On the road

I've hardly been at home this month, what with a very fun tour with the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie and now a trip of 11 days taking in Finland, London and Dallas. Before leaving on Tuesday I had two days at home to catch up with Jeannie and we made the best of what time we had, going to see the fabulous new Pixar film, Up, and eating her delicious cooking. Really, she could open a restaurant if she had the inclination.

Now I'm on my way to London after playing Beethoven 4 for the first time since I was a student. It's quite an amazing piece to work on, so rich in musical substance and metaphor. What is the exact nature of the relationship between piano and orchestra in the 2nd movement, and indeed at the beginning of the whole piece? I am sure that the subtleties and complexities of the piece are impossible to exhaust, no matter how much one thinks about it. My partners were Hannu Lintu and the Tampere Philharmonic, and it was a great collaboration. Hannu is one of my favourite conductors for Beethoven - he has gentleness, wildness, and a wonderfully instinctive grasp of structure. To make music with someone like this is inspiring and it really helped me in the concert, where I didn't feel entirely comfortable (it's challenging to play a piece of this magnitude after a long break); seeing his complete immersion in the music and open smiles kept drawing me back to what a privilege it is to play music like this.

Finland is only 2 hours ahead of the UK but somehow my body clock was quite disturbed. I woke up at 5am yesterday morning (3am UK time!) and couldn't sleep again. So I watched on my laptop the infamous edition of Question Time I wrote about in my last post, as well as news reports of the event. It was rather surreal to me to see a screaming mob outside BBC Broadcasting House where the episode was being filmed, with a kind of vicious energy normally reserved for paedophiles and the like. Given that NIck Griffin was democratically elected, I guess these people must object to democracy in some way. I had an interesting talk about it to Maritta HIrvonen, who works with the Tampere Philharmonic. She said there is a party similar to the BNP in Finland which has some modest electoral success, but creates little controversy. The mainstream politicians don't seem to think that it's a terrible thing for them to have some representation in parliament; after all, their power is very small, and being represented gives them a chance to air their views, hear opposing views, and keeps them from becoming too marginalised and paranoid.

Ironically the BNP is being demonised by protestors in the same way the BNP demonises Muslims - there is no attempt to understand the position that the 'other' is taking. It reminds me of objections to the 'humanisation' of Hitler in the film Downfall. I find this mystifying. To portray Hitler as human is simply to state the obvious, and to attempt to paint him as a monster with no possible redeeming feature is not only unrealistic, it also limits our ability to understand the past. The crucial and terrible issue is - how could a man become so detached from his own humanity that he could commit such acts? So with the BNP: why is it that a somewhat significant proportion of the British electorate are willing to vote for a party that wants anyone who isn't white to leave the country? It is of course tempting to demonise people with views like this but where does it get you? You become unable to discuss with them, and find out the real source of their anxiety. Is it about jobs, or housing, or fear of people who are different, or what? That the main parties remain unable to address this became clear watching Question Time. Most of the programme was taken up challenging Nick Griffin with his past quotes in an atmosphere akin to bear-baiting, but when someone asked, "Have the Labour government's policies on immigration contributed to the rise of the BNP?", the mood became much more uncertain. The government minister said no then flannelled, the opposition spokesman said yes then unconvincingly tried to show how the Conservative policy would be better, but what no-one did was actually address the rise of the BNP. Why are ordinary people voting for them? It was the elephant in the room.

Strangely, this issue is very close to my experience of music-making. I've always had very strong musical convictions and years ago when I played chamber music I would fight for my ideas to dominate the group interpretation. I rarely liked the ideas other people presented, and somehow couldn't imagine that their instincts could be as valid as my own. More recently, I've come to realise that if I open up to someone else's ideas then I often come away with a fuller understanding of the possibilities of the music. Often, it subtly changes my own musical instincts. Above all, it's a much more interesting and engaging experience. So I've learned that examining ideas I maybe don't initially like can be very enlightening. I suspect if our politicians honestly explored the reasons why people vote BNP, they would find themselves in a much better position to counter the rhetoric and re-engage with the electorate.