What a charade in Dubai


Money was doubtless the reason for franchising the BBC Proms to the oil-rich but ethically-challenged emirate of Dubai. However just one of many concerns about classical music's endorsement of the United Arab Emirates is the regime's overt homophobia, which makes demonised Russia look distinctly gay-friendly. As stated by UAE lawyer and government spokesperson Dr. Habib al-Mulla: "This is a conservative society. Homosexuality, conducted homosexuality is an illegal act*. And we are not ashamed of that”. Presumably BBC Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny, who has publicly expressed support for LGBT+ causes and who travelled without demur to Dubai to present the franchised Proms, and BBC Proms controller Alan Davey who is also aligned with the LGBT+ community, are both well aware of the UAE's stance on homosexuality. But in classical music today money speaks louder words, and the Gulf media's critical appreciation of western classical music was clearly not the reason why Dubai was favoured with a Proms franchise; as this extract from the review of the first concert by the UAE's leading English language newspaper The National shows, :
In residence is the renowned BBC Symphony Orchestra which — under the baton of distinguished Proms veteran Edward Gardner — gave over the evening’s second half to William Walton’s Symphony No. 1, a formulaic assault of pomp, grandeur and cliché which, premiered in 1935, chimed a wantonly oblivious note of pride from an empire on the slow march towards collapse.
* Article 177 of the Penal Code of Dubai imposes imprisonment of up to 10 years on consensual sodomy. Before the twitterati complain about negative caricaturing of Emiratis I would point out that the serendipitous header cartoon depicts William Walton with Edith Sitwell in drag and is sampled from a YouTube video of Walton's Facade. Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Comments

Philip Amos said…
When I think that Petroc Trelawny could have been jailed for ten years on a charge of working illegally in Zimbabwe...the saddest words the poet wrote: "What might have been". Anyway, for their next visit, I should suggest a concert performance of Britten's Billy Budd. A 'banner' translation, of course, and best to include the stage directions: "Clear the decks of seamen". And also, surely, a concert that includes Elgar's Symphony No.1 and all the Pomp and Circumstance Marches. If the Walton has the reviewer's imagination running riot, Elgar should induce an apoplectic diatribe of misunderstanding.
3:34 pm
JMW said…
"...a wantonly oblivious note of pride from an empire on the slow march towards collapse." They could have played Vivaldi's Four Seasons and that jaundiced reviewer's blighted ears would have projected the same societal entropy upon it. When there is an agenda, one hears what one desires.
5:51 pm
Graeme said…
I haven't heard the performance but was there no suggestion of malinconia?
9:55 pm
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

David Munrow - more than early music

Image
'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College , Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. ...
Read more

Classical music must be doing something wrong

Image
Classical music's website of choice Slipped Disc  today runs a story on the latest RAJAR UK radio listening figures . This story states that a "...record number of individual hours was spent listening to [BBC Radio 3]. They must be doing something right". Which is good news; but only for those who believe that facts should never stand in the way of a good story. Because simple arithmetic shows that BBC Radio 3 is not doing very much right, while UK classical radio in its entirety is doing something wrong.   In the quarter ended September 2024, BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM audiences were 2.039m and 4.416m respectively. Which gives a total audience for the two classical stations of 6.455m. For the same quarter in September 2023 the audiences were 2.002m and 4.467m, giving a total classical radio audience 12 months previously of 6.469m.  So BBC Radio 3's "something right" turns out to be a fractional increase in its audience year on year, and a contribution ...
Read more

Soundtrack for a porn movie

Image
"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro...
Read more

Beware of the classical music nimbies

Image
Ezra Pound proposed that in moments of transition there are almost always moments of clarity. Today, classical music, the arts, and culture in general have all reached a moment of fundamental transition. But in classical music, where is the clarity?  It is incontestable that classical music has reached a moment of transition. Until recently it was struggling to connect with the young rewired audience . But today the problem is far more fundamental. A decade ago the mature cohort despaired at youngsters whose life experience - including music - was confined to the screens of mobile devices. But now the entire Western population - in fact my recent time in India suggests the entire global population - experiences almost every aspect of their life through a mobile phone. In every age group attention spans are diminishing, social media has become the primary tastemaker, entertainment is valued above enlightenment, instant gratification rules, and  quality expectations have dimin...
Read more

Nada Brahma - Sound is God

Image
It may be my age, but those moments when a piece of music really hits me in the solar plexus seem to get rarer and rarer. But during my recent extended travels in India I was metaphorically punched time and time again when listening to ECM's Codona recordings on headphones. Recent posts have touched on the potential of virtual concert halls and the fact that no one mixes for speakers these days , and the Manfred Eicher produced Codona sessions from between 1978 and 1982 really demonstrate the impact of the up close and personal sound of headphones . The line up for Codona was African-American trumpeter Don Cherry, Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, and Colin Walcott on sitar, tabla, hammered dulcimer, sanza, timpani, and voice. The band took its name from a circus trapeze act of the early 20th century called the Flying Codonas , and the three albums packaged by ECM for CD as The Codona Trilogy capture the peerless musicians-beyond-frontiers performing their creative hig...
Read more

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol...
Read more

Our gods have left us

Image
Olivier Messiaen was a wise being who valued the spiritual. His  Turangalîla-Symphonie  is influenced by the Indian rhythms that underpin Shiva's dance, and the work's title is derived from Sanskrit. Above is the album cover of  the 1978 recording  with André Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. While in India recently my reading - in fact re-reading - included Aki Cederberg's Journeys in the Kali Yuga . Here is an extract: Ours is an age of great dispossession. It is a time of war, terrorism, genocide, corruption, and economic and ecological disaster. But even more than these things, the great dispossession we face is an internal or spiritual one. This dispossession is discernible at almost every level of life and existence. Our gods, however we might perceive them, have left us. Our soul is barren and disconnected from the roots that nourished its growth and formation. We have lost our inner compass and are floundering around, aimless and lost, in pur...
Read more

All aboard the Martinu bandwagon

Image
Depressing, but predictable, to see the mainstream media scrambling aboard the Bohuslav Martinů bandwagon as soon as BBC Radio 3 announces a cycle of his superb symphonies . Equally depressing, but a sign of the times, to see the Independent publishing an appreciation of the composer's symphonies by a writer who confesses elsewhere to never having heard a single note of them. As Norman Lebrecht famously wrote in the Evening Standard back in 2006: ‘... until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’. Sadly the hard facts now show that Norman is no longer at the Evening Standard , and, as from next Monday, the Evening Standard will no longer be a paid for newspaper . But you can find pre-bandwagon appreciations of Martinů here and here . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of ...
Read more

Zakir Hussain - Remember Shakti

Image
Zakir Hussain, who has died at the far too young age of 73, made a huge contribution to the Indian classical tradition. Just a few examples from my own CD library are the 1993 Royal Albert Hall Concert for Peace with Ravi Shankar, the 1997 concert recording from Stuttgart with sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan, and the 1990 concert in Passaic Valley Auditorium, New Jersey with sarangist Sultan Khan. Elsewhere tributes have lazily centred on Zakir's collaborations with George Harrison and Van Morrison, supplemented by the usual YouTube videos. So I want to highlight two other collaborations which highlight just what a visionary genius Zakir Hussain was. Arguably Zakir's furthest left-field project was Tabla Beat Science with bass guitarist, producer and demolisher of comfort zones Bill Laswell . This collaboration, described by a reviewer as "hard-hitting westernised electric fusion...a cross-cultural technical extravaganza", produced two remarkable CD releases, Tala Mat...
Read more

The composer without a shadow?

Image
If you want to start a fascinating thread write about Leonard Bernstein's Mass . Here are some comments from my most recent Mass post : Movie commented - It's not a dishonest piece and I think it still works today . I commented - But what are examples of dishonest pieces of music? Pentimento commented - I'd say much of Strauss's oeuvre is dishonest. I couldn't live without Metamorphosen , Capriccio or the wind concertos, and one of my most memorable, and disturbing, evenings in the opera house was Hildegard Behrens singing the title role in Salome with Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic at the 1977 Salzburg Festival . But, despite that, you may be right Pentimento. Which leaves me with only one possible back link - Herbert von Karajan Ein Heldenleben Sorry I cannot credit the lovely portrait of Richard Strauss (I do hope you meant Richard and not Johann, Pentimento), but I do not know who it is by. It comes from Ferdinand Von Galitzien's blog . Help with ...
Read more