Levit - Cardew and Rzewski, 20 July 2015

Wigmore Hall

Cardew – Thälmann Variations

Rzewski – Dreams: Part Two
Rzewski – The People United will Never be Defeated!

Igor Levit (piano)

 

 

Cornelius Cardew: now perhaps most celebrated, notorious even, for the Scratch Orchestra, his polemical Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, and the still unexplained circumstances of his death at the hands of a hit-and-run driver. We do not have so many opportunities to hear his music. The previous occasion I had, I am afraid I emerged nonplussed. Much depends, I suspect, upon which music. Whilst I struggle to find Cardew’s Thälmann Variations a masterpiece – and was that what he was trying to accomplish in any case – I found it a far more interesting work than the pieces I had heard in 2011. The Variations were written in 1974 to remember Ernst Thälmann, the Communist leader imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis and incorporate Hanns Eisler’s Heimliche Aufmarsch and the protest song set by Charles Koechlin, Libérons Thaelmann!  

What of the music, in a performance from Igor Levit that left none who heard it that the work was receiving as convincing advocacy as it could ever hope for? The theme is odd, sounding more like Auld Lang Syne as it progresses, yet starting with a slightly unfortunate post hoc hint of the Dynasty theme tune. (Confessions of a strangly misspent youth!) Levit played it as beautifully as he would have done Liszt, and indeed the harmonies sound a little like a strange mix of earlyish, straightforward Liszt and early-twentieth-century English music. Moreover, the first variation calls for a technique not so far removed from the Lisztian, which Levit possesses in spades, before Auld Lang Syne comes closer in its successor. The seriousness with which Levit approached and accomplished his task was admirable. Connections with other music, whether through the score itself or the beauty and warmth of his touch, manifested themselves throughout: Debussyan open fifths and Liszt again in the slow section, which might almost have been the core of a nineteenth-century sonata. (How I should love to hear Levit in the B minor Sonata, or the Dante!) If it were there that I thought, reactionary bourgeois, empire-serving modernist that I am, that the Variations veered dangerously close to sentimentality, that was certainly not true of the performance. I cannot say that I found the closing march ‘a complex “march of events”,’ (Cardew) but that doubtless depends on what one understands by ‘complex’; it was certainly not without incident. This emerged as the most interesting Cardew piece and performance I have heard.

Frederic Rzewski’s 2014 second part of Dreams, after Akiro Kurosawa’s film, received its British premiere, Levit having given the first performance three months earlier in Heidelberg. It is a co-commission by Heidelberger Frühling, Carnegie Hall, and the Wigmore Hall, with the support of André Hoffmann. The first movement, ‘Bells’, I am afraid I found over-extended, but again, I am as sure as I can be that that was not to be attributed to Levit’s performance. Performance, perhaps more than the music ‘itself’, brought Debussy again to mind; this was tintinnabulation more compelling, at least, than the ‘holy minimalist’ – may God preserve our souls! – variety. There were intriguing Schoenbergian harmonies to be heard too, and, if I am not being unduly fanciful, also renewed Lisztian associations, suggesting that a performer’s touch (almost) alone can create such resonances. (I am reminded of Sir Donald Tovey’s remark that Liszt’s piano music told us that here was a pianist who could not help but draw a beautiful sound from the instrument.) ‘Fireflies’ (no.6 out of 8) is, as one might expect, vividly pictorial, Levit superseding what sounded like formidable technical challenges. ‘Ruins’, for me the most interesting of the four movements heard, announces a theme as if for variations of some sort – thoughtful programming, as one might expect – but which is immediately developed contrapuntally. As Paul Griffiths noted in the programme, this ‘could be the bass for a chaconne, but one broken or unfinished’. It guides progress, at times almost Bach-like, then seems, if this makes any sense, to desist from doing so for a while. The performer’s task in such music is often to import at least some sense of continuity to (apparent or otherwise) discontinuity; Levit certainly did. Just as he navigated tremolando touch, voicing, harmonic motion, and so on, surely knowingly pointing up likenesses to Liszt’s Bach – and not just BACH – variations. The movement even occasionally sounded neo-Lisztian in form at some times. Apart, that is, from an intervention by mobile telephone. The fourth movement, ‘Wake Up’, states simple early material, apparently from a melody by the singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, and then progresses toccata-like. An initial comparison I made mentally to the finale of Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata failed, when a less single-minded – or, to put it another way, more varied – trajectory emerged. Perhaps this is the broken landscape of post-modernity. Was that a BACH reference I heard, or perhaps a little later, a DSCH one? I am really not sure; my ears might have been playing tricks. Perhaps that is part of the point.

After a highly impressive first half, Levit truly surpassed himself in an all-encompassing performance of Rzewski’s classic The People will Never be Defeated, which takes, as many readers will know, its theme from Sergio Ortega’s  ¡El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!, initially intended as an anthem for Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity coalition, gaining further revolutionary currency as a symbol of resistance both within Chile and without, following the overthrow and murder of Allende. That theme here sounded forthright, catchy, even slinky: just the inspiring thing. The Webern-like treatment of the first variation had us believing in every note (just as a great performance of Webern will, despite his rather more sparing manner!), whilst its successor seemed somehow to fill in some of the gaps left by such pointillism. It was the extraordinary, human variety of treatments, both in work and performance, that most of all struck – just as it surely should. This stands, one might say and despite the difference in form and genre, closer to Mahler’s conception of the symphony than to Sibelius’s. And so, in the third variation, ‘Slightly slower, with expressive nuances,’ an experience not so far removed from shellshock in the face of repression could be felt.

 

Voicing, again, was cared for as if Levit were playing Chopin – and it was interesting to hear how much the music could be made to sound like Chopin’s, or indeed Rachmaninov’s. (At one stage, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini came to my mind.) ‘Care’ should not here be taken to imply something pedantic; rather, it was exercised within a dynamic, goal-oriented framework of impetus and integration, bringing us closer than we might expect to the work’s original companion piece, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Repeated notes – the twenty-third variation, I think – sounded worthy of Gaspard de la nuit. As for the ‘big twenty-eight variation … an essay in boogie-woogie minimalism’ (Griffiths), well quite: it still seemed to me as banal as the real, minimalistic thing. But the revolution is supposed to be for everyone, I reminded myself, slightly grudgingly. The improvisation following the final variation started with a welcome hint of extended Webern and went on its own path compellingly – though my memory does not permit me to retrace it now. (Is that not perhaps part of the point of an improvisation anyway?) And yes, at the end, the tune did emerge having ‘manifested a resilience it was designed to express and encourage’ (Griffiths), intriguingly not unlike the return of the ‘Aria’ in the Goldberg Variations (a work I hear Levit is due soon to record). This was virtuosity in the very best sense, indeed the Lisztian sense: at a musical and technical level that would defeat any ‘mere’ virtuoso.

Meanwhile, well: look at the neo-liberal world in which we live, the neo-liberal progeny of Pinochet’s chums - step forward, Milton Friedman! - apparently triumphant, a Labour Party under Harriet Harman supporting Conservative attacks upon the poor which even the Liberal Democrats opposed. That was not the least of the reasons why I found this performance so moving; it gave a glimmer of hope, experientially, that the heirs of Allende rather than those of Pinochet might yet reunite, might yet even win.





 

A Celebration of Cornelius Cardew, 27 November 2011

Purcell Room

February Piece 1959
February Piece 1960
February Piece 1961
The Fourth System
Material
Unintended Piano Music
Croppy Boy

John Tilbury (piano)

This ‘celebration’ at the Purcell Room is part of a greater festival devoted to Cornelius Cardew by Morley College, of which further details may be found at http://www.thengineroom2011.com/. Cardew is certainly an absorbing, intriguing figure to read about, progressing from boy chorister at Canterbury Cathedral, to the Royal Academy of Music, to assistant to Stockhausen on Carré, to composer of the seven-hour-long Great Learning, founder of the Scratch Orchestra, and radical political activist, having engaged in vigorous Maoist self-criticism, finally meeting his death in a mysterious hit-and-run accident near his Leyton home.

Opportunities to hear Cardew’s music are infrequent. John Tilbury, a friend of the composer, has engaged in tireless advocacy, whether as pianist or biographer. There was certainly no reason to doubt in the truthfulness of his performances. (I have seen no scores.) They sounded committed in every sense, born of experience as well as devotion. To my ears – which, I am well aware, are not necessarily well-attuned to the composer’s voice – it was the earlier works that exerted greater interest. Tilbury mentioned in his programme note Cage and Stockhausen as influences on the three February Pieces; they indeed sounded present, though so, I thought, did Schoenberg, especially in some of the harmonies, if only accidentally. (According to Tilbury’s fascinating memorial lecture, Cardew would later, in 1967, write of Schoenberg: ‘From America Columbus brought us back syphillis, or Death through sex; there is no reason why the compliment should not be returned with myself as the humble vehicle, in the form of total serialism - of Death through music. In the case of serialism the damage has already been done, Schoenberg is the bearer of that intolerable guilt.’ Boulez’s ‘Schoenberg est mort’ sounds relatively innocuous by the side of such words.) The nature of Tilbury’s page-turning suggested aleatory writing; whatever the nature of the compositional principles, this seemed attractive, well-crafted music, even if it was difficult to discern great individuality on a first hearing. The Fourth Element, ‘a kind of appendix to the February Pieces,’ involved a ‘prepared’ element to the piano. Again, it was attractive enough, though somewhat repetitive as time went on.

Material is Cardew’s 1964 piano transcription of his Third Orchestral Piece from four years earlier. Though the material is therefore contemporary with the February Pieces, to me it seemed harmonically more conventional, as if the composer were already moving towards a variety of experimental English minimalism. The previously advertised Winter Potato no.1 – there are three such ‘potatoes’, the pieces, according to Cardew, having lain underground for some time – was omitted, though Croppy Boy took its place, albeit as the final work on the programme. Before that, we heard Unintended Piano Music from 1970 or 1971: Cardew apparently ‘slipped [Tilbury] a single sheet of manuscript paper with a few chords and grace notes.’ I am afraid that is rather what it sounded like: muted doodling. Croppy Boy, based upon a revolutionary Irish song, may well have been important to Cardew in terms of his political principles; yet, as piano music, it sounded merely inconsequential to these doubtless-jaded ears.

I am afraid that I was unable to stay for the second half of the concert, which offered instead of other works by Cardew, improvisations by Tilbury and percussionist Eddie Prévost, coming together as AMM, a ‘cloaked acronym,’ which is both ‘the name of a music improvisation ensemble and the embodiment of a philosophy’. On the basis of Prévost’s programme note, it would seem as though AMM has had something of a fractious history, which once included Cardew, who departed from the ensemble – perhaps the philosophy too? – twice. Further details may be found at http://www.matchlessrecordings.com/.

Songs, Cycles, and Scenas, 1 March 2011

Purcell Room
Cornelius Cardew – Solo with Accompaniment
Howard Skempton – Gloss (world premiere)
Jonathan Harvey – Ah! Sun-flower
Colin Matthews – Out in the dark
John Woolrich – Stendhal’s Observation
Philip Cashian – The Songs few hear (world premiere)
Rolf Hind – Fire in the Head (world premiere)
George Nicholson – selection from Bagatelles (6,3,4,2), for oboe and percussion (London premiere)
Alun Hoddinott – A Contemplation upon Flowers (Myfanwy Piper) (London premiere)

Claire Booth (soprano)
Andrew Matthews-Owen (piano)
Janey Miller (oboe)
Joby Burgess (percussion)


I wanted to like this concert; I had expected to like this concert. Reader, you are doubtless expecting a ‘but’, and verily, there are several. To start with, the programme really did not hang together. I had assumed that there would be at least one work in which all of the players came together. What instead we had was alternating groups of pieces for oboe and percussion on the one hand, and soprano and piano on the other, with a small part for percussion added by the performers for the final piece (no oboe). Nor did there seem to be any connection between the music played by the two groups: that for oboe and percussion was ‘experimental’, and frankly of dubious quality, however well performed, whilst that for soprano and piano was – surprisingly, given the adventurous tastes of Claire Booth in general – pleasant enough but for the most part somewhat conservative.

I was intrigued by the prospect of hearing Cornelius Cardew’s Solo with Accompaniment. A box, I suppose, has been ticked; I cannot imagine wanting to hear its banalities again. Clearly the concept is the important thing, but an extremely simple solo – played, I assume as requested, with most unpleasing tone by Janey Miller – around which a busier percussion accompaniment weaves itself to no particular end, is not much of a tribute to Stockhausen, as John Tilbury claimed in his memorial lecture on Cardew. As for Howard Skempton’s Gloss, receiving its first performance, minimalistic simplicity would, as usual, appear to be the concept. If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will like. To my ears, it sounded like a cross between a GCSE project and the beginning of a score for a Channel 4 period drama. Joby Burgess’s performances throughout, however, seemed exemplary; he certainly did everything he could to try to convince one of the music’s worth. Fire in the Head, by Rolf Hind, also received its first performance. I have only previously heard Hind as an extremely fine pianist – most recently in Lachenmann’s Ausklang – and it would seem that I am far more attuned to his work in that guise. Based, we were told, upon Buddhist ideas, notably that one must live ‘for the moment’ and that the Buddha would at some point dance with the Devil, it was certainly eventful. Burgess and Miller gave it their all, including shouts of what I assume were Buddhist or mock-Buddhist chant. Pouring water from a plastic jug into a bowl was one of Burgess’s manifold tasks. Again, it seemed a bit like a school – perhaps an art school – project, but doubtless I was missing the point. George Nicholson’s Bagatelles went on for a while and ended, though they seemed more substantially composed; I think I had become rather fed up by that point, so ought to hear them again. At least they permitted us to hear the oboe d’amore in addition to English horn.

Of the songs, John Woolrich’s Stendhal’s Observation emerged at the time as a typically finely wrought example of the composer’s art, though I admit that I cannot clearly recall how or why even in what seemed to me the strongest piece on the programme. (That, I am sure, however, and without irony, is my loss.) Jonathan Harvey’s Ah! Sun-flower set words by Blake clearly, without leaving any lasting impression, whilst Colin Matthews’s Out in the dark seemed merely neo-Romantic, but at least short. Philip Cashian’s The Songs few hear from time to time seemed to evoke Britten in its vocabulary; it was idiomatically written for voice and piano, and the musicians concerned would seem to have given a good account. I am not sure that it was done any great favours by the context of its programming. Claire Booth’s clarity and quality of voice were exemplary throughout, likewise Andrew Matthews-Owen’s skilled navigation of the varied – sometimes, not so varied – piano parts. Matthews-Owen perhaps particularly came into his own in the piano reduction of Alun Hoddinott’s A Contemplation upon Flowers. Again, Britten came to mind more than once, but Hoddinott’s language here equally often sounded knowingly post-Impressionist, or at least French-influenced. There are worse influences than Britten and Debussy, of course, and the almost Romantic climaxes, surely and expressively conveyed by both musicians, betokened at least a synthesis that was Hoddinott’s own. Burgess added atmospheric tolling bells in the first and third of the cycle’s three songs.