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.
Showing posts with label Varèse 360°. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Varèse 360°. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Sunday, 18 April 2010
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)