David Helfgott at the City Recital Hall, 10 August 2012

As David Helfgott jogs onto stage and gives a thumbs up into the audience with both hands, grinning like an excited child, you can't help but be enchanted. This is not your average start of a classical concert, and Helfgott certainly isn't your average classical performer. After having inspired the Oscar-winning movie Shine in 1996 with Geoffrey Rush portraying him as an adult, he is in fact probably one of the best known pianists of our time. The movie shows Helfgott's childhood in Melbourne, born to Polish-Jewish parents. He displays early signs of being a prodigious piano player, but increasingly struggles with a schizoaffective disorder. The movie was subsequently strongly criticised by his sister who disagrees mainly with the depiction of their father as an authoritarian tyrant.

Today David Helfgott performs Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 3 in D minor, the very piece that brought about his mental breakdown and admittance to a psychiatric hospital as a young man. It is known to be one of the most technically challenging pieces to play. "Rach Three" is a wonderful composition - full of longing and nostalgia and a passion that sometimes simmers under the surface and sometimes bursts open in glorious, brilliant rainbows. The extraordinary thing about Helfgott's performance is how he seems to literally live and breathe the music he is playing. Every now and then he mutters and grunts, bowing deep over the piano and frowning in concentration. At other times he beams gleefully into the audience, nodding vigourosly when playing a particularly triumphant part. He plays without sheet music and is utterly immersed in the piece. His enthusiasm is contagious and highly entertaining. There is nothing grave and somber about Helfgott's playing; it is pure, unadulterated joy.

When he finishes, the audience erupts in cheers and gives a long standing ovation. Critics have found fault with Helfgott's technical abilities in the past; they have condemned an audience, not used to classical concerts, for clapping between movements. They were bothered by Helgott's grunting while playing. Looking around me, I see smiling faces everywhere, people laughing out loud at Helfgott's repeated hugging and kissing of his fellow musicians on stage, others copying his two-handed thumbs up. This man brings joy and wonder into people's lives, he makes classical music approachable and is truly inspiring in his playfulness. Why so serious?

Jack White at the Hordern Pavilion, 26 July 2012

 

I've go a confession to make: I used to be a rockabilly. This was when I was about 17 years old, right after a brief gothic stint and just before donning Doc Martens and jumping around to Ska and Punk music. It took me a year or so to figure out that my rockabilly friends not only adopted the music from the 1950s, but also the macho culture and latent racism of this period. But for a while my girlfriend and I were part of this cool gang, clad in leather jackets adorned with the Confederate flag, sticky hair and all; feeling very rebellious and different indeed. Until I understood that subcultures are in a way much more conservative than the mainstream, with their stringent rules about the right clothes, the right hair and the right music. Rebellion? Sure. Individuality? No way.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I'm at a concert again - one that I had been looking forward to for months. The support act is the infectiously cheerful Lanie Lane with her mix of rock'n' roll, blues and rockabilly. And that music takes me right back to these exciting times of carving out an identity, deciding where I want to belong and gradually realising what's important (and it isn't what brand of hairspray you're using).

After this stroll down memory lane allow me to be briefly reduced to a gushing teenager in reliving the amazing two hours that are the Jack White concert. Oh. My. God. What a musician! What a guy! I was never so right in anticipating an event; this is without a doubt the best concert I saw this year, if not one of the best I've ever been to. Jack White is a true rock star. Mysterious, a bit bonkers, it seems, but oh so sexy, and with the most amazing voice and guitar skills.

With his terrific all-male band (alternating nightly between this and an all-female band), he plays songs from his time with the White Stripes and the Raconteurs, and from his debut solo album Blunderbuss, about which I wrote in an earlier blog entry. He starts thunderously with Black Math from his Elephant album with the White Stripes. To imagine the power: With just one gesture you indicate you want the audience to clap, and several thounsand people obediently raise their hands. The contrast between his earlier, explosive pieces like The Hardest Button To Button and his new material as a solo artist is sometimes stark, but White pulls it off as he tackles each song with intense concentration. It is only halfway through the concert that he allows himself a half-smile. He ends the concert with an electric rendition of Seven Nation Army, and the crowd goes wild, shouting the lyrics and roaring the bassline. I'm squeezed in, I am drenched in sweat and my lukewarm beer is sloshing out of my plastic cup as I jump up and down - in short, it is exactly how a great concert is supposed to be.



You might have noticed the slight improvement in the quality of the concert photos (I know, the photos of my rockabilly years are pretty dodgy. They are scanned, but I couldn't figure out how to change the frame. Where is your personal technical advisor when you need him...).
I could claim that I took a proper camera this time and was really, really close to the stage. But I'm just going to admit that I got them from Jack White's official website (jackwhiteiii.com), because we weren't allowed to take photos. I'm sure you're glad.

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

I feel like sharing a poem again; one that I love passionately and irrationally in equal measures, as it is - in my view - intensely beautiful, but quite long and not easily accessible, although it is very well known. It is a wonderful example of what I wrote about poetry earlier; that it is sometimes best just to let it wash over you and trust that the poem will carry you safely ashore.

John Keats had the extraordinary power to move his contemporaries as well as readers today. Surely part of his appeal is due to the tragic circumstances of his short life and his death of tuberculosis at the young age of only twenty-five years. He fell in love with his Hampstead neighbour Fanny Brawne, a romance that was beautifully captured in the movie "Bright Star". Keats wrote almost all of his major poetry in the short period between 1818 and his death in 1821.

I
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, –
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

II
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

III
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.

IV
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

V
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

VI
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain –
To thy high requiem become a sod.

VII
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

VIII
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: – Do I wake or sleep? 

Books that changed me

I love to gaze emptily at my bookshelf and just skim the book titles. I've spent many a happy hour standing there, occasionally pulling one book out or the other, opening it at a random page, reading a few lines and smiling in that warm and secure knowledge of having rediscovered an old friend.

The Little Witch (Die kleine Hexe) by Otfried Preussler:
This is the first book I read when I was five years old. Here it was: The magic of words and the astounding miracle that a whole world is just waiting for you when you open a book. I was hooked.

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse:
The knowledge of self was a recurring theme in Hesse's work. And isn't intense self-examination at the core of trying to become an adult? Hesse wrote about finding yourself, being true to who you really are and about claiming your individuality against the odds and against society. So when I discovered these books at the age of about fourteen, they very much suited the angsty, confused and quietly rebellious teenager that I was.

The Age of Reason (L’âge de raison) by Jean-Paul Sartre:
I shared an apartment in Munich with a bunch of crazy, noisy and partying art students. I had just returned from a year of backpacking through Australia and Asia, had broken up with my boyfriend and was at that delicious and heady stage of absolute freedom without any constraints. And - voilà - at this pivotal moment Sartre stepped into my life and talked about just this: You alone are responsible for your own fate, you choose your destiny. There is no helpless surrendering to a divine fate that makes the decisions for you. The purpose of life? You create your own meaning in life (or a lack thereof) yourself.

The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann:
With this book I come full circle: Here again is the vast, sheer endless landscape of knowledge that just waits to be discovered. The language is full of beauty, rhythm and musicality, and one can dreamily read whole passages without quite understanding what Mann is actually talking about. The characters in the book reflect on time, politics and sociological issues. Reading the novel just makes me feel so damn clever and eloquent; a state I have tried to capture and maintain ever since.

The Jezabels at the Hordern Pavilion, 9 June 2012

You know what I love about concerts? Once you have listened to a band live, nobody can take it away from you. It is stored in your acoustic memory. And every time you listen to their music - at home, in the car or in the supermarket (if that's the kind of music you are into) - you can tap into that memory and add layers, visual details and so much emotion to the songs that it will change the way you experience them forever.

I go and see the Jezabels by myself, which is an interesting experience in itself. Before I had children, in that distant past I remember vaguely, I used to have these solitary outings quite regularly. And it actually feels nice getting into the car, putting on the Jezabels, singing along and driving into the night.

After the support acts, Lights and Snakadaktal (how's that for a band name?), there is a long break where I have time to study the audience around me. The first thing that strikes me is how young they are and then that almost everyone is clutching an iPhone and is either typing frantically or just gazing at it. I wonder if this is the modern equivalent of the archaic and almost universally outlawed ritual of holding a cigarette; something that occupies your hands and makes you look busy.

The lights are finally dimmed, and the Jezabels make an impressive entrance preceded by an ominous guitar riff and a strong bassline that makes my skin tingle. They launch into Endless summer, one of the more upbeat songs of their album Prisoner. Singer Hayley Mary is an intense stage presence, with raven hair that hides her face and a very tight, catwoman-style black outfit. Next is Easy to Love and Long Highway, songs that both show off the singer's strong voice that ranges from low and smoky to high-pitched wailing.

Mid-concert Mary gives an endearing little talk about how she is probably supposed to say something now but that she is actually quite nervous. She says that they are living a crazy dream and thanks us for sharing it with her. That sends the crowd into another frenzy of shouted We love you's and Oh my God's. The girl next to me exclaims several times during the concert how this is, like totally, her song.

The Jezabels are one of the rare bands that sound life even better, as their songs are perfectly suited for the drama of smoke wafting off the stage and an amazing lightshow. Their sound is dark, moody and quite theatrical, all the things I like in music. Maybe I'm not that old after all...

Vivid festival 2012

Vivid Sydney is a festival of light, music and ideas that's in town for the fourth time. Didn't I say that in this blog I want to share what recently got me excited and delighted? Well, the following definitely qualifies:



The Customs House in blue...


...and again multicoloured. Kiss!

Light pompoms that looked like exploding fireworks...

...the Museum of Contemporary Art...

...and the astounding projections on the Opera House. This photo is from the official website, because mine just didn't do justice to the amazing concept.

Oh, the excitement!

Deep Sea Arcade at The Standard, 2 June 2012

Finding The Standard in Surry Hills proves to be a challenge. We walk up and down Bourke Street a couple of times looking for it, only stopping for a delicious kingfish carpaccio at My Zakaya and again for cheese and dessert wine at Le Pelican.

Thus fortified, we finally venture into The Standard (it's just off Taylor Square, for the record) in time for the last few songs of support act The Cairos from Brisbane. They are a talented bunch and their song Shame really makes you want to shout along, but, seriously, what is it with rock musicians and their hairdos? Especially the bass player sports a ridiculous outgrown mullet and keeps blowing his fringe out of his eyes. Very distracting.

Enter the members of Deep Sea Arcade and their singer's own version of a Beatles bowl cut. Nic McKenzie is either very stoned or channeling Jim Morrison (or both) as he prowls the stage with a lazy smile playing around his lips and his eyes half closed.

The retro vibe is supported by the '60s sci-fi and French Nouvelle Vague movies played on folded screens in the background. But the frontman's voice sounds surprisingly fresh and clear as he belts out the first song of the concert, Seen no Right.

McKenzie dedicates his next song Girls to a couple of ladies in the audience. He helpfully points them out one by one (sadly, I'm not included). The influence of The Doors is unmistakable in The Devil Won't Take You, and it is the song that made me discover the band on radio. On hearing the first tunes of the upbeat Steam, everyone in the audience starts cheering and singing along. No wonder it is currently one of my four-year old daughter's favourite songs.

The album's musical influence varies from '60s surf pop and the Madchester scene to '90s beat and The Smiths (which is one of my all-time favourite bands, incidentally). This is psychedelic indie pop at its best with catchy tunes and great, layered arrangements. It's joyful and original, and I'm already looking forward to hearing what they will come up with next.