London Sinfonietta - Happy 50th Birthday !

David Atherton

The London Sinfonietta celebrated its 50th anniversary at the Royal Festival Hall, London. The idealistic visionaries of the past may be older now, but age hasn't dimmed their spirit.  David Atherton conducted, as did George Benjamin : two long-term stalwarts without whom the London Sinfonietta might not be what it is now.  The London Sinfonietta changed things, re-shaping music in Britain and beyond.  May that legacy never be squandered !  In fifty years, new generations have come to new music, and new music itself has grown and flourished.  Was that The Message Sir Harrison Birtwistle alluded to in his fanfare commissioned for this birthday gala ? The piece shines brightly, indeed defiantly, sounds reaching outwards into space.  Harry once relished the image of enfant terrible, and indeed, still does, with his earthy common sense.  Now he is, arguably, Britain's greatest living composer and long may he reign.  He's a true original, and a trailblazer.

The London Sinfonietta isn't an orchestra in the usual sense of the word but a collective co-operative.  It adapts to repertoire, covering chamber music and larger-scale ensemble, co-opting other performers, like singers and sound engineers, where needed.  No mega opuses tonight, but smaller works of great importance. Stravinsky's Octet (1923) , winds and brass in sonorous mystery, and Ligeti's Chamber Concerto,  (1970) which the Sinfonietta worked on with the composer himself.  Individual voices for individual instruments, combining. Layers of texture unfold from the woodwind; a slow second movement and a fast fourth movement for contrast. The third movement contains a rubric “preciso e meccanico”, inspired by clocks and machines gradually going wrong. The pianist, has the
instruction, 'hammering like a madman', and the trombone has a strident melody bursting from the delicate sound textures.

Over the years, the personnel have changed.  I remember Enno Senft looking like a teenager and John Constable before his hair turned grey.  And Sebastian Bell on a bench outside LSO St Lukes, eating lunch, a short while before he died.  And when Melinda Maxwell commissioned new work in honour of her mother.  I've also heard David Atherton conducting in Hong Kong.  So many memories, the London Sinfonietta feels like family.  That sense of community lives on.  While the ensemble has, in recent years, diverted a lot of effort towards activities other than core music making, it continues to sponsor new work , new composers and new performers.

Tonight, Deborah Pritchard's River Above for solo saxophone, (Simon Haram), and Samantha Fernando Formations a promising work I like a lot - listen again on BBC Radio 3  A special thank you to Deborah Pritchard for her innovative diagrams analysing pieces of music.  These are truly innovative.  As I write, I've got her study of Birtwistle's Silbury Air in front of me.  You can "hear" the music by following her maps, each part marked as on a score but condensed in colours and patterns, intuitively.  conventional western notation isn't the only way to read music.  A quick and easy way to communicate with creative minds without formality - this is the way to grow audiences and reach people who might be intimidated by the idea that new music is too difficult.  More effective, I think, than some tedious "education" ventures.

Which leads neatly to Hans Abrahamsen's Left Alone, with Tamara Stefanovich.  "Music is pictures of music", Abrahamsen has said. "That is a strong underlying element in my world of ideas when I compose - as is the fictional aspect that one moves around in an imaginary space of music. What one hears is pictures - basically, music is already there."  Abrahamsen's music listens, as a child listens, with purity and wonder. It's alert to the kind of quiet detail that gets missed in a world of white noise and bluster. A child doesn't need to prove anything to anyone. He or she can marvel, without precondition.  One of my friends hated Abrahamsen's Schnee (2007) because it "feels like watching snow fall", but for me that's precisely what I love about Abrahamsen.  Buddhists believe that the path to wisdom lies in divesting oneself of Self and the need to control. Abrahamsen's music examines sounds from different angles and, importantly, through silence, the antithesis of mental muzak 

In Abrahamnsen's Left, Alone the concept "the sound of one hand clapping" is uniquely realized.   Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand was
written for Paul Wittgenstein who lost his right hand in war.. Perhaps it carries the memory of a lost limb, as often happens to amputees. Abrahamsen's piece feels, however, like an exploration of something entirely imagined. Left, Alone moves through a series of six vistas, dark rumblings on the lower keys to bright outbursts in the orchestra. Single notes on percussion blocks tempt the piano forth. At first the piano sounds tentative, as if exploring space. A surge of strings from the orchestra, then a long passage of semi-silence. In fact there are several, passages of semi-silence, each one different, so you have to pay attention. Eventually the piano finds its voice, stabbing exuberantly at the keys, the whole orchestra  animated in support. Having thus found itself, the piano can return to quietude. Single notes are played, repeatedly. A huge arc of sound from the orchestra, a frenzy of sparkling notes: piano, percussion, winds and strings together. The pace intensifies, bubbling along cheerfully.  Not having a right hand is not funny, but the protagonist triumphs, nonetheless. I first heard this in 2016 with Alexandre Tharaud and the CBSO. Stefanovich was more assertive while Tharaud was more probing.

The grand finale - Encore! (14 Variations on a Hornpipe by Purcell). A communal blast, with room for everyone. 

Orchestre de Paris 50th Birthday Party - Berio Sinfonia flows free

The Orchestre de Paris, with Daniel Harding, click to enlarge -it's worth  it

Hugely ambitious concert marking the 50th anniversary of the Orchestre de Paris. The finest concert hall in the world,  and one of the finest orchestras too,  with new Chief Conductor Daniel Harding, and a programme showcasing the connections between sound and space.  Berio's Sinfonia, "a symphony that contains the world"  created so it constantly renews and adapts whenever it's performed anew.  A metaphor for the creative force that is music !  The concepts that make Berio's Sinfonia so innovative apply too to György Ligeti's Poème symphonique pour 100 métronomes, to Jörg Widmann's Fantasie, to Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and to Debussy La Mer.   To assess this vast programme in conventional terms would be to miss its very purpose.  The Orchestre de Paris and the Philharmonie are astute, not stupid.  These works are hardly obscure.  Music doesn't have to be locked into straitjackets of form. Like the river that flows through Berio's Sinfonia, it flows onwards, absorbing many influences, fertilizing new areas, bringing renewal and rebirth.  As Berio explained, "One of my aims was to use the orchestration as a respectful and loving instrument of investigation and transformation". 

It's no accident that Berio references Mahler's Symphony no 2, with its themes of death and resurrection, and specifically to the movement in which the song  Des Antonius von Paduas Fischpredikt  resurfaces wordlessly, in orchestral guise.  Numerous other references, too, such as to Don, the first movement of Boulez's Pli selon Pli ( which means fold upon fold, ie, endless layers and permutations). (Read more HERE)  "Don" means gift, so this is like a gift  from one composer to another. What has gone before shapes what is to come, but absolutely central is the idea that music never ends.  Numerous other references, some musical, some cultural, some explicit, some so cryptic that they only reveal themselves on careful listening.  "For the unexpected is always with us!" a phrase that acts like a signpost in the vocal parts. Berio also experiments with levels of time, blending references to the past to the present and future.  "Keep going, keep going" and later "Stop!" but the music propels ever forward.

Thunderbolt ostinato, screams of protest.  London Voices supplied the archly Anglo tones that appealed to Berio's quirky sense of humour. So what if some audiences don't get everything, all at once ?  St. Anthony kept preaching to the fish, though they didn't listen and kept scrapping. 

 Berio also wrote music that would grow to fit each performance space. In the Philharmonie, the Sinfonia swelled to fit the vast space, where the acoustic  is so fine that it doesn't dampen fine detail. This time the whispers in the voice parts could be heard, imperceptibly, and tiny figures in the orchestration weren't lost  Though Berio uses a large orchestra, big blast is not the way to do this piece.  Harding builds up the layers of colour and texture so they shine . Much in the way Impressionist painters kept their brush strokes clear.  Thus the elegant symmetry of the programme, balancing Berio's Sinfonia with Debussy La Mer. Both pieces are impressionistic in the way details are built up without being muddied, individual cells kept clean and vibrant. La Mer was revolutionary because it marked a sea change in style. It thrives best when conducted like this, where the energy flows freely.  For French orchestras La Mer is a signature piece : the symbol of modern French style.  

In Sinfonia, Berio also makes references to Ligeti and specifically to Atmosphères.  Perfectly logical then to follow Sinfonia with Ligeti's Poème symphonique where 100 metronomes tick, each in slightly different ways. Ligeti's playing with time, and measures of time : the principles of music, where his "players" are usually the means by which music is regulated. More quirky humour ! In a long concert like this, it gave the regular orchestra a rest while the audience worked. If they understood, which they probably did since it's quite a well known piece. Again, proof that music exists in many forms ! Thus Widmann's Fantasie for solo clarinet, heard in March this year at the opening concert at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. The Paris Philharmonie is a much bigger space, but the piece adapted well,  as if the sound of the clarinet were moving around the hall, reaching out into its distances. If anything, I much preferred this new spatial dimension. It makes the piece intriguing, as if the instrument were exploring and responding to its environment.  Like shepherds of Ancient Greece, playing flutes whose sound carries over vast spaces.  Another connection to the themes in Berio's Sinfonia.  

Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, another hybrid form, blending the form of ritual religious music to orchestral style, at once ancient and modern.  It also combines orchestra with choir (the Choir of the Orchestre de Paris, Choirmaster Lionel Sow).  The ideas in Berio's Sinfonia again, but with the unmistakable austerity that would mark Stravinsky's later style. Huge blocks of sound, hewn as if from a rockface, yet moving forward with slow but monumental pace.  Stravinsky, Berio and Debussy, three very different composers but each creating new form.   In contrast,  Jörg Widmann's  Au cœur de Paris written for the orchestra's 50th birthday. It's a party piece,  tumbling different clichés of Paris together in merry profusion.  Yet another nod to Berio and his sense of humour ! 

Listen to the concert here (available for the next six months)

 

Barbican Spring programme picks

At last, green shoots of Spring emerging from the gloom. The Barbican Spring schedule offers plenty of hope

First off from 13-15 January, Simon Rattle conducts György Ligeti Le Grand Macabre, with the LSO and a strong cast headed by Peter Hoare as Piet the Pot. I love Ligeti's quirky music and enjoyed the ENO production by Alex Ollé and Las furas del Baus back in 2009  Read more here   That was the one with the giant woman whose body "was" the stage.  Le Grand Macabre is as frustrating as it is inventive, so staging it takes some doing  But I'm not sure what Peter Sellars will do to it  No doubt it attracts the mega-trendy crowd as it's selling fast though very expensive. (ROH balcony prices)  On 19/1, however, and just as high profile, Rattle is conducting  Mahler Symphony no 6 together with the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Remembering 'in memoriam Evan Scofield'.  This is a keynote concert, which will also be streamed on the LSO website, a wonderful development, since it brings the orchestra to the world

Another British music world premiere the next day, 20/1, Philip Cashian's  The Book of Ingenious Devices, conducted by Oliver Knussen, together with Strauss Macbeth and Elgar Falstaff  An intriguing programme in true Ollie style – will Cashian's piece have Shakespearean connections?  Huw Watkins is the soloist so presumably it's a piano concerto of some sort. A big theme this season is "Russian Revolutionaries",  so plenty of Shostakovich, but more unusually, Galina Ustvolskaya's Symphony no 2 with the Melos Ensemble at LSO St Luke's on 21/1  That weekend, a Philip Glass Total Immersion with better choices than some recent Total Immersions.

All ears and eyes alert for Jonas Kaufmann's four-day residency at the Barbican at the beginning of February That's been sold out for months, so let's hope he will be well enough   Wagner, Strauss (Vier letzte Lieder, nach!)  he's also doing an "in conversation".  Sakari Oramo with the BBCSO and Antonio Pappano with the LSO, both interesting non standard programmes, and Daniel Harding with the LSO on 15/1 with Rachmaninov Symphony no 2 and another Mark-Anthony Turnage premiere,  Håkan with dedicatee Håkan Hardenberger as soloist.

Yet another British composer premiere, Nicola LeFanu's The Crimson Bird for soprano (Rachel Nicholls) and the LSO, conducted by Ilan Volkov on 17/2 and  a Detlev Glanert premiere on 3/3 with Oramo and the BBC SO.  An extended Nash Ensemble residency at LSO St Lukes (lots of RVW chamber music)  and Andreas Scholl on 14/3  Then two concerts with Fabio Luisi on 16th and 19th March I'm opting for the second, with Brahms's German Requiem

François-Xavier Roth starts another After Romanticism series on 30/3 with the LSO - Debussy Jeux, Bartok Piano Concerto no 3 and Mahler Symphony no 1. Then a three-concert series with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert - John Adams, Mahler, and the European premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen's Cello Concerto.  Janine Jansen, Murray Perahia and Mariss Jansens with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and a keynote Dvořák Requiem on 13/4 with Jiří Bělohlávek, the BBC SO, the BBC Symphony Chorus, Brindley Sherratt, Richard Samek, Jennifer Johnston and Katerina Kněžíková   Then Easter is upon us!

François-Xavier Roth LSO Ligeti Berio Barbican

At the Barbican Hall, London, François-Xavier Roth conducted the London Symphony Orchestra. With Roth, always expect the unexpected.  Those who think he's like any other conductor don't understand him at all. Appropriately, he headed the LSO Futures project which involves much more than concerts but offers an in-depth immersion into the process through which orchestras and composers work together to bring performance to life. Roth's theme was the way the concept of symphony has adapted and transformed by contrasting two pillars of modern music, György Ligeti's Atmosphères with Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, 

It's hard to believe that Ligeti's Atmosphères was written 55 years ago, for it still sounds shockingly fresh. Schoenberg horrified audiences in 1908 when he included two movements for voice in his String Quartet no 2, the second of which, Entrückung, floats between keys, evoking the other-worldly, mystical rapture Stefan George described in his poem. The famous first line runs  "Ich fühle luft von anderem planeten." but its last strophe is perhaps even more significant : "In einem meer kristallnen glanzes schwimme-- Ich bin ein funke nur vom heiligen feuer -  Ich bin ein dröhnen nur der heiligen stimme." (In a sea of crystal clarity, I swim, I am only a spark of that Holy Fire, I am only a whisper of the Holy Voice).   I quote at length because this illustrates the eternal search which inspires good artists to seek new frontiers and original means of expression.

Roth may not have included Schoenberg in this concert (with a full orchestra, not chamber ensemble) but Schoenberg's innovative spirit hovers over Ligeti's  Atmosphères. like an invisible guiding spirit.  In  Atmosphères Ligeti dispenses with conventional pitch and form, creating instead ethereal "atmospheres", planes of sound where pitch seems to disintegrate,  The long, reverberating opening chord gives way to other planes.   What form there is, is created by subtle changes of direction and density. Long hollow chords which seem to move from some extraterrestial plane, heralding a rumble from which other planes of sound arise. Low brass pulsates, and the strings shimmer, like rays of light stretching outwards,sublimated into silence.  Ligeti's  Atmosphères. holds a special place in Roth's heart. It was premiered by Hans Rosbaud, who created the SW German Radio Symphony Orchestra of which  Roth is Chief Conductor, the orchestra now sadly doomed.  Read HERE about how Roth protested in mega high profile about the demise of the orchestra and its pioneering principles 

Berrio's Sinfonia with its concepts of confluence as form furthers George's mystical vision, that so inspired Schoenberg : Ich bin ein dröhnen nur der heiligen stimme.  The artist channels something greater than himself. Hence the idea of water, of a flowing river broadening until it reaches the ocean,. We are right back swimming in George's "Kristallen Meer"   And, to paraphrase a line from Sinfonia, "The spirit of Schoenberg hangs in the cool, clean air". .I've written many times  about the synthesis and innovation in Berio's Sinfonia - please READ MORE HERE and HERE

There is so much in Sinfonia,  so many directions and elusive cell-like fragments, it's fundamental to respect what Boulez called "trajectory", that is. direction and purpose. This performance was wonderfully taut and vigorous, rather like the fish leaping around while St Antonius preaches. They represent a powerful life force that can't be contained by sermons. Roth, the LSO and Synergy Vocals interact like chamber performers, responding to each other, while propelling the music forward. Words emerge like signposts : "Keep going, keep going" and later "Stop!" but the music propels ever forward.  Thunderbolt ostinato, screams of protest. Berio  also incorporates different levels of reality, such as the mock emcee naming the performers of the night: this part of the score always varies.  Sounds seem to clear, just as in passages of Ligeti's  Atmosphères which is specifically named and cited, but this is  by no means the end. Pitches hover and sounds rise upwards. In this performance Roth and his forces seem to create the aural image of an aircraft engine readying for takeoff, an absolutely appropriate metaphor for the way the sounds levitate. Yet here was joyous, dance-like back and forth liveliness. Quelques contradictions, as a voice called out.  Fragments of words are lobbed like tennis balls between singers : the vocal balance here so tight that it was easy to spot the different timbres. 

In between these two cornerstons of modern music any other music would inevitably pale.  Elizabeth Ogonek's Sleep and Unrememberance is based on a poem by a Polish poet, written as she confronted death,  Ogonek develops an idea thatb time and space can be compressed, and that perhaps, ultimately what we cling to as important might be only a dream. It's a big, ambitious piece, resplendent with glossy textures and broad sweeps of sound, highlighted by eddies and flurries for contrast.  I kept thinking how successful it would be in Los Angeles, probably because of its shiny polish, but also because it reminded me of Esa-Pekka Salonen or Thomas Adès. Ogonek was a member of the LSO's Panufnik scheme, through which young composers are nurtured in memory of Andrzej Panufnik, whose influence on British music thus lives on. 
 

Prom 55 F X Roth SWR SO Boulez Ligeti Bartók

Photo : Roger Thomas

At Prom 55, François-Xavier Roth  conducted the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg in their first - and regrettably last - appearance at the Royal Albert Hall.  The orchestra is being disbanded, merged into the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. When bureaucrats win over musicianly excellence, even in Germany, it's a blow against art.  Those who stand by watching the BBC being dismantled, from within as well as from without, would do well to ponder. The SWR Symphony Orchestra isn't just another orchestra. It was founded by Hans Rosbaud in 1946, as a statement of faith in the renewal of Europe after the barbarism of the war years. Its demise is thus one of the many symptoms of the anti-intellectual, destructive fundamentalism that's sweeping the world over. .

At the end of this Prom, Roth stood in front of his musicians, declaring his appreciation for them, and for the tradition they represent. It was a gesture of defiance, yet tinged with sadness. Roth is going on to head the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne, another of the less famous but distinctive orchestras that make German music great. I'm not sure what will happen to his players, who are individually infinitely better than some heard recently. The Prom was also a tribute to Pierre Boulez, whose conducting career was launched by Rosbaud, who summoned him to Baden-Baden. He's lived there ever since. When Roth conducted Baden-Baden's concert for Boulez this January, the presenters and audience looked visibly moved.

Nothing routine or sloppy in this Proms performance. Pierre Boulez "....explosante-fixe" (1985) scintillated because Roth and his orchestra respect the music enough to create it properly. With his background in baroque, Roth knows the connection between baroque and new music. Please read more here.  One of the hallmarks of the French aesthetic is lucid intelligence. Think Descartes, Moliere, Voltaire. Complex elaborations need clear basic foundations.  Debussy's swathes of subtle  colour sparkle because he understood the importance of clarity. It's no accident that Boulez was perhaps the finest Debussy interpreter of all.  

The original  "Mémoriale ...explosante-fixe" was written to honour Stravinsky, but the larger 1985 version also honours Debussy. The soloist is now surrounded by two other flautists and a small ensemble, so we can hear the purity at the soul of the piece. This is one of the relatively rare pieces where Boulez extends his palette with electronic effects, but these didn't come through as effectively as the "acoustic" playing, perhaps because I was sitting in the wrong place. Impressionist painting shines because colours are carefully defined by light, not muddied.  "....explosante-fixe" is impressionistic in that individual units are clear, the rainbow created by good players for sensitive listeners. Sophie Cherrier combined technical excellence with sophisticated élan. I thought of Pan, surrounded by purity, an image behind the original Mémoriale and in Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.

The technical excellence of the SWR Symphony Orchestra made György Ligeti's Lontano shimmer, like "music from another planet".  Like Ligeti's Atmosphères, this reached mass audiences thanks to being "borrowed" for the movies. So nuts to the myth that audiences are hard wired not to cope with new music! I got hooked on Ligeti when I heard 2001: a space odyssey, hypnotized by the music, ignoring the movie. Lontano was premiered by the SWR SO, whose players remembered the importance Ligeti placed on precision. The textures are so complex that they benefit from the careful attention Roth and his orchestra gave to them.  Roth marked the invisible bars, showing how the music doesn't simply end when the players stop. The silence evaporates into the ever more rarified resonances of the imagination. 

It's a mistake, I think, to expect  Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra to sound quaint and folksy. In 1940, the composer was looking back on his past well aware of what was happening in the Europe he'd left behind, and in the  right wing extremism in Hungary, whose government aligned itself with Hitler. At this Proms performance the SWR SO played it so well that they brought to the fore the atmosphere that Bartók might well  have intuited: the end of civilized culture.  This isn't a concerto for orchestra for nothing, since the interactions between the different parts of the orchestra suggest the importance of relationships and cross-connections.  Roth and the members of the SWR SO listen to each other: their starting point isn't their own playing but precision and attentiveness . Boulez conducted Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra many times.  Ten years have not dimmed the memory of him  conducting it at the Royal Festival Hall with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.. Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned for the Boston Symphony Orchestra by Serge Koussevitsky. As the present BSO embarks on a new future, they might do well to listen to Roth and the SWR SO.

Top and bottom photos: Roger Thomas

Edininburgh International Festival Aimard Ligeti Debussy

Juliet Williams writes from the Edinburgh International Festival :

"The acclaimed French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard gave a totally stunning recital yesterday at Edinburgh's Queen's Hall as part of this year's Edinburgh International Festival. Arguably the most musically excellent performance as yet of this year's Festival, his standard of playing was an honour for the Scottish capital.

In a generous programme, Aimard alternated a selection of Debussy's Preludes with a selection of Ligeti's Etudes, of which he is perhaps the greatest living interpreter. Of two of the Etudes performed here (Entrelacs and Der Zauberlehrling), he is the dedicatee. He has recorded both these and the Debussy Preludes .

Aimard's playing developed into the programme, coming to the fore in an excellent account of White on White (named for its exclusive use of the piano's white keys), then going from strength to strength. Fem (Ligeti), Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir (Debussy) and especially L'Arc en Ciel (The Rainbow – Ligeti) stood out for me in the first half. This closed with the extended prelude Automne a Varsovie, its melancholic tone reflecting both the mood of the that time year and the political circumstances of that city at its time of composition. Its title and content both reference the Polish composer Chopin.

In the second half, En suspens -which has a syncopation not dissimilar to Arc en Ciel, Brouillards  (fog) with its unique dissonant ending and Entrelacs were particularly enjoyable.The alternation of works of different styles through the performance was reminiscent though also of another recording – also featuring Ligeti – in which some of these Ligeti Etudes were performed in alternation with traditional Pygmy music. The Debussy Preludes have been both recorded on Deutsche Gramophon and performed live by Aimard at last year's Proms, concluding the Cadogan Hall Monday lunchtime chamber music stream of programming.

That concert concluded with the Feux d'artifice (Fireworks) prelude, which depicts in music the closing finale of the firework display in Paris for Bastille day, the nationalistic sentiments  of the occasion being referenced in strains of La Marseillaise. This piece is a wonderful finale and therefore inevitably a hard act to follow. The account given yesterday in Edinburgh was if anything even better than that last year in London, and the attempt to include further material afterwards was perhaps not entirely satisfactory. It is very understandable that the longest and very dramatic L'escalier du diable, inspired by struggling through a sudden Pacific storm on a bicycle, was seen as the culmination of the Ligeti series. However it might be argued that this could have been used to conclude the first half of the concert, and to finish as before with the Fireworks.

However this is a very minor point regarding a performance of quality which can only be described as superlative. It was broadcast live on BBC Radio Three and remains available via the iPlayer for another six days. I cannot recommend it enough."

Atmosphèric Lohengrin Berliner Phil Prom Ligeti Wagner Sibelius

At BBC Prom 63, Simon Rattle brought the Berliner Philharmoniker and did more than just play. They illuminated their music. Ligeti's Atmosphères, Wagner's Act 1 Prelude to Lohengrin, Sibelius Symphony no 4, combined in a flowing seam where each highlighted the other.

The long, reverberating opening chord of Ligeti's Atmosphères gives way to layer after layer of extended sounds. This really is "music from another planet", emanations so pure, high and unnaturally sustained that it must be hell to play. No "melody" as such, but changes of direction and density. Long hollow chords which seem to move from some extraterrestial plane, heralding a rumble from which other chords arise. Low brass pulsate, and the strings shimmer, like rays of light stretching outwards, accelerating in intensity. When I was a kid I used to look up at the sky and think think that shafts of sunlight bursting from clouds were "God", for that's how an abstract idea like God is depicted in religious imagery.

Above all, Ligeti's Atmosphères suggests a soaring sense of infinite expansiveness. Hearing the first strains of Wagner emerge from Ligeti  rings absolutely true in a deeper spiritual sense. Lohengrin isn't historical. Christianity had long since been established by the time Heinrich der Vogler came to Brabant. or he wouldn't be fighting the Huns. In any case, what's authentic about  Lohengrin or the whole Grail community for that matter? From a theological perspecvtive it's hogwash, if not outright blasphemy.  What the Grail represents, however, is something much more primeval than Christianity. It's an ideal that transcends time and context. Hearing this Prelude after Ligeti suggests that Grail values transcend human history, and derive from the cosmos. It goes without saying that the Berliner Philharmonikers are good. Here, they were exceptional. It wasn't just the beauty of their playing, it was the emotional committment .

Theodor Adorno hated Sibelius, in part because performance practice in those days emphasized the  picturesque aspects of his music rather than the innate structural qualities. Sibelius Fourth Symphony was a breakthrough, so shocking in its time that many thought it incomprehensible. In this performance, Rattle and the Berliners show how visionary Sibelius really was. Dark, primordial undercurrents, rent through by blasts of sharply defined chords. The imagery of light in Wagner, the  idea of abstract eternity in Ligeti.  The winds of change so familiar in Sibelius seem to blow from a higher level of consciousness. Sibelius's interest in the Kalevala and nature wasn't regressive but forward thinking. This performance emphasized the "wide open spaces" in the symphony, and the thrill of discovery that makes Sibelius so exciting from a modern perspective. How radical that ending sounds, considering when it was written.

Rattle and the Berliners changed focus in the second part of Prom 63. Ostensibly the connection between Debussy's Jeux and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe is ballet, but that's simplistic. Ballet music is constrained by the limits of the human body, but abstract music isn't. By choosing the Suite on Daphnis et Chloe rather than the full piece, Rattle could focus on the brisk liveliness in both works. In Debussy, the pace was tempered by a good sense of structure. Games, after all, depend on strategy not impulse. In the Suite from Daphnis et Chloe, Rattle and the Berliners could let loose with greater exuberance, capturing its innate spirit of freedom. Not, after all, so very different from the light-filled, open horizons of Ligeti, Wagner and Sibelius.

Games with Time : London Sinfonietta Prom 44

Delightful Londoin Sinfonietta experience at BBC Prom 44. Ligeti, Xenakis, Berio, Jonarthan Harvey, Louis Andriessen and John Cage. Mentally challenging but also intensely good fun. "Fun?" sneered someone not so long ago "That's not an acceptable term in music" But anyone who can't appreciate fun can't really appreciate creativity.To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "when a man is tired of fun, he's tired of life".

This Prom was also a challenge to creative thinking. No orchestra for Ligeti's Poème Symphonique, . Instead 100 metronomes furiously ticking away until their mechanisms run out of steam. Metronomes count time and tempo is a basic building block of music. Like Poème Electronique, it's an installation piece that breaks down rigid assumptions about how we process sound into music.

I've loved Luciano Berio's Sequenza V for years without knowing its background as it works fine as pure music. It's a study of breath control. The trombone emits tentative blips, then creates long, low lines that seem to probe into space. Trombones call to communicate. Byron Fulcher shows how his trombone can peak, sometimes like a moan, sometimes a long exhalation, probing space and reaching outwards. He's dressed as a clown, mocking the Victorian propriety of the Royal Albert Hall. But it's also a reference to a famous clown who lived near Luciano Berio when Berio was a boy. Berio liked humour because it was anti-authoritarian and broke down barriers.

Xenakis Phlegra  refers to the clash between the Gods of Greece and their predecessors, the Titans. Obviously it's not "pictorial" but a confrontation between jagged,  angular pulses and more complex emanations. Woodwinds, brass and percussion weave zigzags  around each other.. Gutsy, "wooden" sounds from the strings. A huge, elliptical emanation from the brass, then a strange blast that suddenly deflates. There's even a snatch of melody, a brief reprise before the piece speeds up maniacally, and ends with pulsating short signals, like transmissions from distant planets.

In Jonathan Harvey's  Mortuos plango, vivos voco, technology is the instrument. A boy's voice sings agains ta recording of  tolling cathedral bells. But the boy himself is now an adult. while his voice rermains that of a child, recorded when the piece was first created. Harvey is playing with time, for what we hear is both something frozen in the past and reconstituted  anew in performance.

Many of the themes in Prom 44 pulled together in Louis Andriessen's  De Snelheid (Velocity) (1984). Two identical groups (saxophone, brass, piano at the sides, flutes, harps, keyboards in the front and centre back what Andriessen calls "Buddha", woodblock percussion that operates as a giant metronome. Regular, unvarying pulse, but one which speeds up quicker and quicker until you can't count the beats. Any faster and the player might disintegrate. It's gloriously punchy and exuberant, but must be hell to play and keep together. The London Sinfonietta have Andriessen's idiom under their skins, so to speak, and have been playing him for years. André Ridder conducted, stylishly.

And then silence. Or not.  After 60 years, John Cage's notorious 4'33 still draws howls of rage from fundamentalists who don't think about what they listen to.  Cage makes us think about the art of listening, why and how we process what we hear around us. 4'33 is like a Cage Musicircus, where we're presented with layers of multiple stimuli. Every "performance" is unique, created by chance and happenstance. Unfortunately at the Proms everyone keeps reverently silent which defeats the purpose. But 4'33 is "music you can perform at home" at any time.  Indeed, in our 24/7 world of mass instant communication, ruled by technology, we need to heed Cage more than ever.

This Prom ended as performance art, volunteers texting randomly, like in an installation space. A cheeky concept!  But fun.

photo : Peter Forster

Scottish Chamber Orchestra Ligeti series

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra under their youthful and highly talented Principal Conductor, Robin Ticciati,are performing a mini-series of Ligeti this January, with concert performances repeated in both Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Ligeti is perhaps most widely known for his large-scale works from the1960s such as Requiem and Lux Aeterna as these are used in the soundtracks of Stanley Kubrick's films, most notably 2001: A Space Odyssey. His work for solo piano has also been popularised, albeit perhaps to a more specialist audience though its advocacy by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who was to join the SCO later this week. Please read review here.  The focus of these particular Ligeti performances is to champion not only the composer himself, who is arguably underappreciated. This gives the listener the opportunity to broaden their appreciation of this composer's chamber output. The forthcoming performance is of that composer's Chamber Concerto for 13 Instruments; last Saturday's performance (Queen's Hall, Edinburgh) featured the 1999 Hamburg Concerto for horn.

This remarkable work consists of a series of 14 very short movements over 15 minutes' total duration, in a wide range of styles. It uses natural harmonics between the solo horn and a quartet of four natural (valveless) horns in the orchestra, giving 'dirty' harmonies which create the very characteristic sound which distinguishes Ligeti's larger works. It has their distinctive sound, whilst also having the compact succinctness of the piano etudes.

It was a night of young high fliers as the evening's soloist, Principal Horn Alec Frank-Gemmill, who already has a string of recordings to his name, is only 26 years of age. He and Robin Ticciati had an obvious rapport which made their skilful performance of this challenging work all the more enjoyable. Further information about the work is given on the orchestra's helpful and informative website where both conductor and soloist give their views on it.

The quality of the orchestra's sound, which was crisp and clear in Edinburgh's Queen's Hall, was apparent from the outset and the opening Kodaly showcased their talents and those of their principal conductor. Brass and flutes particularly shone in this opening work. The multi-talented Ticciati, who also plays violin, percussion and piano was encouraged to conduct and learnt from both Sir Simon Rattle and Sir Colin Davis. Remembering as I do (very fondly) the CBSO's tours to London, this conductor easily reminds me of a young Simon Rattle. He has increased both the standard and the repertoire of this orchestra and this is an ambitious programme for him to offer. Ligeti, although he emigrated to the West, was born in Transylvania on the borders of what are now Romania and Hungary. He attended the Budapest Conservatory, where he met and developed a friendship with Kurtag. The concert's programming, subtitled From the Steppes of Central Europe placed his music alongside that of fellow Central Europeans Kodaly (an early influence on Ligeti), whose Dances of Galanta opened the concert and Dvorak, whose Fifth Symphony formed its second half. This enabled the listener to place Ligeti's music in a context of time and place and to see its occasional common ground as well as its obvious differences. For more, see here.

By Juliet Williams

Ligeti in Scotland - Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Juliet Williams writes from Edinburgh : Last night saw the second in this concert series, this time in Edinburgh's magnificent and acoustically excellent Usher Hall. Pierre-Laurent Aimard was sadly indisposed due to a hand injury and Tom Poster admirably stepped in to replace him at short notice, and gave a thoroughly enjoyable performance of the second Brahms concerto. Mr Poster was given a generous welcome by an appreciative audience. Poster is a winner of the Scottish International Piano Competition (in 2007) and has toured with the SCO and Robin Ticciati performing Ligeti's demanding and virtuostic concerto. There was clearly a good rapport between orchestra, soloist and conductor.

One of the pleasures of this happy and serene work is its almost chamber-music like equality between orchestra and soloist and here the orchestra gave a very good account of the work, again under Principal Conductor Robin Ticciati, especially the famous scherzo in the second movement. (Brahms said of this work that he had written, “quite a little tender piano concerto with quite a little tender scherzo”.)

The Ligeti piece featured in this second concert of the mini-series, "Chamber Concerto for 13 Instruments*, dates from 1970 and represents a transition between the evolution of his first mature style in the 1960s, giving rise to the better- known large scale works such as *Lux Aeterna, *and the greater use of melody which came to characterise his later works, such as the *Hamburg Concerto* featured on Saturday and played so well then by Alec Frank-Gemmill.

This *Concerto* has a four-movement structure (like the Brahms concerto which followed it): an initial opening with layers of texture unfolding from the woodwind; a second movement which is very slow and a fourth movement which is very fast. These are separated by a remarkable third movement with the rubric “preciso e meccanico”, inspired by clocks and machines gradually going wrong. The same precision of approach demonstrated by the orchestra in the earlier perfomance on Saturday served them very well here, and produced an excellent performance of this very challenging work. Although there was a generally high standard of playing, commendation is deserved in particular by the pianist, who at one point has the instruction, 'hammering like a madman', and the trombone, which has a strident melody bursting from the delicate sound textures hitherto to conclude the first movement.

This ambitious programming and consistently high standard of performance across a very varied repertoire is making the SCO an exciting ensemble to follow. More about the Scottish Chamber Orchestra here - their rare appearances iin London are greatly appreciated. For more on the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's Ligeti season please see HERE,

Aldeburgh Festival 2011

Aldeburgh is unique. It's not an all-Britten all-British festival. It has always been progressive and international. And it's not London. London can often be more provincial than Aldeburgh. as Britten knew very well. If only more Londoners knew their Britten!

The 2011 Aldeburgh Festival brochure is now out, full of excellent things. False controversy about the big first night, which sold out immediately. So what? Simon Rattle is one of the biggest names to come to Aldeburgh in years. He sold out the Royal Festival Hall and the Barbican a year before the concerts. And his Aldeburgh programme is exceptional - Messiaen's Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (a Rattle favourite) and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde – extremely perceptive pairing. This would sell out the Royal Albert Hall, so why the fuss about it selling out the tiny Snape auditorium?  It is being broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 which won't be quite so atmospheric, but will mean it's available to all. Let's not be hypocritical. The arts cost money and long-term Aldeburgh patrons have been supporting it for years. And why shouldn't people support whatb they care about?

Aldeburgh also doesn't do Grand Opera, which should come as no surprise to anyone into Britten's aesthetic. The spartan style intensifies the morality, intensifying the stark tensions. The 2011 Aldeburgh Opera is The Rape of Lucretia where the Greek drama concepts are clear. Choruses with major vroles but only one voice each.. What a cast - Angelika Kirschlager as Lucretia, Ian Bostridge (arguably the most intense Britten specialist of all), Susan Gritton,  Peter Coleman-Wright, Christopher Purves, Hilary Summers, Claire Booth and Oliver Knussen conducting.  This travels next to the Holland Festival and to Luxembourg, evidence of Aldeburgh's status in Europe.

Because Aldeburgh's conducive to chamber music and to experiment, it's always supported new music. On Sunday 12/6 there's a Homage to Ligeti. 100 Metronomes for fun but witty, Richard Steinitz for ballast and a series of excellent concerts from early afternoon til midnight. Britten, Rostropovich and the Cello  on 21/6 mixes talk, film and concerts. This year's featured composer is Marco Stroppa, culminating in the final weekend concert. Stroppa's music is being premiered with a new work by Peter Eötvös and Boulez ...explosante-fixe.... London Sinfonietta and Exaudi, so should be good. Other composers featured include Scelsi.

Exaudi are Aldeburgh regulars because their range stretches from early polyphony to the most avant garde work for voice.(The Aldeburgh style in a nutshell). What they're planning this year really is innovative. Everlasting Light is a reflection on Sizewell, where 50 years ago a nuclear reactor was built, turning a fishing village into Brave New World. This performance takes place late in the evening on the beach at Sizewell, blending Ligeti's Lux Aeterna with projections, singing and the landscape itself. Landscape meant a lot to Britten, so the idea of using the land itself as an element in art is very much in keping with the Aldeburgh ethos.

Song people are in for a treat. Matthias Goerne and Pierre-Laurent Aimard are giving the three Schubert collections on 18th, 19th and 20th, with a masterclass on 17th which I'll try to get to, as Goerne's gruff exterior belies exceptional insight and sensitivity. Two James Gilchrist concerts too, including Britten's Les Illuminations, one of the keystones of the repertoire.

Lots of early music too, Bach of course, and a special on Ockeghem's Requiem Mass  Concerts by Les Talens Lyriques and Christopher Rousset. Strangely, these are the main ones being broadcast on BBC Radio 3 this year.  Is it because they're "safe" ? A pity, as Aldeburgh isn't safe in the sense of predictable (and neither is this music if you think about it).

Britten loved visual arts, too, which is why exhibitions are also part of the Aldeburgh scene. This year there's a Philip Langridge tribute, curated by his son Stephen, the opera director. Video and audio clips, photos, personal memorabilia.  Unmisssable! My site carries more on the Aldeburgh  Festival than any other, so enjoy trawling thru posts of past years and related subjects.

For more information, please see  Aldeburgh Music website. 

Jurowski Das Klagende Lied, LPO

Vladimir Jurowski's third Mahler Das klagende Lied with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the South Bank was fun.  This time, it wasn't being recorded, but more relaxed, which is no bad thing with this work, which benefits from a whimsical touch.

The tenuous Mahler connection between the programmes on 26th (reviewed here) and 29th was dutifully marketed in Tuesday's mid concert talk, but the real reason for these programmes was that the LPO had planned to tour Hungary. The trip fell through but the programmes remained. This makes much more sense in musical terms.. The real focus was clearly on separate Austrian and Hungarian traditions. It also makes sense as the RFH debut of Barnabás Kelemen, the energetic young soloist in Bartók's Violin Concerto No 1 .And in programming terms, it reveals a much deeper inner logic, connecting dreams and atmospheric abstraction. Hooray - my faith in Jurowski is confirmed.

For Mahler's Das klagende Lied is almost more tone poem than cantata. Jurowski's wonderful in Das klagende Lied because his attention to detail and fine tuning enhances the Romantic glow.  Indeed, the text is a poem, and the soloists' parts don't exist as "parts" as such. Jurowski gets the atmospheric flow so well that it makes the strange storyline seem plausible. Magic, created from pure music.

Throughout the piece, there are echoes of Wagner, specifically snatches of Das Rheingold and Siegfried's Journey down the Rhine. Das klagende Lied tells of dishonesty and retribution, of young heroes who aren''t completely what they seem. Mahler isn't borrowing in a haphazard romantic way but deftly using the references to expand what he's writing. "Pop up windows" in a sense because they open out onto wider vistas. In essence, he's already exploring the idea of embedding song in symphony. An experienced listener will also pick out snippets that will form Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Mahler's Symhony no 1.

It's a fundamentally different approach to writing music that unfolds as narrative. There are many references, especially in the choral parts, to Carl Maria von Weber, another of Mahler's heroes.  Weber's operas are wonderful as music but not frequently performed as they're not specially stageworthy. The drama is in the music itself. Already Mahler is using musical form as theatre in itself, without needing to go down the opera route. The solo parts are subsumed into the orchestra like extended instrumental colour. The choruses are full of character. Individual pairs of singers stand out from the ensemble, giving depth and connecting with the soloists. Two trebles add an otherworldly eeriness. An off stage orchestra is heard from afar, reinforcing the idea of two worlds co-existing, reality and the supernatural.

Royal Festival Hall acoustics do not favour solo singers. Oddly enough, it helps when they're positioned above the orchestra rather than arrayed in front, even if they have to sing over the orchestra. Melanie Diener, Christianne Stotijn, Michael König and Christopher Purves were very good, but the London Philharmonic Choir augmented by members of the Glyndebourne Opera Chorus, were extremely good. Since Das klagende Lied depends so much on a good chorus, they certainly helped make this performance a success. Less so the positioning of the off stage orchestra. Playing in the Green Bar, sometimes with the doors to the auditorium closed, isn't ideal. No matter how good the players were, the effect was unnatural. Positioning them in boxes is often a better solution.

More on Ligeti, Kelemen and Bartók in a longer, more detailed version of this will shortly appear in Bachtrack, an excellent database for keeping your concert and opera diary up to date.(NOT all Bach!)  If Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony is of interest there's lots on this site about it because I've ;loved it and lived with it many years. Please use search butten, too many different posts.

Meetings with Remarkable Men - Langgaard and Foulds

Trust the Proms to throw up some oddities! Rued Langgaard and John Foulds, Proms 35, 23 and 27. Langgaard's Sfaerernes Musik,  Music of The Spheres (1916-18) defies any possible stereotype. Best let him describe it himself: ‘In Music of the Spheres I have completely given up everything one understands by themes, consistency, form and continuity. It is music veiled in black and impenetrable mists of death.’

It pops out of Langgaard's other work like a strange, exotic effloressence, as if a particle from outer space suddenly took root and flourished. It's inspiration in purest form, unadulterated by rational restraint. 

Thomas Dausgaard and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra were wise to match Langgaard with Ligeti's Lux Aeterna and his two miniatures Night and Morning.  Not for nothing Ligeti's music was immortalized in 2001: A Space Odyssey: it sounds like music from another dimension.  Famously, Per Nørgård  played a trick on Ligeti into reading Langgaard's score. Like everyone else, Ligeti could hardly believe such music could have existed at such a time and place.  Ferruccio Busoni dreamed of new means of expression, inspiring Edgard Varèse, another man before his time. Langgaard's a visionary too, for Music of The Spheres  exists in an atmosphere of its own. Trying to approach it in conventional music terms is utterly pointless.

Better, maybe to think of it as a fragment descending from a cloud of altogether more esoteric experience. Like so many other Europeans at the time,  Langgaard was into "alien worlds", ideas outside the European mainstream.  That's what connects Langgaard with Picasso, Debussy, Ravel, Loti, Colin McPhee, Szymanowski, Tagore, Blavatsky, Zemlinsky, Gandhi, Gurdijeff and, on a wilder plane, Heinrich Himmler who really did send missions to Tibet. Exoticism really is part of the western mainstream. 

And so to John Foulds, who quite likely would have understood Langgaard right away. Foulds was taken by theosophy, too, and went to India where he lived in an ashram. The Beatles and hippies were doing nothing new. Foulds's A World Requiem was revived at the Royal Albert Hall in 2007. Many admired its scale, but for me the performance seemed leaden and congested, the "orientalism" contrived.

Thus I wasn't looking forward to Foulds's Dynamic Triptych or April- England. Fortunately, Mark Elder and Donald Runnicles see the music in Foulds, rather than the curiosity value, so these two Proms performances restored Foulds's reputation  Although Dynamic Triptych is the greater work, I really enjoyed April-England because Elder and the Halle played it with such joyous grace. Even the "smeary" bits, where the notes are elided, not glissando, but stretched, sounded right, the way April rain "smears" the way things are seen. Distortion, but with a purpose, the way Nature itself distorts what we experience. Hearing this made me realise that there's a lot more to Foulds than just another forgotten Englishman. Like Langgaard, he's interesting because he connects to a greater "aliran", the Javanese term for the way a river grows from different streams, and flows apart into deltas that stretch over distances wider than the river alone. (Meetings with Remarkable Men is the title of a book by Gurdijeff, which became a cult movie in the 70's.)

Danses Macabres - Ravel, Ligeti, Benjamin, Mozart Prom 22

Danses macabres at Prom 22, with Mozart, Ligeti, George Benjamin and Ravel. Pierre-Laurent Aimard led the procession with Mozart's Piano Concerto no 7 (K595), using Mozart's own cadenzas. By Aimard's usual glorious standards, this was relatively restrained but in many ways this approach worked,  integrating  with the tautness of what was to come.

György Ligeti Musica ricerata no 2 Mesto, rigido e ceremoniale is skeletal. It was written in 1950 when such modern, innovative expression could get you thrown in prison under the Communist regime. Spare textures, quirkiness, music heard in the mind rather than as public consumption. Even the deremonial procession's secretive, sketched in outlines for the listener to flesh out. Jonathan Nott conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in the seminal Ligeti Project for Teldec some years ago. It was his finest moment. Sometimes his work is mixed, but at this Prom he was good.

Good Proms coverage for George Benjamin's Duet (2008) first heard at  Lucerne in 2009. and later at Aldeburgh the same year. It's a new departure for Benjamin, his first piece for piano and orchestra. Benjamin’s own notes describe it succinctly. “The piano has an enormous pitch compass and is capable of accumulating complex resonating harmonies, but each note begins to decay as soon as it it is sounded. On the other hand, stringed and wind instruments can sustain and mould their notes after the initial attack”. Thus Benjamin tries to find common ground, restricting the pitch range of the piano, avoiding the higher registers where decay occurs quickly. Percussion, harp and pizzicato create attenuated sounds that meet the piano on its own ground.

The piano part isn’t elaborately flamboyant: rather it’s spare, single notes occurring in series, like flurries. It evoked the movement of birds – short, quick jerks expanding into flourish as they take flight. Duet for piano and Orchestra is a different kind of concertante, where soloist and orchestra don’t interact in the usual way, but observe each other, so to speak. Then, with a punchy crescendo, it’s over. Benjamin’s music often sounds pointilliste, like detailed embroidery, but here there’s sharpness in design, and clarity of direction.

Piano and orchestra warily stalk each other's moves, so Duet is a kind of furtive, circulating dance. Excellent introduction to Ravel's danses macabres. First, Valses nobles et sentimentales, intelligently played, favouring the noblesse. Then, in apposite contrast, the relatively little heard Miroirs – Une barque sur l'océan and La valse, so famous that it's basic repertoire.

Hearing them together enhanced Miroirs. It made me think of the Flying Dutchman, not Wagner, but the  haunted soul doomed to sail the high seas. The moments of calm seemed eerie. La Valse of course isn't Johann Strauss. It's haunted too, by the horrors of war.  A fine performance from Nott and the BBCSO, though not, perhaps as savage as it might have been, but plenty good anyway..

Boulez Aldeburgh Ensemble Intercontemporain Carter Ligeti

Pierre Boulez brought Ensemble Intercontemporain to Aldeburgh. This is a major coup, which London venues can't easily arrange. But Aldeburgh can bring Boulez and his amazing orchestra to a hall seating barely 500, in a small country town, because Pierre-Laurent Aimard is Festival Director. They go back together since Aimard was a boy.

This grand finale to the Aldeburgh Festival was much more than a concert, it was a consecration. Ligeti, Boulez, Carter on the programme, but many others invisibly present because of their close connections: Messiaen, Stockhausen, Kurtág and so on. Boulez may not have conducted at Aldeburgh before - he's too expensive - but his "family" of composers have been an integral part of the Festival for years.

Edgard Varèse was the "First Wild Man of Modern Music". Boulez was one of his earliest champions. Varèse didn't have electronics or computer facilties: Boulez created IRCAM so composers of the future would have access to the best technology and support from other creative minds.  It was fitting that the concert should start with Varèse's Octandres. It's not his most famoue piece, but perhaps the most "classically" pure. Seven winds, one double bass -- no klaxons, so no extramusical baggage, but thoughtful exploration.

It was a good prelude to György Ligeti's Chamber Concerto (1969-70) expanding the concept of single instrument protagonists develops into music of delightful but deft complexity. Technically, Ensemble Intercontemporain are of course flawless, but this was truly inspired.  Superb musicianship is liberating, These players don't need to "think",  they play with instinctive freedom. Boulez's conducting style is understated, the merest jerk of a finger, the most refined twist of the wrist, but Ensemble Intercontemporain are so much in tune with him, they catch every nuance.

Some of the most amazing playing in the quieter passages, where the line floats seamlessly even though it's taken up by different instrument.. Perhaps another example of what Ligeti meant when he said his music levitated, like a helicopter. Catch this performance when it's broadcast on BBC Radio 3 online, on demand, internationally for 7 days from 30 June. Studio recordings may be more perfect, but this live performance had élan, vivacity, sparkle. "Breathtaking" is an over-used cliché, but in this case it was apt: you didn't want to breathe lest you miss a moment.  A very well kmown composer/conductor was sitting near me. He sat transfixed.

What are Years is the title of  Elliott Carter's new song cycle, an Aldeburgh commission, in association with the Lucerne Festival and Tanglewood. Aldeburgh is now up there with the biggest. Britten would be thrilled, though some of the British press would rather it became a provincial backwater.  The cycle is to poems by Marianne Moore. Five songs, a group of four which cohere, the final song leading into an unknown, new direction.

Moore's disjointed combinations of phrases without structure suit Carter's vocal writing. Although he was a singer himself (glee clubs and chorals in college)  he doesn't set text in a "singerly" way. Instead, he makes much of Moore's jerky rhythms, sudden bursts of expression, deliberate holdings back and silences. What are Years is certainly not poetry reading but music revealing itself through the framework of text. The voice acts like an instrument, probing and eliding, stretching and pulling the words as if they were abstract music. Claire Booth has the measure of the piece, interacting well with the orchestra, whose role here is critical, enveloping the fragmented nature of the text with a flowing, serene line that suggests the passage of time.

Natural then that Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain ended with Boulez's Dérive 2, written for Carter's 80th birthday, nearly a quarter of a century ago. Now Boulez himself is older than Carter was then. But age is irrelevant when a mind is fertile.  Perhaps that's why Dérive mutates, growing in the imagination. Boulez's music is strongly organic, in the sense that it evolves from deep roots, and grows vigorously. following a definite trajectory, excursions spiralling outwards and growing branches of their own. Again, Ensemble Intercontemporain played vivaciously, energetic but elegant. For me, one of the joys of Boulez's music is the sense of inventiveness and renewal. It may look "difficult" on the printed page, but musicians like Ensemble Intercontemporain reveals its innate liveliness.

Anthèmes II is another Boulez growth-piece, where the violin is augmented by electronics. Jeanne-Marie Conquer and the IRCAM sound desk make sounds that twine round each other symbiotically: which is which, who's leading whom? It's a sophisticated piece, yet approached with wit.

Hearing Dialogue de l'ombre double in the intimate performance space of the Britten Studio at Snape was wonderful. because seeing the movements intensifies the impact of the shifts in sound. It's like a dance bwetween clarinet (Jérôme Comte) and electronics, so seeing Comte change position marks stages in the ritual. The tiniest change of position means a change in sound dynamics. It's a concerto that uses the acoustic of performance space, and sound inaudible to the human ear . Hence the electronics, which pick up things that exist, but we couldn't otherwise hear. It's a multi-layered work, where the boundaries  between clarinet and electronics are deliberately blurred, teasingly up-ended. You have to listen acutely to pick up the subtle shifts and counterbalances, but it's immensely rewarding, especially enhanced by darkness and light as in this performance. Comte emerges from the shadows. Is he playing or is it the sound desk? Again, it's playful and organic, formidable but not at all frightening. If only Varèse, John The Baptist of modern music, could have been with us, too!

Aldeburgh - Bach Mass crowd flock to Boulez and Carter

Pierre Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain came to the Aldeburgh Music Festival. It was the big finale, and such an important concert that I'll write about it in depth later. First, though, the first of the two days with Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain, one of the most amazing orchestras in the world.

Nearly every year at Aldeburgh, Bach's Mass in B Minor gets an outing because it's perfect for Snape. This year, John Eliot Gardiner conducted, guaranteed to sell out within hours. Car park packed with tour buses, full of Bach Mass fans. But the wonderful thing is, many of the Bach Mass crowd came hours early, and heard Pierre Boulez talk to Pierre-Laurent Aimard. They stayed for the concert after the talk - Boulez Incises for Piano, Sonatina for Flute and Piano and Elliott Carter's Duo for Violin and Piano (Dimitri Vassilakis (p), Emmanuelle Ophèle (fl) Hae-Sun Kang (vn))

What's more the Bach Mass Crowd listened attentively. No-one brainwashed them into thinking "Difficult is Dangerous". Maybe they didn't all get it, but they were prepared to listen and think for themselves.  Surprisingly warm applause!  Maybe this audience related to Boulez because he's their own age group, but it felt sincere. A million times better than the stagey fake applause that happens in some places where people think they're proving something by standing up to clap, even for rubbish.

Boulez isn't the demon some sensationalists make him out to be. Nadia Boulanger hated everything about him,. One of the reasons for the schism in American and European tastes springs from Boulanger's jealous antagonism to Messiaen and anyone who might challenge her view that early Stravinsky was what modern music should be. Including Stravinsky himself, later on.

French music's always been different from Austro-German music, said Boulez, and the Nazis weren't going to promote modern music. So French musicians were isolated, especially during the Occupation, when Boulez was studying with Messiaen.  He learned Webern from scores, also hard to come by. Hans Rosbaud was his mentor, indeed, it was Rosbaud who asked Boulez to conduct at short notice when Rosbaud fell ill. Boulez took the train to Germany, and started another career. Learning from the score has been Boulez's mantra ever since. That's why he set up Domaine Musicale, so new music could be performed by top musicians who cared about it. From Domaine Musicale to Ensemble Intercontemporain, and to IRCAM.

Boulez talked about John Cage "from whom I learned so much", about American poetry and painting, which influence his music. Boulez's knowledge of European art and literature is formidable, though he didn't mention it in the talk.  He gave up on serialism and other isms decades ago, "It was too boring. Why twelve tones when you can have so many other possibilities?". But Schoenberg showed the way. Boulez and Aimard discussed various works, Le marteau sans maître, the Piano Sonatas, Cummings ist der Dichter.  They could have gone on much longer, but even at Aldeburgh, time schedules intrude.

Later, there was a screening of the film, Piano du xxe siècle, where Pierre-Laurent Aimard talks through Boulez Piano Sonata no 1, almost bar by bar, showing why it's so interesting. Aimard knows what he's talking about and is so enthusiastic it illuminates the full performance even if you already know the work. It's a wonderful film, made in 1985. lots of extras as background, like a shot of "Boulez's school report", Messiaen's comment on the official record of the Paris Conservatoire. "Un tel musicien! Il aurait un grand avenir."

The film is part of a series for French television, but is most certainly not dumbed down. Boulez, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Ligeti, each documentary filmed to enhance the music itself.  For this film, says Aimard, "we aimed for a risk taking element with the camera, keeping its movements  and gestures improvised, albeit prepared with the greatest of care in order to correspond to the extremely active and free gestures of the music".

Is that the secret of promoting music ? Not just new music, but all music. The film engages with a specific piece, describing how it works and how it came to be. Intelligence, imagination and freedom of spirit - just like the piece itself. No wonder Messiaen used this piece as basic teaching material.  He wanted his students to think,  and create original work. Those who hate  "difficult" music have only themselves to blame.

Breugelland - thoughts on Le Grand Macabre ENO

Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre is what he called an "anti-anti-opera" so thinking in opera terms doesn't work so well. Ligeti conceived it as a way of filling a perfomance space with anything that would have dramatic impact - theatre with music and many other things rather than music-theatre. La Fura dels Baus's production at the ENO is a very good realization of the composer's basic concept.

Pity the concept is so much of its time in many ways. Like Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Peter Blake for the Beatles) everything possible pulled together at random, the impact being the diversity. Personally I'd cut the Black and White Minister dialogue because it's daft, but it is so central to the whole that cutting it won't work. Cosmic panoramas don't have to be perfect in all parts.

The idea goes back forever though : Ligeti and Ghelderode deliberately invoked Breugelland, the spirit of chaos and infinitely detailed panoramas. Click on the image to enlarge. It's Breughel's The Triumph of Death - see the figure of Death on his mangy horse ? That was the image behind the original production. In the ENO production, Death is a fat man on a plastic bubble horse: but again this is perfectly in keeping with the Breughel/Bosch concept where all assumptions are overturned and made ironic. The whole medieval concept of feast and famine, extremes of excess and deprivation, moments where pleasure is frantically seized from the relentless progress of death.

Think Carmina Burana, with less singing. Click HERE for another Breughel image, a companion to the Triumph of Death. It's The Battle between Carneval and Lent. The people are feasting before Lent and austerity sets in. How do they know they might not be dead when Lent ends? So they party while they can.

So La Fura dels Baus also brings out other very important aspects of the chaotic mindset behind this opera or whatever you call it. "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die!" Hence the grim, brutalist sex, not for the sake of reproduction but as momentary distraction from death. Thus too the giant woman with the stale Big Macs in her lonely room, and the fixation on body parts and functions. These are in the script and in Bosch and to a lesser extent in Breughel. Look at the image of Bosch HERE and see just how seriously obscene medieval art could be. There's a person admiring himself in a mirror, but the mirror is a monster's behind! So the giant on stage at the ENO is a metaphor, its very hugeness a comment on the small-scale frantic activity all round it.