Elsie's Column

  October 2005 - Nigel on my Mind........

I’ve been reading a novel…… “Blood on the Tongue,” by Stephen Booth………..yes, I know, it’s only light reading, but I can’t spend all my time researching the details of Nigel’s performance practice as evidenced by the contrasts between his first and second recordings of the Elgar Violin Concerto……….well, can I ? I admit that you probably can’t imagine what this novel I’ve been reading has to do with Nigel and indeed it doesn’t really have anything to do with him……….except that he’s mentioned in it. One of the characters, a police superintendent, has apparently been on a course and as a result suspects brought in to the police station to be questioned are treated to the sounds of Nigel, playing……what else ? ………..“The Four Seasons.” This gives them pause……….well, it would, wouldn’t it ?.........to the point where one suspect, Eddie, comments that, while the tea he has been given is not bad, “they’re going to have to turn the bleedin’ music off. It’s doing my head in !” Actually, Eddie turns out to have been up to some, shall we say, decidedly unappealing behaviour and at the time he makes this comment, he’s got rather a lot on his mind. You can well imagine that pure, 100%-proof Nigel might be a little too much for him at this stage. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was almost too much for me the first time I heard Nigel play………..it was “The Four Seasons” too !! The day I heard it turned out to be the first day of the rest of my life…………I’ve never been the same since. Well, look…………..before that I would never have dreamed of flying across the Atlantic to hear someone play the fiddle, would I ?..........and now here I am again with plane tickets bought, seats reserved, hotel all but booked and at the end of the month I’m off again, this time to Paris for the Nigel Kennedy Festival at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées ! To hear Nigel play the bleedin’ music yet again. (See you there !)

I wish I could say that Eddie is eventually redeemed by his exposure to Nigel’s music, but, alas, no such redemption is even hinted at in the rest of the novel. Too bad.

I really am not doing this on purpose, but I seem to keep finding bits of information about what is going on inside Nigel’s head………….it’s just a tad scary, you know that ? Well, think about it………last month I let you in to the secret of why Nigel can hear women when they talk to him………..all because the time he spends doing music has developed his temporal lobe beyond what is common in men who are not musicians. You got that, did you ? Right, now you’re ready for this……… brain imaging has shown that expert violinists grow more motor cortex for the left hand, which does all that work, than they do for the right hand. Fascinating, isn’t it ? I don’t quite know what to do with this information………….if I were to tell Nigel that he has the cutest temporal lobe I’ve ever come across and the size of his motor cortex for the left hand takes my breath away, do you suppose he would fall at my feet in speechless adoration ? Not ? Oh, well !

I see that Nigel and the Berlin Philharmonic have been nominated for the Austrian Klassik Amadeus 2005 prize for their recording of ‘Vivaldi II.’ You already know that this recording has won a German Echo award, because you read it in our News section, didn’t you ? (And if you didn’t, why not ? You guys have really got to pay attention, otherwise you’re never going to keep up with Nigel……….keeping up with him is like trying to hit a moving target at the best of times !! ) ANYWAY……….the winners will be announced in mid-October, although one prize has already been announced………a prize for the life work of an Austrian composer has been awarded posthumously to Friedrich Gulda………….Hey, I wonder if Mozart has ever made the short list for this award ?.............does anyone know ? No disrespect to the memory of Herr Gulda ………I’m sure he richly deserves this honour. If Nigel and the Berlin guys win an award, you’ll find all the details in our News section………..make a note !

Something else I’ve been reading is Stanislavsky’s ‘My Life in Art,’ in which the famous Acting Method is discussed, amongst other things. Yes, all right………if the fame of this Method hasn’t so far grabbed your attention, all you need to know is that it requires actors to think themselves into the minds of the characters they are playing, rather than studying them from the outside in order to decide how they will portray them. Since I finished reading the book fairly recently, parts of the interview with John Evans in the September edition of ‘Classic FM Magazine’ grabbed MY attention. Nigel is talking about Bach: ‘I consider Bach one of the greatest, if not the greatest composer of all time.’ He goes on to say that if Bach’s music appears to some people as ‘dry or lacking in humanity,’ the fault lies with the theorists, who ‘get their knowledge of performance from academics’ and, as a result, give ‘a miserable conservatoire-trained performance.’ The purists…….. ‘the real purists’……are people like Pablo Casals, Glenn Gould, Arthur Rubinstein, ‘artists who were totally inside the soul of the composer.’ Prompted by a further question from Mr. Evans, Nigel replies:

‘[The performer ]………can get into the language of the composer and find out where [the] energy comes from. It’s about finding the soul of the composer and gravitating towards it.’

I’m sure you see, as I do, the interesting connection with Stanislavsky. What’s more, I’m always fascinated at Nigel’s concerts by the question of how much of what I’m hearing is the composer and how much is Nigel. A stupid question, it would seem. What I’m hearing is something greater than either individually, a new entity so powerful that, listening to it, I become part of it too. It’s a potent mix…….. ‘music,’ says Nigel, ‘is something special to bring people together.’ Let him have the last word. (He usually does !)

Oh, yes…………….guess who recommended the Stanislavsky book to me ??!!!

Elsewhere in the magazine, we find an article by Julian Lloyd Webber, who tells us that he is often asked what he thinks of musicians like Nigel……….and Vanessa Mae. His answer to that question:

‘Quite apart from never having seen Nige in a wet T-shirt (always be grateful for small mercies !), I assure you that they aren’t the same at all. Kennedy is a highly trained thoroughbred who has played the great violin concertos with great orchestras and conductors………..[he] has made forays into the pop world……..but I venture that we will generally remember Nigel for classical and Vanessa Mae for pop.’

Does it matter ? Mr. Lloyd Webber thinks not, unless ‘they both wish it were otherwise.’ Well, I don’t know about Vanessa Mae, but I do venture to think that it matters to Nigel very much indeed. Whatever kind of music Nigel plays, he plays it because he believes in it and believes in it passionately. I think he would be considerably naffed if we were to conclude that he’s playing some of it simply for the hell of it, so we can dismiss it as just ‘a foray’ into a different kind of music. I don’t want to lecture Mr. Lloyd Webber, whose music gives me hours of immense pleasure and to whom I am indebted for that delicious image of Nigel in a wet T-shirt (ooh !)………but I think this needs to be said………..Nigel is defined by his commitment to music as music, not to any one particular type of music.

Something else that needs to be said is that the November column will be a few days late, since I don’t get back until the fourth, but I will still be so wired that the column will be charged with so much electricity it will probably crash all your computers !

Till November

Elsie