Alexander Goehr 90th Birthday Concert – Goehr, Richards, and Anderson, Nash Ensemble et al., 22 March 2022

Wigmore Hall

Goehr-Stravinsky: ….around Stravinsky, op.72, for violin, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon
Emma-Ruth Richards: de Stâmparare, for solo oboe
Goehr: Largo siciliano, op.91, for piano, horn, and violin
Goehr: The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, op.102, for voice, clarinet, and piano (world premiere)
Julian Anderson: Ring Dance, for two violins
Goehr: Combat of Joseph della Reina and the Devil, for two sopranos, mezzo-soprano, tenor, piano, and viola (world premiere)

Héloïse Werner, Emilia Bertolini (sopranos)

Clare Presland (mezzo-soprano)

Joshua Ellicott (tenor)

Nash Ensemble

Alasdair Beatson (piano/director)

Alexander Goehr will be 90 in August; here the Nash Ensemble, longstanding Goehr champions, got in a little early with a celebratory concert including no fewer than two Goehr premieres and three other of his works. Compared to his two ‘Manchester School’ colleagues, Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies—John Ogdon and Elgar Howarth being very different cases—Goehr has latterly, perhaps always, had a raw deal in terms of public and institutional approbation. It is never too late to start setting things right, though; and if it is long past time for our opera houses and orchestras to rise once again to the challenge, this Nash Inventions concert will surely have confirmed the faithful in their habit and made a number of new converts. 

The Nash Ensemble premiered ….around Stravinsky twenty years ago in 2002. It is difficult to imagine a more sparkling, witty, and involving performance than that given here. With Stravinsky’s Pastorale at its heart, Goehr ‘remembers and refers to the piece “around” which it is performed’. And so, first we heard rich-toned solo violin (Benjamin Nabarro), in the movement ‘Dushkin’, which had at least a little, I fancied, of Stravinsky’s singular way with the instrument, albeit more rooted in German tradition (Schoenberg and Bach). Stravinsky himself, as automated music box, roaring towards (first version) and out of (second, as heard here) the Twenties, yielded to solo violin once more, this time an ‘Introduzione’, as eloquent as its predecessor, in character both related and different. Its proportions, not simply temporal, but also vertical and horizontal, sounded just right to me, beautifully handled both as work and performance. For a concluding Rondo, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon returned. One might initially have thought this Stravinsky, or at least Stravinsky-adjacent, but distance increased as it went on its merry way: not only a neat but an expressive and enjoyable conceit. 

Emma-Ruth Richards’s de Stâmparare received a fine performance from oboist Gareth Hulse. Based on a Romanian folk song, Hora Spoitorilor, it sang, cried, and in the tradition of the doina, seemed to invoke help or solace from beyond. Microtones woven around its (broadly) tonal core, it remained both direct and ambiguous, phrasing lightly deconstructive or developmental. 

Written in 2012, Goehr’s Largo siciliano stands precisely midway, temporally, between ….around Stravinsky and today. It refers, strikingly and surprisingly, to Messiaen’s Mode de valeurs et d’intensités, with what I think of ultimately as a respectful lack of respect. Throughout its sequence of variations for piano, horn, and violin, fascinating shadows and echoes of very different music emerge: melodic lines, rhythms, and harmonies all transformed. There is some splendidly gestural music, not entirely foreign to Messiaen, but darker, Brahmsian tendencies and related variegation are more typical. Indeed, the greater connection that struck me to Messiaen was less harmonic, than pertaining to a way of listening to harmony. (Or perhaps that was just me. At any rate, the analysis lectures I heard Goehr give at Cambridge, in which he argued the importance of mixture chords, as opposed to endless ‘growth’ of harmony in the guise of ‘new’ chords, seemed much to the point.) With counterpoint and harmony in fine balance, developing variation propelled us along a path whose transformational treatment of variations put me in mind of Liszt or the Beethoven of the Diabelli Variations. These were but reference points, though; I do not think there was anything so straightforward as ‘influence’. This may not have been serial music, which had long since become too predictable for the composer, but there seemed to me an idea, maybe even an Idea, at work not entirely dissimilar. Through the voices of three highly independent instruments, a whole world of potentialities opened up—and closed. 

Goehr’s The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba visits the Queen’s own visit to St Anthony in a Flaubert parody from Ulysses. Immediately, its combination of fantasy and the sardonic captivates, indeed even from its purely instrumental introduction. Full of incident and with a keen sense of musical narrative, it is overflowing with Schoenbergian lyricism that satisfies as much as it beguiles. A typically animated and detailed performance from Héloïse Werner, stepping in at very short notice for an indisposed Claire Booth, extended our understanding not only of Goehr but of Molly Bloom, leading us to the calculated disruption of the wake-up call: ‘You are a poor old stick in the mud. Go and see life. See the wide world.’ 

Julian Anderson’s early Ring Dance (1987) for two violins followed. Its grating—in a positive sense—Hardanger fiddling truly dug into the instruments of Nabarro and Michael Gurevich; or rather, they did, in its service. Work and performance served up an arc clearly felt, experienced, as well as observed, its notes worked for and achieved. Whilst it could hardly be considered spectral music, perhaps some of its processes fulfilled a similar function, not unlike Goehr’s transformations for serialism. It is, at any rate, a work newly released by the composer for public performance, and which he considers ‘to some extent … a prototype for everything I’ve composed since’. 

The second of two premieres was of Goehr’s setting, somewhat in the manner of Janáček’s Diary of One who Disappeared, of a Kabbalistic ‘Jewish Faust’ story, presented some time ago to the composer by Gerschom Scholem and latterly translated by Goehr from German intro English. The ‘combat’—a nod to Goehr’s beloved Monteverdi, in the guise of Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda—of a rabbi with the Devil, the rabbi and his disciples setting out to climb the mountain where the Devil and his consort Lilith live, summoning Elijah, angels, and archangels along the way to help, only to be told that help his impossible, and having succeeded, failing through trickery and temptation at the last is told with dry wit yet expressive generosity (so long as one actually listens). A sweet-toned Joshua Ellicott, as the Teacher, was echoed and elaborated at the first by solo viola (Lars Anders Tomter), and latterly the full ensemble in varied, differentiated fashion, modes of not un-Brechtian Verfremdung lightly worn yet richly and amusingly expressive. The Schoenberg of Moses und Aron and smaller choral works stands in the background of the writing for the three disciples when heard together, yet each (Werner, Emilia Bertolini, and Clare Presland) was given plenty of scope for individual, shiftingly cast portrayal. 

These passages of narration, in which roles merged and separated, fascinated as much as the dialectical, rabbinical wisdom at the musical as well as philosophical heart of the work; indeed, the former seemed to emerge from the latter. Each of ten episodes had its own integrity, yet contributed to ascent as a whole. Viola harmonics, as the Angel Sandalphon vanished, echoing collaboration between the two high angels Metatron (loud) and Katrie (pianissimo), and a sense of time occasionally suspended, yet often pressing on furiously contributed to a work of well-judged proportions, leading ironically in the light of where the evening had begun in violin terms, with victory for the Devil, depravity for the rabbi, and intriguing survival for one of the disciple-narrators. ‘Only I remain to tell the tale.’ Make of that what you will—and that seemed to be the invitation. 

Now, please, for a revival of Goehr’s Brechtian masterpiece, Arden Must Die. ENO, are you listening? In time for the fiftieth anniversary of its 1974 British premiere at Sadlers Wells?

Happy 450th anniversary, Claudio Monteverdi!

I have adored, more to the point thirsted for, his music since I first heard it, as an A-level student, the 1610 Vespers one of my set works. (Yes, I have since learned, indeed I learned then, that 'work' was definitely to be placed in inverted commas, especially in this case.) We listened to John Eliot Gardiner from St Mark’s, but I found the performance, indeed the whole approach, rather stiff. I managed to borrow a copy of Gardiner’s earlier recording, and liked that rather more; I still do, unfashionably. However, I still know of no single performance or recording that conveys more than a little of what I imagine of the intimacy, the grandeur, the eroticism, the piety, the richness of verbal and musical meaning: of those and so many other qualities. Perhaps that is as it should be: the ‘work’ is ‘impossible’ to perform in the best sense(s).

Getting to know some other of Monteverdi’s works during those A-level years, I encountered Zefiro torna, which made a lasting impression – although not nearly so much as when I discovered Nadia Boulanger’s legendary recording of this and other madrigals.

Other sacred music seemed almost to cast a magic spell upon me. It remains the sacred œuvre that says most to me before Bach’s – and yet is so utterly different from his in almost every way. Sample, immerse, never ignore.  

I came to the operas later: Poppea, then Ulisse, then Orfeo. I actually knew Alexander Goehr’s Arianna before any of them, being lucky enough to attend a performance in Cambridge. (I even played a tiny, tiny role, or deluded myself that I did, in the performance and, I think, the recording. A friend was working in the studio on the manipulation of the Kathleen Ferrier Lament to be incorporated at the heart of Goehr’s inventive new drama, and I had to listen, as a second pair of ears, for the pitch to be correct.) It was after that that I plucked up the courage to write to him, concerning his father, Walter’s early performances, and he kindly sent me cassettes, including Walter’s Philharmonia Poppea. The knowledge that there was someone else in Cambridge who loved both Monteverdi and Schoenberg emboldened me to listen to more of both and to listen to, indeed to read, more Goehr too.

It is now perhaps those operas, and perhaps above all Ulisse of which I think most often when I think of Monteverdi. Ulisse’s Shakespearean range and depth have rarely, if ever, been surpassed. If they have, then it is surely only by Mozart and Wagner. But I am sure my feelings, my provisional judgements, will change; I hope they will. Monteverdi is, after all, for life, not just for A-level.

For St George's Day: 'migrant' and other suspect English music

I am, I hope, one of the least nationalistic people alive, but I could not help thinking, when seeing a Gramophone list of ‘Top 10 English Composers’ for St George’s Day, that we could do a great deal better than that. John Tavener (rather than John Taverner)? Delius, seriously? The ludicrously overrated Britten (who might make it in for The Turn of the Screw, but for little else)? Not that I expect members of the Campaign for Real Barnacles to agree, but I thought I should offer an alternative top ten, celebrating not only, in ‘nativist’ style, those born here, but those who lived and worked here.

John Taverner: composer of music of such complexity as to make most post-Schoenbergian music seem like ‘easy listening’. He saw the light, thank goodness; he seems to have become a proper Englishman and gave up on music.

 

 

William Byrd: a traitor in hock to un-English, Italianate Popery who composed for other such traitors (the politically correct might call them ‘recusants’ or even 'victims of state-sponsored religious persecution', the Muslims of their day).

 

 

Henry Purcell: the English Orpheus, whose music, alas, drew far too heavily upon Frenchified nonsense.

 

 

George Frideric Handel: a German ‘migrant’ in the service of German ‘migrant’ monarchs.

 

 

Franz Joseph Haydn: a shady ‘Croat’ who shamelessly took away ‘British jobs for British people’, even ‘sending home’ the money he purloined; Gordon Brown would have had none of that.

 

 

 

Felix Mendelssohn: Another temporary ‘migrant’, not only German, but shock horror, Jewish too. Still, he visited Birmingham.

 

 

Edward Elgar: composer of German music, masquerading as an Englishman.

 

 

Alexander Goehr: son of a German ‘migrant’ who, still worse, was a pupil of Schoenberg and had the temerity to introduced Monteverdi’s foreign 1610 Vespers to this scepter’d isle.

 

 

Harrison Birtwistle: composer of such cacophony that a group of common-sense Englishmen assumed their patriotic duty to ‘heckle’ performances of music closer to Stravinsky than to H Balfour Gardiner. From ‘The North’.

 

 

Rebecca Saunders: a woman, who moved to Germany. I can’t imagine why.
 

 

And I’ve still had to omit John Dowland and many others. Oh well: next year.

 

Theseus Ensemble/Paterson - Goehr and Carter, 30 April 2012

Linbury Studio Theatre

Goehr – Lyric Pieces (1974)
Carter – Triple Duo (1982)

Jenny Doyne (flute/piccolo)
Kate Andrews (oboe/English horn)
Sarah Thurlow (clarinet/bass clarinet)
Rosie Burton (bassoon)
Adrian Uren (horn)
Chris Evans (trumpet)
Matthew Knight (trombone)
Stephen Burke (percussion)
Chris White (piano)
Florence Cooke (violin)
Jonathan Rees (cello)
Anthony Williams (double bass)

Geoffrey Paterson (conductor)


The Theseus Ensemble and Geoffrey Paterson continue to further their commitment both to perform challenging new music and to provide new ways for audiences to approach it, first and foremost amongst which are Paterson’s excellent spoken introductions with musical examples. Alexander Goehr’s Lyric Pieces were therefore introduced with brief comparisons between two of Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze and two passages from Goehr’s work, which is to a certain extent built upon structures and gestures to be found in its predecessor: nothing laboured, nor indeed forbiddingly technical, but a way in for listeners who may conceivably have fretted about what to expect. Derivation and transformation, in these particular cases from the eighth and ninth Schumann pieces (both Florestan), were presented with admirable clarity, as indeed was the performance as a whole, which benefited equally from purposive command of line. Particularly striking was the echt-Romantic horn melody of the second of the six pieces, ‘Sostenuto, ma non troppo lento’, which, when joined by muted trumpet proved suggestive both in sonority and progress of Webern’s transcription from the Musical Offering (Bach’s masterpiece another Goehr favourite, perhaps far from incidentally). Trombone added an almost chorale-like impression, again furthering the sense not only of refracted Bach but Bach refracted via a refraction of German Romanticism. Stravinskian coolness from the ensemble’s woodwind offered a welcome counterpoint, in more than one sense. A sense of processional was doubtless furthered by timbral similarities with Varèse’s Octandre (the scoring is identical) and, inescapably, Symphonies of Wind Instruments. By contrast but also by connection, the liveliness of the third piece, both as work and performance, put me in mind of a more Germanic Pulcinella. The near-hypnotic repetitions of the fifth piece – already contextualised by that piano excerpt from the sixth Schumann piece – were heightened by intensification, again both in work and performance; this is no mere repetition, as Paterson’s keen rhythmic sense made clear. Indeed, there was a true spirit of the dance, both delightful and threatening. Echoes of the boisterous good spirits of Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony, surely a contender for the most life-affirming work of the twentieth century, were to be heard in the closing ‘Scherzando’, also possessed of an eloquent, wonderfully grainy bassoon soliloquy from Rosie Burton.

Paterson’s introduction to Elliott Carter’s Triple Duo presented the arresting image of a cocktail party, at which conversations between three pairs of people, more or less independent of each other and yet with some knowledge of and some reaction to the other conversations, finally closing with a conversation involving all six. Spatial separation between the three pairs heightened that way in for the listener; Carter may or may not approve, but there will always be other performances that do not adopt the experiment. It certainly offered clarity as well as visualisation for the first-time listener, so that the different varieties of ‘conversation’ – in rhythmic terms, triplets for flute and clarinet, twos and fours for violin and cello, slightly more elliptical groups of five for piano and percussion – might be more readily identified than would otherwise necessarily be the case. That in turn enabled one’s ear to devote a little more attention to the crucial intervallic characteristics of the different ‘conversations’ and eventually to the nature and implications of their combination. Again rhythmic exactitude proved fundamental to the success of the performance, permitting one to delight in the almost Haydnesque sense of invention Carter typically brings to his material. Perhaps surprising is the frankly lyrical quality of some of his writing, heightened again in performance.

It was excellent to observe so good-sized an audience for this Linbury lunchtime recital. Alas, it was considerably less than excellent to have to endure a number of persistently distracting noises-off – moaning, groaning, sometimes even shouting – from someone above. Whatever the reasons, and it may well have been that someone was ill, action should have been taken earlier by someone responsible. It was a pity, but ultimately music and performance won through.


 

 

Theseus Ensemble concert: Goehr and Carter

The Theseus Ensemble will be performing Alexander Goehr's Lyric Pieces and Elliott Carter's Triple Duo at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Theatre on 30 April, at 1 p.m. Geoffrey Paterson will once again conduct, as he did in two extremely fine previous concerts (for previous reviews, click here and here). Anyone in the vicinity or potentially in the vicinity is warmly encouraged to come along: this is a splendid group of young professional musicians, strongly committed to the cause of contemporary music. Admission is free; a certain number of tickets may be reserved online from the Royal Opera House website nine days beforehand; others will be available on the day.

Nash Inventions - Turnage, Goehr, Matthews, Davies, Birtwistle and Harvey, 13 March 2012

Wigmore Hall

Turnage – Returning, for string sextet
Goehr – Clarinet Quintet
Colin Matthews – The Island, for soprano and seven instruments
Davies – The Last Island, for string sextet
Birtwistle – Fantasia upon all the notes, for flute, clarinet, string quartet, and harp (world premiere)
Harvey – Song Offerings, for soprano and eight instruments

Claire Booth (soprano)
Nash Ensemble
Lionel Friend (conductor)


Almost exactly four years ago (12 March 2012), three of the six works on this programme were performed at the Wigmore Hall as part of a ‘Nash Inventions’ programme, two of them, Colin Matthews’s The Island and Alexander Goehr’s Clarinet Quintet, as world premieres. It was interesting to welcome them back, not only to hear them again, but to hear them again in different company. Sir Harrison Birtwistle had been present in 2008, on that occasion with pieces from his Orpheus Elegies; this time, he had a world premiere, that of his Fantasia upon all the notes. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, another member of the ‘Manchester School’ – whether that school retains any meaningful identity is a question I shall leave on one side for the moment – was represented by The Last Island, for string sextet (2009), which forces also offered Mark-Anthony Turnage’s 2007 Returning, the third of the pieces in common between the two programmes. Last, but certainly not least, was Jonathan Harvey’s Song Offerings, by some distance the earliest of the works, dating as it does from 1985.

Turnage’s Returning, written for his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, made a similar impression to last time. It has an intriguing opening sound world: harmonics, shard-like writing, and a strong vein of ‘English’ nostalgia. Its sense of thawing came through powerfully in the Nash Ensemble’s performance, possessed of a wonderfully rich string tone, the impassioned central climax supported by a fine sense of line throughout. If its harmonic language tends to sound somewhat conventional in the company of these other works, this remains a work worth hearing.

Goehr’s Clarinet Quintet continues to intrigue and to delight. I cannot say that I subscribe any more than I did in 2008 to the composer’s own description of it as an austere work; at times, and perhaps especially in this performance, there is a sense of playfulness and, by contrast, almost of the ecstatic. There is an arresting – post-Bartókian – opening, whose rhythmic character as well as melodic inflection set up a number of possibilities later to be followed through, though certain melodic contours also bring to mind echoes of Brahms. (I do not think that is just a matter of the forces employed, though they doubtless make a difference.) The clarinet (Richard Hosford) acts both in a quasi-soloist role and as a member of the ensemble. Post-Schoenbergian rigour is of course present, but is in general lightly worn, though I was intrigued by the hints later on both of the First Chamber Symphony and the Suite, op.29. The work’s twelve sections are apparent but so, more clearly, is the sense of the work as a whole, for which again the performers must surely share the credit. One garners a sense of something akin to variations, though not quite the same; I thought fleetingly of Stravinsky’s Variations: Aldous Huxley in Memoriam. But above all, there is a warmth, often a richness of harmony too, which prove inviting and satisfying, and make one very keen to hear the work again soon.

For The Island, a short song cycle on Rilke’s Nordsee, in Stephen Cohn’s translation, Claire Booth joined members of the Nash Ensemble. Her performance was every bit as excellent as one might have expected, indeed more so, precision and warmth in ideal balance. Matthews’s melancholy landscape was painted evocatively by the instrumentalists, the interlude between the first and second of the three songs a fine case in point of seamless yet perceptible transformation, the process furthered in the new vistas – ‘outside the course of galaxies, of other stars or suns’ – of the third.

Davies’s The Last Island returned us to the world of the string sextet. Its title, according to the composer, refers to the further of two small islands off the coast of Orkney, the sextet attempting ‘to invoke the island’s unique atmosphere – essentially peaceful and full of the wonder of ever-changing light of sea and sky, yet strangely threatened with menace, even on the brightest of days’. That gives a pictorial impression, which is certainly part of the story, but some older Davies preoccupations, notably magic squares and plainsong – ‘an unusual plainsong version of Ave maris stella’ – are also apparent. Hints of the viol consort characterise the opening; indeed there is very much a sense of historical refraction throughout the contrasted turns the material takes. I was taken by the frankly – at least to my ears – Schoenbergian writing of one section, put in mind of Verklärte Nacht and the first two numbered quartets in particular. The fading al niente of the plainsong material on high violin harmonics proved an evocative conclusion, whether pictorially, musically, or better, both.

I had assumed that Birtwistle’s Fantasia upon all the notes would be offering some sort of Purcellian reference, but Bayan Northcott’s note to the piece disabused me: ‘Rather, Fantasia upon all the notes hints at how, each time the harpist shifts a pedal between sharp, natural, or flat, a new scale or mode is set up, and – in this work – how a shifting sequence of harp modes can interact with and guide the harmonies of a surrounding ensemble’. It came as little surprise that we should hear a dangerous, violent archaic world presented, as hieratic as anything in Stravinsky or Boulez. Symphonies of Wind Instruments, despite the very different instrumentation, loomed large, and was that a reference in the angular rhythmic treatment of material and the crucial role of the harp to the Symphony in Three Movements too? And yet, there is acerbic beguiling to be heard too, perhaps our longing for the real world of Orpheus. Lionel Friend, as in the other works he was conducting – Matthews, Davies, and Harvey – proved as sure a guide as his players. Birtwistle learned, whilst working on the score, of the death of his sometime publisher Tony Fell. The work is marked at the end: ‘for Tony Fell in sorrow and anger’. It was commissioned by the Nash Ensemble, with funds provided by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Wigmore Hall itself.

Harvey’s Song Offerings was quite a revelation. Written for soprano, flute/alto flute, clarinet, piano, string quartet, and double bass, its settings of Rabindranath Tagore in his own translation from Bengali express and further a ravishing sensual and sexual mysticism. Booth once again excelled herself, as indeed did all the performers. Sleep – ‘Ah, sleep, precious sleep – prevailed for a while in the first song, with a splendid sense of lulling, whilst the second was marked by the combination of captivating instrumental glistening and exciting vocal arabesques: playful ecstasy, perhaps. Harvey’s eroticism throughout the four songs conveys a sense of Messiaen’s spirit without ever actually sounding like him. (If I occasionally thought of Zemlinsky, I think that was more a matter of Tagore’s verse than the music.) Languor and rush were combined to highly sensuous effect in the final song, ‘Death, O Thou the last fulfilment of life’.

Transition_Projects/OUT HEAR: Ligeti, Musica ricercata, 28 February 2011

Hall Two, Kings Place

Danny Driver (piano)
Andrew Stephen (actor)
Netia Jones (direction/video design)
Nat Urazmetova (video assistant)

Capriccio 1 and 2 (1947)
Invention (1948)
Musica ricercata (1951-3)


This was a wonderful concert! As if the promise of a complete performance of Ligeti’s Musica ricercata were not enough, we had, as has often been the case with Transition_Projects events at Kings Place, a bonus, this time in the place of some even earlier Ligeti piano pieces. One entered Hall Two to see a man, played by the excellent Andrew Stephen, seated near motionless at a typewriter and his projection on the screen behind. Crackling radio-like noises evoked a post-war environment, suggestive of the world in which Ligeti came of age, and more specifically of his father, in the words of Netia Jones’s helpful note, ‘a highly intellectual and cultivated man constantly surrounded by science and research books, who would spend days clattering away on a typewriter’. Such matters remained an abiding interest for Györgi Ligeti; this concert provided a relatively rare opportunity to experience his musical life at the beginning: not as a documentary, but as a fascinating and enjoyable imaginary encounter. Ricercata as research, then, as well as musical form…

The previously advertised Ryan Wigglesworth had at some point been replaced with Danny Driver, who proved a sure guide in our fifty-minute tour. The notes were not merely played, but connected: always a crucial thing, but of particular relevance given the additive plan of Musica ricercata, on which more in a moment. First, however, we heard the bonus pieces: not mere bonuses, of course, but characterful in their own right and enlightening background to the main course. First, a title screen was typed – and screened. Dictionary and technical definitions of words such as ‘contrapuntal’ and so forth appeared on screen thereafter, Ligeti’s autodidacticism brought to the fore. We also saw Driver’s hands at one point. Bartók’s influence was keenly felt, especially in the second Capriccio: sometimes at least a dangerous thing in post-war Hungary, as Ligeti would already have known.




Musica ricercata is a set of eleven pieces, unperformed until 1969, in which each piece has one more pitch class than its predecessor. Thus, the first is restricted to A, with D introduced at the end; the second, E sharp, F sharp, and G, and so on. Bartók is still an audible presence, but Ligeti’s own ricercata is the guiding principle. In Jones’s words, ‘his voracious intellect … [led] to research in many different directions, from his favourite books, What is Mathematics? (Richard Courant & Herbert Robbins) and A la recherche du temps perdu (Marcel Proust) to early compositional techniques and methods. An open-ended research that could last a lifetime … [and] a foretaste of the exhilarating invention that was to come.’

Jones’s projections and Stephen’s stage action genuinely added to the sense of research and invention. The man’s pacing, increasing to running, seemed to liberate our aural imaginations during the first piece, not to restrict them; there was no suggestion that this was what the music was ‘about’, but it worked. Process music this may be, in some sense, but there are different processes at work, so visual processes must vary too. Moreover, it is certainly not merely process music; it is full of character and wit, once more aided and abetted by the visuals. Not that one should forget the musical performance that lay at the evening’s heart: Driver’s clearly insistent alternation between E flat and E natural during the jaunty third piece had its own, ‘musical’ tale to tell. Before the fourth piece began, we even heard an organ-grinder, again through radio crackling, setting up nicely the waltz music to come, even providing an intriguing setting for Ligeti’s exploration of piano harmonics. The ninth piece is explicitly dedicated to Bartók’s memory; however, its low-sounding bells proved equally evocative of two other composers, Schoenberg’s reminiscence of Mahler’s funeral in the last of the op.19 Six Little Piano Pieces. Accompanying this – again, wisely not attempting to translate it into pictures – was a striking image of a man holding a pocket-sized version of himself in his hands, and squashing it. Surrealism would soon be a valued addition to Ligeti’s universe; perhaps it was already. Another aural connection evoked through Driver’s performance was the kinship – intentional? I do not know – between the tenth piece and the finale of Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata. (Interestingly, Alexander Goehr dedicated his contemporaneous, 1952, Piano Sonata, op.2, to Prokofiev’s memory.) Finally came the Omaggio a Girolamo Frescobaldi, in which necessarily full chromaticism came delightfully into play with contrapuntal designs and research: musica ricercata in the fullest sense, not just the work, but its performance and presentation too.

Preparing to conduct Le marteau sans maître: Interview with Geoffrey Paterson

This morning, I visited the Royal Opera House to interview Geoffrey Paterson, at present working there as conductor on the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme. We spoke before rehearsals for The Barber of Seville, on which he is assisting Rory Macdonald. Geoffrey is also hard at work with preparations for the forthcoming Linbury Studio Theatre concert of Boulez (Le marteau sans maître) and Benjamin (Upon Silence) from the Theseus Ensemble, which he founded and whose second concert I reviewed here.

I started by asking whether there was any significance in the programming of Le marteau sans maître for that most nauseating celebration in the calendar, St Valentine’s Day. ‘None whatsoever; it was simply the date in the Linbury we were given, though I think it can serve as a sort of anti-Valentine’s Day concert.’ Some of the imagery in Le marteau sans maître is highly erotic, though. ‘I’m not an expert on poetry at all, but the funny thing with the poetry here is that Boulez only really uses a few words.’ And of course, René Char’s verse isn’t exactly the most readily understood. ‘So you really have something like just an adjective and a noun, with a few verbs thrown in. But whatever you make of the poetry, it’s striking when you think that the whole idea of serialism for many people was the withdrawal of the composer and yet here is something so violent and unpredictable. I didn’t really know what to make of that when I first heard the piece. I can’t really believe that Boulez wanted to shoot himself in the foot or engage in self-critique like that.’ Though in many ways so-called Darmstadt composers were very keen on just that, especially with regard to each other’s works. It does come as a surprise though, after the total serialism of works like the first book of Structures. What perhaps most struck me when I first heard Le marteau was how beautiful, indeed ravishing, it sounds. ‘Yes, I think the first time I heard any of it was on an old interval feature from the BBC, a little black-and-white film. It was done in a very arty way, with the camera cutting. It was one of those rare things; very rarely does one hear anything that is completely unlike anything one has heard before. I didn’t understand it but I was utterly intrigued. That’s what I was so excited about.’

I recalled having had a similar experience with what, I think, was the first Boulez piece I ever heard, the Second Piano Sonata. I listened to Pollini’s recording and really did not understand what was going on, but could tell immediately that something was going on, which I wanted to understand. Odd bits I could discern, the Beethoven connection for example… ‘I actually heard the Boulez sonata before the Hammerklavier sonata. And I had assumed that it was at least hyperbole when people spoke about it being modelled on the Hammerklavier. And then it was really thrilling to discover that that was actually the case, and how it was the case.’ Maurizio Pollini, I remarked, will be playing the Boulez sonata in London in April: the date, it turns out, of the Royal Wedding. ‘It can be another anti-celebration…’

We then discussed the issue of rehearsing the Boulez and the stage that had now reached. ‘I’ve been rehearsing individually with some of the players. You really need to do that first. The players, even those who have performed a lot of contemporary music, are now having to play, in the pieces I am choosing, music that is even more difficult. The best thing, when you are dealing with music of such difficulties, even with the notation, is to go through it individually first, to work out what it all means. Some of it is so horrible to read; the notation is almost fetishistic. That is perhaps the greatest difficulty, though when it come to the viola part – I used to play the viola myself – that is the one verging on the unplayable, particularly when it comes to all of the double-stopping.’ The vocal soloist will be Louise Collett, singing the part for the first time. ‘I’ve known her for quite some time from working in Scotland. She’ll be singing Maddalena in Rigoletto for Scottish Opera this year. She is not a contemporary music specialist by any means, although she sang the Berio Folk Songs very well, but the vocal quality is so important here. We’ve been working through the score together and I’m delighted to be working with her.’

I then asked about the George Benjamin piece, Upon Silence, knowing it only by reputation. Geoffrey reminded me that it had originally been written for Fretwork, and then reworked by the composer for modern instruments, though very much with the intention that the original austerity, indeed a good part of the viol sonority, should be maintained; ‘the way he dulls the sound is very much part of the effect. It’s really an incredibly beautiful piece.’ Clearly this piece by a fellow Messiaen pupil will prove an intriguing companion to the main course of Boulez.

The conversation turned for a while to Boulez as conductor, since Paterson studied with him at the Lucerne Academy. It was interesting to note how eminently practical Boulez’s advice would be on matters of how to get tricky groups of seven or eleven right, always born of experience, sitting down and talking through how they might be heard, understood, and then fitted back into context. The ear helps of course too. ‘Of course, he seems to have pitch as absolute as possible. Mine has got much better and my relative pitch, which is probably more important, has improved a great deal. But Boulez can simply hear every pitch in a great orchestral chord and tell that the second horn is slightly out of tune, hearing the notes as pitches, where others might hear a chord and then try to work out which part of is simply out.’ I was put in mind of a similar situation when I heard Boulez rehearse Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in Berlin, when, at a climactic point in the first movement, he was somehow able to correct, ever so courteously, a slight infelicity of tuning from one of the clarinets.

Another experience was working with Péter Eötvös on Stockhausen’s Gruppen. Not just a matter then of being able to beat time at sixty-seven and a half beats per minute, or whatever it might be? ‘No, he would suggest that you sang it. I looked at him, wondering however you might do that. He suggested then singing the harp part. Because the point is that, in these pieces, you are not just there to beat time. If you can’t conceive of the different lines musically, you aren’t going to be able to communicate that to the players.’

It was a delight to learn that our conductor was also a great devotee of Strauss. Operatically, he has not yet had much opportunity, though he had played for an extract from Der Rosenkavalier, which we agreed was a much darker work than many recognise. The moment of the Marschallin’s return in the Third Act, and the straightforward but wonderfully apt cadential means with which it is announced was a particular favourite moment. With regard to the work as a whole, ‘just because it is placed in inverted commas doesn’t mean that there is a lot of what is there in Salome and Elektra’. And of course, those works have their inverted commas too. It was even better to discover an ardent fan of the Alpine Symphony, ‘Strauss at his most serious,’ and in some ways sparer, the ‘Ausklang’ less awash with notes than the earlier tone poems. The extraordinary historical accident of late Strauss being composed at the same time as Boulez’s First Piano Sonata, Webern and Bartók already having died, was not without its irony for those who admire those composers so greatly.

Alexander Goehr, from whose analyses I learned a great deal at Cambridge, was a formative influence for Paterson when an undergraduate there too. He took private compositions lessons with him for quite some time. One of the things he most admired, a word I have heard time and time again with respect to Goehr, is ‘integrity’, another ‘the refusal to play to the gallery, which is very important to me too’. Goehr said that he did not mind at all the style in which something was written, but taste, by which it seems that he meant that ‘integrity’ was crucial; he was critical of composers who had not thought through what they were doing or why, or who were playing for effect. ‘I’m immensely grateful for him making me think much more closely about my composition, though it slowed me down a lot. I don’t mean that in an ungrateful way at all; it was a very good thing. Now, like many people who start off composing, I have found myself doing less of that and more conducting.’

More generally we discussed the difficulties of a great deal of expression within ‘modernist’ works, the adjective being one of which Paterson is wary, since it can often put people off and should perhaps now be considered more historically. He is, he said, very attracted to complexity that is expressively necessary, to works that often need more than one hearing to reveal their secrets, ‘like my first experience with Le marteau sans maître’; after all, if one has heard everything in a work on a first hearing, there is nowhere left to go. (I thought immediately of a great deal of Shostakovich, but kept my thoughts to myself.) Schoenberg, I suggested, was another case of so much expressivity, more than many audiences still seem able to take, though they often reject his music claiming quite the opposite. Paterson’s criticism of some of Schoenberg’s music was tellingly similar to that of Boulez, namely that the new, serial language sometimes falls back upon old forms.

Returning to more contemporary music, we agreed upon a parallel problem to that of the term ‘modernist,’ namely the habit of more conservative listeners to refer to some new music as ‘tonal’, when that seems truly to miss the point of tonality. ‘Just to hear a chord that might appear in tonal music does not make the music tonal, since it does not have the same role at all. For instance, some of the chords in George Benjamin’s piece, though not of course in Le marteau sans maître and other pieces where composers avoid them, might sound like that in isolation, but this isn’t tonal music.’ Nor, of course, is complexity somehow something that appeared in the twentieth century, a favourite case of his being the complexity of the Eroica Symphony. For, in Paterson’s view – and mine – what matters here is what is done with and to the material. One might listen superficially and just hear a tune, but it is the processes that remain crucial, processes which, as he pointed out, are also so apparent in Haydn’s playing with form. Classical composers were not placing consonant chords around to be heard in themselves. The case of Debussy, I suggested, showed the difference: he would sometimes do just that, using chords to be heard, because of their sound; Mozart and Beethoven were certainly not in the business of doing that. With Schoenberg, however, and another Paterson favourite, Elliott Carter, listening in that way is simply not an option. ‘Carter’s Concerto for Orchestra is a wonderful, wonderful work, but you need to concentrate, to keep a sense of what is happening all the time. You can’t listen to it half-heartedly.’

The Theseus Ensemble’s next performance, of Boulez and Benjamin, will take place at 1 p.m., 14 February, in the Linbury Studio Theatre of the Royal Opera House (click here). Further details concerning the ensemble may be found here, and concerning Geoffrey Paterson here.

Alexander Goehr: Promised End (world premiere), English Touring Opera, 9 October 2010

Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

King Lear – Roderick Earle
Gloucester – Nigel Robson
Edmund – Nicholas Garrett
Edgar – Adrian Dwyer
Goneril – Jacqueline Varsey
Regan – Julia Sporsén
Cordelia/Fool – Lina Markeby
Knight/Servant - Jeffrey Stewart
Servant/Captain - Adam Tunnicliffe

James Conway (director)
Adam Wiltshire (designs)
Guy Hoare (lighting)

Aurora Orchestra
Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor)


This latest opera from Alexander Goehr – probably last, he says, but then so did Henze about his L’Upupa – promises in subject matter as well as name the makings of a testament, but there are signs aplenty of new life too. Promised End draws its name from Kent’s ‘Is this the promised end?’ when Lear re-enters, the dead Cordelia in his arms. The late Frank Kermode assembled the text exclusively from Shakespeare. This, apparently, was insisted upon by composer and librettist, and who can blame them after the miserable doggerel to which Meredith Oakes reduced The Tempest for Thomas Adès? There are twenty-four sections, ‘preludes’, but the action, bar an interval, is continuous.

Beckett looms large, though not overwhelmingly so, and how could he not in a Lear for our times? Ours is an age often preoccupied with reception history; it is not an age for naïve art. Some cultured despisers sneer at that, but what is the alternative: ignorance? We have far too much of that already, aided and abetters by those whose interests it serves. If Beckett is a strong presence, so is Brecht, not least in the creation of a chorus, which comments, punctuates, structures. The tension between existential devastation and alienation is productive, enhancing and questioning both.

Constructivist tendencies are also manifested in the pairing of Goneril and Regan, who seemingly cannot work without each other, and yet ultimately gain nothing, or at least nothing of value, from having done so. The pairing put me in mind – though this may just have been coincidence – of Morgan Le Fay and Lady de Hautdesert from Birtwistle’s Gawain, though without the sense of framing: Shakespeare’s unruliness is too great for that. Cordelia and the Fool are brought together in a further tightening of the casting-parallel noose. At the heart of both libretto and music lies the parallelism between Lear and Gloucester. Too old men, rendered foolish – and not in the Fool’s way – by power, have much to undergo before they can come together in the scene of transformation: a recognition scene not so much in the Elektra sense but recognition of themselves, of something concerning the true bleakness, as opposed to self-pity, of the human condition. Whatever happens in Elektra, it is certainly not that. There is no sub-Wagnerian redemption in this recognition; it is all too late. That, however, does not render it any less necessary.

Goehr’s score is of course the crucial thing. Endlessly inventive, we hear a dark generative activity that seems genuinely inspired by the short ‘prelude’ structure: shades even of Wozzeck, perhaps, in the tension between smaller forms and the greater whole. Sonority from his chamber orchestra – the fine Aurora Orchestra playing under Ryan Wigglesworth’s taut yet expressive direction – offers intimations of twentieth-century Neue Sachlichkeit: Hindemith at his more interesting and Weill sprang to mind, as well as Schoenberg. They remain intimations, however, certainly not imitations. Stravinsky’s graveyard harpsichord (The Rake’s Progress) makes its presence felt, both as soloist and quasi-continuo player, the organ proving a complementary and opposing force, perhaps a reference to Goehr’s beloved Monteverdi and The Death of Moses? There is little purely orchestral music; the pace is fast, though not, I think, cinematic, notwithstanding Goehr’s admiration for Eisenstein. However, we hear something akin to a battle symphony – the ghost of Handel? – when Edgar goes away to war. A notable feature of Goehr’s ensemble is its brace of tubas, sparingly used, yet a lugubrious and still melodious evocation of the wheel turning full circle.

The Fool’s songs, accompanied by guitar, evoke – at least for this listener – Monteverdi at his most Shakespearian; the parasite Iro (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria) meets Beckett. That strange existential world is assaulted by Brecht and Weill, but is never vanquished; indeed, it emerges all the stronger. Vocally, there is typical precision and concision: never expansive, but somehow seeming dramatically ‘right’ in its urgency. Foucault, whom Goehr cites as an influence in this respect, would have pointed to the constructed nature of madness: here it is compositionally apparent.

James Conway’s production, aided by Adam Wiltshire’s designs, contributes greatly to the Beckettian mood and its Brechtian challenge. Japanese Noh theatre – recalling both Goehr’s Kantan and Damask Drum and his dream of Lear in Japanese, which provided the opera’s initial inspiration – is a presence too, though a contributory reference rather than an agent of excessive stylisation. The production seems to take its cue from the work, rather than to force itself upon the latter. As the action unfolds, the chorus is not static but re-assembles, so that observation remains to feed subsequent commentary.

Performances were all of a high standard: a true and worthy feather in the cap of English Touring Opera. Roderick Earle’s Lear commanded the stage and moved without inappropriate emoting. Nigel Robson’s Gloucester ran in parallel but remained differentiated: this was not a king, or an ex-king, but a senior courtier. Adrian Dwyer portrayed with touching acuity the transformation of Edgar into Poor Tom, whilst Nicholas Garrett’s leather-clad Edmund proved as devilish as his recent Don Giovanni for Opera Holland Park – and more cunningly fiendish. Jacqueline Varsey and Julia Sporsén offered what seemed the just admixture of repellent, individual ambition and structural complementary duet as the unlovely sisters, a true contrast with Lina Markeby’s haunting Cordelia and Fool.

Three cheers, then, for English Touring Opera. Let us hope that other companies, both in England and further afield, are listening, for Goehr’s earlier dramatic works demand revival, and sooner rather than later. And surely another company could offer him a commission he would find too intriguing to refuse?

Arden Must Die - or the arts will...

Some excellent footage from the days when BBC television still retained a degree of respect for Lord Reith's principles:





Look out for Charles Mackerras as conductor.

Will someone now revive this fine Brechtian opera, Alexander Goehr's first? Now more than ever we need to show what the arts are capable of, as their political enemies take lipsmacking delight in slashing budgets. Opera companies and other arts organisations must be bold, must never retreat into rehashings of tired repertoire that could quite readily be mounted commercially.

Rolf Liebermann's words are especially instructive. As Hamburg Intendant, he felt it artistically necessary to commision an opera from Goehr; the composer's nationality was supremely irrelevant to him. Covent Garden, kindly take note! Liebermann commissioned no fewer than twenty-six operas during his Hamburg tenure; others include Henze's Der Prinz von Homburg and Penderecki's The Devils. Opera and art in general must never consign themselves to the museum. That way they will succeed only in signing their death warrants.

Alexander Goehr premiere: Promised End

(Photograph: Loganarts Management)


Tomorrow will witness what promises one of the most important musical events of the year, the first performance of a new opera by Alexander Goehr. Promised End has all the makings of a testament, though there is of course no reason to believe that Goehr will not be composing for many years to come. It is a bold composer who tackles King Lear, but the late Frank Kermode was at hand to assemble the libretto from Shakespeare. English Touring Opera's initiative is equally bold; the company will stage four performances from director James Conway at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio Theatre, before moving on to Malvern, Bexhill, Exeter, Crawley, Cambridge, and Snape Maltings. Tour details may be found by clicking here. Ryan Wigglesworth will conduct the excellent Aurora Orchestra. The Cambridge performances should be special indeed, marking a homecoming for composer, librettist, and indeed conductor.

Sandy Goehr's lectures were a formative experience during my time at Cambridge. Though reading history, I was always keen to smuggle in as much music and philosophy (though certainly not 'Cambridge philosophy') as I could. At any rate, there was a definite spring in my step as I made the very short walk across from the History Faculty to the Music Faculty to hear analyses of Wozzeck, The Rite of Spring, and so forth. It is often fascinating to hear composers talk about music they esteem, but to hear such works taken to pieces and put back together again by a master analyst with a composer's insight was a special, enlightening experience indeed. Two of Goehr's - and his father's - especial passions, the music of Monteverdi and Schoenberg, coincided with two of mine as a research student. (Walter Goehr, a pupil of Schoenberg, conducted the first British performance of the Monteverdi Vespers, in York Minster.) When I wrote to him, asking about his father's Monteverdi performances, he generously sent me cassette recordings, including L'incoronazione di Poppea with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Goehr fils's own recomposition of the lost Arianna, with Kathleen Ferrier's crackly lament at his heart, became an object of fascination and indeed love.

Conversations concerning Monteverdi and Schoenberg have always been of inestimable value to me, the latter especially helpful for my own work on Moses und Aron. Indeed, one might even go so far as to suggest that there is something of that opera's dialectical antagonists in the influence and voices of both those composers, individually and when opposed to each other. Apropos Moses, the cantata The Death of Moses is another fine work, engaging with the extraordinary power and hold of Schoenberg's legacy with means that have something also of Monteverdi to them. I recall a Cambridge performance conducted by Stephen Cleobury, dedicated to the memory of Yehudi Menuhin, who had died that day.

But my first encounter, I think, with Alexander and Walter Goehr was in the sixth form, when my late music teacher, who perhaps has the greatest claim as a formative influence upon me, gave me a copy of their joint essay, 'Arnold Schoenberg's Development towards the Twelve-Tone System'. I read it and re-read it, and suddenly found that what I was grappling towards as a listener, increasingly obsessed with Schoenberg and his music, I could now understand intellectually, and especially historically. I therefore could listen all the more acutely and happily.

Anyone wanting a 'way in' could do no better than start with that essay and Charles Rosen's Schoenberg. Schoenberg's music truly became a joy for me at this time, a joy that has never departed. (An interesting parallel presents itself to my mind when writing this: one of my A-level set works was the Monteverdi Vespers, another joy that has persisted and intensified.) Goehr is above all, of course, a composer, but, like his fellow Messiaen pupil, Pierre Boulez, he is very much more than that - which redounds to the benefit of the music. Speaking of Boulez, further mandatory reading is 'A Letter to Pierre Boulez,' (1987) as sharp an assessment of divergent post-war musical currents as I know. Goehr considers how, in his words, how he was 'led ... away from what was later to be seen as the "classical" avant-garde position,' making 'my music of no interest to, though not free of the influence of, Boulez.' This, the Schoenberg piece, and other essays, may be found in Finding the Key: Selected Writings of Alexander Goehr, published by Faber. I can recommend them as heartily as Arianna.

I have no idea, of course, what we shall hear tomorrow. The few words above, however, may give some indication of why my hopes are high. In the meantime, here is a wealth of material on Goehr's earlier operas, including excerpts, and below is the beginning of a short interview between composer and director concerning the new work.



The remainder of the interview may be found on Youtube.

Nash Inventions, Wigmore Hall, 12 March 2008

Wigmore Hall

Turnage – Returning, for string sextet (London première)
Birtwistle – Pieces from Orpheus Elegies, for countertenor, oboe, and harp
MacMillan – Horn Quintet (London première)
Goehr – Clarinet Quintet (world première)
Colin Matthews – The Island, for soprano, alto flute, horn, piano, harp, viola, and cello (world première)

Nash Ensemble
Claire Booth (soprano)
Andrew Watts (countertenor)
Gareth Hulse (oboe)
Lucy Wakeford (harp)
Paul Watkins (conductor)

This concert proved a marvellous way to highlight the Nash Ensemble’s continuing commitment to new music. Five works by British composers were performed, four of which were receiving some sort of première, two of them of the world variety. Indeed, the ‘early music’ was Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Orpheus Elegies, which dates back all the way to 2003-4. All five composers were present, along with a number of other significant figures from the ‘new music world’.

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Returning (2007), for string sextet, provided a relatively easy ‘way in’ to the music, although I doubt that many in the audience would have been unaware of what was on offer. It was evidently a genuinely felt offering for the composer’s parent’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, which, although it could hardly have been said to have strained at the bounds of compositional technique, utilised the sextet forces admirably and worked to a clear narrative plan. The marking ‘Almost as if frozen’ described the opening perfectly. Thereafter, the music appeared to thaw, with proliferating instrumental underneath the predominating high melodic line. Gathering in intensity – in both work and performance – the somewhat frenetic climax subsided again, although, as Anthony Burton pointed out in his programme note, less to freeze than to thaw. Much of the music sounded, in harmony and in texture, recognisably in a tradition of English string music.

There did, however, appear to be a world of difference between this sextet and the masterwork Orpheus Elegies, from which Birtwistle selected eleven of its twenty-six movements, each based upon one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. Birtwistle’s original intention had been not to set the texts, but ‘simply to let them influence the instrumental music,’ with a quotation at the end of each movement, rather like the ‘titles’ to Debussy’s piano Préludes. But the texts would not leave the composer in peace, so he decided to include some of the sonnets, or at least lines from them, and to introduce a countertenor. This performance will have provided many in the audience with a curtain raiser for London’s forthcoming operatic Birtwistle events: two (!) productions of Punch and Judy and the world premiere of The Minatour. Indeed, Andrew Watts will be singing in the latter. Here one was in the presence of an utterly personal voice, with never a note wasted. The composer spoke of ‘the problem of the combination of oboe and harp: how do you avoid making that combination sound like occasional music?’ I hardly need add that there was no chance of that happening here; Birtwistle may write incidental music, such as that to the National Theatre’s Oresteia, but there is nothing remotely occasional about his compositions.

The combination of oboe and harp, with countertenor for four of the elegies, proves every bit as vigorously haunting as one would expect from this composer’s pen. The oboe, Birtwistle explained, is ‘the voice of Orpheus,’ the countertenor the narrator, and the harp represents Orpheus’s lyre, although he added the caveat, ‘very generally speaking’. Whilst there is an undeniable element of such role-playing – hardly surprising in the work of a born musical dramatist – what also struck me was how it did not seem at all fanciful to gain an overall impression of regaining the ancient music we have lost: not in any reconstructive or even restorative sense, but as a reimagination of the primæval world of the Orphic lyre. Violence and beauty are fiercely present, with the countertenor providing an appropriately unearthly timbre and also a link to the world of the Baroque aria, presenting a single emotion rather than development (think of Alexander Goehr’s The Death of Moses). Indeed, the way no.13 (Sonnet II) subsided into a silence both earthly and unearthly, following the words ‘in den Himmel, den ihr Hauch nicht trüht,’ was quite spell-binding, for which equal credit must be granted the performers. The coruscating harp glissando upon the word ‘mädchenhandig’ should have banished any suspicion that Rilke’s feminine Lament (Klage) might cloy. No.8, which ends with the words ‘Sieh, die Maschine’ was almost onomatopœic in its mechanical quality, to which both instruments contributed equally (again, nothing ‘occasional’ here!) Gareth Hulse’s oboe almost seemed to speak in the scherzo-like no.23 (‘Ordne die Schreir, singender Gott!’): this could have been a refraction of the memory and afterlife of Orpheus himself. The concision of no.24 put me in mind of Webern: everything that needed to be said was said and then it stopped. And the memory of the only occasionally – in a very different sense – but most movingly relieved monotone of the vocal line of the second half of no.20 (Sonnet V) will remain with me for a long time. To be ‘hearers and a mouth for nature,’ in that sonnet’s words, was what Birtwistle truly accomplished in inimitable fashion.

James MacMillan’s Quintet for horn and string quartet (2007) provided quite a contrast. This was an exciting, extrovert work, which relished the hunting resonances of the horn, of which the splendid Richard Watkins took full advantage. The turbulently striking opening grabbed one’s attention from the outset, as towards did the singing of the richly full-toned viola line of the equally splendid Lawrence Power. A theatrical effect was attained by having the horn player leave the ensemble whilst the quartet continued to play, to be answered from offstage by a haunting horn call, almost reminiscent of Mahlerian Nachtmusik.

The second half brought us the concert’s two world premières. With Alexander Goehr’s quintet for clarinet and string quartet (2007) we returned to the ‘Manchester School’, although it is not clear that the music of Goehr and Birtwistle ever had much in common. If Stravinsky acted as godfather to much of the latter’s music, it is Schoenberg who has exerted so much of an influence over the former, not least via Walter Goehr, himself a Schoenberg pupil. (It is characteristic of a composer who has been so generous with his time and experience to younger composers and to other musicians that, when I spoke to him before the concert, he was far more concerned to enquire after my current research on Schoenberg than to talk about himself and his works.) And beyond Schoenberg, of course, lies Brahms. Brahms is liable to come to mind in any clarinet quintet, but I did wonder whether this single-movement work in twelve sections was in some sense a homage to that most richly autumnal of composers. There was certainly an almost Brahmsian beauty to the string writing, married to an equally characteristic post-Brahms/Schoenberg integrity of motivic working out. This was the case both for work and performance, in which, astonishingly, every line was made to tell as if the Nash Ensemble were presenting an established masterpiece. (I firmly believe from this first hearing that the work will prove to be just that.) The tenth section, an almost Bachian sarabande, provided a still centre to the work’s progression. Once again, the synthesis between counterpoint and Classical form evoked Brahms, or rather an historically mediated memory of his tradition’s concerns. Interestingly – and somewhat enigmatically – the composer himself referred to the inspiration of masses by Josquin and Ockeghem, which, he wrote, ‘probably accounts’ for the quintet’s ‘rather austere and motet-like character’. This, I must admit, was not at all how I heard the music, which I found warm, classically dramatic, and not at all austere.

The final work was Colin Matthews’s The Island (2007), also based upon Rilke, in this case his Neue Gedichte. The three poems of Rilke’s North Sea ‘Insel’, in Stephen Cohn’s excellent translation, are set as a continuous span with instrumental interludes. The vocal line, here treated to a commanding and apparently perfectly judged rendition by Claire Booth, is frankly melodic. At first, it soared above the instrumental ensemble, whose role was definitely to accompany, albeit with a beautiful array of colours and harmonic shifts. Occasional echoing of the vocal line, for instance by the richly expressive alto flute and sweet-toned violin, gradually blossomed into a greater independence for the ensemble, fully exploited during the two evocative interludes. The dark piano chords at the close of the second poem, ‘Upon the outer dyke a sheep appears/larger than life and almost ominous’, were themselves as ominous as the tolling of funeral bells. By the time we reached the third poem, there was a sense both of maintaining the impetus of instrumental development and of completing the cycle by returning or, perhaps better, renewing the opening mood. We had moved on from a tide that ‘wipes out the path across the flats’, to encompass, without forgetting, something ‘outside the course of galaxies, of other stars or suns’. As in every work this programme comprised, the Nash Ensemble and friends did the composers prouder than one might have thought possible.