Michael Kennedy

Happy 80th birthday, Dame Janet Baker

Raise your glass on 21 August to wish a happy 80th birthday to one of the greatest singers and singing actresses this or any other country has produced — Dame Janet Baker, the mezzo-soprano from Yorkshire, who never went to a music college and won the hearts of her audiences in a career spanning 35 years. Joining us in our toast will be some shades from the past who have much for which to thank and applaud her. Make way for Bach, Handel, Elgar, Monteverdi, Britten, Mahler, Strauss, Purcell, Schubert, Berlioz, Schumann and Wolf, all of whose music she has sung with penetrating insight. In the concert hall and the opera house she has lavished her art on theirs. It is now more than 30 years since she sang in public.

The dark side of Benjamin Britten

We are only two months into the Britten centenary year and already books, articles and talks (and, of course, performances) swell the flood of existing biographical studies and the six bulky volumes of diaries and letters. Dead for less than 40 years, Britten is as copiously documented as any English composer except Elgar. Have emails wiped out areas of research? I hope that some teenage composer, a latter-day Britten, is even now baring their musical soul writing candid and maybe scurrilous opinions on the current musical scene in a diary as the young Britten did from 1928. ‘The child is father to the man’ rings true in Britten’s case. Britten the man was a Jekyll and Hyde, with Hyde perhaps too often gaining the upper hand.

The unforgettable Ferrier

On the centenary of her birth, Michael Kennedy pays homage to ‘Klever Kaff’, occasional golfer, and inventor of Rabelaisian limericks Was she as wonderful an artist and woman as legend has it? Yes. Everything is true that has been said or written about the contralto Kathleen Ferrier, the centenary of whose birth is 22 April. She has been dead for 59 years, but through her recordings her voice — rich and always with a vein of melancholy — lives on, and could be mistaken for no one else and no one else for her. Never has a woman singer been so widely loved. The radiance of her personality suffused the music whether it was Bach or a folk song. When she died from cancer on 8 October 1953, someone perceptively wrote that she may well have been the most celebrated woman in Britain after the Queen.

A golden age

Was there a golden age of English music a hundred years ago? From today’s vantage-point there probably was.Was there a golden age of English music a hundred years ago? From today’s vantage-point there probably was. The years 1910 and 1911 still excite the imagination as one contemplates the extraordinary richness of the new works that were being introduced to audiences in London and at festivals at that period. If you believed in the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, there was plenty to support you. The spirit was changing — ‘Rarely, rarely comest thou, spirit of delight’ was the ambiguous line by Shelley that Edward Elgar inscribed on the score of his Second Symphony. If a single work of art could be said to epitomise the years from 1900 to 1914, this great symphony must be a leading candidate.

Michael Kennedy

Mahler’s mass following

It is 150 years since the composer’s birth. Michael Kennedy on his remarkable popularity Approaching 60 years of writing music criticism, I have been wondering what I would nominate as the most remarkable changes on the British musical scene since I started. I decided there were three: the emergence of Mahler as a popular composer worldwide; the enthusiasm for the music of Janáček, especially his operas; and the establishment of regional opera companies. It is not as if Mahler’s music was completely unknown in Britain, even in his lifetime (1860–1911). But until about 1960 his impact on the general public was roughly the equivalent of, say, Szymanowski today. Now you cannot escape him. The history of his rise and rise in Britain can be traced through a series of historic performances and the endeavours of far-sighted pioneers among conductors and critics.

Legacy of an Eminent Victorian

‘Mr Hallé’s Band’ began giving concerts 150 years ago. Michael Kennedy on the great orchestra On the wet evening of 30 January 1858 in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, which had been opened only two years previously, the 38-year-old Charles Hallé launched his privately funded series of orchestral concerts. On the same date next week, 150 years later, the orchestra still bearing its founder’s name will celebrate the anniversary with a programme introduced by Dame Janet Baker. In a century and a half it has had only ten chief conductors. The tenth, Mark Elder, will be on the rostrum. Carl Halle, as he was born, with no acute accent, was German and trained as a pianist although he conducted several operas in his home town of Hagen when he was 11.

Fighting Finn

Where does Sibelius stand today? Twenty years ago, the answer would have been not very high. Today, 50 years after his death, I think it would be ‘on the up’ again, especially as we now know not just the symphonies and tone-poems but also the wonderful songs in performances by Karita Mattila, Soile Isokoski, Anne Sofie von Otter and Jorma Hynninen. In Britain during the first half of the 20th century Sibelius was regarded as the symphonic heir to Beethoven. There was no mention of Mahler and Bruckner in those days, except in very restricted circles. It almost seemed as if Sibelius was an honorary Englishman. The composer had first visited England late in 1905 to conduct in Liverpool. (On arrival at Dover he was fined on the spot by Customs for bringing an illegal quantity of cigars into the country.

A new home rich in history

With its move into 22 Old Queen Street, The Spectator will occupy a house full of friendly ghosts and memories of grand occasions in the world of the arts in the first quarter of the 20th century. For this elegant mansion in Westminster was for over 30 years the London home of Leo Frank Schuster, known to all his circle as Frankie, a patron of the arts and friend of the composers Edward Elgar and Gabriel Fauré and of the conductor Adrian Boult and the poet Siegfried Sassoon. He was homosexual and very rich. Born in 1852, as a youth he had worked for a spell in his father’s bank in the City but decided that his share of the family inheritance was all he needed and he could not waste his life making any more money.

Thursday

Happy 80th birthday, Dame Janet Baker

Happy 80th birthday, Dame Janet Baker

Thursday

The dark side of Benjamin Britten

The dark side of Benjamin Britten

Saturday

The unforgettable Ferrier

The unforgettable Ferrier

Saturday

A golden age

A golden age

Saturday

Mahler’s mass following

Mahler’s mass following

Saturday

Legacy of an Eminent Victorian

Legacy of an Eminent Victorian

Saturday

Fighting Finn

Fighting Finn

Saturday

A new home rich in history

A new home rich in history