Written by Peter Bingle, Chairman, Bell Pottinger Public Affairs
On Saturday evening as I drove to Worth School to collect my children from a school disco I tuned into Classic FM. Quite by chance I had the opportunity to listen to Otto Klemperer conducting Bruckner’s sublime Fourth Symphony – The Romantic. This is one of my favourite works. The symphony starts (as is often the case with Bruckner) with hushed strings and then suddenly there is a wonderful entry by the horns. Is there a more magical opening to any work?
I have listened to many recordings of this great symphony. Until Saturday evening, however, I had never heard this recording by the great man. It was so wonderful I stopped the car in order that I could hear the first movement in full. Treats like this are special. Again by chance (God was on my side on Saturday evening) I was able to listen to the last ten minutes of the final movement on the way back. I arrived home content with life and confident about my salvation. Bruckner always this effect on me.
The Classic FM presenter said that this was music that Wagner would have composed if he had been a nice man. This is an interesting point. Bruckner and Wagner were very different in every conceivable way apart from one – they were both geniuses. The eroticism of Wagner (Tristan & Isolde is often called the longest orgasm in history) and the religious certainty of Bruckner could not be more different. And yet when you listen to their magnificent music it is clear the world is a better place for having had both of them.
I wonder what music is being played in the Deputy PM’s office this morning as he reads the newspaper reports about Chris Huhne. This should have been a moment of triumph for the Energy Secretary. Against the odds (in others words he took on and beat George Osborne, Vince Cable and Philip Hammond) Chris Huhne has secured a historic climate change deal. Yet according to Ladbroke’s he is the punters’ favourite to be the next minister to resign from the government. Should the police decide to formally investigate the traffic points allegations (and a Labour MP has formally requested that they do so) it is hard to see how he can survive. Politics can be a cruel business.
I also wonder what music is being played this morning in President Sarkozy’s office. The man who is ahead of him in the polls and who well have become the next President of France is due to appear in court later today charged with sexual offences against a hotel chamber maid. Whatever happens going forward the political ambitions of Dominique Strauss-Cohn are dead in the water.
Just as cars slow down on a motorway to observe the grisly details of a car crash there is something strangely fascinating about the slow but almost inevitable demise of a political career …
The last movement of Bruckner’s fourth symphony is regarded by musicologists as one of his most difficult. For all the grandeur, flashes of genius and the most wonderful peroration it is flawed. Perhaps the same is true of Chris Huhne and Dominique Strauss-Cohn.
Is there a greater opening symphonic opening movement than in Bruckner’s fourth symphony? Will history remember Chris Huhne for the historic climate change deal or for more personal matters? What next for Dominique Strauss-Cohn?
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