This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject

Legend and mythology sit uneasily with encyclopaedic ambitions. Or so it seems with the Wikipedia entry on Robert Johnson. The page is filled with tantalising snippets, for example that ‘In 1941, Alan Lomax learned from a very shy Muddy Waters that Johnson had performed in the Clarksdale, Mississippi area.’ The Lomax/Waters encounter itself would qualify as a mythical precursor to the discipline of ethnomusicology, were in it not that Lomax undoubtedly documented it in sufficient detail to secure its status as historical fact. And the ‘Robert Johnson disambiguation’ index points out something that I not thought of before: the reason why the composer and musicologist Robert Sherlaw Johnson insisted on the use of his middle name. Oh, and the bluesman was Robert Leroy Johnson by the way, if ever the two musicians crop up in the same context outside of Wikipedia. But there is a worrying disclaimer at the top of the Robert Johnson page reading ‘This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject’. I assume that they just want somebody to even up the style at bit, but it doesn’t exactly instil confidence in the authority of what follows. Here’s to the joys of user-generated content.

Missing the V&A? Try the RAM

I had a few hours to spare in London yesterday, so I thought I’d head down to the Victoria and Albert to pay my last respects to their soon-to-be-replaced-by-miniskirts Musical Instrument Gallery. No such luck. It’s not open again until the 19th Feb, when you will have three short days to catch it. (You’ll have to take my word for that, by the way; there is no mention of these opening hours on their website.) So I thought I’d cut my losses and visit the Royal Academy of Music Museum instead.
And what did I find? Lots of violins and lots of pianos. The museum is on three floors: it shares the ground floor with the shop (giving it the unfortunate appearance of the shop’s stock room) then has a first floor devoted to violin family instruments and a second floor devoted to keyboards.

Here is the ground floor display (sorry about the crummy photo). You can’t see this display on a Sunday, incidentally, because it is supervised by the cashier of the shop, who is having a day off. One of the real treasures of the RAM collection (at least to me) is Dennis Brain’s Alexander horn, which is the one at the bottom right of this picture. I’d heard that it had been badly damaged in the car crash on the M1 that killed him in 1952. And indeed it had, but in the intervening years, Paxman have completely rebuilt it. What a shame! I’d much rather have seen it in its mangled state.

Moving upstairs, here is a case of violins, mostly Cremonese makers. There are several members of the Amati and Guarneri families represented (nothing from del Gesù though), and there are a few Stradivaris. What a beautiful display! I love the way you can walk round them and see the sides and backs. If you ask nicely, they let you play them. I didn’t, but one of the students was doing so when I was there. I think this is the most impressive collection of violins I have ever seen (there are another few cases too) and as I say, magnificently displayed.

Here’s a Strad. Check out that slender, curved waist. Lovely!
And so to the top floor. Sorry, I had trouble getting and decent pictures without a flash. This floor is dedicated to pianos and harpsichords (and I think I saw a spinet in one corner). There are some nice square pianos by Broadwood and some interesting 19th century Erards.

The labelling up here was atrocious, by the way; the only way you can find out anything about the provenance of the instruments is by reading the label inside the lid.

Something I really like about the layout of this museum is the fact that both the first and second floors have an instrument repair workshop in one corner, a luthier on the first floor and a piano repairer on the second. So there are students coming and going all the time with instruments and bits of instruments. One guy came in with the back of a double bass. I’m not quite sure what he had done with the rest of it.

All in all, this is a very different experience to the V&A’s gallery. I think you have to be a musician to appreciate the significance of what you are looking at here. And if you’re not interested in violins or pianos, there isn’t much for you. Of course if you are, it’s an Aladdin’s cave, and the violins in particular rank up there with finest collections in the world.

MusBook: Networking, forums, news, music uploads...and even a TV station!

I just wanted to draw your attention to a new website I recently came across: MusBook. Basically, it is facebook for musicians, so it has all the social and professional networking functionality of facebook (you can even link your facebook and MusBook accounts), but also has a range of other features aimed at musically-minded users. If you have an ensemble that is looking for players (or audiences), this is the place to find who you are looking for. Also check it out if you’re a teacher looking for pupils, or a pupil looking for a teacher. They have some impressive MySpace type sound and video uploading facilities. And yes, even a TV station offering online music-related videos. It has only been up in its current form since the start of the year, so it’s early days. On the technical side, everything seems to work, they just need a few more members to get the online community side of things really active. So what are you waiting for? And if you want to be my MusBook friend, you’ll find me at: http://www.musbook.com/GavinThomasDixon

I like Despina, she’s not quite as stupid as Dorabella.

I visited the Royal Opera House last week to interview Helene Schneiderman about her role as Despina in the upcoming revival of Jonathan Miller’s Così fan tutte. She has sung Dorabella in the same production, so she is going from victim to collaborator in Don Alfonso’s scheme. In this production, Despina is not in it for the money, she just wants to have fun. In fact, the whole production sounds like a lot of fun. It opens on Friday (29th Jan at 7pm). In the mean time, you can read the interview here.

34 Year Old Opera Fan: a Demographic Anomaly?

Reading Rupert Christiansen’s review of the Royal Opera’s newly revived Rake caused me a few concerns. Firstly, I thought the review itself is grossly unfair: ‘a superficially bright idea’, ‘precise to the point of being pedantic’, ‘no fun at all’. I have my own issues with Stravinsky’s score, but in my view the fault is his alone. And it takes a stern sole indeed to miss the fun in this production.

But on a more personal note, I was even more worried by the demographic that the Telegraph’s dating service has allotted for me on the basis on my online reading. My possible mates, as selected for the page on which the review appears, are lined up above. Am I exceptional in enjoying opera in my early-(OK, mid-)thirties? Of course, none of these gentlemen would seem out of place in a Covent Garden audience, Alf1 is even suitably attired. But with no disrespect to him, Seabirdsailor or John555, you guys are just not my type.

The Rake at Covent Garden: Too Spectacular for its own good?

Just a few despatches from the opening night of The Rake’s Progress revival at Covent Garden. Most readers will already have seen the spectacular production stills from the previous staging (the concept is Hogarth’s London transferred to 1930s Hollywood), though I have to say it is even more breathtaking in the flesh. The revival has a new cast, and all put in excellent performances. Top honours go to Kyle Ketelsen as Nick Shadow, followed at a hair’s breadth by Toby Spence in the title role. Spectacle is the key to this production, and the staging of each scene combines jaw-dropping visual innovation with a loyalty to the essence of the story. And the direction is impeccable, with every potential visual gag or sly interaction exploited to the full.

But there is one serious flaw in the whole conception, and it’s the music. I don’t want to come over all Adorno about Stravinsky’s neo-classicism, but the music in The Rake’s Progress really is at the workaday end of his Mozartian spectrum. Certainly, it is skilfully crafted, and his arias and recitatives do everything the story needs. But that’s all they do, and the work is functional to a fault. In more modest stagings, the composer’s lack of ambition is less glaring, but in a spectacular production like this, you begin to wonder why so much effort was put into making something so visually powerful out of such a slender musical offering. Bizarrely, the scene changes become the focus of the audience’s attention. Cast and orchestra do everything they can for Stravinsky, but the uncharacteristic modesty of his score puts his music in an unusually subsidiary position to the spectacle.

New Album from Amy Dickson

If you haven’t yet heard of classical saxophonist Amy Dickson, you’re about to, and in a big way. She is on the front cover of at least one leading music magazine next month, and her new album has been singled out as an ‘Editor’s Choice’ in another. On it, she plays the Philip Glass Violin Concerto, a movement of John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil and Michael Nyman’s Where The Bee Dances, the first two works in her own transcriptions. I met Amy last week to discuss the project. Read the interview here.