Nash Inventions - Stravinsky, Holt, Grime, Davies, Carter, Casken, Matthews, and Anderson, 18 March 2025

Wigmore Hall

Stravinsky: Concertino
Simon Holt: Acrobats on a loose wire (world premiere)
Helen Grime: Long have I lain beside the water (world premiere)
Davies: String Quintet
Carter: Mosaic
John Casken: Mantle (world premiere)
Colin Matthews: C.A.N.O.N. (world premiere)
Julian Anderson: Van Gogh Blue

Claire Booth (soprano)
Nash Ensemble
Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Founded in October 1964 by Amelia Freedman at the Royal Academy of Music, a shortish walk away from the Wigmore Hall, the Nash Ensemble is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary season, this the culminating concert in a day’s events of ‘Nash Inventions’ that was but one part, broadly speaking the ‘new music’ part, of that season. As Harrison Birtwistle noted, quoted in the programme, the Nash is and has been unusual in ‘dedication to the old and the new’. Here, no fewer than four world premieres were heard alongside other Nash commissions, plus Stravinsky’s Concertino. 

Stravinsky’s 1920 piece for string quartet received a performance making it sound as new as the day it was born, now of course more than a century ago. Incisive, even aggressive, the Nash’s account showed that rich tone was not inimical to such qualities, quite the contrary. Quite rightly, this singular work sounded unlike anything else, although certain approaches to The Soldier’s Tale made a welcome impression.

Simon Holt’s new work, Acrobats on a Loose Wire, for flute (in the balcony above and behind) and string trio draws inspiration from a painting by Jusepe de Ribera. Its clear trajectory, the flautist moving from piercing piccolo to alto flute and finally to (standard) C flute, seemingly unaware of the string trio on stage proved engaging and brimming with melody of a kind one might almost, borrowing from Wagner, call ‘unendlich(e)’. 

Soprano Claire Booth and conductor Martyn Brabbins joined flute, clarinet, string trio, and harp for the premiere of Helen Grime’s  Long have I lain beside the water in its chamber version. Originally, it was the final song in a cycle for orchestra and solo soprano, to words by Zoe Gilbert. ‘A lament’, to quote Gilbert, ‘by a murderous sister, a tale of jealousy and love,’ it opens with a single pitch passed from woodwind to soprano, other instruments joining around them (descending). Words and music seemed to form an indissoluble union, both as work and performance, whether melismatic or syllabic. In that, they gave a taste – rather more than that – of gripping drama in which every note counted: both song and scena, it seemed. Typically vivid of timbre, it made me keen to hear the larger work from which it comes. 

Next came Peter Maxwell Davies’s 2014 String Quintet. Whether it was quite the right time and place to hear it, I have my doubts. It made for a long evening with this broad span of four movements. Still, if there were few surprises here, there was unquestionably compositional craft. The first movement in particular, entitled ‘Chacony’, might initially have sounded conventional, and the music is naturally distant from the anger of the composer’s youth; its ambiguities nonetheless suggested something more elusive the closer one listened. An oblique ‘Reel’, a broad, sometimes anguished ‘Slow Air’, and the whirlwind of a vigorous closing ‘Stamash’ brought us to the interval. 

Elliott Carter’s 2004 Mosaic, taking a further decade’s step back, proved a fine counterpart in context to the Grime piece. Once again, every note counted in a bejewelled mosaic for flute, oboe, clarinet, harp, string trio, and double bass. It evinced all the vigour of a young composer and all the wisdom of the composer’s actual years in a setting so exquisite one might reach for the word ‘Mozartian’. There was certainly no gainsaying the vibrance of the performance. If every aspect of form were not immediately to be grasped, it was certainly, like a mosaic, to be perceived as a whole. 

Returning to 2024, John Caskeen’s Mantle for piano and wind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn) offered a different sort of ‘classical’, perhaps in some ways closer to Stravinsky’s brand (though hardly to the Concertino heard on this occasion). Again, one sensed, even if one could not necessarily grasp, the music mapped out before us in another vividly present performance. As with most of the music heard this evening – excepting the Davies Quintet – there was a suggestion of it having covered such ground as might have been expected from a considerably longer piece, its span if not short, then certainly not long. It pulsed with life and clear, sonata-like direction. 

Colin Matthews’s new commission, C.A.N.O.N. for soprano and piano trio, took its leave from a 2022 setting of Christopher Reid’s poem ‘O’ for what would have been Oliver Knussen’s 70th birthday. Its first part, ‘C’ for Claire, did not actually include Claire Booth: instead, we heard a wistful, even Romantic movement for piano trio. Instant contrast was offered with an ‘A’ vocal movement (as with the rest, words by Reid) for ‘Anonymals’, ‘the numberless nameless ones’, but also for ‘Amelia’. Both singer and composer truly used the words to shape music—and, so it seemed, vice versa. ‘N’ for ‘Nightingale’ and ‘Nash’ offered the bird’s voice, I think, first in the trio, then reflected in the vocal writing. ‘O’ was clearly very much the heart of the material; that I could tell before having read the composer’s note. And ‘Narwhals’, once again for ‘Nash’, felt from the outset as a finale, its music founded on yet never merely dictated by the words it ‘set’.

Again without prejudice to any music in particular, I felt the second half might have benefited from one fewer piece. Julian Anderson’s Van Gogh Blue, for which Brabbins returned to conduct an ensemble of flute, two clarinets, harp, viola, and cello, nonetheless made for a characterful and characteristic conclusion. Sparer though also more luxuriant, perhaps more ‘Gallic’ in sensibility, it formed a beautifully crafted homage to Van Gogh’s paintings in musical images of the colour blue from dawn to midnight. The brightness of the latter made for a fitting, somewhat disturbing evocation of Starry Night in light of the painter’s suicide: clarinets again above, a quarter-tone apart.

 

Hardenberger/Kopatchinskaja/LSO/Roth - Järventausta, Strauss, Grime, and Coll, 3 April 2022

Barbican Hall

Joel Järventausta: Sunfall (world premiere)
Strauss: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, op.28
Helen Grime: Trumpet Concerto (world premiere)
Francisco Coll: Violin Concerto (UK premiere)
Strauss: Tod und Verklärung, op.24

Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin)

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

London Symphony Orchestra

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

Three premieres, two of them world premieres, and a couple of Strauss tone poems. Add concerto soloists of the calibre of Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Håkan Hardenberger to the formidable team of the London Symphony Orchestra and François-Xavier Roth, and what is not to like? Nothing here, I think. Joel Järventausta’s Sunfall, apparently rooted in the composer’s synaesthetic response to the colour orange, made for an impressive opening piece, subdued first chords swiftly, rudely interrupted by a cataclysmic orchestral clap. That and other such contrasts in material were worked out in an atmosphere of unease and natural-world majesty. A keen ear for matching timbre and harmony, and for lone, fragile melodic against that atmospheric backdrop imparted a sense of the ultimate amorality of the sun and its light: it can give life, but it can also take it away. Increasing animation, even frenzy, returned us to a transformed wilderness. Chatter at its close—musical, yet speech—enhanced the enigma, but also the unapproachability of that giant fireball now departed.

I do not think it would do Sunfall any disservice to call it a contemporary tone-poem. At any rate, it was followed by the first of two supreme masterpieces of the genre. Till Eulenspiegel emerged in Roth and the LSO’s capable hands flexible, colourful, and wry as ever. It shared with its predecessor a clear sense of narrative, full of incident and clear of structure, though it was certainly not to be reduced to its programme. There was an idiomatic swing where called for, not so very far from Strauss’s waltz-king namesake. Throughout, Roth showed that, like the best Strauss conductors, he could ‘play’ the orchestra with ease. 

Helen Grime’s new Trumpet Concerto opened darkly, yet with a host of orchestral colours, harmonic and timbral, not entirely un-Bergian. From that, the trumpet emerged magically, before sinking once more into an orchestral cauldron that was itself home both to echoes and pre-echoes of Hardenberger’s wondrously spun solo thread. Motivic threads were knit tightly together in a way I am tempted to call Classical, though I do not wish to imply something backward-looking. And in truth, the method probably had little to do with such distant forebears, though the movement of particular lines more than once recalled to me the late music of Boulez. Fantastic descending orchestral spirals, scurrying, and more would surely have interested, even delighted, him. Hardenberger’s lightly worn virtuosity became all the more apparent, incited by magnificently idiomatic writing for the instrument. There was, moreover an ebbing and flowing melancholy to the trumpet, not remotely sentimental, but which rather seemed to bear witness, perhaps even to the troubled time in which it was written (and first performed). 

The opening éclat of Francisco Coll’s Violin Concerto, more angular rhythmically, heralded a kinship that may only have been of chance, but which in context spoke of twin conceptions of instrumental and orchestral fantasy, replete in this case with punctuating percussion. At any rate, we heard the music of two composers by now fully mature, even contemporary masters. (For me, it has been quite a thing to acquaint myself with their musical journeys over the past decade or so.) Kopatchinskaja’s explosive, full-blown virtuosity led the way towards a lyrical blooming that was not so much ‘traditional’, whatever that may mean, as intriguingly and, yes, movingly haunted by some of tradition’s ghosts. The first movement (‘Atomised’) close, with high-lying, silvery orchestral violins heightened a kinship I had already felt with Prokofiev: not ‘influence’, nor a model, but perhaps simply a sense that the two composers, mediated by Kopatchinskaja, might have something to say to one another. 

There was certainly a sense of magic, drawing one in, to the second movement ‘Hyperhymnia’ and its lyricism, both uneasy and (almost) easy, harmonic development propelling its motion. Indeed, the expressive nature of Coll’s harmonic language, never to be reduced to that of anything or anyone else, proved at times quite breathtaking. A section of almost neo-Mahlerian climaxes, not in language, but in preparation and spacing, led to a true cadenza of true, musical virtuosity, which in turn led us into a finale (‘Phase’) of great invention (for instance, a passage setting violin against double basses) and intensity. Passages of (relative) stasis and movement, of shifting colours, transformational rhythms, and ghosts in the machine, seemed as inspired by Kopatchinskaja’s playing as she by Coll’s writing.

Both concertos, indeed all the works so far heard, had been journeys of transformation. So too, of course, was Tod und Verklärung. Its ominous opening heart-beats, vividly pictorial and crucial to subsequent, motivic development, heightened rather than dignified the magic of life (and beyond). There was high-operatic drama, presented with polish, precision, and grand sweep. There were light and shade, including colours I had never fancied were there. There was harmonic richness too, all revealed in a full-bodied orchestral performance, with none of the thinness one sometimes hears in this work. The glow of final transfiguration was echt-Straussian and intensely moving.

For International Women's Day

Tallies of concert and total (concert and opera) performances, 2018

Before Christmas, I posted my tally of opera performances attended during the year. Having attended my final concert of the year last night, I can now do the same for concerts and, below, combined. I may have miscounted, forgotten the odd thing I did not review, etc. Encores are not included (if only because I have not always noted them down). One appearance in a single programme counts once. What does this show? Not very much, perhaps. It certainly does not reflect what is performed; I naturally tend to choose performances I think will interest me. On the other hand, if no possibilities to hear Webern had presented themselves - which sometimes they do not - I should not have been able to hear his music on six different occasions. Moreover, if I can hardly lay claim to anything approaching gender balance here, it is good to see three women composers - Charlotte Bray, Helen Grime, and Olga Neuwirth - receive more than one performance. Neuwirth would have had another, had bronchitis not had me miss one of hers.


It is good, in any case, to see Brahms - often the target of a bizarre loathing more suited to the nineteenth century than the twenty-first - come on top of the concert list and indeed to share second place in the aggregated list with Wagner. If Mozart comes out on top, I am certainly not going to complain. Click here, for the sake of comparison, for the lists for 2017.

Concert tally

11 Brahms

9 Haydn

8 Debussy, Schubert

7 Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky

6 Schoenberg, Webern

4 Berg, Mahler, Mozart, Schumann, Stockhausen

3 Ligeti, Liszt, Prokofiev, Strauss, Tchaikovsky

2 Bartók, Berio, Charlotte Bray, Dvořák, Helen Grime, Janáček, Olga Neuwirth, Ravel, Frederic Rzewski, Szymanowski, Tallis, Wagner, Zemlinsky

1 Mark Andre, Berlioz, Gerald Barry, Biber, William Bolcom, Lili Boulanger, John Browne, Bruckner, Byrd, Uri Caine, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Cavalli, Chausson, Unsuk Chin, David Robert Coleman, John Corigliano, William Cornysh, Dario Costello, Louis Couperin, Brett Dean, Duparc, Duruflé, Andris Dzenītis, Elgar, Fauré, Andrea Gabrieli, Gesualdo, Glière, Gounod, Christoph Graupner, Handel, Reynaldo Hahn, John Harbison, Hasse, Henze, Anders Hillborg, Holst, Philippe Hurel, Kódaly, Krenek, Lachenmann, Lassus, Gordon Lightfoot, Magnus Lindberg, Matthew Locke, Steven Mackey, Alma Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Emilie Meyer, Milhaud, Mosolov, Thea Musgrave, Mussorgsky, Offenbach, Palestrina, Edmond de Polignac, Poulenc, Purcell, Rebecca Saunders, Sciarrino, Scriabin, John Sheppard, Nat Shilkret, Ravel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Antonio Sartorio, Takemitsu, Alexander Tansman, Taverner, George Thalben-Ball, Ernst Toch, Joan Tower, Turnage, Weber, Hedy West, Jörg Widmann, Charles Wuorinen, Wolf, Peter Yarrow

Overall

13 Mozart

11 Brahms, Wagner

10 Haydn

9 Debussy

8 Schubert, Strauss

7 Beethoven, Schoenberg, Stravinsky

6 Webern

5 Stockhausen

4 Berg, Janáček, Mahler, Prokofiev, Puccini, Schumann, Tchaikovsky

3 Ligeti, Liszt

2 Bartók, Berio, Benjamin, Bizet, Charlotte Bray, Dvořák, Handel, Helen Grime, Olga Neuwirth, Poulenc, Ravel, Frederic Rzewski, Szymanowski, Tallis, Turnage, Weber, Zemlinsky

1 Ondřej Adámek, Daniel Blanco Albert, Mark Andre, Lennoz Berkley, Berlioz, Gerald Barry, Biber, William Bolcom, Britten, Lili Boulanger, John Browne, Bruckner, Byrd, Uri Caine, John Casken, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Cavalli, Chausson, Unsuk Chin, David Robert Coleman, John Corigliano, William Cornysh, Dario Costello, Louis Couperin, Peter Maxwell Davies, Brett Dean, Duparc, Duruflé, Dusapin, Andris Dzenītis, Gottfried von Einem, Elgar, Fauré, Andrea Gabrieli, Gershwin, Gesualdo, Glière, Gounod, Christoph Graupner, Handel, Reynaldo Hahn, John Harbison, Hasse, Henze, Anders Hillborg, Hindemith, Holst, Humperdinck, Philippe Hurel, Elfyn Jones, Kódaly, Krenek, Lachenmann, Edward Lambert, Lassus, Gordon Lightfoot, Magnus Lindberg, Matthew Locke, Steven Mackey, Alma Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Emilie Meyer, Milhaud, Monteverdi, Mosolov, Thea Musgrave, Mussorgsky, Offenbach, Palestrina, Edmond de Polignac, Poulenc, Purcell, Rebecca Saunders, Sciarrino, Scriabin, John Sheppard, Nat Shilkret, Ravel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Antonio Sartorio, Takemitsu, Alexander Tansman, Taverner, George Thalben-Ball, Ernst Toch, Joan Tower, Turnage, Philip Venables, Huw Watkins, Hedy West, Alastair White, Jörg Widmann, Charles Wuorinen, Wolf, Peter Yarrow, Na’ama Zisser

LSO/Rattle - Grime and Mahler, 19 April 2018

Barbican Hall

Helen Grime: Woven Space (world premiere)

Mahler: Symphony no.9

London Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

No doubting the important performance here: the world premiere of Helen Grime’s Woven Space, commissioned by the Barbican for the LSO and Simon Rattle. Alas, Rattle’s recent way with Mahler and indeed with much central repertoire prior to Schoenberg continued: not so extreme as some performances, yet still highly mannered, and for the most part lacking in direction. The Barbican Hall does not help, of course: too small, the sound constricted, yet another indication of why London so desperately needs a decent large concert hall. Yet that would not, could not have changed the fundamental problems with the performance, lapped up, needless to say, by the audience. I was left longing for something along the lines of Bernard Haitink with the same orchestra.

The good news, however, was very good. Grime’s piece, in three movements, had apparently been offered in a sneak aural glimpse last autumn, the first movement, ‘Fanfares’ heard at the opening of the LSO’ season. Its opening éclat, hard-edged (tuned percussion and strings in particular), even icy, yet inviting, proved not only to be éclat, soon developing, perhaps not entirely unlike later Boulez. At the same time, there is something fantastical to it too, almost akin to a tone poem in the Dukas line; her Virga, written for the same orchestra in 2007, performed again by them in February, did not seem so entirely distant in that sense at least. Tautness of rhythm, unity of purpose from Rattle and the LSO could hardly be faulted. Bells and solo cor anglais – I could not help but think of Berlioz – may not have been reducible to a narrative; nor, however, did they rule it out. For there are fanfares, certainly, but as part of something more, be it a narrative as such or something which, in performance, fulfils a similar function: perhaps the structure by Laura Ellen Bacon, a 2009 Chatsworth Park aenclosure within an enclosure, after which Woven Space is named. There is stillness too, unease, I think, and consequently something darker. Fascinating in its multivalence – again, perhaps not entirely unlike Boulez’s Notations, albeit with a smaller orchestra – it must have whetted the appetite for more in September.

More we now heard. ‘Woven Space’ is also the name given to the second of the three movements. It seems to pick up, loosely – not, I think, necessarily in terms of material as such – from the ‘uneasy’ section of the first movement. There are similar sonorities, ‘hard’ and ‘softer’, yet this is no mere repetition. I fancied, looking ahead aurally, that some of the string lines, whilst more tangled, might be hinting at late Mahler, but perhaps that was nothing more than my own personal fancy. At any rate, the harmonies have little in common. There is a strong sense of descent, in the sense of downward motion, played out amongst three competing choirs, distinct yet not unvarying: roughly, strings, woodwind and percussion, and brass. What initially seems to be the still heart of the work reveals itself to be at least as much its dramatic cauldron. I liked the way it simply stopped once it had no more to say: less shattering than Wozzeck – what is not?! – yet perhaps in its line. ‘Course’, the third movement, presents different motion and different forms of motion: upwards, this time, swirling and perhaps even swarming, yet with other forces competing against that primary tendency. At a certain point, the tension built up starts to dissipate, preparing the way for a telescoped, binding (that woven structure again?) conclusion that is no mere return. New lines, new developments open up, or seem to: the uncertainty is part, I suspect, of the fascination. Again, the music stops; again, we are left wanting more.

I feared the worst at the very opening of the first movement of the Mahler, yet once the second violins entered, Rattle engendered a far greater sense of momentum. Indeed, the unease that pervaded roughly the first half of the movement, pervading in particular its progress, was enlightening in its suggestion of the implacable. Mahler’s music was made stranger without merely sounding perverse. We were made to listen, especially in its hushed, liminal passages, their exaggerations notwithstanding. Ultimately, though, it became clear that these were more passages, even sections, of interest than building blocks within a structure, let alone dialectics within its formal elucidation. The sense of connection, however complex, Rattle had brought to the first half generally eluded him here. The dawn of the recapitulation sounded duly monstrous in its combination of beauty and ugliness; alas, its disintegration proved all too distended.

The second movement proved strong of heft, yet heavy, in more than one sense, in stylisation. Fair enough, one might say, and initially I did. But do we not need something behind the parody of a parody, perhaps of a parody? At best, some of the Schoenbergian transformation of rhythms – seemingly, intriguingly, founded in rhythm and then extending itself to melody – had one listen anew. In the absence of Schoenbergian, or indeed other discernible method, though, the performance began to sound merely bloated. There is much to be said for problematizing repertoire in performance; Boulez, for instance, often did just that. Yet Boulez’s clarity of purpose, whatever one might have thought of it and its underlying ideology, proved once again elusive here. Structure and form less dissolved – an enticing, almost Debussyan prospect – than lost their way. It was above all the loss of impetus that concerned most, far more than slowness of tempo as such. Alas, I remained resolutely unmoved.

The ‘Rondo-Burleske’ fared better, especially to start with, as if the music had come back into focus: not tamed, thank goodness, yet with a guiding thread to help us through the labyrinth. The LSO responded, so it seemed, in kind. Again, later on, there seemed to be some loss of way, yet to a lesser extent. And so, when the violins dug into the opening phrase of the final ‘Adagio’, it seemed to mean something. Rattle could not resist moulding the theme that emerged, yet not unreasonably so. He certainly did not take the easy way through this movement, which is to be applauded; its extremities were acknowledged, without abandonment of a sense of harmonic motion. A passage in which string vibrato was withdrawn made its chaste point; so too did the relative rarity of giving the strings their heard. If the final goodbye were perhaps unduly prolonged – it takes a Boulez not to succumb – then such a reluctance is eminently comprehensible. Even here, though, I longed for the relative straightforwardness of a performance Rattle gave with the same orchestra round about 2000. There is much to be said for letting musical contradictions overflow into performance; Mahler should never sound too easy, let alone bureaucratic. At the same time, however, his music too needs its ‘woven space’.

Kavakos/LSO/Harding - Grime, Prokofiev, and Strauss, 18 February 2018

Barbican Hall

Grime: Virga

Prokofiev: Violin Concerto no.2 in G minor, op.63

Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie, op.64

Leonidas Kavakos (violin)

London Symphony Orchestra

Daniel Harding (conductor)

A wonderful concert. Without being didactic – nothing wrong with that, far from it – in its programming, it permitted connections to be made, if one would, whilst concentrating on performing and interpretative excellence. If I have heard better live performances of either Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto or Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, then I must have forgotten them. That seems unlikely.

First, in a programme that more or less corresponded to the traditional, yet now quite rare, overture-concerto-symphony format – it was actually never quite so ‘traditional’ as some like to claim – came Helen Grime’s Virga. Commissioned by the LSO for its UBS Sound Adventures Scheme and first performed more than ten years ago in 2007, Virga takes its name, to quote John Fallas’s excellent programme note, from ‘precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before reaching the ground’. I do not know whether you will believe me – I hope so, dear reader – but I thought of raindrops whilst hearing the piece (for the first time), prior to reading the note immediately afterwards. Indeed, I thought, almost saw, droplets falling or travelling not so much in both as in many directions. Immediately, that is, after an opening éclat which must surely have offered particular appeal to one of the piece’s early advocates: no less than Pierre Boulez. The precision both of work and performance under Daniel Harding would surely have appealed to him too; it sounded not un-Gallic, and indeed not without a little Russianness either. (I do not think it was just the coming of Prokofiev that had me think that.) However, there was something intriguingly Germanic, a little Germanic out-of-water perhaps, to an almost Romantic cello melody, still more so its violin (Mahlerian?) successor, heard without accompaniment. Messianesque tuned percussion incited a Boulezian sense of controlled delirium – or, perhaps, rather the sense that such a state might be around the corner. I mention other composers not because I found the music in any sense derivative, quite the contrary. But just to place it, as I indeed placed it for myself, when hearing it for the first time. Harding and the LSO shaped it beautifully, but this was music, ‘poetic’ in a far from un-Romantic sense, which permitted of such shaping. I very much look forward to hearing it again – and indeed to the LSO’s new commission from the composer, to be heard later this year, conducted by Simon Rattle.

The opening solo of the Prokofiev concerto is surprisingly difficult to bring off. It needs to be direct yet inviting, anything but fussy and yet – a frustratingly vague term, I know –  ‘expressive’. Those things it certainly was in Leonidas Kavakos’s performance; it sounded the easiest thing in the world, as deceptive and yet as necessary an impression as if the melody were Mozart’s. Somehow, without my always being quite sure how, the orchestra and conductor seemed always to complement Kavakos’s playing, as that did theirs. This was clearly a meeting of minds and, I think, of souls too. There was an unusual sense of the ‘Allegro’ as well as of the more common ‘moderato’ of the first movement’s tempo marking, greatly to its benefit. It was flexible, yet directed: flexibly directed, one might say. There was darkness too, without exaggeration: a world of fairy-tales, perhaps, yet we know how deep such tales delve into our psyches, individual and collective. Dead-centred, whether in a single line or double-stopping, Kavakos’s tone was surely a joy in itself, yet there was no ‘in itself’ to it. His counterpoint blended perfectly with that of the orchestra’s soloists, every one of them first-rate.

Egyptian cotton, rather than silk, was my first thought concerning the soundworld of the slow movement, often sentimentalised, yet not here. The pulsating ‘accompaniment’ did all that could be asked of it and more; so did the hemiolas it helped create. Kavakos’s vibrato, the length of his bowing, his fingering, all were perfectly chosen and varied; and yet again, it sounded so easy. (It most certainly is not!) I think I even preferred this to Heifetz. Music and performance alike proved soulful, communicative, yet never narcissistic. Form, once again, was vividly, even magically communicated by all. The finale, taken attacca, offered just the right degree of contrast: very much the next and final chapter. It had – something about which I have been thinking quite a bit recently – very much the character and dynamism of a finale. That might sound a truism, but I do not think it is; it certainly did not seem so in a performance of such distinction. And yet, it was very much the particularity of this finale, castanets and all. The side-slipping ‘simplicity’ of the third movement from the Sonata for Two Violins, op.56, collegially given with LSO leader, Roman Simovic, made for the perfect encore.

Richard Strauss’s music and indeed his æsthetic seem to me all the more necessary by the day. His defence, a musical defence, of art and of music in particular are just what a world, descending further daily into abject barbarism, needs. And of course Strauss knew very much about that – not just after 1933, but over the four-year period of writing this symphony, 1911-15. The darkness, here visual as well as aural, in which the symphony’s ‘Nacht’ opens is, or should be something very special: materialist, yes, and with a Nietzschean spirituality born out of anti-Christian materialism. So it was here. Harding’s way with the opening material intrigued me greatly: more flowing than one often hears, Wagnerian with its unendliche Melodie. I liked it very much. What grew out of it was elemental, magnificent, yet never pompous. It breathed the air of Strauss as much as of Garmisch; it spoke not only of ‘Nature’ in the way that some think it does, pictorially. Nor was the music unduly shoehorned into conceptions, often irrelevant, of what a symphony ‘should’ be. It made its own way, more a symphonic poem, perhaps, certainly sui generis: all the better for it. Paths opened up – and closed – before one’s ears; this was a musical ascent, not just a musical recreation of an ascent.

If I say that I found the performance captivated me still more than one from Bernard Haitink with this same orchestra several years ago, that should give an indication of quite how highly I esteemed it. The LSO certainly sounded warmer, or at least the Barbican acoustic did, and I do not think it was just that. For ‘symphonic’ need not, should not, imply a lack of attention to colour, of which there was as much to appreciate here as in the pieces by Grime and Prokofiev. Fragments from Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier – not literally from those works, but ‘as if’… - dissolved before our aural imagination, just as they had in Verga. Indeed, that coupling came to seem all the more inspired in retrospect. Then Die Frau ohne Schatten came into earshot, above all progressions that might well have come from there – even if, again, they did not. To put it another way, this was not just Strauss’s Alpine Symphony; it was most definitely Strauss.

Olivier Stankeiewicz’s oboe solo, exquisitely moving, made me long to hear him in Strauss’s concerto for that instrument. Indeed, at times, the composer’s ‘Indian summer’ did not sound so distant. At other times, though, quite rightly, it seemed a world away; there was a battle to be fought right here, right now. These are very particular Straussian phantasmagoria here; so they sounded, relished yet thoroughly integrated by Harding and his players. In the Epilogue – Karajan used to say that he conducted the work only for this – everything mattered. Above all, Strauss mattered – more than ever. The lamps were going out all over Europe, across the world. I think we all knew or at least felt what Sir Edward Grey (may have) said next. And yet, there was hope of a sort. For this work offers the best of tests. You cannot really believe in Strauss if you do not believe in it. (You cannot even really have listened to it, I should argue.) If you do not believe in Strauss, can you really believe in music? At any rate, if you do not believe in music, especially now, may God help you.

For International Women's Day

Proms Saturday Matinée 4: London Sinfonietta/Fischer - Boulez, Grime, and Mason, 29 August 2015

Cadogan Hall

Boulez – Mémoriale (‘…explosante-fixe…’ Originel)

Helen Grime – A Cold Spring

Boulez – Domaines

Christian Mason – Open to Infinity: A Grain of Sand (United Kingdom premiere)

Boulez – Eclats/Multiples

Michael Cox (flute)

Mark van de Wiel (clarinet)

London Sinfonietta

Thierry Fischer (conductor)

 

And so, the Proms celebration of Pierre Boulez’s music drew to a close. I have previously lamented the lack of Répons, but otherwise, we have much for which to be grateful. Here, three of Boulez’s works were interspersed with works by two admiring young British composers, Helen Grime and Christian Mason.

First up was Mémoriale, hot on the heels of the Albert Hall performance of …explosante-fixe.... It was interesting to hear the two works in close succession, not least since that experience offered a reminder that the ear can sometimes play tricks: is one hearing electronic sounds or not? Clearly not on this occasion, but I might have guessed so, had I not known otherwise. The flute’s trills, the general contours: all were quite familiar by now; yet of course, they sounded different in a different performance (Michael Cox first among London Sinfonietta equals) and in a very different acoustic, that of Cadogan Hall. The ensemble here seemed to offer something of an aural shadow, reminiscent perhaps of Dialogue de l’ombre double. Boulez’s short piece sounded somewhere in between, or rather somewhere beyond, Debussy and Stravinsky, mediated by hints of the Bergian labyrinth. The horns’ final dying away into nothingness was not the least magical moment.

Helen Grime, in conversation with Tom Service, said how struck she had been, even at music college, by Boulez’s ear for harmony and colour. Her ear is formidable too, in no sense replicating, but happy to admit inspiration. The three movements of A Cold Spring (after a poem by Elizabeth Bishop) offer highly virtuosic writing, each having a featured solo instrument or pair of soloists. The first opens teeming with melody, as if paying updated homage to The Rite of Spring, albeit very much in its own voice. I thought also of Schoenberg – a work such as the First Chamber Symphony – in its melodic profusion, although I am unsure whether such associations are merely my affair. The stiller, second movement (‘Calmo’) brought to me a colouristic hint or two of Birtwistle, perhaps a hint too of a melancholy not entirely dissimilar to his. Dark bass lines (cello and double bass) seem to colour the invention above. Calmness is transformed into something else, prior to a final enchantment, blessed, so it seemed, by all instruments, but perhaps especially the harp. The transition to the third movement is led by the double bass, that movement itself sounding very much as a development of what has gone before, not least in its darkness – melody and harmony, as well as its instrumentation.

In Domaines, the number six is prevalent: the clarinettist, here the excellent Mark van de Wiel, plays from six different stands, each with an original page and a ‘mirror’ thereof, each of those twelve pages having six musical fragments, thus totalling seventy-two in all, ranging in length from forty seconds or so to – temporally speaking, at least – little more than the twinkling of an eye. The collision, navigated by the performer, between ritual theatre and a single instrument’s kaleidoscopic array of colours is not the least of the piece’s claims to drama. And that particular instrument, the clarinet, perhaps inevitably has one listen – and, indeed, watch – mindful of kinship with Birtwistle. Indeed, I could not help but think there was something, whether coincidental or otherwise, of Punch and Judy, albeit suaver, to this performance. One would certainly never have guessed the textual complexity of this assemblage of ‘single’ lines in a performance of such  mesmerising musical theatre. Was Boulez’s aspiration – sorry, not in the Liz Kendall sense – to unendliche Melodie even at this stage perhaps born of Wagner (Parsifal at Bayreuth)? And/or Pelléas? Every so often, there seemed also to be an instrumental, even melodic, reminder of Webern. At any rate, score and performance seemed endlessly generative. The idea of ‘mirrors’ offered other, French resonances, whether with respect to Ravel or even old, Baroque ‘doubles’. One could hear, or fancy one heard, such connections, but this was above all Boulez’s own path, the performer’s, and the listener’s.

Open to Infinity: A Grain of Sand (the title, I assume, inspired by Blake) is the second of Christian Mason’s works dedicated to Boulez, and intended as a tribute. As Mason put it, all three movements were as yet at the ‘grain of sand’ stage, but were open to expansion: a highly Boulezian conception. (Boulez acted as mentor to him at Lucerne.) Another nod to Boulez lies in the use by all fourteen players of crotales, intended as a reference to Le Visage nuptial. In each movement, one can hear, even in a first encounter, the varied working out of the same pitch material (almost Berg-like in its audible presence).  The éclat of the first, ‘In a Grain of Sand’, though it could not be mistaken for Boulez, could certainly be heard as homage. The second, ‘In a Wild Flower’, has almost jazzy inflections: perhaps a touch, dare I suggest it, of Boulez’s would-be antipode, Henze? Whatever the truth of that, there is certainly revealed a keen ear for colour and its relationship to rhythm (which, I admit, could equally be inspired by the orchestral Notations: pure speculation on my part). Dramatically insistent figures characterise the third, ‘In the Palm of Your Hand’, with the London Sinfonietta offering, in a true array of colours, all the performative commitment one would expect.

Eclats/Multiples depends upon split-second decisions from the conductor, not the first and certainly not the last of Boulez’s insistence on the importance of performance. It certainly received a splendid performance from the Sinfonietta and Thierry Fischer. The opening piano éclat announced its Messiaenic inheritance; hearing John Constable, one could almost imagine the ghost of Yvonne Loriod. Such resonances, even echoes, again began to make their own way, however: to construct, perhaps even to destroy, and to suggest further creative-destructive connections (whether thinking of the Second Piano Sonata or the endlessly misquoted interview with Der Spiegel). The illusion and the construction of line familiar from Domaines took on new life in ensemble. The ‘pointillism’ of 1950s serialism has generally been exaggerated, give or take an odd Stockhausen piece; this seemed an object lesson in compositional and performative constructivism from the following decade. (Just, one might say, as in Boulez’s conducting of Webern.) It was a joy to meet in new garb old aural friends from the world of Le Marteau sans maître: to know, with hindsight, where they might lead – or not. Why is this wonderful work not more often performed?

 

Prom 31 - Coote/Hallé/Elder: Berlioz, Elgar, Grime, and Beethoven, 9 August 2014

Royal Albert Hall

Berlioz – Overture: Le Corsaire, op.21

Elgar – Sea Pictures

Helen Grime – Near Midnight (London premiere)

Beethoven – Symphony no.3 in E-flat major, ‘Eroica’, op.55

Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano)

Hallé

Sir Mark Elder (conductor)

 

One of the most saddening aspects of this year’s Proms has been the insulting disservice it has done to new music. Whoever is responsible for the decision to cut contemporary works from television broadcasts should lose his or her job forthwith; it is difficult to imagine a case in which the BBC has acted more clearly against anything remotely approaching Reithian principles. (For the most informative and thoughtful piece on this issue, I have seen, please visit Classical Iconoclast here.) And so it was, apparently, that despite giving the London premiere of Helen Grime’s Near Midnight, the BBC saw fit not to broadcast it on television, whilst offering the rest of the concert. Not only was the decision wrong, it was foolish, for this probably proved the highlight of the Hallé’s concert under Sir Mark Elder. (Incidentally, does not this ‘Hallé’ rebranding sound silly; whatever was wrong with the Hallé Orchestra?)

 

Near Midnight was the first piece Grime wrote for the Hallé as Associate Composer, as we learned in the composer’s informative programme note. Initially inspired by D.H. Lawrence’s poem, Week-night Service, it shows a composer seemingly born to write for a large symphony orchestra. Indeed, though there is not necessarily much in common in terms of language and musical content, that ease of handling initially put me in mind of Henze, though French composers and perhaps Carter may offer a more revealing comparison. Considerable, but not excessive, use is made of percussion, likewise brass fanfares which act ‘almost like the tolling of bells … important markers in the structure of the piece’. A keen sense of drama and fantasy – and fantasy accomplished – was very well conveyed by orchestra and conductor; so was Grime’s careful pacing, impetus building before subsiding beautifully. Composer, orchestra, conductor, and not least television audience: all are owed an apology by the BBC.

 

The first half had been devoted to Berlioz and Elgar, in what might, barring Near Midnight, have been a classic Barbirolli programme. In the Corsaire Overture, Elder seemed unable to settle upon convincing tempi. The opening was absurdly fast; what followed seemed excessively drawn out, there seeming to be little that connect various sections. However, the orchestra itself was on fine form, no detail being lost, whatever the tempo. That said, when very fast, accented notes tended to be snatched at rather than given their full import: hardly surprising. Not for the first time in the evening, I longed for the late Sir Colin Davis.

 

Alice Coote joined the orchestra for Elgar’s Sea Pictures. Hers was a carefully variegated performance, in many ways admirable, though sometimes she struggled either to make herself heard or at least to make the words heard in the Royal Albert Hall acoustic. Elder ensured that the orchestra did not overwhelm her, offering a magical tapestry of orchestral colour. Whether one can take Alice Elgar’s poetry is a matter of taste, or lack thereof, but ‘Capri’ at least proved a charming musical interlude between ‘Sea Slumber-Song’ and a dignified, if somewhat slow-moving ‘Sabbath Morning at Sea’. ‘Where Corals Lie’ was splendidly free, whilst maintaining a good sense of form. The Hallé was again beyond reproach, as full of colour as if this had been Les Nuits d’été. Again, though, it was difficult to make out a good number of the words. The final song, ‘The Swimmer’ was urgent yet noble, perhaps more operatic than oratorio-like. Again, though, the music is so much better than the poem (this time by Adam Lindsey Gordon).

 

After Midnight followed the interval, Grime’s piece then being followed by the Eroica Symphony. On this showing – and, indeed, on that of his Royal Opera Fidelio – Elder is, alas, not a great Beethovenian. Quoted in the programme, he made wearily predictable ‘authenticke’ remarks, claiming that his work with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment had ‘changed everything: the excitement, the edge, the daring … Comfortable opulence has no place here.’ Yes, of course Furtwängler, Klemperer, et al. were known for that very lack of excitement, edge, and danger, and of course for ‘comfortable opulence’. Likewise more recent Beethovenians as different as the aforementioned Sir Colin, Daniel Barenboim, and Michael Gielen. People say silly things, however, and it does not necessarily invalidate their performances. What was striking, however, was how lacking in excitement, edge, or danger Elder’s performance was.

 

The first movement was fashionably fast, presumably conforming to some metronome fatwa somewhere, but what was more apparent than mere speed was the strange lightness of tone. The Hallé’s performance was well articulated, sometimes excessively so. However, if Elder’s performance were punctilious with respect to the score – as if that were ever more than the starting-point for a performance! – what seemed entirely lacking was any sense of meaning, of why this work and Beethoven’s vision might matter. What ought to be a truly climactic moment, that of recapitulation, passed by almost unheralded – and weirdly un-phrased. Heroism: whither now? Beethoven seemed bizarrely domesticated, certainly far from Wagner’s 1851 vision of this symphony:  ‘the term “heroic” must be taken in the widest sense, and not simply as relating to a military hero. If we understand “hero” to mean, above all, the whole, complete man, in possession of all purely human feelings — love, pain, and strength — at their richest and most intense, we shall comprehend the correct object, as conveyed to us by the artist in the speaking, moving tones of his work. The artistic space of this work is occupied by … feelings of a strong, fully formed individuality, to which nothing human is strange, and which contains within itself everything that is truly human.’ But no, of course, Wagner is wrong, and ‘authenticity’ is right.

 

Perhaps surprisingly, the Funeral March fared better, though only comparatively. It flowed well – which, at whatever tempo, it must – and, despite a swift temp, it did not sound rushed. However, it was often little more than pleasant, which is hardly enough; there was certainly little sign of the composer to whom Wagner referred to as ‘the master who was called upon to write the world history of music in his works’. Withdrawal of string vibrato irritated too. Mendelssohn came to mind in the scherzo, albeit with loud(-ish) interjections; again, Beethoven’s spirit seemed distant. (It is perhaps worth mentioning here Elder’s strange, quite inauthentic decision to use four horns.) The finale went along its way quite merrily, if rather quickly, but with all the metaphysical import of a Toblerone. I was left feeling distinctly nonplussed, and recalling Barenboim’s performance two years previously at the Proms: it might as well have been a different work, and not only on account of the heroism of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.