Classical bitchery

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I found this quite fun - who knew how catty all these great composers could be about each other?

• "He has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour." - Rossini on Wagner
• "After Rossini dies, who will there be to promote his music?” - Wagner on Rossini
• “A composer for one right hand.” - Wagner on Chopin
• "He composes by splashing his pen over the manuscript and leaving the issue to chance." - Chopin on Berlioz
• “A regular freak, without a vestige of talent.” - Mendelssohn on Berlioz
• “A tub of pork and beer.” - Berlioz on Handel
• “He’d be better off shovelling snow than scribbling on manuscript paper.” - Richard Strauss on Schoenberg
• "He is no longer of any interest to me, and whatever I may have learned from him, I am thankful to say I misunderstood." - Schoenberg on Strauss
• "Such an astounding lack of talent has never before been united to such pretentiousness." - Tchaikovsky on Strauss
• "He can’t compose a single note without someone’s help.” - Tchaikovsky on Borodin
• ""What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius." - Tchaikovsky on Brahms
• “Hygienic, but unexciting.” - Liszt on Brahms
• “Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?” - Stravinsky on Villa-Lobos
• "Bach on the wrong notes." - Prokofiev on Stravinsky
• “He wrote marvellous operas but dreadful music.” - Shostakovich on Puccini
• "A man of great talent who lacks the essential quality that makes great masters." - Bizet on Verdi
• "A very tolerable imitation of a composer.” - Vaughan Williams on Mahler
• “If he'd been making shell-cases during the war it might have been better for music.” - Ravel on Saint-Saëns

Miaow!

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Composers in the collage:

First row - Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Händel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven;
Second row - Gioachino Rossini, Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi;
Third row - Johann Strauss II, Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonín Dvořák;
Fourth row - Edvard Grieg, Edward Elgar, Sergei Rachmaninoff, George Gershwin, Aram Khachaturian

An evening in Queen Anne's Footstool

St John's, Smith Square - nicknamed "Queen Anne's Footstool"

Completing a succession of evenings out this week - Polari, Sondheim's Assassins at the Menier Chocolate Factory, the "Fantasy Egypt" night at the Petrie Museum - our little gang went for a bit of classical culture yesterday evening: a concert of Bach, Wagner and Schoenberg by the Fulham Symphony Orchestra at the beautiful St John’s, Smith Square in Westminster.

The concert opened with J.S. Bach (orchestrated by Stokowski) – Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, a beautiful baroque piece in perfect keeping with the sumptuous surroundings of Thomas Archer's 1728 masterpiece. Melodramatic and emotional in turn, it was lovely.

An even bigger treat was, however, their excellent second piece - preceded by a lengthy exploration by conductor Marc Dooley of the concept of the leitmotif, as heavily used by Wagner and later by Schoenberg (far better explained by the legendary Anna Russell, incidentally) - the final scene (Leb’ Wohl) from Die Walkure, part III. The part of Wotan was beautifully sung by bass-baritone Stephen Holloway:


[If the player doesn't work, click here to listen]

It was very helpful of Mr Dooley to do the "compare and contrast" between Wagner and Schoenberg, we found, for it merely helped convince us that none of us really wanted to stay for Pelleas und Melisande; modernist "symphonic poems" not really being our favourite style of music. So we buggered off to the pub instead.

However, what we heard (even if there were a couple of slight technical "ouch" moments) was splendid enough to make for a very enjoyable experience.

Fulham Symphony Orchestra website.

"Born in Poland, made in Germany, stolen by Hollywood"

There are many reasons why a relationship remains strong over the years, and complete compatibility of taste in music and arts is a major factor - and this is a shining example of why Madam Arcati and I have lasted twelve years together this month.

For when the esteemed Madame announced he had managed to find a clip of silent screen vamp Pola Negri singing Wagner, I could have whooped with joy! A perfect addition to our burgeoning collection of all things camp here at Dolores Delargo Towers...

Pola Negri - Richard Wagner parody

The lovely Fraulein Negri was a wonderfully exotic addition to the Art Deco silent movie era - she left her native Hungary early in her career, and was "discovered" by Hollywood while residing in Weimar Berlin. Her career blossomed in glamorous big-budget silents alongside the megastars of the day such as Rudolph Valentino (with whom she had a much-publicised affair), but the Depression and the rise of the talkies were not kind to her career. Controversially on her return to Germany she became a firm favourite actress of Adolf Hitler (despite being anti-Nazi herself), and the "Nazi connection" led to much vilification among her peers, including Tallulah Bankhead, despite the fact that the German authorities were in fact investigating her alleged Jewish background.

After leaving Germany and later the occupation of France, she returned to Hollywood, where she made a few more movies before retiring in the 1940s. Pola Negri maintained her flamboyant persona to the end of her life and was often compared to Norma Desmond, a character role she had famously turned down - which became the most famous and iconic screen moment for her friend and rival Gloria Swanson. She lived to the ripe old age of 90, and when she died in 1987 her body was laid out wearing a yellow golden chiffon dress with a golden turban to match. A magnificent lady!

Pola! Pola! Pola! - the Pola Negri Appreciation site