpful in his directions, and totally focused on the music and its message. His unstinting commitment, and that of his young players, produces a wonderfully heartening evening of classical music-making.