Views And Reviews: Introducing Paul Serotsky
Paul Serotsky is a "professional listener''. What he listens to, by the hour, the day, the week, are the wondrous sounds which originated in the creative brains of the great classical composers.
"I am no musician,'' says Paul "although - I hasten to add - not by choice. My performance career is limited to a bit of choral singing, a spell swinging on a bell as a campanologist, and realising the nightingale in a performance of The Pines of Rome. The only musical instrument I can play is the 'gramophone'.''
Over the years Paul has built up a huge fund of knoweldge concerning those composers and their masterworks. He distils that knowledge into words: enthusiastic words, provocative words, hugely enjoyable words.
He reviews CDs and books for MusicWeb http://www.musicweb.uk.net/ The site attracts 14,000 readers a day. He writes programme notes for classical concerts in Britain and North America.
And once a week, starting today, Paul's reviews and notes will also be appearing in Open Writing.
Now, please allow Paul to introduce himself.
Following the introduction there's an article (programme note) on Frederick Delius's The Walk to the Paradise Garden, from “A Village Romeo and Juliet”. This was commissioned and written for a concert given by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in May last year and has appeared in MusicWeb.
Having acquired, more by good luck than good management, a M.Sc. in Geophysics and Planetary Physics, I worked for several years at the Meteorological Office. For my sins, I became embroiled in the murky world of computers although, to be fair, those were the days when computers occupied whole rooms or even entire floors, and were made by companies
who took pride in their products "never going wrong". After a spell at the then Huddersfield Polytechnic, I ended up at Yorkshire Water. Here I observed the development of the inverse relationship between the "power and capability" and the "robustness and reliability" of computer systems.
In Autumn 2004 I took early retirement, with a view to emigrating to New Zealand so that Pam and I could live near our daughter and grandsons.
At the time of writing (August 2006), we have at last been allowed to submit an application for residency - getting into NZ isn't quite as easy as getting into the UK.
I am no musician, although - I hasten to add - not by choice. My performance career is limited to a bit of choral singing, a spell swinging on a bell as a campanologist, and realising the nightingale in a performance of The Pines of Rome. The only musical instrument I can play is the "gramophone".
Nevertheless, as a life-long music-lover I instead became, as one member of the Slaithwaite Philharmonic so succinctly put
it, "a professional listener". Ever since my university days, I have presented programmes for recorded music societies, and similarly for long spells on community and hospital radio. The last included doing many live concert relays and recordings.
In passing I should mention that, for light relief, during the last 30 years or so I have spent my Saturday mornings torturing children. This activity is otherwise euphemistically described as coaching kids, aged anywhere from three to fourteen years old, at the Princess Mary Junior Athletics Club in Cleckheaton.
Nowadays, with the almost infinite indulgence of Pam, I am kept busy - or at least "out of mischief" - writing concert programme notes and occasional articles on music, trying to write a book on the Arnold Symphonies, and of course reviewing records and concerts.
I like to think of my writing style as "conversational". This can be a bit of a problem, because although "conversational" reads better, it's not exactly what you could call "word-efficient" - I don't get through anywhere near as many CDs as most reviewers, but I probably get through more words!
Some folk seem to like my style. Some don't. That's fine by me: "provocative" is better than "boring" any day. I'm bothered only by the odd one or two who think I'm more concerned with my words than I am about Music. I write because I love the music. I hope that, as Brahms said, "Any fool can see that!" Of course, in saying this I will necessarily be provoking the ire of that "odd one or two". I will never forget the day I received, within an hour of one another, two e-mails about a programme note for Bax's Tintagel. The first praised my "beautiful and evocative description of the music" and asked permission to reproduce it. The second I quote exactly as received and in its entirety (only the quotation marks are mine): "why did you bother writing that crap about tintagel". In the interests of objectivity, I forwarded the latter to the sender of the former. The sender of the latter I left to form his own conclusions.
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Frederick Delius (1862-1934) - The Walk to the Paradise Garden, from “A Village Romeo and Juliet”
Delius’s Dad actively supported music – he helped to organise the Hallé Bradford Subscription Concerts, where I (much later!) cut my musical milk-teeth. However, he did not support a musical career for his talented son. “Fred” tried, but couldn’t hack it in the woollen business. Eventually, he persuaded his father to let him manage an orange plantation in Florida.
“Manage” was a euphemism for “look after the music studies and let the oranges look after themselves”. From there he wormed his way towards his goal, becoming one of the most quintessentially English composers ever to be born of German parents.
We need to get one thing absolutely clear: the “Paradise Garden”, far from being some soft-focus horticultural heaven, is in fact a pub - and a rather dilapidated one, at that. In the opera, this enchanting intermezzo covers the scene change to the said hostelry, where the fleeing lovers decide to do away with themselves. The dominant theme, zipping aloft then
faltering, reflects their quandary: shall we flee, or put ourselves beyond capture? Alternating languor and ardour, Delius drenches his score in perfumed harmonies and sultry textures, evoking a humidity such as was never endured, not even by Debussy’s Faun.
© Paul Serotsky
