Kafelnikov criticised the court, the hotel where he was staying, the ambience of Docklands, and probably advised Peggy Mitchell that the vodka in the Queen Vic would be flushed down the nearest drain in Gorky Street.Yesterday, given as little scope by the inspired Rosset as he had offered to Rusedski the previous afternoon, Kafelnikov glowered at his Swiss opponent, hit a couple of shots at Rosset’s 6ft 7in frame, and smirked across the net on the odd occasion when events went his way. Rosset responded by telling Kafelnikov “You’re just an idiot” and suggested that he “should learn some humility”.Those who yearn for the good old bad old days, when Nastase, Connors and McEnroe created heaven and hell on the court, would have beenencouraged by yesterday’s strained relations. Rossetenjoyed every moment.”I’ve played the guy 12 times and won nine of the matches, so I think he wanted to beat me badly,” he said “Sometimes the calls get tight I think it’s good for the tennis. You can be enemies on the court, but good friends outside.” Does that mean he and Kafelnikov would be dining out together? “I can’t promise.”Rosset, 29, was the only Swiss competitor to win a gold medal at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Along with the 26-year-old Kafelnikov, he is regarded as one of the less conventional characters on the ATP Tour.
He did not object to Kafelnikov’s drilling the ball at him – “It’s part of the game” – but was not impressed by his opponent’s general lack of grace.”Sometimes you can be No 1, but you have to be able to lose to somebody lower ranked.”Kafelnikov, while complimenting Rosset’s performance – he was surprised particularly by the consistency of the backhand – he bemoaned his own lack of “lucky breaks”, but added that what really frustrated him was his inability to match the display he gave in defeating Rusedski, 6-3, 7-6, a performance blemished by only seven unforced errors, four of them double-faults.Struggling to hold serve against the aggressive Rosset, Kafelnikov recovered after being broken for 1-2, but was cracked again for 3-4. Given a code violation after an audible obscenity during the opening game of the second set, the Russian whinged at every perceived misfortune. His humour did not improve when Rosset delivered three aces and a service winner to hold to love in the fourth game and then secured the decisive break for 3-4 with a forehand drive at 15-40.Kafelnikov at least did not blame the court on this occasion – “it played OK” – and his shots to Rosset’s body were tactical, he said “Marc has a long reach. I was going to his body to try to win the point.” He gave Ms Croft her interview and also promised to return next year, even if the event remains in Docklands.
“They [the organisers] know they are unacceptable conditions,” he said. “I’m sure they will do better next year.”Rosset was delighted to add to his victory in Marseilles a fortnight ago, although, in common with Kafelnikov, he did not court favour “The court here has a few bad bounces,” he said. “That seems to be natural in London, because when we play at Wimbledon it’s the same.”. “What would have happened to the Aeneid if everybody had taken Virgil at his word? He was ill and said it should be burned.
He reckoned that he still had two years’ work to put into it – but he was overridden by his Emperor.” The composer (and Independent music critic) Anthony Payne ponders the problem of uncompleted masterworks and what to do with them. “With no Aeneid, there would have been no Berlioz Les Trojans, no Purcell Dido and Aeneas. It is one of the great founding works of Western literature and I don’t really think that a creative artist has the right to put out a work, then say ‘don’t let anybody touch it.’ If that’s what he really means, then he should burn it – not leave it around like a sort of tease!”
“What would have happened to the Aeneid if everybody had taken Virgil at his word? He was ill and said it should be burned. He reckoned that he still had two years’ work to put into it – but he was overridden by his Emperor.” The composer (and Independent music critic) Anthony Payne ponders the problem of uncompleted masterworks and what to do with them. “With no Aeneid, there would have been no Berlioz Les Trojans, no Purcell Dido and Aeneas. It is one of the great founding works of Western literature and I don’t really think that a creative artist has the right to put out a work, then say ‘don’t let anybody touch it.’ If that’s what he really means, then he should burn it – not leave it around like a sort of tease!”
Payne backed his principles with action when, in the 1990s, he braved initial opposition, bit the bullet and elaborated the sketches that Elgar left for a Third Symphony into a masterwork that, within a period of just two years, has won the hearts of thousands.
Elgar, like Virgil, fretted over the prospect of leaving his work unfinished. “I want you to do something for me,” he said in 1934 to his friend and biographer Billy Reed, “the symphony [is] all bits and pieces, don’t let anyone tinker with it.” But, as Payne explains, just three days earlier the terminally ill composer had been saying that “if I can’t complete the Third Symphony, somebody will complete it – or write a better one – in fifty or five hundred years”. An extraordinary prophecy, but then Elgar was manic-depressively inclined, “a fractured soul” as Payne puts it, and subject to peaks and troughs. “When he said ‘burn it’, he was experiencing a trough,” says Payne. “Towards the very end of his life, when he had recovered from that very depressive day, he was again talking about the symphony, dropping hints about it everywhere, writing little bits of it on postcard and stuff.”The vast majority of the sketches were published in Reed’s book Elgar As I Knew Him (Gollancz, 1936), but there were others – some of them crucial to Payne’s project – that were housed in the British Library. In 1995, the Elgar family commissioned a complete version of the score, which was eventually premiered in London in February 1998.
