Four Poems by Neil Fulwood

 

BEECHAM

 

Cough-nudge-wink. There’s always

a scintillating bit of gossip, be it

Covent Garden contract shenanigans

or high society folies à deux,

shade thrown on the great and the good

or what he said that incensed Seattle.

 

Weigh that against the litany

of orchestras conducted, countries

visited, a jet-setting lifestyle 

before the jet-set even existed.

A maestro of international means: 

a man of the future. Not to be sniffed at!

 

 

 

REINER

 

For all that he can reduce the sound

of an orchestra to a held breath

or drive it to thunderous denouement

 

the movement of the baton is millimetric.

 

For all that his image on album covers

is an exercise in the suppression 

of personality, a blanking out of distraction

 

he is the face of wrath to errant players.

 

He is a rod-of-iron tyrant

answerable only to the score.

 

 

 

JOCHUM

 

His Bruckner is a symphony cycle

for the ages: a definitive statement

on the sacred, the all-too-human

and the terrifying void-like spaces

 

in between; a treatise on faith

and darkness and the interstices

of the deeply felt and the seldom 

admitted; a masterclass in agony

 

and transcendence; an edifice

set in visceral contrast against 

these earthly ruins: a cathedral 

incandescent with the fear of God.

 

 

 

HARNONCOURT

 

It is in his blood: the music,

the history, the nobility

 

hardwired by decades, 

centuries, heritage.

 

He has re-evaluated scores,

unafraid to be abrasive

 

resolutely done his own thing

in absolute service of the work.

 

At the close of his career

the Missa Solemnis stands,

 

colossal, a testament.

Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, England, where he still lives and works. He has three collections out with Shoestring Press: No Avoiding It, Can’t Take Me Anywhere and Service Cancelled, with a fourth scheduled for publication next year.

These poems are drawn from a longer sequence p-in-progress under the provisional title The Great Conductors. Each poem in the sequence seeks to distil the essence of one of the great maestri, either by capturing their personality or focusing on a formative moment in their life or career. Neil Fulwood.