Women in Music, on International Women’s Day

It's International Women’s Day which these year does matter more than ever, when the forces of small minded represssion are gaining power, all over the world, in many forms.  ears ago a young upstart advised me "Read more Feminist books". Uh? Like billions of others have done for millenia and are still doing today, I've learned the hard way. It isn't just about middle class western values.  Caring about people, as people, enabling them to have decent lives, these are the values that underpin the issues. And that's also why there's a backlash from those so insecure that their fragile egos need to be supported by hurting others. Real men don't need that.  At least half the world's population is female: We should be celebrating women who do what they do and their best, whoever they are.

But this is a music blog so I'll try to stick to music. We can, and should, be listening to women in music all the time.  It's impossible not to listen to musicians who are women : so many excellent soloists and ensemble players! It is an issue that sometimes they aren't paid the same as men, but they exist.   Making it to the top as a conductor or music director is tough, but that's tough anyway, and there's enormous nastiness in the business, not least of which comes from fans who don't actually listen.  It's about the music, not the ego of the listener. And there have been women composers for hundreds of years, not just in western classical music.  We need to know, and to keep learning. No bandwagon gestures, no instant fixes. No-one plays, writes or conducts with their anatomy, and that includes men. Only when gender is no longer an issue will we have reached common sense.

Picking out favourites  is invidious because good musicians are always themselves, and distinctive.  Over the years I've written a lot about a few special people, like Clara Schumann, whose greatest contribution was her pioneering role as a performer, travelling all over Europe, arranging her own gigs, transport, accommodation, publicity etc. at a time when there were few celebrity artists who supported themselves.  She's the equivalent of Chopin or Paganini, re-shaping the reception of classical music in the 19th century.  Yet still some think she needs promoting for the work she wrote to please Robert.  Hail thee, Clara, a working mother who was a breadwinner, who made Robert's career possible.

And Vítezslava Kaprálová, whi died aged only 25 yet left behind a considerable body of work.  From childhood, she came into contact with almost every big name in Czech music circles, so perhaps it was inevitable that she was something of a child prodigy. She started writing her own music from the age of 9 and entered the Brno Conservatory aged 15. She moved between Prague and Paris, developing a strikingly independent and original voice. She began conducting in her teens and worked with masters like Vítězslav Novák and Václav Talich. In her early 20's she was conducting the Czech Philharmonic and made a notable impact on her contemporaries, including schoolmate Rafael Kubelik. In 1938, aged 22, she conducted the BBC  Symphony Orchestra in her own Miliitary Sinfonieta (1937). Against the background of Nazi confrontation, it's quite a statement. Fierce, bright brasses suggest defiance, more lyrical passages suggest the endurance of more peaceful (possibly Czech)  values.. The tension between driving ostinato and themes of soaring freedom give the piece considerable sophistication. Perhaps we can even hear echoes of Janáček's Sinfonietta in the cheeky, rhythmic fanfare towards the end.  It may well be Kaprálová's humorous way of acknowledging quirky nationalist spirit.  Is the Military Sinfonietta "women's work" ? Of course not : it's a daring take on Janáček's Sinfonietta, by a young composer whose father was a Janáček specialist. She knew what she was doing. I've written a lot about her songs and piano works, which are a lot less famous.  (click on link below)

And then there's Rebecca Saunders, one of the best living British composers, which is saying something. Needs no special pleading : she's that good.  Plenty to find more about her on the net, and many opportunities to hear her music. Saunders  once described her method as being like looking at a sculpture from different angles, in different light, against different backgrounds. Yet Traces(2006,commissioned for Staatskapelle Dresden) operates on a much deeper level: hence the double basses, sounds as darkly sonorous as it's possible to get with string instruments,legato that curves and stretches and lifts off suddenly, to slide along from a different angle. It's like touching a work of art, "feeling" it intuitively. As a blind person might see, visualizing by instinct and emotion, surprisingly sensual.  In the second part,it changes tack. Sharper, brighter textures now, very high strings, though the same sense of sweeping curves, sculpting shapes in swathes of sound. It's like glissandi but created by a group of different individuals playing in such connection they move as a unit, stretching the palette beyond what a single instrument could do. Brass and woodwinds form similar blocks, so there's a sense of great forces rotating, revealing different aspects of sound as they move, leaving in their wake ripples of unpitched percussion. Towards the end the keening sounds stretch out, becoming so pure and clean the music seems to float into infinity.

Arditti Quartet Wigmore Hall Rihm Saunders Abrahamsen Clarke

Wild weather outside the Wigmore Hall on Halloween Night, but the Arditti Quartet sparkled, revitalizing what has been a relatively bland five months in London music (with a few notable exceptions).

Brisk start to proceedings with James Clarke's String Quartet (2002-3) in place of the scheduled premiere of Clarke's 2012-5 for two string quartets. The JACK Quartet were due to join the Ardittis for this, but Hurricane Sandy intervened. No worries, since Clarke's String Quartet was commissioned for the Ardittis in the first place.They played with brio, relishing its zany, almost-but-not-quite anarchic delights. Ecstatic audience reaction.

Hans Abrahamsen's serene String Quartet no 4 (2012, UK premiere) was somthing of an odd man out in an evening of musical bourrasque, but I loved it. It's beautifully constructed in four movements, starting in a pitch so high it seems ethereal. Abrahamsen calls this movement "hoch im Himmel gesungen".  Arditti's bow scarcely seems to move, but amazing sounds emerge. Ashot Sarkissjan shadows the first violin, ghost-like, adding depth. The earthiness of folk melody, translated in graceful refinement.  A jam session for samisen and koto? Cello and viola (Lucas Fels and Ralf Ehlers) reinterpret the first movement in rumbling low pitch. Pizzicato reinforcing the idea of samisen and ancient instruments.  "Big black raindrops" says Abrahamsen in his notes. Joyous purity, good-natured poise.

"Fletch" refers to the feather placed on the end of an arrow to stabilize it in flight. You don't need to know this to follow Rebecca Saunders's Fletch for String Quartet (2012, UK premiere) since so much of her music moves like physical form. Great forward thrust and balance, purposeful.  Even her programme notes sound musical  "....this elemental sonic gesture is an up-bow sul point double-harmonic trill, often with fast glissando, crescendo-ing rapidly out of nothing to fortissimo....surface, weight and feel are part of the reality of performance. The weight of the bow on the string the differentiation of touch of the left-hand finger on the string...feeling the weight of sounds is an integral part of the composing process.... being aware of the grit and noise of an instrument, tracing the essence of the fragments of colour within a confined and reduced palette of timbres and exploring the physical gesture which creates a fragment of sound"  Anyone who still thinks modern music isn't emotional needs to hear Rebecca Saunders. Her music moves sensually, as if it were a living being, alert, sensitive, eclectic.

Before Hurricane Sandy, the Arditti and JACK Quartets were planning to play Mauro Lanza's Der Kampf zischen Karneval und Fasten for octet ( 2012, UK premiere).  One can imagine what that might sound like! Instead, the Arditti Quartet played Wolfgang Rihm's String Quartet no 13. Explosive attack at times, vigorous.  A deliberately deceptive ending to further throw you off balance, in a nice way. Listen to the August 2012 performance at the IMR HERE.


photo :  Zé Carlos Barretta from São Paulo, Brasil

Wolfgang Rihm at 60 - London Sinfonietta

Eager anticipation for the London Sinfonietta's Wolfgang Rihm at 60 concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Part of the disappointment was that it wasn't really "Rihm at 60" but a revisting of earlier works. That's not necessarily a minus since Rihm himself loves revisiting familiar work from a wildly new perspective.

Rihm's Nach-Schrift (Eine Chiffre für Ensemble (2004) is an outgrowth from the extensive Chiffre-Zyklus (recording here) written during the course of the 1980's. Chiffre means "cipher", so part of the fun is trying to discern how ideas disguise themselves. Score-studier's paradise. But Rihm himself is a natural anarchist, not a pedant. What's striking about his music is its joyous energy and vigour. In Nach-Schrift, (postscript),  do we hear the sound of rushing footsteps in that merry ostinato? It's as if the music were playing hide and seek, teasing us with patterns that seem to repeat but suddenly whisk themselves away when we grasp them. The xylophone keeps things light hearted, despite dense textures. Bright, strident trumpets and giant contrabass trombone. Low murmuring contrabassoon and clarinet, like mysterious voices of darkness.

Will Sound More Again (2011) (an outgrowth of Will Sound, 2005), comes seven years on from Nach-Schrift, and is much more densely orchestrated. Very firm structure, weighted down with tuba, contrabassoon, the winds extended by two cheeky saxophones. This time there's a sense of churning and turning, ideas reverberating  in concentric waves. This time there's a new figure in the landscape, struggling against the orchestra. Andrew Zolinsky let the piano taunt and trick, bright, lyrical lines bursting forth with joyous freedom. The orchestra's trying to encircle him but he won't be bound. The title? "Something will sound because it wants to", says Rihm in the notes. "The composer obeys the will  and the development and notates the spaces in between". Sometimes it flows undergound, but its trajectory and life-force are not submerged.

Rihm's Ricercare in memoriam Luigi Nono (1990) references Nono's ideas on spatial relationships. The small orchestra is arranged in a semi circle,  the usual instrument groups separated, with gaps between, and two percussion desks at each end. Elegant directional flow, high pitched sounds stretching upwards and outwards. Not vintage Rihm, but useful as a reminder of what he - and we - owe Luigi Nono for his concept  of music as invisible architecture.

This puts Rebecca Saunders Quartet (1997-8) into context, for Saunders is a master of music as sculptural  form.  She was one of Rihm's early students but early on developed a totally distinctive, unique style. Her music is almost tactile, as if the notes are tracing curves like fingers exploring their way around an invisble shape by instinct. Quartet is scored for an unusual combination of accordion, bass clarinet, piano and double bass so there's much more than the usual communal listening that makes chamber music so rewarding. The accordion is an ideal instrument for Saunders, as it's like the human body, breathing in and out through "lungs". Saunders's music has a deeply organic pulse, as if she's describing a body at sleep, anchored with a steady  heartbeat, but drifting in subconscious dreams. At times the accordion made sounds so ethereal they seemed to come from inside the psyche. Quartet rotates and turns, not like Rihm's churnings, but more intimate and meditative. Indeed, Saunders's music is more spiritually gratifying. once you understand where she's at. She's highly respected in her own right apart from the Rihm connection and has been a regular at the Proms and at Huddersfield.

Jörg Widmann, a much later Rihm pupil, has a high profile because he and his sister, the immensely talented violinist Caroline Widmann, have spent a lot of time in London and are well connected. The South Bank and Wigmore Hall have done a lot for Widmann, whose music fills a niche for audiences not yet ready for Rihm and Saunders. Dubairische Tänze (2009) is a series of 8 unconnected pieces over 18 minutes. A parody of Viennese waltz, of polka, of Bavarian oompah band, then novelty items like two basins of water being splashed about. A new kind of percussion but one that outstays its welcome within seconds. Perhaps there's a Rihm influence in the madcap mayhem of the later segments but they came over more as soundtracks for cartoons.  Unusual audience.There were well known composers and musicians  present, but also some who probably don't go out much. One woman read a newspaper throughout the concert, while another spent the whole evening playing games on an iPad.  Perhaps that accounted for the response - wildly enthusiastic applause and muttered murmurings.

Although I love the London Sinfonietta and once had an unbroken run of every single concert for five years, they didn't sound much like themselves this evening. Even though I wasn't listening from score (often the sign of a Beckmesser) some entries felt wrong and the overall dynamics somewhat muffled. Thierry Fischer, longtime conductor of the BBCNOW in Wales, has a strong interest in modern music but his approach seemed more suited to large ensemble than tight, small scale detail.

Lots about Rihm and Saunders on this site, please search. Rihm was the subject of a Barbican Total Immersion two years ago, which I wrote about here. .

Huddersfield Festival on the BBC

Sort of!  The 2010 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival programme looked really good. Rebecca Saunders as composer-in-residence, for example. Saunders is one of the most exciting British composers though she lives in Berlin and is oriented towards the German scene. Mentor, Wolfgang Rihm, no less. Read more about Rebecca Saunders on this site and also on the Huddersfield website which has videos, soundclips and an interview with her. For her, it would have been worth attending.  November, though, is a busy time for me and Huddersfield is far away, and for that kind of money you could go to Berlin, so I thought I'd catch up with the BBC broadcasts.

Sure enough, for the next five weeks each Saturday night, highlights from the Huddersfield Festival  can be heard live, online and on demand. Which is excellent because the music reaches thousands more, and broadcast rights help cover costs. Usually the BBC is scrupulous about telling us what pieces and which composers will be played. Now you have to guess and look back at the Huddersfield site for help. Obviously those keen enough to tune in will be listening anyway, but it's cumbersome and inconvenient.  Contemporary music needs sensitive marketing (especially with the image Huddersfield throws up).  The BBC blurb tells nothing. Surely a bit of finesse wouldn't go astray?

Is this a sign of some new BBC policy? Another programme features music from Turku and Talllinn. But what music? Admittedly this is a programme about tourism and junkets, but it would be nice to know. (We can all guess Arvo Part etc)  Maybe audiences don't want music anymore but lifestyle decor. But personally I think, in times of restraint amny business should concentrate on key product. Cut the extras like trips abroad, boxes at the Proms, celebrity presentters etc and stick to music. MORE JOBS LESS JUNKETS (read link!) Indeed, on hearing the programme, all my fears were realised. Two presennters not one and the music  treated like it was an intrusion. Interviews with festival director and musicians OK because they care about what they're doing, though the director could have been edited, which is normal practice. With contemporary music you need to get people to think, wow, I want to hear more. Here, you have to fight the impulse to switch off.  Too much emphasis on window dressing presenting, the product itself down the tubes. Defeats the whole purpose of broadcast. Maybe I shouldn't have said "more jobs" but real jobs. Notice the BBC website now has a tab for "presenters". Wrong perspective.

Luke Bedford opera - BCMG 2010/11 season

2010-2011 with the BCMG (Birmingham Contemporary Music Group) looks exciting. Luke Bedford's first opera, Seven Angels, eagerly awaited by all who know how well Bedford writes for voice.

"Seven angels fall through space and time. When they come to rest in a desert landscape they imagine the creation of a legendary garden that once flourished there, and its destruction from greed and neglect". The text, by Glyn Maxwell, is nspired by Paradise Lost. The opera interprets the themes of John Milton’s great epic poem for a modern audience facing the potentially apocalyptic consequences of a changing climate and diminishing resources.

If it is anything like Bedford's Good Dream She has, also inspired by Milton, and adapted by Maxwell, it should be wonderful. Please read more about that by clicking the link. Lots on Bedford on this site!

Featuring seven singers and BCMG players, conducted by Nicholas Collon, Luke Bedford’s music for the opera is "both dark and seductive, tense and lyrical by turns, and integrates solo voices and choral textures", say those who've heard it. If it's anything like Good Dream She Has, wo!

The opera’s post-apocalyptic landscape is realised by Japanese visual artist Tadasu Takamine. Seven Angels is the first collaboration between BCMG and The Opera Group.  They were the team that briought the wonderful George Benjamin Into The Little Hill , so again the prospect looks good. Follow the link and see why.

Seven interesting concerts !. See the BCMG site for more details. Looks like I'm heading for Birmingham on 10th October for Simon Holt, Rolf Hind and Helmut Lachenmann. Lots more coming up - Rebecca Saunders (Visible Traces, read more about her here),  Mark Anthony Turnage, Birtwistle, Morton Feldman, (The viola in my life, a favourite) etc. And Ollie Knussen, too, of course.

Simon Bainbridge, Rebecca Saunders : music as sculpture

The joy of being in cities like London is that there's so much on, you're spoiled for choice. Last Saturday alone there were 6 different good things on offer. The one I wish I'd been at was the Wigmore Hall where the Arditti Quartet and the Hilliard Ensemble played several new works, including Simon Bainbridge's Tenebrae.

This is what the Times, said, "a tough but atmospheric work that appeared to take its cue from the English title — Shadows — of the Paul Celan poem it set. Certainly the use of silence, and of strings to cushion the gentle, overlapping chanting of the voices on eerie chords, seemed to suggest an “otherworld” shadowing the human. I just wished that the voices had something more interesting to do. All the extrovert break-outs came from the strings." The Times is not the place to go to read about new music but at least that helps a bit. I wish I'd been there! Bainbridge is one of the most original current British composers, quite different from the "religious" crowd like Finnissy, MacMillan, Harvey, Tavener.

Bainbridge previously set Primo Levi, extremely well, in Ad Ora Incerta and Four Primo Levi Settngs, so Paul Celan should follow naturally. Indeed, I've always thought of Bainbridge in terms of Paul Celan, so I'm kicking myself for missing this. Last night I was listening to the recording, about which I'll write more later.

Magnus Lindberg said “music is making notes vibrate in space”. There’s also the often-quoted phrase describing architecture as “frozen music”. Hence, Simon Bainbridge’s Music Space Reflection addresses itself to Daniel Liebeskind’s innovative building for the Imperial War Museum North. The music was created to be heard in that building, the audience encouraged to look up and around them, even to move around to appreciate how movement adapted what they heard. The idea, I think, is that the listener can process sound in relation to space, and respond to surroundings in a musical way. I heard it in the flat, conventional auditorium at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which almost certainly limited the experience. There were wide screen projections of images like glass and metal – nothing more explicit – but these were distracting rather than helpful.

The orchestra played in four equally balanced blocks across the platform, amplified sensitively by microphones and speakers in unusual formations, such as above and behind the audience. The resonances were quite bizarre, genuinely imparting a sense that sound was coming from four dimensions, and adding a low, rumble giving a depth of sound not otherwise possible from conventional instruments. It felt as though we were hearing the very pulse of the earth.

The music unfolds against a deep electronic deep reverberation, moving swiftly in different directions, sometimes creating angular dissonances, sometimes rotating in whimsical flurries. Sometimes the sounds turn on a sudden pivot, changing direction as if they were rounding corners. You don’t need visual clues, but you can “feel” glass and metal in the clear, sharp textures, solid forms against transparent. This is very expressive music, though not at all “programmatic”: it’s far too imaginative and quirky. Just as architecture is a means of giving shape to “empty” space, even silence is part of Bainbridge’s concept. At the end, sounds gradually dissipate, but even then, there’s a structure to the way they fade into the computer-enhanced hum, so understated that only sensitive ears can pick it up. In nature, too, there are many sounds almost imperceptible to human ears, but they are there, nonetheless, and affect us subliminally.

Driving home I listened to BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now programme on the Berlin Avant Garde. Quite interesting speakers though I'm not sure about the music. One piece reminded me of many hours spent in an intensive care unit praying the machines didn't deviate from relentless hum because of what that might mean. But forward it to 22 minutes, when Rebecca Saunders comes on. Blauuw, written for the trumpeter Marco Blauuw is a wonderful piece, so listen before it goes off air on 14th.

Music is invisible, but it's created by sound waves and vibrations which are physical phenomena, and affected by where they are made. Saunders's music is extremely physical. She uses sound like probes, exploring the space around it: sound waves expand or retract differently in different environments, subtly adapting to the space in which they are heard. At the Proms in 2009, her Traces was performed. Read about it HERE If you think in conventional thematic development, it seems formless, til you realize that what's she's doing is using music to "feel" a way around ideas, like a blind person might use their fingers to explore what they can't see. It's a whole new way of thinking about music, extremely sensual and physical but in a subtle way that grows out of space rather than existing in limbo. Rebecca Saunders sculpts with sound, the way a sculptor might shape a piece of marble, following the natural form inherent in the stone.

THIS is where I went Saturday night - Britten Sinfonia at the QRH. I went because the programme was very well chosen, designed to showcase Elliott Carter's Dialogues, from 2005, an important work that has been recorded 3 times already as far as I know. It's a very important work in the vast Carter canon, and needs to be known by anyone wanting to understand Carter's work. Performance was good enough, but the last time I heard this live it was conducted by Pierre Boulez, Carter's friend for over 50 years, who's one of the best Carter interpreters of all. The Britten Sinfonia is a good orchestra, but the booklet presentation could have been better.

Andriessen De Staat Prom 58 2009

De Staat is a seminally important work. So much modern music stems from it, not only "serious" classical music but progressive popular music too. No De Staat no Different Trains and many other things.

De Staat is so radical that it still sounds fresh after almost 40 years. Essentially, it's a wild, almost savage piece that breaks all the rules of form and development that constitute formal music. But such manic, kinetic energy! Driving, compelling rhythmic patterns drive the piece forward. The patterns are circular, revolving on themselves relentlessly without beginning or end. Structurally, blocks of density are intersected by planes of sharp brightness.

De Staat is also interesting because it transcends text. It's based on Plato's The Republic where music is denounced as a form of subversion. The words matter. At early performances, audiences were given the text to read carefully. Yet De Staat transcends text. The singing is deliberately embedded into the music, almost abstract, like a cryptic code whose meaning goes deeper than surface words. Modern music doesn't do simple word-painting. Meaning is absorbed, translated into abstract sound. Much modern writing approaches this state too. Just yesterday we heard Rebecca Saunders's Traces, which springs from Samuel Beckett's exploratory syntax. (Another Beckett-inspired composer is Pascal Dusapin)

The texts are in ancient Greek, which most people don't understand nowadays, which is all the more reason to focus on how the music itself expresses meaning, not just the words. The final chorus is illuminating for it quotes authoritarian dogma against innovation. "Change always invokes far-reaching danger. Any alteration in the modes of music is always followed by alteration in the most fundamental laws of the State". Nothing has changed since Plato. Modern music is hated for much the same reasons, as if easy music makes life safe.

So Andriessen's unremitting, hard driving planes of sound express something about society and its pressures. This Proms performance, conducted by Lucas Vis, leading the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, celebrated the composer's birthday, so wasn't quite as intense as some performances, where the relentless, pounding rhythms create severe anxiety and tension. This is an ensemble for whom the work is basic repertoire – listen to the live recording, also by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, from the 1978 Holland Festival, included as a CD in the book by Robert Adlington, Louis Andriessen : De Staat (2004).

This sense of fear and danger is important, for the driving repetitions represent the idea of conformity. Hence the need for tight, disciplined performance. Repetition is conformity, strictly imposed. From which freedom, non-conformity and creative innovation can break loose. Perhaps that's why I admire Ravel's Bolero and liked Salonen's perceptive performance).

The very structure of De Staat is meaning. As Andriessen has said, "there is no hierarchy in the parts". The chorus is only one of the several units in the piece that function in parallel, rather like society itself. Hence the phalanx of brass positioned on both sides of the orchestra, and the "chorus" of violas and lower strings. Voices may be suppressed in authoritarian states, but abstract music can still speak.

This programme was extremely well chosen, placing De Staat between Steve Martland's Beat the Retreat and Cornelis de Bondt's Closed Doors. Martland's piece is a protest against government laws on outdoors entertainment, a cheerful act of irreverent anarchy. De Bondt's piece, from 1985, starts and ends with a deep sonic boom that reverbrated nicely in the Royal Albert Hall. It's part of a much larger work that pivots different threads of music history upon each other. That's why there were two conductors, not in itself any big deal (Charles Ives did it decades ago). Like De Staat, the material circulates, disparate parts that can't meld.

Another recommended recording of De Staat is by the Schoenberg Ensemble, conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw, a superb performance, with a stellar group of singers, but with one big caveat, that's all there is on the disc and it's expensive. The Netherlands Wind Ensemble recording includes Il Principe, part of a series of works associated with De Staat as a kind of mega-cycle (and you get the book, too).

This Prom was woefully under-attended, perhaps because it was the start of the last holiday weekend of the summer, when everyone's out of town, or perhaps because the early evening concert was Tchaikovsky, whose fans don't overlap with Andriessen's. But that's why broadcast and online repeat listening is so valuable. Not everyone can have the luxury of getting into London for a concert that ends after much public transport closes for the night. But many, many more get to hear the music at home, or on the radio, wherever they may be, in London or anywhere else. Why should music be the privilege of a closed elite? Thank goodness for technological innovation!

Rebecca Saunders is the Real Thing Prom 56

Rebecca Saunders is The Real Thing as modern composers go. This isn't at all "musical fast food" which gives an instant kick but rebounds on your system. You have to savour it thoughtfully, to engage with the wonderful range of timbres and colours that emerge: a bit like not rushing a vintage wine, so it breathes and develops on the palate. Look at her photo, where she stares out fearlessly, absorbed in thought. No artifice, no compromise, but a kind of inner purity that promises great depth. Livelier photos HERE

Prom 56 showcased Saunders's Traces, premiered the previous night in Dresden with the Staatskapelle and Fabio Luisi. Listen to this on repeat broadcast and on TV, and read the programme notes which are very informative.

Saunders describes her method as being like looking at a sculpture from different angles, in different light, against different backgrounds. Yet Traces operates on a much deeper level: hence the double basses, sounds as darkly sonorous as it's possible to get with string instruments, legato that curves and stretches and lifts off suddenly, to slide along from a different angle. It's like touching a work of art, "feeling" it intuitively. As a blind person might see, visualizing by instinct and emotion, surprisingly sensual. Such subtle music means players of great sensitivity, but its challenges are met by musicians of the calibre of the Staatskapelle Dresden, one of the great orchestras of the world.

Then the music changes tack in the second part (about 7 minutes into the 15 minute work). Sharper, brighter textures now, very high strings, though the same sense of sweeping curves, sculpting shapes in swathes of sound. It's like glissandi but created by a group of different individuals playing in such connection they move as a unit, stretching the palette beyond what a single instrument could do. Brass and woodwinds form similar blocks, so there's a sense of great forces rotating, revealing different aspects of sound as they move, leaving in their wake ripples of unpitched percussion. Towards the end te keening sounds stretch out, becoming so pure and clean the music seems to float into infinity.

I first encountered Rebecca Saunders's Miniata from the Donaueschingen MusikTage in 2004. For recordings and scores see Editions Peters HERE. Writing about Miniata, Saunders quoted Wassily Kandinsky’s theories on colour, of “feeling the weight of sound…..being aware of the grit and noise of an instrument, or a voice reminds us of the presence of a fallible physical body behind the sound”. Hence the vibrating resonances that follow loud outbursts on timpani, and the echo of percussion sticks as they clatter across the soundscape, imitated in turn by piano. It's about sensations, huge masses of sound, up and turning on a pivot. About half way through, there is a massive crescendo splintering in fragments of fractured sound, transmuted into the vocal equivalent of “white noise”, almost imperceptible variations on a long drawn out sigh. Traces is a more sophisticated and mature version of these ideas, for she's no longer dealing with a spectrum of light infused colour but something much deeper and more emotionally resonant.
REPEAT BROADCAST OF THIS PROM online ondemand for 7 days from 30/12 on the BBC Radio 3 website - see "performance on 3" on 30/12 . And please also read other pices about Rebecca Saunders music on this site, like this : http://classical-iconoclast.blogspot.com/2009/11/simon-bainbridge-rebecca-saunders-music.html"