An Interview with Graham Bickley

Graham Bickley

Hannah Nepil interviews singer Graham Bickley in the run-up to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s performances of two Bernstein concerts: on Saturday 8th June at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham, and Tuesday 11th June at Cadogan Hall, London.

In an extravagant tribute to one of our most fondly remembered musical icons, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is to devote two concerts to the American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. For the performers – who will present excerpts from Bernstein’s musical theatre works including Candide, On the Town, Wonderful Town and Trouble in Tahiti – it’s a chance to demonstrate exactly what makes this composer so great. ‘The lyrics are fab, the tunes wonderful and the orchestration always so interesting: it really helps to support us singers,’ says one of the performers Graham Bickley.

On a technical level, Bickley admits, Bernstein is ‘tricky stuff. You really have to be on it, no matter how many times you do it.’ What’s more, performing miscellaneous musical snippets in a concert setting presents certain challenges: ‘to get into every character in every song is a tough call because you only have two minutes in a particular song to get that across and then you’re into another character from another show.’ But then, as he says, ‘it’s a compromise: what you lose out on in terms of the storytelling because of the very nature of concerts, you get back in hearing this orchestra which is much bigger than the original pit orchestra. The audience enjoys it for different reasons to those they would if they were watching it within a musical theatre context.’

Luckily, in Bernstein’s shows much of the storyline and drama is conveyed through the music. And that, according to Bickley, is exactly what good musical theatre should be like. ‘I’ve sat through many a performance where it seemed like all the performer was thinking about was “I’m going to get through this scene and then I’m going to hit a top G”. That’s boring’.

Musical theatre, says Bickley, gets a bad press: ‘It’s not seen as the skill it should be.’ And celebrity culture doesn’t help: ‘we do have those who have been through The X Factor and have had a bit of celebrity thrown upon them and they think “I’ll do musical theatre now because that’s easy”.’ But, as he points out, it’s not. ‘You can’t put a song across without acting it – as an opera singer would also say. From the beginning of the show to the end some of it is sung, some of it is without music, but it should be acted all the way through.’

Bickley should know: he’s a veteran of music theatre having ‘been in the game for the last 25 to 30 years.’ As a child he was surrounded by music. His father was a choir master and ran the local amateur operatic society, his sister is an opera singer and his family always had music in the house. ‘From day one I knew what I wanted to do. And I’ve been able to maintain that dream up until the heavy age that I am today,’ he says with a laugh, ‘just don’t ask what that is.’

Bernstein on Broadway – Saturday 8th June, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham

Bernstein Night – Tuesday 11th June, Cadogan Hall, London

The Zukermans: A Family Portrait

Pinchas Zukerman

How does it feel to give your Southbank début…under the baton of your dad? Arianna Zukerman can give us a clue. On Wednesday 29th May the forty-year-old American soprano hits the Royal Festival Hall, singing the solo in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Her father, the world-renowned violinist Pinchas Zukerman, will conduct.  

‘I grew up listening to the way my father plays and the way he phrases, so I often know what to anticipate when we make music together. I aspire to speak his musical language,’ says Arianna. She frequently collaborates with her father, who, in addition to conducting the Mahler, will perform Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.3 in G in the first half of the concert. Off-stage, professional and family life are carefully separated. Much of Arianna’s time is now devoted to her nineteen-month-old daughter Veronica.

And, musically, she has always maintained her independence. As a child, Arianna was encouraged to discover her musical interests by her father, and her flautist-writer mother Eugenia, but their approach was to ‘wait-and-see’. She came to singing of her own accord. ‘Singing is different from playing an instrument in that singers can never see what’s happening technically,’ says Arianna, ‘unlike violinists who can see, for example, whether their wrists are too high on the bow. So there was enough mystery in singing for my father to leave me alone.’

Temperamentally too, she and Pinchas make very different first impressions. While Arianna is very measured, Pinchas is irrepressible. When I speak to him, I’m caught up in a whirlwind of ideas and topics ranging from the relationship between technology and music to the merits of English orchestras (sense of humour; good manners). But what really gets the juices flowing, is the mention of Mahler. An Israeli by descent, Zukerman particularly identifies with the ‘Jewish’ flavour of Mahler’s music, characterised by frequent snippets of Klezmer. ‘You recognise it immediately,’ says Pinchas, ‘My father was maybe the best Klezmer player I ever heard. So that rhythm, that colour: that’s my DNA.’

Arianna has an analytical approach to the subject: ‘I wonder if all the Klezmer in Mahler’s music had more to do with his Jewish faith or the trends of the time. Because in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century there was a trend towards exoticism. There might be more to the story than saying ‘Mahler’s Jewish. That’s why his music sounded like it did.’ And what are the challenges of performing Mahler? ‘To allow it to speak for itself. Sometimes I think, oh Arianna, just get out of the way!’ she laughs. But then, as she says, ‘simplicity is hard won’.

And one last question: in rehearsals, does Arianna call Pinchas ‘Maestro’ or ‘Dad’? Neither apparently. ‘It’s usually ‘excuse me but could we please….I’m Mr Excuse Me’ says Pinchas. ‘But ‘Daddy’? No, no. It doesn’t work like that.’

Pinchas and Arianna Zukerman perform with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday 29th May.

First Time Live in Scunthorpe

Musicians performing at The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe

Local resident Margaret Dyke shares her impromptu experience with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra last week, after following musicians from Sainsbury’s to a First Time Live concert at The Baths Hall in Scunthorpe.

It’s not usual for the crowd at our local Sainsbury’s café to wear black for lunch, and it’s not usual for anyone to wear dress trousers to lunch at a supermarket. My partner and I were considering this at some length, especially since if dress trousers are not usual, dress trousers twinned with a high-vis jacket are not so much unusual as not quite normal. Just what sort of people would wear such odd attire at lunchtime on a Friday? Our branch of Sainsbury’s in sunny Scunny is just opposite the newly opened Baths Hall and we eventually worked out that anyone who wears a DJ to lunch at a supermarket must consider it a uniform and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra had been performing at The Baths Hall the previous night. As the musicians drifted off we noticed the swarms of children descending on the venue and guessed it was a masterclass or a concert. Being at a loose end (that time of year when annual leave has to be used up) we thought it a good idea to gatecrash, and the venue was flexible enough to let us in. Since we don’t travel with our criminal records bureau numbers we were not allowed near the children and were seated alone on the side balcony. I came to classical music late in life and am still fascinated by being able to see which instrument makes which noise so I couldn’t have had a better seat. What we had stumbled upon was a First Time Live concert.

First Time Live is a new touring programme devised and led by the national music charity Orchestras Live. It aims to bring high quality orchestral concerts to nearly 14,000 young people aged between 10 and 14 years living in 10 locations in England that fall in the bottom 20% for arts engagement, including Scunthorpe. First Time Live is not a passive experience; it is not only about listening to a concert. Neither is it just an opportunity for the top music students in an area. Yes, First Time Live gives some kids the chance to play with an internationally famous orchestra and that’s great, but it also gives others chance to develop their skills through opportunities to choose the programme, compose the music, film the event, organise publicity and arrange and carry out interviews. They also get involved in presenting, stage management, lighting, front of house, blogging, internet advertising and for all I know making cups of tea.

First Time Live gives students the opportunity to contribute to all that makes a concert, on or off stage, seen or unseen, heard or unheard, and the result in Scunthorpe was outstanding. The presenters were polished and confident, and had devised good scripts. The programme was fun; the inclusion of the music from Angry Birds was a bit wasted on me but is apparently known to 12 million iTunes users. Murray Gold’s version of Dr Who was good but for one who hid behind the settee for the first episode, nothing compares with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. There was teaching without boredom. Now I know length of the tube in a French Horn and which instrument chimes midnight in Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre. I was especially taken with the use of night-time traffic on the Humber bridge as a video to Adams’ Shaker Loops (which gamers may recognise from Civilization IV) it appealed to the Koyaanisqatsi fan in me. It would be great to see it worked up a bit, with the footage speed matched more to the music’s tempo.

We left on a high after a rip-roaring version of John Williams’ Star Wars Theme and trundled back to Sainsbury’s to go shopping. I pounced on an unfortunate violinist buying a bunch of flowers and – trying to thank him for the opportunity First Time Live has given to local teenagers – became surprisingly emotional.

I’m not sure that the best things in life are free, but they often happen unexpectedly. Thank you and congratulations to all involved: professional or amateur, young or old, in public or behind the scenes.

The Max Factor

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

Hannah Nepil interviews Sir Peter Maxwell Davies about his upcoming concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, featuring his Symphony No.6, Violin Concerto No.1 – with soloist Jack Liebeck – and An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise, at Cadogan Hall on Tuesday 12th March, 7.30pm.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is being mysterious. I have just asked the Master of the Queen’s Music if he is planning to compose anything to mark the upcoming Royal Birth, and his reply is suitably neutral: ‘We’ll see’. Anything he does write, however, is unlikely to hurt the Queen’s ears. ‘I think her life is difficult enough. And I’m not going to make it any more unpleasant than it needs to be by subjecting her to music that she won’t enjoy,’ says the legendary British composer. ‘That is human consideration.’

But then, Sir Peter – ‘Max’ to his friends – is as comfortable writing light music as he is dissonant, avant-garde works. In the Sixties he was known as an enfant terrible of the British classical music scene – famed for radical outpourings such as his 1969 work, Eight Songs for a Mad King. But having taught at Cirencester Grammar School for three years, he also dedicated much of his time to writing works for schoolchildren. That’s one way in which he takes after the composer Benjamin Britten, whose influence Sir Peter vividly recalls, particularly now, in Britten’s centenary year. ‘When I had a première of something I had written for the children at Cirencester Grammar School, Britten would send me a telegram saying: “Good Stuff”.’

Sir Peter moved to Orkney in 1970, where he still lives to this day. The change of scene, he says, had a calming influence on his work, ‘and made the next fifty-plus years of composition possible because I think I would have probably burnt myself out the way I was going.’ But his compositional personality remained as varied as ever, as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s upcoming tribute concert for the composer will highlight. Alongside Sir Peter’s virtuosic Violin Concerto – written for the violinist Isaac Stern and the RPO in 1985 – the programme features the complex, turbulent Symphony No.6 and the joyous An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise. Although these two works are in many ways worlds apart, both were written in a similarly furious burst of inspiration. Sir Peter describes the Symphony as one of those pieces he just had to write ‘in order to be able to live at all. If you didn’t do it, I think you would choke or something. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.’ An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise, on the other hand, was written in the few days after Sir Peter’s father died, as a way of cheering himself up. ‘I was going to the hospital every day. And suddenly there was this piece in my head that was joyous and life-enhancing and seemed to say: “just get on with life.” I thought “I’ve got to get this down”.’

Sir Peter is looking forward to revisiting these works at the concert, with the added benefit of hindsight. ‘I think I’m going to hear things in it that I didn’t realise were there and that I might not like at all.’ Over the years, however, he has learnt to be dispassionate about past works. ‘Writing my 1969 pieces for example, I had a very young man’s head on my shoulders, and you can’t criticise them for that. You have to take that music at face value,’ he says, ‘and respect it for what it is.’

An Interview with Jack Liebeck

Hannah Nepil discusses the challenges of being an international soloist with acclaimed young violinist Jack Liebeck, who will perform Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ First Violin Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on Tuesday 12th March at Cadogan Hall, London.

I had planned to meet Jack Liebeck in person. But, as it turns out, the violinist has temporarily escaped London and is now basking in the heat of a Cape Town summer. I can hear the glee in his voice when I phone: ‘We’ve got no heating at home at the moment so it’s a good time to be away.’

Liebeck’s parents were born in Cape Town and this is the first time he has been back there since the Eighties. Like most internationally acclaimed soloists, however, he is no stranger to jet-setting. On this occasion he is holidaying with his wife Victoria, who is a violinist in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (thanks to the wonders of Skype, I can hear her practising in the other room). But Liebeck (aged 32) is less fond of travelling by himself: ‘when I’ve been in another part of the world I’ve always wished my wife was there to share it,’ he says. ‘I’m a real home-bird.’

So it’s just as well that there’s plenty to be getting on with at home. Along with several British orchestras, he regularly performs with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and is now gearing up for his next gig with them on 12th March: a concert devoted to the British composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, in which Liebeck will perform Maxwell Davies’ Violin Concerto No.1. The work was originally written for the violinist Isaac Stern to perform with the RPO, and Liebeck is feeling the weight of expectation. He was working with Isaac Stern’s son, the conductor David Stern, when he found out he would be playing the Concerto, ‘and when I told David about it he said  “Oh my God! My dad found that piece so difficult!”’

But then, as Liebeck freely admits, nobody said being a violinist was easy. ‘I do often think about what a bizarre profession it is,’ he says, ‘performing for a living, putting yourself under immense pressure, like a sportsperson does. Sometimes you think “Why am I doing it to myself?”’ Luckily, he has always risen to the challenges involved. As a child he used to practise the violin ‘until I dropped’, not because his parents forced him to but because he believed ‘that if I practised a lot I’d be able to have a good life as an adult.’

As an adult he remains philosophical: when it comes to performing, he has an ‘it’s going to happen anyway’ attitude, ‘so I might as well enjoy myself when I’m doing it. Because the one thing you can’t avoid on a concert day is that 7.30pm will come.’ He grins. ‘And if it doesn’t that means you’re probably dead, which isn’t a good thing either.’