Newsletter Vol 13 No 4 November 2009
Editorial
This is our penultimate issue of the year, aimed first to serve as a reminder of our immediately forthcoming events and also to tempt you with some seasonal CD and book ideas. We are keen to raise the profile of our fundraising and I ask you all to think seriously about ways in which you can help maintain our support for young artists, principally through our Bayreuth Scholarship. For example, if you cannot attend our Christmas event, why not send a donation instead? And please take time to consider the letter you will receive with your next year's membership card: this again will stress the importance of maintaining our Scholarship fund at a meaningful level.
Finally, we will hold a fund-raising recital with a sale or auction in the early part of next year (date to be announced). This will be a pleasant social and musical evening, and I hope you will attend. If not, then please again consider the gift of an item for the sale or a donation. Our subscriptions have always been maintained at a low level and mainly cover postage costs in mailing the Newsletters, the cost of the Journal, and upkeep of our excellent website. Similarly, admission charges to events are kept low so that we can meet room hire costs and travelling expenses for our speakers.
We promise you a monthly programme of varied and interesting events in 2010, further details will be with our next mailing, before Christmas, with which you shall receive your copy of the 2009 Journal and (we all hope!) the chance of tickets for Bayreuth in our annual Ballot.
Forthcoming Events
Sunday 8th November at 7.30pm: "My Ideal Alberich" - Frederick Robson and The Victorian Theatre.
A Lecture by Stewart Spencer.
This lecture will address the subject of Wagner's stay of four months in London in 1855, with particular reference to his visits to the theatre, to the works that he saw, to the acting styles and production values to which he was exposed and, finally, to their influence on his own work in the rehearsal room. The talk is illustrated with contemporary prints, engravings and paintings, and some music and film.
Stewart Spencer taught medieval German literature at the University of London and has translated books on Bach, Liszt, Mozart and Wagner. He has also written widely on Wagner, having served as contributor to and editor of numerous volumes on the composer and his work. We are delighted to welcome a scholar of his distinction to Edinburgh.
Edinburgh Society of Musicians, 3 Belford Road. Admission £5 members; £6 guests.
Saturday 19th December from 6.00pm: Christmas Party
Those happy people who attended last year's party at the Scottish Arts Club in Edinburgh's Rutland Square will contentedly recall a rich feast indeed. We enjoyed an erudite guest of honour, live music, and a superb buffet supper. This successful formula is to be repeated at the same venue this year, when we will welcome as our special guest a much-loved presenter from BBC Radio 3, Christopher Cook, who is a member of our Society and who will share with us some very personal reflections on Wagner and his art. Welcoming drinks from 6pm, followed by an hour with our speaker and some music at 6.30 pm; supper at 7.30pm.
Tickets are £30.00 each, to include a welcoming drink, entertainment and supper.
Please return the form enclosed with the last Newsletter as soon as you can.
Remember, places are limited! If you have mislaid the form, simply send a cheque for £30.00 per person (made payable to 'The Wagner Society of Scotland') and your contact details to:
Lewis Morgan-Klein
19-21 Baronhill,
Cumbernauld Village,
North Lanarkshire,
G67 2SD
Tickets will also be on sale at the meeting on Sunday 8th November.
[Please note that the committee have decided not to hold a raffle or tombola at this year's Christmas event. But we do intend to mount a fund-raising evening and sale/raffle in the new year. So any gifts and donations (preferably of a Wagner-related kind) are always welcome, and can be brought along to any meeting or collected by arrangement.]
Sunday 31st January 2010 at 7.30pm: Wagner And Berlioz - The "Enemy Brothers - Beethoven's Bastard Offspring"
A Lecture by David Cairns
An account of the relationship, both personal and artistic, between these two great composers. David Cairns is the author of an acclaimed two-volume biography of Berlioz and has translated and edited the composer's Memoirs. He was chief music critic of the Sunday Times from 1983 to 1992, having earlier been music critic and arts editor of the Spectator, and a writer on the Evening Standard, the Financial Times and the New Statesman. He has been Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California at Davis, a visiting scholar at the Getty Center in Santa Monica, and a visiting fellow of Merton College, Oxford. In 1991, in recognition of his services to French music, he was made Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has always been involved in practical music-making, and conducts regularly.
Edinburgh Society of Musicians, 3 Belford Road. Admission £5 members; £6 guests.
Members are reminded that they will always be welcomed at Wagner Society events in London. Please visit their website for details: www.wagnersociety.org
Special CD Offer
Der Ring Des Nibelungen: Boxed Set
Recorded Live At The
Bayreuth Fesival 2008
Conducted by Christian Thielemann
Bayreuth Festival Chorus and Orchestra
A 14-disc CD box set marking the first ever Opus Arte CD release
Catalogue no. OA CD9000B D
Our special price to members £99.99
(+ £3.00 postage and packing)
Special Book Offers
The Genius of Valhalla: the Life of Reginald Goodall by John Lucas*
The Boydell Press, 2009. ISBN 0781843835172 (paperback)
RRP £14.99 Our special price to members £11.99
(+ £2.00 postage and packing)
Thomas Beecham: An Obsession with Music by John Lucas*
The Boydell Press, 2008. ISBN 0781843834021 (hardback)
RRP £25.00 Our special price to members £20.00
(+ £3.00 postage and packing)
*see the review of these two books below
If you would like to reserve copies of any of the above, please order through Derek Watson (address below) enclosing a cheque made payable to 'Linton Books' for the total amount.
Please remember to add the appropriate postage to your cheque.
Alternatively, items can be reserved for collection at the Christmas Party or the January event.
A review of the John Lucas books listed above:
There have been many studies of great Wagner conductors. Few have been served more faithfully than are Reginald Goodall and Thomas Beecham in the two splendid biographies by John Lucas. The Genius of Valhalla is a very welcome reprint: a slightly revised edition of a 1993 book, Reggie: The Life of Reginald Goodall. As with his recent life of Beecham it is widely and impeccably researched and superbly written. Both conductors of course had a life outwith Wagner. Goodall - notably with Benjamin Britten's operas (the first and, according to Sir Peter Pears, the best conductor of Peter Grimes), and Beecham - very eclectic and more international. Whereas Reggie never lost his interest in contemporary music (he was 'fascinated' by Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus), Sir Tommy's modernism largely stopped with Richard Strauss and Delius. Wagner became more and more the ocean in which Goodall immersed himself and his lucky protégé singers. After a gripping account of his glorious last years as a major Wagner maestro, it is intensely moving to read on the final page of the book of Goodall's last full day of life; when Anne Evans visited him he said, "I'd like to have one more go at The Ring, dear. I never got bits of it right. It's the work of a lifetime." The Valhalla of the title refers to the room (also a cleaners' store cupboard) where Reggie coached near the rafters of the Royal Opera House. Lucas has written a loving tribute to the genius who presided there: a complex and enigmatic man whose reputation, thanks to many recent CD releases of live performances, has certainly risen since his death.
Beecham, although never much out of the limelight in a very public life, was also in many ways an enigmatic and complex artist. His immense energy and flair are the surface impressions that conceal great sensitivity and poetry. On every page Lucas again engages the reader's interest, this time about a very different obsessive. Wagner performance clearly remained supremely important for Beecham from his very first concerts of extracts at the end of the nineteenth century until several in the last decade of his life, by which time he had conducted all the mature Wagner operas from the pit several times over, excepting Parsifal. This too is an exemplary biography, with the bonus of a CD of Beecham in rehearsal. With meticulous detail it cuts through many myths and misconceptions (some of these coined in the orotund manner of the subject himself), and is a more than fitting tribute to 'arguably the finest executant musician this country has produced'.
The Wagner Society of Scotland Scholarship 2010
A fund has been established to enable a young artist to attend the Bayreuth Festival in 2010. The successful applicant will receive £900 to defray the cost of travel expenses, meals & accommodation. The winner will also receive tickets for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg on 5th August, Lohengrin on 6th August and Parsifal on 7th August. In addition the Richard Wagner Scholarship Foundation will arrange lectures, a tour of the Festival Theatre, visits to the Wagner and Liszt museums and other sightseeing and social events commencing on 4th August. Application forms, rules and conditions can be downloaded from our website or obtained from Iain Millar, 46Easter Hermitage, Edinburgh EH6 8DR (iain.millar@leith46.plus.com).
The winner of the 2010 Scholarship will be announced in early February.
International Richard Wagner Society Congress 2010
Next year's Congress takes place in Stralsund on the Baltic Sea in north-east Germany from 13-16 May. There's a performance of Der Rosenkavalier (12th May) Der fliegende Holländer (13th), a Wagner Gala (15th), Turandot (16th), plus other events and excursions. If you would like a brochure and booking form, please apply to Derek Watson. Cities hosting future Congresses are Wrocław (2011), Prague (2012), Leipzig (2013) and Dessau (2014).
Chairman and Newsletter editor: Derek Watson, Deanfoot House, West Linton, Peeblesshire EH46 7EA Tel 01968 660339 Fax 01968 661701; e-mail derek@lintonbooks.plus.com
Secretary: W S Scott, 83 East Claremont Street, Edinburgh EH7 4HU; Tel 0131-556 2617; Fax 0870 0568159; e-mail will@elgar1.plus.com
Treasurer: John Holcombe, 4 Galleon Court, Lamer Street, Dunbar, East Lothian, EH42 1GX; e-mail john@holc.wanadoo.co.uk
