Magnus Lindberg - EXPO
Grieg - Four Songs: To Brune Øjne / Jeg Elsker Dig / En Svane / Våren
R. Strauss - Three Songs: Muttertänderlei / Meinem Kinder / Cäcilie
- Till Eulenspiegel’s lustige Streiche
Sibelius - Symphony No. 5
Conductor - Thomas Søndergård
Soprano - Inger Dam-Jensen
The appointment of a new Principal Conductor to a major orchestra is a big event with far-reaching ramifications for the musicians concerned and their audience; a fact hardly lost on Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård, to whom the baton was officially passed, as it were, on October 12th from Thierry Fischer, outgoing Principal at the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Søndergård’s choice of repertoire for this, inaugural concert revealed aspirations for his four-year tenure on both personal and orchestral levels. But it was the opening piece that threw down the gauntlet in more than one regard.
EXPO, a short, flamboyant showcase of orchestral virtuosity by Finn Magnus Lindberg, was commissioned in 2009 to celebrate the inauguration of another, similarly youthful conductor at another orchestra; Alan Gilbert at the New York Philharmonic. It’s inclusion here drew bold comparison between that event and tonight’s concert in Cardiff - perhaps overly bold, given that a bright start gave way to workmanlike performances in key ensuing items. However, the piece also signaled Søndergård’s welcome intent to perform not only works by fellow Scandinavians, but contemporary music alongside older, more familiar repertoire. EXPO fulfilled both criteria and was used here to play a fun, if somewhat unsubtle, national card as a link with Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5 in the second half; a piece nonetheless worlds away in tone and seriousness of intent, and the most ambitious item on tonight’s programme.
But before that came less challenging fare from Edvard Grieg and Richard Strauss; firstly, in a series of orchestral songs also designed to please followers (at least, those with long memories) of the Cardiff Singer of the World competition, won in 1993 by tonight’s Danish soloist, soprano Inger Dam-Jensen. Grieg was, of course, also a Scandinavian composer and the first to achieve wider fame outside his native Norway - although his music is still snubbed by some who persist in the condescending belief that only proven symphonists can earn the right to ‘major composer’ status. Where Grieg excelled was as a miniaturist and writer of deceptively simple songs (he, like Strauss, was married to a soprano), and the set of four on offer tonight were delivered with grace and sensitivity; the first, To Brune Øjne Op. 5 No.1, delicately orchestrated by Barry-based composer Christopher Painter. A more full-bloodied, dramatic approach from soloist and orchestra alike would have enlivened the three Strauss songs which followed; these were somewhat fey and underwhelming, but nicely wrought for all that, with Dam-Jensen and orchestra finding comfortable rapport.
Strauss, too, had musical detractors and initially had difficulty earning respect as a composer, but for wholly different reasons; in his case, an advanced and, to some, shocking chromaticism begot a reputation as an enfant terrible. With the tone poem Till Eulenspiegel - his fifth in a genre he developed with extravagant artistry - he stuck out his tongue at critics who could not, after all, ignore it’s dazzling feats of invention, wit and colour. How far Søndergård himself may or may not identify with the anti-hero prankster of the folk tale from which the piece springs is open to question (notwithstanding his cheeky-chappy exhortation to the audience’s ‘beautiful faces’ to stay for a post-concert interview). But tonight’s performance could certainly have been more rudely characterful. This is not a piece with which to tread carefully and, although the orchestra clearly enjoyed themselves once warmed up - the Strauss eventually picking up where Lindberg’s virtuosic energy left off - it needed a more insolent relish.
It was, in part, interpretation of another tone poem which brought Søndergård critical acclaim upon his BBCNOW debut in 2009; then with Sibelius’s En Saga. Tonight, he upped the ante considerably in tackling the Finn’s profound and problematic Symphony No. 5. It is not the harmonic or rhythmic language Sibelius employs that makes this and other of his key works so difficult to bring off, nor any specific aspect of instrumentation or technique; indeed, at the time Sibelius wrote and then revised the 5th Symphony during and after World War I, his tonal idiom appeared, on the surface, positively backward-sounding beside the atonal experiments of Central European contemporaries. However, this and other of his major scores have often baffled those who seek in vain therein for conformity to prevailing Austro-German symphonic models. Furthermore, Sibelius is not simply a proto-Romantic, inspired by national identity and lonely Northern wilderness (although this can also be true), but his organic formal and harmonic processes are so subtly radical as to constitute a unique, modernist development in themselves. It is nonsense, therefore, and not just simplistic to assume that a Scandinavian must be able to perform Sibelius convincingly just because he or she is Scandinavian, for this ignores the extent to which Sibelius’s unique sound springs from purely musical procedures rather than nationalist sentiment.
Søndergård’s interpretation on this occasion showed a great deal of promise but was far from polished or convincing overall; much of the formal expansion and contraction of the first movement, for instance, was marred by a feeling of its being bolted together - both in terms of the movement’s span and the instrumental sections, as woodwind, brass and strings sounded at times completely disparate rather than fragments of one voice, now emerging from, now dissolving into the disquieting orchestral texture. Such waves occur throughout the work, in which the three movements are themselves different stages within one, extraordinary whole. But, despite Søndergård’s often brisk pacing, there were long passages where momentum flagged, becoming ploddy and lacking the tension so needed to ensure the forwards propulsion that should paradoxically emerge from Sibelius’s continual collapsing inwards. Key climactic brass passages (notably the so-called ‘swan theme’ that emerges fully at last in the third movement) were strangely muted - although some passages and certain of the trickier transitions had verve and spirit, showing flashes of what could be accomplished given greater depth and broader, longer-range sculpting.
Søndergård will surely continue to hone his Sibelius 5, both with BBCNOW and elsewhere - and it is good news generally that Sibelius’s true stature continues increasingly to be recognised. On the other hand, Sibelius is performed and recorded a great deal nowadays, in stark contrast to an exact contemporary of his who also produced major symphonies - and who, by chance, was actually Danish. So, whilst it was inevitable that considerations of popularity would shape tonight’s inaugural programme, it is nonetheless a pity that we will have to wait until next April to hear Søndergård’s interpretation of his fellow countryman’s important but little known Symphony No. 5 - composer of which being the troubled but brilliant Carl Nielsen.
Posted by Wales Arts Review 2/11/12:
http://www.walesartsreview.org/bbc%20national%20orchestra%20of%20wales.html
About Me
- steph power
- Twitter: @spower_steph, Wales, United Kingdom
- composer, poet, critic, essayist
Saturday, 3 November 2012
Concert Review: Music Theatre Wales Ensemble, Dora Stoutzker Hall, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, 4th October 2012
Huw Watkins - Four Inventions (2009)
Mark David Boden - Between Waking and Dreams (2012)
Stuart MacRae - Equilibrium (2008)
Huw Watkins - Speak Seven Seas (2011)
Salvatore Sciarrino - Lo Spazio Inverso (1984)
Mark-Anthony Turnage - Grazioso! (2009)
Miranda Fulleylove (violin), Yuko Inoue (viola), Daisy Vatalaro (‘cello), Jo Shaw (flute/piccolo), Scott Lygate (clarinets), Julian Warburton (percussion), Huw Watkins (piano/celeste), Michael Rafferty (conductor).
Since the early days of opera, when Claudio Monteverdi and his Renaissance contemporaries first staged a type of secular music drama with characters that mostly sang rather than spoke, the question of what kind of an art-form opera is and what it seeks to do has elicited passionate and differing responses. But what constitutes the bedrock of the art-form has never been seriously doubted - and that is, music. Not theatre nor visual spectacle, not staged narrative nor even libretto, but musical sound; the dramatic combination of voice and instrumental ensemble expressing human emotion and telling human stories. The acting of roles and paraphernalia of staging have always been important, but secondary to the music itself which carries the drama - even in Richard Wagner’s supposedly totalised Gesamtkunstwerk, in which he aimed to elevate the visual, the poetic and the musical into a new kind of integrated art-form beyond any one of the three alone.
At the heart, then, of Music Theatre Wales, as with all opera companies, lies music and the composers who write it. What characterises MTW is that, not only is it one of the UK’s leading touring companies, but it is also one of the few demonstrating an ongoing commitment to the development of opera as a contemporary art-form through the commissioning of new works by living composers, rather than the re-staging of familiar, established repertoire from the past. This concert at the Dora Stoutzker Hall was an opportunity to meet two such composers, whose work MTW is currently touring as a double-bill across the UK in collaboration with Scottish Opera; Welsh-born Huw Watkins (In the Locked Room, librettist David Harsent) and Scot Stuart MacRae (Ghost Patrol, librettist Louise Welsh).
Stripping back, as it were, to bare, musical bones away from the operatic stage, this event featured members of MTW’s Ensemble, offering an introduction to the chamber, concert music of these two contrasting composers and three others with whom MTW have already or will in future enjoy operatic collaboration; Boden, Sciarrino and Turnage. It also marked the inauguration of a three-year partnership between MTW and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation) which aims, in the words of MTW Joint-Artistic Director Michael McCarthy, “to expand the appetite and understanding of contemporary opera in Cardiff” and “build a platform of professional knowledge and experience for future performers, musicians, writers and composers”. So, an important event, which also sought, in part, to open a dialogue concerning the different but not necessarily unrelated disciplines of composing for theatre and composing for the concert platform; which latter - at least in terms of contemporary music - ironically appears so much harder for audiences to engage with in the absence of additional theatrical inducement.
Three of the composers (Watkins, Boden and MacRae) were present to talk about their work. Of these, perhaps inevitably given the current tour, it was MacRae and Watkins who made the more overt links to their operas. MacRae described how his mini viola concerto Equilibrium pitted soloist against quintet in a dramatic dialogue directly informed by his operatic writing; here, with a gradual paring down of contrast, play and imitation to find balance in repose. The work offered a proliferation of dynamic ideas and intriguing landscapes, ably navigated by conductor Rafferty and with some excellent playing. A greater sense of risk would have enhanced the drama which, nonetheless, had subtlety as well as punch.
Watkins opened both halves, given star billing for his deserved renown as a pianist. His Four Inventions for piano solo were a concise, brilliant display but it was his piano trio Speak Seven Seas which referenced his opera, for which it was a study. Both the opera and the trio have sea settings, the title here coming from Dylan Thomas’s Author’s Prologue; but this was no Four Sea Interludes-type extraction from the opera, despite clear stylistic parallels with Benjamin Britten. Rather, the trio takes the opera’s opening material in a different musical direction; employing an ebb and flow of changing moods - with some beautifully-crafted writing - to rise to the challenge of composing a piece of substantial duration (13-14 minutes) in just one movement.
The three remaining pieces were idiomatic showcases bearing no direct relation to their composer’s operatic writing. Boden’s Between Waking and Dreams was largely effective in its exploration of contrasting textures, inspired by a poem by Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, which describes the tranquillity of air travel above the clouds and its antithesis in the mêlée enjoined upon landing, whilst the closing Grazioso! displayed Turnage’s trademark rude percussive health and sharp orchestration, with moments of surprising tenderness.
But before that came the clear highlight of the evening. The largely self-taught Sciarrino (b1947) is a prolific Italian composer whose importance has yet to be recognised in the UK. His Lo Spazio Inverso of 1984 was by far the oldest work on the programme but sounded the freshest and most striking, drawing the best from an ensemble that was everywhere superb. This was music of gossamer and depth; not at all fragile but appearing so in its hushed exploration of “sound at the edge of breath” as McCarthy put it - and with some astonishingly relaxed but controlled playing from clarinettist Scott Lygate. Deceptively simple yet profound, and inspiring eager anticipation of MTW’s 2013 UK premiere of Sciarrino’s 1998 opera Luci mie Traditrici (roughly, My Betraying Light). Yet another major forthcoming event, this will hopefully continue to prove MTW’s ability to draw large and enthusiastic audiences for superbly produced contemporary opera. Perhaps another challenge for the company’s ensemble might be to buck another cultural trend and discover how to do the same for some richly rewarding but relatively ignored contemporary music in the concert hall.
Posted by Wales Arts Review 19/10/12:
http://www.walesartsreview.org/music%20theatre%20wales%20ensemble.html
Mark David Boden - Between Waking and Dreams (2012)
Stuart MacRae - Equilibrium (2008)
Huw Watkins - Speak Seven Seas (2011)
Salvatore Sciarrino - Lo Spazio Inverso (1984)
Mark-Anthony Turnage - Grazioso! (2009)
Miranda Fulleylove (violin), Yuko Inoue (viola), Daisy Vatalaro (‘cello), Jo Shaw (flute/piccolo), Scott Lygate (clarinets), Julian Warburton (percussion), Huw Watkins (piano/celeste), Michael Rafferty (conductor).
Since the early days of opera, when Claudio Monteverdi and his Renaissance contemporaries first staged a type of secular music drama with characters that mostly sang rather than spoke, the question of what kind of an art-form opera is and what it seeks to do has elicited passionate and differing responses. But what constitutes the bedrock of the art-form has never been seriously doubted - and that is, music. Not theatre nor visual spectacle, not staged narrative nor even libretto, but musical sound; the dramatic combination of voice and instrumental ensemble expressing human emotion and telling human stories. The acting of roles and paraphernalia of staging have always been important, but secondary to the music itself which carries the drama - even in Richard Wagner’s supposedly totalised Gesamtkunstwerk, in which he aimed to elevate the visual, the poetic and the musical into a new kind of integrated art-form beyond any one of the three alone.
At the heart, then, of Music Theatre Wales, as with all opera companies, lies music and the composers who write it. What characterises MTW is that, not only is it one of the UK’s leading touring companies, but it is also one of the few demonstrating an ongoing commitment to the development of opera as a contemporary art-form through the commissioning of new works by living composers, rather than the re-staging of familiar, established repertoire from the past. This concert at the Dora Stoutzker Hall was an opportunity to meet two such composers, whose work MTW is currently touring as a double-bill across the UK in collaboration with Scottish Opera; Welsh-born Huw Watkins (In the Locked Room, librettist David Harsent) and Scot Stuart MacRae (Ghost Patrol, librettist Louise Welsh).
Stripping back, as it were, to bare, musical bones away from the operatic stage, this event featured members of MTW’s Ensemble, offering an introduction to the chamber, concert music of these two contrasting composers and three others with whom MTW have already or will in future enjoy operatic collaboration; Boden, Sciarrino and Turnage. It also marked the inauguration of a three-year partnership between MTW and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation) which aims, in the words of MTW Joint-Artistic Director Michael McCarthy, “to expand the appetite and understanding of contemporary opera in Cardiff” and “build a platform of professional knowledge and experience for future performers, musicians, writers and composers”. So, an important event, which also sought, in part, to open a dialogue concerning the different but not necessarily unrelated disciplines of composing for theatre and composing for the concert platform; which latter - at least in terms of contemporary music - ironically appears so much harder for audiences to engage with in the absence of additional theatrical inducement.
Three of the composers (Watkins, Boden and MacRae) were present to talk about their work. Of these, perhaps inevitably given the current tour, it was MacRae and Watkins who made the more overt links to their operas. MacRae described how his mini viola concerto Equilibrium pitted soloist against quintet in a dramatic dialogue directly informed by his operatic writing; here, with a gradual paring down of contrast, play and imitation to find balance in repose. The work offered a proliferation of dynamic ideas and intriguing landscapes, ably navigated by conductor Rafferty and with some excellent playing. A greater sense of risk would have enhanced the drama which, nonetheless, had subtlety as well as punch.
Watkins opened both halves, given star billing for his deserved renown as a pianist. His Four Inventions for piano solo were a concise, brilliant display but it was his piano trio Speak Seven Seas which referenced his opera, for which it was a study. Both the opera and the trio have sea settings, the title here coming from Dylan Thomas’s Author’s Prologue; but this was no Four Sea Interludes-type extraction from the opera, despite clear stylistic parallels with Benjamin Britten. Rather, the trio takes the opera’s opening material in a different musical direction; employing an ebb and flow of changing moods - with some beautifully-crafted writing - to rise to the challenge of composing a piece of substantial duration (13-14 minutes) in just one movement.
The three remaining pieces were idiomatic showcases bearing no direct relation to their composer’s operatic writing. Boden’s Between Waking and Dreams was largely effective in its exploration of contrasting textures, inspired by a poem by Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, which describes the tranquillity of air travel above the clouds and its antithesis in the mêlée enjoined upon landing, whilst the closing Grazioso! displayed Turnage’s trademark rude percussive health and sharp orchestration, with moments of surprising tenderness.
But before that came the clear highlight of the evening. The largely self-taught Sciarrino (b1947) is a prolific Italian composer whose importance has yet to be recognised in the UK. His Lo Spazio Inverso of 1984 was by far the oldest work on the programme but sounded the freshest and most striking, drawing the best from an ensemble that was everywhere superb. This was music of gossamer and depth; not at all fragile but appearing so in its hushed exploration of “sound at the edge of breath” as McCarthy put it - and with some astonishingly relaxed but controlled playing from clarinettist Scott Lygate. Deceptively simple yet profound, and inspiring eager anticipation of MTW’s 2013 UK premiere of Sciarrino’s 1998 opera Luci mie Traditrici (roughly, My Betraying Light). Yet another major forthcoming event, this will hopefully continue to prove MTW’s ability to draw large and enthusiastic audiences for superbly produced contemporary opera. Perhaps another challenge for the company’s ensemble might be to buck another cultural trend and discover how to do the same for some richly rewarding but relatively ignored contemporary music in the concert hall.
Posted by Wales Arts Review 19/10/12:
http://www.walesartsreview.org/music%20theatre%20wales%20ensemble.html
Book Review: Music as Alchemy: Journeys with Great Conductors and their Orchestras, Tom Service, Faber 2012
Music as Alchemy is writer and broadcaster Tom Service’s first book. In it, he describes a series of encounters with six conductors and their principal orchestras within the context of his beliefs about the transformational power of symphonic music. Chapter by chapter, he narrates his listening experiences of each conductor-orchestra combination over a period of rehearsals and performances in a chatty style aimed at the general reader and classical music listener. Informal interviews with the conductors and sundry orchestral players provide further access to this traditionally exclusive world whilst a smattering of information about the orchestras and repertoire in development paints a basic background picture.
The book’s purpose is to unpick the apparent ‘magic’ of these particular ‘great’ conductors; what they do and how they do it, described in poetic rather than technical terms. Perhaps it might more accurately have been sub-titled ‘My Journeys with Great Conductors and their Orchestras’ as it revolves around Service personally; focusing on his subjective thoughts and feelings about his chosen conductor-orchestra pairings. His approach is to consider each in turn, observing part of a typical orchestral schedule as a fly-on-the-wall and marveling at the gulf between conventionally taught conducting technique (he himself once studied the ‘Canford Method’) and the arcane gestures which form part of the unique arsenal of every ‘great’ conductor. He discusses charisma and body language; how each conductor handles the orchestra musically and psychologically, how they view their leadership role and how the orchestra responds artistically and individually before assessing the musical results from the perspective of a largely enraptured, if not always entirely convinced, listener.
Disappointingly, Music as Alchemy glosses over issues of social and artistic relevance at a time when many orchestras world-wide are struggling to find funding in a climate of savage cuts to the arts. Rather, Service chooses to re-explore territory which is historically controversial in its own right - the relationship between a conductor and ‘his’ orchestra being notoriously tension-laden - but he does so in almost entirely positive terms; content to put "a happy family" spin on the ensembles concerned (to use Iván Fischer’s description of his Budapest Festival Orchestra), whilst adopting the rarefied, Romantic position that the ‘music itself’ and musical values are autonomous. Throughout, Service sticks to an idealised view of symphonic culture despite acknowledging that “conducting is about collaboration, politics and society”. Nowhere, for example, does he consider the controversial ‘museum’ aspect of a classical music culture in which a proliferation of orchestras depend on ritualistic performances of the same, familiar works from the past to ever-shrinking niche audiences of ever-increasing average age. The result is a text which props up the symphonic establishment with virtually PR zeal.
Moreover, the masculine emphasis on ‘his’ orchestra is a given in this survey, as Service’s roster of ‘great’ conductors are all men, even as he notes that increasingly well-known maestros such as Marin Alsop and Susanna Mälkki are no longer merely described as ‘women conductors’. Indeed, it is a very select, European few who gain inclusion here: from Valery Gergiev, Mariss Jansons and Jonathan Nott to Simon Rattle, Fischer and Claudio Abbado. Service justifies his choice on the less than convincing grounds that a) material is readily available on other candidates such as Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez (when Rattle, for example, has had huge exposure) and b) the sheer amount of space needed to do justice to more conductors. Clearly, lines had to be drawn regarding both the numbers and quality of conductors included - particularly in view of the personal nature of the book and focus on perceived ‘great’ (as opposed to ‘mediocre’?) conductors - but the loosely-written chapters could comfortably have been reduced in length for the sake of broader geo-cultural scope.
Service is careful to note that the days of the tyrannical, megastar maestros such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Arturo Toscanini and Herbert von Karajan are over; that, these days, a healthier, more democratic culture of mutual respect prevails. But his conductors are presented as superstars nonetheless; they, their musicians and even the music itself are lionised as culture heroes in terms that downright stretch credulity. For instance, he writes that Abbado
“needs his musicians to make music, to interpret his gestures, but more than that ... he needs their faith. Abbado’s body language is only translatable into sound because the musicians in the Lucerne Festival Orchestra believe that’s possible ... that Abbado’s gestures communicate everything they need to know about how to play Berlioz or Bruckner ... The fact that they know Abbado trusts them and has chosen them ... means they can safely go further into the music and their musicality than they could otherwise and Abbado himself is pushed to explore the extremes of what’s possible because he knows there are no limitations imposed by institutional politics or personal conflicts. That’s part of the secret of the musical miracle manufactured in Lucerne.”
Such heady stuff typifies Service’s idealisation of the orchestral environment and hints at his reification of the aesthetic experience. Throughout, he talks about music in universalised terms separate from society and ‘real life’, writing, for instance, of a performance of Gustav Mahler’s 6th Symphony that:
“Having looked at the music’s terror and fear and premonitions of death squarely in the face, it was possible to return to the world drained but renewed.”
Yet, at the same time, he describes music in exalted emotional terms as, for instance, in a performance of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique:
“We all became Berlioz’s doomed protagonist that night, wracked by obsessive love, experiencing moments of sensual joy and pastoral calm and then going through the fires of hallucinogenic hell until the ultimate extinguishment of our collective ego in the final moments...”
Emotional transport is often central to the hearing of extraordinary music and the impetus to share the effects of it on oneself is matched only by the paradoxical impossibility of doing so through the medium of words; Service is brave indeed to try and is clearly a knowledgeable as well as passionate advocate. But the difficulty here is that his grandiose, quasi-spiritual descriptions infantilise both the experience and his readers; moreover, he skirts uncomfortably close to condoning a kind of artistic submission and escapism despite his intention to encourage the opposite and, indeed, to de-mythologise the orchestral world. Submission to the composer via the score, submission to the conductor, to the collective entity of the orchestra and to the performative moment and a kind of ‘great mystery’ are all ultimately lauded as a means of giving up the self in order to transcend the self through ‘great’ music. Such utopian ideals of social or individual harmony are all very well, but it is arguable to what extent music sets out to achieve that - even if such healing transformation is possible in purely musical terms; a question which continues to resound, alas, all too clearly as we see in the chapter on the Berlin Philharmonic, in which Service recounts that orchestra’s shameful allegiance to the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.
Ultimately, it is not enough to suggest, as Service does, that transported listening amounts to active participation in the artistic experience; for that, one also needs a good deal more critical engagement than is offered by Music as Alchemy, for all that Service is not always won over by some of the music-making he describes. His book may open the door a crack for those completely unfamiliar with the workings of such cultural monoliths - and it certainly offers a view into an unfortunately wide-spread, romanticised mode of thinking about classical music and its performance. Nonetheless, it is a missed opportunity to gain deeper insight into the contemporary symphonic world at a time of increased global musical reach, yet urgent social and artistic challenge.
This is a longer version of a book review posted on Wales Arts Review 19/10/12:
http://www.walesartsreview.org/music%20as%20alchemy%20-%20journeys%20with%20great%20conductors%20and%20their%20orchestras%20%20by%20tom%20service.html
The book’s purpose is to unpick the apparent ‘magic’ of these particular ‘great’ conductors; what they do and how they do it, described in poetic rather than technical terms. Perhaps it might more accurately have been sub-titled ‘My Journeys with Great Conductors and their Orchestras’ as it revolves around Service personally; focusing on his subjective thoughts and feelings about his chosen conductor-orchestra pairings. His approach is to consider each in turn, observing part of a typical orchestral schedule as a fly-on-the-wall and marveling at the gulf between conventionally taught conducting technique (he himself once studied the ‘Canford Method’) and the arcane gestures which form part of the unique arsenal of every ‘great’ conductor. He discusses charisma and body language; how each conductor handles the orchestra musically and psychologically, how they view their leadership role and how the orchestra responds artistically and individually before assessing the musical results from the perspective of a largely enraptured, if not always entirely convinced, listener.
Disappointingly, Music as Alchemy glosses over issues of social and artistic relevance at a time when many orchestras world-wide are struggling to find funding in a climate of savage cuts to the arts. Rather, Service chooses to re-explore territory which is historically controversial in its own right - the relationship between a conductor and ‘his’ orchestra being notoriously tension-laden - but he does so in almost entirely positive terms; content to put "a happy family" spin on the ensembles concerned (to use Iván Fischer’s description of his Budapest Festival Orchestra), whilst adopting the rarefied, Romantic position that the ‘music itself’ and musical values are autonomous. Throughout, Service sticks to an idealised view of symphonic culture despite acknowledging that “conducting is about collaboration, politics and society”. Nowhere, for example, does he consider the controversial ‘museum’ aspect of a classical music culture in which a proliferation of orchestras depend on ritualistic performances of the same, familiar works from the past to ever-shrinking niche audiences of ever-increasing average age. The result is a text which props up the symphonic establishment with virtually PR zeal.
Moreover, the masculine emphasis on ‘his’ orchestra is a given in this survey, as Service’s roster of ‘great’ conductors are all men, even as he notes that increasingly well-known maestros such as Marin Alsop and Susanna Mälkki are no longer merely described as ‘women conductors’. Indeed, it is a very select, European few who gain inclusion here: from Valery Gergiev, Mariss Jansons and Jonathan Nott to Simon Rattle, Fischer and Claudio Abbado. Service justifies his choice on the less than convincing grounds that a) material is readily available on other candidates such as Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez (when Rattle, for example, has had huge exposure) and b) the sheer amount of space needed to do justice to more conductors. Clearly, lines had to be drawn regarding both the numbers and quality of conductors included - particularly in view of the personal nature of the book and focus on perceived ‘great’ (as opposed to ‘mediocre’?) conductors - but the loosely-written chapters could comfortably have been reduced in length for the sake of broader geo-cultural scope.
Service is careful to note that the days of the tyrannical, megastar maestros such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Arturo Toscanini and Herbert von Karajan are over; that, these days, a healthier, more democratic culture of mutual respect prevails. But his conductors are presented as superstars nonetheless; they, their musicians and even the music itself are lionised as culture heroes in terms that downright stretch credulity. For instance, he writes that Abbado
“needs his musicians to make music, to interpret his gestures, but more than that ... he needs their faith. Abbado’s body language is only translatable into sound because the musicians in the Lucerne Festival Orchestra believe that’s possible ... that Abbado’s gestures communicate everything they need to know about how to play Berlioz or Bruckner ... The fact that they know Abbado trusts them and has chosen them ... means they can safely go further into the music and their musicality than they could otherwise and Abbado himself is pushed to explore the extremes of what’s possible because he knows there are no limitations imposed by institutional politics or personal conflicts. That’s part of the secret of the musical miracle manufactured in Lucerne.”
Such heady stuff typifies Service’s idealisation of the orchestral environment and hints at his reification of the aesthetic experience. Throughout, he talks about music in universalised terms separate from society and ‘real life’, writing, for instance, of a performance of Gustav Mahler’s 6th Symphony that:
“Having looked at the music’s terror and fear and premonitions of death squarely in the face, it was possible to return to the world drained but renewed.”
Yet, at the same time, he describes music in exalted emotional terms as, for instance, in a performance of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique:
“We all became Berlioz’s doomed protagonist that night, wracked by obsessive love, experiencing moments of sensual joy and pastoral calm and then going through the fires of hallucinogenic hell until the ultimate extinguishment of our collective ego in the final moments...”
Emotional transport is often central to the hearing of extraordinary music and the impetus to share the effects of it on oneself is matched only by the paradoxical impossibility of doing so through the medium of words; Service is brave indeed to try and is clearly a knowledgeable as well as passionate advocate. But the difficulty here is that his grandiose, quasi-spiritual descriptions infantilise both the experience and his readers; moreover, he skirts uncomfortably close to condoning a kind of artistic submission and escapism despite his intention to encourage the opposite and, indeed, to de-mythologise the orchestral world. Submission to the composer via the score, submission to the conductor, to the collective entity of the orchestra and to the performative moment and a kind of ‘great mystery’ are all ultimately lauded as a means of giving up the self in order to transcend the self through ‘great’ music. Such utopian ideals of social or individual harmony are all very well, but it is arguable to what extent music sets out to achieve that - even if such healing transformation is possible in purely musical terms; a question which continues to resound, alas, all too clearly as we see in the chapter on the Berlin Philharmonic, in which Service recounts that orchestra’s shameful allegiance to the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.
Ultimately, it is not enough to suggest, as Service does, that transported listening amounts to active participation in the artistic experience; for that, one also needs a good deal more critical engagement than is offered by Music as Alchemy, for all that Service is not always won over by some of the music-making he describes. His book may open the door a crack for those completely unfamiliar with the workings of such cultural monoliths - and it certainly offers a view into an unfortunately wide-spread, romanticised mode of thinking about classical music and its performance. Nonetheless, it is a missed opportunity to gain deeper insight into the contemporary symphonic world at a time of increased global musical reach, yet urgent social and artistic challenge.
This is a longer version of a book review posted on Wales Arts Review 19/10/12:
http://www.walesartsreview.org/music%20as%20alchemy%20-%20journeys%20with%20great%20conductors%20and%20their%20orchestras%20%20by%20tom%20service.html
Friday, 5 October 2012
Book Review: Lutyens, Maconchy, Williams and Twentieth-Century British Music: A Blest Trio of Sirens - Rhiannon Mathias (Ashgate, 2012)
Rhiannon Mathias’s book aims to bring to wider attention three 20th Century composers who continue to suffer varying degrees of unjustifiable neglect. Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-1983), Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) and Grace Williams (1906-1977) have very little in common musically, but were contemporary, pioneering students at the Royal College of Music in the 1920s; each, however, going on to experience difficulties as a woman in gaining professional recognition despite their acknowledged talents. Mathias argues that, although ‘these women were rightly held in high esteem in the musical world’, they never quite got the opportunities or recognition they deserved, and her survey is intended to help end at last the continuing lack of public awareness of their music and their important contributions to British 20th Century musical life.
Clearly, their gender has been central to their neglect. Mathias points to crude and pervasive sexism from the ‘20s and later, typified by critic and composer Cecil Gray’s paraphrasing of Dr Johnson’s infamous dictum: ‘Sir, a woman’s composing is like a dog walking on its hind legs; it is not done well but you are surprised to see it done at all’. Alas, such attitudes have been slow to change within the classical music establishment; as recently as the mid-1980s, I myself heard the then Artistic Director of the London Sinfonietta Michael Vyner opining (not to mention whining) on national radio that ‘women can’t compose’. So - and despite her book striking a somewhat awkward balance between sociological study, biographical survey and musical analysis - Mathias is to be applauded for opening a wider debate by putting in plain terms gender issues that ultimately concern not just these three composers, but which go to the heart of musical culture well beyond the narrow enclaves of historical musicology.
Moreover, Mathias rightly contextualises the gender prejudices experienced by all three within a broader parochialism that largely prevailed throughout their lives (and, it could be argued, in many regards still exists today). She shows how attitudes within British musical institutions tended to reflect a cultural insecurity and snobbery, veering from a conservative horror of contemporary music on the one hand, to a self-conscious obedience to fashion on the other - and taking in a sentimentalised nationalism along the way. Williams, for instance, lamented that ‘when people see my...folk song arrangements and Fantasias...it is so easy for them to forget that I also write full scale serious works’. At the other end of the stylistic spectrum, Lutyens - an important pioneer of much-maligned and misunderstood serial techniques in Britain - was first perceived as too ‘advanced’, then too ‘behind’ vis-à-vis European compositional developments. Meanwhile, Maconchy simply suffered from a lack of ‘modishness - for saying the right things to the right person, or for being in the right place at the right time’ , as the composer (and, coincidentally, her daughter) Nicola LeFanu put it.
This raises all sorts of important, still wider issues about how we decide - and, indeed, about who gets to decide - questions of what constitutes cultural and artistic value in society, and thence to shape the practice, distribution and history of art itself. Mathias steers well away from deeper probing of this kind and is careful even to avoid comparative musical judgements, writing in a very neutral prose and giving the three composers distinctly equal consideration. What she does do is manage to discuss a large amount of music amidst a wealth of background information, interlacing monographs of each composer within three historical periods; Part I 1926-1935 narrating student experiences, whilst Part II 1935-1955 and Part III 1955-1994 consider each composer in turn, surveying key works within their respective biographical frameworks. This approach serves well for the introduction she intended - so it is a pity that Ashgate’s ungenerous Index hardly does justice to her painstaking research and is, moreover, unforgivable in a volume priced for institutional libraries.
But there is a difficulty lurking within Mathias’s book, which no amount of diplomatic treading and balanced musical and biographical attention can circumvent, and which remains an issue for anyone daring to broach considerations of gender bias in music; and that is the thorny problem of how one gets away from the tiresome pidgeon-holing of women composers as ‘women composers’ when one has chosen to write a book that groups three composers together on the basis that they are...women composers - however sympathetic and sensitive the angle.
Of the three, arguably, the one who detested such pidgeon-holing the most - or, at any rate, the one who protested the loudest and in the ripest language to anyone who did it to her - was Lutyens; she who happened at her best - arguably again - to have composed by far the most interesting and influential music. However, what Lutyens would no doubt have appreciated about this book, is Mathias’s determination to discuss her music rather than her famously acid persona, which has hitherto inevitably proved the greater talking point. Notwithstanding feminist quibbles, for that reason alone, Mathias’s survey deserves to be widely read. Not only that, but she succeeds in placing Williams in a wider, British - as well as a Welsh - context and mounts a serious challenge of the music-historical ‘backwater’ category to which Maconchy in particular, but all three to varying extent, have unjustifiably been consigned for too long.
Published by Wales Arts Review 2/11/12
http://www.walesartsreview.org/lutyens,%20maconchy,%20williams%20and%20twentieth-century%20british%20music%20-%20a%20blest%20trio%20of%20sirens%20by%20rhiannon%20mathias.html
Clearly, their gender has been central to their neglect. Mathias points to crude and pervasive sexism from the ‘20s and later, typified by critic and composer Cecil Gray’s paraphrasing of Dr Johnson’s infamous dictum: ‘Sir, a woman’s composing is like a dog walking on its hind legs; it is not done well but you are surprised to see it done at all’. Alas, such attitudes have been slow to change within the classical music establishment; as recently as the mid-1980s, I myself heard the then Artistic Director of the London Sinfonietta Michael Vyner opining (not to mention whining) on national radio that ‘women can’t compose’. So - and despite her book striking a somewhat awkward balance between sociological study, biographical survey and musical analysis - Mathias is to be applauded for opening a wider debate by putting in plain terms gender issues that ultimately concern not just these three composers, but which go to the heart of musical culture well beyond the narrow enclaves of historical musicology.
Moreover, Mathias rightly contextualises the gender prejudices experienced by all three within a broader parochialism that largely prevailed throughout their lives (and, it could be argued, in many regards still exists today). She shows how attitudes within British musical institutions tended to reflect a cultural insecurity and snobbery, veering from a conservative horror of contemporary music on the one hand, to a self-conscious obedience to fashion on the other - and taking in a sentimentalised nationalism along the way. Williams, for instance, lamented that ‘when people see my...folk song arrangements and Fantasias...it is so easy for them to forget that I also write full scale serious works’. At the other end of the stylistic spectrum, Lutyens - an important pioneer of much-maligned and misunderstood serial techniques in Britain - was first perceived as too ‘advanced’, then too ‘behind’ vis-à-vis European compositional developments. Meanwhile, Maconchy simply suffered from a lack of ‘modishness - for saying the right things to the right person, or for being in the right place at the right time’ , as the composer (and, coincidentally, her daughter) Nicola LeFanu put it.
This raises all sorts of important, still wider issues about how we decide - and, indeed, about who gets to decide - questions of what constitutes cultural and artistic value in society, and thence to shape the practice, distribution and history of art itself. Mathias steers well away from deeper probing of this kind and is careful even to avoid comparative musical judgements, writing in a very neutral prose and giving the three composers distinctly equal consideration. What she does do is manage to discuss a large amount of music amidst a wealth of background information, interlacing monographs of each composer within three historical periods; Part I 1926-1935 narrating student experiences, whilst Part II 1935-1955 and Part III 1955-1994 consider each composer in turn, surveying key works within their respective biographical frameworks. This approach serves well for the introduction she intended - so it is a pity that Ashgate’s ungenerous Index hardly does justice to her painstaking research and is, moreover, unforgivable in a volume priced for institutional libraries.
But there is a difficulty lurking within Mathias’s book, which no amount of diplomatic treading and balanced musical and biographical attention can circumvent, and which remains an issue for anyone daring to broach considerations of gender bias in music; and that is the thorny problem of how one gets away from the tiresome pidgeon-holing of women composers as ‘women composers’ when one has chosen to write a book that groups three composers together on the basis that they are...women composers - however sympathetic and sensitive the angle.
Of the three, arguably, the one who detested such pidgeon-holing the most - or, at any rate, the one who protested the loudest and in the ripest language to anyone who did it to her - was Lutyens; she who happened at her best - arguably again - to have composed by far the most interesting and influential music. However, what Lutyens would no doubt have appreciated about this book, is Mathias’s determination to discuss her music rather than her famously acid persona, which has hitherto inevitably proved the greater talking point. Notwithstanding feminist quibbles, for that reason alone, Mathias’s survey deserves to be widely read. Not only that, but she succeeds in placing Williams in a wider, British - as well as a Welsh - context and mounts a serious challenge of the music-historical ‘backwater’ category to which Maconchy in particular, but all three to varying extent, have unjustifiably been consigned for too long.
Published by Wales Arts Review 2/11/12
http://www.walesartsreview.org/lutyens,%20maconchy,%20williams%20and%20twentieth-century%20british%20music%20-%20a%20blest%20trio%20of%20sirens%20by%20rhiannon%20mathias.html
Interview with Composer Lynne Plowman
Composer Lynne Plowman’s operas have won critical acclaim. Her fourth premieres at the Brighton Festival next spring and she is a recipient of an Arts Council of Wales 2012-13 Creative Wales award. The following conversation will be published in Issue 1 of the new Cyfansoddwyr Cymru/Composers of Wales Quarterly of which I am Contributing Editor:
Can you tell me about your current, fourth operatic project?
It’s for Glyndebourne. We are creating an interactive pirates opera for a children’s and family audience [with Martin Riley, librettist of Lynne’s previous operas - Ed]. It’s very fast-paced, with sword fighting, slapstick and spoken theatre underscored by the band, who are on stage and in character; quite anarchic, with an ‘end-of-the-pier’ comedy and a dark edge. The audience dresses up as pirates and the performing space is a pub where they come for a drink; they take part, singing along in places and interacting with the characters. At one point children come up to conduct the band.
This opera is for a professional cast whereas the previous one was for young people to perform. That was The Face in the Mirror for Welsh National Opera Max and written for WNO’s Singing Club, a chorus of 10-15 year olds. But it was for an adult audience and probably the most serious piece of work Martin and I have made, being based on the Second World War.
Your music - including your concert music - is strikingly direct.
Yes, it’s really important for me that the music communicates directly to the audience. But I work so intuitively it takes me a long time so one of the things I’d like to do with the ACW Creative Wales award is to speed up my creative process.
Does that intuitiveness account for some of the freshness and vitality of your work? Your piece Hall of Mirrors, for Piano Circus, was described as “irrepressibly eclectic”. What do you think about that?
I like to use existing musical ideas. By using little moments of pastiche, you can instantly sum up a place or a time or an atmosphere which speaks beyond the music. That’s how music functions theatrically, so I suppose that comes into my concert music too. Six pianos is such a bonkers combination of instruments! So I came up with pianists from six different times and places, throwing them together in a melting pot of fragments. That’s how that piece patchwork-ed itself together.
Is that how you work - in patchwork - or do you develop ideas from a to b?
It depends on the piece. With opera the music has to serve the drama so in some ways it’s written from the beginning to the end although I’ll pick out certain moments to write the music for separately. Concert pieces are more of a jigsaw; I’ll create sections then play with the structure. I find it easier to write long pieces of music than short ones because it’s much freer somehow.
With Martin, do you work together, producing libretto and music simultaneously?
It starts with us together, coming up with the idea and the scenario, then he writes a first draft of the libretto. But section by section so I start writing the music before he’s finished. Once I start composing, I find there are sections where the music leads and I make decisions about what’s going to be spoken, what’s going to be sung, where there might be a song. Then I ask for re-writes so there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing!
We have a lot of joint experience of the audience we’re writing for. We understand how bright children are - that they don’t need to be written down for - and how, if a ten year old enjoys this piece, so will an adult. The music has to tell the story well and if it does that then it’s successful - and kids don’t have those musical prejudices that we acquire as grown-ups; if you get a scrunchy chord that’s fine, that’s the sound.
So how will you take this into your orchestral experiments?
Well this will be a challenge - the idea of Creative Wales is to take myself out of my comfort zone and gather techniques. I’m not intending to write a finished piece but to make orchestral sketches exploring different harmonic and orchestration sound-worlds. I’m not so concerned about structure
because I feel confident with that but I want to push my harmonic and textural languages. And that’s why I’ve chosen to use full symphony orchestra. I probably won’t use the whole orchestra for each of the sketches, but I’ve got that unlimited canvas to work with.
How will the project work?
There’ll be a closed workshop next September with BBCNoW. We’ll record the session, then I can use the material in a piece at a later stage. When I’ve finished the pirates opera, I’ll take some time to do some listening, thinking and reading, then the sketches will gradually emerge. I don’t know what musical direction that’s going to take me in! But if you stand still as a composer it stops being creative and starts becoming a production line, which I don’t want! I think it’s so important for artists to have that breathing space so I feel really lucky that we have this funding scheme in Wales.
Many thanks Lynne.
www.lynneplowman.co.uk
Can you tell me about your current, fourth operatic project?
It’s for Glyndebourne. We are creating an interactive pirates opera for a children’s and family audience [with Martin Riley, librettist of Lynne’s previous operas - Ed]. It’s very fast-paced, with sword fighting, slapstick and spoken theatre underscored by the band, who are on stage and in character; quite anarchic, with an ‘end-of-the-pier’ comedy and a dark edge. The audience dresses up as pirates and the performing space is a pub where they come for a drink; they take part, singing along in places and interacting with the characters. At one point children come up to conduct the band.
This opera is for a professional cast whereas the previous one was for young people to perform. That was The Face in the Mirror for Welsh National Opera Max and written for WNO’s Singing Club, a chorus of 10-15 year olds. But it was for an adult audience and probably the most serious piece of work Martin and I have made, being based on the Second World War.
Your music - including your concert music - is strikingly direct.
Yes, it’s really important for me that the music communicates directly to the audience. But I work so intuitively it takes me a long time so one of the things I’d like to do with the ACW Creative Wales award is to speed up my creative process.
Does that intuitiveness account for some of the freshness and vitality of your work? Your piece Hall of Mirrors, for Piano Circus, was described as “irrepressibly eclectic”. What do you think about that?
I like to use existing musical ideas. By using little moments of pastiche, you can instantly sum up a place or a time or an atmosphere which speaks beyond the music. That’s how music functions theatrically, so I suppose that comes into my concert music too. Six pianos is such a bonkers combination of instruments! So I came up with pianists from six different times and places, throwing them together in a melting pot of fragments. That’s how that piece patchwork-ed itself together.
Is that how you work - in patchwork - or do you develop ideas from a to b?
It depends on the piece. With opera the music has to serve the drama so in some ways it’s written from the beginning to the end although I’ll pick out certain moments to write the music for separately. Concert pieces are more of a jigsaw; I’ll create sections then play with the structure. I find it easier to write long pieces of music than short ones because it’s much freer somehow.
With Martin, do you work together, producing libretto and music simultaneously?
It starts with us together, coming up with the idea and the scenario, then he writes a first draft of the libretto. But section by section so I start writing the music before he’s finished. Once I start composing, I find there are sections where the music leads and I make decisions about what’s going to be spoken, what’s going to be sung, where there might be a song. Then I ask for re-writes so there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing!
We have a lot of joint experience of the audience we’re writing for. We understand how bright children are - that they don’t need to be written down for - and how, if a ten year old enjoys this piece, so will an adult. The music has to tell the story well and if it does that then it’s successful - and kids don’t have those musical prejudices that we acquire as grown-ups; if you get a scrunchy chord that’s fine, that’s the sound.
So how will you take this into your orchestral experiments?
Well this will be a challenge - the idea of Creative Wales is to take myself out of my comfort zone and gather techniques. I’m not intending to write a finished piece but to make orchestral sketches exploring different harmonic and orchestration sound-worlds. I’m not so concerned about structure
because I feel confident with that but I want to push my harmonic and textural languages. And that’s why I’ve chosen to use full symphony orchestra. I probably won’t use the whole orchestra for each of the sketches, but I’ve got that unlimited canvas to work with.
How will the project work?
There’ll be a closed workshop next September with BBCNoW. We’ll record the session, then I can use the material in a piece at a later stage. When I’ve finished the pirates opera, I’ll take some time to do some listening, thinking and reading, then the sketches will gradually emerge. I don’t know what musical direction that’s going to take me in! But if you stand still as a composer it stops being creative and starts becoming a production line, which I don’t want! I think it’s so important for artists to have that breathing space so I feel really lucky that we have this funding scheme in Wales.
Many thanks Lynne.
www.lynneplowman.co.uk
Monday, 9 July 2012
TOURISTS
Tourists II
There's a poor eagle looking lost up at the farm by the fords.
He's not lost, he belongs to Charlie who lives there.
Oh, but he looked all lost.
He's not lost, he belongs to Charlie who lives there. Did you see the ID rings?
Ooh yes, but he looked all lost. Who did you say he belonged to?
Charlie.
Where?
There, by the fords.
Oh, but he looked all lost. Thanks for clearing that up.
Think nothing of it.
Tourists I
Today a silver car
slowed by the house.
An arm reached out of the
driver's window, taking
snapshots.
Of what?
Whose life?
What possible trophy,
what triumphant proof of
existence might thus have
been obtained?
Without stopping, the
car slid gently past,
occupants obscured by
branches dappled across the
windscreen.
Friday, 25 May 2012
resolve
patience
awareness catching shallow breath tense
muscle of hiatus the transition moment
pinned expanded stretched
refracted
sharp edges of a hot sun glaring squeezing
light to closely angled corners filling
space as well as time with scrutiny with
pressure under day by day duress of
waiting
stillness
bright colours buzzing speculation in the ear the
when and how of next step inconclusive in
abeyance in no hurry to reveal itself or simply
happen
purpose nonetheless enshrined in lists of
things to do in squinting at the sky and
holding out for news of change to
hear of better things to
come
awareness catching shallow breath tense
muscle of hiatus the transition moment
pinned expanded stretched
refracted
sharp edges of a hot sun glaring squeezing
light to closely angled corners filling
space as well as time with scrutiny with
pressure under day by day duress of
waiting
stillness
bright colours buzzing speculation in the ear the
when and how of next step inconclusive in
abeyance in no hurry to reveal itself or simply
happen
purpose nonetheless enshrined in lists of
things to do in squinting at the sky and
holding out for news of change to
hear of better things to
come
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