OAE what a night...

A classical concert for the ipod generation


Coriolan Overture, Beethoven
Symphony No. 7, Beethoven
OAE/ Vladimir Jurowski

4 stars

Either the discoball or the orchestra were in the wrong place. Surely? For the latest in their Night Shift series, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment took to the stage in the Roundhouse, Camden – a building which later this week will be hosting the KERRANG! RELENTLESS tour. Something of a departure, then, for both parties.

Since 2006, OAE’s Night Shifts have been quietly re-tuning the strings of the classical world. Audience members can wander in and out of concerts, applaud in between movements and even talk during the performance. But mobiles must still be switched off: as Jurowski joked, “we’re not that relaxed yet”.

After a warm-up act which saw experimental young performers rapping over the top of Beethoven themes, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment took to the stage to perform Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Seventh Symphony. Conductor Vladimir Jurowski started by offering a commentary on the music and throughout the performance large screens behind the orchestra zoomed in to focus on fingers spinning and sweat flying. This, combined with Jurowski’s decision to “rewind” the closing bars of the first movement – so the audience could hear how they led into the second – created a concert experience for a technology-driven generation. Jurowski even referenced the ipod as providing a context for the decision to separate each movement: as one might hear them on an ipod shuffle.

Despite all these trappings, it was still the music which held centre stage: Jurowski was a tautened spring of energy, stabbing the air with his baton to emphasise the martial rhythms of the Coriolan overture. Feeding on this, the orchestra gave every ounce of energy to produce a performance of the high standard we have come to expect from the OAE. The second movement of the symphony was imbued with a visceral power, as a result of Jurowski’s emphasis throughout on the relentless rhythms of the symphony. ‘Rhythm is our entire life,’ he said at one point, ‘even death has a certain pace to it’.

The question, though, is whether this kind of concert is “the future” or merely a passing gimmick. The large screens, the commentary and the contemporary setting made a valuable contribution to the audience’s experience of the music. But as far as the “relaxed” atmosphere goes? People did occasionally creep out to get another beer and some audience members did, even, take up the invitation to talk – although they were often briskly hushed by their neighbour.

Most of the audience, myself included, however, sat in silence. Not because we had to – this, as the OAE stated, was “classical music minus the rules” – but because we chose to. This music has survived over the centuries; it still has what Jurowski called ‘the power, after 200 years, to engage people as if they know what is going on’. I passed on a second drink and gave this magnificent music my full attention, because it deserves no less.

The next Night Shift will be in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 25 May.

The Habit of Art: Review

As a follow-up to my previous post...

The Habit of Art, Alan Bennett
National Theatre
Dir. Nicholas Hytner

3 stars

Auden has become a bore; Britten is paralysed by artistic doubts. Humphrey Carpenter, who later wrote both their biographies, floats on the periphery to provide what JD Salinger famously called ‘all the David Copperfield kind of crap.’ In The Habit of Art, Bennett brings the two artists together for a final (fictional) encounter and, in so doing, creates a play which explores the difficulties of recording a life: ‘I want to hear about the shortcomings of great men, their fears and their failings. I’ve had enough of their vision.’

We watch this play, though, at one remove: through the murky glass of a rather shambolic rehearsal. Richard Griffiths portrays, not only Auden, but also Fitz – the actor playing Auden; Alex Jennings plays not only Britten, but also Henry, the actor putting in his usual ‘plodding’ performance. And while a “play-within-a-play” can be a means of adding philosophical depth or knowing parody, Bennett’s “Russian doll” structure appears to be largely an attempt to excuse the play’s flaws, and smacks, instead, of navel-gazing.

The considerable strength of the play, however, lies with the characters at its core: Griffiths as Fitz and Auden effortlessly communicates the world-weariness of both actor and poet. Jennings as Henry and Britten presents a masterclass in pained restraint: what Auden in the play calls ‘England…taste, modesty’. The first half often shows Bennett at his best: here a joke seemingly out of nowhere, there an astute observation about life and art. Nicholas Hytner’s production is polished and lets Bennett’s erudite script take centre-stage. This is a work in which wit permeates every line and which, like The History Boys, wears its learning amiably on its sleeve.

The end of the play, however, is misjudged. Bennett has not one, but two plays to end: and he manages to conclude neither convincingly. Fitz interrupts, the Author dictates while Frances de la Tour’s mother-hen of a stage manager coaxes them all to the finishing line (‘Come on. Last lap’). In the final moments of the play, de la Tour delivers a bizarre eulogy to the National Theatre. Given that so much of the play is concerned with the people who are ‘left out’ (the rent boy, the author, the “real” Humphrey Carpenter), the decision to include a speech which immediately and drastically shrinks the play’s circle of relevance, seems short-sighted. Apart from anything else, it wipes out, at one fell swoop, any chance of a nationwide tour.

The Habit of Art feels, appropriately enough, like a work-in-progress: the script gives the impression of being the preparatory notes to a more polished and decisive play. In a diary entry from 1999, Bennett stumbles across notes he wrote for his play The Lady in the Van and finds himself ‘feeling…that [the finished play] is slightly to the side of a play I wanted to write.’ The Habit of Art, it seems, is the marginal annotation to the side of what could have been a much better play.

The Habit of Art is on at the National Theatre until April.