We have just been to a performance of music and words based on the life of Clara Schumann. It had been written by Gawn Grainger based on the various lives of Robert and Clara Schumann, particularly Clara, a novel by Janice Galloway. The role of Clara was taken by Zoë Wanamaker, the singing by the great tenor, Keith Lewis, accompanied by Melvyn Tan. Nothing could have been more intense than the lives of the two Schumanns played out in their own music and the music of Brahms.
Tag Archives: England
Cressida Bell
In all the years that I’ve known Cressida Bell, I don’t think that I’ve ever actually been to her annual studio sale. I was determined to go this year, which is her thirtieth. So, I walked up through Hackney to her studio which is in Clarence Mews behind Clapton Square:
Hackney
My post on Hackney mysteriously disappeared.
It began with the 1930s town hall, a grand piece of municipal classicism:
Regent’s Canal
I’ve always loved the Regent’s Canal, the artery which connects the Thames to the Midlands. It looked particularly beautiful this morning with more barges than usual because they’re dredging the stretch north of Limehouse Basin:
Lord Mayor’s Show
We had a good view of the Lord Mayor’s Show in a grandstand opposite the south front of St. Paul’s in a cheerful crowd in spite of the intermittent drizzle. It was a fine mixture of the magnificent, the moving and the ridiculous, including a surprising amount of straight advertising. There was the band of Christ’s Hospital, a lot of military recruitment and the Royal Academy’s red collars leading our Learning Department, as well as Gog and Magog led by the Worshipful Company of Basketmakers. Like much of the City, it’s part medieval ceremonial, part fund-raising and part community outreach. By the end, we were frozen.
Tower Bridge
It was hard not to admire Tower Bridge in the early morning sun. Although it must be one of the most photographed views in Europe, Sir Horace Jones’s late Victorian design still retains a certain municipal dignity above the traffic and the crowds:
Poppies at the Tower
Before the crowds got up, I thought I should go and pay my respects to the poppies at the Tower. There was already a great sea of people standing silent with their cameras, milling about, acres of poppies stretching out all around the bastions of the Tower. It’s a very simple commemorative device and extremely effective:
Mr. Turner (3)
We had a very good event this evening in which three of the actors who appeared in Mr. Turner – Martin Savage who played Benjamin Robert Haydon, Mark Stanley who played Clarkson Stansfield and Timothy Spall himself – came to the RA to talk about the work which went into the film: the amount of background reading, two and a half years in which Timothy Spall was taught the craft of painting, the extent to which the actors were required to think themselves into their roles, the research which went into the reconstruction of the 1832 exhibition (filmed at Wentworth Woodhouse), and the task of improvisation which led to the final script. I had not known that Turner had actually met Reynolds as well as being a huge admirer of Reynolds’s Discourses – indeed, that Reynolds had chaired the panel which led to Turner’s acceptance into the Royal Academy Schools aged fourteen and Turner attended the last of his Discourses in December 1790. The event convinced me, if I had had any doubts, of the seriousness of the film as an exercise in research-based and intelligent, as well as intuitive, reconstruction.
Gallery SO
As I walked down Brick Lane, I discovered to my surprise that Gallery SO, the jewellery gallery sandwiched amongst the Indian restaurants, was open on the first Thursday of the month. They had a beautiful mixed display of new work by mainly German jewellers, including Bernhard Schobinger whose exhibition we saw recently at Manchester City Art Gallery:
Smith Square
As I had an early morning meeting at Tate Britain, I thought I would walk down from Westminster tube station through the streets round Smith Square. I have always liked this unexpected survival of early Georgian London: the great Roman Baroque church by Thomas Archer surrounded by streets – Barton Street, Cowley Street, Lord North Street – lived in by plotting parliamentarians and grace-and-favour houses owned by Westminster School.
These are details of the church:
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
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