Six Degrees of Separation

[salymap]

I don't think you could ever just be 'part of the furniture'

Thanks Flossie - I think I need that today OFF TOPIC my new BT emails are putting all pix in Spam and some have disappeared.

[salymap]

Well, salymap, a Henry Hall fan! In my (over 200) podcasts I've played more than 70 Henry Hall 78's:

http://www.r2ok.co.uk/playlists.htm

and I wrote a short internet biography of HH some years ago, here :

http://www.jabw.demon.co.uk/hhall01.htm

Thank you so much - I've only just found this.

[Richard Tarleton]

I keep being amazed by the breadth of Liszt's acquaintance - I'm now a third of the way through volume 3 of Alan Walker's magisterial biography. Thanks to him I'm six degrees from Queen Victoria (not fussed about that ), Emperor Napoleon lll, Pope Pius lX, Ivan Turgenev, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Grieg, Saint-Saens....

[Flosshilde]

Having said that I haven't met anybody, I was reminded by today's play that I knew, or at least met, Hallam Tennyson (Beryl Hallam Augustine Tennyson) when I was a member of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality back in the 1980's. I haven't worked out who that might connect me to (apart from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, obviously), but as he worked as a radio producer & produced plays by Stoppard, Beckett and Pinter he could very well provide a link to them, and, according to his obituary in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/...ituaries.radio) he knew Ghandi well.

[Richard Tarleton]

Well there you are, Flossie - (assuming he knew his grandfather if not his great grandfather Alfred Lord T): Tennyson>Queen Vic>Mendelssohn, Liszt, every Prime Minister from Lord Melbourne onwards, Duke of Wellington, not to mention Tsar Nicholas 1, Alexander Pushkin (who met Nicholas 1)....not to mention Nicholas ll, the Kaiser.....

[Boilk]

...Thanks to him I'm six degrees from Queen Victoria (not fussed about that )...:

So only seven degrees from the Prince Regent. My condolences.

[Richard Tarleton]

So only seven degrees from the Prince Regent. My condolences.

A cultured patron of the arts, if a bit fat - one of the few Hanoverians who was not a Philistine

[Flosshilde]

Well there you are, Flossie ... Liszt,

It always arrives at Liszt, doesn't it?

[Flosshilde]

Well there you are, Flossie - (assuming he knew his grandfather if not his great grandfather Alfred Lord T): Tennyson>Queen Vic>Mendelssohn, Liszt, every Prime Minister from Lord Melbourne onwards, Duke of Wellington, not to mention Tsar Nicholas 1, Alexander Pushkin (who met Nicholas 1)....not to mention Nicholas ll, the Kaiser.....

I think just Pinter would be good enough for me

[gurnemanz]

I keep being amazed by the breadth of Liszt's acquaintance - I'm now a third of the way through volume 3 of Alan Walker's magisterial biography. Thanks to him I'm six degrees from Queen Victoria (not fussed about that ), Emperor Napoleon lll, Pope Pius lX, Ivan Turgenev, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Grieg, Saint-Saens....

Thumbs up to Alan Walker on Liszt. We saw Mayerling at the ROH on Saturday. A great evening with John Lanchbery's fascinating arrangement of Liszt as ballet music and by no means all well-known bits. I found a checklist here, including, unusally for a ballet, a song ("Leb wohl! ich scheide") sung on stage to piano accompaniment.

My links to famous musicians are rather few and rather obscure. I once chatted to Eberhard Wächter's daughter at a party in Cologne. I taught English to The Thomasorganist (Bach's successor) in the vestry at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. I got a lift from the clarinettist Gervase de Peyer from Golders Green to Central London. I also did a dodgy currency exchange in East Germany with composer, Graham Whettam

[Richard Tarleton]

It always arrives at Liszt, doesn't it?

Well it's partly because I'm reading his enthralling biography, but - to quote Alan Walker - his three volume biography

arose from a conviction, based on many years of study of the man and his music, together with a close investigation of the literature, that Liszt was the central figure of the Romantic century (Berlioz and Wagner notwithstanding).....

[clive heath]

So I was wondering if I could get to Miles Davis and I think I can in 2. It works like this. In the mid-60s a group in which I was the pianist "toured" a two venue trip taking in the Reading Summer Arts Festival and my old school, Dauntsey's, then still all boys. The group was Ken Gibson (tmpt. composer, later Dankworth house arranger), Dave Cain (bass, later BBC drama and Radiophonic Workshop), John Iveson (tmb, later principal trombone BBC Symphony Orchestra), George Khan (sax,flute) ( at least I think it was he, otherwise it was Olaf Vas), Brian Spring ( drums, later Stan Tracey's drummer). The latter, as the drummer in Ronnie Scott's house band, accompanied visiting musicians including George Coleman and that's the link!!! After the Reading gig the group moved to my parent's house in Cherhill for the overnight stay. The back of the house has a yard with three sides of outhouses adjacent completing a rectangle. Next morning Brian set up his drumkit in the middle of this space and proceeded to woodshed for a good hour which is a sight I will treasure.

[salymap]

A pianist friend of mine studied with Cyril Smith, who studied with Rachmaninov. A link I think.

This is very addictive

[Richard Tarleton]

A pianist friend of mine studied with Cyril Smith, who studied with Rachmaninov. A link I think.

This is very addictive

Yes, saly, that's Beethoven in 6 for you (Rach>Tchaik>Liszt>Beethoven)

I saw Cyril Smith and Phyllis Sellick play at St Edwards Oxford in the late 1960s. He hooked his walking stick over the end of the piano.

[salymap]

Yes, saly, that's Beethoven in 6 for you (Rach>Tchaik>Liszt>Beethoven)

I saw Cyril Smith and Phyllis Sellick play at St Edwards Oxford in the late 1960s. He hooked his walking stick over the end of the piano.

Yes, off topic, but I remember Cyril before that British Council trip.A rehearsal at the RCM with Sargent, LSO and Pyllis and Cyril. St Saens Carnivalof the animals, Phyllis seated at one piano, Cyril suddenly rushed up the hall and jumped over the low rail round the platform. He seemed so young and full of life Butstill he kept going, a lovely couple.