Mozart-Saal, Konzerthaus
John Zorn – The Remedy of Fortune (2014, Austrian
premiere)
Liza Lim – The Weaver’s Knot (2013, Austrian
premiere)Lina Tonia – Ennea (2015, world premiere)
Hilda Paredes – Hacia una bitácora capilar (2014, Austrian premiere)
Thomas Kessler – String Quartet, for string quartet with live electronics (2012, Austrian premiere)
By default rather
than design – although I think it is worth doing more often – I heard all five
of these pieces without programme notes, since I had left the Wien Modern
programme at my apartment. My experience was often unmediated by anything
whatsoever, since I had only heard music by one of the composers, Hilda Paredes,
previously, and even then, not this particular piece. Too much can sometimes be
made of the virtues of listening with an ‘innocent ear’. An important part of
artistic creation and reception is what we bring culturally to the table; we do
not need always to reinvent the wheel, or sonata form, or whatever it might be.
However, there are real virtues too; I hope that my reactions would not have
been different, had I known more about the works and the composers – the performances,
needless to say, all seemed excellent – but how can I know?
First up was John
Zorn’s The Remedy of Fortune. I
learned afterwards that it was ‘inspired by Guillaume de Machaut and Béla
Bartók’s work’. The title, it seems, is after a poem by Machaut; the work, Zorn’s
sixth quartet, unfolds in six tableaux, each of them beginning, in a tribute to
Bartók’s Sixth Quartet, mesto. That
must, the first time around, have been what I heard as an introduction of
sorts: so far, so good. Moreover, the work seemed to unfold in sections as
outlined, although I naturally had no idea of the reasoning, nor of the
emphasis upon different aspects of ‘romantic love’: hope, pain, ecstasy, and so
on. A tonal violin fragment was repeated several times, prior to some quite
different material, setting up what seemed like an unpredictable pattern for
the rest of the work. Sounds from the past came and went. One pizzicato passage
sounded almost balletic, a first violin passage following with shades of
Prokofiev, although the music against which it was set certainly had no such
shades! At what seemed like the heart was another pizzicato section, certainly seeming
to evoke, to imitate, perhaps even to incorporate early music. Involved
counterpoint would be followed by simple, diatonic harmony, with much in
between too. I am not sure what it all added up to, but, by the same token,
could certainly not, on the basis of a single hearing, say that it did not add
up.
Liza Lim followed,
with The Weaver’s Knot, written for
the fortieth anniversary of the Arditti Quartet. Her piece was – a welcome
thing, this! – shorter than its predecessor. ‘Traditional’ extended techniques,
harmonics included (if one can call them extended techniques!), sounded,
especially at its opening, surprisingly fresh, even new. There seemed to me far
more of a continuous line than in the Zorn piece, however quickly that line
might change its quality. Pitches emerged as centres, if only then to be
replaced by others. A process of unfolding, not necessarily as one might expect
it, seemed to be at the heart; perhaps that was the concept of the ‘knot’ and its
untying?
Lina Tonia’s Ennea, still shorter, or so it seemed (I
am never any good at knowing how long music lasts in seconds, minutes, hours…),
emerged as an accomplished work indeed, again from someone with whose music I
was entirely unfamiliar. The ‘spiral form’ – as I learned later – had in common
with Lim’s work a strong sense of what one might reasonably think of as
development and of unexpected, yet far from arbitrary, twists to that
development. An arresting opening with high (post-Ligeti?) scurrying
immediately instilled the sense of not knowing where the music might lead. Lucas
Fels’s cello continued to offer something different: both from the violins and
viola, and from its earlier, reinventing self. A long, quite viola note (Ralf
Ehlers), perhaps with a reminiscence, at least for me, of Nono, led to
reinvigorated, even violent scurrying. I should certainly like to hear more
from Tonia.
Finally, in the
first half: Paredes’s Hacia una bitácora
capilar, a shorter version, as again I would learn afterwards, of another
40th anniversary Arditti work, Bitácora
capilar. The players’ performance certainly seemed to speak of knowing the
material inside out: performed as a ‘classic’, as other quartets might perform
Brahms. There seemed, to my ears, to be a strong sense of harmony and harmonic
progression, although the harmonies themselves were rarely over-familiar, or
expected. Likewise, the sense of musical narrative, not necessarily to be
translated into words or images, though not necessarily not so to be
translated, sounded strongly throughout, both in work and performance. Textures
were varied, yet always sounded as if they took their leave from a greater
whole.
After the interval,
came the one work with electronics: Thomas Kessler’s 2013 String Quartet. I
have still not consulted the programme note, but shall do so after writing. Ghostly
– in the sense of the past and of something akin to the spirit world – opening
electronics sounded initially an intriguing idea that a more tonal realm might
be that of modern Klangregie, whilst
the venerable string quartet sounded more of the present. And yet, that
relationship did not remain constant, apparently subjected to all manner of
twists and turns: the well-worn metaphor of a journey sprang again to mind.
Intervals sounded with stronger tonal implications than I might have suspected
they intrinsically had; I was not sure how or why that was accomplished, yet again,
it intrigued. Electronic manipulation of ‘old’ harmonies and incessant
instrumental ‘interference’ put me in mind of an old radio broadcast. And then,
quickly, there was something else entirely; or was it? At any rate, there
seemed to be no resting upon laurels, upon easy assumptions. Materials seemed
re-examined, re-imagined, almost like Lachenmann, but in a less overtly
didactic fashion; indeed, I sensed no didacticism at all. Perhaps there was an
irony in that the traditional pattern of what sounded as the ‘weightiest’ –
that is not necessarily to say the ‘best’, though equally, it is not to say
that it was not, either – work was placed as the culmination of the concert. Much,
then, to think about, in another splendidly impressive Arditti Quartet
performance. And yes, I should be eager to hear more of Kessler’s music.
