LSO/Hannigan - Khayam, Haydn, Vivier, Debussy, Sibelius, and Bartók, 20 March 2025

Barbican Hall

Golfam Khayam: Je ne suis pas une fable à conter (UK premiere)

Haydn: Symphony no.39 in G minor

Claude Vivier: Orion

Debussy: Syrinx

Sibelius: Luonnotar

Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin: Suite

Gareth Davies (flute)
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbara Hannigan (soprano/conductor)

The second of Barbara Hannigan’s two March LSO concerts opened with a UK premiere: Golfam Khayam’s Je ne suis pas une fable à conter, which Hannigan commissioned and has already performed with the Iceland Symphony, Radio France Philharmonic, and Gothenburg Symphony orchestras. Khayam being unable to travel to after hearing hearing her speak on Iranian music, receiving a reply and offer a collaboration within two hours of sending her message. They settled on a poem by Ahmed Shamlou. There are, it seems, elements of improvisation, though without knowing the work it is impossible to know how much. Opening with cellos and double basses, joined by other, deep-pile LSO strings, the piece effects, especially after voice and flute entry, an ‘east-west’ encounter in vocal and instrumental arabesques, and in combination of tonal and modal (at least to my ears) writing. It seemed to suggest eventual passage from mourning to light, or perhaps better, to glimpse it almost Janáček-like, at the end of our current tunnel. Not that it sounded in any way like Janáček, but perhaps there something in that sensibility was held in common. Perhaps it was no coincidence that here the words turned from French to Farsi. 

Haydn’s Symphony no.39 received a fine reading, Hannigan revelling in its quirks and surprises—considerably more so, it seemed to me, than her slightly disappointing way with the so-called ‘London’ Symphony no.104 last week (an altogether more Classical concern). From the off, she and the LSO relished its Sturm und Drang energy, silence as much part of its activity as sound in the first movement. It developed and returned, almost in a flash, yet certainly not without our knowing that it had. Here and in the ensuing Andante, there was nothing generic to form and process, deeply rooted as they were in Haydn’s particularities. And what a joy it was to hear the LSO in such music, unburdened by ‘period’ affectation. In her programme note, Kate Hopkins described the minuet as stately. It might have done with being a little statelier here, or at least sterner. Still, in its more flowing though not rushed way, it ‘spoke’ clearly, just as its delectable trio sang. The finale, full of incident, might in some ways sound ‘theatrical’ but proved, quite rightly, above all symphonic. 

Claude Vivier’s Orion followed, essentially a theme and five variations. Throughout, it was characterised by a strong sense of liminality, doubtless born, as Tim Rutherford-Johnson’s helpful note pointed out, of Vivier’s preceding opera on death and the afterlife, Kopernikus, and its foretelling; ‘You will hear the music of Orion and the mystical seven sages.’ Distinct echoes of various music – the Stravinsky of the early ballets, Messiaen, Grisey (or was that the Wagner of the Rheingold Prelude) – sounded both too close not to be intentional, yet also too fully integrated to be the point. Above all, it seemed to refer only to itself and, in the two percussionist cries of ‘hé-o’ to the mystery of human subjectivity set against something implacably cosmic. 

The second half opened with a solo from above (at least in the Stalls), Gareth Davies in a beautifully free yet coherent performance of Debussy’s flute Syrinx. Hannigan again led for Sibelius’s Luonnotar. But of course she can sing Finnish whilst conducting… It made for a fascinating combination, the Sibelius possessed of a keen narrative thrust born of words and music alike, all the drama of the ballad rooted in febrile LSO strings. It emerged as a kindred spirit to Mahler’s Das klagende Lied, albeit in (relative) miniature. 

Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite rounded off an eclectic programme. For me, it is one of those cases in which I always regret the loss of material. Habits of early encounters with Boulez doubtless die hard. Nonetheless, on its own terms, there was much to ‘enjoy’, if that be the right word. Hannigan and the LSO seemed more focused on the harder edged elements to the score: a steely frame that seemed to invite comparisons with more or less contemporary Prokofiev (Le Pas d’acier and even the later Fiery Angel). Occasionally ear-splitting in the Barbican’s awkward acoustic, it danced its way to a final, ever wilder climax.

London Sinfonietta/de Ridder - Haas, Xenakis, Levi, and Vivier, 27 February 2015

Purcell Room

Georg Friedrich Haas – Open Spaces (United Kingdom premiere)

Xenakis – Aroura

Mica Levi – Greezy (world premiere, London Sinfonietta commission)

Claude Vivier – Zipangu

London Sinfonietta

André de Ridder (conductor)

 

This was the first of two London Sinfonietta concerts, collectively called ‘Spectrum of Sound’. The second would take place the following evening, presenting works by Scelsi, Ligeti, Murail, and Haas; I only managed to catch the first. It was, I suppose, encouraging that it sold out – except for those who failed to secure tickets! – but I was a little surprised that it took place in the Purcell Room rather than the next-door Queen Elizabeth Hall, which would have enabled a larger audience to hear an interesting programme.

 

Georg Friedrich Haas seems popular at the moment – at least in certain new music circles. The London Sinfonietta gave a wonderful performance not so long ago of his in vain. This later, 2007 work, written in memory of James Tenney, was the only one to add to the evening’s basic string ensemble. In addition to six violins, two violas, two cellos, and two double basses (all strings ‘retuned’, that is, along microtonal lines), we heard also the excellent work of two stereophonic percussionists. The swarming sounds to be heard throughout the string ensemble at times put me in mind of Ligeti, although I am not sure whether that were ‘influence’ as such, nor whether it would matter if it were. There was revealed, as in in vain, a fine sense of instrumental drama, not least in a great, almost orchestral crescendo. Interest – dramatic in its way – also lies in the ‘shadowing’ of one half of the strings (that is, three violins, one each of viola, cello, and double bass) by the other half, each tuned a sixth of a tone lower. (The composer’s helpful note made this clear.) Open strings, not quite as one might expect them to sound, perhaps resound all the more overtly, or rather might seem to do so, in the new context.

Xenakis’s presence on concert programmes remains all too rare. This most uncompromising of composers never fails to make the strongest of impressions, at least in a remotely competent performance. Here, as throughout, the London Sinfonietta under André de Ridder certainly offered more than that, allowing one to trust in its guidance – always a crucial matter in new music (and I think we can still call a Xenakis piece from 1971 that). ‘Aroura, Homer’s earth,’ to quote the composer, ‘precedes Antikhthon, and represents the sound textures of the earth (the word is from the same root as “area” or “arena” in the Romance languages). The first impression the eyes receives of the earth is of textures, e.g., fields, words, or bare soil; similarly, the first impression the ear receives of sound is of textures.’ As ever with Xenakis, ‘elemental’ very much seemed the apt word for such impressions, however clichéd it might have become. One heard kinship in the swarming, but difference too in the variety of interplay, continuation, and imitation between instruments. Lines interlocked but also seemed to continue determinedly according to their own (would-be scientific?) necessity. There was drama too, perhaps more ‘conventionally’ framed than one might have expected – or perhaps that was a matter of the narrative coherence the conductor and ensemble imparted to their performance. Glissandi, for instance, could considered as a group be considered to generate form, necessarily heard through time – and ‘felt’, as it were, through time, too, given the undeniably visceral nature of Xenakis’s music.   

Following the interval, we heard the world premiere of Mica Levi’s Greezy, the title, according to the composer, denoting ‘a word used to describe a character who shows no remorse, who will do something bad without worrying about the consequences. It’s a kind of “hard core” description of strength through lack of compassion and fearlessness’. The work’s processional quality – Levi herself spoke of it as dirge-like – seems preoccupied with slowing, not just slowness, of time. A pair of cellos seems almost to step back in time, evoking to this listener’s ears resonances of Purcellian viols. The performance as a whole benefited from a splendidly rich string sound from the London Sinfonietta. Perhaps one of the work’s most immediately notable features is a wide oscillating vibrato, to which de Ridder drew attention, inspired, it seems, by the sound of electronic synthesisers.

Claude Vivier’s Zipangu shares with Greezy an opening concerned with what we might consider to be ‘repeated notes’, but which in context had a rather different effect, soon sonically modulating, from that which they might have had in broadly Classical repertoire. Simon Blendis’s virtuosic violin solo, superlatively played, initiated – or at least seemed to initiate, though it was not quite the first instance of such writing – responses from other instrumentalists, within what Vivier considered to be ‘the frame of a single melody’. (Zipangu, by the way, is a name given to Japan at the time of Marco Polo.) Differentiated bowing techniques contribute to the sonic tapestry, through which structure seems both to emerge and to be mediated. A ‘Spectrum of Sound’, then, was certainly what we heard.

 

This concert will be broadcast on Hear and Now, BBC Radio 3, on Saturday 11 April, 10 p.m.