Showing posts with label Arvo Pärt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arvo Pärt. Show all posts

Friday 5 February 2016

At Lunch 2 : Arrangements, augmentations, and other versions [Edited Ligeti version]

This is a review of Britten Sinfonia in At Lunch 2 on 19 January 2016

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


20 January


This is a review of At Lunch 2, given by Britten Sinfonia at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Tuesday 19 January 2016 at 1.00 p.m.


NB This is the edited version, now that the review is complete (whereas the full version can be found here

Britten Sinfonia’s (@BrittenSinfonia’s) programme for At Lunch 2, heard at West Road Concert Hall (@WestRoadCH), mixed the eighteenth century (with three arias from cantatas by Bach, and two re-workings of ones by Alessandro Scarlatti¹) with the twentieth (Ligeti and Pärt) and a new commission (Anna Clyne) – one theme being arrangements and other versions, and with the concert’s own running-order altered and augmented (the original place in the order, if different, in shown in parenthesis) :


1 (4) Aria Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not [with its preceding Sinfonia] ~ Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)

2 Due arie notturne dal campo ~ Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725*) arranged by Salvatore Sciarrino (1947–)

3 Fratres (version for string quartet) ~ Arvo Pärt (1935–)

4 (1) Aria Gott versorget alles Leben ~ Bach

5 Continuum ~ György Ligeti (1923–2006)

6 (7) Aria Tief gebückt und voller Reue ~ Bach

7 (6) This Lunar Beauty ~ Anna Clyne (1980–)



* * * * *


Dating from Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis (BWV 21), a Cantata written by Bach in Weimar (in 1714), the aria that we heard, (1) Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not, was a good opening choice : its accompanying Sinfonia introduced Marios Argiros to us on obbligato oboe, and, as we listened to the aria, the plangent tone of that instrument, beloved of Bach’s later sacred works², was weaving in and out of the texture (as, also, Jacqueline Shave on first violin).

When soprano Julia Doyle made her entry, leaning into the monosyllables of this short text (e.g., in the first two lines, Not, Furcht, and Tod (respectively ‘need’ (or, in that sense, ‘want’), ‘fear’, and ‘death’)), it was with an uncluttered vocal-style. Around all this, giving a stately, steady feel, was Maggie Cole’s harpsichord continuo (and also from Caroline Dearnley on cello, adding weight to the ensemble). As Jo Kirkbride’s programme-notes comment, regarding the last Bach aria in the hour-long sequence, the accompanying instruments ‘suggest a level of torment beneath the calm surface’, so here there were suspensions and mini-cadenzas that punctuated the vocal line.

It is with the initial words, in reference to which the aria borrows its title, that Bach is most concerned, and to which he will have us return : after a moment of attack on Schmerz (‘pain’), the final word in the four-line text, Doyle had to go very high, in re-visiting the opening line, and we ended, as we began, with oboe, and a very definite close.


In Alessandro Scarlatti’s (2) Due arie notturne dal campo (as arranged by Salvatore Sciarrino), possibly pre-dating the Bach work*, Doyle brought out warmer, stronger tone-colours, better suited to Italian than to German.



The setting was built around accents and a falling scale (other works in the programme were to do the latter), and each half-line of Dove sta / la mia pace was repeated for emphasis. We could see, as well as hear, string-effects being passed from viola (Clare Finnimore) to cello (Caroline Dearnley), and, at the last line of the text, we doubled back for a da capo finish.

The second, shorter, aria fitted a lighter tone, and Doyle’s ornamentation was bright and easy, as exemplified by the portamento on the significant word curo in the first line : Non ti curo, o libertà. On cello, Caroline Dearnley’s playing was vibrant, and (on viola) Clare Finnimore could be heard bringing out the resonance.


Lamentably, the review of The Sinfonia at Saffron Hall (@SaffronHall) [with Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho (1960), played with a simultaneous screening] is still not finished (and is unmanageably overlong already). However, it says what was as true of hearing Arvo Pärt’s version of (3) Fratres (1977) for string quartet (from 1985) : watching performers as they play can bring out what one might otherwise overlook [but please see 5, below], or take for granted, by not being conscious of what they are doing - here, the initial two clusters of pizzicato gestures on the cello, which act as a sort of punctuation before each of nine variations, but by no means invariantly (please see below).



Here, those opening gestures led in a disembodied, echoing tone (also described above), and seeing Dearnley’s spread hand for playing harmonics helped one hear the sounds that she was producing. In the programme-notes, which are the link to (2) the Scarlatti / Sciarrino, it is observed that Pärt ‘employs just a simple scale’ [in Italian, the word just means ladder], and he also had Miranda Dale (second violin) much occupied with a continuous note, to act as a drone - virtually the polar opposite of the plucked, and so almost necessarily brief, notes on the cello ?

Not that Pärt intends to hypnotize us, or the string-players, but it proves harder than one might imagine to keep track of the variations, at important points in each of which (by no means to stay out from under the piece’s influence) the performers ensured that they were together by nods. By around the fifth section, which now sounded uncannily like Russian Orthodox chant, the feeling had become far less aetherial, and spoke rather of richness, with the succeeding pizzicato notes on cello being notably different in tone (all of which, somehow, is presumably indicated by notation ?).

The next section added even greater resonance, and it and what followed much more resembled a conventional string-sound, before a variation that was again contemplative – with a slight diminuendo, and a more quiet cello pizzicato. Now, right at the end of the work, the section that followed was softer, and with Pärt achieving a very striking spiritual effect on us, through a little rallentando, which then combined with a diminuendo. In the final pizzicato, one could see Caroline Dearnley’s other hand, holding the string (to shorten the duration of the note, one assumed).


For the second Bach aria (originally to have been the first number in the hour-long concert), (4) Gott versorget alles Leben [from the Cantata Es wartet alles auf dich (BWV 187)], the date of composition (1726) is twelve years later (and in the period of works by Bach already referred to²), but what links it is the beautiful writing for obbligato oboe, which leads into that for voice.

To this setting of a longer passage of verse, accompanied this time just by harpsichord, oboe and cello³, Julia Doyle gave, in her delivery, both clear vocal-tone, and a quality of ‘reaching out’ from - and with - the given text, which made the change in mood at the mid-point, as well as feeling natural, touch us with the sentiment Worries, be gone !, as from the words of another person.


(5) Continuum (1968), a piece for solo dual-manual harpichord by György Ligeti, was next, and some of us had sampled it beforehand via the link Tweeted by Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) :


Much more detail than given here can be found in the full version

As Richard Steinitz tells in his book György Ligeti : Music of the Imagination⁴, Ligeti’s work, one of thirty-eight commissioned by Antoinette Vischer, has become the most famous (others had been written by, for example, Cage, Berio and Henze). Continuum was based on Goffried Michael Koenig's discoveries in the electronic studio in Cologne (where he became Ligeti’s mentor), specifically having found a rate at (and above) which a succession of pitches coalesces as chords, and the pitches are then not distinguishable as a line of melody : Steinitz says that, when a human performer plays the piece, each hand (one on each manual) depresses 16-17 keys per second⁵.

It was soon apparent – when principal harpsichordist Maggie Cole started playing – that concentrating on watching the performance was counter-productive, and that it was better to have one’s attention, not on the instant moment, but rather on absorbing the overall patterns and impressions. After the event, what Steinitz had written was confirmatory, in describing how rhythm operates on three levels, the first of which he characterizes as the incessant ‘clatter’ of the foreground pulses), beyond which the second is the rate at which patterns repeat in the piece, and the third that at which the choice of pitch changes.

Listening with a relaxation of active awareness led to making this comment later : Perhaps the piece exists, in this way, in the cycles between and within the cycles : not quite as with a work by Steve Reich, with whose approach one hears different things and in a different way, but as with other works by Ligeti. Whatever others were hearing, and how they chose to listen and what to watch, one necessarily did not know, but the conclusion of the piece brought Maggie Cole a tremendously appreciative round of applause, which saw her return for a further bow.


After the intensity of the Ligeti, and with the reversal that had been announced of the order of the final two vocal pieces, we next heard the third Bach aria, before the new commission by Anna Clyne (at the mid-point of a world-premiere tour).

(6) Tief gebückt und voller Reue [from the Cantata Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut (BWV 199)], again, as with the first aria in the revised order (Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not), from 1714, seemed reminiscent of the sound-world of The Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046–1051), especially - as explained in the next paragraph - No. 3 (in G Major) : as is well known, the six instrumental works are so called, because, in 1721 (although they are thought to have been composed earlier), they were presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt.


The opening bar of BWV 1048 (as we might call it), which the Sinfonia will be bringing to Saffron Hall in a concert on 15 May, contains just two semi-quavers (as one can see above). They, with the first note of the next bar (a quaver), form a rhythmic and tonal three-note motif (and then, further down the treble stave, it immediately repeats, for the first of numerous times – taking it next up the stave once more, and then down). Although the aria also has, as an obvious feature to the cello part, such a semi-tone ‘dip and back’, it does not have the Concerto’s insistence, albeit a gentle one – as of links in a chain, and making for a higher level of patterning [not wholly dissimilar, dare one say, to the effect of the various levels, as Steinitz calls them (please see above), of rhythmicity that one could discern within Continuum ?].


To how this five-line text had been set, and the honest metaphysics of its words, the Sinfonia instrumentalists assisted Julia Doyle in bringing poise of vocal expression, so that (in the third line) Ich bekenne meine Schuld then balanced against both of the lines that followed (in fact, all of them against each other) : Aber habe doch Geduld / Habe doch Geduld mit mir !. Here, catching Bach’s intention, there was a feint of simply finishing there, with a soft ending, till our hearing a ritornello signalled beginning da capo, and then closing, so that we were plunged back into the words after which it is titled, Tief gebückt und voller Reue.

These three arias, and the company that they kept, worked very well together - as did our soprano and her fellow musicians !


Concluding the hour of music with (7) Anna Clyne’s This Lunar Beauty (2015), setting W. H. Auden’s poem of that name [the text is here], must have been the right thing to do with the programme, and Anna Clyne is not a stranger to having works appearing in Sinfonia concerts. (She can be heard here, in a pre-concert talk with The University of Cambridge’s Kate Kennedy (@DrKKenney), from the final At Lunch 2 concert, at The Wigmore Hall (@wigmore_hall), on the following day.)

The composition felt to have a Scottish ring to it at times, e.g. with the use of a drone on the viola, but also more generally, in its landscape (which perhaps fits with what Clyne says, in that talk, about having studied music at university in Scotland), and it seemed Nymanesque in a vague way (not inconsistently with using a high soprano voice towards the end). We started with oboe, which had been a linking element in these pieces, then Marios Argiros was joined by Clare Finnimore (viola), and next the two violinists, until all were playing.

One can think of works from the Classical period that did likewise, but, in the last hundred years, it has often enough been a feature in neoclassical and modernist works, too : one purpose that it served was to draw attention to the various instruments (for, whilst we cannot be unaware of Bach’s use of obbligato oboe, the role of the cello or harpsichord is much less prominent, and more subtly part of the voice’s accompaniment). Again (hardly for the first time), Clyne makes the soprano seem more part of the ensemble’s range of voices, which we hear from at various times, such as harpsichord figurations with cello and violin.

Except for the Ligeti [for quite other reasons, already very sufficiently given above], This Lunar Beauty was unlike everything else on the programme, and, on a first hearing, a feat to try to take in - not least because of its unfamiliar text, which (despite its simple appearance) is both densely poetical as well as outright difficult to construe in places, even with later quiet reflection (for example, the second half of the second stanza : the text is here). Amidst a lively part for oboe, which at times was up and down scales / parts of them (which is where Michael Nyman somehow first seemed present ?), or elements of pounding from the harpsichord, and definite in their company, the unhurried, tranquil voice (as of The Moon ?) of Julia Doyle, complete with impressively leaping into the higher register before, with some bending of notes, the work came to close.




End-notes

¹ The dates for Scarlatti (2 May 1660 to 22 October 1725) are wrongly given in the programme as 1685–1757 : the latter are those of Aleesandro Scarlatti's son Domenico (now much more famous ?).

² E.g., towards the end of Part I, in the aria for tenor with Chorus Ich will bein meinem Jesu wachen, in the St Matthew Passion (original version 1727) (BWV 244). (Or the Quia respexit from the Magnificat in D Major (from 1733, after the version (from 1723) in E Flat Major) (BWV 243).)

³ In the continuo, one could hear how Bach gave the oboe part shorter note-values than for harpsichord and cello.

⁴ Faber & Faber, London (2003), pp. 164-166.

⁵ The video of which the Sinfonia Tweeted a link (please see above) shows the progress of a piano-roll alongside a recording that runs to around 3:47 (said to be played by Antoinette Vischer herself - please see above). At the end of his chapter, Steinitz talks about an adaptation for barrel-organ, which, in recorded performance [in the Ligeti edition] takes just 3:22 (op. cit., p. 166).

This is faster than Maggie Cole could have played Continuum, and so the duration for the piece when heard with the video is intermediate between her playing and the version for barrel-organ. Describing that version, Steinitz says that the headlong tempo has two effects, both of creating a splendid ‘coalescing’, whilst the shifting patterns of second-level rhythm are actually clearer : might even the recording from a piano-roll, if heard first, have tended to put Cole at a disadvantage by giving these effects, but to a lesser extent ?




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Wednesday 20 January 2016

At Lunch 2 : Arrangements, augmentations, and other versions [Full Ligeti version]

This is a review of Britten Sinfonia in At Lunch 2 on 19 January 2016

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


20 January


This is a review of At Lunch 2, given by Britten Sinfonia at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Tuesday 19 January 2016 at 1.00 p.m.


NB This is the original version, but, now that the review is complete, there is an edited one

Britten Sinfonia’s (@BrittenSinfonia’s) programme for At Lunch 2, heard at West Road Concert Hall (@WestRoadCH), mixed the eighteenth century (with three arias from cantatas by Bach, and two re-workings of ones by Alessandro Scarlatti¹) with the twentieth (Ligeti and Pärt) and a new commission (Anna Clyne) – one theme being arrangements and other versions, and with the concert’s own running-order altered and augmented (the original place in the order, if different, in shown in parenthesis) :


1 (4) Aria Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not [with its preceding Sinfonia] ~ Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)

2 Due arie notturne dal campo ~ Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725*) arranged by Salvatore Sciarrino (1947–)

3 Fratres (version for string quartet) ~ Arvo Pärt (1935–)

4 (1) Aria Gott versorget alles Leben ~ Bach

5 Continuum ~ György Ligeti (1923–2006)

6 (7) Aria Tief gebückt und voller Reue ~ Bach

7 (6) This Lunar Beauty ~ Anna Clyne (1980–)



* * * * *


Dating from Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis (BWV 21), a Cantata written by Bach in Weimar (in 1714), the aria that we heard, (1) Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not, was a good opening choice : its accompanying Sinfonia introduced Marios Argiros to us on obbligato oboe, and, as we listened to the aria, the plangent tone of that instrument, beloved of Bach’s later sacred works², was weaving in and out of the texture (as, also, Jacqueline Shave on first violin).

When soprano Julia Doyle made her entry, leaning into the monosyllables of this short text (e.g., in the first two lines, Not, Furcht, and Tod (respectively ‘need’ (or, in that sense, ‘want’), ‘fear’, and ‘death’)), it was with an uncluttered vocal-style. Around all this, giving a stately, steady feel, was Maggie Cole’s harpsichord continuo (and also from Caroline Dearnley on cello, adding weight to the ensemble). As Jo Kirkbride’s programme-notes comment, regarding the last Bach aria in the hour-long sequence, the accompanying instruments ‘suggest a level of torment beneath the calm surface’, so here there were suspensions and mini-cadenzas that punctuated the vocal line.

It is with the initial words, in reference to which the aria borrows its title, that Bach is most concerned, and to which he will have us return : after a moment of attack on Schmerz (‘pain’), the final word in the four-line text, Doyle had to go very high, in re-visiting the opening line, and we ended, as we began, with oboe, and a very definite close.


In Alessandro Scarlatti’s (2) Due arie notturne dal campo (as arranged by Salvatore Sciarrino), possibly pre-dating the Bach work*, Doyle brought out warmer, stronger tone-colours, better suited to Italian than to German.



The setting was built around accents and a falling scale (other works in the programme were to do the latter), and each half-line of Dove sta / la mia pace was repeated for emphasis. We could see, as well as hear, string-effects being passed from viola (Clare Finnimore) to cello (Caroline Dearnley), and, at the last line of the text, we doubled back for a da capo finish.

The second, shorter, aria fitted a lighter tone, and Doyle’s ornamentation was bright and easy, as exemplified by the portamento on the significant word curo in the first line : Non ti curo, o libertà. On cello, Caroline Dearnley’s playing was vibrant, and (on viola) Clare Finnimore could be heard bringing out the resonance.


Lamentably, the review of The Sinfonia at Saffron Hall (@SaffronHall) [with Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho (1960), played with a simultaneous screening] is still not finished (and is unmanageably overlong already). However, it says what was as true of hearing Arvo Pärt’s version of (3) Fratres (1977) for string quartet (from 1985) : watching performers as they play can bring out what one might otherwise overlook [but please see 5, below], or take for granted, by not being conscious of what they are doing - here, the initial two clusters of pizzicato gestures on the cello, which act as a sort of punctuation before each of nine variations, but by no means invariantly (please see below).



Here, those opening gestures led in a disembodied, echoing tone (also described above), and seeing Dearnley’s spread hand for playing harmonics helped one hear the sounds that she was producing. In the programme-notes, which are the link to (2) the Scarlatti / Sciarrino, it is observed that Pärt ‘employs just a simple scale’ [in Italian, the word just means ladder], and he also had Miranda Dale (second violin) much occupied with a continuous note, to act as a drone - virtually the polar opposite of the plucked, and so almost necessarily brief, notes on the cello ?

Not that Pärt intends to hypnotize us, or the string-players, but it proves harder than one might imagine to keep track of the variations, at important points in each of which (by no means to stay out from under the piece’s influence) the performers ensured that they were together by nods. By around the fifth section, which now sounded uncannily like Russian Orthodox chant, the feeling had become far less aetherial, and spoke rather of richness, with the succeeding pizzicato notes on cello being notably different in tone (all of which, somehow, is presumably indicated by notation ?).

The next section added even greater resonance, and it and what followed much more resembled a conventional string-sound, before a variation that was again contemplative – with a slight diminuendo, and a more quiet cello pizzicato. Now, right at the end of the work, the section that followed was softer, and with Pärt achieving a very striking spiritual effect on us, through a little rallentando, which then combined with a diminuendo. In the final pizzicato, one could see Caroline Dearnley’s other hand, holding the string (to shorten the duration of the note, one assumed).


For the second Bach aria (originally to have been the first number in the hour-long concert), (4) Gott versorget alles Leben [from the Cantata Es wartet alles auf dich (BWV 187)], the date of composition (1726) is twelve years later (and in the period of works by Bach already referred to²), but what links it is the beautiful writing for obbligato oboe, which leads into that for voice.

To this setting of a longer passage of verse, accompanied this time just by harpsichord, oboe and cello³, Julia Doyle gave, in her delivery, both clear vocal-tone, and a quality of ‘reaching out’ from - and with - the given text, which made the change in mood at the mid-point, as well as feeling natural, touch us with the sentiment Worries, be gone !, as from the words of another person.


After the concert, someone remarked to the effect that (5) Continuum (1968) was the first piece by Ligeti that she had liked : not only is that comment, in retrospect, actually ambiguous, but there was not time to enquire what others of his compositions she had heard. Besides which, Ligeti was such a varied composer that it might be anything (with works, say, ranging from his Chamber Concerto (1969–1970) (with its important part for harpsichord) to Aventures (1962) and Nouvelles Aventures (1962–1965)). However, this still seemed surprising to learn, possibly because not everyone would have welcomed this aural experience on, as one maybe wrongly gathered (please see above), the first occasion…

If this level of detail is too much (it continues), there is now an edited version, which shortens the time taken on this piece



It had been noticed, earlier on, that the harpsichord had been set up with a microphone above the strings, and what looked like a feedback monitor, underneath it, and pointing towards the strings upstage of it : one knew too little about Continuum (beyond having reminded oneself of it via the link in the above Tweet) to know what, if anything, this might signify in relation to a live performance.

What did quickly become apparent, though, was that – when principal harpsichordist Maggie Cole had started playing – one least wanted to be aware, beyond the sound, of what was happening on stage (or in the auditorium as a whole) : for it appeared that one could only give listening one’s best by, with one’s gaze directed upwards, actually least trying to concentrate on it. Not wishing to labour what might resemble some Zen paradox, but Less can be more [as in a Sinfonia concert, at Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW), with, first, Frank Zappa's The Perfect Stranger] : to have one’s attention not on the instant moment, and rather on absorbing the overall patterns and impressions (from which it felt that the mechanical aspects, revealed visually, served too much as a distraction).


In a book published not long before Ligeti's death, Richard Steinitz (in the couple of pages devoted to Continuum (1968)⁴) starts by telling how it was one of thirty-eight pieces that were commissioned by Antoinette Vischer for her instrument (which, over time, seems to have eclipsed those by the likes of Cage, Berio and Henze), and that it was written for the sturdy ‘modern’ two-manual harpsichord with 16’, 8’ and 4’ stops (specifically not the type since used in period performance). In summary, Steinitz says that, at the correct tempo for the piece, each hand (one on each manual) depresses 16-17 keys per second⁵, and that its genesis was in Goffried Michael Koenig's discoveries in the electronic studio in Cologne : he became Ligeti's mentor (and Ligeti assisted with his electronic work Essay (1957-1958)). The new understanding from which Continuum derived was having found a rate at (and above) which a succession of pitches coalesces as chords, and the pitches are then not distinguishable as a line of melody.

Steinitz then goes on to describe, in general terms (and before talking about the harmonic progressions, and how and in what way they operate), how rhythm operates on three levels (the first being what he characterizes as the incessant ‘clatter’ of the foreground pulses) – it was precisely by being open to the music, and letting it come through (without, as described above, trying to focus overly on it), that what Steinitz analyses in two further paragraphs (which are well worth reading, in context⁶) was audible at the two levels beyond that of 'clatter', one (the second) being the rate at which patterns repeat in the piece, and the other (the third) that at which the choice of pitch changes. (These brief comments had been written after the concert, but before consulting Steinitz's book : Perhaps the piece exists, in this way, in the cycles between and within the cycles : not quite as with a work by Steve Reich, with whose approach one hears different things and in a different way, but as with other works by Ligeti.)


In preparation for hearing Continuum some other time, then, it might be best to practise (or remember, at any rate, to exercise) that relaxation of active awareness, and also to leave reacquaintance with the work until the event. This is on the basis that one can have Too much of a good thing, whereas the less-concentrated, but no less powerful, effects of Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto [including the use of harpsichord in the third and fourth movements, marked, respectively, Movimento preciso e maccanico and Presto] make it more susceptible to repeated listening : in tribute to Pierre Boulez (26 March 1925 to 5 January 2016), the link is to his recording with The Ensemble Intercontemporain.

Whatever others were hearing, and how they chose to listen and what to watch, one necessarily did not know, but the conclusion of the piece brought Maggie Cole a tremendously appreciative round of applause, which saw her return for a further bow.


Finally, after the inordinate amount of space taken on a piece that lasted four minutes… With the reversal that had been announced of the order of the final two vocal pieces, we heard the third Bach aria, before the new commission by Anna Clyne (at the mid-point of a world-premiere tour).

(6) Tief gebückt und voller Reue [from the Cantata Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut (BWV 199)], again, as with the first aria in the revised order (Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not), from 1714, seemed reminiscent of the sound-world of The Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046–1051), especially - as explained in the next paragraph - No. 3 (in G Major) : as is well known, the six instrumental works are so called, because, in 1721 (although they are thought to have been composed earlier), they were presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt.


The opening bar of BWV 1048 (as we might call it), which the Sinfonia will be bringing to Saffron Hall in a concert on 15 May, contains just two semi-quavers (as one can see above). They, with the first note of the next bar (a quaver), form a rhythmic and tonal three-note motif (and then, further down the treble stave, it immediately repeats, for the first of numerous times – taking it next up the stave once more, and then down). Although the aria also has, as an obvious feature to the cello part, such a semi-tone ‘dip and back’, it does not have the Concerto’s insistence, albeit a gentle one – as of links in a chain, and making for a higher level of patterning [not wholly dissimilar, dare one say, to the effect of the various levels, as Steinitz calls them (please see above), of rhythmicity that one could discern within Continuum ?].


To how this five-line text had been set, and the honest metaphysics of its words, the Sinfonia instrumentalists assisted Julia Doyle in bringing poise of vocal expression, so that (in the third line) Ich bekenne meine Schuld then balanced against both of the lines that followed (in fact, all of them against each other) : Aber habe doch Geduld / Habe doch Geduld mit mir !. Here, catching Bach’s intention, there was a feint of simply finishing there, with a soft ending, till our hearing a ritornello signalled beginning da capo, and then closing, so that we were plunged back into the words after which it is titled, Tief gebückt und voller Reue.

These three arias, and the company that they kept, worked very well together - as did our soprano and her fellow musicians !


Concluding the hour of music with (7) Anna Clyne’s This Lunar Beauty (2015), setting W. H. Auden’s poem of that name [the text is here], must have been the right thing to do with the programme, and Anna Clyne is not a stranger to having works appearing in Sinfonia concerts. (She can be heard here, in a pre-concert talk with The University of Cambridge’s Kate Kennedy (@DrKKenney), from the final At Lunch 2 concert, at The Wigmore Hall (@wigmore_hall), on the following day.)

The composition felt to have a Scottish ring to it at times, e.g. with the use of a drone on the viola, but also more generally, in its landscape (which perhaps fits with what Clyne says, in that talk, about having studied music at university in Scotland), and it seemed Nymanesque in a vague way (not inconsistently with using a high soprano voice towards the end). We started with oboe, which had been a linking element in these pieces, then Marios Argiros was joined by Clare Finnimore (viola), and next the two violinists, until all were playing.

One can think of works from the Classical period that did likewise, but, in the last hundred years, it has often enough been a feature in neoclassical and modernist works, too : one purpose that it served was to draw attention to the various instruments (for, whilst we cannot be unaware of Bach’s use of obbligato oboe, the role of the cello or harpsichord is much less prominent, and more subtly part of the voice’s accompaniment). Again (hardly for the first time), Clyne makes the soprano seem more part of the ensemble’s range of voices, which we hear from at various times, such as harpsichord figurations with cello and violin.

Except for the Ligeti [for quite other reasons, already very sufficiently given above], This Lunar Beauty was unlike everything else on the programme, and, on a first hearing, a feat to try to take in - not least because of its unfamiliar text, which (despite its simple appearance) is both densely poetical as well as outright difficult to construe in places, even with later quiet reflection (for example, the second half of the second stanza : the text is here). Amidst a lively part for oboe, which at times was up and down scales / parts of them (which is where Michael Nyman somehow first seemed present ?), or elements of pounding from the harpsichord, and definite in their company, the unhurried, tranquil voice (as of The Moon ?) of Julia Doyle, complete with impressively leaping into the higher register before, with some bending of notes, the work came to close.




End-notes

¹ The dates for Scarlatti (2 May 1660 to 22 October 1725) are wrongly given in the programme as 1685–1757 : the latter are those of Aleesandro Scarlatti's son Domenico (now much more famous ?).

² E.g., towards the end of Part I, in the aria for tenor with Chorus Ich will bein meinem Jesu wachen, in the St Matthew Passion (original version 1727) (BWV 244). (Or the Quia respexit from the Magnificat in D Major (from 1733, after the version (from 1723) in E Flat Major) (BWV 243).)

³ In the continuo, one could hear how Bach gave the oboe part shorter note-values than for harpsichord and cello.

⁴ Faber & Faber, London (2003). György Ligeti : Music of the Imagination, pp. 164-166.

⁵ The video of Continuum on YouTube (@YouTube) [where it is called Continuum für Cembalo], to which Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) linked in its Tweet (above, after the introductory paragraph on Continuum), and which simultaneously shows the progress of a piano-roll across the screen, is three minutes and fifty-two seconds, but the actual recording runs to around 3:47 (and is credited as being played by Antoinette Vischer herself – for whom it was written, please see above).

In the last paragraph of his chapter (op. cit., p. 166)), Steinitz talks about Pierre Charial’s adaptation of the piece for barrel-organ (from 1988). According to him, its recorded performance [in the 1997 Ligeti edition] takes just 3:22 (which is faster than Maggie Cole could possibly have played it), because of ‘the superhuman speed with which it can read the perforated rolls’ : the duration for the piece as heard on YouTube, then, is intermediate between that for the version for barrel-organ and what was likely when Cole played it (Steinitz says that four minutes [are] allowed for human players).

In a quicker performance (he is referring to Charial’s mechanical adaptation, but the same would tend to be true when heard played, not in around 4 minutes, but on YouTube in 3:42), Steinitz describes two effects (which would, for those who had heard the recording, have put Cole at a relative disadvantage) in his concluding sentence : The headlong tempo creates a splendid ‘coalescing’, whilst the shifting patterns of second-level rhythm are actually clearer.


⁶ One does have a slight hesitation, though, if one carefully reads what Steinitz writes to describe, in percentage terms, what happens to the slowing in the rate at which notes repeat when the score has the player move from alternating between a pair of notes to repetitively playing them (or other notes ?) with a third note. For he writes (ibid., p. 165), When the opening two-note ostinato of G and B flat acquires an additional F, the rate of repetition automatically slows down by fifty per cent. Lovely to see an author / copy-editor at Faber adhering to ‘per cent’, but is the mathematics behind the statistic itself not awry ?

For, with the initial G and B flat, do the notes not play 50 : 50, but, with the F added, that changes to 33.33 : 33.33 : 33.33 ? Accordingly, unless one mistakes much, is the change in the percentage rate at which either of B flat or G is heard (before and after the F joins them) not by fifty per cent, but, rather from fifty per cent, the calculation of the rate of change being given by : 50 minus 33.33, all divided by 50, then multiplied by 100 (which gives us 33.33 again)... ? Whereas a slowing of 'the rate of repetition [...] by fifty per cent' would surely require the piece to go directly from an alternating pair of notes to a repeating four-note pattern ?




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Wednesday 4 November 2015

Splashes of beauty

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


3 November




Revisiting this film, and finding little that Peter Bradshaw (in the handed-out text of his review) says to illuminate it (although, at least, he just waffles, without wasting time telling the story), one is struck by the amount of death, as well as of life, in it (and by the unnecessary literalness with which it may have been viewed before) : death breaks through and, falsifying Jep Gambardella’s (Toni Servillo’s) standard, cynical take on funerals, forces him to feel something, and shows him doing so to Ramona (Sabrina Ferilli). Dream also breaks in*, and whereas it may have seemed discrete during previous viewings, there is probably more of a blurred, intermediate quality to much of what is shown, which may extend to whether flamingos really do flock and rest on Gambardella’s balcony, and a nun, said to be 104 years old and about to be sanctified, really does fall asleep on his floor ?

Likewise this conversation between her and Gambardella :

Sa perché mangio sempre radici ?

No. Perché ?

Perché le radici sono importanti.


[Does he know why she always eats roots (40 grammes per day, we are told, when she is in Mali) – because roots are important.]


In narration, Gambardella tells us that he has already, just after his sixty-fifth birthday, realized that he is no longer going to spend time on what he does not need to do – so, he disappears before Orietta can show him her photographs of herself, in which he had perhaps felt himself drawn to feign interest. What he seems to show genuine interest in, and to be moved by, is a photographic installation in an architectural space – instinctively, we may sense that what we see of the installation may have been virtually imposed on the space, but, as we track across the images, we can feel Gambardella’s connection with this theme (even if it might link with Orietta’s self-obsessed Facebook-oriented one ?), and its relation to the past.

Seeing a film of this quality again is itself an unfolding against one’s uncertain recollections of what comes next (just as Gambardella falters, trying to recall a precious memory), and we have our own Where does that scene fit in with… ? and When does Santa Maria appear… ?, partly tempered by what one remembers the central message to have been, and whether it seems different this time : does it all fit in, or is it only re-emerging in response to one’s memory ? Perhaps losing momentum only momentarily with the child-artist (which, this time around, is maybe one parody too far ?), and what had previously seemed magical in Stefano’s possessing, as a trustworthy person, keys to view Rome’s treasures by night, but which now seems part of Gambardella’s gift to the younger woman, to engage with her, and to show her his life.

Rome has really disappointed me ~ Romano


Whether one wants to see the ending of the film as looping on the beginning, and having (as Bradshaw suggests) teller converge on tale (as if Gambardella finally follows up his novel[ette] The Human Apparatus), seems immaterial, because we have seen hard-bitten Gambardella come to a realization about himself. We have been with him when he tracked down a man, Ramona's father, who had been kind to him, and seen him remember his formative moments and what matters (so that the past enters the present in a bar, and Romano, who says that Gambardella is the only person from whom he sees the need to take his leave on his departure, finds him just before a giraffe is made to vanish), and the coda, silent of speech, remains as strong and significant as before, coasting up to and past Castel Sant’Angelo.

Alongside and within all of this, the principal, gracious thematic material by Lele Marchitelli (which first colours the night-time tour of the palaces), and the use of Arvo Pärt’s My Heart’s in the Highlands and John Tavener’s The Lamb. These pieces of music are an immediate and necessary part of the conception of the whole : in those two settings (of Burns and Blake, respectively) – as well as opening the film a capella with David Lang's ‘I Lie’ (whose work we also hear in Sorrentino's Youth (2015)) – the voices cut through with rawness and intensity, and flood our hearts and souls with feeling.


End-notes

The most exquisite, dream-like image, partly because Gambardella's writerly life-style has him awake in the night, is an uncredited cameo-role for Fanny Ardant : he recognizes her personage as she passes, speaks her name, and she fleetingly acknowledges him, before passing on and away.

A serenity and poise at quite the other end of the scale from the vulgarity of the vibrant birthday-party, after which Gambardella asks not to be woken till 3.00 p.m., and from the Martini sign, which usurps both the sun's place, by rising over the remains of the party (and his editor's slumped form, who seems to have been overlooked, since she tries to alert people that she is there), and that of the moon, by looming over the head of the boulevard that he descends...




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Saturday 15 November 2014

Living safely - and playing dangerously

This is a review of The Philip Glass Ensemble at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


15 November

This is a review of the concert that The Philip Glass Ensemble (PGE) gave at The Corn Exchange in Cambridge (@CambridgeCornEx) as part of Cambridge Music Festival (@cammusicfest) on Friday 14 November 2014

In April 2014, Philip Glass had graced Cambridge, not with his presence, but with his Cello Concerto No. 2, played by Matt Haimovitz (for whom it had been written) under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies



Large (left to right) : Philip Glass, Andrew Sterman, Michael Riesman
Top right : Lisa Bielawa (to the right of Philip Glass)
Bottom right : (after Michael Riesman, left to right) Mick Rossi, Jon Gibson, David Crowell, Lisa Bielawa


The running order was announced from the stage, piece by piece, by Philip Glass.

It differed from that in the Cambridge Music Festival programme, both as to when played and - in some cases - what was included / substituted (as usefully confirmed by this image provided by Tweeter Rob Patchett - @Never0ffside) :




1. 'Cologne section', CIVIL warS #2 (from 1984)

2, 3. Selections from Music in 12 Parts, from 1971 to 1974 : Parts 1 and 2 were played

4. Façades (from Glassworks - 1983) [moved from the second half]

5. 'The Grid' (from Koyaanisqatsi (1982))


Starting with pieces that concluded the first half, both were 'safe bets', with (4) Façades the equivalent of Arvo Pärt's Fratres, as an also much-arranged signature-tune, both seemingly simple : the plangent, lonely clarinet* (cor anglais ?) of Andrew Sterman being joined, and then replaced, by alto* (Jon Gibson).

However, with (5) 'The Grid', the ensemble was consciously not reproducing the full, familiar version, following the immediacy, rawness and rhythmicity of the carousel-like keyboard parts. Its celebratory tone made it a good place to pause.


Beforehand, we accustomed to the ensemble's set-up with (1) CIVIL warS #2, and its four keyboard-players, two (facing Glass) with double manuals, in the form of Michael Riesman (musical director) and Mick Rossi (along with Riesman, Glass, Sterman and Gibson, another composer).

Behind Glass was the unmissable Lisa Biewala, who was distinguished by having a head-level microphone (as was Sterman) - and, of the back rank of reeds and woodwind - Sterman was the one wielding piccolo, as essential to Glass' sound-world as Biewala's high soprano (or Gibson's and his doubling on flute in Part 1 of Music in 12 Parts).

Here, the ensemble seemed to operate as a collective, but with Riesman performing the bulk of the keyboard work, Glass adding in swirling effects, or what seemed like foghorn blasts. However, the balance changed with (2) Part 1, because (after sounding soprano voice and spinet-effect had set the tone) Glass was signalling changes within the fabric with a clear nod.

Either in its own terms, or as Glass determined (as might a leader of church music, indicating repeating a Chorus), Part 1 was the junior partner to the highly extended Part 2, developing almost like a séance, with the effect of Bielawa's voice multiplied**. It had less emphasis on variation, more on what – within the mesmeric patterns – could be detected to have changed with each nod, be it an edge to the flute-sound, a dropping interval, a single note, or a held note in the voice, or Sterman joining in with low, loud vocal sounds.

Glass had said that the beginning of (3) Part 2 would be apparent, and, in throbbing, pulsing keyboard rhythms, it was. In the world of film, some critics talk about 'a slow burn', and, just as much as Ravel's Boléro is one, so was Part 2, after repeating a falling interval that sounded like Je-sum, and then a three-note dropping flute-pattern.

With time, it became faster, and more intricately patterned. As each mood came and went, it was a juxtaposition of repetitions, with small changes such as the centrality of the flute giving way to alto, up and down the keyboards, or a quick pattern or dazzling / shimmering from the sax (David Crowell) - all bulking up to a sound that - in such relief - felt highly full, and, having won us over, ended with the trio at the back.



* * * * *


In the second half, Floe and Rubric (both from Glassworks - 1983) and Music in Similar Motion (from 1969) were substituted by the first three pieces that were played

6. 'The Building' (from Act 4, Scene 1 of Einstein on the Beach (four-act opera, first performed in 1976))

7. 'Raising the Sail' (from The Truman Show (1998))

8. 'Dance IX' (from In The Upper Room - 2009)

9. Act III, The Photographer [chamber opera, from 1983]


Before the major work in this half, (9) from The Photographer, a significant piece was (6) from Einstein on the Beach : Sterman’s solo part was clearly not written out (i.e. improvised), and Riesman was now directing the Ensemble.

It begins with swirling, short-valued notes, with which – in a stratospheric overlay – a second keyboard then joins, growing into a roar of sound, with another keyboard entry and soaring soprano. As Bielawa’s voice mounts, there is richness and dimension to the music, to which Sterman’s tenor sax adds : the overwhelming sensation is of intense wave-fronts, until, eventually, it dies away – almost as if after orgasm.

The number* from (7) The Truman Show, after beginning in a measured, chorale-like way, sets woodwind against a slow, sustained keyboard trill. Later, Bielawa gave us sampled tubular bells (momentarily, one wished for real percussion), chiming with stately octaves, which finally dissolve.

(8) 'Dance IX' is in sonata form (A – B – A), with A itself deriving from an alternating pattern of arpeggios, which bring in soprano and sax. After section A has recurred, Bielawa has a rising motif, with repeated notes, to reiterate : as the pulsing effect grows, the piece is, again, greater than its constituents. Then, with alto and flute to the fore, it ends with the sound of piccolo.


Just as (2, 3) Music in 12 Parts is said ‘to describe a vocabulary of techniques’, so (9) The Photographer used a fair few, starting by exploiting enhancement of the soprano voice plus a piccolo, then going up a tone and playing on the discord.

A new section begins instrumentally, and, as one detects a kind of keyboard buzzing, Bielawa makes long, sustained ‘Ah’ sounds, which are picked up by the piccolo, before further demands are next made on her : first, with descending intervals, and then leading to an intense vocal jabber, which alternates with short whelps that one might associate more with Siouxsie Sioux’s vocal style at its most vigorous.

A central section steps back, with keyboard arpeggios and woodwind, before it builds in intensity over an ostinato in the bass, with parps on saxes. Upon a rallentando, repeated intervallic motifs set a backdrop for Bielawa, giving us an array of differing intervals. Over it all, Glass floats a sax for a while, then the bass comes in, with a tutti of shimmering effervescence.

There is an exciting feel to the finale, with the voice-sound first processed, then interrupted, alongside keyboard modulations. At the very end, the music goes up a gear – a joyous mood, exploring tonalities, and with the ensemble giving it all. A strong piece of performance, very well received.



10. Encore : 'Spaceship' (from Act 4, Scene 3 of Einstein on the Beach - 1976)


The piece (10) famously opens with warbling keyboard : to it are added voice and flute, piccolo plus sax, with Bielawa then appearing to be counting One Two Three / One Two Three Four, over and over. Next, Glass contrasts her high voice with somewhat ponderous bass notes, until a gradual slowing with piccolo and flute.

The end seems in variation form, at times with motifs / scales up and down the keyboard, before doing so stormingly – as if in delayed gratification. On a hiatus per tutti, the voice comes in much more quickly, finishing in a few bars.


Maybe it was there all along, but one became aware of dark purple spots that played upwards onto a screen at the back - as if evoking Rothko, and the parallel of colour field painting in these textures :

This concert, without images, nonetheless resembled a spectacle. One could have imagined clips projected above the ensemble, but instead they played onto our minds and souls.


It has since been seen that bachtrack's - somewhat picky**** - review of PGE's gig at Bristol's Colston Hall (@Colston_Hall), on Saturday 8 November, makes the same point about visuals, but comes to a different conclusion...


End-notes

* A real challenge to one's identification of different reeds, and lovely to hear them live ! The instrumentalists were not on platforms, so friends with balcony seats could see them better (than from the tiered seating), but were still unsure about the scoring.

** Courtesy of Messrs Ryan Kelly and Dan Bora on audio.

*** Radio 3 Free Thinking’s (@BBCFreeThinking’s) Matthew Sweet (@DrMatthewSweet) unfailing calls them ‘cues’.

**** There is clearly some disparity between the views of its reviewer, Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres, and those of Lou Trimby for Bristol 24/7, because the latter reports :

[I]t was clear that Ensemble were so familiar with the work performed and yet still passionate about it that there was little likelihood of them being anything other than note perfect. And note perfect they were.






Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Tuesday 2 September 2014

Don't mention Beirut ! I mentioned it once, but I think that I got away with it all right...

This is a (short) review of A Most Wanted Man (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


3 September

This is a (short) review of A Most Wanted Man (2014)

Funding apart, there really is little point in having a film set in a country where all the cast speaks English, but they are supposed to sound as if they speak it with the accent of that country.

To that end, Rachel McAdams (who was not identifiable even as a non-German, despite being the love interest in Midnight in Paris (2012)) was alone worth the sole language coach’s fee, whereas Willem Dafoe desperately drifted, but that was better than the respected Philip Seymour Hoffman, who, despite his German name, sounded most often like the best of Richard Burton than any Günther Bachmann.

What was, McAdams apart, the point of this exercise, where Germans such as Nina Hoss (Irna Frey, and who played the lead in Barbara (2012)) were in no way matched by the non-Germans ? One has no doubt that Hoss could have spoken English with less of an accent than the one that the non-Germans were not picking up…

That apart, however nicely the production was put together, more of the same with the script (maybe to be laid at author John Le Carré’s door) : one big dénouement (perhaps predictable) to account for why a man who, under Russian torture (as Günther observes), confesses to crimes and who anyway fits the visual image of the dodgy muslim fundamentalist (until he trims some hair), can prove to be actually more like Prince Myshkin than a jihadist.

Frankly, if that is what one takes from the film, that a man who admits that the non-organization that he heads has no status will not be done over in seeking to protect this Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) and that said Karpov needed some love, then that is not worth the price of the ticket.

Ah, but one forgets the original soundtrack ! As Hamburg is the home of a sailing nation and a commercial centre, accordion slowed down so that sea-shanties became unrecognizable, incorporating the sound of also slowed data-transmissions into composition, and otherwise imitating Arvo Pärt’s procedure of tintinnabulation – all of that must have made it worthwhile after all.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Monday 19 May 2014

An edited review of Dennis Russell Davies conducting Pärt, Glass and Adams in Cambridge

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


19 May




At full strength, Basel Symphony Orchestra has fifty string-players. Cambridge Corn Exchange has had many a huge orchestra occupy its stage, but it has probably never before entertained a programme comprising works such as those by Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and John Adams in its regular concert series, as it did on Sunday 27 April – and rarely under a conductor as distinguished in his field as Dennis Russell Davies.

Whatever the three composers featured may have in common (Pärt, at least, rejects the popular description of minimalism), there is assuredly more that makes each one distinctive, as this review hopes to show.



Arvo Pärt – These Words…

This short piece was composed at the end of the last decade, and apparently (according to the publishers) uses material from a Slavonic Prayer, as well as alluding to Hamlet. The reference is not made explicit, but, just before the scene with the play performed by the theatrical troupe, Hamlet’s uncle Claudius says to him I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These words are not mine. (Act 3, Scene 2).

With the connivance of the leader of the players, Hamlet had interpolated the text with material designed to bring out guilty behaviour in Claudius. Yet afterwards, when Hamlet confronts his mother Gertrude, she says O, speak to me no more! These words like daggers enter in my ears. No more, sweet Hamlet. (Act 3, Scene 4).

All of these works employ percussion in a persuasive way. In These Words…, it is triangle, xylophone (marimba ?), cymbals, drums, and bell-sounds (not obviously tubular-bells), and, with them, strings. After a beginning filled with suspense, Pärt sets out his thematic material in the percussion instruments, and then introduces the bell-notes, with a descending interval between them.

With, at times, an oriental feel to the writing, he moves between plucked and bowed strings, evoking a sense of eeriness in the ensemble, and returning to the contrasting bell-notes, letting the second one sing – and then a pause / silence in which it lingers as part of the music. So is a fade to almost nothing, after which, in the spirit of Pierre Boulez, he puts the xylophone / marimba into the texture, not as an interjection, but an inner statement.

We seem to be tracing a very slow, but clear, life-sign, with the music conforming to its own measure. The strings swell, then diminish – momentarily (no more than a bar or two), the material has a different rhythm, then it ends, again with the sound of the bell. An excellent choice to open the concert !


Here, it is essential that the gesture of sounding a bell is germane and has poise : Davies so works with orchestras that the atmosphere that Pärt is seeking is wholly present. Likewise, a large group of strings bows together, yet playing piano, with the density of the texture, but not the immediacy of the sound.



Philip Glass – Cello Concerto No. 2 (‘Naqoyqatsi’)

Four times, Philip Glass has worked with director Godfrey Reggio on a film (the latest being Visitors (2013)), and turned the score for the previous film, Naqoyqatsi (2002) into his seven-movement Cello Concerto No. 2, thus subtitled.

Davies has recorded the work with the same soloist, Matt Haimovitz, but conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Its movements all have titles, which may be those of cues from the film’s score, but they are not always self explanatory.

The concert performance had a moment of additional drama in that, at around the end of the sixth movement, one of Haimovitz’s strings – under a lot of pressure – broke. With aplomb and a string from a fellow cellist to hand, he effected the repair there and then in front of us, whilst Davies stood guard over the mood of the piece…

As mentioned, percussion is important in these pieces, but Glass also writes for tam-tam, struck cymbals, wood-blocks, and snare-drum : as the percussionists were at the back, and largely standing, one had a perfect view of what they were adding to the sound, and how carefully. In addition, the concerto is scored for harp, bassoon, horns, and other brass.


1. Naqoyqatsi
Strings and ‘parping’ horns open the work, before the soloist enters with intense drums and cymbals, and weighty cellos / double-basses. Straightaway, Haimovitz demonstrated a lovely sound with the ensemble, his part encompassing a variety of moods, including yearning.

A feature is the shifting tonality, and a tutti section features tubular-bell, and thrilling modulations. Later, cellos alone, then with basses, bring what is almost a trademark of Glass’ music : with, for want of a better term, circle-sounds, he does not literally inscribe a circle with complementary pairs of descending triplets, but it feels like it. He ends the movement with low-register cellos, joined by basses, brass, and percussion.


2. Massman
The second movement had Haimovitz playing sharpened notes, a tremolo effect, and even, later, quarter-tones. The orchestra interjects tutti, but overall that it feels a little like a trudge. Glass then writes high for the cello, and, with percussion giving an oom-pah effect, he momentarily seems to parody Shokstakovich’s own ‘ironic’ parodies. High-energy tutti, rich in brass, herald ‘circle-sounds’ again – now with a slightly sickening feel to the solo part. Before Haimovitz ended, at the bottom of his register, we had a fleeting evocation of Viennese style.


3 – 5. New World / Intensive Times / Old World

Taking these movements together, as they feel linked, we find (3) that tam-tam beats lead to suggestive solo-writing, resembling a gypsy fiddler. Now resembling a solo cello with an orchestra behind him, Haimowitz evoked not only tuning the instrument and the Bach solo cello Suites, but also harmonics, slide-notes, and ghostly tremolos by the cello’s bridge. Next (4), prominent tutti passages, featuring wood-blocks and snare-drum, which leads to haunting brass-writing in its ‘peachy’ register, accompanied by struck cymbals.

The movement develops to vary between driving inevitability and harmonic uncertainty, but bedding down before the end. Finally, (5), as with New World, another opening with the soloist - high, aetherial lines, followed by harp chiming in with an emerging phrase by sounding a descending interval. Generally, the movement feels similar to New World, but instead exploiting a rising interval.


6. Point Blank
A bouncy, but sinister, theme opens the movement, coarsened by a rasp from the brass. Yet it develops by seeming to pitch a descending minor third against a rising major third (?) from the soloist, with lurking snare-drum rhythms. After tutti sections, Haimowitz had writing that demanded intense slurring and sawing. Adamsian ‘Circle-sounds’ follow, but are undercut by descending, sneering brass and strings. Though the cello reaches out, it simultaneously feels constrained by brass and percussion, and ends meditating on one note.


7. The Vivid Unknown (when the broken string was being replaced, described by Davies as ‘the epilogue’)
The movement opens with a very expansive theme for solo cello, which, whilst it generally strives upwards, moves downwards. Cellos and basses contribute ‘circle-sounds’ as the cello has a vivid outpouring, only brought back to earth by the violins’ purity. The bassoon, there in the general texture, makes a weighty contribution, which gives way to more solo material. The bassoons then contributed, with a rising interval (a third ?), and, on beats from the tam-tam – in conjunction, with the other percussion ¬– the concerto came to an end.


The concerto’s origins may mean that the movements are necessarily more delineated than, say, in the work by John Adams after the interval : several began with the soloist introducing thematic material, or of a different character. Haimowitch gave a highly engaged performance. He had hesitated about premiering the work, but Glass had assured him that repeated matter could be varied according to context and his judgement.

All in all, with Pärt and Glass, a good first half, and one that introduced a post-modern approach to compositions that explore the dimensions of a small chosen realm in depth, but without much of the vividly atonal or even twelve-tone approaches that many composers of the last forty or fifty years have embraced.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)