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Twin Spirits - Sting and Trudie Styler
See below for Twin Spirits DVD special offer
Mark Ellen is charmed by the latest offering from the ever-versatile Sting – a DVD that tells the tale of a 19th century romance
Do you remember that moment at the end of The Mike Yarwood Show? Having trotted out his cast of characters – Eddie Waring, Frank Spencer, Robin Day, Ted Heath – he'd wink at the camera, announce "And this is me!" and burst into some breezy old showtune like You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby.
It made the point: I'm an impressionist and everything I do is an act, but there's a real person under there – with hidden depths and talents.
It's much the same with Gordon Sumner. For eight years this highly-educated former teacher and jazz musician, nicknamed Sting, was the leader of The Police. The more hits they racked up – Message In A Bottle, Every Breath You Take – the more he had to keep the winning formula tight and commercial. Their albums might include the odd indulgence, but the band's trademark was polished pop singles finely tuned for the international market. Yet even the early hits hinted at a greater intellect straining at the leash. Roxanne was inspired by Cyrano De Bergerac. Don't Stand So Close To Me mentioned the writings of Vladimir Nabokov.
Sting disbanded The Police in 1985 and, summoned to an interview, I entered a dimly-lit Parisian theatre to discover him weaving his way through long and finger-knotting new compositions with a group of jazz musicians – the message was loud and clear.
Among the rich and resonant songs about the Cold War and the miners' strike there was even a mournful operatic theme lifted straight out of Prokofiev.
The hidden depths came thick and fast. In the 25 solo years of his career he's explored jazz, recorded with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, released echoes of traditional folk like Fields Of Gold and Elizabethan lute music. His lyrics are full of echoes of Chaucer and Shakespeare and he appeared in plays in the Eighties, among them Dennis Potter's Brimstone And Treacle and Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale.
Which brings us to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden on an autumn evening where his latest project is about to unveiled, Twin Spirits, the DVD of a concert performance of the love affair between the composer Robert Schumann and the piano prodigy Clara Wieck. The couple's letters are read on stage by the 58-year-old Sting and his actress wife Trudie Styler, interspersed with Schumann's music sung and played by a chamber orchestra. It's beautifully filmed and crackles with mid-19th century hope and heartbreak.
There's a champagne reception after, and it's extraordinary to meet a pop musician with an interest in such a variety of words and music. Did he find it frustrating when he had to restrict himself to three-minute pop singles?
“Well, that particular discipline doesn't need everything else to inform those three minutes. I mean Shakespeare wrote some pretty good three-minute pop songs! Art thrives on limitations and restrictions. Your job is to make it as fresh and exciting as possible. Pop music has no rules or constraints. As soon as you start making rules, the form dies."
Does it get easier as you get older? Once you've had some success, you must feel more relaxed about going off at tangents.
"Well, yes and no. I can do exactly what I want, but my children write songs in their twenties and they have that confidence to go with the first idea they get, whereas I get paralysed with self-judgment. So it doesn't get easier as such, but I do what I can get away with. I've got another record out this Christmas about winter, If On A Winter's Night – sacred songs, secular songs, folk, classical, some songs of mine. I work hard to exist in a legacy that's older than rock 'n' roll."
Twin Spirits DVD - special offer
Saga readers can benefit from a special discount deal on the DVD of 'Twin Spirits' - 25% off the recommmended retail price (taking the price down from £19.99 to £14.99). This offer runs until December 1, 2009.
Readers should phone 01332 540240 and quote "SAGA OFFER" to receive the 25% discount.
