Salzburg Festival (6) - Aristidou/Klangforum Wien/Cambreling: Ravel, Boulez, and Varèse, 23 August 2025

Haus für Mozart

Ravel: Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé
Boulez: Improvisation sur Mallarmé III
Boulez: Éclat/Multiples
Varèse: Déserts

Sarah Aristidou

Klangforum Wien

Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)

Images: © SF/Jan Friese

Sarah Aristidou, Klangforum Wien, and Sylvain Cambreling presented another splendidly Boulezian programme for the concluding concert of the Salzburg Festival’s ‘À Pierre’ series. In one sense, it helped complete – with due provisos concerning eternal work-in-progress – Boulez’s Salzburg 1960 debut, which included the first two Improvisations sur Mallarmé, by presenting the third, alongside Eclat/Multiples, Varèse’s Déserts (with tape sections), and Ravel’s response to Pierrot lunaire, the Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.

Quasi-Symbolist harmonies fashioned a magical portal to the concert as a whole, instrumental opening responded to by Aristidou in a deeply sympathetic performance attentive to words, music, and an alchemy that involved ‘meaning’ but went considerably beyond it. In all three songs, we heard Ravel as if through Schoenberg, the second song ‘Placet futile’ seemingly approaching Debussy too, though the melodic impulse could only ever have been Ravel’s. Klangforum Wien’s approach, perhaps unsurprisingly, sounded all the more fashioned from a new music standpoint—which is not to say that it lacked warmth, any more than Boulez’s own music-making did, far from it. The suspended song – to borrow from Nono – of ‘Surgi de la croupe et du bond’ seemed to offer a further opening to the explorations ahead as a conclusion to those so far.

Nowadays, we are more likely – when we have chance at all – to hear Pli selon pli as a whole; it was interesting to step back and hear it in part, like this as part of such a varied, yet coherent programme. Moreover, Klangforum Wien and Cambreling seemed to approach it more as an ‘early’ performance, closer to Boulez at the time of composition or not long after, as opposed to his increasingly luxuriant, even Romantic way with the score in the twenty-first century. Bar some early stiffness in Cambreling’s direction, it worked well, with initial contrast between something more rebarbative – these things are relative – and Aristidou’s spinning of the vocal line, ravishing melismata and all, in itself instructive. Ensemble tapestry grew before our ears, four flutes crucial to that proliferation. It was, moreover, very much an ensemble rather than orchestral sound. Nevertheless, there was no denying that sultry heat, nor the sublimated frenzy.

Éclat/Multiples offered as much contrast as complement, though the two necessarily involve one another-pli selon pli, as it were. The initial éclat to Éclat could be missed by none; all the more remarkable, was its subsequent dissolution in proliferation (resonance included). Here was responsorial Boulez already, in timbre – piano and various instruments and combinations – and much else. Webern’s example was readily apparent, probably more so than in the preceding piece. There were all manner of wonderful moments: combination of mandolin, harp, and piano lingered long in the mind. It was ultimately, though in their connection, their progress, and the magical surprises of diversion, if only in retrospect, that the substance of the musical journey was truly instantiated. Once fully within the labyrinth, even part of its fabric, one could only be mesmerised, albeit actively so.

 Certain sounds at the opening of Déserts – percussion especially, but wind too – seemed familiar yet also unfamiliar from what had gone before. Hieratic, primaeval, yet urban, here was the uncompromising voice of Varèse. Noise, sound, or music? Why choose? Partly, the work suggests that we ought, or at least might, or does it? At this distance, it seemed to suggest awe in the face of what was yet historically to come, but also foreboding. One found patterns, progression, even ‘meaning’ or the illusion thereof, both in the tape music and in its relationship to other material: an endless and endlessly fascinating task. Grand yet fragile, abstract yet evocative, it cast quite a spell as sounds ricocheted around the Haus für Mozart.

Musikfest Berlin (2) - Varèse, Haddad, Ravel, Bach-Benjamin, and Schoenberg, 2 September 2023

Kammermusiksaal, Philharmonie

Varèse: Octandre
Saed Haddad: Mirage, Mémoire, Mystère, for string quartet
Ravel: Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé
Bach, arr. Benjamin: Canon & Fugue
Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony no.1, op.9

Anna Prohaska (soprano)
Ensemble Modern
George Benjamin (conductor)

Image: © Fabian Schellhorn / Berliner Festspiele

The first of two Musikfest Berlin Proms from Anna Prohaska, Ensemble Modern, and George Benjamin offered music on a small ensemble scale that proved anything but ‘small’ in terms of ambition and intensity, nor of course achievement. A hallmark of all we heard was concentration, for this was highly concentrated, often richly textured music, which also called for – and seemed to receive – a high level of concentration from the audience in Berlin’s Kammermusiksaal, the smaller of the two halls in its Philharmonie.

 

In Varèse’s Octandre, Christian Hommel’s oboe initially appeared to be searching—but searching for what? Ultimately for something piercing, impervious, something that gave the impression of always having been there, however recently discovered. Stravinskian echoes, above all of the Rite, yet also of Symphonies of Wind Instruments, did battle, though they were so familiar, so integrated, they were barely ghosts, more guests. Delphine Roche’s piccolo solo, when it came, suggested something more playful, yet ensemble response was implacable as ever, akin to seeing or rather hearing the same object from another standpoint, both of angle and distance. Yet there was difference in what we heard, for instance the duet between double bass and bassoon, spreading to the ensemble as a whole. Brass rightly took no prisoners. Varèse, not unlike Stravinsky himself, remained. 

Saed Haddad, a Benjamin pupil, was represented by his Mirage, Mémoire, Mystère (2011-12), for string quartet, described as being for violin and string trio. That interests me, since I did not really make that distinction when listening. Perhaps I will next time, for I hope there will be a next time. A richly turbulent opening put me in mind right away of Schoenberg’s developing variation. Indeed, there were a few striking coincidences of pitch and harmony, though I suspect that is more that I was listening with Schoenberg in mind than intent or reference. Certainly, there was an emotional intensity to this single-movement work I can imagine that composer admiring. Its development, or transformation, was rhythmic too, through a kaleidoscope of related moods that, in retrospect, seemed to convey the broad overall progression of the title.

Prohaska joined the Ensemble, and Benjamin returned, for Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, the work in which he most clearly approaches Schoenberg (Pierrot, though not only Pierrot), without ever sounding, nor indeed writing, ‘like’ him: not even in the extraordinary opening string harmonics of ‘Soupir’, here perfectly realised in performance. Ravel, at its most characteristic, seems perhaps more the destination than the starting-point, both instrumentally and vocally, yet a floated languor heard and felt, too precise for Debussy, and indeed quite unlike him in other ways too, could only ever have been Ravel’s. It was as if a Japanese engraving, with apologies for the orientalism, had come to life. ‘Placet futile’ proved, doubtless with similar danger on my part, a garden of delights, at times more animated, more heated even, though cooling beautifully too. Prohaska proved a vividly communicative soloists, really using the French words to shape and colour her line. ‘Surgi de la coupe et du bond’ presented flight and descent, movement and stasis, all art of a journey that chilled in timbre and harmony, yet also invited, whilst holding us at an almost sacral distance. ‘A rien expirer annonçant/Une rose dans les ténèbres.’ Some mysteries are both for us and not.

Benjamin’s 2007 Canon & Fugue arranges the ‘Canon alla Ottava’ and ‘Contrapunctus VII’ from Bach’s Art of Fugue for an unusual ensemble: flute (silent in the first movement), two horns, and string quartet (which can be expanded to smallish string orchestra). This is unquestionably modernist Bach, not necessarily in the line of, though surely with kinship to that of Schoenberg, Webern, Berio, and others. That sense of concentration was again apparent, indeed alive, in both movements, the sustaining power of horns (and other particular qualities) employed to excellent effect in the former. The Fugue was less frenetic and furious, though no less concentrated, early use of stopped horns and string pizzicato not only arresting but also seemingly aiding that transformation of tempo. There were many timbral delights and surprises, not least the way a combination of horn, violin, and viola sounded uncannily like an organ, yet this was always a way of hearing Bach.

So too, albeit at a greater distance, is much of Schoenberg. It was fitting, then, to end with his First Chamber Symphony, although this was the performance about which I had a few doubts. A little more than fifteen years ago, I heard Pierre Boulez conduct this same work in the same hall, with the Scharoun Ensemble of players drawn from the Berlin Philharmonic. That struck me as an ideal performance, but perhaps I was simply more used to the underlying assumptions and aesthetic. Benjamin, I think, took the opening, once past the short introduction, not only faster but at a speed at least to rival the earlier Boulez, of Domaine musical vintage. One expects a bias towards wind in this version (as opposed to Schoenberg’s two arrangements for full orchestra, where strings will tend to dominate) yet, to begin with, that balance seemed somewhat exaggerated, even harsh. The performance settled, yet Benjamin’s approach had the merit of reminding us just what difficult music this can, and arguably should, be. Perhaps we have allowed Schoenberg to mellow a little too much, in post-Siegfried-Idyll-manner. When the music slowed, moreover, it really slowed. The scherzo section was urgent, yet in character, that is not merely fast; character seemed to grow out of Schoenberg’s instrumentation and use of those instruments, almost as much as his harmony. This was Schoenberg on a coiled spring, which could nonetheless relax in the ‘slow movement’. Moreover, the internal and external role played by fourths was certainly to be heard, as if this were a matter of casing and inner mechanism. It was another performance of concentrated riches, then, even if not always the riches I had expected.

London Sinfonietta/Cornelius - Varèse, Boulez, Feldman, Berio, and Davies, 18 May 2022

Hall Two, Kings Place

Varèse: Density 21.5
Boulez: Dérive 1
Morton Feldman: The Viola in My Life 3
Berio: O King
Tansy Davies: grind show (unplugged)

Simone Ibbett-Brown (mezzo-soprano)

Michael Cox (flute)

Paul Silverthorne (viola)

London Sinfonietta

Gerry Cornelius (conductor)

The London Sinfonietta’s Couch to Concert programme is intended for ‘newcomers … an exercise programme for the ears that will help you work towards attending a concert of contemporary classical music, and arm yourself with the tools to listen to (and even enjoy!) this genre’. I confess that I have yet to listen to the podcasts, but what an excellent idea. There certainly seemed to be a reasonable turnout in Hall Two of Kings Place; let us hope that some at least of the audience was there for the first time as a result. 

Varèse’s Density 21.5, here performed by Michael Cox, has humanity’s oldest instrument become its newest. Cox offered detail without pedantry, a masterclass in notes becoming music. Variations in vibrato, attack, dynamics, as well as telling phrasing all contributed to overall shape and direction, in a vividly communicative performance that would surely have had many wonder why this music might ever have been considered ‘difficult’. Boulez’s Dérive 1 followed, that opening, generative figure pregnant with potential. Its febrile clarity, married to post-Debussyan languor created and constructed balance and direction before our ears. Endlessly transforming, both free and determined, this was a fine introduction to the Boulezian labyrinth. 

Morton Feldman offered an instructive contrast, with the third of his The Viola in My Life pieces, this for viola (Paul Silverthorne) and piano (Elizabeth Burley). Its introverted intensity put me in mind almost of a passive-aggressive Messiaen (!) More fundamentally, though, its undeniable minimalism emerged as a real aesthetic, not the populist tag of contemporary centrist dads who merely like the sound music makes. Like what had gone, as well as what was to come, it had one listen. 

Berio’s O King was the only piece to open the human voice: older still than the flute, of course. It is difficult, probably impossible, to imagine humanity without it. Mezzo Simone Ibbett-Brown proved utterly in control of her instrument, if we may call it that, dazzlingly so when dovetailing with other members of the ensemble. Differences were revealed too, as they were between other players, ultimately revealed as penumbra to her lament for Dr King. Last up was Tansy Davies’s grind show (unplugged), to my ears more clearly post-Stravinskian than anything else we had heard. Rhythmically insistent, even obstinate, its status as dance music was abundantly clear in this London Sinfonietta performance. Something for everyone, then, which I suspect was a good part of the point.

Aimard/BPO/Roth - Haydn, Bartók, and Varèse, 26 October 2019

Philharmonie

Haydn: Symphony no.59 in A major, ‘Fire’

Bartók: Piano Concerto no.3, Sz 119

Bartók: Dance Suite, Sz 77

Varèse: Arcana (revised version, 1960)

Varèse: Poème électronique; Ionisation; Density 21.5; Octandre; Intégrales; Hyperprism; Ionisation; Octandre; Offrandes

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Sarah Aristidou (soprano)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Scholars of the Karajan Academy

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

Two Berlin Philharmonic concerts in a single evening: such is the cultural desert we know as Berlin. For the first, we heard Haydn, Bartók, and Varèse from the full Berlin Philharmonic, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and François-Xavier Roth; for the second, Roth and members of the orchestra were joined by scholars of the orchestra’s Karajan Academy, a few guest instrumentalists, and soprano, Sarah Aristidou for late-night Varèse that went beyond a mere ‘bonus’. Both concerts proved enlivening and edifying: complementary, yes, yet eminently satisfying in their own right.

Haydn’s Symphony no.59 received, sadly yet far from surprisingly, its Berlin Philharmonic debut. (That is not intended in any sense as a criticism of this orchestra; I imagine it would be the same for many others.) Is there a composer so fundamental to the canon – other, perhaps, than Schoenberg or Webern? – so scandalously neglected? The orchestra and Roth certainly made up for lost time, in a performance as fizzing as it was thoughtful, as charming as it was enthralling. A vigorous opening movement, full of life, released nervous energy rather than – in the manner of so many current Haydn performances – trying to impose it upon the music. Line and disjuncture were revealed to be too sides of the same coin; Beethoven certainly did not come from nowhere. It was full of surprises, even for those who might have ‘known’, so long as one listened – which listening was certainly invited. Harpsichord continuo, so discrete one could barely hear it, was employed, for those who care about such matters. The second movement sounded elegant, yet strange: nothing taken for granted, whether by Haydn, Roth, or the players. Balance or dialectic between counterpoint and harmony? That was the question key to both work and performance. Haydn’s ingenuity is and sounded extraordinary, without exaggeration. Likewise in the minuet, whose structure many, foolishly, might consider merely conventional – that is, again, until they listen. A sotto voce move to the trio again took us by surprise, drawing us in further to savour Haydn’s tonal delights. The finale was everything a finale should be, not least in its brazen particularity. Berlin horns in particular thrilled, but really, this was a showstopper for all concerned. How could one not adore such music, when taken on such a journey, with such twists and turns, and in such expert hands?

Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto has long been a problem work for me. Although it was the first I heard, thrilled by a performance I heard as a schoolboy at Sheffield City Hall – I cannot recall by whom – I have, almost ever since, responded far more readily to the First and Second. I might have known that Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Roth would be the musicians to change that. With this performance, it suddenly made sense to me and I could no longer understand what my difficulties might have been. Exceptional keenness at the opening, from orchestra and soloist alike, promised much and was fulfilled. Again, nothing was taken for granted; again, we were invited, in eminently collegial fashion, to listen, rather than bludgeoned into doing so. (That is partly the nature of the music, of course. There would have been nothing wrong with, say, Beethoven or Mahler compelling us to do so in different fashion.) What struck me, in this first movement and throughout, was the revelation of listening to (this) Bartók in the light of Haydn. Indeed, listening to the relationship once more of harmony to counterpoint, in a not entirely dissimilar way, was invaluable to finding that key to the door that was not Bluebeard’s. Aimard’s phrasing and voicing were second to none: never prominent for their own sake, always in the service of musical expression. This was, moreover, a true partnership between conductor, soloist, and orchestral musicians, all listening to and responding to one another; audience too, it seemed.

There was an almost neoclassical chasteness to the opening of the second movement, Aimard’s responses to the orchestra almost akin to those of the piano in the slow movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, less taming the Furies, if we recall Tovey’s evocative characterisation, than beginning to thaw the intriguingly Stravinskian ice. The night music was both contrasted and rooted in what had gone before, again recalling Haydn’s moves; fantastical and not without the occasional hint of Ravel, it sounded newly strange and yet ultimately familiar. The finale erupted with perfect yet never predictable logic, as if to say, yes, the old Bartók is still here; that is, before it took another, related path, once again bringing Haydn’s surprises to mind. Bartók as Classicist? No. Bartók as fresh renewal of the Classical? Quite probably.

Following the interval, Bartók’s Dance Suite – first played by the orchestra under Furtwängler, most recently under Boulez – was immediately characterised by a similar freshness, rhythms sharply etched yet, crucially, never considered separately from other parameters. This was dance music, one might say, rather than musical dance. Flexibility, where apt, was as noteworthy as drive. The Berlin Philharmonic sounded at its most magnificent when truly unleashed, but this was a multi-faceted performance, of fantasy, charm, balletic moves, and ebullience.

Varèse’s Arcana was given its German premiere by the Berlin Philharmonic in 1932, conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky. Its 1960 revision was last heard here as recently as 2016, under Andris Nelsons. Roth proved a worthy successor, setting up a clear, anticipatory opposition and complement between the stark and the fantastical. The Stravinsky of the Rite, but even of the Firebird, was far from dead, but much the same might have been said of Romanticism. It is easy to think of Varèse in such terms in the abstract; it is not always so easy to hear him as such. Here, in a beautifully upholstered performance, a delightful, structured starscape emerged, twin riots as well as rites of spring heard – even, perhaps, seen – in simultaneity. Or was it more summer? Roth’s tracing of the work’s logic and illogic was, at any rate, vividly communicated.

We returned to the hall a little later for Varèse’s Poème électronique. There remains something a little strange to a concert hall, a space for performance, as home for a work without performers (at least in the conventional sense). Percussionists and conductor filled the gap, in a way, entering the hall ready for the following Ionisation, Roth pressing the button on the laptop onstage for the beginning of the electronic poem first ‘performed’ at Expo 58’s Philips Pavilion, designed by Le Corbusier and Xenakis. Now we sounded closer to Stockhausen, though these sounds, this music, could never be mistaken for his. The spatial element was undeniable, of course, but only as part of something more. This was, it seemed, in a very different way both from Arcana and Sirius’s most celebrated son, music of the stars. Memories, the illusion of a heavenly, electronic ‘ensemble’ and much else combined – both just as musical instruments and performers might, and quite differently from anything they might have accomplished.

Ionisation emerged from its shadows – or rays. It was fascinating, disconcerting, even amusing to hear the siren sound as if it were still part of this piece’s fading predecessor, though that fading had, in fact, already ceased. One made connections: perhaps above all of ritual. The hieratic quality heard here, as later with Intégrales in particular, was, however, quite different, revealing a very different musical conception and narrative. Was this a controlled riot, or a riot out of control? As with Varèse’s successor, Boulez –Roth seemed especially sensitive to that affinity – it was difficult, perhaps impossible to tell. Then, before we knew it, Density 21.5, for solo flute, was heard from on high. Initially seductive, Debussyan, in a way that seemed to extend beyond mere sentimental identification with the instrument, it announced the importance of timbre and then revised that initial assessment, suggesting that it had, in fact, been little more than sentimental. For soon, we sensed what the two works had in common too: a fascinating, telling juxtaposition.

Octandre’s instrumental timbres engendered not only different expectations but the musical material itself. It is, in reality, a game of chicken-and-egg, not least since the distinction is arguably false, but such was the impression in context here. The music’s aggression was palpable and powerful, tension at times close to overwhelming. I am not sure that I have heard a double bass sound stranger, and yet I am equally unsure that I could say why.

The starkness of hieratic ritual in Intégrales seemed to foreshadow Birtwistle, albeit initially without explicit, perhaps even implicit, violence. Not that that could be said at the close, growth and transformation powerfully conveyed in an exceptional, disconcerting performance. One might have thought Hyperprism would sound dissimilar; but no, as in the case of, say, two Haydn symphonies written for similar forces, the musical invention was revealed to be very different. Instruments in themselves, we learned, do not create the material: as important a lesson in listening as in composition. Aristidou duly complemented and contrasted with the players for the closing Offrandes, the first song oracular, the second losing its mooring in the ‘old’, whatever that may have been. It was, like its predecessors, a detailed and compelling performance. It asked what might have been, had Varèse taken a different path, and also confirmed the rightness of that he did take: not unlike, then, the rest of this evening’s music-making.

Musikfest Berlin (5) – Faust/BPO/Eötvös: Eötvös, Xenakis, and Varèse. 8 September 2019

Philharmonie

Eötvös: Violin Concerto no.3, ‘Alhambra’ (2018)

Xenakis: Shaar (1983)

Varèse: Amériques (performing version of the 1922 manuscript, by Chou Wen-chung)

Isabelle Faust (violin)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Peter Eötvös (conductor)

Hot on the heels of two Peter Eötvös ensemble works at the Kammermusiksaal, many in the audience made their way to the larger hall of the Philharmonie proper, for the second German performance of his Third Violin Concerto, ‘Alhambra’, the local premiere having taken place the night before. Opening, as it closes, with solo violin (Isabelle Faust), it is perhaps surprisingly evocative of the colours and music of southern Spain. This is a walk around the Alhambra’s gardens with antecedents, suggested if never explicit, in Falla, Ravel, and Debussy, as well, perhaps, as Mussorgsky’s promenading. Eötvös employs the orchestra sparingly, hints of a Szymanowskian tapestry or something harder-edged, even Stravinskian, in the air, yet never quite determining the climate. Other solo strings come to the fore: violins, double bass, and mandolin; but so do woodwind and brass, clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer’s arabesquing especially noteworthy. Bells are both suggested and heard, the latter thereby well prepared as music rather than effect. There is something, perhaps inevitably, of Berg to certain, more innig passages, but also to repeated chains of intervals. Ciphers of ‘Alhambra’, ‘Isabelle’, and ‘Faust’ are, apparently concealed, but I should need to listen again, and/or to consult the score, to have them revealed to me. That, on the basis of this performance, I should happily undertake. (I should also like to know, if anyone can oblige, what Faust’s encore was.)

Xenakis’s Shaar, for string orchestra, made a truly elemental impression, its opening lines as striking as any unison in Bruckner, the feelings of awe engendered, maintained, and transformed actually not so very different as some might expect from those inspired by the latter composer. Not that the music really has anything in common, of course; it is what it is, proudly, starkly so – and so it sounded in this Berlin Philharmonic performance under Eötvös, its granitic drama, both earthly and unearthly, inviting comparison with a Hebraic past summoned in the title. Clusters, swarms, ritual; imbued with an implacable sense of rightness, yet never predictable: work and performance alike brooked no dissent. The BPO had never played the work before; it should do so again soon. More Xenakis everywhere, please!

There was likewise no doubting the distinction of the Berliners’ performance of Varèse’s Amériques, Eötvös doing much to highlight the work’s musical interest, not least its debts – some might put it more strongly than that, especially in this first version – to Stravinsky, and to The Rite of Spring in particular. Innovation with timbre notwithstanding, I wish I found the work itself more convincing. Leaving aside its frankly irritating whistles and sirens, the form of what Eötvös ably delineated as a twentieth-century tone poem continues to elude me. The sheer volume and exuberance of Amériques remain quite a thing, of course, but it does go on a bit. Perhaps its placing after the iron discipline of Xenakis was the problem.

Musikfest Berlin (3) - Ensemble Modern/Lubman: Varèse, Neuwirth, and Andriessen, 4 September 2019

Philharmonie

Varèse: Déserts, for fourteen wind instruments, piano, percussion, and three interpolations for electronically organised sound (1949-54, revised 1960-61)

Neuwirth: locus…doublure…solus, for piano and ensemble (2001)

Andriessen: De Materie, Part III: ‘De Stijl’, for four women’s voices, female speaker, and large ensemble (1985)

Hermann Kretzchmar (piano)

Catherine Milliken (speaker)

Norbert Ommer (sound direction)

Chorwerk Ruhr (chorus director: Klaas Stok)

Ensemble Modern

Brad Lubman (conductor)

'De Stijl'  (images: © Adam Janisch)

‘I no longer believe in concerts, in the sweat of conductors and the flying storms of virtuosi’s dandruff, and am only interested in recorded music. That is why I must wait. There are more opportunities in Europe for this kind of activity, but one would have to be there, and unfortunately Europe is no place to make a living. It will come, and in the States.’ As predictions for the future go, Varèse’s words of 1952 to André Jolivet are as hopeless as those of any soothsayer. However, the work with which he would break his compositional silence – at least in terms of music completed – two years later, Déserts, was certainly not lacking in consequences for the future. This fascinating programme from Ensemble Modern and Brad Lubman was not in that sense didactic but suggestive. It would nevertheless have been difficult and not a little perverse not to draw connections when and where they presented themselves. As Musikfest Berlin’s website had it, ‘“De materia”, on music and matter, could be the title of Ensemble Modern’s programme.’ Indeed – and that was in part how I heard it.

‘Deserts,’ Varèse explained, was for him ‘a highly evocative word. It suggests space, solitude, detachment. To me it means not only deserts of sand, sea, mountains and snow, of outer space, of deserted city streets, not only those stripped aspects of nature that suggest bareness and aloofness but also the remote inner space of the mind no telescope can reach, a world of mystery and essential loneliness.’ And yet – is there not always a ‘yet’? – the title was personal, ‘not intended as a description of the music’. For what struck me at the highly dramatic – take that as you will – opening to this performance from Ensemble Modern and Brad Lubman was the sense almost of a portal to another world, of invitation, and then of entry into that world. Wind instruments, all fourteen of them, still spoke of Stravinsky; it could hardly be otherwise, but not in any derivative sense, connection to the past offering degrees of comfort and reinvigoration in equal measure. Doublings of piano and (other) percussion instruments were incisive, suggestive to my ears of later Boulez (sur Incises!), but auguries are strange things, to be distrusted especially when they seduce us. I still have my doubts about the taped sections, but there was an interesting impression of antiphonal response between ensemble and the ‘recorded music’ of which Varèse wrote to Jolivet, a relationship not to be reduced to, but in some sense related to, a parallel relationship between ‘real’ and ‘surreal’, such as would also feature in Olga Neuwirth’s locus…doublure…solus. There was certainly, for me at least, vivid senses of different perspectives, of landscapes real and metaphorical, even, dare I say, of the old idealist dualism of phenomenal and noumenal. Anyone can juxtapose and contrast. With Varèse, though, both in work and performance, there was more: both clearly and subtly. The close brought a feeling of departure from wherever, whenever, we had visited: a final aural glance over the shoulder, then, and it was over.

Neuwirth’s 2001 work for piano and ensemble, as already implied, brought kinship and contrast. Drama and landscape, yes, Stravinskian remnants too, but something harsher too, perhaps, the (proto-)surrealist starting-point (Raymond Roussel’s novel Locus solus) notwithstanding. Titles, as Varèse had already told us, can be dangerous things when they limit rather than liberate our understanding. A fascination with rhythm and a certain hieratic quality revealed themselves, in a landscape that sounded as much urban as garden, but then the novel’s estate is anything but a mere walk in the park. Repetition of various parameters – pitch, rhythm, and timbre in particular – accrued great dramatic power and an unmistakeably modernist sense of wonder, even enchantment. Wandering pitches suggested, as in Varèse, wandering through a decidedly constructed landscape, but was it an earthly city or something beyond? Flânerie, marching invasion, observation, and much else besides seemed suggested: metaphors, not mere depiction, Hermann Kretzschmar’s piano virtuosity a necessary response, even rebellion. Awe-inspiring final climax and resonance brought closure that was in retrospect as surprising as it was undeniable.

And then for something completely different; or was it? Ultimately, I think it was, yet ‘De Stijl’, the third part of Louis Andriessen’s De Materie, appeared in context as welcome, even necessary, contrast, its directness of line, its pulsating energy very much a response to the intricacies and alternative standpoints of both Varèse and Neuwirth. Having unwisely checked my telephone during the interval, and thus having heard news of what sounded as though it were a wrecking amendment to the bill going through Parliament, yet which transpired to be a typically damp Kinnock squib, I responded with perhaps unusual keenness to the vigour of Andriessen’s response to Mondrian: ‘The perfect straight line is “the” perfect line.’ Stravinsky remained, yet transformed, this time in a guise both aggressive, thrilling, and ultimately humanistic, that puts most other minimalism – if, indeed, this be ‘minimalism’ at all – to shame. Repetition functioned in a very different way from Neuwirth’s, yet no less dramatically. Sheer volume played its part. So too, though, did music theatre, narrator Catherine Milliken and four female voices from Chorwerk Ruhr as powerful and precise as the instrumentalists and Lubman. Once it was over, strangely, I felt very little, perhaps nothing. It had been music for the moment – but that, I think, may well have been the point. For better or worse, my telephone and its unending stream of ‘news’ awaited. The relief, however, could not have been more welcome.

Philharmonia/Salonen - Debussy, Varèse, Stravinsky: Centenary Performance of The Rite of Spring

Royal Festival Hall

Debussy – Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

Varèse – Amériques
Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring

Philharmonia Orchestra

Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor) 

Another week, another anniversary. Ubiquitous though it may be, and though it might, like Mahler’s symphonies in this if in little else, benefit from fewer, better performances, The Rite of Spring surely deserves mention in its centenary. One can argue about whether it, or Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, premiered the previous year, had the greater ‘influence’; that will largely come down to what one decides to mean by that notoriously slippery term. But since that legendary premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the Rite has passed not simply through the vessel of its creator, as Stravinsky famously put it, but into our collective consciousness. That has not always been a good thing; too many of today’s performances treat it as a mere orchestral showpiece, reduce it to the level of slightly spicier Rimsky-Korsakov. Boulez’s analysis, available in his Relevés d’apprenti (‘Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship’), should be required reading for anyone tempted to proceed down that path. Certainly anyone having heard Boulez conduct the work is unlikely ever to forget the experience. (I am fortunate to have done so twice.) So, a hundred years on, performing the Rite brings its own challenges, not least, how does one make it shock anew?

 

Clever programming helps – but all too often that can fall down unless performances match it not only in quality but in conception. Fortunately, Esa-Pekka Salonen hit or rather engendered the jackpot in both respects. Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune is as good a candidate as any for the first piece of twentieth-century music. Its composer would famously give a two-piano performance of The Rite, with its composer, and minus its final ‘Sacrifical Dance’, in 1912. More importantly here, Salonen imparted a marriage of warmth and coolness that presaged a similar dialectical confrontation in the second half. The performance, conducted but not micromanaged, was wondrously flexible, especially when it came to Samuel Coles’s delicious flute arabesques. The Philharmonia strings were on far better form than they had been for last week’s Wagner anniversary concert: rich, even glamorous in their sheen, though not too much, and only when truly given their head. And the climax may well have been the most erotic I have heard, positively Tristan-like (think of the opening of the second act) in its pulsations. Except, of course, Wagner’s metaphysics are gone, replaced not with Strauss’s Nietzschean materialism but with Debussy’s far more radical indeterminacy. Boulez, a master conductor of The Rite, not to mention one of the greatest composers of the later twentieth century, stood not so very far away. Likewise Mallarmé – and his union with Boulez in Pli selon pli.

 

Varèse was present at that first Rite performance in Paris, prior to his emigration. Amériques was his first large-scale work following his arrival, though here it was given in the reduced, 1927 scoring. (The orchestra is still huge!) Its opening alto flute solo necessarily brought back memories of Debussy’s Prélude, though the specific instrument, here splendidly played by Rowland Sutherland, with equally necessity brought to mind Boulez, also a master conductor of Varèse, and Le Marteau sans maître. A New World cityscape it may be, at least at some level, but Amériques under Salonen also gave us presentiments of the primæval stirrings of The Rite. He was equally deft at imparting dramatic form and inevitability to a work which, in lesser hands, can all too easily sound sprawling. Lest that sound dry, I can assure you that this was also a riot to put to shame those dubious events at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées., a riot that took upon itself many forms of wildness. And what a tremendous conclusion! Salonen visibly willed the orchestra to a still higher decibel count, its noise finally managing to drown out the coughing couple – it is, apparently, still more fun with a partner – seated behind me

 

Such was the power of that performance of Amériques that I worried Salonen’s Rite might pale somewhat. Quite the contrary: this proved a performance to match one I thought I should never hear approached, from Boulez and the LSO. The challenges were new, of course; that first bassoonist never had to vie with an accursed mobile telephone, but I doubt that he could possibly have matched Amy Harman in richness of tone or precision, initiating duly weird – in the very best sense – responses from her orchestral colleagues. Salonen’s sense of flow here at the opening was similar to that in Prélude à l’après-midi; consciously or otherwise, links were being forged. Ghosts of Petrushka began to dance on acid. Yet something older and newer was getting under way – and it truly felt, in mind and body alike, as though it were a celebration, a rite. All those pointless showpiece performances were forgotten; this was the real thing. Presentiments of later Stravinsky, for instance the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, were offered – but in a sense they were not, for whereas that later masterwork is frozen, almost objet-like, here it was part of a gigantic, world-changing thaw.  There were a few slips here and there, but they mattered little or nothing, unless one were missing the point to Beckmesser-like proportions.

 

This, then, was a performance that combined, indeed brought into fruitful conflict, various opposing forces – just like the work itself, and its plot. It was viscerally exciting and musically satisfying; it was as sardonic as Stravinsky’s own performances, yet benefited from far greater orchestral weight and, dare I say, theatrical imagination. In that sense, it did what seem people claim to hear in Gergiev’s performances, though I have found them mostly an incoherent mess. And those dancing reminiscences of Petrushka kept coming. Tension was maintained until the sudden close of the first part. Then we found ourselves in territory similar and yet quite changed. It soon became clear what had changed; the fate, quite inescapable, of the chosen one had been ordained. Now we could only sit it out, fearful and yet complicit, indeed relishing it; for it felt that we were involved, dramatically, almost as if in a Wagner drama. (We have not even really begun to relate the tale of Stravinsky’s debts to his supposed antithesis.) Alluring sweetness, not in the least cloying, characterised rich violas. Controlled delirium marked the evocation of the ancestors. I could list many such wonderful features of the Philharmonia’s outstanding performance. However, the crucial thing was not just that they added up to more than the sum of their parts, but that Stravinsky’s miraculous score was communicated and experienced as a searing drama. Just as drums hammered blood-lust and carnage into our immediate consciousness – a word to which my thoughts keep returning – so was the final nail hammered into Stravinsky’s absurd claim that music could not express anything other than itself. The Rite was experienced as vividly as the Symphonie fantastique, yet penetrated far deeper into our collective consciousness, the consciousness of our so-called ‘civilisation’, shown to be anything but. It emerged as a work of 2013, not 1913.

Varèse 360° (2) and (3) - London Sinfonietta/National Youth Orchestra/Atherton/Daniel, 18 April 2010

Queen Elizabeth Hall and Royal Festival Hall

Varèse – Hyperprism, for wind and percussion
Un grand sommeil noir, for voice and piano
Octandre
Offrandes, for soprano and chamber orchestra
Poème électronique
Intégrales, for wind and percussion

London Sinfonietta
David Atherton (conductor)
Cathie Boyd (staging, director, video, lighting)
Elizabeth Atherton (soprano)
Sound Intermedia
Pippa Nissen (video)
Zerlina Hughes (lighting)
Dan Ayling (stage manager)

***********
Varèse-Chou Wen-Chung – Tuning Up
Varèse – Arcana
Nocturnal, for soprano, male chorus, and small orchestra
Amériques

Elizabeth Watts (soprano)
Laudibus
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
Paul Daniel (conductor)
Same production team as previous concert

**********

These two Sunday concerts completed the Southbank Centre’s presentation of the complete Varèse, initiated with a London Sinfonietta concert two nights previously. The Sinfonietta under David Atherton played for the first, again in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, after which we walked across to the Royal Festival Hall, to hear the National Youth Orchestra.

Hyperprism opened the Sinfonietta concert, immediately impressing upon us the urban nature of Varèse’s musical landscapes. Brash and virile, it also had its sleazier moments, in which I fancied I could hear a kinship with another Busoni pupil, Kurt Weill. Un grand sommeil seems to be the only surviving work from Varèse’s pre-1921 period, the others having been destroyed in a warehouse fire: myth-making for a year zero that is almost too good to be true, and yet appears to be just that. It was fascinating to hear this Debussyan Verlaine setting from Elizabeth Atherton and John Constable. The former’s diction was outstanding, though she was a little too tremulous in her delivery. For the first time in the series, we heard a stringed instrument, a double bass, in Octandre. The sinuous woodwind opening, especially Gareth Hulse’s oboe solo, contrasted strongly, as it should, with subsequent jaggedness. As so often with Varèse, one heard echoes of Stravinsky: here the Symphonies of Wind Instruments. Offrandes, the first of Varèse’s American works, followed. Here, we heard a few more strings (two violins, viola, cello, double bass, and harp), softening the general tone a little, and providing a very tentative bridge with tradition. Elizabeth Atherton seemed more at home in this highly dramatic performance, in which trumpeter Alistair Mackie also shone in his solo work.

One cannot really say anything about a ‘performance’ of the still extraordinary Poème électronique. The last time I had heard it was in a Sinfonietta concert at Kings Place, in which Le Corbusier’s original film was shown. Here the images were more abstract, arguably permitting one to concentrate more closely upon the music, though the former experience was probably the more interesting. At any rate, this sonic tragedy, initiated by tolling bells and culminating in electronic storm-winds, had lost none of its raw, elemental power. Finally came Intégrales: Varèse surely wrote nothing more masterly than this. The performance again brought out Stravinskian antecedents, the Rite of Spring in particular, through the sharp, insistent repetition of rhythmic cells. Oboe solos once again stood out as particularly exquisite, but it was perhaps above all the hieratic nature of the work that shone through, the chorales presaging a sharply materialist version, if that can be imagined, of Messiaen.

And so to the Festival Hall, to hear the NYO under Paul Daniel. Or not under Paul Daniel, in the opening Tuning Up, Varèse’s witty parody of the opening procedure of a typical orchestral concert. I especially enjoyed the quotation from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, but most captivating was the sense of an event coming into life. I am yet to be convinced that the full orchestra – and the NYO was more than full! – presents the best of Varèse, but Arcana is surely the best of orchestral Varèse. What one heard – and indeed saw – most of all was the sheer enthusiasm with which these young musicians, none older than eighteen, approach and execute their task. It is testament to their achievement that no thought of ‘difficulty’ entered the mind: Varèse was above all enjoyable. Once again echoes of the Rite were heard in what sounded like a veritable concerto for orchestra. And at last one heard soaring strings given their head.

The second half opened with Varèse’s last work, Nocturnal. Elizabeth Watts and the vocal group Laudibus gave a committed performance, replete with histrionics of crucifixion. I cannot claim to understand a work I find frankly bizarre – whoever would have linked Varèse and Anaïs Nin?! – but one cannot gainsay its dramatic effect. We then heard the British premiere of the original, 1921 version of Amériques, including offstage brass and music excised from the composer’s final, slightly more practical, version. The sheer extravagance of the orchestration was relished by Daniel and the orchestra, though I think more is probably ultimately less here: interesting but not necessarily to be preferred – unlike, say, Petrushka or The Firebird. Fantastical, optimistic, sprawling, full of incident, this was clearly the America of Varèse’s dreams, even if they were never to be fulfilled. There was also, however, or at least I fancied so, a more Gallic edge to some of the music that would be excised, indicating a soul in transition. It was, then, all the more fitting that, for an encore, we should hear the work which, when Varèse heard it in Turin, convinced him to become a composer: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. And after the complete Varèse, it was perhaps a relief to hear a Debussy performance that was warm, almost Romantic, rather than stridently modernist. The true radicalism of this first piece of twentieth-century music will, in any case, always tell. I suspect that this will not be the last time we shall hear the excellent flautist Joshua Batty so sensitively voice its tones.

Varèse 360° (1) - London Sinfonietta/Atherton, 16 April 2010

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Varèse – Ionisation, for thirteen percussionists
Varèse – Density 21.5, for solo flute
Varèse-Chou Wen-chung – Dance for Burgess, fragment for chamber orchestra
Varèse – Ecuatorial, for bass and ensemble
Varèse-Chou Wen-chung – Etude pour Espace
Varèse – Déserts, for wind, piano, percussion, and tape

London Sinfonietta
David Atherton (conductor)
Cathie Boyd (staging, director, video, lighting)
Sir John Tomlinson (bass)
EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble
Jonathan Golove, Natasha Farny (cello theremin)
Sound Intermedia
Pippa Nissen (video)
Zerlina Hughes (lighting)
Dan Ayling (stage manager)

The complete Varèse in three weekend concerts was a brave undertaking, the fruition of a long-held ambition of Gillian Moore, the Southbank Centre’s Head of Contemporary Culture, richly rewarded in a queue for returns outside the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I admit that I was surprised, though delighted, and wondered how many of the audience were drawn in by the multi-media presentation. For me, that aspect was the least interesting, much of it barely going beyond something one might see on a computer screen-saver, though it often had the merit of changing form in a fashion that delineated structure, doubtless a useful ‘visual score’ element for some. Still, it did no harm, and seemed to elicit appreciation from many.

Ionisation – could one ask for a more ‘twentieth-century’ title? – sounds barely less radical than it must have done seventy years ago. It received from the percussionists of the London Sinfonietta, under David Atherton, a performance of great impetus, fierce in its uncompromising radicalism, like a miniature Rite of Spring on speed – in more than one sense. As with so much Varèse, this is in many respects an utterly urban landscape: music for Le Corbusier, if you will. And yet, an African primitivism also shone through. Density 21.5 also bares its scientific inspiration in its title, in this case the density of platinum: the work was written for a new platinum instrument, made for flautist George Barrère. This evening’s flautist – Michael Cox, I think – gave an unusually, yet refreshingly, muscular account, which could yet hark back to Debussy when necessary. Dance for Burgess is an occasional work, written, believe it or now, for Burgess Meredith’s musical comedy, Happy as Larry, whose run lasted all of a single night. The Sinfonietta presented a raucous, almost Ivesian fragment, with gleaming, hard-edged brass: a typical Varese sound, with more than a nod, as Malcolm Macdonald’s excellent programme notes suggested, to Cubism.

The first half culminated in the extraordinary Ecuatorial, which might here have been subtitled ‘John Tomlinson sings Varèse’: perhaps only surprising to those who think of this searching artist simply as a Wagnerian. Birtwistle, Henze, and many others would tell us otherwise. Tomlinson provided a proper tension between raging reminiscent of a bass Gurrelieder Waldemar, if you can imagine such a thing, and something still more elemental, more sage: the Rite again? There is, and I do not mean this in a negative sense, something nonsensical to a modern, Western listener about this Mayan incantation. And there are, of course, many unexpected sounds from the orchestra, not least, in such a setting, the organ, here played by Iain Farrington. It is interesting that, in its – unconscious? – homage to the Doktor Faust of Varèse’s teacher, Busoni, the instrument actually elicits more surprise than the two theremin cellos.

A certain mediævalism, perhaps an almost inevitable consequence of choral writing, announced itself in the Etude pour Espace, ‘orchestrated and arranged for spatialised live concert performance’ by one of Varèse’s pupils, Chou Wen-chung. The EXAUDI vocal ensemble acquitted itself very well, both chorally and soloistically, the work emerging majestic, triumphant, like coronation music for the twentieth century – and beyond. Again, Varèse showed us that uncompromising need not equal ‘difficult’, and indeed ‘difficulty’ is often as much a product of listeners’ prejudice as anything else. Déserts presents quite another landscape, and here the video images seemed well judged in presenting suggestions of a nuclear age world. The performance was implacable, both immediate and, from its muted brass, distanced. Woodwind are equally crucial, of course, likewise the tape interpolations that so shocked the 1954 audience at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The block writing – tape and instruments are never heard together – coincided with visual variation, but I cannot imagine that anyone would have failed to register the change aurally. One could hear the deserts, whether urban or extra-terrestrial, of the title far better than they might ever be seen.

London Sinfonietta: Sonic Explorations - 20th Century Classics (2), 3 October 2009

Kings Place, Hall One

Varèse – Poème Electronique (with film by Le Corbusier)
Stockhausen – Pole for 2
Berio – Naturale

Paul Silverthorne (viola)
Sam Walton (percussion)
Sound Intermedia

The second of the London Sinfonietta’s two 20th Century Classics concerts, themselves part of a greater series of Sonic Explorations, retained Luciano Berio from the first programme, adding two other great electronic pioneers to the roster: Edgard Varèse and Karlheinz Stockhausen. To my mind, or at least to my senses, Berio’s contribution was the most powerful, whilst Stockhausen’s Pole for 2 had not worn well.

It was, however, fascinating to hear Varèse’s Poème Electronique whilst watching Le Corbusier’s original film. Last summer the poem had been heard at the Proms, in a concert that had proved one of the highlights of the season. It was interesting to note how different the work seemed, with its partial context restored. I am not entirely sure that this restoration, as with so many others, ultimately redounded to the work’s advantage. The chance to see Le Corbusier’s images, an old-fashioned encyclopædia of ‘world civilisations’, was interesting in itself, but I found myself distracted, and less able to listen to Varèse’s extraordinary score as ‘organised sound’ in its own right. One might argue, of course, that this was never the composer’s intention, that I am turning the poem into ‘absolute music’, to which I am tempted to reply, ‘Romantic as charged’. But these are musings concerning the work and what one day might be considered rudimentary matters of ‘Varèse performance practice’. The realisation by the London Sinfonietta’s David Sheppard and Ian Dearden (Sound Intermedia) was beyond reproach.

Next came Stockhausen’s Pole for 2. I said that it had not worn well; that at least was the impression garnered by this performance, from the two members of Sound Intermedia using sounds from shortwave radio, processed live with computers. (It can also, I believe, be performed with two instruments or voices.) I can imagine that it is absorbing and even great fun to perform and that one learns a great deal by following Stockhausen’s instructions as to interaction between the two performers; perhaps one even becomes frustrated by the composer’s refusal, even in a graphic score, to let go, and this tension becomes part of the experience. But, even with the assistance of visualisation on screen, just listening to a tour around various shortwave frequencies – even the snatches of garage music sounded dated: ‘very 2002’, as my more knowledgeable companion ironically observed – struck me as an unsatisfactory compromise between organised and disorganised sound. Stockhausen’s achievements are legion; I should hesitate to place this one highly, at least in terms of any (post-)Romantic conception of a musical work.

There are no such problems with Berio’s marvellous Naturale, for viola, percussion, and tape. With Varèse, the purely human has been relegated to the merely human; with Stockhausen, one often seems to be straining towards the extra-terrestrial, with Berio, the music is rooted in actual, historical, human experience. All of these approaches have their strengths; yet, on this occasion, Berio’s won out for me. The extracts from Sicilian folksongs recorded on tape ought to be fundamental; in a sense they doubtless are. However, such was the strength of the performances from Paul Silverthorne and Sam Walton that the folksong elements seemed at least as much to emerge from the ‘purely musical’ – actually nothing of the sort – as vice versa. Walton reminded us that, whilst electronics have been one of the twentieth century’s great additions to the instrumental palette, so too has the increasing diversity of the percussionist’s palette. Tuned and untuned, rhythmically driving and dramatically punctuating: this truly drew one in to the composer’s extraordinary sound world. So did his interaction with Silverthorne – and that of both with the tape. One of Silverthorne’s many achievements was to remind us of the very particular qualities of the viola; here it proved a bridge between old and new, West and East. Not only the virtuosity but the musical sensitivity with which Silverthorne performed provided a veritable masterclass; this could almost have been Bach, such were the security of performance and its probing nature. Alas, misfortune was to strike when one of his strings snapped. The hall’s evening schedule doubtless made it impossible to start again from the beginning, once the errant string had been replaced; instead, as the sound projectionists were instructed, the work resumed at figure J. I should have been more than happy to have heard the entire work twice, but it would not do to be ungrateful, having been treated to so rare and valuable an opportunity.

Prom 45: BBC SSO/Volkov, et al., 19 August 2008

Royal Albert Hall

Harvey – Tombeau de Messiaen
Messiaen – Concert à quatre
Harvey – Mortuos plango, vivos voco
Harvey (with Gilbert Nouno and Arshia Cont: IRCAM computer music designers) – Soundings (world premiere)
Varèse – Poème électronique
Varèse – Déserts

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Emily Beynon (flute)
Alexei Ogrintchouk (oboe)
Danjulo Ishizaka (’cello)
Jonathan Harvey (sound projection: Harvey)
Jerémie Henrot and Clément Marie (IRCAM sound projection: Soundings)
Ben Bayliss and Chris Beddall (sound projection: Varèse)

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (conductor)

Interesting and intelligent programming may prove to be a hallmark of Roger Wright’s tenure at the Proms. One can only hope so following the previous dispensation, much of which has remained in evidence during this ‘changeover’ season. At the heart of the programme lay the music of Jonathan Harvey, a fine composer, far too often overlooked in his own country. It would seem that his marriage of modernism, not least a keen interest in French spectralism and electronics, and a deep, syncretic spirituality – yes, I too generally run a mile upon hearing that word; but this is the real thing, not the easy-access, synthetic bells and smells of the ‘holy minimalists’ – has not always appealed to the English empirical temperament. All the more reason then to grant him such a splendid opportunity as this. Harvey studied with Messiaen and the two composers’ concerns in various ways overlap. An ongoing association with IRCAM – brain-child of Boulez, another Messiaen pupil – brought us the classic electronic work, Mortuos plango, vivos voco, and a new work, Soundings, co-commissioned by the BBC, IRCAM, and Radio France, as the third and final part of a trilogy ‘referring to the Buddhist purification of body, mind, and speech’. Soundings was composed by Harvey as Composer-in-Association to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, who premiered it this evening. And then, for the third part of the concert, we turned to the still-bracing dawn of electronic music, to the work of Varèse. Having questioned the suitability of the Royal Albert Hall for various more ‘conventional’ works, I am happy to report that, on this occasion, the space worked very well. This may partly have been owed to the vagaries of seating – even sitting a few seats away appears to make quite a difference here – yet the space itself added something important, visually and acoustically, to the electronic works.

Harvey’s Tombeau de Messiaen, for piano and digital tape, opened the programme. In a brief programme note, Harvey cited Messiaen as a ‘protospectralist ... fascinated by the colours of the harmonic series and its distortions, ... [who] found therein a prismatic play of light’. And so, the tape part of this 1994 tribute is made of twelve piano sounds tuned to the harmonic series, one for each pitch class. The piano part, in equal temperament of course, then plays with these series, both combining with and distorting them: ‘never entirely belonging, never entirely separate’. This interplay was dazzlingly captured by Cédric Tiberghien, as were the bell-like echoes – a slightly nauseous yet colourful pealing – not only of Messiaen but also, I fancied, of the Debussy of La cathédrale engloutie. ‘Echoes’ was also the operative word for the crucial role of the hall. Harvey and Tiberghien exploited the full extremities of the keyboard, before moving to a piercing climax of an almost Messiaenesque ecstasy.

Concert à quatre (1990-92) is Messiaen’s final work, completed by Yvonne Loriod, in consultation with Heinz Holliger and George Benjamin. From the very first notes, it is instantly recognisable as Messiaen, indeed as the work of the same composer who, compositional developments notwithstanding, had written L’Ascension sixty years earlier. Emily Beynon and Alexei Ogrintchouk are both principals with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, whose long experience with French music was surely valuable here, but the BBC SSO too managed to sound convincingly ‘modern French’ (think of the Orchestre de Paris or the Orchestre National de France). In the first movement, the Entrée, it was once again Tiberghien’s opportunity to shine, the piano being treated as a solo instrument apart from the rest of the concertante group. Needless to say, he grasped this opportunity, exhibiting glistening tone and dazzling rhythmical precision. The orchestra’s ten (!) percussionists, including wind-machine, certainly made their presence felt too, though never unduly. For the second movement Vocalise, Messiaen transcribed with ornamentation a piece he had written in 1935 for a series of vocal studies. It is tribute to the constancy of his style and voice, that this in no sense sounded out of place. The beautiful A major melody, ‘warmed’, in Paul Griffiths’s excellent choice of verb, by the composer’s third mode of limited transposition, was passed between each of the soloists in turn, the orchestra here being of secondary importance, timbral ‘warming’ furnished by a limited number of strings. Beynon presented a ravishingly lyrical opening, followed by an equally heart-stopping duet between oboe and piano, Ogrintchouk being possessed, it would seem, of unlimited and luxurious reserves of line and breath. The unapologetically Romantic ’cello entry was meltingly taken by BBC New Generation Artist, Danjulo Ishizaka, who also shone in the ensuing Cadenza. So too did the combined forces of the xylophone, xylorimba, and marimba. For the final Rondeau, Ilan Volkov clearly delineated its verse-refrain form. He and his players also imparted a welcome sense of the apocalyptic. The dialogue between piano and bells took on an aptly ecclesiastical tinge as versicle and response. This movement teemed, quite properly, with life and joy.

Mortuos plango, vivos voco, for eight-channel tape (1980), was inspired by the sounds of bells and choristers at Winchester Cathedral, where Harvey’s son had sung. The largest bell has inscribed upon it the text: HORAS AVOLANTES NUMERO, MORTUOS PLANGO, VIVOS AD PRECES VOCO (‘I count the fleeing hours, I lament the dead, I call the living to prayer’). Harvey cleverly – and movingly – conveys this through the ‘dead’, however rich, sound of the bell and the ‘live’ sound of the boy, the audience inside the surrounding sound of the former, whilst the latter ‘flies freely around’. I was reminded not only of the English cathedral tradition– and of English cathedrals themselves –but also of the strange, threatening, yet ineffably beautiful Venice of Nono. It was interesting to note how very much more human, less alien, this work sounded than Stockhausen’s COSMIC PULSES had a couple of weeks before. This is new music concerned with utterly ‘traditional’ Christian concerns of life and death, nowhere more so than in the dying away al niente of the bell sounds. The hall itself took on an aptly Gothic splendour as the frame for the music.

In Soundings, Harvey explains, he ‘wanted to bring together orchestral music and human speech. It is as if the orchestra is learning to speak, like a baby with its mother, or like first man, or like listening to a highly expressive language we don’t understand. The rhythms and emotional tones of speech are formed by semantics, but even more they are formed by feelings – in that respect they approach song.’ Quite apart from the eloquence with which the composer elucidated the imperative behind his work, this is very much what we heard, for which tribute should also be paid to Volkov and his excellent orchestra. (How very different from the dispiriting Mahler and Damnation of Faust I heard them give at the Proms a few years ago.) The Ur-quality of the opening inevitably brought to mind earlier ‘creations’ of music out of the void: The Creation, Das Rheingold, Berg’s Op.6 Orchestral Pieces. This sounded very much as Harvey described it: ‘like an incarnation, the descent into human life.’ Leader Elizabeth Layton did sterling work with several taxing solos, although she was far from alone in this respect. Swarming strings and Messiaenesque chattering woodwind were keen contributors. The second of the three movements – continuous, yet distinct – is an expansion of the work Sprechgesang (for English horn and chamber ensemble). For Harvey, it is ‘concerned with the frenetic chatter of human life in all its expressions of domination, assertion, fear, love, etc.’, which ‘finally moves, exhausted, to mantra and a celebration of ritual language. The mantra is orchestrated and treated by shape vocoding.’ The voices actually put me in mind of an electronic version of Berio’s Sinfonia, which of course has its fair share of ‘frenetic chatter’. Passages of joy were reminiscent once again of Messiaen, who would surely have understood and shared Harvey’s concerns. There were even Romantic ghosts in the machine in the guise of virtuoso piano (splendidly performed by Lynda Cochrane) and languorous woodwind phrases. For the third movement ‘speech has a calmer purpose; it is married to a music of unity, a hymn which is close to Gregorian chant.’ This was certainly apparent, not least in the ominous monodic passages for brass and electronics. The movement built towards a shattering, almost Brucknerian climax, before reverting to some earlier material, taken in different directions, with some further Messiaenesque activity. Divisions between work, performance and audience broke down as the sound enveloped us and took us somewhere beyond, to the transcendent. ‘The paradise of the sounding temple is imagined.’

Varèse’s Poème électronique, for pre-recorded magnetic tape, was composed for Le Corbusier’s Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair. (Those were the days!) It was the architect’s insistence, against considerable scepticism from Philips, which ensured that Varèse would be the composer of precisely 480 seconds of music, created second by second from both ‘real’ and purely electronic sounds. (Interestingly, much of the technical design for the pavilion was delegated to Le Corbusier’s assistant, none other than the young Xenakis.) Although the pavilion was demolished, Varèse’s music was preserved and subsequently transferred to computer. The opening bell sounds provided a link with Harvey, but soon we hurtled into an extraordinary futuristic world with a multiplicity of sounds, from organ to heavy industry. At this distance – we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary –there was occasionally something of the Heath Robinson to some of this, but every work, even that of Varèse, must eventually be classicised and take upon itself something of its own time as well as ours. The closing storm-winds set the scene for the déserts of the following, final work.

Here, in Déserts, for fifteen wind instruments, percussion (all ten players once again, including piano), and magnetic tape (1950-54), we were once again awakened by the chiming of bells. An overriding impression from both work and performance would be summed up by the word Boulez had not so long previously used at the head of the seventh of his piano Notations, as yet unpublished: Hiératique. The ghost of Varèse’s own Ionisation was far from lain. Volkov and his instrumentalists were impressively insistent, accomplishing the paradoxical feat of sounding both variegated and monolithic – in fact, rather like the three interpolated passages of ‘organised sound’. All the necessary precision and timbral starkness were there. The electronic sounds are again utterly of the twentieth century – unlike much tamer twentieth-century music – in their evocation of an age of warfare and ‘technological progress’, of deserts both natural and urban, and of what Varèse called ‘this distant inner space where no telescope can reach, where man is alone in a world of mystery and essential solitude’. Gleaming brass was uncompromisingly Corbusier-like, as opposed to the Bauhaus constructivism of some at least of twelve-note Schoenberg; it is interesting, how often one reaches for architectural simile when thinking of Varèse, more often indeed than one does with Xenakis, of whom one might have expected it. This performance marked a fine end to an outstanding concert.