Musical Magic

Jeffrey Tate has died. He was the most amazing conductor I have ever watched, a man hugely deformed by spina bifida and scoliosis who struggled onto the podium and settled himself with difficulty on a stool. Throughout any performance he continuously rose to his feet like a ballet dancer, sweeping his arms into the air and stretching his misshapen body in the most beautiful, expressive, fluent movement imaginable. To watch him was to be inspired, aweatruck really, and I was. He performed many of the Mozart piano concertos with Mitsuko Uchida in, I think, the Festival Hall in around 1987, and I was present for maybe six of them. I have lots of the recordings as well of the two of them. But his obit today records that he said:  “Music in itself cannot be my whole life. I like to try and be as complete as I can, and music is only one element. If I only had music I think I would become slightly dead.” That threw me a bit, because I often think I could saturate myself in music and never emerge. Maybe I have a death wish. After that period in the 80s he worked abroad and I never saw him again but I never forgot him.

Music has been uppermost in my mind for a while now, more than usual. With my car aerial broken and being too busy to order a new one (!!) I've been playing on a loop the CD I bought of the young folk singer Saskia. It touches me deeply because of its pure beauty, and I'm both uplifted and unbearably saddened by it. Another favourite that I very occasionally indulge in when I need a lift is the YouTube recording of Susan Boyle's audition for Britain's Got Talent. The evident unworldliness of her character coupled with an extraordinary performance of I Have A Dream never fails to move me, often to tears. I want to slap each and every member of the audience who first jeered and sneered and then clapped throughout as if she was a clever performing monkey. Shut the fuck up and listen to her you morons, I seethe. It's only you who didn't expect a fat woman with overgrown eyebrows and poor dress sense to have the voice of an angel.

My last musical anecdote involves, bizzarly, Iestyn Davies in a platinum blonde wig and tight (ouch) grey trousers buying a cup of coffee and a bun a few feet away from myself and my fellow conspirators who were debriefing at Snape Maltings today. He is Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream which they were rehearsing today. There he was standing in the queue at the cafe. And there again, sitting on a bench in the sun with his mates, munching away with his mouth slightly open. Just a bloke in silly clothes, but put him on the stage and let him sing and he's a god, totally transformed. That's what music does, and it's why people like Jeffrey Tate and Saskia and Susan Boyle and Iestyn Davies go straight to our hearts.