Pfefferkorn/PHACE/Pironkoff - Le Marteau sans maître and newly commissioned responses from eight composers, 13 June 2017

Berio-Saal, Konzerthaus

Boulez – Le Marteau sans maître

Interspersed with miniatures in homage to Pierre Boulez, all commissioned by PHACE and the Vienna Konzerthaus, all receiving their world premieres:

Ivan Fedele – Drive

Gerhard E. Winkler – Anamorph VII (Alte Meister): ‘Boulez-Samba’

Alessandro Baticci – L’Artisanat furieux

Alexandra Karastoyanova-Hermentin – Letrei

Helmut Oehring – MARTEAU, miniature for contralto and instrumental ensemble

Iris ter Schiphorst – Make him talk!

Eva Reiter – Masque de fer

Luca Francesconi ­– Sans

Isabel Pfefferkorn (contralto), 

Sylvie Lacroix (flute)

Reinhold Brunner (clarinet)

Mathilde Hoursiangou (piano)

Berndt Thurner (vibraphone, percussion)

Alex Lipowski (xylorimba, percussion)

Harry Demmer (percussion)

Michael Öttl (guitar)

Felix Pöchhacker (electric guitar)

Ivana Pristašová, Rafał Zalech (violas)

Alexandra Dienz (double bass)

Alfred Reiter (sound direction)

Simeon Pironkoff (conductor) 

This was perhaps the most ambitious instalment yet – of those I have heard, of course – in the Vienna Konzerthaus’s tribute to Pierre Boulez: a performance of Le Marteau sans maître, still, perhaps, his most instantly recognisable, celebrated work, interspersed with eight newly commissioned miniatures from eight different composers. The new music ensemble, PHACE, conducted by Simeon Pironokoff, joined by contralto, Isabel Pfefferkorn, did an extraordinary job here, jointly commissioning the new pieces too, with the Konzerthaus. Wisely the viola parts were split: Ivana Pristašová playing the ferociously difficult, verging-on-impossible part from Le Marteau, Rafał Zalech the others.

Perhaps it was partly the studio-like environment of the Konzerthaus’s Berio-Saal, underground like IRCAM, yet not very much like it, but there seemed, at least in the beginning, to be something of the old Boulez ferocity, even semi-pointillism, to the performance. It was certainly – a favourite word of Boulez himself – a less Romantic performance in character than he would have tended to give towards the end of his life. Ivan Fedele’s Drive came first of the new works, its three short sections (I have seen no programme notes, let alone scores, so my solecisms will likely be many!) suggesting to me a branching out, even a proliferation, from one another, the two instruments, vibraphone and piano, shadowing, enveloping, one another, then again accomplishing something quite different. Exploration of the relationship between the two seemed to be the thing. The first ‘commentaire’ on ‘Bourreaux de solitude’, itself of course still to be heard, offered a keen sense of a perhaps surprisingly soft-spoken mechanism getting into gear. Gerhard E. Winkler’s Boulez-Samba (!), perhaps a nod to the composer’s 1950 visit to Brazil, seemed to take off initially from that music, before going its own way, layers overlapping in a colouristic swirl that did not quite, for me, evade questions of easy colonialism, as Le Marteau does. Perhaps, though, I was missing the point; there was a huge amount to take in throughout the evening.

Alto flute, followed by that unforgettable opening vocal melismata – what richness of voice from Pfefferkorn! – in ‘L’Artisanat furieux’ came like a breath of fresh air, that vocal air increasingly warm, yet never humid. Alessandro Baticci’s arresting combination of electric guitar, floor tom, and double bass, made me keen to hear more from a composer entirely new to me. It was not just the combination, but the variety of sonorities, far from all expected, he drew from them. Following the second ‘commentaire’, Alexandra Karastoyanova-Hermentin’s piece brought viola fury of a very different nature from Boulez’s, yet equally impressive. As the ice and fire of Boulez’s inspiration continued to penetrate as only they can, return to his music often offering a sense of ‘back to the real business’, I found some of the other contributions a little hit-or-miss. Perhaps, though, that was down to me. It was nice to hear Boulez’s own voice sampled in Iris ter Schiphorst’s Make him talk! and there was, I think, a real sense of that voice becoming part of the ensemble. Hermut Oehring’s MARTEAU, though, took a while to pass through its hand movement-silence-shouting phases, and Eva Reiter’s Masque de fer, intriguing though some aspects may have been, seemed rather music-theatre gestural in this particular company. It was a relief to near conclusion with Luca Francesconi’s exquisitely finished Sans: winding down, or opening out? Both, probably, those sentiments intensified in the final movement of Le Marteau. Boulez’s music, quite rightly, was still the thing.

Pavilions: New Music Show 2 - London Sinfonietta/Brabbins, 5 November 2011

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Charlie Piper – Insomniac (world premiere: London Sinfonietta commission)
Dai Fujikura – Double Bass Concerto (world premiere: London Sinfonietta commission)
Steven Daverson – Elusive Tangibility III: ‘Clandestine Haze’ (United Kingdom premiere)
Iris ter Schiphorst – Zerstören (United Kingdom premiere)
Francisco Coll – Piedras (United Kingdom premiere)


Across the River Thames from the Queen Elizabeth Hall lies the Palace of Westminster, whose rescue from Guy Fawkes’s incendiary project some care to celebrate on 5th November. (Many of the rest of us wish there were a similarly elegant solution to rid ourselves of our venal, careerist political class.) The London Sinfonietta offered fireworks of its own, in the second of its Pavilions concerts: five United Kingdom premieres, of which two were also world premieres. Alas, I missed the earlier concert, which had presented no fewer than five world premieres of short works by James Olsen, Shiva Feshareki, Edmund Finnis, Tim Hodgkinson, and Isambard Khroustaliov.

It seemed to me that perhaps the strongest and certainly the most winningly suggestive piece was the third in Steven Daverson’s six-part Elusive Tangibility series, ‘Clandestine Haze’. The cycle is intended to treat with things that can be seen yet not necessarily touched: in this case, an ephemeral clandestine haze, such as might be evoked by the flickering of a candle. Written for alto flute/bass flute, bass clarinet/contra-bass clarinet, trombone, percussion, viola, and cello, it emerged as a fascinating study in shifting timbres and subtleties of motion, with the occasional surprise, which therefore truly registered. There is some use of extended techniques, for instance the breathy bass flute. This is a highly accomplished, even beguiling work of contemporary Klangfarbenmelodie: I especially liked the resonance – if only within my own imagination – of the trombone’s later line, as if a modern refugee from the spiritual land of Webern.

Francisco Coll’s Piedras (‘Stones’) was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. Written for flute, oboe, clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon/contrabassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, harp, piano, and two percussionists, it concerns itself, according to the composer, with a dualism that has long interested him between the stable and the unstable, partly derived, as is often his practice, from inspiration in the visual arts. The opening material, both in writing and performance (the London Sinfonietta under Martyn Brabbins), is lively and incisive, full of glittering sonorities, eventually transformed into more dream-like material: a Romantic horn call especially evocative here. Distinction between the two types of material is not, however, absolute: for me, some of the most striking music was to be found in the liminal zones of transition.

The first performance of Charlie Piper’s Insomniac opened the concert. A work in three movements, it concerns itself with three different states in another liminal zone, that between sleep and wakefulness, and is written for flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet/bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, bassoon/contrabassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion, piano, harp, string quartet, and double bass. Throughout one senses a heartbeat, but varying context enables, even compels, one to hear and to respond to it differently. Jagged rhythms remain a constant in the first movement, whatever the Stravinskian changes of metre and gradual shifts in instrumentation. Slowly shifting harmonies lull in the second movement, inspired by Piper’s period of almost continual sunlight in Gotland. Externally induced insomnia – a neighbour’s party, for instance – provides the idea for the final movement, almost a concertante piece for aggressive trumpet, with a prominent role for double bass too.

Iris ter Schiphorst’s 2005-6 Zerstören was the only piece to employ electronics, alongside an ensemble of flute, oboe, clarinet, contrabass clarinet, contrabassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, piano, percussion, sampler, string quartet, and double bass. One sensed a sound-world for the modern city, the world of the motor car, yet it was not always clear, at least to me, what lies beneath that sonic surface. Perhaps further hearings would reveal more.

Dai Fujikura’s double bass concerto received its world premiere, Enno Senft the soloist, the Sinfonietta’s forces comprising flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet/bass clarinet, two horns, two trumpets, two percussionists, three violins, and two violas. It certainly proffered ample scope for Senft’s virtuosity: most impressive indeed. I was less convinced by the musical substance, heightening the doubts I felt earlier this year at the premiere of his Flare, for string quartet. For most of the time, the soloist employs pizzicato, turning to his bow towards the end. The initial material, according to the programme note, draws upon kinship with the ‘Shamisen’, a Japanese guitar-like instrument. The technique is certainly guitar-like and there is very much an ‘Oriental’ tinge to the music, a little too obviously so for these ears. Some material echoes Messiaen, again a little too obviously. For all the claims concerning new solo techniques, however, the writing is not that unconventional, whether in the many – too many? – slides in the writing for ensemble strings or the inevitable soloist resort to harmonics at the end, the latter sounding born of a perceived need to tick a box. There is some rather soft-edged neo-Romanticism to be heard too. Still, if this piece emerged a little too eagerly fashionable, it was a pleasure to experience six new works in predictably committed performances.