Archives for February 2010

'Dum! Dum! Dah-dee-dah-duh-dah-dee-dee-dah ...' The opening bars of Beethoven's Third Symphony, the Eroica, have been ringing out rather a lot in the office of the Radio 3 Interactive team recently. 

In the last few months we've been working on new ways to develop in-depth understanding of classical music and we selected the Eroica Symphony for 'special measures' because it is a well known, widely accessible and in its own way, ground-breaking work.

I've been working closely with producer Gregory Stevens on the video recording of the Discovering Music programme on the Eroica which Radio 3 broadcast on Sunday (still available on the iPlayer for another six days). Last December, we travelled to the Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff's Millennium Centre to film Stephen Johnson's splendidly informative and entertaining analysis, and the performance by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Christophe Mangou. My job was to write the camera script and direct the video: this means that, unlike a full-scale TV outside broadcast, you do your own vision mixing.

As well as scripted cuts to the conductor, the 'conductor shot' is also the fail-safe or default shot should anything go wrong - however Christophe Mangou had an extremely expressive face and it was tempting to cut to him more often than not because most of his shots were winners, as you'll see if you watch the performance. In post-production, Gregory and I also prepared extracts for the visual glossary of musical terms which we are developing as part of our support for the Discovering Music archive. You can watch Stephen Johnson's introduction and the complete performance by following this link.

Meanwhile, as a 'homework' project, producer Roger Philbrick has been putting in a lot of hours developing a visual guide to the Eroica's opening movement. Roger had been studying audio waveforms of the music and it occurred to him that these could be used to provide visual representations of musical structures and patterns.

He used colour coding to show the broadly sonata-form format of the movement - and how its scale, dynamics and section lengths compare with a late Mozart symphony. A second set of colours were used to show themes, texture and instrumentation. The next step was to use Flash animation to combine the waveform graphics with music clips, dynamic descriptions and simple controls so you can both see and hear what is going on at important points in the music.

Roger and coder Anthony Ali have compiled these elements on a rather colourful webpage, with links to the relevant sections of Stephen Johnson's analysis. They hope you enjoy the results.

We'd always like to do more, of course: to this end, we'd welcome your comments on the Eroica work - just post them here!

• The pictures (©Graeme Kay/BBC) show the Hoddinott Hall scene dock at the Wales Millennium Centre, and Gregory Stevens lining up the ConductorCam in the hall.
  
  

This year, BBC Radio 3 launches a new scheme which aims to support and inspire young world music artists by bringing them together with an internationally renowned artist in the same field. In the first year of the BBC Radio 3 World Routes Academy, the focus is upon two Iraqi musicians; the young, London based musician Khyam Allami is the first recipient of this scholarship and he will work with the celebrated Ilham al-Madfai, the guitarist, singer and composer who will take on the role of mentor.

Radio 3's weekly programme World Routes (Saturdays, 3pm) follows the partnership over the 9-months of the scheme featuring regular interviews, documentary material, recordings and performance. In addition to following Khyam and Ilham's progress the programme takes a wider look at Iraqi music and cultural traditions.

Throughout the year, Khyam will be blogging abouthis experiences - here's his first post.

So, aside from practising the 'U-d (or Oud - short necked Middle Eastern lute),studying a reasonable stack of books in Arabic and English about the history of the 'U-d, some of the Arab world's greatest musicians, the Dastga-hs of Persian Classical Music, Iraqi Maqa-ma-t, Turkish Makamlar, Ethnomusicology, Orientalism and Arabic music theory all punctuated by extracts of Borges and Marquez... I've actually been working for the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing the 'U-d with the ensemble that accompanied their production of Arabian Nights.

Did I mention that I'm half-way through a Masters and trying to study the Turkish language? Or that I fell in love with the films of Almodóvar and replaced learning Turkish with Spanish and then went back to Turkish again? Anyway...

Up until last November, the theatre was uncharted territory but fortunately for me, the warmth of the cast and crew made our cold winter in Stratford-Upon-Avon a relatively painless experience. I say relatively only because playing the same 98% composed music eight times a week for two months does grate a little after, well, a few days but... theatre, as an artistic medium and environment is truly amazing. Can't wait to be involved in it again, hopefully in a more creative role though! A big thank you to my Arabian Nights brothers and sisters, see you all soon.

Fortunately, being in Stratford-Upon-Avon and away from London's light-speed tempos gave me a chance to get my head down and work hard in preparation for the WRA (World Routes Academy) and all that revolves around it.

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Having been sidelined by a particularly virulent bug (imagine a percussion section playing fortissimo on your insides...) I've had rather longer than anticipated to consider my thoughts on this concert performance of Hans Werner Henze's Phaedra.

One of my best DVD buys in recent years was Henze's glorious L'Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe - I must have listened to it at least a dozen times already and still find so much to discover and enjoy. So when I heard that his latest operatic work Phaedra was to receive its UK premiere this weekend at the Barbican, I knew I had to be there.

Phaedra occupies a different sound world to L'Upupa by using a smaller orchestra of 23 players - 14 woodwind and brass alongside a harp, celesta, piano, array of percussion and just 4 strings, brilliantly performed here by the virtuosic instrumentalists of Frankfurt's Ensemble Modern under the expert direction of conductor Michael Boder. With this combination Henze creates a vivid range of orchestral colour, every bar of music seemed distilled down to the bare essentials, much more so than in the frequently lush, exotic sound-world of L'Upupa.

Phaedra doesn't possess a pretty plot. Instead it offers betrayal, rape, incest, murder, suicide, seduction, mutilation and much more. This isn't the journey to enlightenment that we travelled on in L'Upupa, rather an emotion and event driven drama played out by the four main protagonists: Phaedra (Maria Riccarda Westerling, mezzo), Hippolytus ( John Mark Ainsley, tenor), Aphrodite ( Marlis Petersen, soprano), Artemis (Axel Koehler, counter-tenor) as well as the smaller but key role of the Minotaur (sung by Lauri Vasar, baritone).

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