Saturday, May 29, 2010

My hero / Nikolai Medtner by Philip Pullman

 

Nikolai Medtner


My hero: 

Nikolai Medtner 

by Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman

Saturday 29 May 2010

T

he composer Nikolai Medtner was born in Russia in 1879, so he was a contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninov, and indeed the two were close friends. Medtner was never as popular as Rachmaninov, despite his friend's advocacy and support, and his music – all of it involving the piano, whether solo or in concertos, chamber music, and songs – gained, and retains, a reputation for difficulty and unapproachability. It's true, his music takes a little time to work on you. It's subtle and complex, and the melodies are not blatant and obvious. They don't come to you emoting intemperately; they remain reserved, modest, apparently unassuming, until you approach them on their own terms, and then their beauty opens like a lover's eyes. It's the most astonishing, the most moving thing. YouTube has plenty of examples, but try the Sonata Reminiscenza, Op 38, to start with. Marc-André Hamelin plays it very well.

But plenty of composers have written lovely music. The reason I hold Medtner in such high regard is his courteous and implacable refusal to compromise with what was fashionable. Most music since Brahms, he thought, was a bad mistake. As it happens, I don't agree with him; I think much wonderful music was written by Stravinsky, Schoenberg and their successors. But Medtner persevered, sustained by a few good friends, including the English pianist Edna Iles, who lent him her Cotswold cottage during the second world war and who championed his music in the concert hall.

At the end of his life, in a little house in Golders Green, troubled by financial problems, weakened by ill-health, this "firm defender of the sacred laws of eternal art" (in the words of Glazunov) went on calmly writing music in an idiom as out of date as the wing-collar he wore, completely untouched not just by fashion but by common sense as well. He was a hero because he was right to work in that way, the way that suited his genius, the way that was true to his art, and to refuse to work in any other.

THE GUARDIAN





2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016





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