About a month ago I got an email from my good friend, American piano technician Barbara Renner asking if I fancied a trip to Liverpool. Having worked on many pianos for the eminent pianist Kathryn Stott Barbara wanted to take in Kathy’s last ever performance in Liverpool.
Although I had never heard her play, only few days earlier I had heard a fascinating interview on Radio 3 with Kathryn and YoYo Ma with whom she has a long musical relationship. So I was definitely up for the trip.
After a long and very distinguished career Kathryn has decided to retire from the arduous business of public performance.Intead she will concentrate on teaching, which she loves, and curating events and festivals which she has been doing since the mid ’90s. So she has spent much of the last year playing, in many of her favourite venues, a programme which traced her career through pieces which had been seminal for her. In the first half, Bach, Lili Boulanger, Fauré (whose music she has ardently championed), Ravel, Greig, Piazzolla and Shostakovic.
The second half started with a gentle and tinkling piece, Scent, from composer Graham Fitkin with whom she has worked closely for many years. Followed by Sir Stephen Hough’s delightful arrangement of My Favourite Things, Caroline Shaw’s Gustave le Grey twinned with Chopin’s Mazurka No 4, Percy Grainger and Carl Vine. The concert ended, as she had warned us, with very different piece also written for her by Graham Fitkin: Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. Rapid, unscheduled and disasssembled it certainly was – thrilling, tumultuous, electrifying. What a way to bow out!
Cathedrals
Kathryn’s concert was, obviously, the reason for and the highlight of our visit but since Barbara had never been to Liverpool I was more than happy to show her my favourite sights. These have to be the two massive cathedrals which glower at each other down the length of Hope Street.
This the the view from the top of the Anglican cathedral’s 300 foot high tower looking down Hope Street to Sir Frederick Gibberd’s extraordinary conical Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King.
All else aside I find it extraodinary that in a century when church attendance has plummetted to mere thousands, the money and the enthusiasm was still found to build these two huge and dramatic churches: the catholic one constructed between 1962 and 1967, at break neck speeed for a cathedral; the Anglican one, the foundation stone for which had been laid in 1904, finally completed in 1978.
The Catholic cathedral (locally nicknamed ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’), surmounted by its stained glass truncated cone is the very personification of 1960s avant garde design – and sits on top of a vast brick built crypt. This is all that remains of an earlier and much more grandiose cathedral project, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, which was to have been the second largest church in the world. Like it or loathe it, Sir Frederick’s cathedral is spectacular and definitely merits a visit.
The brick built Anglican cathedral (seen here on a previous visit to Liverpool when the sun was shining) all but outdoes Lutyen’s vision for the catholic cathedral, being the largest church in England and the eighth largest in the world. Traditional in design it is perched on the top of a rocky outcrop, flanked on one side by my favourite place in Liverpool, the deep defile of St James Gardens cemetery accessed through a tunnel lined with gravestones.
The sheer vastness of the cathedral is all but overwhelming – but amazing – as is the structure of the tower and the bells.
According to Wikipedia, ‘at 67 m (220 ft) above floor level, the bells of Liverpool Cathedral are the highest and heaviest ringing peal in the world’. They are certainly massive and you do not want to be in that space when they are ringing. According to the radio engineer we shared the lift with, they have had to cushion all their masts on the tower to prevent interference from the vibrations.
The Library
Enough of cathdrals but before leaving I need to put in a shout for the new Liverpool library. Entering through a fairly insignificant door in a long stretch of grandiose, classical stone buildings, you find yourself in this glorious five story atrium, designed by architects Austin, Smith Lord, criss-crossed by walkways and drenched in light. Images do not even remotely do it justice so, if you are in Liverpool, do not miss it.
So back to music….
A full run down on January’s offerings and a Kickstarter campaign for an exciting recording project to come after Christmas, but meanwhile…
May we wish you all a very merry and music filled Christmas!
For future happenings in at Hampstead Lane and elsewhere – see our Upcoming Events page.
Follow us on Instagram – SalonsMusicales
Leave a Reply