Nicholas Daniel's Kaleidoscopes blog

In the lead-up to the world premiere of John Tavener's new oboe concerto, Kaleidoscopes, soloist and director Nicholas Daniel shares his thoughts on the experience in a blog.

The Kaleidoscopes blog will be updated every few days so come back and chart Nick's progress up to the premiere on 6 November at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London (more).

To give some background on the project, we asked Nick some questions about his relationship with John Tavener. Click here to jump to the background interview.

13 November 2006

So we gave the final performance of Kaleidoscopes at Norwich. In many ways it was the best of them, though actually each of the 3 so far have been very different and I wouldn’t like to say which was most effective.

I feel very relieved and pleased that I managed to get better and better results from my performance of the piece, and very satisfied that my Britten Sinfonia colleagues have been so enthusiastic about it too, they were from the first moment we started rehearsal, but Norwich was just fantastic from them all and they said that they felt it was great to have the chance to immerse themselves more deeply by repeat performances. The Mozart and especially the Tchaik benefited from this too.

In myself I seem to have found a deep sense of calm and I don’t think it’s just relief! I have decided to allow myself a little modest pride that I managed to find a way into being able to bring out the best in this piece, and that the effort involved in playing it did not get in the way of communicating John’s vision of my instrument in an operatic, poetic and visionary way. I certainly feel the piece is unique and I am sure it will have quite a further life, it is actually pretty unique in John’s output too, and certainly marks a new direction for him.

Many people have said to me that I’m the only person who’ll ever play Kaleidascopes, but actually I’m intending to give chunks of it to my students to learn. Those students that heard it absolutely loved it, and James Turnbull tells me he is even playing chunks of it from memory(!) For the first time ever I have insisted on some exclusivity on a new piece though, and I think it may be a good call!

I’m suddenly unbearably excited about Music of the Sky, the song cycle with oboe, piano and tenor that John has written, that we play for the first time in February in Britten Sinfonia's Lunch Series. I have helped curate the series, working with David Butcher, the BBC, the composers involved and Aldeburgh! I remember on that first visit to Dorset being absolutely knocked out by that piece too, and the tenor writing is about as inter-bolistic as the oboe writing! We have got my dear friend and colleague Julius Drake playing the piano and the amazing Charles Daniels singing with us. He is a wonderfully committed artist, I saw his John Passion Evangelist a while ago and it was about as good as it gets. I believe we are recording that live from Cambridge…

I think I will write a final blog entry in a few days just to sum up how things are standing, but for now thank you all so much for sharing this journey. I never dreamed how important this process of tapping away my thoughts would become to me, but I’ve got a lot out of it actually. Maybe, in the end, the piece has had a really profound effect on me, I certainly feel quite surprisingly calm and still in my mind, and I feel that keeping the piece in my head, maybe memorizing it or parts of it even better, might help me keep what I am finding right now.

10 November 2006

For those that were at London and Cambridge thank you for your wonderful concentration in all of our concerts there, and for your warm response to our performances.

For my part both of those concerts were so very different but equally special. Cambridge feels like home to us and we love the West Road Hall and our own audience there. It is comparatively rare for us to World Premiere in London and it does add an extra edge to the proceedings! London was really exciting, but I felt in a totally different place in myself- especially for the Tavener. It’s amazing how having done it once I KNEW I could do it in performance and I would say that it was literally 50% less effort than in the first performance, well ok 40%! I was able to get out to the audience much more with my eyes and seem to be playing most of it from memory, although I wouldn’t trust myself for another 10 performances at least!

I managed to handle the facial moisture issue better, with 2 big hankies that I never have time to put back in my pocket so they have to be dropped theatrically to the floor after the only 2 places where I can towel myself down, and anyway I’m turning a page and conducting a really hard bit in a slow 6/4 pulse that the 2nd quartet begins! The Guardian review said that I “conducted with relish” and that it must have been a relief for me to “concentrate on just one of his musical skills at a time” ! Well at least he implied I have skills and it wasn’t just 'Nicholas Daniel conducted', as per normal! I wonder what I have to do to make the musical establishment really sit up and look and listen to my conducting the way the musicians and the audiences seem to?! I must say that I am thrilled with the shape of the Tchaikovsky, it’s so often played as a blasting romp, or an over indulgent milking opportunity, I love the terse fugal aspects of it, and the RHYTHM we are giving it, it all adds much needed reinforcement and rigour to the searing melodies.

Norwich is tonight. I’m going early to escape the double glazers and the hole being bashed in my living room wall by Steve our truly delightful builder. He’s making us a fireplace! I’m going to meet Jacob and Laura who have come back specially from Trossingen to hear the last two of this run of performances. I have a feeling we may try a little shopping expedition punctuated with lunch! I feel that wearing white in the middle of the orchestra may be better than wearing black, and my exquisite Issey Miyake white shows just a little too much hairy chest without a jacket!

We are nearly at an end of this blog project, though I will report anything new that happens in terms of recording and further performances. To be honest I originally agreed to do it because the staff at the Britten Sinfonia office are just so lovely that it’s hard to refuse them anything, but in fact I have found it cathartic and fascinatingly therapeutic to share this journey with you. I thought it was going to be a chore but the idea that some of the audience who I don’t get to talk to normally will actually read this, or people who don’t know my work, is really interesting to me. Thanks for reading. Nick

9 November 2006

I need to talk about something probably considered rather uncool by politicians and maybe music critics.

Before I set off on this I want to say that I have nothing but respect for writers and commentators on music, and feel that their bastion of reflecting on musical culture is a really important one that we should all defend energetically. I know they work for love in the same way that we do and I’ve always got on wonderfully with the ones I’ve met and talked to whether I generally agree with what they write or not.

The uncool thing I want to comment on is Faith. That famous phrase from the Alastair Campbell about Tony Blair, ‘we don’t do God’.

I remember when The Protecting Veil was at its highest level of popularity, and was listening to Radio 1 one day in the car and suddenly it came on, soaring out from the speakers in the door of my little Red Rocket Mini. I remember that the DJ at the time back-announced it and said that there was something amazing going on to find this requested on Radio 1, some kind of special upsurge of interest in music that focussed one’s mind and led to meditative prayer. That’s not exactly what he said but it logically led me to that conclusion. It was the same thing when Roger Wright put all of Bach on BBC Radio 3 last Christmas, a hugely brave and amazingly successful step, despite its detractors.

Why is a composer who puts stillness, bringing a spiritual dimension and divine communication at the centre of his world, sneered at and made fun of by fellow composers and music writers? Why is it impossible for people, perhaps those that need it most, to stop listening to things as being tonal or atonal, serial or not, and just turn of the contemporary music chatter and tune in to the very heart of a piece that, it seems to me, clearly has an important, even crucial message for our times?

I’m going to put my money where my mouth is on this. How funny that the strongest proof (personal, honest, internal ‘I believe that’ kind of proof) of something greater and other than our existence should come to me through Music, John’s music, when I had looked just about everywhere for it except in the area where I have the most skill and in the thing I care most about in my existence.

It is not cool to sneer at people’s faith, it’s probably illegal anyway these days! It is not cool to ignore the intellectual rigour in a piece by Tavener, actually almost any piece by him. It is not cool to ban faith, belief, prayer and meditation from what is allowable in the concert hall, and anyway if you try to do that it will turn round and bite you in the arse anyway, because the people have a need and a thirst for it, as proved by the popularity of Tavener, and it’s not just people wanting soothing classics at 2, - that is a totally spurious argument based on a skant knowledge of Tavener’s work and forms; it’s the egoless and humble non-coercive way the music offers the gentlest drink of the purest water to the human soul, and acts as a balance to the suffering and pain we can only too easily see around us.

8 November 2006

I had a lovely chat with John yesterday in the car on my way to the osteopath. My right arm was a bit sore, very unusually, and she has put me back together again! John was so very kind about how I’d played his piece and it was good to tell him some of my thoughts about it with a little perspective.

He was not worried but vaguely interested in a concerned way about what the national press might make of his piece. I said to John that I thought that the recent energy and vivacity in his work might wake them up a bit at least, but also I was sure that the greatness that we found in it would come over to them and win them over a little.

As it turns out the reviews were mixed. At least the critics loved the band and mentioned my conducting a little. I guess that in the current climate of journalism it’s about as hard to stay fresh and interested as it can be in the music profession. I am so lucky really that I have such an optimistic nature!

Two of my visitors from my class in Germany are coming back for Thursday and Friday’s performances! They were blown away by the piece. I am so thrilled about that.

I had a fairly restful day yesterday and decided not to practise. I think it could have been a mistake but only today will tell! My lips needed a little respite and so did my arm.

I’m so excited to play the piece again tomorrow, I have all sorts of ideas how we can make it link a little better, more attacca into different sections and maybe a little more silence here and there. I’m so looking forward to getting the piece run in really.

Mad at home today, double glazing blokes and 2 or 3 different builders. I was quite glad to escape to school with the children. At least the dreaded barking of my Lovely Mother in Law’s not so lovely dog has relaxed a bit recently! Oh, then again, there she goes.

7 November 2006, 1.45am

Well, I think Sir John has a hit on his hands. It was in many ways the most extraordinary premiere I have ever given. I felt I played fairly well, but hope the next two performances on Thursday and Friday may be even better.

The whole piece has such a superb operatic feel to it. It often swings abruptly from utter meditative beauty to wild madness, and it's so well written for us all. It was a serious stamina test though, and I felt a bit sweaty on the stage. I hate it when you lose grip from your lips and the pressure of the blowing wants to make the oboe shoot out of your hands! At one point I was conducting 2 bars, wiping my forehead and turning a page simultaneously.

The Hall staff (Queen Elizabeth Hall) had lit us wonderfully with the 4 string quartets in a pool of light each and me in the centre, and I think it looked great.

I had suggested leaving the centre of the stage while playing the very end, and John thought it worked well in the rehearsal. I hope it added to the detachment and return to the 'now' in the ending.

Many lovely friends and all my students from Germany in the green room afterwards, John seems really pleased and dashes back for a train to Dorset. I had a quiet moment with him before he left and he said to me that he has no idea quite how he wrote that piece, or even, unusually for him, much memory of writing it. I suggest to him that he was open to something working through him and all his technique, which is formidable, was at the service of that energy that became this piece. He agrees that this is likely, hugs me again, thanks me again, and dashes off for his train! He is really happy about it I think.

I like him so much, he is as honest a man and musician as you could meet, and he seems so free in himself these days, like his music is. We always have such fascinating chats and he is a great listener, punctuating the conversation with questions that make me end up opening up to him rather garrulously quickly, but it leads to great openness between us.

I am so very proud that he has written such a thing for me. It is quite a step forward for the instrument and for me technically, and I think it presents the oboe in an unique way. I want to play it all over the world and we are already talking about recording it.

Even now as I try to sleep the music is in my head haunting me and demanding I remember it. I think I might practise something entirely different tomorrow, just to clear my head, oh and a long walk with the dog, he has terrible arthritis but we've been told that walking him is really good. Actually John would love him, his name is Zen!

6 November 2006

Woken by Daisy, my Mother in Law’s yapping dog, who appears to have lost her temper with a pheasant in the garden! I was so hoping for a lie-in, but anyway I want to see the boys before school, and actually before 8.00 there are 3 workmen here and we await the beginning of our double glazing installation today!!

Actually I feel very excited, and of course nervous about the concert. I remember that I have to save energy all day and really ask for the right thing when the concert comes.

I’m hoping to speak to Jackie today, I’m so pleased that she is coming to the concert despite being bruised.

So blog readers, thank you for following the journey so far. I’ll report tomorrow, or even tonight if I can’t sleep as is so often the case after and exciting concert. Bye for now.

5 November, later

So we had the rehearsal with John. He is wonderfully warm and it was fantastic to see him in our overgrown practice room!

We rehearsed Tchaikovsky first and the results were really rather pleasing. It’s always the way with the most famous pieces, all the performances of the past haunt the conductor and they have to be cleaned before we can start seeing it in all its glory. Tchaikovsky is the arch example of that kind of composer. The melodies are so amazing and arching, but they need to be seen from the point of view of a balance between the notes and the harmony. It’s also why I love being an oboist, no real Heifetzs and Rostropovitchs to worry about, it’s very releasing, but with conducting it’s different, there’s always Maris Janssons!

A heap of my students have arrived from Germany for the concert. When I think back to when I was teaching music students in London, with the odd exception; it would have taken some kind of nuclear threat to get them to come to concerts.

Matt Denton, our guest leader replacing Jackie, appeared at about 3pm. It was so great when he arrived, we are finally complete as a group and the last movement of the Tchaikovsky really took off with a little audience of students and with the leader in place.

So then we start Tavener. John is with us in the corner with his publisher and as the music begins I am deeply moved by it’s serenity and beauty. I have to allow myself to be moved, I have to be in control tomorrow! We work really hard on it for 3 solid hours. This rehearsal day has had an extra hour of overtime added to it and we use every second. The music has an extraordinary power, and John says at one point that he has no idea where it has come from. It’s got the normal hallmarks of his music but a lot more energy and power at certain points, and that contrasts with the extreme crystalline beauty of the slower music. These contrasts are very satisfying and lead to a heightened listener experience I think.

John wants much of the fast music faster and we spend the last 5 minutes of the session (7 hours of rehearsal) working at these in isolation from the rest of the music. I make a quiet plea for 5 minutes of final concentration and get it, the band have been total angels. He wants these parts faster because he says that it sounds too much like Steve Reich!!!!! He wants this music to be like a Mozart Patter Aria, all Italian chattering.

It’s lovely to be in the middle of the group, I can take a few steps and be at anyone’s side with a score and it makes it so very personal.

I’ve suggested to John that I either turn away from the audience at the end or even walk off. I tried it at the end of the piece and I love the feeling of being out of the light for a few seconds. It means I can compose myself before I have to acknowledge the audience. In the past I have had such a mental battle with how to ‘be’ with audience and public generally. It’s so important to acknowledge the part the audience has to play and to be open to them, but I used to find clapping and then me bowing a strange way to celebrate the music. Then I got real! The clapping is the audience’s chance to break the concentration and the silence, and their only way to tell you that they appreciate your work and concentration. It’s also a chance through the bowing to give the message that I salute the audience’s part in the evening and most importantly the composer’s and the music’s part.

5 November 2006

Rather a lot to report! Everything was going swimmingly, the piece, the practice, the building work etc. but then while having a quiet evening watching TV with my family a horrendous phone call comes. Jackie Shave, our wonderful orchestral leader, has fallen down stairs at the car park at the BBC and has badly torn ligaments in her wrist and bruised her whole body.

Of course the first priority is to replace her with someone who will understand Tavener's vision and lead and play well. Jackie is completely irreplaceable but we work until 12.30 at night, Tom our Orchestra Manager and me, but draw only blanks. Sleep is needed. Sunday morning rehearsal day. I feel terribly deflated about not having Jackie with me on stage as well as being concerned about her, not knowing whether the wrist is broken or not. She is such a wonderful spirit to be on stage with and it's going to be at best different without her.

I start to drive to the rehearsal, John is coming and we still have no leader, and I suddenly had a brainwave. Matthew Denton is a fabulous violinist who leads the amazing and impossibly young Carducci Quartet. I ring him and he's free for half of today and tomorrow. He will bring great spirit and integrity to the piece. Tom is relieved. So I get to the Guildhall School in London and disciver that the room we have is a badly lit oversized practice room. I feel so flat. I trog around the building with Tom looking at other rooms but they are worse. We have to stay.

The music starts. It is everything I thought and so much more. It's wonderfully dense in places and a lot louder than I expected and there is so much pure greatness in it. It's a bit early to process what was so wonderful about it enough to put into words, just typing this over a bite of lunch, but I am stunned by the sheer sounds he has conjured up and how the architecture makes so much sense when you hear it as a whole.

We rehearsed Tchaikovsky, interesting, feels so released as music. Mozart great fun, trying to make it light and floating.
It's all a bit hair raising but I must trust them and myself to do our best. More later.

03 November 2006 - later

I think the top B flat may be in! Am going to surprise John with it at the rehearsal and see what he says. Terrible risk! I love risk!

03 November 2006

I’m just back from rather a marathon and very enjoyable teaching stint in Germany . I managed to find time for work on ‘scopes’ (as I’ll minimize it to), but it was really quite challenging to work on the piece after 8 hours teaching before a 2 hour masterclass!

It’s just that the oboe plays in this piece for about 30 or 35 minutes without ever really taking it out of the mouth. It’s a huge challenge, a bit like playing the famously lethal Strauss Concerto (actually not so lethal but one of the harder pieces for stamina) twice, having cut out all the orchestral tuttis! I worked out that there are several points with the metronome mark that I am playing repeatedly for 30 second stretches with no breathing place and circular breathing (puffing out with cheek muscles and inhaling through nose simultaneously) just seems somehow wrong. It may of course be necessary!

Add to the mix Tchaikovsky String Serenade, some Mozart, a 3 hour rehearsal on the day and on some days a pre-concert talk too and you can see why I need to be so well prepared! Of course the reed is absolutely crucial and I had delivery of a new batch of my amazing reeds made by Dimiter Jordanov in Montreal. Environmentally inexcusable I know, reeds with air miles, but my goodness they are little treasures. At least I buy locally grown veg round here, apart from the sweet potatos that my Doctor insists I eat every day!

Thank goodness yesterday I had a fabulous practice of the piece in between finishing teaching and dashing for my Ryanair shuttle. I managed to properly play through it for the first real time without breaks and with the depth of understanding that I seem to have been allowed to gain of the piece. I need to keep doing this now not just for the stamina, but also to emotionally acclimatize myself to the piece. This is always true of new work, unless one is flush with rehearsal time. The first performance is the first time the emotion of the piece hits you with audience, and The Audience (capital letters by blogger) always makes a huge and often unpredictable difference. Britten called it the ‘Holy Triangle’ of composer, performer, audience. I suspect that John would rather see it as a 4, Blessing of inspiration, composer, performer, audience perhaps, and each end of that group of 4 links to the other if John has done his job right!

A little more about John’s view of Mozart: I’m beginning to understand more and more of what Tavener has done with this piece, and it’s a remarkable achievement. He hears, as do most of us, an massive outpouring of love for humanity, in all it’s faces, in Mozart’s music, and he has somehow both pulled Mozart closer to us by writing about and of him, placing him high in the heavens, right with the stars, singing along with the music of the spheres. In fact the very ‘singing-ness’ of the music is what I’m finding moving right now, and I must get used to it so that I will be able to control myself and the oboe with the audience is added to the mix.

I’ve got thousands of emails today, but blogging and practising is all I’m good for it seems! Interesting how I have had to apply much stronger filters to myself regarding the outside world since I’ve been digging into this piece. Almost as though John’s world of meditative and rarefied beauty has affected me in some way and made me demand more calmness and tranquillity for myself.

31 October 2006

Good practice done but I had to spend most of it playing scales as my fingers had forgotten what it meant to move very fast! Much of the Tavener is melodic and not speedy at all and I always feel the need to have my finger technique at the ready!

Here in Germany now to see my lovely students. They are so good this year I feel the need to practise in order to sound acceptable when I pick up the oboe cold in lessons. Every spare minute my fingers twitch to Tavener though and they always find me practising it when they come into the room! I think they might know it as well as I do when they hear the premiere. Perhaps I will give some of them a teeny chunk of it to learn to see what they make of it.

Got a fascinating and very illuminating little essay from John yesterday all about Mozart. I shan't attempt to lessen its meaning by abbreviating it, but he absolutely loves Mozart and talks to him in the bath! He also feels that Mozart was a vehicle for divine perfection and beauty in an 'unconscious' way. I think that may be true, but it rather denies all the hard work his father did to get him that good that young and to make the best of his gifts.

29 October 2006

I’m praying I will be able to practise properly again tomorrow - the builders are coming early and all sorts of potential distractions are likely. I’m finding more than almost any piece I have worked on lately that I need real calm and focus in order to practise this piece and have it become second nature to me. I’m now playing it from the score so I can imagine the harmonies as I play it rather than just worry about my part, and it’s really starting to take shape. As I was practising it the other day I suddenly found a resonance I had been looking for in terms of the sound I need to make for this piece, and the music grew so much in my mind at that point.

I also discovered that a rather lovely quiet top B flat may be possible, even though I had told John that top A was about the musically controllable limit for me. It’s in the beginning of the third part where the music rises and rises, except that the register meant that it had to go down an octave. I was so chuffed to find it! The only thing is, should I say to John that I could do it, and risk it? What if it quacks like a duck in a thunderstorm or is horribly out of tune?

I played it to Joy who said that the top B flat was perfect and totally acceptable but she wasn’t at all sure about the normal C just before it!!!! That of course is the difficulty, one has these extremes of register and concentrates on them to the exclusion of normal notes around them. I feel suitably chastened, and anyway it may be that only my practice reed will do that note as I want it, the context in a bigger hall and with so many strings all around me will be so different.

I’m also slightly concerned that we will rehearse it for one day and then premiere it the next day. I have to be so terribly well prepared for Mozart and Tchaikovsky too. If anyone could do it Britten Sinfonia can. I really do think we get some great results, concerts that grab people’s imagination and bring them with us on the journey. It’s wonderful for me to know that Jackie Shave will be leading, she will understand the piece really quickly and the new style John has embraced.

Sleep now, practise for a few hours tomorrow then off to Germany for 3 days teaching and coaching. Tavener coming with me both in my music case and in my heart and my head.

25 September 2006

Another visit to see John. I got back from holiday 2 weeks ago to find the part and computer score for the music. It feels like a mountain to climb, especially after 3 weeks off (the first time I've ever dared do that!). It was wonderful to see John and his family (including Orlando, 2 months old).

We settled down to playing through the piece. It seems even more amazing than last time, partly because I've got a part to play from and have been able to spend a few days working on it! John said some very lovely things about how I'm playing it and some really excellent tips about how to keep the music flowing and a few small changes to articulation and tempo indications.

We work in his beautiful music room at the front of the house. Surrounded by towering piles of books on philosophy and art and of poetry and with exquisite religious icons around us. On the table where he works is a massive oversized score which is open at the point where he has paused from writing his latest piece. It looks massive, full of life and power.

I asked John whether I could see the manuscript copy of my piece. The part and the score I have have been computerised and I felt that some aspects about the piece are easier to realise when you look at his handwriting. John has given me now a proper score of his handwritten version and I'm working from that as well now, though it's too big to travel with as hand luggage and I won't risk checking it in, wretched travel restrictions!

Summer 2006

Interview

To kick off, we asked Nick what is the attraction of working with John Tavener

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