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The Herald Scotland
18 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
It's quaint the things you find in some people's bathrooms...
Anna Percy's 12-year-old daughter had a friend round, and at one point this young girl visited the bathroom. On her return she mentioned to Anna that she was intrigued by the toothbrushes she spotted on the shelf. It transpired that in her home everyone uses the motorised versions, and she had never seen a non-buzzy brush before. 'I didn't know you could get one that wasn't electric,' she admitted, before asking: 'What do you call it… an acoustic toothbrush?' Dan's the man True confession time. Reader Neil Gregory is a respected pillar of society, often to be spotted in sensible shoes, sedate trousers and a shirt which is safely tucked beneath his belt. But in the good old, bad old days of the 1960s he was something of a Flower Child, with hair as lengthy as Wagner's Ring Cycle, bell-bottom jeans, and even a pair of sandals, which was a brave choice of footwear to be wearing on the puddle-spattered Glasgow pavements. Being a hippy meant befriending other hippies and forming a community of sorts, which Neil proceeded to do. He was even lucky enough to bond with a bona fide American drop-out from the rat race, who was named Daniel, and had previously loafed around the fabled hippy enclave of Haight-Ashbery, before he eventually tripped and traipsed his way to Scotland. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this chap came to be known by the nickname Dan Francisco. Anger (mis)management True confession, Part Deux. Reader Ryan Dawson says: 'I realised I have a road rage problem when my five-year-old daughter shouted "Pick a lane, eejit!" while sitting in my shopping trolley.' Andrew Smith from Troon spotted this shop in Irvine and concluded that they could have chosen a better name for it… (Image: Contributed) Trash talk When he was a student, Barry Rogers got a part-time job as a garbage collector. 'So you're working as a binman?' said one of his friends. 'I prefer to think of myself as a pick-up artist,' replied Barry. Kid's stuff We mentioned that a Scottish actor has bagged the role of Harry Potter in a TV version of the popular fantasy series. David Morrow wonders if this will lead to other classics of children's literature becoming Scottified, and he looks forward to reading… The Famous Fife. Bump and beyond 'I bought a book on how to survive falling down a staircase,' says reader Chris Jones. 'It was a step-by-step guide.'
The Herald Scotland
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
A command of English that would drive you up the wall
It wasn't the most pleasant experience for she was always on her feet, and sometimes dealt with irritating customers, including one drunk chauvinist who staggered into the restaurant along with his equally inebriated friends. 'Isn't this place a wee bit sexist?' he slurred. A confused Victoria admitted she didn't understand the question. 'Well, it's called Wagamama, innit?' continued the sloshed customer. 'How come it's no Wagapapa?' Games people play The son of Andrew Shaw hopes to be accepted for university later this year. In anticipation of this momentous event Andrew bought the teenager his very first laptop, intended for the writing of essays and academic research. Perhaps the youth didn't accept the gift with this inspiring notion, for with a delighted squeal, he said: 'Great! I can't wait to start downloading games onto this baby…' Cop that Most police officers are of the firm conviction that their job would be much easier if there weren't so many civilians allowed on the streets. Putting the entire nation under lock and key, with the key then tossed in the Clyde, is surely the only civilised solution. Jim Lynch recalls his days on a Glasgow beat, and once spotting a suspicious looking fellow who had obviously recently found shelter and sustenance in the local boozer. Jim politely inquired what this fellow's intentions were for the remainder of the evening, and was given the robust response: 'I ain't answering no questions, officer, on the grounds that I might inseminate myself.' You're chucked More boozy badinage. Ian Barnett tells us he was at the pub for a family outing. 'One of my relatives had too much to drink and was expelled by the bouncer,' he adds. 'He climbed back in through a toilet window, only to be quickly chucked out again. 'That was my first cousin, twice removed.' Ring for service The Diary is celebrating those spiffy new tumble dryers that need to be connected to the house Wi-Fi in order to operate. John Mulholland did some research and discovered that washing machines can also be connected to Wi-Fi. 'I suggest,' he adds, 'the appropriate music to play when the machine is on its 1400rpm spin program would be Wagner's Ring Cycle." Foreign affairs 'Nothing is made in the UK any more,' harrumphs reader Kevin Rushton. 'I bought a telly and it says 'Built in Antenna', and I don't even know where that is.'
South China Morning Post
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
A maestro of sound and scents, Fabio Luisi breaks music and perfume down to their essence
'I smell a little bit of the Starbucks over there,' says Fabio Luisi, music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO), as we sat on a bench in the West Village shopping centre in the city in the US state of Texas. It is a brisk February morning, and Luisi – whose fine-tuned nose is as sharp as his ear – is being put to the test. Advertisement The coffee shop is about 50 yards (45 metres) away, but then we both notice a woman sitting on a nearby bench. She is drinking iced coffee. 'Ah yes,' Luisi says, in his light European accent. 'It is her.' A conductor is a wizard of sound , summoning harmony and drama from notes on a page. As the DSO's music director for the past five years, the 66-year-old Luisi has led the orchestra through world premieres and epic sonic journeys, like the four-part Ring Cycle, a series of Germanic operas by composer Richard Wagner so long and arduous that few, if any, orchestras in the 21st century have dared it in its entirety. Fabio Luisi conducts the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Dallas in 2022. Photo: TNS Luisi is also a wizard of smell. He is a perfumer who makes his own line of bespoke scents in a laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland, the home he does not live in much. Advertisement The fate of a maestro like Luisi, who won a 2013 Grammy for leading New York's Metropolitan Opera in the last two operas of the Ring Cycle, is to be forever in demand. He is also the principal conductor of orchestras in Tokyo in Japan and Denmark in addition to Dallas.
The Guardian
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Simone Young: ‘There hasn't really been a woman ageing in this profession before. It's uncharted territory'
On a mild summer mid-morning at Lavender Bay, there's a halcyon calm that not even distant construction noise can penetrate – unless you're Simone Young. Aurally clocking a pneumatic drill, the conductor in chief of Sydney Symphony Orchestra cocks her head in the direction of the sound and then works both her hands downwards in a shimmering motion as if sculpting the air between them: 'I'm seeing that as a long column of ragged stuff.' Remembering happier sounds, she casts her mind back to a recent Wednesday night on the podium at Sydney Opera House, conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and 'our beautiful singer', soprano Noa Beinart, in Mahler's Third Symphony. 'When she opens her mouth the sound is like a river of silk,' Young says, and you can almost see her toes curl with pleasure at the memory. Young has synaesthesia. 'To me, sound is something that is visual and three-dimensional,' she says. We're sitting on the jetty facing her Milsons Point apartment block, with the bay to our right, Luna Park ahead, and Wendy Whiteley's gorgeous 'secret garden' up the hill to the left. Young gestures towards the greenery: 'A really good painter will look at that group of trees, and they'll be analysing all those different tones, perspectives, depths and shadows; it's three-dimensional for them. And frankly, if I tried to paint that, it would come out two-dimensional.' That, she says, is the difference between how she and the average person experiences sound. Young is self-deprecating when talking about her synaesthesia and her other superpower, perfect pitch – the ability to identify a musical note just by hearing it, and (in inverse) to reproduce a written note accurately without a reference tone. And yet: her innate sensitivity to sound has fuelled her extraordinary four-decade career, in which she has conducted the world's top orchestras and most prestigious opera houses, from the Met in New York to La Scala in Milan and the legendary Bayreuth Festspielhaus, where in 2024 she became the first woman and first Australian conductor to conduct Wagner's Ring Cycle. Watching Young on the podium on Wednesday night – her expressive arm gestures, her body leaning into and flexing against the sound – it seems as if she's sculpting a three-dimensional force that only she can see. There's an easy assuredness to her presence – on the podium and on the jetty bench where we're talking – that's nothing like the stereotype of the overbearing conductor or exacting maestro. Young suspects her father – a teacher turned solicitor and classical music enthusiast – passed his sonic superpowers down to her (synaesthesia and perfect pitch are thought to be genetic), as her mother was 'completely tone deaf'. Her brother Tony, who died in 2013, was also musical – albeit in a very different way: as a virtuoso air guitarist, beloved in Sydney's 1980s alt-rock and punk circuit for impromptu onstage performances with bands such as The Whitlams (whose song Chunky, Chunky Air Guitar was inspired by him). 'He saw me at work once and he said, 'What you do and what I do is pretty much the same: you're waving your arms around in the air and they're playing the music',' Young recalls, laughing. Sibling jokes aside, conducting an orchestra is a physically strenuous vocation. We're sitting rather than walking today to spare her knee, which has borne some of the brunt of the SSO's Wednesday and Thursday concerts, which Young compares to two-hour step classes. 'And that's just the end product: it's 12 and a half hours to get there, more than two and a half days of rehearsal beforehand.' Gone are the days when she used to 'dance around' on the podium while wearing heels, she says with a rueful smile. On the brink of 64, Young describes this period of her career as the 'peak' years for a conductor. She flew into Sydney on Sunday evening straight from a string of engagements in Europe that took her to four cities over six weeks. On Monday morning she leapt into rehearsals with the SSO. 'I'm totally wiped out,' she admits – though there's little evidence of this during our conversation. Young is used to operating at this level of intensity. 'I wouldn't take time off even when I had my kids,' she says. 'I was back on the podium 10 days after my second daughter was born.' Then there was a decade-long stint from 2005 in which she did what she has described as '14-hour days, seven days a week' in the dual roles of artistic director of the Hamburg State Opera and music director of the city's Philharmonic Orchestra. 'It's a profession, but it's also a complete obsession,' she says of conducting, 'so you do tend to put it ahead of your own personal needs most of the time. People will sometimes say to me, 'where do you get the energy from?' I really have no idea. I can be desperately sleep deprived – but when it comes to conducting the music, it takes over.' These days, as she juggles her SSO role (which has her in Australia between eight and 12 weeks a year) with work in Europe, days off remain rare. On the day we meet she has a concert in the evening so 'everything will stop at 1.30'. 'If I can't sleep, I'll meditate. And then I'll do very little before getting ready to start the evening. People know not to send me messages or emails with questions … I just want to be 100% focused.' One suspects that this is integral to Young's success: the ability to focus when it's needed – and perhaps also the ability to switch off when it's not. While her hobbies include a high-culture grab-bag of voracious reading, Duolingo and Wordle (which she plays in five languages), she also espouses the benefits of '20 minutes of completely pointless activity on an iPad', name-checking Candy Crush and solitaire. She also knits – currently working on matching cardigans for her granddaughters. Despite being a self-confessed workaholic and perfectionist, she says there's 'no greater joy than waking up on the day when I have absolutely nothing planned'. Still, she has no intention of winding down – yet. 'Being a conductor is a weird profession: you're sort of still a beginner at age 40; at 60 you're hitting your peak,' she says. Being one of very few female conductors at the top of a male-dominated field is even more unusual, and Young comments that 'there hasn't really been a woman ageing in this profession before, so it's uncharted territory'. 'Most of my girlfriends have taken retirement or are talking about it, and they say 'Are you thinking of winding down?' But as long as the work is as interesting and wonderful as it is, and my health keeps up, then I would hope to spend the next 20 years travelling the globe and living this extraordinary life,' she says. 'It's an incredibly privileged experience to be surrounded by beauty.' Simone Young will be conducting Richard Strauss for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in September 2025. For performances in Paris, Berlin, New York and others from April through to June, see here
The Independent
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
London Symphony Orchestra conductor Antonio Pappano goes underground — he takes the Tube to work
Antonio Pappano has gone underground since leaving The Royal Opera for the London Symphony Orchestra. 'Now, more often than not, I take the Tube, which I never did when I was at the opera house because I had a car service,' he said. 'This is a more streamlined organization, if you like.' A 65-year-old conductor who was Covent Garden's music director from 2002-24, Pappano succeeded Simon Rattle as the LSO's chief conductor last September and has a quick commute from his home in Hampstead to the LSO's Barbican Centre home. He is leading the orchestra on a 13-concert U.S. tour to California, Florida and New York that culminates this week with its first Carnegie Hall appearances since 2005. 'Everything is very much based on the voice for Tony because of his opera background,' said Maxine Kwok, an LSO violinist since 2001 and a member of its board. 'So it all comes down to emotions and how you would phrase things if you were singing.' Pappano was born in England and moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, with his family when he was 13. A son of a voice teacher, he became a rehearsal pianist at the Connecticut Grand Opera at 17 and then at New York City Opera at 21. He worked as assistant to Daniel Barenboim on 'Tristan,' the Ring Cycle and 'Parsifal' at the Bayreuth Festival and debuted in 1991 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and in 1994 at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Barenboim was music director. 'I probably shouldn't have been in front of some of the big symphony orchestras, Chicago Symphony, for sure. That came a little bit too soon,' Pappano said. 'But I survived and then hopefully you learn from those mistakes of timing. In terms of the long-term positions I've had, I don't think I've put a foot wrong.' He was music director of Oslo's Den Norske Opera from 1990-92, Brussels' Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie from 1992-2002 and Rome's Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia from 2005-23, often working with his wife, vocal coach Pamela Bullock. While Pappano grew up in the U.S., he has concentrated his career in Europe. 'There's a lot of turmoil in the States, well, all over the world at the moment, and I don't miss that,' he said. 'I'm concerned about the way America is going, if I'm honest. I also worry about the degree to which art in general is treated like some kind of elitist domain to an even greater degree than it is over here. We have to fight that sentiment over here because the easiest thing to cut in a budget is the arts budget.' Clive Gillinson, then LSO's managing director, engaged Pappano for a 1996 recording of Puccini's 'La Rondine' with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Roberto Alagna at London's Abbey Road Studios. 'I thought he should be given a chance as a symphonic conductor because there was very little track record,' said Gillinson, now Carnegie Hall's executive director. 'To be honest, in those early days, I didn't think he was a great symphonic conductor. It took him time." Pappano led his first LSO concert performance the following January at the Barbican. 'It was clear right from the get-go that he kind of got the LSO and we very much got him,' said Neil Percy, a principal percussion who has been with the LSO since 1990. 'It's in his soul, man. You can see it in his skin. He just understands opera kind of like no other conductor that I've ever been fortunate enough to work with.' Pappano debuted at The Royal Opera in Puccini's 'La Bohème' in 1990 and was 32 when he became its youngest music director, following distinguished predecessors Rafael Kubelik, Georg Solti, Colin Davis and Bernard Haitink. Pappano announced in March 2021 he was switching to the LSO, an ensemble known for its work on movie soundtracks that include 'Star Wars.' Rattle had moved to the LSO in 2017 and decided he wanted to switch in 2023 to Munich's Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. 'We're chalk and cheese, as they say in England," Pappano explained. 'With Simon Rattle there's an incredible precision in the approach to the playing,' said Kathryn McDowell, who succeeded Gillinson as the LSO's managing director. 'It's a different sound with Antonio Pappano... it's got a real sort of sheen.' Pappano is continuing to lead Covent Garden's production premieres of Barrie Kosky's staging of the Ring, with 'Die Walküre' opening May 1, 'Siegfried' next season and 'Götterdämmerung in 2026-27, but his successor, Jakub Hrůša, will be in charge of the full cycle in 2027-28. When Pappano conducted the finale of Maher's Symphony No. 1 in Naples, Florida, last week, he was struck by a realization. 'I've never had anything like this under my hands. What a lucky sod I am,' he recalled thinking. 'That life underneath every note, that was always the calling card of this orchestra. If you could stoke that flair, that theatricality that they have, it's quite something.'
