One in twenty
One way or another, a newly-acquired book or two must come into the house most weeks. So in a year, that’s much more than a shelf’s worth. After a few years, even with occasional donations of books to Oxfam, there are far too many books in piles around the place, on furniture, on the floor, slotted in randomly here and then. So there comes that time again when Something Must Be Done. Perhaps one in twenty really needs to go. And this time, everything ought to be taken off shelves and dusted down …
So that was a week’s worth of mornings, just for the books at one end of the living room. “Will we ever read this again?”, “Good lord, I’d quite forgotten we had a copy of that”, “Do you remember finding that book in …?”, “Oh, it is more than time to reread …”, “Oops, we seem to have bought two copies of …”, “Hold on a moment, let me just remind myself what this is about …”, “Do you remember that exhibition …?”. And so it goes. It all takes time. But job done, and the shelves look a lot tidier. Bags of books line the hall waiting to be distributed to charity shops. Not one in twenty of course. But enough.
A recent report of research from Imperial College indicated that one in twenty are affected by, as it were, Very Long Covid, with symptoms lasting even a year. I seem to be in the unlucky group. Over six months on from catching Covid on a lovely trip to Perugia, I’m still getting chest discomfort and fatigue, of a pretty annoying kind. So, some days, a morning’s book clearing is stupidly tiring. Not much writing then gets done on matters categorial …
But I can read. What has been particularly enjoyable in the last few weeks? I don’t think I can put it better than this, from the blurb: “In Thunderclap, Laura Cumming reveals her passion for the art of the Dutch Golden Age and her determination to lift up the reputation of Fabritius. She reveals the Netherlands, where – wandering the narrow streets of Amsterdam, driving across the flatlands, or pausing at a quiet waterfront – she encounters the rich reality behind the shining beauty of Vermeer and Rembrandt, Hals and de Hooch. She shares too her relationship with her father, the Scottish artist James Cumming, who had his own deep connection to Dutch painting, and who taught her about colour, light and the rewards of looking deeply. This is a book about what a picture may come to mean: how it can enter your life and change your thinking in a thunderclap, a sudden clarity of sight. This is also a book about the precariousness of human life – the way it may be snatched from us in an instant. What can art do to sustain us? The work that survives tells its own compelling story in these pages.” I thought in advance that that must be over-selling the book! But I did find it hugely engaging. Especially when read with iPad to hand, to find reproductions of more of the paintings Laura Cumming mentions. Warmly recommended. Thunderclap stands out among books I’ve read recently — one in twenty, perhaps.
Let me share a belated discovery. I should have known before about the pianist Cordelia Williams who won the piano section of the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2006 and has since released four CDs to considerable acclaim, and fifth just a couple of days ago. (There is a Cambridge connection too: she gained a First in Theology at Clare College about the time for her early competition success.)
The playing here immediately strikes me as very fine, the familiar Schumann immediately captivating, the Prokofiev (which I didn’t know) evanescent fleeting glimpses, the Beethoven impressively convincing. I will want to listen and re-listen. But for Schubert on Sunday, I’ll be returning to her first CD of 2013 of the Schubert Impromptus. The Guardian reviewer wrote at the time “Don’t be lulled by Cordelia Williams’s sweetly cool reading of the first two of Schubert’s Impromptus D899 in this recording; there’s romantic fire lurking under the surface. No 3 is almost Brahmsian in its achingly beautiful sweep, and there’s a delicious, dark brooding beneath the delicacy of No 1, D935. Crucially, [she] manages to suffuse each of these eight miniatures with just the right degree of regret …”. These aren’t performances to replace Brendel, Lupu, Pires, Uchida. But they are a delight to listen to.
But if Cordelia Williams’s recording of the Impromptus made a fine debut disc, her return to Schubert a couple of years ago in her fourth CD “Nightlight” is something else again. The centrepiece of this disc is Schubert’s C minor Sonata D958. The Gramophone reviewer wrote, more eloquently than I could, “For all the architectural grandeur of the opening Allegro, [Williams] brings subtlety and contrast to its urgent rhetoric. When the purity of the voices in the Adagio’s chorale devolves into the menacing triplets, it is a plausible psychological progression from calm self assurance to abject terror. Its sinister undertow notwithstanding, the Minuet maintains poise and grace. The finale’s flight from the furies, despite its driven desperation, remains an escape inerrantly proportionate and flawlessly planned. Throughout the sonata, her playing is always natural, unforced and supremely lyrical, yet alive to every tragic implication in Schubert’s drama. … For all this album’s many strengths, the Schubert sonata alone is worth the price. Williams unapologetically takes her place among the most eloquent exponents of this great work in recent years.” Yes! And from another review: “Her performance of the strange un-minuet-like minuet is a marvel. Even the great names amongst Schubertians seem a little perplexed by this fugitive music. Perhaps it is Williams’ night time theme that helps her unlock the way the uneven phrases interlock so convincingly as though an insomniac Schubert were facing his demons in the wee small hours. Whatever the prompt, Williams catches the mood peculiarly well both here and in the finale. In not straining to find high tragedy, she brings the music closer in character to the other two of Schubert’s last piano sonatas. There is the bitter-sweet tang. There are the fleeting moments of sensual delight and of joy mixed with deep sadness and nostalgic regret. It all passes under her attentive fingers. The first two movements are just as good; this is one of the great performances of this sonata.”
Ah well. It’s very nice, then, to be able to hit a cheering note. Here’s a book recommendation. I’ve just finished the very enjoyable How to be a Renaissance Woman by the art-historian Jill Burke. As the blurb says “The Renaissance was an era obsessed with appearances. And beauty culture from the time has left traces that give us a window into an overlooked realm of history — revealing everything from sixteenth-century women’s body anxieties to their sophisticated botanical and chemical knowledge.