Today is Valentine’s Day. For many, it’s a day to do something romantic. Traditionally, this requires (at least) two people. However, many of us are sans significant other at the present time. If you fall into that category, read on… Over the past few years, I’ve developed an interest in music psychology – an interest fed by my work in the Music, Sound and Performance Lab. You don’t have to be a psychologist or a neuroscientist to realise that music is a powerful medium. However, you may be unaware of just how powerful it is. In 2005, NeuroImage published a paper by Vinod Menon and Daniel Levitin investigating the brain activity associated with emotional responses to music. The authors discovered that listening to music triggered activity in areas of the brain that release dopamine. This particular hormone provides feelings of enjoyment and is known to be linked with food, recreational drugs and, you guessed it, sex. Four years prior to that study, Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre presented similar neural activity – as well as changes in heart rate, muscle activity and respiration – in participants listening to a piece of music that gave them “chills”. What can we take…

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks watching rehearsals of Parsifal at the English National Opera. Yes, I know, it’s a rough life. Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s production – which premiered at the ENO in 1997 and has since done the rounds of European stages and ended up on DVD along the way – has come back home for its (‘scuse the pun) swansong. Sometimes I’ve felt a bit like I’ve wandered into an episode of Doctor Who, with people in space-alien makeup (it’s a bit of a post-apocalyptic staging) and elaborate robes wandering about the place – not just on the otherworldly set, but also in the very this-worldly stalls. Anyway, it’s been quite fascinating to watch, but what’s especially wonderful is to hear this opera – which I’m really only meeting for the first time – come together, to see Mark Wigglesworth work his magic, and to hear a bunch of excellent singers on an almost daily basis. Among them – and this is in fact is mostly why I’m posting – the one and only Sir John Tomlinson, Wagnerian supreme, whose Gurnemanz – even in rehearsal – is a wonder to behold. Quite simply, The Man is God. And…

Life in the Antipodes has accustomed me to enjoying my favourite singers only via recording; but this time I was actually going to coincide with one of them – Magdalena would be singing in London while I was there. The recital in question took place on Friday. Not only was this my first in-person encounter with Magdalena, it was also – despite several previous trips to London – my first ever visit to Wigmore Hall, which is very pretty, remarkably compact and acoustically an utter delight. In such happy surroundings, I was in a good mood even before the music started; but I’m pleased to report that when it did start, La Koženà well and truly lived up to gorgeousness of the album. Her band here was the same as on the CD, the excellent period band Private Musicke, whose leader Pierre Pitzl heralded the beginning of the recital by strolling out on stage, already playing his guitar. The rest of the group followed, instruments in hand, and among them – a barefoot and beaming Magdalena Koženà, who began to sing (Vitali’s “O bei lumi”) before anyone had a chance to applaud. Her two subsequent numbers followed in quick succession,…

Gavin Bryars: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet This is another example of minimalism, demonstrative of the variety of forms it comes in. Bryars was working on a documentary when he recorded an uncredited homeless man singing (unaccompanied) about Jesus. He decided to loop a short segment of the recording and orchestrate an accompaniment. The way he did this is most interesting. The “score” consists of 13 bars (the duration of the short segment) of full orchestration and a “road-map”. The latter of which graphically indicates the times (in minutes) that each section of the orchestra should start playing, reach full volume, start quietening and stop playing. The longest, most recent version of this piece is 74 minutes. It is surprisingly easy to listen to, and even easier to get stuck in your head – so, you’ve been warned. Unfortunately, this version also features Tom Waits – one hobo too many. Leonard Cohen: The Future (Live) Given my above comment about Tom Waits (and I apologise to any fans), the confession that I’m a huge Cohen fan might come as a surprise. In 2010, I was fortunate enough to see him live for the second time (with my dad –…

One of the big changes that’s come of this new life of mine has been the experience of seeing performances from The Other Side. In Sydney I was a frequent and fascinated audience member, but very rarely to be found backstage and never before or during a show – only after, and only by happy accident. Even going back to my Dunedin days, I’ve not often had the experience of watching somebody I know well in any sort of performance, really. Unless you count school plays, which I don’t think I do. Tagging along with the tenor in my life has put a whole new spin on the matter, as you might imagine. My behind-the-scenes experience is still pretty limited so far – I couldn’t be your gossip blogger even if I wanted to be – but nevertheless it’s interesting to watch the process of a show coming together, whether that’s over a course of weeks or days. Already my understanding of everything that goes into that final product – good, bad, magical, dull-as-ditchwater – has been markedly increased, and it’s probably a good thing that I’m not reviewing any more, because so too has my (already considerable) sympathy for…

Starting one’s classical music education with a concert by Philip Glass is, let’s be perfectly honest, kind of cheating.  It’s not dissimilar to beginning a fine arts degree with a really unfocused discussion of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans or Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl. Beginning at the beginning, Francis Merson (Limelight‘s editor and, in the interest of full disclosure, one of my best friends for many years) and I decided to check out Glass’s talk and performance as part of the Sydney festival last Monday.  I’ve long been acquainted with his work as a film composer because I don’t live in a cave and am not illiterate, but this was the first time I’d had the opportunity to hear him live.  Now, I’m no music critic – if I were, this would be a very different blog – but I have to say that I wasn’t particularly impressed by his playing. The piano sounded muddled and he just seemed to be doing the same thing over and over again with his hands – sort of like if one’s not-too-talented older sister were practicing very, very pretty but very overly-complicated scales on the family piano. When Francis and I lived in Moscow,…

There are a number of traditions associated with Australia Day. BBQs, beer, sunburn, cricket, and the Triple J Hottest 100. Although I haven’t tuned to the station all that often over the past 12 months, there’s a certain irresistible sense of occasion associated with the countdown that gets me hooked. This year, it got me thinking about the music I had been listening to in 2010. I started to reflect on the various times throughout the year when I thought to myself “wow”. So, I have decided to do my own “Hottest“ list. However, my focus here is not music that was released in 2010, but music that was new to me in 2010 and left a lasting impression (so, yes – the connection is weak). Furthermore, 100 is far too ambitious. Therefore, I present my Hottest 10 of 2010 (part one). Arvo Pärt: Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten Love or hate his music, you have to appreciate it’s simplicity (and the success he’s had with it). In my opinion, it’s beautiful music – but that shouldn’t necessarily be attributed to the composer. It’s a simple idea: various sections of the string orchestra descending a minor scale at different rates…

I was listening to our Prime Minister speak the other day. Some say she has a dreadful voice. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but I do think she could do with some voice training. Julia Gillard’s voice seems stuck down the back of her throat, strangled by her own uvula. She doesn’t need a media minder so much as an opera coach, to allow her to find the upper harmonics in her voice.  She is coming across as a bass-contralto, but I’m sure there are warmer tones to be had.  The danger is if she continues with the very flat and uninspiring delivery, we will stop listening. There was a time when voices were important. John Laws got into radio primarily because of his extraordinarily stentorian tones. His voice meant business, and eventually he made it a big business. No wonder they called him the Golden Tonsils. On radio now, it doesn’t matter what sort of voice you have. Not so much Golden Tonsils as Nickel Adenoids. The ABC used to be very concerned about such matters, but now they couldn’t care less. There are voices on local radio that are as appealing to me as a chainsaw cutting…

The Welsh soprano Dame Margaret Price, best known as a Mozartian and Lieder singer par excellence, has died. She was 69. Here she is with what I think is one of the most impossibly beautiful songs ever written, Mahler’s “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”. Rest in peace, Dame Margaret. See also: David Nice’s detailed (and video-illustrated) obituary at The Arts Desk.

Thank you to all those people who came to the Domain on Saturday night to join the Sydney Symphony, Sydney Philharmonia and John Bell in our concert dedicated to the music inspired by the bard presented as part of Lindy Hume’s 2011 Sydney Festival. It was a great program featuring Prokofiev’s evocative ballet score for Romeo and Juliet and Walton’s brilliantly orchestrated score for Olivier’s film of Henry V. There was a wonderful feeling on stage and we fed off the enthusiasm of the audience right up to the last note of the 1812 overture…which of course has very little to do with Shakespeare! It is a privilege to work with such dedicated singers, talented orchestral musicians and Australia’s greatest thespian, John Bell. Here’s to a great year of performances in Sydney in 2011!

Sony and Decca have recently announced record deals with Nino Machaidze and Aleksandra Kurzak respectively, and I suspect there’s going to be at least a bit of shared repertoire between the two – Nino’s is a collection of bel canto arias, Aleksandra’s a selection of “lyric and coloratura” fare with Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti all on board. Nino’s name I knew mostly from the cover of a DVD I haven’t seen, a Roméo et Juliette from Salzburg opposite Rolando Villazon; Aleksandra’s from the cast list of the Royal Opera’s current production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, which I’m hoping to see in the next couple of weeks. But having not actually heard either of them, I figured I should probably overcome my irrational fear of hyped sopranos and go YouTubing a little. Nino Machaidze, who made her La Scala début at the age of 24, seems already to be the more filmed of the two – as well as the aforementioned Roméo et Juliette, there’s a Gianni Schicchi from Milan, an opera gala from Berlin and an I Puritani from Bologna. Not bad. I don’t think I’m in love with her just yet, but this aria from Puritani is pretty…

It’s interesting how often pianos are at the centre of unsavoury relationships. In the film The Piano (1993) Holly Hunter gets her piano back one key at a time by letting Harvey Keitel do “things he likes” while she plays. They fall in love and eventually play more than scales together, and she ends up sacrificing a finger as a result. I hated the film. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t have dragged the piano just a few feet further up the beach. In The Piano Teacher (2001) Erika is a piano professor in her forties at a Viennese music conservatory who lives in an apartment with her domineering mother. Her father is a resident in a lunatic asylum. With such a stable family background it’s no wonder she starts to obsess about her 17-year-old piano student. The film also touches on voyeurism and sadomasochism. Anything to make playing scales more interesting. In The Seventh Veil (1945) Francesca Cunningham is a suicidal pianist and mental patient who earlier in her life came under the guardianship of James Mason in the role of a crippled musician and teacher who prevented her from being with her true love. I can see a…