Friday 12 February 2016

Levity is an irresistible temptation ! ~ Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel)

This is a detailed exegesis, following a review of Youth (La giovinezza) (2015)

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


11 February (link added, 19 May)

This is a detailed exegesis, following a review of Youth (La giovinezza) (2015)


* Contains many spoilers – intended for those who have watched the film *

It has been commented already [in I have to believe everything in order to make things up] that the title Youth, and Jane Fonda (as Brenda Morel), both make very delayed appearances¹.

(The title of that posting is quoting Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), responding to Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) about his gullibility. That of this one refers to a conversation between Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano) and Ballinger, when Tree says that Ballinger and he made the same mistake (he with a film where he played Mr Q, Ballinger with his Simple Songs), of 'giving in to levity'.)




The whirling opening (heard presaged in the audio, as the various logos of collaborating film companies flick through) features a song called ‘You’ve Got The Love’ (originally recorded by Candi Staton, as vocalist with The Source, in 1986 (Florence and The Machine also spent quite a bit of time with it)) :


Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you
Sometimes I feel like saying, ‘Lord, I just don't care’
But you've got the love I need to see me through


Later, we see this group, The Retrosettes (from Manchester), in the context of the acts laid on at this spa-hotel, but we are straightaway introduced to the film’s style, its immediacy with the camera on the lead singer Helen Rodgers, as everything else literally blurs behind her. These words, which speak of love, may be speaking of divine love (as The Song of Songs, part of which is set by composer David Lang as ‘just’, also ambiguously does), but they mark one end-point, the other being the fictional Simple Songs, where we have (as well as violinist Viktoria Mullova) soprano Sumi Jo, on a pure white stage and cyclorama, with lyrics such as I lose control.

Paul Dano (playing actor Jimmy Tree) had been at the hotel with Michael Caine (Fred Ballinger), and is in the audience, as Ballinger conducts this piece by royal command. What does it mean that, in the very last moments of the film, we see Harvey Keitel (Mick Boyle) with both forefingers and thumbs put together to make a view-finder, as if just appraising this shot ? Of course, we might simply see Ballinger, imagining his departed friend, in this gesture. Or we might, recalling that The Great Beauty (2013) is a film of complexity (even as to waking and dreaming), and invoke the well-known question whether The Emperor dreams being a butterfly or vice versa…

For is it not a massive suggestion that this staged moment with Ballinger, which looks unreal, is unreal ? That, all along, Boyle has been devising a film about his life-long friend (we know that what was being worked on was called Life’s Last Day), and so, when Boyle (immediately after saying I'm going to make another film) casually jumps over the balcony, we should actually be reminded more of De Niro in Brazil (1985), as the semi-mythical Tuttle, than of Ida (2013) or The Lobster (2015) :

On this interpretation, we do not really see an act of dying, but Boyle Making an exit¹(just as Beckettt has Vladimir and Estragon draw attention to their theatricality²). Is nothing that we see afterwards - where we finally leave the hotel and its environs - inconsistent with the notion that this is footage from Boyle's new film ? [Even if Boyle did die, did he exist in the first place, outside this film - its costume, hair and make-up departments, and the person of Keitel ?]

A film in which Ballinger, mysteriously told by the doctor that 'youth' awaits him outside, does visit Venice (casting off this 'apathy' that Lena talks of, and seems to adopt (please see below)), where we realize that there has been a clever misdirection – complete with Ballinger visiting San Michele, Venice's cemetery island (on the way out to Murano, Burano, Torcello...) - with our impression that his wife Melanie, Lena’s mother, is dead. (Ballinger is only in the cemetery, because that is where Igor and Vera Stravinsky are buried (as they are).) Earlier, we had seen his look (shocked at the idea ? frightened ?), when Lena says, You could bring flowers to mummy.


Quite a time before this coda, and with Mick Boyle’s challenging confrontation with Brenda Morel still to come, we had had a scene with the six heads of his collaborators and his juxtaposed, though we roam from face to face, not taking in the whole. The scene's look is assuredly impressionistic (and quite probably a film reference, yet to be placed³), as they lie together, seeking to determine what, in terms of a closing moment, the conclusion of Life’s Last Day will be.

They are meant to be working on the scenario He's on his death-bed…, as a result of which, having heard all the other suggestions, Boyle overrules, determining that the unnamed character in the film ‘doesn’t say anything’ (but, rather, that something is said to him) : in all the conversations about this film’s genesis, we never know anything other than it concerns a man, because he is (somehow) not graced with a name. Yet this scene – with its stylized notion of a script that is complete but for that last utterance⁴ (as if it really could be added in at the end, as in the game where one pins the tail on the donkey) – comes both right after we have seen Ballinger in significant conversation elsewhere.

As to the question of his apathy, the etymology takes us back to an origin in a word in classical Greek for ‘without feeling’. In relation to which, Ballinger says to his daughter both that her mother could understand her, but, he claims, I can’t, because your mother’s not here, and that he can only relate to music. (As mentioned above, Tree says that Ballinger’s mistake was in relation to levity with Simple Songs.)

He considers himself retired from conducting (and composing), but, in the spot in nature to which he returns after Boyle’s exit, we have seen him in the surreal action of conducting the alpine cows (duly equipped with bells), birds, etc. – his animation, his enthusiasm and enjoyment. Since, even at the superficial level, this is a film, we can see this happen (as it does in Mary Poppins (1964)), but it is a clue to what the film within this film means, as are the titles of other works by Ballinger, which Tree gives us : The Black Prism and The Life of Hadrian. Encyclopædia Britannica tells us that ‘Hadrian’ also appeared in the form ‘Adrian’. Could The Black Prism evoke 2001 : A Space Odyssey (1968), in which the most famous use of music is Sonnenaufgang (Sunrise) from composer Richard Strauss’ tone-poem Also sprach Zarathustra (Op. 30) ?

If so, Thomas Mann is thought to have taken Friedrich Nietzsche, who is the author of Also sprach Zarathustra, as one model for the composer Adrian Leverkühn in his novel Dr Faustus (Doktor Faustus: Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde [Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, Told by a Friend]), published in 1947, to which the titles The Life of Hadrian and The Black Prism could obliquely refer. In the review, links were made before both with this novel by Thomas Mann (concerning a Faustian pact made by a composer, often identified with Arnold Schoenberg, though might it well be Strauss ?), and also with his earlier novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), which was set in what is now The Hotel Schatzalp, one of the film’s secondary locations (in Davos, in Switzerland). (Mann seems to have started the work in 1912, but it was not published until November 1924.)

Der Zauberberg’s principal character, Hans Castorp, initially goes to the sanatorium in Davos to visit his cousin (before starting his intended career in ship-building). However, there seems to be an element of ‘guilt by association’, because the cousin is being treated for tuberculosis, and Castorp, whose departure back for Hamburg (and to begin practising his profession) keeps being delayed by his being unwell, is first thought to have a bronchial infection, but is then diagnosed with tuberculosis.

He does not leave for seven years (at which time, he leaves to volunteer to serve in the army in World War I), but he has a life there, in the sanatorium and its environs, that is centred around a very varied group of inmates, just as is that of Guido Anselmi’s (Marcello Mastroianni’s) in the spa-hotel in (1963), or Boyle and Ballinger’s is in that of Youth itself (the actual location is The Grand Hotel Waldhaus Flims). Ballinger’s connection with, and difference from, Castorp or Anselmi is that he is here for a cure (hence Boyle’s and his exchange of notes about rates of micturition, in a place where – as in – we see the guests as they queue to take the waters), at a place to which he has chosen to come for more than a decade :

Ballinger, though, is not a film director, trying 'to fizz himself' into bringing to life a film that is anxiously expected, but substantially does not exist (a topic at which Seven Psychopaths (2012) fairly unsuccessfully tried its hand), but rather considers himself ‘retired’ from the activity of conducting (and composing). [It remains unclear since when that is so, even if we may guess at it from his interactions with HM The Queen's Emissary (Alex Macqueen, of all surnames !), and with his daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz) in her capacity as his assistant.]


As we are well aware, it is Boyle’s métier that is film-making, even if, as his cinematic testament (with which the title Life’s Last Day chimes), he ultimately desires for his female lead a woman (in the heavily made-up shape of Jane Fonda as Brenda Morel) who twice calls his last three films ‘shit’ (saying that it is everyone’s opinion of them) : in attitude and appearance, Morel does not conjure up youth (la giovinezza), but resentment, and, with her withdrawal, she renders null the task of Boyle and his team (though he does not tell them that, when he parts from them at the station).

(To a lesser extent, also, there is Tree’s realization that he does not wish to work with horror – from experimenting as an agéd Hitler, complete with the alpenstock that we see him size up and purchase when Ballinger is with him (amusing himself by setting off the cuckoo-clocks), and having adopted (as Tree said that he did with all the guests), Ballinger's mannerism with his handkerchief : as with Luca Moroder, casting off Lena Ballinger and him from the mountainside and into the air, this idea of experimentation cannot properly be taken on a literal level, but a symbolic one, of imagery...)


The choice of music (i.e. meaning other than what David Lang has composed / adapted) likewise functions on the level of imagery. Four times (from Debussy’s Préludes, Book I, No. 6), Sorrentino brings back the motif of moving pairs of notes, the first accented, the second higher, which speak of muffled and snowy quietness (marked Triste et lent, and sub-titled – exactly at the end of the piece – ‘Des pas sur la neige’ (‘Footsteps in the snow’)).

Maybe not in this order (items 3 and 4 could be out of sequence ?), the entries of the Debussy occur when :

1. General conversation in the grounds of the hotel mentions the subject of love

2. The young woman (who turns out to be operating, from the hotel lobby, as a prostitute) is dressing, as the naked man in the room leans against the wall (or a chest of drawers ?)

3. Mick Boyle and Lena are talking about her father, and she says what a strange friendship they have that he did not mention the royal request – until they go on, they are ambiguously almost talking about Fred Ballinger as if he were dead

4. The end of Boyle and Morel’s conversation is near, probably when he has already said that he will make his film without her


All of these usages of the Prélude underscore times when there is a question of relationships – having heard it the first time, in its context, echoes for us when we have the situation of (2) a client (and the uncertain expression that he has on his face), (3) of old friends, when one (Ballinger) is discussed with one (Boyle) who must be an old friend of the family as well, and of (4) former colleagues (do we suspect, also, former lovers ?), whose ways are parting, in flagrant disagreement (though seeking to hold back (further) contempt and bitterness as they finish their meeting ?).


Boyle and Ballinger, it is suggested, can be thought of as parting company : though not necessarily, or only, in the way that proceeds from calmly stepping onto a chair – and, thence, onto a low parapet - and off. Even in the literal terms of cinema (within and despite the suddenness of this action, from which, as in Ida (2013), is where its effect comes), we know that Boyle is taking leave of the film, not Keitel of life – and similarly that, although Luca and Lena (such euphony) absolutely seem to float off above the Alpine greenery way below, we know, on reflection, that people will be credited with having made us think so. (We probably do not much need to invoke the world of Holy Motors (2012), and what it there means for Kylie Minogue’s character / character within a character to fall from the heights.)

Boyle, then, is parting from Ballinger. However, this is not known to the latter, of course – unlike Morel and Boyle, who propulsively found that they have scant common ground nowadays, or that client as the sex-worker is exiting, who, however much he may regret it, knows that he struck a deal for how much ‘company’ he would get (and would have to pay more to extend it). The surprise in what Boyle does, when he has been talking in the hotel-room with Ballinger, is that he has just asserted that he is going to make another film [emphasis added], which is the claim that this exegesis has been seeking to consider.

Just before he [says about making another film and] jumps, and in response to what Ballinger said to him about what he believes [and what] matters to him, Boyle tells him that Emotions are all we’ve got. Unlike those other partings, Ballinger also does not know what has happened (or that anything has happened) except that, as a man whose career has been built around working with sounds, he hears them from below : Mick Boyle, we see, has evoked a reaction in Fred Ballinger, and has got through to him, because we can see him shaking. (Although, on a literal level, it would be an extreme way to show Ballinger the existence and reality of his emotional life.)


In the closing sequence, the command-performance concert [the link is to @YouTube - audio only, of Sumi Jo and Viktoria Mullova with an unspecified BBC orchestra] is inter-cut with shots from Melanie’s room in Venice. There, we had previously seen Melanie, looking out of the window (as Fred speaks to her, and says what they will keep as secrets). (Curiously, we may have noted, the view from the window behind her, seemingly of The Grand Canal, is a painted backdrop.) However, images of Melanie are now brought back, and she is no longer seen from the side – seeing her face fully for the first time, and in the vividness of what seems real time, we realize how she resembles Lena.

Not only that, but there is then a moment when we are with Sumi Jo in front of the orchestra, in the lush, enthused intensity of what David Lang has written as Ballinger’s early work, and Sorrentino cuts across to Melanie : as we see her, and her lips moving, they seem to merge with the words being sung in London (not least because the soprano, as she performs, has often looked – for some technical reason, rather than any other ? – to be miming). With no disrespect intended to age, or the older Melanie, one is reminded of Dylan Thomas’ poem ‘After the Funeral (In Memory of Ann Jones)’, where his final words are envisaging the time until :

The stuffed lung of the fox twitch and cry Love
And the strutting fern lay seeds on the black sill



Of course, there is also Thomas’ famous poem about his boyhood, ‘Fern Hill’ (read here by Richard Burton), and, for Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) in La grande bellezza, his own early manhood, and his first love, is a connection that he finds himself making - unexpectedly breaking down in tears at news of her death. In that film, though, Paolo Sorrentino gives us early on Gambardella’s changed perspective on the life that he leads, and we are concerned with his working out what it means to him – with a convergence (again through symbolic cross-cutting) with the saintly nun who is to be canonized, painfully climbing La Scala Santa in search of spiritual sustenance.



And Youth (2015) ? When, and because, Mick Boyle leaves the film, we have Fred Ballinger, not as a man considering that there must be something wrong with him, but believing in his invigoration : he cannot resist, when told that he does not have any problems with his health (not even his prostate), asking what Boyle said about Gilda Black, and satisfying his curiosity. Unlike Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg and its Hans Castorp, Ballinger is not going out from the clinic only with the likelihood of dying in conflict, but to remedy years of neglecting to visit his wife :

If there is an element of Doktor Faustus about him, with what seems to have been his peremptory Quiet, Melanie ! to her (and thence to the rest of the household), Boyle seemed ‘to jump ship’ on that version of Ballinger’s life, no longer seeing the attraction of a film that leads to ‘a last day’ – if only to be outside that version, and so be able to make one, embodying youth, that starts from there. That is the thesis (on the analytical basis provided above), that we have Boyle at the end, framing his shot, because he is the originating film-maker within this film, not just in Ballinger’s memory (or mind’s eye) : as with Jep Gambardella, and what he values in life, what one takes from Youth beyond these clues will be personal.



End-notes

¹ At the station (of Wiesen, in Austria), just before Boyle turns out to have taken leave of the group with whom he has been working (the old filmic motif, of being revealed to be still being on the platform when the train pulls out), he has said – to counter their perceptions about the business of making films – that all have to do what Brendan Morel did In order to survive in this world, and claimed that We’re all just extras.

² Though, for notoriety at least, few works match the fact (albeit amply presaged by Chekhov, amongst others) that the activity referred to by Waiting for Godot turns out to extend, incomplete (announced, as it had been, by The Boy at the end of Act One), beyond the end of the play. For us, an often familiar audience (rather than the original, surprised Parisian one), this pair of lines (quoted from memory, as the text proves elusive) is as true :

Estragon : What keeps us here ?
Vladimir : The dialogue.



³ It is not the example that had been sought from the world of art, but Albrecht Dürer’s Christ among the Doctors (1506) comes close :



Or maybe it was M. C. Escher's Eight Heads (1922), after all (a tessellating print made from a wood-cut block) ?⁵ :




⁴ Slyly, Sorrentino does allude fleetingly to Gilda (1946) – till it turns out that Fred is reminding Mick of their seeming joint and lifelong obsession with Gilda Black : it is a film of which it is famously asserted that it was made up as it went along…

⁵ In fact, all along, it was this work (by Hieronymous Bosch)...






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

Tuesday 9 February 2016

You’re just a sore loser

This is a review of Rams (Hrútar) (2015)

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


9 February

This is a review of Rams (Hrútar) (2015)


Of course, though there are sheep in the film, those are not the rams – but no one, even without having seen the film-poster, need feel complacent for that realization…


Film references :

* Addicted to Sheep (2015) [interview with director Magali Pettier]
* Burden of Dreams (1982)
* Fitzcarraldo (1982)
* Iona (2015)
* It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
* Kosmos (2010)
* Life in a Fish-Bowl (2014)
* Nebraska (2013)
* Rear Window (1954)
* The Field (1990)


However, there are some puzzles in the film – asking ourselves, as we try to be intelligent observers, Why is he doing that ? [meaning, usually, Gummi¹], and intractably getting no answer in at least one case – and they require our patience. There must also be half-a-dozen times when, through things such as reflections, our attention is drawn to the fact that Gummi is looking at the world through a window : in one shot, we almost have more streaks of light featuring across the image than the image itself, and at a moment when we are really watching Gummi watching (or the character playing him, pretending not to expect what he sees), and not just first being shown him at the window, then what we know that he is seeing.

They are still there, but writer / director Grímur Hákonarson does not overdo it with beautiful views of Iceland, and there are two sorts of shots that he has cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen distinctively employ : external long-shots with a static camera-position, allowing us to take in what we see, and which may include an element of movement to which we can give our attention (not least if we are asking ourselves the question Why are we being shown this ?), and internal medium shots, again static, that let us take in Gummi, sitting, or with someone else, where there is a landscape painting above him, but what the window is framing is at least as worth looking at (a point of connection with the previous paragraph).


Those who invite us to see this film on the basis that it is 'deadpan comedy', executed extremely well, seem to see that as sufficient reason in itself, but no film is under an obligation ‘to be about’ what it appears to be about – and this one does not even seem to be about the sheep (even if there is enthusiasm akin to that of Tom and Kay Hutchinson in Addicted to Sheep (2015), and the passion and love for, and for breeding, the prize-winning favourites). When Gummi delivers Kiddi to the hospital, we might stop to consider where the humour comes from (even if it may elicit an amazed snort, rather than a belly-laugh - though there were pockets, in the screening, of those fervent to derive much amusement from their viewing) :

In constructing the scene, Hákonarson first of all effects a misdirection (which derives from the manner of the delivery, and in relation to an earlier scene²), and it has already been noted how, as a quiet way of subverting our perception, he has us react to what we expect, e.g. early on, when Gummi does not receive first prize, and what he is then about outside (a moment whose implication drives the whole story on, but which looks like sabotage).

By the time of this part of the film, Hákonarson has already set up a polarity, where our time is very clearly with Gummi (as well as our sympathies), not Kiddi, and what works here is the incongruity between action and the duty that informs it³. (A little, as it turns out, with Tom and Jerry, we may be worried about Kiddi, taken to and left in the surprised care of those who have half a mind that their attention should be on the unknown driver, but Kiddi soon turns out to bounce back (as those characters do), in a way that belies our fears.)


We need to spot, but only to set aside, the patent theme of obsession, for this is not the desire-at-all-costs of Richard Harris (as ‘Bull’ McCabe) in The Field (1990) (or of Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982), though, at times in Burden of Dreams (1982), we might ask whose mad obsession the film is about), despite arising from the issue of ‘the last of the Bolstadur stock’.

Artfully, then (and with the wise investment in using no fewer than four translators to care for its foreign-language viewers), the film is a lot more to do with an obsession that actually speaks and treats of notions of identity and personhood (as in Nebraska (2013)), which is exposed, on one level, when the government official / lawyer tells Gummi You’re the one who’s responsible. If we mentally stay with its arc (and never quite credit, per se, this conceit of deadpan comedy, any more than we can / should with Lars and The Real Girl (2007)), Rams has laid foundations⁴ so that, led by Atli Örvarsson’s score, we build in the last ten or so minutes to what is actually the heart of the film, with excellent sound-design, visual-effects and situation.

Right at this moment, where we may misdirect ourselves as to what is taking place, we might just puzzle a bit about what happens after the black-out at the end (and leave, saying so loudly, and what a good film it was)... Or we might consider what, in us, has made us doubt what we see, both in this film, and in the world outside : what challenge, in other words, the film might mean for our lives, when we construct realities of the world, and of - and for - people who are in it, both those whom we write off, and those whom we credit.


Still from Lars and The Real Girl (2007)

And, for those who also stay for the credits, there is a chance to reflect on how the theme for piano sounds now, when reprised, and to note that Örvarsson played it, as well as the organ and accordion, with the session musicians.


End-notes

¹ It is only a diminutive nick-name (as is Kiddi), but, if we did not note the full name in the film, IMDb (@IMDb) does not know, and cannot tell us after the event…

² As well as by the look of some of the shots (characterized above), one is reminded of the powerful close of Kreuzweg (Stations of the Cross) (2014), but also of the brothers, driving around in Kosmos (2010).

³ Contains spoilers * Not unrelatedly, it is as if Gummi is feeling required to kill the fatted calf, but his heart is elsewhere – and by no means rejoicing – when he does it (a little as with George Bailey, and his life ?), and from this way in which Hákonarson has Gummi (hardly for the first time that we know of) care for Kiddi, but without according him any more dignity than a bag of potatoes. A treatment grotesquely exploited, at length, by John Cleese and Connie Booth with ‘The Kipper and The Corpse’ in Fawlty Towers.




⁴ In a way that Iona (2015), set on the island of that name, just fails to, wishing to seem genuinely portentous (as if it had the emotional pull of Greek tragedy ?), but only being bogus and hollow. (In a similar way (though less unsuccessfully), Icelandic film Life in a Fish-Bowl (2014) wants to nestle big themes, such as those of the Icelandic banks, amongst domesticity, as if it were another Chinatown (1974)...)




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

Monday 8 February 2016

Don’t you dare waste it !

This reconsiders Pride (2014) after a screening plus panel discussion

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


8 January

This reconsiders Pride (2014) in the light of a screening, plus panel discussion, at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, on Monday 8 February at 6.30 p.m.



NB As this is not just in the nature of a review, it assumes knowledge of the film, i.e. *containers spoilers *

One of the touching aspects of the closing captions, watching Pride (2014) again, is that Sian James (Jessica Gunning) did take that advice from Jonathan Blake (Dominic West) [given in the title of this posting], getting a degree, and becoming an MP in 2005 : the film leaves one in a little doubt whether a preceding scene with Jonathan / Sian had been shot (but had to be lost to get down to 119 minutes), because the film’s style is generally not really just to tell you what it includes, but also to show it¹.

[Since Bromley / Joe (George MacKay) is fictional, we have to imagine what happens to him when he abruptly leaves home, and whether, as the film shows Gethin Roberts (Andrew Scott) being¹, he is reconciled to his family, although, at Onllwyn, Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) gives him advice that we see him follow.)


In the post-film discussion, the real-life Gethin Roberts suggests that the film is, which it is, about solidarity (in oppression), and that there are not [not his exact words] goodies and baddies. However, quite opposite to that latter view, and with the benefit of watching a film unfold and know (roughly) where it is going², there are actually clear elements of pantomime :

* Most obviously, the combination of a malign character egging on her stupid sons as her agents (Lisa Palfrey, as Maureen Barry)

* The same woman, tricking those whom she opposes by catching them unawares (moving the time of the meeting)

* Before that point, generating the bad press that causes the meeting to be called : although screenwriters adhering to a conventional model of a film’s development will have a difficulty arise, and the action develop from overcoming it (and, of course, seeming not to be able to) [and that is not what one happens here], one could almost imagine Maureen Barry talking to camera, saying what she is planning, and inciting the audience to hiss and boo her

* Almost where else, but in musicals, does someone win over affections or hearts by dancing² (as Jonathan does, at the Onllwyn Miners’ Welfare Hall ? – a spectacular moment from Dominic West, even if it was but, as Gethin Roberts told Screen 3 at The Arts (in describing the left-wing credentials of the real location), one of those plot-obstacles just alluded to above)

* Probably for no very good reason, and not that Paddy Considine (as Dai) is not on top form in the film (as are so many others – please see below), not least when he makes a superbly scripted speech of thanks about Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, his character seems like Buttons, almost too good for this world

* Much as one should disregard any notion that it really means much, when reading about a film, to have something described as happening in the third act… (save that some films can, all too easily, be more programmatic than theatre, and fall into patterns already mentioned, with the initial situation, difficulties in the way, and a resolution), shots of The River Severn and one of its crossings (one forgets which, but one bridge did not exist then) do serve to punctuate, both giving us a breather (with some stunning aerial and scenic views), and mentally effecting the repeated transition from a city with an openly gay and lesbian bookshop (although not always well received) and how Pride chose to portray The Dulais Valley (Gethin gave us some facts about inclusivity³ in Onllwyn, and its not being as remote) to tell its story


One could go on, and risk just becoming more tenuous, but there is something about the way in which the characters are drawn (those of Dai and Maureen have already been caricatured a little) that lets them make an impact. From the start, Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer), to whom Joe / Bromley (George MacKay) looks up, is a committed campaigner for rights, seeing the connections / the similarity with others³, not the superficiality that separates.

One on one level of memory, one might recall this film for (the role of) MacKay’s character (and as an innocent, gay, coming-of-age story, grafted onto the historical narrative), with him gingerly going up from Kent to London to see what the Gay Pride march is all about. In fact, Bromley / Joe sticks in our mind because, structurally, he is really our way into (the life of) this film, and the way in which it unfolds is quietly pinned onto his being present :

He is there right from the first, stumbling out of the Underground station and into the parade, instantly to be met by Mike (Joseph Gilgun) – and at the end (with a brief hiatus of house-arrest by his mother (Monica Dolan), despite, after her husband has shouted at him, her work of seeming relative sympathy), as the marchers are assembling, stunning people such as Mark Ashton by how he now expresses himself. It is through Joe, in between, that we see the founding steps of LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners⁴), as someone intrigued, but shyly confused and on the margins, who sees how people’s support drops off, and stays in, a little by default. For its purposes of concentrating on this group of people⁵, what the film does not show - until, at the end and by implication at least, it has to - is that there grew to be LGSM groups in eleven cities.

Indeed, as one of the panel of speakers told us, Cambridge had been one of those cities, with volunteers, and those who donated money and food, etc., providing support to mining areas in Nottinghamshire (and, also, South Wales ?) : a memory-project, where those who remembered that time had been invited to submit their contributions to a record of its history. (It is now written up, as Cambridge and the miners' strike, on the Internet here [www.cambridgeminersstrike.com].) Gethin Roberts, and the local representative (@AmnestyCambridg) from Amnesty (@AmnestyUK), talked about showing the film elsewhere in the world to those involved in strikes or political struggle.



It has been cheekily suggested (above) that Paddy Considine’s Dai might be seen as a bit of a pantomime goodie, but the role, as Stephen Beresford’s screenplay has given it to him and Considine has played it, is to the latter’s credit, as a portrayal of someone not afraid to stand up for what he believes, and to face a difficult situation with courage. In his way, for self-belief and leadership qualities, Dai is a structural counterpart in the film to the part of Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer), with Dai’s speech at the gay club mirroring the reception that the party from LGSM seems set to receive at Onllywn, even when Ashton has announced them…

On another level completely, away from the impact of set-pieces, there is a very affectionate moment (and also one of nicely underplayed humour) with just Bill Nighy (Cliff) and Imelda Staunton (Hefina), making sandwiches together in the kitchen at Onllywn : it might be that we are more engaged with the dialogue, and how Matthew Warchus has directed it, when Cliff tells her that he is gay.

If so, we might not see not only that these are hard times, so they are filling-less sandwiches, but also realize that, when she tells him how to cut them, he had been doing them that way at first, before his utterance. The comedy in her pretending to recall when she realized, and telling him that it was around the end of the 1960s, shows that she has cared about, and for, him that he thought that he had to keep a secret all that time, and that they know each other well enough that she can make making him know that she knew a little joke. Both actors play this short scene beautifully and tellingly.


As a whole, the screening was full of good spirits – even if, without being trite, Pride finds the positivity in the situation (with an engaging and appealing lightness of tone and approach), but does not play out what the NUM’s losing the strike was to mean (leaving that to films such as Still The Enemy Within (2014) [review still to come…]). Nearly the biggest laughter must have been when Hefina (Imelda Staunton) claims that she is driving the LGSM minibus to take them to Swansea [?] for a big ‘lezz-off'.


End-notes

¹ Gethin’s being attacked, which is what brings Sian and Jonathan to be in the same place, for obvious reasons is not (the film is rated 15), and, until the same place in the film, we are kept in suspense how he was received when he calls on his mother.

² Though one knew that there was that stupendous dance-scene, it occurred where, but not when, one recalled it…

³ One is reminded, as brought out by hearing from Gethin Roberts about the long-term links of the miners in South Wales with those in Spain, and their involvement with The Spanish Civil War and the efforts of Paul Robeson, Snr, for equality, of a documentary at Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) : Héroes Invisibles (Invisible Heroes) (2015), which is subtitled Afroamericanos en la Guerra de España (and one might interpret that as ‘The part played by Afro-Americans in The Spanish Civil War’).

⁴ Since Gay Pride, in the UK, had its roots in protests in the States, there is a certain irony that the American-Scottish Ian MacGregor, the nemesis chosen by Nicolas Ridley / Margaret Thatcher for the National Union of Mineworkers, was another US 'import', but one that LSGM opposed… (Rather puzzlingly, MacGregor’s Wikipedia® entry claims : Margaret Thatcher herself felt that he had handled the public relations aspect of the miners' dispute poorly, failing to empathise with the British public's widespread sympathy for the miners and their communities, and the pair were on cool terms after his departure from the NCB.)

⁵ Another consequence of eliminating our having an awareness of what LGSM was doing elsewhere is that the issue that is made to cause difficulty for the miners’ group to receive LGMS’s money artificially has to be made a local one about, literally, bad press and its ill-effects.




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

Saturday 6 February 2016

Catrin Finch at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge

This reviews European Union Chamber Orchestra with Catrin Finch / Fiona Slominska

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


6 February

This review is from a concert given by The European Union Chamber Orchestra and with soloists Catrin Finch and Fiona Slominska, at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge, on Friday 5 February at 7.30 p.m.




After the talk that Catrin Finch gave, which was in the basement of Heffer’s bookshop in Cambridge (with Ambrose Miller (Managing Director of The European Union Chamber Orchestra (EUCO / @EUCO1)), the first piece on the programme at The Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) was Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 (in G Major, BWV 1048).

For understandable reasons (because none of the other pieces required harpsichord¹), EUCO had omitted it from the ensemble. However, although the contribution that it makes to the continuo is perhaps subtle at times, it is still important in this third Brandenburg, otherwise Bach would have scored the work for just ten strings (we had nine, in the event, with just two cellos).

From the point of view of just being able to omit that instrument, only Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 might really have succeeded (and here, with very different scoring, would just have created a surfeit of recorder-players !). As it was, particularly at the tempo at which the first movement was taken, hearing the harpsichord amongst the strings, as Bach intended, would have enriched the texture, and opened up the scope for more-nuanced intonation.



Concerto for Flute and Harp in C Major, K. 299 ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

1. Allegro
2. Andantino
3. Allegro


Note on the cadenzas :
As would have been usual, we do not have any written-out cadenzas provided by Mozart (even if it was asserted that they did not survive). The usual choice is those by German pianist and composer Carl Reinecke, but André Previn (as well as various soloists) have written ones of their own.



The introductory bars of the Allegro, with two horns and two oboes, had poise and grandeur. Flute and harp were co-introduced, and were sharing thematic material², and with the flute seeming to give answers or replies to the harp – on occasion, the latter’s part seemed to be that of beautifying the role of the flute. However, at many others, it also had significant chords and closures, and Catrin Finch was obviously into the work from the start, feeling the way in relation to and working with her fellow soloist Fiona Slominska’s playing, and, as the movement proceeded, there were was greater interplay between the instrumentalists. In the cadenza, before a close per tutti, the flute gave the impression of wanting to say something, but of failing, in the end, to do so.


Andantino is an unusual marking, in that it can ambiguously mean a little slower or a little faster than Andante. With its opening, for strings, it similarly seemed more than a distant relative to Mozartian theme familiar from elsewhere. The version of the theme that we heard on the flute was passed to the harp, which now had more scope to be eloquently expressive, and there was a synergy with Slominska, as we saw Finch carefully listening to what the flute was doing, and which then caused the synergy to work even more closely :

If we were to want to ascribe moods or characters to the soloists’ parts, that of the flute weightily feels something emotional, and has a sympathetic response from the harp. The cadenza began in a standard way, but again with the sense of the flute searching, and, in that search, of becoming even more of a duo with the harp. In the refinement at the end of the movement, the motif from the cadenza continues to be shared between them, but in the company of the strings.


Catrin Finch

Away from this feeling of intimacy (not uncommon with Mozart’s slow, inner movements) was the effect of the almost boisterous and rather ‘straight’ opening to the Allegro, complete, at points, with horns and oboes. For a while, harp was to the fore, before passing over to flute, when Catrin Finch could be seen, with her head cocked, listening to Slominska’s intonation and interpretation, in and out of passages with orchestra : the more that one tries to write about musical performance, the more that one finds oneself watching the communication involved in how soloists and other fellow musicians seek to hear and align themselves with what is being played. Briefly, harp and the two oboes were the most prominent players, and with matter that, when handed to the flute and supported by the harp, formulates the concerto’s path ahead.

In that, Finch had definite and clear statements to make (at one moment, with forceful repetitions), and one was in no doubt about her energy or her enjoyment of her role in the work : she imbued it with the spirit of making utterances, but all the while heeding the flute as a commentator who could influence the direction of her own playing. Come the cadenza - with Slominska holding the note that leads into it, as the ensemble expectantly withdraws - the instruments were as equals, and, when Finch broke off with the melody, it oscillated between them before they played together. In lively and positive mood, the Concerto completed with cadences and two full final chords, and to much appreciation for harpist Catrin Finch, and flautist Fiona Slominska.


* * * * *



Danse sacrée et danse profane³, L. 103 ~ Claude Debussy (1862-1918)


Beforehand, after the intervening interval, Catrin Finch needed to check being in tune, with scales and swirls. To the first dance’s relatively sombre opening (the Danses sacrée), she brought lightness of touch from the harp, and a definite feeling that she was in command : in that sound, one could almost sense what it had been, hearing Marisa Robles play, that had captivated a girl of five with the wish to be able to conjure such sounds into existence. When the strings played pizzicati, her tone was authoritative, and the restatement of the theme was made with restraint.

The tone and theme of Danse profane, begun by the harp and then in relaxed synchrony with the strings, are arguably more familiar. As it developed, Finch brought to it playing that was first luminous, but, soon after, deliberately resembled brittleness. When Debussy started anew with his material, she gave us an evocation of a rêverie, and then a mood that seemed decisive, which, when it led to one of action, was marked by tautness. A glissando, and a few quiet touches, brought the piece to a finish.


Catrin Finch ~ www.catrinfinch.com

Catrin Finch was again greeted with much enthusiasm for her thoughtful playing, and some flowers from the wings.


After the Debussy, we heard Haydn’s Symphony No. 55 in E Flat Major (Hob. I:55), with the finale of his better-known and recently performed Symphony No. 49 (in F Minor, La passione (Hob. I:49)), as an encore.

It brought out the orchestra’s enthusiasm, although they had done their best to be inspired with playing the preceding symphony : read around it only a little, though, and no one seems to consider it other than highly conservative in approach, etc. Failing a better choice from Haydn's many other symphonies, we might (despite issues of balance) have been better ending with the Debussy… ?


End-notes

¹ That said, a soloist may commonly play an instrument (such as a piano) that will not appear in the rest of the concert, quite apart from some members of the orchestra.

² Did the principal theme seem to resemble one from Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in G Major, K. 313 ?

³ The piece itself, consisting of two movements (respectively, the sacred and profane), is relatively straightforward (or so familiar as to seem so ?). However, sometimes the separate titles get confused, as Danses sacrée et profane, which means not only that it appears that more than one dance is being referred to as both sacred and profane at the same time, but also, for anyone who knows about adjectival agreement in French, some scratching of the head as to why this is not in the plural throughout, i.e. Danses sacrées et profanes.

(For those who prefer, there appears to be this alternative title : Deux danses pour Harpe (ou Harpe chromatique ou piano) avec accompagnement d'orchestre d'instruments à cordes.)




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

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)