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Psychogenic fugues on today’s programme – but it’s not an arcane lesson
in music theory, I promise. Instead that’s the psychological condition
that inspired David Lynch’s movie Lost Highway, in which people end up
inhabiting a completely new identity, but are destined to repeat the
mistakes and mores of their former selves. Olga Neuwirth’s opera is
based on Lynch’s film and Barry Gifford’s screenplay, but it explodes the
two dimensions of the cinema in vivid, three-dimensional theatricality.
English National Opera are putting at The Young Vic in London. Fred
Madison, who thinks he has murdered his wife, Renee, has an alter ego
called Pete Dayton, and the whole opera takes place in a hall of mirrors
somewhere between fact and fantasy, where everyone has a doppelganger,
and reality can’t be taken for granted. I’ve been talking to Olga, and
meeting the production team. And a Ford Mustang.
An older kind of multi-media as well: the poetry of Heinrich Heine, and
the more than 8000 songs this genius of early nineteenth century
German literature has inspired. As Susan Youens’s new book says, it all
starts with Schubert, and the six Heine songs he wrote in Schwanengesang.
The Schumanns – Robert and Clara - take up the baton later, but there’s
a whole host of other composers who’ve been catalysed by the expressive
richness of Heine’s poems. With pianist Roger Vignoles and baritone
Stephan Loges, Susan and I discuss what she calls the ‘Heine juggernaut’,
and what it has to tell us about the Lied and German cultural history
right up to the twentieth century.
Sir Thomas Allen knows a thing or two about lieder, but then this doyen
of British baritones has a lifetime of experience on the operatic
stage and the concert hall, which he’s sharing with audiences around the
world. But not just with music-lovers. With the Samling Foundation,
Thomas Allen is trying to spearhead the professional development of
Britain’s brightest young singers, sharing his tricks of the trade with them,
and ensuring his craft is passed on to another generation. I’ve been
talking to Thomas Allen about everything from his North-East work ethic –
he was brought up in Seaham, County Durham – to how he’s turned his
hand to directing.
And we’ve also time this week to remember the life and music of Welsh
composer Alun Hoddinott, who died ten days ago at the age of 78. Nobody
did more in the twentieth century for music in Wales, galvanising the
music department at Cardiff University, and creating a catalogue of
symphonies, operas, and chamber music that was at once international in its
scope and appeal, but rooted in Hoddinott’s strong Welsh identity.
Friends and colleagues – including Osian Ellis – tell us what Hoddinott
the bon viveur and the composer meant to them. Happy Easter! – start the
weekend in the style to which you’ve become accustomed, on Saturday, at
12.15.
Tom
