There was much kerfuffle when it was announced that Valery Gergiev was to take over as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra in January 2007. But as the moment approaches when he will take up the baton formerly wielded by Colin Davis, questions are being asked about what kind of commitment Gergiev will be able to offer. This is a conductor described by the New Yorker as carrying "a disproportionate share of the music world on his shoulders." He is artistic and general director of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg; he runs the Rotterdam Philharmonic-Gergiev festival as well as the Moscow Easter festival, Finland's Mikkeli festival and the Red sea festival in Eilat; he is also principal guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and has forthcoming concert series in Europe with the Vienna Philharmonic.
The LSO promises 12 programmes a year with their new maestro, plus major international tours, but fitting Britain's premiere orchestra into Gergiev's already crowded schedule will be a triumph of aviation. He refuses to let anyone organise his time for him. When administrators want him to confirm details of concerts, they have to catch him in an interval at the opera, or snatch a brief word during the post-performance late night carousing he favours.
When he raises his hands in front of an orchestra, Gergiev shows that he's worth it. How much of that fabled energy he'll be able to bring to the Barbican is another matter.
British West Wings
You wait years for the British answer to The West Wing, then three come along at once. First was Armando Iannucci's mordant The Thick of It, and now World Productions have announced that this summer, they'll start filming Party Animals, a political This Life about two brothers in their twenties, one working for an MP, one for a lobbyist—the plot reflecting real events as they happen. And the BBC has now greenlighted a political soap: State Within, to be set in the British embassy in Washington and scripted by Dan Percival and Lizzie Mickery, the team behind 2004's what-if shocker, Dirty War.
Fictional French fraud
Prospect readers who recall Tim King's epic account of 1990s French corruption ("French Favours," January 2004), will be interested in a new movie by Claude Chabrol, L'Ivresse du pouvoir, which stars Isabelle Huppert as the campaigning magistrate Eva Joly, who nearly brought down Elf petrol and the French political elite. It's a remarkable account of a woman rooting out evil, only to wind up lonely and disillusioned. The problem with the film is that Chabrol denies it is based on fact. His protagonist is not called Joly, nor is the corrupt multinational identified as Elf. In France, real people and fiction do not mix. Let's hope L'Ivresse du pouvoir quickly gets distributed in Britain, where that's par for the course.
Dave Eggers saluted
This month's note of honour goes to US author Dave Eggers and his literary mag McSweeney's. It has pioneered a new kind of DVD magazine with the nicely ridiculous title of Wholphin, named after the fact that "whales and dolphins sometimes, you know, do it." The idea is to publish short films, documentaries and other "cinema hybrids." It's an idea, frankly, that we'd like to steal, to reinforce our short stories. There is a wealth of short British films waiting to be plundered. Sponsorship offers would be most welcome.
