James Gilchrist, tenor
Anna Tilbrook, pianoAs a singer myself, songs in a foreign language always present challenges. Not only are there tricky pronunciations to distract me, but also there are the complexities of communicating the song's meaning.  The composers featured in the first half of this concert, held at the Holywell Music Room on 21st January, must have experienced similar challenges.James Gilchrist opened the programme with two settings of Shakespeare in German, which could not have failed to be interesting for a native English speaker.  Schubert is the comfort food of the lieder audience, allowing us to ease away from the wet January night outside into a world where, in the words of the second song, Ständchen: "Der Ringelblume Knospe schleußt / Die goldnen Äuglein auf" ("The marigold's bud opens its golden eyes").  Here Gilchrist first allowed the full power of his voice to fill the Holywell's delicate acoustic, exhorting "Da süße Maid, steh auf!" ("Sweet maid Arise!").After these musical hors d'oeuvres, Gilchrist introduced a much meatier course: excerpts from the Italienisches Liederbuch, set by Hugo Wolf (1860-1903), which as Italian folk-poems, set in German by a German composer, continued the concert's theme ideally.  According to Gilchrist "they explore the Italian quality of wearing one's heart on one's sleeve"— which was exactly where Gilchrist proceeded to wear it!  A particularly operatic performance was given in "Hoffärtig seid Ihr, schönes Kind" ("You are haughty, beautiful child"), which reached the impassioned climax “Willst du nicht Liebe, nimm Verachtung hin” ("If you don't want love, take scorn").  Not all the songs relied on powerful actions in the singer's body for effect: in "Und willst du deinen Liebsten sterben sehen" ("And if you would see your lover die"), Gilchrist slowly, and movingly, spread out his arms from his chest, and remained almost motionless for the final excerpt, "Sterb ich, so hüllt in Blumen meine Glieder"
("When I die, cover my limbs in flowers").The anonymous medieval Irish monks who scrawled in the margins of manuscripts could never have imagined that their fragments would be collected, almost a millennium later, by Samuel Barber (1910-1981) into the eclectic Hermit Songs.  For Gilchrist, the monks' uncanny insights are both "deeply heartfelt moments of reflection, but also of a remarkably profane nature."  This comic side was particularly apparent in "Promiscuity", which features speculation on a fellow monk's bedfellow that night, and in "The heavenly banquet", containing the unforgettable line: "I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings."  More sublime was "St Ita's vision", a soaring lullaby, and "The monk and his cat", which would resonate with any work-weary student who takes solace in the companionship of a pet!  At various points in the programme Gilchrist tried, with varying success, to create a whispering tone in the intimate acoustic of the Holywell, but pulled this off most convincingly in the sustained last note of "At St Patrick's Purgatory".After these exotic, culture-crossing songs, Gilchrist indulged the audience in the second-half with some thoroughly English material: Britten's Winter Words, settings of poems by Thomas Hardy.  Here we saw Gilchrist the storyteller, subtly modulating his voice to take on roles of narrator, vicar, young boy and even the creak of a little old table in the imaginatively titled "The Little Old Table".  From the entire programme, the Britten gave most opportunity for the piano, from the train horn and click of wheel on rail, in "Midnight on the Great Western", to the strains of a fiddle in "The Convict and the Boy with the Violin". Gilchrist and Tilbrook made an impressive pairing, managing entries and co-ordination flawlessly without need for eye-contact.Last year saw many composers’ anniversaries, and Gilchrist was quick to point out in his introduction that 2008 is the 50th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan-Williams' death.  The programme concluded with six songs from this quintessentially English composer and collector of folk-songs, including the old favourite "Linden Lea", as well as the lesser known "Winter's Willow".  The final song of the concert was "The sky above the roof", a translation from French of a Verlaine poem.At the risk of overusing culinary metaphors, the encore, Quilter's "Go, lovely rose" reminded me of Worcester College's lemon tarts: a little too sweet and intense.  But I would not hesitate to recommend Gilchrist and Tilbrook for a Michelin star!by Matthew Silverman

Oxford University’s Jewish Society and the Aegis Society , a grassroots movement against genocide, will organize and sponsor a torch-lit march through Oxford city-center for Holocaust Memorial Day on Sunday, January 27th.

The march will be celebrating the 63rd anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1945 – the very end of the Second World War. The commemoration walk is scheduled to begin at the Jewish Centre in Jericho at 5:45 pm.

OUSU president Martin McCluskey thinks the significance of this event is heightened after the Holocaust denier David Irving’s controversial visit to the Oxford Union last term.

“Education about the Holocaust seems even more pertinent now. For people who haven't heard a Holocaust survivor speak before, it's incredibly powerful and brings home how horrendous it was,” commented McCluskey to the Oxford Times.

Other commemorative events are scheduled for Sunday, including a talk by a Holocaust survivor at the Jewish Centre, at 4 pm. Oxford University Chabad Society will be holding a lecture on Sunday by Professor Sir Michael Howard, president emeritus of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and who was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. His mother was Jewish, fought in the Italian Campaign during the Second-World-War and was twice wounded and won a Military Cross at Salerno. The lecture will begin at 8 PM at the David Slager Chabad Jewish Centre on George Street.Cherwell 24 is not responsible for the content of external links

by Tom Carpenter, Deputy Editor, C24

A comment and opinion article

Imagine my horror yesterday morning when, dehydratedly fighting my way out of my room in typical, randomised panic, I stumble upon a small, unassuming brown envelope. One that bore the Tick of Terror. The TV licensors were coming.

You may have noticed that TV licensing has been getting more aggressive over the past couple of years. Although I was aware I was not prepared for the crimson, underscored caps that red-blooded their way into my attention. 'OFFICIAL WARNING' it read, 'Your address is scheduled to receive a visit from our National Enforcement Division’

The letter went on to inform me that, as there was no valid TV licence for the address ‘Staircase 15 Room 21’ and I had not ‘responded to their warnings’, the NEDs would soon be paying me a visit. I remember the ‘warning’ well, a coolly-worded letter telling me I was ‘under investigation’ and instructing me to call their (0870 – more on this shortly) number so I would kindly inform them that I did not own a television and they could kindly cease their investigation.

I did not, and do not, own a television, but I was going to do no such thing! It galled me that not only was there an apparent presumption of my guilt but also that it was my job to disprove it! To add injury to insult, the number is a revenue-raiser. A common sum for the owners of 0870 numbers to be paid is 2p a minute^1. A quick look at the DFES website tells us that in 2005/6 there were 1.87 million home undergraduate students. Given this, and assuming that, oh, 50% of them were intimidated enough to call, each spending 5 minutes on the line, the Bristol-based companies collective stood to gain £93,500. These calculations are crude but they paint a damning picture. This figure only represents the money received by the company, of course – 0870 calling costs are higher and for students using mobile phones, the amount of money spent professing their innocence would have been staggering.

Let me take a moment to illustrate the tone of the letter:

“…official warning…enforcement division…as you have not responded to our warnings…this visit and its consequences…when our officers arrive at your accommodation…let me remind you that…committing a criminal offence…our officers on the ground…they will confirm the situation when they visit…”

It is a threatening whisper, a clipboard claw hammer, the smallness of you faced with peerless authority. And I don’t like it one bit. They have managed to combine the shadow of the police state with the shamelessness of the free market.

This is not the worst of it, though. The purposes and nature of these intimidatory tactics are not as bad as the means. The second letter arrived, as with the first one, under my door, not in my pidge. Presumably the college came to some arrangement where the scouts delivered them; I don’t know. What concerns me is the implication, “we know where you live”. People who have done nothing wrong are being made to feel as if it is their duty to prove it. Guilty until proven innocent. TV Licensing, contracted by a public body, has resorted to bullying. This simply isn’t good enough. Bring on the NED!

Cherwell24 is not responsible for the content of outside links.

¹ http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/0870-say-no#why

Unlike Daphne du Maurier’s heroine, I really had been back to my abandoned chateau.

Just last week, I was back in Oxford for the first time since June, and the experience was heavily laden with ghosts of the past. I entered the Bodleian and requested books with my old barcode and password. They were brought up by the same librarians. I read them in the same seat (number 208 in the upper reading room) that I frequented all of last spring. I drank G&Ds coffee. I ate in the Covered Market. And all the while it rained.

Oxford, it appears, is slow to change. That timelessness was one of the strongest impressions I took home with me about Britain . I wrote often last year about the contrast between the sense of constancy I experienced abroad and the obsession with change I associated with my home in the U.S. That Oxford in January 2008 looks much like Oxford in June 2007 was no big shock.

What got to me this time were my encounters with friends I hadn’t seen in months. I’m generally diligent about keeping in touch and, thanks to e-mail and Facebook, I was fully up to date on all the gossip basics of break-ups and new couplings. As a writer obsessed with new media, I’d assumed the physical separation and reunion would make minimal difference.

How wrong I was. Simple and sappy as it may seem, I was floored by the depth and force of emotion I felt seeing people face to face, hearing voices live and standing in physical spaces of college quads. It was a sharp reminder of the things that—at least for me—technology can’t yet replace. So I’m curious: do you, my fellow Gen Y, Web 2.0 readers, see limits in the things that can successfully be made virtual?

It's a health and safety risk. As Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein points out on Comment Central:

Goethe’s novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther) was published in 1774. And its publication was followed by many reports of young men shooting themselves. Why? It was widely believed that these suicides were copies of the death of the novel's hero. When academic David Phillips studied copycat suicides in the early 1970s, he coined the term Werther Effect.

Case closed.

Cherwell 24 is not responsible for the content of external links

A naked actress paraded through the streets of Oxford yesterday evening for the premiere of the new Lady Godiva film.

Libby Jewson, who plays a principal part in the film, rode from the Old Parsonage hotel in Banbury road to the Odeon Cinema in Magdalen Street wearing nothing but a wig and a sash around her waist to protect her modesty.

Libby Jewson admitted that she was cold but told the Oxford Mail that she was more than happy to brave the British winter for her sister Vicky Jewson, the director of the film.

Vicky Jewson arrived at the premiere by more conventional means than her sister. She said that she had considered Leicester Square for the premiere, but having lived in Oxford all her life, felt that it would be a good thing for the city.

Lady Godiva was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry in order to protest about the oppressive toll her husband placed on his subjects. Lady Godiva is not played by Libby Jewson, but by Holby city star Phoebe Thomas. The film is released on Friday. By Sian Cox-Brooker

(Penguin Classics; translated into English for the first time)From the flashes of diamond-clad fingers at the mah-jong table of the collaborating political elite, to the complaining internal monologue of a foreigner’s ‘amah’ (maidservant), faced with ration shortages in the darkest corners of  WWII Japanese-occupied Shanghai, Eileen Chang’s five short stories are steeped in vividly involving description. At times alarmingly cynical – for example, Mr Garter’s consolation that his sleeping amah is ugly, as competent servants are harder to find than easy women – the stories are more than a comment on the political situation of wartime Shanghai at Chang’s time of writing. They explore the gritty reality of raw emotion, exposed as if from within each character’s thoughts. Although love is hinted at and aspired to, it is with dexterity that Chang handles the confused lust of a young ‘femme-fatale’, the spitefulness of the sister-in-laws of a new bride, and the humiliation of ageing wives discarded by their husbands in favour of young concubines. Chang’s real triumph is her understanding of her female characters, although it is not always with a sympathetic view that she illustrates their grievances. The title novella of this collection is sadly misrepresentative of the charming simplicity of the remaining four stories. It gives the impression of being the bare skeleton of a much longer and more intricate plot. Indeed its overly complex array of characters and spy-plot circumstances only confuse the reader, and detract from the perfection of the language used to render what is nevertheless a tale of tense emotion. It is only a shame that Chang did not expand on the intrigues of this short story to a fully explicated novel. Owing to this is perhaps the success of the novella’s adaptation for the big screen (under the same title), and the Golden Lion which it won at the Venice Film Festival.Fortunately, this is true of ‘Lust, Caution’ alone. In the other four tales of occupied Shanghai, the beauty of Chang’s Chinese metaphor is enhanced by more simple plots. ‘In the Waiting Room’ takes the reader into the lives of its patients, their various individual tales momentarily interwoven in their common wait, whilst their seemingly petty worldly woes are symbolic of a more universal intertwining of human experience. The tales are a comment on Shanghai society from every perspective: the serving classes, old Chinese money and the ‘Nouveau Riche’. However, neither this nor the translation from Chinese makes them inaccessible to the Western reader, thanks both to the richness of the descriptive language and to the delicacy with which the translators have dealt with Chinese metaphor. ‘Wrapped in layers of clothes, her white, fleshy body was like a big, solid rice dumpling wrapped in bamboo leaves.’: the language achieves the feat of conjuring a very specific Chinese image, even in the Western mind, whilst the plot introduces the reader to the complexities of, and frictions within, the Chinese social order and familial relationships. By Sarah Fleming

Women's Hockey

Despite some transport issues, Oxford eventually found the correct venue to take on the team directly above them in the league, Tulse Hill and Dulwich.  Their opponents started well, and Oxford found themselves a goal down within ten  minutes. Oxford battled back, but conceeded again at the start of the second  half. However, a finely finished goal from Beth Wild followed by a short corner  strike from Charlotte Jackson saw the Blues earn a hard fought draw against the  physical London side.

Netball

The Blues lost 30-27.  The Roos lost 28-24 in a tough match against Wolverhampton.  Despite dissapointment with the result, it was a strong performance agaisnt a physical side, with Emma Fuller drawing the plaudits with her virtuoso performance.  Only three months ago, the Roos lost by twelve points to the same opposition.  This is a real vindication for their new South African coach.  To still be maintaining a mid-table position, having only been promoted this year, is a genuine achievement. 

Women's Ice Hockey

A frustrating 3-1 defeat against Milton Keynes took place on Saturday. Having held their  opponents to 1-1 by the end of the first session, Oxford were disappointed to  have lost such a tight match.  But Milton Keynes' experience and fitness proved  decisive as they shut the Blues out after going in front. Tickets are soon on  sale at £5 for the Varsity match : 2 March at 6.15pm at the Oxford Ice Rink.
 
Coming up:

If you would like to see your Blues' results first on Cherwell24, e-mail [email protected] to see them
published online.

Fauré, Ravel, and Stravinsky with the Oxford Sinfonia and Carolyn Dobbin
19th January 2008
 
This was an ambitious programme for a non-professional orchestra, but it was executed very convincingly indeed. Such intensity pervaded the interpretation, that one had no choice but to forgive the slight imperfections which are inevitably present in an amateur performance.
 
The Oxford Sinfonia is an amateur chamber orchestra composed of players from in and around Oxford. Tonight they were conducted by Nicholas Cleobury, a former organ scholar of Worcester College, and currently conductor of the Britten Sinfonia. Irish mezzo-soprano Carolyn Dobbin sang in Ravel’s Shéhérazade.
 
The concert opened with Fauré’s charming suite ‘Masques et Bergamasques’. Whilst it is probably not, as the concert programme claimed, Fauré’s most famous orchestral work, it perhaps should be. The suite opens with a vigorous Ouverture, which was played with more energy than many commercial
recordings. The Minuet was executed with charm, and the glorious faux-Baroque Gavotte was taken at an appropriately steady pace, revelling in its own frivolous gravity. The piece closed with the dreamy Pastorale, beautifully rounding off this delightful work. Despite occasional slight scratchiness in the high strings, this was a thoroughly enjoyable performance.
 
The next number was Ravel’s fairy tale suite Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose), which tonight was presented in the five-movement version for orchestra. Although a few imperfect solos occasionally detracted from the magic, this piece was otherwise well delivered. The dazzling percussion playing in the quasi-oriental third movement (Laideronette, Impératrice des pagodes) was particularly impressive. The close of the final movement (Le jardin féerique) had a hint of Disney about it as the wedding bells chimed for the Prince and Princess: an appropriate happy ending to the more naive section of the programme.
 
To close the first half, soloist Carolyn Dobbin took to the stage for the song cycle Shéhérazade. With an impressive CV it was no surprise that her performance tonight was both musically and theatrically superb.  This performance was sometimes (but not always) matched by the orchestra, which had some tuning issues in the brass section. The first poem, Asie, was sung with a wide-eyed restraint, occasionally  breaking forth into exuberant climax. There was some beautiful flute playing in La flûte enchantée, and L’indifférent was delivered with a delicious sensuousness.
 
The ‘final hurdle’, as one player described it to me in the interval, was Stravinsky’s Symphony in C, and the hurdle was well and truly cleared. The symphony started strongly, and the rhythmic levity of the opening section gave way to a breathtaking violence reminiscent of The Rite of Spring. The
contrasting peaceful and disturbed elements of the Larghetto were conveyed skilfully, at turns playful and threatening. The Scherzo was perhaps slightly more chaotic than the composer intended, but this formidable movement was tackled with characteristic vigour. The finale was exquisite as the piece built up to a tense climax and then failed to resolve, settling into a combination of C and G chords before fading away.
 
This was an impressive concert, the Oxford Sinfonia playing to a very high standard. Their next engagement is a charity come-and-sing Verdi’s Requiem on 2 February at the Sheldonian Theatre (tickets available from Tickets Oxford 01865 305305).
 
by Daniel Trott

Christopher Allen, Stephanie Illingworth and Sarah Karacs take a look at the rising waters…