Truro Choral Society's Tippett A Child of our Time

A rather introspective programme was presented by Truro Choral Society and Truro Symphony Orchestra, a Rachmaninov first half followed by Michael Tippett’s secular oratorio, A Child of Our Time.

The choir opened with Bogoroditse Devo, the last movement of Rachmaninov’s famous Vespers, a setting of Ave Maria. This first item was conducted by Truro Cathedral’s organ scholar, James Orford, making his directorial debut. The chorus were supported by the string section, giving the sound an extra luminosity. Orford’s simple yet definite conducting allowed the music to speak for itself without any fussiness unbecoming of the piece, while the choir’s diction of the Russian text spoke well into the Cathedral acoustic.

All change at the front for the second item, Rachmaninov’s C minor second Piano Concerto, as Martin Palmer took the stand alongside the soloist, Paul Comeau. While the second movement is probably the most familiar (a favourite of Classic FM Hall of Fame, no less), this performance showed us that the whole work is just as approachable – the opening Moderato: allegro finds the piano sounding out the deeps before the orchestra joins, more or less taking the spotlight away from the soloist before a majestic climax that restates the initial theme, taking us to the sparkling cadenza. Comeau was surely in his element here, at turns deftly maintaining his part in the orchestral texture, before blazes of sheer virtuosity, relayed throughout the Cathedral via the cameras so those further back wouldn’t miss out – a real delight!

The second movement, the Adagio sostenuto, was a super-smooth episode of pure romantic relaxation, with eloquent solos from flute and clarinet. The finale, the Allegro scherzando, allowed for more dramatic elements to surface, balanced by the lyricism of the orchestral woodwinds, before building tension considerably to the final cadenza – Comeau once again holding the attention of the entire Cathedral.

What elevated this performance, for me, was not just Comeau’s undeniably sublime playing, or Palmer’s well-mannered and sympathetic conducting, but the communication between the two of them, giving the concerto a calm, collected air. A rousing ovation followed, with plenty of well-deserved cheers for Comeau, a real local hero on Truro’s musical scene.

As the programme reminded us, A Child of Our Time "…can never be comfortable"; a deeply personal statement by the composer conceived as a musical protest. The atmosphere was electric from the opening chords, with Palmer’s clear direction inspiring the choir to come in confidently on some exceptionally difficult leads. The young team of soloists added to the mood, their voices commanding in their own right, yet blending well when together. The five Negro Spirituals were particularly moving, Steal Away as a stand-out triumph, with a beautiful, sustained tone from the soprano soloist.

While this concert’s programme was more inward-looking than one might usually expect from Truro Choral Society, they acquitted themselves with a dignity befitting the music during another evening of exciting music making.

By Paul-Ethan Bright

Published 18th of June for Truro Choral Society website

Published 22nd of June for the West Briton website

Eat it: Pork and mushrooms with a cyder vinegar jus

Something from the 'What can I get on the cheap and oh what's that in the fridge' school of thought.  The recipe as it stands will serve a supper for one.

INGREDIENTS

Two pork loin steaks/Pork chops off the bone       Fresh Rosemary       5 closed cup mushrooms       

Spring onions       Cyder Vinegar       Salt and Pepper       Three garlic cloves

METHOD

Sit the mushrooms so the domed part is facing upwards, slice them, and put them aside.  Skin and roughly chop the garlic, and put that by with the mushrooms as well.  Cut the root end off the onions and slice them length ways - I haven't specified how many because they slice down awfully thin, so feel free to have as much as you like.  Set these aside also, but separately.

Heat olive oil in a pan and throw in a few sprigs of rosemary while you season the pork with the salt, pepper and leaves of fresh rosemary.  When you have been sufficiently generous with your flavourings, fry the pork with the fatty edge on the side of the pan for 2 or 3 minutes on each side.  Once they've started to brown, take them out of the pan and put them in a warm place to rest - I put them on a side plate and in the smaller part of my oven on a low heat - you certainly don't want them to cook in any significant way at this stage now.  

Pour the mushrooms and garlic into the pan and turn the heat down slightly.  They will soak up the oil in the pan, so keep an eye on it so it doesn't stick too much, making sure the garlic doesn't catch.  After a few minutes of stirring, add the spring onions.  Once they've softened, pour in two tablespoons of Cyder vinegar, and deglaze the pan.  When the sauce is simmering merrily, get the pork back into the pan along with all the meat juices for another few minutes.

When you're ready to serve, set the pork aside and using a spoon, lay the vegetables on the pan.  I normally do so in a single bed in the middle of the plate, but do as you wish - if you want to arrange it in chevrons or a circle, be my guest.  Serve the pork on top, either whole or cut into thick slices, and pour the remaining sauce over.  Service!

#~#

This thing of taking the meat out before cooking the veg in the same pan is a really very simple thing but adds to the dish - you'll notice I even advise it for that stir fry I wrote up oh so long ago.  Resting the meat even ever so slightly allows the juices to stay in the meat preserving the flavour.  Although I don't need to tell you that, right?

NEXT WEEK on Asylum South West: I imagine what it's like to be in the worst play ever, why I let the other person talk sometimes, "Nischt farinteresirt", and why you shouldn't bother being nice to me.  Ever.

Now Showing: Mad Max: Fury Road

To put it bluntly, Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the loudest, unrelentingly violent, extreme and simply one of the oddest films I have seen for a long time.  I also think it's totally brilliant.

Having only a vague cultural awareness of the Mad Max franchise and watched one trailer for this new iteration, I had very little knowledge in advance - all I really knew was that it was post-apocalyptic, Australian, and featured immense car chases - but I knew enough.  What I wasn't prepared for was the brute force of the film's delivery, which is broken up into a series of vignettes that split the film into little discrete chapters, as if Wes Anderson survived nuclear holocaust.  Our main players, Tom Hardy as "Mad" Max Rockatansky and Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa, are name checked before the the title - there are no further opening credits as we open on our first episode, where after an opening monologue from Max progresses to a car chase (naturally) and capture by a bunch of whitewashed nutters, leading to capture and a violent and juddering escape attempt, including hallucinations and a very literal cliffhanger.

The film carries on like this for its two hour runtime - anything approaching an explanation of what unfolds on screen isn't given by any of the characters until at least an hour in.  You're forced to accept what happens through it happening, rather than having any set up to hold on to and try and reason your way round... And after a while it all makes sense.  Of course there are insane car battles in an irradiated Australian outback following the downfall of society after nuclear war; how can there not be?  Survivors have become gangs who have then become cults centred around definite territory - we only really meet one of these great cabals, the Warboys led by the main villain of the piece, Hugh Keays-Byrne's Immortan Joe, promising his followers entrance to Valhalla in exchange for their lives.  It's easy to grasp, especially when we learn he has sole access to the water in "the Citadel" (the Warboy HQ).  Over the course of the film, we meet the gangs from "Bullet Town" and "Gas Town"and their respective leaders (who may or may not be related to Joe?!), the biker gang and the Vuvalini, although we only learn their name during the credits.  There's an air of hand waving going on here, almost as if George Miller just wants to get on with his film and let the audience catch up.

The rumours are true: it's a very woman-centric film.  While Max is the eponymous protagonist, he's not the only one, and in fact he isn't the one driving the plot, or indeed the War Rig.  That role falls on the shoulders of Theron's Furiosa, all woman and part prosthetic arm, hell-bent on rescuing Joe's 'breeders', the Five Wives, women imprisoned, chosen for their ability to bear healthy children and played by a gaggle of model actresses (actress models?), including that girl off the Victoria's Secret commercials and Elvis Presley's granddaughter.  From their first appearance in the film as nominal damsels in distress, meeting them more formally moments later in a scene where they hose each other down and use bolt cutters to remove chastity belts, they undergo a kind of humanisation largely missing from the stoic Max, becoming a little gang of character archetypes in their own right, whereas Max becomes the 'token' man of the outfit.  This rescue plot is already happening by the time Max becomes an asset in the film, after being strapped to the front of an insane car, being used as a mobile bloodbank for Nux, the Warboy with a heart of gold.  Nux goes on a greater journey than Max, although Mad Nux doesn't quite have the same ring to it.  The ultimate goal of Furiosa's escape attempt is to take the Five Wives to the "Green Place", an easy short cut to something better than the eternal desert that surrounds them.  This plays out in a pretty unexpected way but proves the old adage "the world won't change, all it does is turn.".  Furiosa's quest has a primal element, helping the women to escape biological slavery and find a safe haven, the utopian aspect blatantly obvious... Or perhaps they seek eutopia?

So!  You're not here for the plot presumably, I know I certainly wasn't.  Like I said at the top, this film is just insane.  All of the crazy rigs are real, built from the ground up especially and some of the stuff is just mental.  The War Rig that sits at the centre of the picture is probably the most normal looking out of the bunch (or is it just because we see it so much that we get used to it?), pretty standard Mack Truck... Except for the massive turbochargers and extended passenger cab, obviously.  The big bad Immortan Joe starts out in something that looks like one Cadillac stuck on top of another with bubble canopies and exhaust out of a hot rod's dreams, then moves to a ridiculous monster truck wheeled car.  There's an old Chevy chassis sat on top of tank treads, and countless other random genetic modifications on show.  Incredibly, most of the action on screen is real, with a few standout moments of CGI here and there (sadly some of the flame plumes are the least believable effects).  The scenes are crazy busy, yes, but it isn't messy.  A lot of deaths occur out of shot, cut away deftly after wince-inducing crashes, explosions and sniper shots, all accentuated by the mad kineticism of Miller's direction, coupled with the ever-changing frame rate provided the jerky motion we see from time to time.  Unlike say, anything by Zack Snyder, the use of chroma key filters and slow motion (or indeed fast motion in this film) is never too much.

The actual character of Max himself is... well, he's kind of a silent protagonist, or more likely a silent supporting character.  Hardy's use of non-verbal, be that grunting or through his actions, rather than reliance on spoken exposition remind me of countless video game protagonists, The Legend of Zelda's Link in particular, giving the audience a blank slate for the other characters to reflect on.  Although I haven't seen any of Mel Gibson's performances, this Max is particularly mad, what with his hallucinations and night terrors, juxtaposed with his expertise in combat and field medicine.  Like a Silent Bob who survived the end of the world though, the effect of his short speeches are magnified by their rarity.  Even a line as simple as "Max.  That's my name.", delivered towards the very end of the film carries more weight than had he been yapping all through the film.

Go and see this film.  Go and see how crazy it all gets.  Go and be overwhelmed by the sheer force of it all.  Go see men swing from 50 foot poles.  Go see lethal sniper grannies.  Go and sit, mystified by albino slapheads and mutant wildlife.  This even shows potential for what a great Tank Girl movie could look like, given half a chance - if a film this weird can succeed then there's plenty of room for TG and Booga.  The ending's all a little bit tidy: the outback is saved (for now), and everyone we like has survived (well, almost) - door's open for whatever comes next but there's not exactly any definite threads.  The good guys are good, and the bad guys are bad - no real heavy intellectual lifting here.  Go and see it and enjoy it, commit to being totally confused and weirded out.  And remember: "One man, one bullet."

Sequenza 2: Growing up's a trap anyway

Turned out nice again - 

Lovely day for your 21st!

That is today, right?

Remember the phrase,

that "Life begins at forty"?

It's time to find out!

There's only so much

to be said in a card, or

over these short lines;

Sometimes the value 

is rather in what's not said,

but in what you know.

So Happy Birthday!

I hope your day's as nice as...

You truly deserve.

Fyer, fyer!

I wrote this on the train, and also in a flat in Islington (here in a basement).

I've been doing this all wrong for too long.

As some of you may or may not know, I've been on holiday to England.  Yes, yes... Laugh it up, Cornwall technically is part of England.  But it also isn't.  Favoured holiday destination of seemingly most people on this island, be it from middle class families, beach hut owners, post A-level and pre-university students or just people from Birmingham, Cornwall is very much its own place.  I don't really need to wax on too long about this; I'm sure you have all the TripAdvisor recommendations and have seen enough of the new Poldark to be able to form your own, unquestionably valid conclusions.  My own recent adventures out to Gurnard's Head and getting sunburnt from just sitting at the desk in the office are part of the good things about living here.  What's most telling about life on this 80 mile spit into the Atlantic is the sheer scale of things – or the lack of it.

Five days in Derby have given me a lot of perspective back, actually.   As sad as it is to walk about and see parts of the city dirtier than memory would have me believe, at least... At least it's there. You know?  Okay, okay... The ineffable value of a place being the place is difficult to get down on paper (this is paper? What is truth then?) but not lost on the author.  No trip to Derby is complete without a bag of dinky donuts, or indeed, kneeling on St. Mary's Gate to get in the entire height of the Cathedral tower in frame.   I sometimes wonder about going back... But then I remember that nothing can ever be the same, and that the hope that it could be is an even more vain and time wasting hope than usual, even for me.  But much as suffering builds endurance and endurance builds character, distance allows for breathing room and breathing room allows for perspective.  A little distance is what I've needed for a long time, actually; I've been remarkably hard on myself (even for me, a noted self torturer) recently in sort of not going anywhere.   I've become stuck somewhat in Truro for what I could only describe as no good reason.  I haven't even been to the sea on my own, for saying it's £2.70 and a half hour away, let alone somewhere luxurious such as Exeter...

In getting stuck though, I've almost given up.  In moments of self awareness, I've noticed that I've stopped playing music (excuses here are legion, the best being that my keyboard plug is bust), stopped listening to music (the headphone jack on my phone doesn't work oh dear), almost given up writing, reading, cooking... It's worrying. It could be worse though!  I could have stopped all of these things and started handing my books out to other people!  Tragic.  It's as if I have let the fight just...run out of me.  I suppose that this is all part of the process I started about a year ago, of resetting my head.  I said it was a rewiring job at the time, before moving on to a more apt metaphor, that my head is more like an Asylum, a colossal house of madness full of rooms and whole wings that make up the most of my memory, bad as it is already, that can be shut off, doors locked and barred.  I have recalled things I had rather not have over the past twelve months, things that I have chosen to discuss either publicly or on here, in order to help myself get past them; while the jokes might not exactly be pouring forth, but at least I can talk about my own history of suicidal tendencies rationally now.   Last week was more about straws and my own dromedary spine, but as sure as you break me with reed I shall purge you by hyssop.  I'm sure there's worse to come as well.

It's not so much that I have been totally beset by tragedy or misfortune, perhaps just as much as anybody else, but that I wear my heart on my sleeve, until both it and the sleeve wear out.  It makes sense though – I have no real fine control over my sensory input or emotional state which is extremely tiring and difficult to manage, notwithstanding my propensity for panic attacks and more recently, nightmares (not something I'd recommend).   Also I've been struggling with interpersonal skills again, in differentiating means and ends, recognising the two (and who sees me as which and vice versa) – there's been plenty of unrest actually and I'm glad to have taken a step of several hundred miles away from things. Something else I've been pondering is that in getting older and becoming more settled am I simply becoming... Boring?  Being outspoken and opinionated doesn't really seem to have helped terribly, but what's the alternative?  Sycophancy?  Alright, that's the extreme sure, but really?  All of us, all of our lives struggle, in different degrees with things, people, situations and relationships that we don't like and for what?  Usually so other people are happy, more often than not.  I think we're done here.

There's actually a lot of unrest at the moment, all bubbling away under the surface. I'm sufficiently convinced that this isn't the time and place to discuss the hard and fast reasons behind it, but I'm certainly not the only person who isn't entirely happy – and it isn't difficult to tell either.  Sometimes syntax isn't just about how you put a sentence together, it's about how you are as well. It's something that I suppose that people aren't aware of, but it's all a giveaway.  Things like, oh I dunno... How often you go to the pub, or more tellingly, what time you start drinking.  I have to watch this kind of thing all the time, I spend an awful amount of effort trying (and often failing) to decode social meaning and hierarchy and all (who has a problem with authority anyway?).  You never really realise yourself, but when you have to watch things... it's all a dead giveaway when something's the matter.  As I've already mentioned, I am of course my own worst case in point – since my keyboard power adapter has broken I have all but given up and resorted to well... Drink instead of practice really. I still resolutely claim that things are “alright” and that I'm “okay”, but really?   It doesn't take a behavioural scientist to work out I'm secretly in misery and denying it.

Something about being back has reminded me that the moment I feel like giving up is in fact the moment to start fighting back again.  It always was, and I have no idea why I let it go? Maybe it's something in the water – or more accurately, the lack of it down south (mmmm, limestone hills). It's always like this, and I usually stay pretty fired up for about two or three days after getting back and then... Poof! Back to normal, or what passes for anyway. Now is the most selfish time I have, as I have been reminded. I will never be as young as I am now, and if I keep rolling over and giving up just for the sake of what I don't even know, then I will have wasted all the effort that brought me here, and waste what potential I have left for my future.


NEXT TIME ON ASW... Le Grand Depart, in detail!

Do you not know?

Paul-Ethan Bright, Author at large. 

Do not approach.  Avoid direct eye contact.  If contacted, do not reply.  Do not accept anything the author gives you.  If you see the author, contact the authorities immediately.  

May contain: Depression; Autism; Mental Health; Suicide; Insanity; Abandonment; Existential Pain

May also contain: Sarcasm; Satire; Irony; Profane Language; Bitterness; Hatred

Likely to contain: Foolishness; Idiocy; Mistakes; Triumphs

While the author does not contain nuts, he comes from an environment where nuts are handled

May cause Vomiting; Nightmares; Sudden Crises of Confidence; Domestic Arguments; Panic Attacks; Palpable Disgust; Outrage; Disappointment

The author must be stopped, no matter the cost.

An Identity

Awake thy heart, 

Dread engine that thou art,

And seize this day.

Awake too thy soul,

Ready for its central role

Upon this world's stage to play.

Claim all thy bones, sinew and flesh,

And this brave heart and soul enmesh,

Greater than the sum of its clay.

Let's hear thy voice, and speak!

Tell thy piece, be not so meek;

Learn thy lines to proudly say.

Show then thy face,

Of soft expression and hard grimace,

And united enter life's fray.

So now thou art complete at last,

Though life is short, and passes fast,

Remember thyself; shrink not away.