Wigmore Hall
Salvatore
Sciarrino: Sei quartetti brevi (1967-92)
Philippe
Hurel: Entre les lignes
(2017, UK premiere)Mark Andre: iv 13 (Twelve miniatures) (2014-17, UK premiere)
Sciarrino: Cosa resta (2016, UK premiere)
Jake Arditti (countertenor)
Irvine Arditti Ashot Sarkissian (violins)
Ralf Ehlers (viola)
Lucas Fels (cello)
First, some early music –
certainly by the Arditti Quartet’s standards: Sciarrino’s Sei quartetti brevi, the first of which was written in 1967,
dedicated to Franco Evengelisti, added to with five further pieces in 1991 and
1992. Perhaps such a conception inevitably brings to mind Webern, at least for
those of us with a centre of gravity in still earlier music, but it was only
really in the second piece (that which was written first, in 1967) that he came
strongly to mind in musical terms, at least in performances such as these,
typically free of nostalgia. That intimate post-Webern riot – if you cannot
imagine such a thing, just listen – was preceded by an opening movement of
bowed whispers, transforming over its course, febrile yet always with a sense
of a ground from which to take flight, into a language, perhaps even a world,
of its own. A focused yet variegated – dialectics aplenty here! – third
movement, suggestive at times almost of electronic sounds had in that respect
much in common with the fifth piece, its short-wave radio intimations
charmingly reminiscent of Stockhausen, even if only coincidentally. The ghostly
swarming between of the fourth piece in between seemed in retrospect, again if
only coincidentally, to prepare the way for a final movement in which I sensed
something sung, somehow ‘behind’ the harmonics, and yet which was imaginatively
recreated by them. Perhaps we had reached the air of ‘another other planet’.
At the close of the recital, we
turned or returned to some early music refracted – or so, on occasion, it
seemed, the air of the Italian Renaissance both palpable and yet not. In
Sciarrino’s Cosa resta, Jake Arditti’s countertenor, finely
balanced between the unearthly and the earthly, led us through the inventory of
Andrea di Sarto, as accounted for after his widow’s death in 1570: first
straightforwardly so, reminding me – doubtless only because I had just heard it
from English Touring Opera – a little of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, then more playfully, mysteriously, broken and
prolonged, as if cleansed and invigorated by the air of the post-war avant garde.
Recitative, almost, followed by arioso, almost, eventually blooming into
something quite different: there was a true impression of back and forth, not
only between eras but within the text, verbal and musical. Instruments would
sigh, imitating and developing ideas from the voice, from the words. At other
times, especially towards the close, something intriguingly mechanistic
emerged; perhaps significantly, that came perhaps as resistance to something
more ‘sung’, less ‘spoken’. Performances from all concerned, not least Jake
Arditti, were as engaging as the work itself. I look forward to hearing the
items for soprano and mixed octet that surround this piece to form Sciarrino’s Immagina il deserto. There was certainly
much scope for imagination, of the desert and beyond, here.
In between, we heard works by
Philippe Hurel and Mark Andre. Hurel’s Entre
les lignes, like the first Sciarriano and the Andre, a UK premiere, was forestalled
for a minute or so by an electronic contribution from an unwitting audience
member. No harm was done and a little amusement afforded when Irvine Arditti
asked: ‘Is that a Sciarrino telephone? If so, I want one.’ Contrast with the Sei quartetti brevi proved considerable,
not least in terms of initial volume and directness of attack, which would surely
have more than drowned out any audience contribution. The other thing that
immediately struck me was that Hurel seemed to be working very much more within
the generally accepted tradition of string quartet playing: the sound, if not
the language, of Schoenberg and Bartók, for instance. (I was then gratified
later to see his words quoted in the programme: ‘I made no attempt to explore
string techniques; those I have used belong to the familiar vocabulary.’) Had I
not known better, I might have believed the intensity of polyphony arose from
more than four instruments. The relationship between harmony and counterpoint
again seemed to spring from tradition, without being reduced to it. And yet,
ultimately, the programming also spoke of possible connections to, or at least
similarities with, the preceding Sciarrino work. Dialectical contrast between
often clearly demarcated sections, and in internal, cumulative narrative played
against one another. A highly dramatic work and performance seemed to grow out
of the physical and intellectual nature and potentialities of the instruments.
Andre’s ‘iv 13 (Twelve
miniatures)’ belongs to a ‘long series of solo instrumental and chamber pieces,
iv,’ on which the composer has been
working since 2007. These pieces were composed between 2014 and 2017, and given
their first performance by the Arditti Quartet last year. The soundworld, at
least at times, seemed to me closer to Sciarrino than to Hurel. Sometimes
towards, if not quite at, the edge of audibility, they seemed occasionally to
hint (not necessarily a case of influence) at Nono too, perhaps also, as Paul
Griffiths suggested in his note, at Lachenmann. Extended techniques were
certainly the order of the day here: bowing on wooden dampers, retuning and ‘mistunings’
(Griffiths), col legno playing, and
so forth conspiring to create, in the composer’s words, ‘a music of
disappearance’. Its ‘presented compositional spaces breathe, disappear, and
leave behind shadows, traces, which is how this intimate piece works musically
and eschatologically.’ Whispered confidences certainly spoke of a kinship, if
only in this particular programming context, with Sei quartetti brevi. It seemed both to bring various tendencies in
the programme together and yet also to question them – just as one might have
expected from the ever-excellent Arditti Quartet.
