Wednesday, December 6, 2023

My hero / John Tavener by Steven Isserlis

 

JOHN TAVENER

A sense of theatre … John Tavener.


My hero: John Tavener by Steven Isserlis 

Having asked Tavener to write a short piece for him, the cellist Steven Isserlis was delighted to be provided with the huge and deeply romantic The Protecting Veil

Steven Isserlis
Friday 15 November 2013

I

first met John Tavener, who died this week, in the late 80s, when I asked him to write a short musical piece for me. The result, rather to my surprise (but even more to my delight), was a huge work, The Protecting Veil. It was written in a burst of inspiration, and at astonishing speed, and, in the end, was commissioned for the BBC Proms and first performed there in 1989. It was in the second half of a marathon programme, which also contained the first performance of a symphony by Minna Keal, and John and I were both convinced that The Protecting Veil would be overlooked by a tired audience.

We need not have worried; the piece became an instant classic. For the next couple of years, wherever I played, people would ask me: “When are you going to record that beautiful piece by John Tavener?” Eventually, the arrangements were made, and we did record it; it leapt to the top of the classical charts.

Why did it capture people’s imaginations? I believe that it was because the beauty came from within; many people write beautiful music – but music of such intense rapture, such aching fervour, is rare indeed.

John wasn’t writing to please people – at the time he composed The Protecting Veil it was many years since he’d had a major success. He was writing the music he had to write, fired by his love of Russian Orthodox music, and his conviction of the importance of purity and simplicity. He was not a minimalist; The Protecting Veil is a deeply romantic work, even if its proportions allow for much repetition. The form is uncomplicated but satisfying; the whole work written in sections starting with each note of a descending F major scale.

Will his music last? I certainly hope so – and I believe that it will. Not every piece was an unqualified success, but there is at the core of his music a power of communication, a sense of theatre, a love of truth, that moves people deeply.

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

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray / Quotes
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
054 My hero / Michael de Montaigne by Liyun Li
055 My hero / Michael Donaghy by Maggie O'Farrell
056 My hero / Richmal Crompton by Louise Crompton
057 My hero / Edward Thomas by David Constantine
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal
059 My hero / Sefton by Jilly Cooper

2011
076 My hero / John Cooke by Geoffrey Robertson 
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
095 My hero / Les Murray by Daljit Nagra 
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 My hero / Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan

211 My hero / Mavis Gallant by Jhumpa Lahiri and  Michael Ondaatje 

212 My hero / David Rayven Allen on John Arlott 




245 My hero / Geoffrey Chaucer by Lavinie Greenlan 

2015
250 My hero John Bayley by Richard Eyre 
2016



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