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Twitter: @spower_steph, Wales, United Kingdom
composer, poet, critic, essayist

Thursday, 23 May 2013

Dreaming Wagner: Welsh National Opera

Yesterday was exactly two hundred years since the birth of Richard Wagner in Leipzig on 22 May 1813. Wagner is by no means the only composer to have triggered seismic shifts in Western culture by revolutionising the musical world; his predecessor, Beethoven, is perhaps the most obvious of other such examples. But Wagner’s genius remains the most musically and socio-politically divisive, and his bicentenary has re-ignited passionate debate about the man, his art and his legacy.

Central to the celebrations - a delicious feast for some and a nauseating excess for others - is, of course, a plethora of competing performances; at the Proms alone, seven of Wagner’s operas, including the mighty der Ring des Nibelungen in its four-opera entirety, will be performed in concert. Welsh National Opera’s response to the occasion is, however, more boldly imaginative than most and offers the opportunity for perhaps a different kind of Wagner reappraisal.

Today, 23 May, WNO opens a new production of Lohengrin at Cardiff’s Wales Millennium Centre, directed by the award-winning Antony McDonald and conducted by Music Director Lothar Koenigs (whose performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was ecstatically received in 2010). Then, on 6 June, WNO will present the first fully-staged UK production of a contemporary British opera in which Wagner himself is the main character and which draws on the lesser-known spiritual and compositional concerns of his latter years; Wagner Dream by the late Jonathan Harvey (director Pierre Audi, conductor Nicholas Collon).

This brings together two completely contrasting operas by composers temperamentally and aesthetically poles apart. Nonetheless, the works are related in thought-provoking ways and provide an opportunity to re-examine the nature of opera itself as an art-form in the light of Wagner’s undoubtedly towering, if problematic, genius. In conversation, WNO Artistic Director and CEO David Pountney remarked that the company is aiming to offer - in addition to the self-standing experiences of the operas themselves - for those that want it, ‘a very stimulating experience of seeing two completely different visions of what opera might be like, but somehow very closely linked around the same subject and the same composer.’ That subject is divinity and the human aspiration to it, of which Lohengrin is, for Wagner, a nascent and in some ways crudely drawn, yet multi-layered, early expression. Many of the philosophical and religious themes Wagner went on to develop in later operas are present through, for example, references to ancient Teutonic myth within a strongly quasi-Christian pantheon, symbolised by the descent from heaven of a Knight of the Holy Grail (although we don’t discover Lohengrin’s identity until the work’s conclusion).

Indeed, for Pountney, Lohengrin is the first opera in which Wagner attempted to ‘find a musical language for a kind of transcendental state ... and, of course, that music of transcendence is something which Jonathan Harvey spent a whole lifetime trying to find.’ In Harvey’s music, the search revolved around his beloved Buddhism but admitted wisdom from many faiths and found expression in a technological unfolding of an extraordinary orchestral and vocal palette inherited in large part from Wagner, through the kinds of other-worldly, electronically-realised sounds that so enrich Wagner Dream.

It may surprise some to learn that Wagner was attracted to Buddhism upon reading Schopenhauer in the 1850s, and had been planning an opera on a Buddhist subject, Die Sieger (The Victors) for many years. But he died without realising the project and Harvey’s opera depicts an imagined struggle in Wagner’s mind at the moment of his death as he is encouraged by the Buddha, Vairochana, to renounce his artistic ego and surrender to cosmic reality beyond the illusion of the self. Most poignantly, concerning Harvey’s own death last year, WNO are presenting Wagner Dream in a new translation (agreed by Harvey and written by Professor Richard Gombrich, Founder-President of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, with WNO Head of Music Russell Moreton) of Jean-Claude Carrière’s original, English libretto into a more culturally appropriate German and Pali; a 2000 year-old language which was spoken by the Buddha himself.

Both Harvey and Wagner were composers of ideas. Whatever one’s position within the Wagner debate, WNO’s summer season makes for a fascinating prospect. As Pountney says, ‘if we are going to go to all the effort and expense of having an opera company, it should be putting out material into society which is a stimulating subject of discourse.’ No doubt Harvey, at least, would relish the opportunity for dialogue along intriguing lines as we are, in effect, offered the chance to consider - or ‘dream’ - his thoughts about Wagner’s thoughts and, hence, to reflect upon our own. 

Friday, 17 May 2013

Welsh National Opera Orchestra: Wagner / Stravinsky

St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 26th April 2013

Wagner - Parsifal: Prelude
              - Götterdämerung: Siegfried’s Funeral March and Brünnhilde’s Immolation
Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring

Conductor: Lothar Koenigs



In his youth - and contrary to later disavowal - Stravinsky was a keen admirer of Wagner. With his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, he attended a performance of Siegfried in the winter/spring of 1908 and, during the first interval, shared with the diarist Vasily Yastrebtsev his ‘delight in the first act of that opera, a work of genius’. However, just four years later, Stravinsky went to see Parsifal at Bayreuth whilst working on the Rite of Spring and reacted with a vehement disdain that was to characterise his subsequent pronouncements on the revolutionary German, writing that the ‘unsatisfactory and blasphemous interpretation of art as religion and of the theatre as a temple should be stopped once and for all. The absurdity of this pitiable aesthetic can easily be demonstrated.’ Ironically perhaps, it may have been the tumultuous early reception of Stravinsky’s own proto-religious and self-described ‘solemn pagan rite’ which sealed his antipathy to Wagner; for, as Richard Taruskin has noted, a year after the notorious debacle of the Rite of Spring’s première at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913, Stravinsky triumphed at last when concert performances of the ballet were received with acclaim, only to have his star rudely eclipsed within weeks by the Paris première of Parsifal in June 1914.  

Aesthetically, the two composers are polar opposites but stand as titans of their respective ages and ours - which latter says a good deal about the pluralism, as well as the obsession with the past, of today’s musical culture. This concert, conducted by Music Director Lothar Koenigs, was an opener for Welsh National Opera’s forthcoming summer season, in which Lohengrin will be imaginatively twinned with a contemporary opera, Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner Dream. It was conceived as a pre-emptive showcase of Wagner’s sound-world in contrast to Stravinsky’s Rite, and to celebrate two important anniversaries: Wagner’s bicentenary (1813-83) and the one hundredth anniversary of that very 1913 debacle from which Stravinsky recovered, eventually to be hailed as (probably) the greatest and most influential composer of the twentieth century.

There are drawbacks to the programming of bits of Wagner operas in concert - either with singers or without, as here tonight in Cardiff. The inevitable ‘greatest hits’ or ‘medley’ connotation is hard to avoid, however well the music is performed, and raises the question: ‘why’? Moreover, who is such a programme for? Is it really helpful - or even desirable - to bathe in extracts of Wagner’s semantically loaded music out of context; without recourse to the work’s unfolding as music-drama and, hence, without the development of those ideas and philosophies which give rise to and underpin the music itself within his notion of Gesamtkunstwerk or all-embracing art-form? For me at least, the answer is no - perhaps especially in this year of reappraisal, as well as celebration, of Wagner’s undoubtedly towering but problematic genius.

The lack-lustre  performances on this occasion did little to persuade me otherwise. Indeed, the enlarged orchestra sounded curiously muted at times and gave few hints of the sheer significance of the famous oft-called ‘Grail’ and ‘Communion’ Leitmotifs, for example, from the opening Prelude to Parsifal. Then again, without the rest of the opera (the previously advertised Good Friday Music unaccountably absent from tonight’s schedule), it was difficult to hear this extract nor, indeed, the following extracts from Götterdämerung - itself the last of four extremely long operas comprising Wagner’s mighty Ring cycle - as anything more than a species of highly Romanticised chromatic reverie; a difficulty which only serves to assist those Wagner detractors who point with distaste to the indulgently mesmeric quality of his music. Despite some fine moments - notably the dignified climax of Siegfried’s Funeral March - and some excellent brass playing in particular - the orchestra struggled at times with ensemble and intonation and seemed reluctant to rise to the challenge of Wagner’s heightened passion and epic scale, which presupposes absolute commitment whether on the platform or in the pit; a shame, because, at its best, the WNO Orchestra is more than equal to the extreme demands of Wagner’s emotional landscape.

In the second half, the Stravinsky offered redemptive power to some degree in its savage, primitivist depiction of seasonal renewal through sacrifice. But the orchestra seemed to be in alien territory with this score; a pounding exposition of orchestral virtuosity so familiar to purely concert ensembles. In any case, the performance felt roughly pulled together and only in places showed real drive or energy; a situation not helped by some uncertain rhythmic syncopation - and some ploddingly slow tempi from Koenigs, especially at the start of Part II, the Sacrificial Dance. Throughout, there were differing approaches to phrasing and articulation across the orchestra, which resulted in a lack of that single-minded, brutal relentlessness which can so electrify great performances of the Rite. Koenigs did succeed in opening some valuable and intriguing textural perspectives upon this kaleidoscopic work, but that is simply not enough when it really could - or even should - have been a spellbinding experience with players of this calibre.

The music of the Rite of Spring was composed to underpin a dance of merciless, erotic barbarism. The fact that it can work so brilliantly as a concert piece, and not just as a ballet score, is itself indicative of the diametric opposition of Stravinsky’s art to Wagnerian theories of Gesamtkunstwerk, which the Russian considered to have ‘inflicted a terrible blow upon music itself’. Nonetheless, certain themes can be seen to have preoccupied both composers in opposing ways, an idea which tonight’s concert also set out to explore, but which does not, as the programme notes suggested, mean that the pieces on the programme can realistically be ‘unified’. Nor should we necessarily look or wish for unifying theories; for what it’s worth, the Rite clearly has a sacrificial theme in that a female dancer is singled out to dance herself to death for the collective good, whilst Parsifal, Siegfried and Brünnhilde all perform important multi-layered sacrificial functions in Wagner’s quasi-Christian pantheon. But, as Stravinsky himself so succinctly put it: ‘There are simply no regions for soul-searching in the Rite of Spring’.

Wagner and Stravinsky (at least, in this, early ‘Russian’, phase of his career) shared other characteristics too in their preoccupation with myth, exploration of folk memory and, on a musical level, a particular - if radically differing - concern with time as an intrinsic part of the compositional process. On a personal level, both were certainly adept at poetic licence and self-mythologising - and Stravinsky too, was hardly innocent of the anti-Semitic poison for which Wagner remains notorious. But there is a more ironically entertaining fact which ‘unites’ these composers, should we choose to pursue the point; for they both managed to upset the hugely influential critical theorist Theodor W. Adorno, who accused them of a  ‘fetishization’ of musical means and expression. Indeed, according to Adorno, ‘in so returning to the past, to the realm of the pre-ego, to the control of regression through ritual, Stravinsky goes Wagner one step better’; which is bitterly to mean: towards the debasement of art. Regardless of whether one agrees with Adorno here (and I for one do not), it remains hard not to see some truth in his better-known warnings against the commodification of art, when Wagner, for example, is so frequently dished up in concert gobbets designed to allure and tantalise as here in Cardiff tonight. Thankfully, on the other hand, a great benefit of today’s musical pluralism is that audiences like tonight’s do get the opportunity to decide directly for themselves whether or not they might agree.






Published in Wales Arts Review 2:12: http://www.walesartsreview.org/welsh-national-opera-orchestra-wagner-stravinsky/

BBC National Orchestra of Wales: Rachmaninoff / Nielsen

St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 12 April 2013

Sergei Rachmaninoff - Piano concerto No. 3

Carl Nielsen - Symphony No. 5

Conductor: Thomas Søndergård
Piano: Llŷr Williams



The piano concertos of Sergei Rachmaninoff - or, at least, the first three - have come to embody a flamboyant and distinctly Russian form of late-Romanticism. Each work pitches a lone, mesmerically brilliant virtuoso against the titanic forces of a full orchestra in a battle of epic emotional sweep and physical endurance, the two sides finally emerging united in an affirmation of life through adversity. For regular audiences, the battle takes on a quasi-ritual significance in which the pianist is ultimately embraced anew as culture hero following a super-human display of technical and artistic prowess against the odds. In the case of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (1909) - which saw a surge in popularity over the hitherto better-liked Concerto No. 2 - the ritual took on mythic proportions in an ironic twist following the 1996 movie Shine, which enacted a concert pianist’s battle against internal demons and mental illness through the piece itself; the questionable suggestion (expressing a surprisingly pervasive belief) being that the practice of ‘art’ is tantamount to courting madness. Thankfully, tonight’s more subtle performance by soloist Llŷr Williams and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (conducted by Thomas Søndergård) bore no trace of the dubious cultural assumptions and downright sentimentality from which such nonsense arises.

In pairing the Rachmaninoff with Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 5 (1921-2), BBC NOW offered instead a robust and thought-provoking - not to mention exhilarating and emotionally-charged - insight into two wholly contrasting composers who each chose a highly individual path at a time of social and artistic upheaval. Whilst Rachmaninoff’s music has largely been snubbed by scholars for its supposed stylistic anachronism (and associations with that very sentimentality), Nielsen’s music has more or less been ignored by those outside his native Scandinavia (bar important work by Robert Simpson and Daniel Grimley amongst others) as a perceived idiosyncratic sideline to a main narrative of music-historical ‘progress’; a narrative which is at last now being challenged as more scholars question the notion of musical ‘progress’ and, in particular, what constituted modernism in the early twentieth century. It turns out that Nielsen is one of the greatest and most original symphonists, not just of the last century but - I would argue - of any century; a bold claim perhaps, but one to which I hold true in the light of Søndergård’s enthralling performance of this most challenging and elusive work.

Both pieces on the programme were performed with commitment, passion and, at times, hair-raising energy, and it was a joy to experience Søndergård’s emerging rapport with the orchestra. Interestingly, it was the tenderness of the Rachmaninoff rather than its grandiosity that stood out, as Williams played to his strengths as a pianist of intimate, poetic warmth rather than outright physical power. The outer movements in particular of this Concerto can often seem to rush from climax to climax on waves of pianistic glitter, but here, melodic lyricism led the way - not just in the solo part but throughout the orchestra, with some beautifully dovetailed phrasing from the woodwind, for example. Indeed, the interplay between Williams and the orchestra was superb and, facilitated by Søndergård’s responsive baton, was undoubtedly helped in places by the pianist’s renowned sensitivity as an accompanist. He and Søndergård gave us a reading that was full of playful touches as well as a cinematic colouring which did not neglect the many darker hues of this mercurial piece. Needless to say - as Williams is now long established as a culture hero in his own right for Welsh audiences - the packed auditorium was ecstatic and listened to his generous encore of Chopin’s Waltz in A minor with rapt attention.

If the Rachmaninoff was excellent, the Nielsen was outstanding. In his Symphony No. 5, Nielsen takes the idea of battle to an altogether more rigorous, grimly sardonic level and, although he was clear in stating that the piece has no direct programme, he nevertheless described it as ‘the division between dark and light, the battle between evil and good’ and further spoke of nationhood as a ‘spiritual syphilis’, showing how deep-seated his natural pessimism had become in the aftermath of the Great War. The symphony is incredibly difficult to play, with lengthy passages of repeated rhythms for the strings and exposed, astringent writing for the woodwind (hats off to Tim Lines for his whirlwind first clarinet) - as well, of course, as the famously oppressive snare drum which dominates the first movement; perfectly judged on this occasion by the unflappable Chris Stock. But the triumph was Søndergård’s overall, as he turned total engagement from the orchestra into music-making of the highest calibre in a performance which yielded claustrophobic compression and breathtaking expansiveness in equal, requisite measure.

The power of this music is underlined by a reviewer’s description of a performance of the 5th Symphony in Stockholm, 1924, which spoke of ‘genuine panic’ in parts of the audience; around a quarter of whom ‘dashed towards the exits with horror and rage painted across their faces ... [and so Nielsen’s] description of modern life with all its confusion, brutality and struggle, all the uncontrolled cries of pain and ignorance - and behind it all, the hard rhythm of the side drum as the only discipline - gained, as the audience fled, a touch of almost diabolical humour.’

That ‘diabolical humour’ - as well as sheer rage and passages of eerie stasis, notably at the end of the first movement - drove Søndergård’s performance in a way which the composer would surely have appreciated from his fellow Dane. Nielsen was a troubled figure and had an ambivalent relationship to European musical developments (in a 1925 essay ‘Words, Music and Programme Music’, for example, he tartly referred to Germany as a ‘breeding ground for metaphysicians’). But his music had more in common with the modernism gaining ground in Central Europe than might at first appear, setting aside the obvious difference that Nielsen never eschewed tonal harmony; for he too was looking forwards and backwards at the same time in seeking ways to tackle problems of continuity and rupture in musical form and language. In the Symphony No. 5, that searching found apotheosis in a unique exploration of contrast and opposition which, for all the confusion at early performances, was quickly appreciated by Scandinavian audiences as well as critics. Hopefully, tonight’s justified acclaim from BBC NOW’s Cardiff audience is a sign that more listeners in the UK are appreciating the full scope of Nielsen’s achievement.

Published by Wales Arts Review 2:11: http://www.walesartsreview.org/bbc-national-orchestra-of-wales-rachmaninoff-nielsen/














Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Music Theatre Wales: Vasco Mendonça - 'Ping' / Peter Maxwell Davies - 'Eight Songs for a Mad King'

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, 27th March 2013

Ping - music: Vasco Mendonça, words: Samuel Beckett, video: Sandro Aguilar
Eight Songs for a Mad King - music: Peter Maxwell Davies, words: Randolph Stow, George III

Conductor: Michael Rafferty
Director: Michael McCarthy
Designer: Simon Barnham
Lighting: Ace McCarron

Ping - Actress: Nia Roberts, Singer: Helen-Jane Howells
Eight Songs for a Mad King - King George III: Kelvin Thomas



As part of their twenty-fifth birthday celebrations, Music Theatre Wales has revived one of the most iconic British compositions in any genre of the last fifty years, Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies. The piece was premièred in 1969 to opposing roars of enthusiasm and protest that were as nothing beside the howls of its tormented protagonist, George III; today, the extremes of expression traversed in the piece - going beyond even Schoenberg’s Erwartung and the directly inspirational Pierrot lunaire - may no longer be so unfamiliar or disturbing on a musical level, but Max’s superlative depiction of the monarch’s mental fragmentation and descent into untrammeled insanity still has the power to shock.

Max was in his mid-thirties when he embarked upon Eight Songs, still considered to be an enfant terrible and about to change the face of British music through the addition of percussion (as well as harpsichord) to Schoenberg’s 1912 Pierrot quintet of flute, clarinet, violin, ‘cello and piano; as Paul Griffiths noted, ‘hey presto, an ensemble was born, one that goes on ricocheting through contemporary music.’ The piece was first produced by Music Theatre Wales (then Cardiff New Opera Group) nearly thirty years ago with tonight’s very soloist, Welsh baritone Kelvin Thomas, as the King; a role he has since made his own with countless acclaimed performances around the globe, adapting a fearsome vocal part which includes chords as well as Sprechstimme and a range of over four octaves (written for the extraordinary Roy Hart). During that time, Max has cemented his status as a leading British composer of his generation, accepting a CBE, then a knighthood and - either fittingly or ironically, depending on one’s viewpoint in the light of Eight Songs for a Mad King - the position of Master of the Queen’s Music in 2004. MTW itself (of which he is Patron) is currently riding high; this year alone they have won a South Bank Sky Arts Award for Opera for a joint production with Scottish Opera of Ghost Patrol by Stuart MacRae and, on the very day of this performance, learnt of their nomination for an Olivier award for the double-bill which combined MacRae’s opera with Huw Watkins’s In the Locked Room.

First on the programme tonight came a piece demonstrating MTW’s continued remit to explore new work; the UK première of Ping (2011) by the Portuguese composer Vasco Mendonça, whose birth in 1977 also puts him in his mid-thirties at the time of composition. Mendonça is no enfant terrible but, otherwise in common with the Max of yore, he is a serious and highly capable composer of great promise. The two works made an excellent pair and a fascinating bridge across the generations, showing complementary yet diverse approaches to the worlds of music theatre, language and performance. Ping also depicts the worsening mental state of its protagonist; in this case, by means of multimedia - a trend which has been gaining momentum across Europe and the UK as increasing numbers of composers and performers combine video or other visuals with acoustic and/or electronic music, often in a theatrical context as Mendonça does here.

The video in Ping was commissioned from film maker Sandro Aguilar and the text is the short story of that title by Samuel Beckett (published in French as Bing in 1966, then in English a year later - around the time Randolph Stow created the libretto for Eight Songs utilising quotations from George III himself). The piece was beautifully staged and exceptionally well executed, making the most of an ideal theatrical and acoustical space. In this production, director Michael McCarthy chose to split the solo part between two performers to great effect, with a singer (Helen-Jane Howells in clear, pure voice) ‘ghosting’ the actor/narrator (an equally impressive Nia Roberts) from behind a semi-opaque gauze curtain onto which was projected Aguilar’s flickering black and white patterns. This latter worked with the diffused electronic sounds to create a feeling of internal white noise or static entirely pertinent to the flux of Beckett’s short, repeated phrases and fractured syntax. Also visible behind the gauze were the ensemble of two clarinets, violin, ‘cello and percussion (conducted by Michael Rafferty) from whom emanated music of exquisite lightness and textural plasticity which sought not to ‘interpret’ or ‘enhance’ the Beckett, but rather paralleled its emotional resonance in the most subtle way - in co-witness with the audience, as it were, to the protagonist’s increasingly frustrated recycling of episodic memories.

Beckett’s monologue has its own verbless, compressed ‘music’ and has been aptly described by Mary Catanzaro as forcing the reader to ‘attend to a linguistic form in which a non-traditional, musical representation of a narrative text undermines the traditional, humanist notion of identity and cracks open the illusion of an autonomous, centered “self”.’ This process of de-familiarisation evidenced by - as Mendonça himself puts it - ‘the impossibility of language’, is classic music theatre territory and is directly traceable to the European heyday of the genre from the sixties to the eighties. Composers such as Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio, Hans Werner Henze, Mauricio Kagel and, here in the UK, Vic Hoyland and David Sawer (continuing in part with the latter and especially Roger Marsh among others), explored a deliberately un-operatic aesthetic involving an experimental, Dadaist notion of performative art drawn from influences as diverse as the impersonal Japanese Noh theatre, cabaret, political radicalism and the Theatre of the Absurd - of which Beckett, of course, was a prominent example.

Max’s Eight Songs is clearly allied to this tradition by virtue of its ‘distanced’ yet extreme Expressionism, lack of straightforward narrative, broken chunks of text and use of alienating theatrical devices (not least the King’s shocking destruction of the violinist’s instrument at the work’s climax in Song 7). But, at root, the piece belongs to a more conventionally operatic tradition in that it seeks to illicit our sympathy for the delusional King, projecting his mental state through the music itself in a way which seeks to describe or expound that mental state - much like the music in a conventional opera would. The King’s alternate screechings and whisperings are not a semiotic exploration of the limits of language but, rather, a straightforwardly realistic - albeit horrifying - portrayal of a mind in utter breakdown; his attempts to locate himself as he reaches out to his beloved birds are psychologically ‘real’, not a questioning of the nature of identity itself.

Thanks to the compelling rendition of the role by Thomas and the musical expertise of the ensemble under Rafferty, tonight’s performance was a moving experience. However, it was not as shattering as it might have been; after the wonderful coherence and balance of Ping, the lack of substance in the direction here was disappointing, with little help given to the soloist by means of dramaturgy, lighting or even costume; ironically, the result of such a ‘hands-off’ approach was to lessen the impression of the King’s tragic isolation as Thomas was in danger, at times, of becoming the focal point of an essentially supportive ensemble rather than trapped alone inside the birdcage of his disintegrating mind.

Such things matter if productions of the piece are to remain true to the sheer visceral intensity of Max’s vision. In 1969, when the piece was written, it was a mere ten years since the 1959 Mental Health Act had outlawed promiscuity or other ‘immoral’ conduct alone as grounds for detention - which gives some inkling as to the archaic attitudes to mental illness still remaining at that time (and which continue to surface today in various ways). The piece is an enduring testament to Max’s compassion and willingness to take a stand on social issues. Given the heartbreaking inability of the King to communicate, it seems fitting that his groundbreaking vocal athletics are so eloquent in communicating the pathos, horror - and occasional lucid wit - of his affliction. But more was needed here from the production in dramatic terms to fully realise the nightmare of that affliction and raise the bar to excellence overall.





Posted by Wales Arts Review 2.10: http://www.walesartsreview.org/music-theatre-wales-ping-eight-songs-for-a-mad-king/


Friday, 19 April 2013

BBC National Orchestra of Wales: A. Panufnik, Britten/C. Matthews, H. Otaka, Lutosławski

Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff, 28th March 2013

Andrzej Panufnik - Katyń Epitaph
Benjamin Britten / Colin Matthews - Double Concerto
Hisatada Otaka - Flute Concerto
Witold Lutosławski - Concerto for Orchestra

Conductor: Tadaaki Otaka
Flute: Adam Walker
Violin: Anthony Marwood
Viola: Lawrence Power



Between January and May, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales has programmed works by Benjamin Britten (1913-76) in five concerts, including tonight’s, in celebration of his birth centenary in 2013. This is evidence of the very high regard in which Britten is held; the more so given that his reputation rests upon his operas (and, to a lesser degree, other vocal works) rather than his instrumental music - and certainly not upon those minor pieces forming part of BBC NOW’s current series. If only Britten’s some-time friend Witold Lutosławski (1913-94) were appreciated in the UK to anything like the same degree relative to his own, actual compositional stature. Alas, Lutosławski’s music is by no means as familiar to UK audiences as that of the home-grown Britten and so his centenary, also falling this year, is attracting far less attention* despite his being one of the major composers of the twentieth century, whose significance is acknowledged far beyond his native Poland. Tonight’s offering from BBC NOW’s spring season cast a welcome ray of light upon Lutosławski in the form of his most popular piece by far, the Concerto for Orchestra (1950-54) - but not, sadly, upon any of the four symphonies, nor his mature orchestral oeuvre.

The concert opened with a piece by Lutosławski’s compatriot and another, much closer, friend (as well as formative, war-time piano duet partner), Andrzej Panufnik, who managed an extremely dangerous defection to the West in 1954, just as the ‘accessible’ Concerto for Orchestra was about to rehabilitate Lutosławski with Poland’s Soviet masters. The Katyń Epitaph (1967/69) was written to commemorate the massacre of fifteen thousand defenseless Polish prisoners-of-war in Katyń Forest by the Russians in 1943 and ‘to express my personal sorrow that the Western civilised nations have allowed this crime to remain forgotten’ (composer’s note). It is a short piece (just eight minutes); simple in structure but highly intense, and so a difficult opener for the orchestra. On this occasion, the ensemble took a while to settle upon their entry following leader Lesley Hatfield’s emotionally piercing opening solo, but conductor Tadaaki Otaka soon gathered his forces into a convincing crescendo to the close.

Perhaps the string sound in the Panufnik could have been warmer and fuller to greater effect - but there were no such issues in the following work, the Double Concerto for violin, viola and orchestra by Britten and Colin Matthews, which was beautifully played by soloists (Anthony Marwood and the outstanding Lawrence Power) and orchestra alike. For a composer aged just eighteen, as Britten was at the time of writing in 1932, pre-Opus 1, this piece is a remarkable achievement and it is fully deserving of its place in the repertoire since its posthumous premiere in 1987. However, one wonders how much of the perceived quality of the piece is down to its stunning orchestration, which was done by Colin Matthews (b1946), not Britten, who left the piece as an unfinished student work. Matthews assures us that the orchestration is ‘virtually 100% Britten’ and taken from markings that Britten himself made on his short-score. But the instrumental colours, gestures and sheer sophistication are almost eerily prescient of the mature Britten and it would hardly be surprising if Matthews was, albeit unconsciously, influenced by his intimate knowledge of Britten’s later works. But, regardless, the finished score is a clear example of the extent to which orchestration is an art in itself; intrinsic to the compositional process and much more than a matter of obeying markings on paper.

Alas for Hisatada Otaka (1911-51, father of tonight’s conductor), his Flute Concerto (1948, revised 1951) did not benefit from its close proximity to the impressive Britten/Matthews, although it made for a gently evocative start to the second half in this nicely put together programme of three concertos and an epitaph. The combination of French-influenced light melodicism with occasional flashes of Viennese-ish waltz evinced Otaka’s European training, but the solo flute part (albeit played with unassuming warmth by Adam Walker) was full of cliched pentatonic swoops and harmonic-minor runs just too reminiscent of composers like Jacques Ibert. There was nothing here to tax either soloist or orchestra, nor to challenge the audience. But perhaps that was the point, given that the work preceded the virtuosic rollercoaster that is Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra.

The Otaka was quickly forgotten in the opening pulsating timpani of the Lutosławski, which commanded attention from the start; indeed, the respect and affection which the orchestra holds for their Conductor Laureate were palpable here in Otaka junior’s riveting performance. The playing was simply superb across the orchestra and throughout this bold and vital piece as Otaka shaped each of the three movements with a combination of sure pacing and minute attention to detail, interweaving the complex, ever-changing instrumental sections and solo lines with a discreet, almost alchemical skill. Rhythmic precision, textural balance and nuanced phrasing - all were present in exemplary abundance and made as compelling a case as any for the piece’s designation as a ‘great work’ (if any were needed) in spite of Lutosławski’s own attempts to dismiss it in hindsight as ‘a work which I could not rank among the most important ones in my music ... [which] originated in a way which I had not quite expected, as a sort of a result of what was my episodic symbiosis with folk music’. Speaking later of his difficulties at that time with the socrealizm of the authorities' Soviet-adopted artistic stance, he further dismissed the nationalism of the Concerto for Orchestra, saying ‘I wrote as I was able, since I could not yet write as I wished.' For sure, the work in no way represents Lutosławski’s mature style or later aesthetic concerns (as in, for example, his exploration of aleatoric techniques from 1960 onwards, after hearing part of a broadcast of John Cage’s Piano Concerto). But it is a fantastic piece and performances as electric as this remind one that there simply is no substitute for hearing music of exceptional calibre performed live by brilliant exponents. An Otaka/Lutosławski cycle of symphonies and other orchestral works to enable BBC NOW audiences to explore the composer’s unique rethinking of symphonic form? Yes please.



* the highest profile celebration is the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Woven Words Festival:
http://woven-words.co.uk.
Tom Service devoted Radio 3’s Music Matters to Lutosławski on Jan 19th: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pyffp 

Posted by Wales Arts Review 2.10: http://www.walesartsreview.org/bbc-national-orchestra-of-wales-panufnik-brittenmatthews-otaka-lutoslawski/

Wednesday, 10 April 2013

Back Catalogue CD Review: Brave New Wales


Various Composers / Artists - transform010
www.fouriertransform.com

The following short review appeared in Issue 2 of Composers of Wales / Cyfansoddwyr Cymru Quarterly, March 2013

According to the liner notes, this triple-CD compilation is a ‘personal selection of the best new music being made under the radar and off the grid by musicians from and/or living in the Land of Song'. It features a wealth of over eighty experimental composers, musicians and sonic artists working under some thirty names; many operating in a solo capacity, but the majority as part of small groups or collectives - some local, others more geographically widespread - with an emphasis on shared creativity and collaboration. Most of the featured artists, perhaps inevitably, are clustered around main population centres in the south-east and north-west of Wales, but a substantial number also hail from more remote, rural and coastal areas; thus, with the CDs comprising recordings made largely between the years 2000 and 2008, the collection makes for essential listening as a truly national survey of the underground, experimental scene in Wales at the start of the new millennium.

The variety here is enormous, with tracks occupying a whole gamut of genre-defying, abstract zones from the noise-inspired electronica of Rose Heyworth to the free improvisation of Rhodri Davies via ambient drones, avant-garde doodlings and the field recordings of Simon Profitt. Many tracks are abrasive, some have political or humorous subtexts - but all challenge the listener to enter a world of serious and vital music-making well away from the academy or mainstreams of ‘rock’ and ‘classical’ music.

Fourniertransform’s liner speaks for itself: ‘Despite many areas of Welsh music being celebrated and well-documented, little publicity has so far been given to the ... avenues being pursued by the rule-breakers, or perhaps more interestingly, those blissfully unaware of the rules in the first place ... our intention is ... to showcase music that you are unlikely to have heard before; to give recognition to the creative souls tucked away in bedrooms and studios (and forests) up and down the land making music primarily for their own pleasure and to show that in this tiny and bewitching country of only 3 million people, there’s much to celebrate’.

The resulting package is ambitious, well produced and beautifully designed; a rare collection to be cherished.


Monday, 8 April 2013

Bangor New Music Festival

Bangor New Music Ensemble, 12 March, Powis Hall, Bangor University
 
Electroacoustic Wales, 13 March, Powis Hall, Bangor University

Psappha, 14 March, Penrhyn Hall, Bangor City Centre

The Bangor New Music Festival is the only festival dedicated to new music in North Wales. It takes place annually over a week or so in early spring and, from its inception in 2000, has been run by volunteers working in collaboration with Bangor University’s School of Music under the Artistic Directorship of composer Guto Pryderi Puw. This year, the BNMF began and ended with two very different sorts of folk music, kicking off with a popular music showcase by celebrated harpist Catrin Finch, and ending with a performance of Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs (1964) by Psappha; one of the UK’s most renowned new music ensembles, whose inspiring concert was in part an homage to Berio (1925-2003) – a major force of post-war modernism – ten years after his death.

In between these events, there were concerts, workshops and talks exploring a number of other themes, from a poetry and percussion event led by Eurig Salisbury and Dewi Ellis Jones, to the final three concerts of the Festival which form the subject of this report. But, throughout, a folk theme could be said to have been present in a social sense, as every concert – not just token, specific events – contained a strong element of education work involving the programming of pieces written and/or performed by students and/or local school children alongside professional performances of music by established composers. Puw sees education at all levels as a key component of the Festival and, in conversation, told me that he considers it crucial to the success, not just of future performers and composers on an individual basis, but to the well-being of new music itself: ‘it’s one way of reaching out to newer audiences, but also, between composing, performing and listening to new music in what is, for them, probably a large concert hall, it becomes a whole package of experience for school children and their parents – as well as for students – which will hopefully lead to a greater future involvement in new music.’

The notion of games and play could be seen as an ideal entry point for an exploration of new music and this just happened to be the theme of a concert given by the Bangor New Music Ensemble on March 12th in the context of experimental and multimedia pieces utilising graphic scores. The ensemble comprises a floating group of undergraduate and postgraduate performers and composers (on this occasion playing various combinations of two flutes, clarinets, violin, keyboards, percussion and a Chinese guzheng). Works by three students – Christine Poon, Damien Vadgama and Francesca Reader – sat surprisingly well alongside pieces by more established composers Randy Raine-Reusch, David Pocknee and Juan María Solare, and it was enlightening to see the graphic scores projected onto a screen above the ensemble whilst they played. This was especially so with Bruno Maderna’s Serenata per un satellite, (1969, conducted by Hans Kretz), the oldest, best known work on the programme.

The concert was a little on the short side but, hopefully, the ensemble will have gained the confidence to attempt longer interpretations of graphic scores in future, as the players generated an engaging chemistry; moving in a choreographed way from piece to piece with an easy-going but serious sense of theatre, and creating a convincing event in a genre too readily consigned to a kind of hippy historical past – partly, perhaps, in reaction to the showmanship of guru-like figures such as Cage and Stockhausen.

Perhaps too, as Puw further noted in our conversation, it is the increasing trend throughout new music towards multimedia performances that offers some of the most exciting possibilities for composers today and which, in part, might serve to connect the experimentalism of the past with technological and other developments of the future. With that thought in mind, it was interesting that the following evening’s presentation by Electroacoustic Wales (March 13th) featured not just acousmatic compositions, but also works with video (by the Festival’s Resident Composer Peiman Khosravi and Richard Nelmes) and an intriguing piece in which electronic sounds were triggered live by the movements of a dancer (by Kimon Emmananouil Grigoriadis) – as well as a composition by primary school pupils from Ysgol y Graig, Llangefni, which was diffused live by the children themselves (assisted by Ed Wright), taking it in turns at the mixing desk.

Electroacoustic Wales is an organisation directed by composer and Bangor University Professor Andrew Lewis which, as he wrote in the programme, ‘exists to promote and encourage the creation and dissemination of electroacoustic music within Wales and beyond’. Four of the composers showcased tonight – Gregoriadis, Nelmes, Roy Woods and Steven Tunnicliffe – are current postgraduate students of Lewis’s. But this was by no means a purely academic display despite the clear technological literacy of the composers, evident to varying degrees. Of the student works, Tunnicliffe’s Sandy was the most successful in creating a distinctive sound-world with dexterous pacing and changes of texture, though all showed a vitality of palette and sense of structural purpose, and Nelmes’s Hiraeth was very poignant. Khosravi’s music, though, was outstanding; born in Tehran in 1982 and having recently completed his PhD with Denis Smalley at City University, he is on track to become a major voice of the future. All three of his pieces presented here (Convergences, an audio counterpart to filmmaker Stan Brakhage’s powerful Dog Star Man Part II and Vertex) were rich in subtle nuance and sheer musicality of expression; the acousmatic Vertex offering the profoundest insight into a compelling and finely-honed sonic architecture.

As part of its educational remit, the BNMF hosts and, this year, administered the biennial William Mathias Composition Prize in honour of the celebrated Welsh composer, who was Professor at Bangor University from 1970 to 1988. The competition is open to any composer to submit works within the particular requirements of that year’s festival which, for 2013, involved writing a piece between six and ten minutes in length for flute, viola, ‘cello and piano, to be performed by members of Psappha; not, perhaps, the most immediately inspiring combination of instruments, but one therefore likely to expose any lack of imagination on the part of the composer. As it transpired, the excellent winning piece, Aller-mümsige Burggoven by Tom Coult, chosen from fifteen anonymously submitted scores, was full of wit and colour. Moreover, the fact that Coult travelled all the way from his base in London for Psappha’s superb Composition Prize workshop and ensuing evening performance (March 14th) gives grounds for optimism in terms of Puw’s assertion that: ‘one of the reasons we decided to set up the Festival here in Bangor was to give a sense of the kind of lively scene and networking opportunities that you would otherwise have to go to a big city like Manchester to experience – if only for one weekend in the year!’ The Prize itself is most generous thanks to the Mathias family (who presented £500 to the winner) and Coult headed home with the satisfying further promise of a commission worth up to £1000 for next year’s Festival.

The evening concert by Psappha at which Coult’s piece was premiered was a highly successful conclusion to the Festival and demonstrated the trade-mark excellence of the Manchester-based ensemble. Psappha are themselves renowned for their pioneering education work and the combination here of two pieces from the ‘softer’ side of Berio’s output with three pieces by Bangor composers – two, overtly Berio-inspired – and a piece jointly involving Psappha members and pupils from Ysgolion Brynaerau and Talysarn, was a winning one. The pupils were both delighted and delightful, performing the story of a little girl who becomes a fairy but decides after all that she would rather stay a little girl and, in the process, has adventures with such wondrous creatures as a fire-breathing tortoise. The piece was directed in touching, unassuming fashion by Bangor postgraduate composer Katherine Betteridge, following the successful premiere of her own piece, Belovodia, inspired by Mongolian shamanism and full of its own magical textures and sonorities, from prepared piano to bowed vibraphone and breathy woodwind effects.

Two university staff members had premieres at the concert; Patricia Alessandrini with a UK premiere of Black is the Colour…(Omaggio à Berio) and Lewis with a world premiere of Il re lunaire – also a tribute to Berio and, jointly in this case, Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire (which iconic work was one hundred years old last October). The title of Alessandrini’s piece is taken from the first of Berio’s Folk Songs and especially sought to celebrate his assertion in 1981 that ‘the future of new music is theater music’. The drama here was understated and largely effective, with performers at times vocalising and playing into the open piano to capture different kinds of resonance in a piece that had a gently fluid, improvisatory feel. Lewis’s Il re lunaire focused on sound and its transformation through timbral and textural as well as pitch-derived means, weaving together repeated fragments from Berio’s O King with the opening of the Schoenberg and utilising many, subtly moving sonorities. Both works complemented Psappha’s eloquent performances of O King (1968) itself and the Folk Songs, which were written for his first wife and long-term artistic partner Cathy Berberian and, on this occasion, beautifully sung by mezzo Kate Symonds-Joy.

Berio’s highly personal music embraced at various times not just new developments in theatre but also new techniques in the use of language, instrumental sonority and electronics. In 1993 he was asked what kind of music interested him, to which he replied: ‘In principle, all musics that have roots in our history, in our experience. They carry traces of the past, but they have a vision of the future too.’ In that sense, he made a poignant dedicatee for this year’s BNMF with its emphasis on inclusion, looking to the future and the importance of musical curiosity. The atmosphere surrounding the final three concerts was one of active listening and a mutual support between performers, composers and audience that was far from the sometimes cynical posturing of less personal new music events. But audience – or rather the small size of the audience – remains an issue here as with so many new music concerts and festivals. Just how the BNMF builds on the success of its education outreach programme and gets more people to come along remains the million dollar question. So, in that regard, it seemed a pity that the BBC National Orchestra of Wales concert which took place in Bangor the day after the Festival finished (March 15th) was not incorporated into the programme with some contemporary works; after all, this was successfully accomplished in the Festival’s tenth anniversary year, for example (2010), when the orchestra gave a BNMF concert including music by Puw (then BBCNOW Resident Composer). Hopefully, future years might see further such collaborations now that the Festival has secured Arts Council of Wales funding for the next three year period. In the meanwhile, the organisers and participants should be congratulated for the artistic success of these final three days of the Festival in 2013.

Posted by Wales Arts Review 2.9: http://www.walesartsreview.org/bangor-new-music-festival/