Arcomis International Brass Event, 10 – 13 October 2013
London Sinfonietta, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 12 October 2013
Luciano Berio – Call – St Louis Fanfare
Harrison Birtwistle – The Silk House Tattoo
Luciano Berio – Sequenza V, for solo trombone
Witold Lutosławski – Mini Overture
James MacMillan – Adam’s Rib
Timothy Jackson – Two Haiku
It’s not often that the London Sinfonietta ventures across the Severn
Bridge. Indeed, to my knowledge, the last time they did so was for
another Arcomis event; the inaugural festival in 2011, which celebrated
all things flute in a packed weekend of concerts, workshops, recitals,
masterclasses and happenings for people of all ages. Two years later and
the Cardiff-based Arcomis returned with a new theme: ‘Brass without
Boundaries’. The main performance venue had shifted from the BBC
Hoddinott Hall to the larger St David’s Hall (with Cardiff University
and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama) but the ethos and drive
remained the same, with an emphasis on top, international performers and
exciting, innovative events exploring and celebrating brass instruments
from every angle.
As you might guess of a festival which involves the UK’s premier
contemporary music ensemble, the core of the Arcomis project is the
promotion and commissioning of new music. But Arcomis’ approach is
beguilingly easy-going and far from the usual up-front, ambassadorial
stance of new music festivals. The hope is that the emphasis on
exceptional performers and the sheer excitement they bring to their
instruments will lead new audiences to discover new music through the
very thrill of those sounds. Moreover, the inclusive programme spanned a
wide range of music old and new across many genres, with ensembles from
Superbrass to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, National Youth Jazz
Orchestra to the comedic Mnozil Brass, and world-class soloists such as
trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth and horn player David Pyatt. It was an
impressive undertaking to say the least and one deserving of
congratulation to Director Adrian Hull and his team.
I spoke with Adrian ahead of Saturday’s London Sinfonietta concert
and he told me that he’d worked for over eighteen months to make this
happen, and was grateful for the support of many people, including
Phillippe Schartz (Principal Trumpet at BBC NOW), the BBC NOW producers
and staff of St David’s Hall in particular. He described the aims of
Arcomis International Events thus: ‘We come at it from a new music point
of view but it can be entertaining, world-class, world quality. Part of
the idea is to give a boost to all the great music that goes on in this
area, in Wales and the South-West, with so much happening in London.’
He also spoke of some of the themes running through this year’s event,
which quietly commemorated five, major anniversary composers – the first
four of whom happen to have been linked by friendship and/or influence:
Benjamin Britten and Witold Lutosławski (birth centenaries) with
Francis Poulenc and – scandalously neglected elsewhere – Paul Hindemith
(fifty years since their deaths). The fifth composer, of course, is the
great Luciano Berio who died a decade ago this year and who did so much
to pioneer new ways to write for solo instruments. As Adrian says,
‘There are threads there but they don’t necessarily need to be in
people’s faces. It also helps us to be coherent in programming and to
give it a bit of variety and to give a focus on new music without it
being too much.’
The London Sinfonietta concert featured works by Berio and
Lutosławski alongside composers happily very much alive and kicking:
Harrison Birtwistle, James MacMillan and Timothy Jackson (who also
happens to be Principal Horn with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
Orchestra and who was present to hear his Two Haiku for brass quintet).
But before that came a foyer fanfare performed by the Arcomis Brass
Quintet – one of ten fanfares specially commissioned by Arcomis; all bar
one popping up at different points of the festival in the public area
of the Level 3 St David’s Hall lounge (the tenth took place in the RWCMD
foyer). Appropriately to the ‘Sinfonietta programme, this particular
piece was Michael Zev Gordon’s Fanfare-Epitaph: Homage to Witold Lutosławski, a short, brilliant work of bright and dark contrast based on the Polish composer’s own Epitaph for oboe and piano and played here with great oomph and relish.
It proved an apt prelude to a classic ‘new music’ concert by the
‘Sinfonietta players, exploring a wide range of sonic possibilities
within the loosely modernist perspective of six works written between
1966 and 1998. The line-up varied from solo instrument to full brass
quintet, as in the opening Call – St Louis Fanfare (1985) by
Berio. Like much of Berio’s music, the piece explores the title from a
number of perspectives; musically here through the calling back and
forth of hocketing trumpets and a literal calling of the players by
voice into their instruments. But as a fanfare, the piece itself is a
call to the audience to listen, as Berio disarmingly put it, ‘before the
feast begins’. On the basis of this performance, the work is a feast in
itself; full of subtle textural and tempo changes.
The ceremonial
ambience continued into Birtwistle’s The Silk House Tattoo
(1998), a substantial work with a characteristic theatre element. Cast
in four sections, two trumpeters moved around a central snare drummer in
a circle; now static, now marching. The spatial aspect held a subtle
acoustic and visual drama, and every tiny nuance was audible here and,
indeed, throughout the concert, from rich, full-throated tones to muted pianissimo, delicate flutter-tonguing and precise, singing quarter tones.
In concerts involving a variety of instrumental line-ups, stage
management often creates its own theatre as the stage is re-set between
pieces – not always helpfully at that. Here, at least, the whole process
was relaxed and gracefully done and the next two pieces were the
highlights of the concert: Byron Fulcher’s winning performance of
Berio’s Sequenza V (1966) for solo trombone and Lutosławski’s brilliant single-movement Mini Overture
(1982) for quintet. Fulcher appeared in costume as Grock, the clown of
Berio’s inspiration, and was effortlessly equal to the composer’s
virtuoso self-described ‘theatre of vocal and instrumental gestures’,
revolving pathos and humour around the single enunciated ‘why’? As for
the Overture, it was stunningly performed (with a welcome
pivotal role for the horn), making the most of the composer’s array of
colours, contrasting articulation and precise rhythmic passages within
the ebb and flow of the now building, now arrested momentum.
Harmony was
to the fore in MacMillan’s Adam’s Rib (1995), which opened
with exquisite, dark, open chords. Here the tuba and trombone came into
their own, underpinning the whole with long, held notes of a deep
resonance in two richly scored Chorale sections either side of a
contrasting fanfare. The Two Haiku (1997) by Jackson which
closed the concert were neatly drawn and sturdily well written for the
instruments, if somewhat formulaic in character, but packing much detail
into a series of evocative vignettes.
Overall, the London Sinfonietta created an oasis of top-quality
music-making far away – but in no sense divorced from – the shoppers in
Cardiff city centre close by. And that was the point of Arcomis’ ‘Brass
Without Boundaries’, which placed the ‘Sinfonietta alongside kids’
workshops and big jazz concerts as just one of many performances by
exceptional players over the four days of the event. When congratulated
on his achievement in pulling it all together, Adrian Hull’s modest
response summed up both his own terrific enthusiasm and the buzz around
the festival:
‘It’s nice that people come along and that they’re keen
about it. The support has been incredible. It’s also fine if people
don’t like things as well – that’s what it’s there for! Honestly, doing
this session here [an open workshop performance with Mnozil Brass], when
I’ve just come from the ‘Welsh College with a load of toddlers having a
go on trombones, and now to the London Sinfonietta – it’s sublime!’
No comments:
Post a Comment