Festival of Friendship : George Benjamin : A Duet and a Dream

George Benjamin conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, London on 5 March, with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in Olivier Messiaen Le merle bleu and Benjamin Duet for Piano and Orchestra, Oliver Knussen Choral, Janáček Sinfonietta and Benjamin Dream of the Song. Interesting programme with obvious connections and some more provocative.

This concert celebrates that special bond between Benjamin, Aimard and Knussen, whose presence will be felt by many, and that of Messiaen, too.  Aimard was one of Messiaen's "sons", studying with Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod aged 12, so close to the composer he was like family.  Benjamin joined Messiaen circles when he was 16, hence their special relationship.  At Aldeburgh, and for decades before, Aimard, Benjamin and Oliver Knussen were stalwarts. I remeber an occasion when Knussen was driving Benjamin to London, waved off by friends saying "No stopping off at Little Chef on the way". Little Chef too is now long gone.

A very thoughtful choice as introduction, with Knussen's Choral (op 8, 1970-72). Choral isn't chorale, so much as an exercise in using instruments as vouces operating as a small choir.  It dispenses with high strings altogether. Four double basses march against counter processions of trumpets, horns and mournful trombones. Flutes and percussion cry out against the dirge. Eventually the different parts of the orchestra coalesce, not in unison, but in chorus.  More "chorus" in Messiaen's Le merle bleu No 3 from Book 1 of  the Catalogue des Oiseaux, written for Mme. Loriod.  Aimard would have heard her playing this, with the composer himself listening. He understands it thoroughly "from source". At Aldeburgh he performed the whole series at the right times of the day and night.  I woke in time  to greet the dawn chorus at 3 am. This consideration is important as it enhances the atmosphere, since Messiaen sought to recreate the whole environment from which the birds come. Le merle bleu is one of the more exotic sections,with scintillating moments of display, yet joyously natural, since birds sing from sheer exuberance.

More congeniality : Benjamin's Duet for Piano and Orchestra (2008) which Aimard premiered at the Lucerne Festival. Benjain has written "With its vast range and virtuosic capacities the piano is in its own right almost the equivalent of an orchestra. So this Duet is an encounter between two equal partners, partners whose capacities, however, diverge in numerous essential ways. The piano can traverse over seven octaves with the greatest ease and, with the help of the sustaining pedal, accumulate harmonies containing literally dozens of notes. These are feats with which no orchestral instrument can compete. And yet every note of the piano begins to die away immediately after being struck, a characteristic so different from the legato capacities of string and wind instruments. I have attempted to cross the divide between the soloist and the orchestra by finding compatible areas between them, specifically by dividing the piano into a few distinct registers with timbral equivalents in the orchestra. At the same time the piano remains an alien figure in the orchestral landscape and often treads an independent path through instrumental textures that can seem intentionally oblivious of it. The orchestra employed is somewhat reduced, above all by the absence of violins. A certain prominence is given to the piano's nearest relatives in tuned percussion and, especially, the harp".

Of the UK premiere in 2010, I wrote "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."  Not all so different from birds calling out to each other.

Though the concerts ends with Janáček Sinfonietta  the big draw for me will be Benjamin's  Dream of the Song.  Benjamin uses texts from three poets, two of whom lived in Granada, the jewel of Islamic civilzation, where education, art and philosophy were honoured.  Samuel Hanagid (993-1056) and  Solomon ibn Gabirol (d. approx 1050) were Talmudic scholars but also fluent in Arabic, for this was a time when Granada was a haven of tolerance in a Europe plagued with prejudice. Benjamin's third poet is Federico García Lorca, the radical modernist  who was assassinated by fascist forces in Granada in 1936.  Songs silenced across the centuries: chances are that the "Dream" Benjamin is referring to is no reverie.

Significantly Benjamin blends and combines the poems into a seamless flow.Strange rustling bell sounds and a cry that sounds like the call of a mullah; "Naked" sings the counter-tenor, the word broken into fragments but reiterated. An epigrammatic opening, opening out, like a window onto another vista. "The multiple troubles of man" The oboe calls out plaintively, its firm, clear sound probing outward as if searching across time itself.  In the central section, the countertenor's lines are haloed by a chorus of female voices intoning Lorca. the words don't really matter. In Andalusian art, images aren't representational but  myriad intricate patterns and colours, in Islamic tradition, epitomized by the Palace of Alhambra.

Thus Benjamin writes patterns of sound which serve the purpose of rhymes.  Brief images float into the foreground in typical Benjamin style "A girl in a garden" elides smoothly, to suddenly switch to terse staccato "tending her shrubs".  a transition built on pizzicato - suggesting the passage of time, perhaps, or splashing water, a concept fundamental to Andalusian metaphysical thought.  The women's voices herald a change of direction - bright, sharp and urgent. Then a brief pause, the silence almost imperceptibly interrupted by quiet tapping.  The male voice returns, singing strangely abstract semi harmony  "Written", the soloist sings but the sound is  magically clean and pure, shining all the brighter against a backdrop of a murmuring horn.  "The stars....." sings the countertenor,  and suddenly, sound seems to break off.  But perhaps that is the point ; the music, the "Dream of Song" does not die with its makers, however doomed their lives.

Benjamin's Dream  of the Song is a milestone. It represents a return to the meticulous craftsmanship of his work before Into the Little Hill and Written on Skin, though the operas are distinctively Benjaminesque.  Although it's written for small orchestra, it's  ambitious  compared with some of his earlier output, utterly assured and confident.

Beethoven seance - Aimard, FX Roth, Gurzenich Orchestra

Raising the spirit of Beethoven in a musical seance "Nothing but Freedom", with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, François-Xavier Roth and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln. As always, Roth's flair for programmes creates an experiece that inspires the mind and imagination.  Beethoven's passion for  freedom played no small part in shaping his music, the "new music" of his time.  If we could contact him now, what would he feel about the state of civil liberties today, even in supposedly "democractic" countries ? Would he, in turn, connect with how his values continue to shape music in a very different world from his own.  Of course you don't get answers in a seance, but as music, this was interesting food for thought.  Roth, Aimard and the orchestra are touring the programme over Europe, with a visit to London's Royal Festival Hall on Friday 21st February. The concert was also livestreamed from Köln last week.

An introduction that was "spooky" in the sense that it was quiet, the notes of Beethoven's Bagatelle in C, Op.119 No.7 (Allegro, ma non troppo) rising upwards, Aimard raising Beethoven before us. From this a completely new work arose : Isabel Mundry's Resonances, unknown to most of us,which was maybe the point - we're entering new territory, where strange sounds and rustlings gradually merge to create  a mysterious new landscape.Whirring sound, swathes of brass and high pitched winds : a sense of turbulence, punctuated by thwacks of percussion. Wherever this might be it's not airhead but then neither was Beethoven.  Listen to this Beethoven Piano Concerto no 3 "The Emperor" Aimard playing with intensity and verve, Roth whipping a performance full of punch.  Beethoven has returned to life !

The house lights dimmed. From the darkness, Aimard played fragments of the Vivace moderato from Beethoven's Bagatelle in  A minor, Op.119 No.9. and the Allegramente from the Bagatelle in A, Op.119 No.10 and the Bagatelle in B flat, Op.119 No.11 (Andante, ma non troppo). But what are the strange chords that follow ?  Francesco Filidei's Quasi una bagatella for piano and orchestra responds.  There are distinct sections, the first wild, the second paced with greater deliberation, Aimard playing with poise and dignity- single notes: lots of "listening" between orchestra and soloist. The final section is quirky, adventurous with a wry sense of playfulness.  Percussion includes the clapping of hands. There's a dialogue, of sorts, going on here. Beethoven via Aimard and Roth, reply with the Beethoven  Adagio sostenuto from Piano Sonata in C sharp minor, Op.27 No.2 (Quasi una fantasia - Moonlight).  How sublime those famous motifs feel. Beethoven may or might not get this music but maybe he can figure where it's coming from.  Helmut Lachenmann's Tableau  (1988) emerged framed by fragments of Mundry and Beethoven. Sheer theatre ! then a reminder of another composer who valued freedom so much that he killed himself in despair, Bernd Alois Zimmermann. Photoptosis, from 1968, is an ambitious piece for large orchestra, teeming with detail, some figures fragmentary, others developing further, like individual voices heard in a tumult. A dense, heavily populated landscape of multi-layered sound.Betthoven, I think, would have "got" this.

Stockhausen Cosmic Prophet at the South Bank 2019

Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Stockhausen Klavierstück XI with Hr-synphonieorchester Frankfurt in 2016

Please read my review of Donnerstag HERE  Stockhausen Cosmic Prophet, a new Stockhausen series at the South Bank, London, scene of so many great Stockhausen events over the years. This one's special.  (Please click on my label "Stockhausen" below and right for more).  The big highlight is  Donnerstag aus Licht the first UK staging since 1985 of Stockhausen's fourth opera in his Licht saga.  Maxime Pascal conducts the London Sinfonietta, staged with light, computer music design and video.  Stockhausen needs to be experienced live for full impact, to achieve his visionary ideals. His is music that's more than music, but conceptual art that provokes and stretches boundaries.  All round surround sound event, even in the constraints of the Royal Festival Hall.  Some seats still available.
On the weekend of 1st and 2nd June, Stockhausen In Depth, two full days of performances supplemented by talks and workshops.  On Saturday night, in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Pierre-Laurent Aimard does Klavierstück I; Klavierstück II; Klavierstück III; Klavierstück IV; Klavierstück V; Klavierstück VI; Klavierstück VII; Klavierstück VIII; Klavierstück IX; Klavierstück X; Klavierstück XI and Kontakte for electronic sounds, piano, percussion. Aimard is a brilliant Stockhausen pianist, so this should be a must. Aimard will be joined by percussionist Dirk Rothburst of Ensemble musicFabrik, with sound design by Mark Stroppa, the composer and former head of music research at IRCAM.  Stick around too for the late night performance of Stimmung with the London Voices.
On Sunday 2nd June at 2.30, Apartment House do Für kommende Zeiten (For Times to Come) "intuitive music", which grows from interaction between performers. Even more stellar (deliberate pun for the Man from Sirius, Zyklus for percussion; Mantra for 2 pianos with 12 antique cymbals, woodblock & 2 ring modulators (and shortwave radio/tape) where Pierre-Laurent Aimard is joined by Tamara Stefanovich and Dirk Rothbrust percussion and Marco Stroppa sound design
Earlier this week, Marc Bridle was at the Royal Festival Hall for Actress x Stockhausen Sin {x} II, Actress being Darren Cunningham, a new work that takes its cue from Stockhausen's Welt-Parlament, the first scene from Stockhausen's Mittwoch, the third opera in the Licht saga.   Please read Marc's well-informed analysis of the new work, discussed in the context of Stockhausen's Cosmic Pulses and Mittwoch, as it was staged in Birmingham a few years back. (More on both pieces on this site, too) . Please read Marc's review in full, HERE In Opera Today

Aldeburgh why I woke before dawn for Messiaen

In the reedbeds around Snape, Aldeburgh, Pierre-Laurent Aimard played Olivier Messiaen Catalogue d'Oiseaux to greet the dawn chorus. RSPB Minsmere, whose photo this is,  is one of the finest nature reserves in the UK, home to nearly 6,000 species.  The Alde River estuary is virtually untouched in many places, it's an area of outstanding beauty, and a haven for year-round residents as well as migrating species.  Aimard's Catalogue d'Oiseaux is  a metaphor for what the Aldeburgh Music Festival stands for.  Long may it be protected from exploitation and vested interests. Long may it stand for pristine excellence.

Messiaen was a deeply spiritual person, so for him birds were part of God's creation. Not for nothing that his great opera was Saint François d'Assise, the humble saint who embraced simplicity and talked to the birds.  (Read more about the opera here)  And so I am up with the birds, too, with darkness outside, listening quietly. An incredible haven of peace in a world that's become insane with extremist delusion.  This morning Aimard played Le Traquet stapazin (black-eared wheatear), La Bouscarle (Cetti's warbler) and Le Traquet rieur (black wheatear)  Never mind that these aren't the exact same birds at Aldeburgh. Messiaen's music is music, transcribing and adapting the spirit of the  birds.   It's 5 am now, and the music is over, but I'm going outside to sit in the garden for a bit. The sun's not quite out yet. It will be cold. But it's so beautiful.

BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting all four of Aimard's Catalogue d'Oiseaux concerts live (and on demand) plus other features on connected themes. Next concert 1pm, then 730pm and 11pm. Link HERE.

Aldeburgh Reedbeds Aimard Messiaen

The Aldeburgh Music Festival epitomizes Britten's belief that life, art and landscape connect, and this year's festival is particularly innovative.  Pierre-Laurent Aimard will take his music outdoors, into the reedbeds that surround Snape and start playing in darkness at 430 am.  In the darkness, the landscape may seem still, but the reedbeds come alive with birds, for this is Minsmere, one of the finest nature reserves in this country.  Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue des Oiseaux is a magnum opus of 13 substantial movements, spread over 7 books, and takes nearly three hours to play. It isn't something you'd hear often in recital.  Messiaen himself woke before sunrise, waiting in the darkness for the dawn chorus  when birds call out to mark sunrise. This Catalogue des Oiseaux will unfold in stages throughout the day of 19th June, ending around midnight when the birds go to rest.  The music will be heard, literally, in context, even if the birds at Minsmere aren't the same as those in the Camargue, where Messiaen heard them, but the event will be "music theatre", music heard with added value.  Aimard is, without doubt, the greatest exponent of Messiaen's works for piano, so this will be the experience of a lifetime.

Please also read my piece on Aldeburgh's Les Illuminations - Britten illuminated. Benjamin Britten goes to the circus !  And why not ? Rimbaud's original is much longer but Britten's setting emphasizes its theatrical aspects.  Les Illuminations is a watershed in Britten's creative growth because he was finding his own, individual voice through what Auden was to call "mediterraneanising" - breaking away from the conventional world of a mainstream British composer. Britten's horizons looked outward to the North Sea and beyond.  He adored Alban Berg and would have been well aware of Lulu, where characters flit from persona to persona, and where proceedings are overseen by a Ringmaster.  Perhaps it's no accident that he responded to ever-changing circus in Les illuminations and it's keynote cri de coeur "J'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage!" It's not a cry of triumph but the realization that the key - the illumination -  to creativity lies in being genuinely original.

Benjamin Aldeburgh London Sinfonietta Birtwistle Knussen

At Aldeburgh, George Benjamin, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Birtwistle, Knussen - a veritable roll call of big names in contemporary music in modern Britain.In some ways, it was a bit of history, too, since the three major British pieces are fairly early, but have connections with the London Sinfonietta.

Harrison Birtwistle's  Carmen arcadiae mechanicae perpetuum ("a perpetual song of mechanical arcady") was a London Sinfonietta premiere, conducted by Birtwistle himself in 1978. Like a Klee painting, it's built from six basic "mechanisms" which fracture and regroup to form 22 blocks. Each is distinct, some punctuated by percussion, others by dark splats of brass. Each tableau is heralded by a high horn call.  Benjamin's precision allowed individual cells to be heard clearly, as if illuminated, creating an aura of perpetual motion. The piece sparkled, much like the way brushstrokes in an Impressionist  painting let light shine through.  The craggy, zig-zag rhythms sounded gloriously wayward, and the sudden ending bristled with a lively twist.

Benjamin loves Oliver Knussen's Songs without Voices (1991/2) . It's easy to hear why. The exquisite delicacy of these pieces lends itself well to Benjamin's refined sensibilities. Songs without voices?  Because they aren't tied to any specific text, other than the brief title, the listener is freed creatively to "hear" in the imagination. The listener becomes part of the creative process.  For me, the quiet stillness of Fantastico (Winter’s Foil)  suggest the pale light of winter and the way one's breath become visible in cold air. I've never seen open plains, but I could visualize the long outward reaching lines in Maestoso (Prairie Sunset) translated into long, horizontal vistas. In the third song Leggerio : The First Dandelion , I could hardly breathe for fear of shattering the stillness  One could read the original poems (Walt Whitman) but I think the pieces work better as more abstract conceptua, so every listener will have a different experience. In the final song,  Adagio: Elegaic Arabesques, the cor anglais leads, delineating elegant patterns.

George Benjamin's At First Light was premiered by the London Sinfonietta in 1992, with Simon Rattle conducting. The piece was inspired by JMW Turner's painting Norham Castle at Sunrise, an early modern "abstract" painting  Benjamin has said, "A solid object can be formed as a clearly defined punctuated musical phrase". A short, brisk opening dissipates into extended silence.A second movement full of incident - something's stirring! This unfolds into a final movement where long, continuous harmonies interweave.

This concert at the Britten Studio mirrored the concert Benjamin conducted at the Maltings, both ending with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, whose Ravel Piano Concerto in G major in the earlier concert was the impassioned highlight of an oddly lacklustre evening, which began with a soggy Wagner Siegfried Idyll and included Benjamin's very early A Mind in Winter with Claire Booth as soloist. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra are very good indeed, so it was a relief to hear them back on form the next night with François-Xavier Roth. Read my review of that concert HERE. Tom Coult's Beautiful caged thing sounded like early Benjamin, too, but then he's young and a Benjamin pupil.  But it's good that new work by young artists gets heard at Aldeburgh. That was Britten's objective. Saed Haddad's In Contradiction for two cellos and ensemble was more engaging, contrasting ideas and blocks of sound in a tight, energetic structure. Haddad was a Benjamin pupil more than ten years ago, and has found his own, distinctive voice. If Aimard's Ravel was good, his Ligeti Piano Concerto was even better. He traversed its lively, zany high spirits with joyous delight. Aimard has performed most of the key modern works for piano, and knew most of the composers personally, including Ligeti. We are very lucky indeed to have him at Aldeburgh. 

It is set in three movements: in the short, opening one, superimposed fanfares burst into hazy, undefined textures. After a pause the extended second movement follows, itself subdivided into several contrasted sections, full of abrupt changes in mood and tension. The concluding movement arrives without a break, and progresses in a continuous, flowing line illuminated with ever more resonant harmonies. - See more at: http://www.fabermusic.com/repertoire/at-first-light-761#sthash.q7E7q1ka.dpuf

A ‘solid object’ can be formed as a punctuated, clearly defined musical phrase. This can be ‘melted’ into a flowing, nebulous continuum of sound. There can be all manner of transformations and interactions between these two ways of writing. Equally important, however, this piece is a contemplation of dawn, a celebration of the colours and noises of daybreak. - See more at: http://www.fabermusic.com/repertoire/at-first-light-761#sthash.q7E7q1ka.dpuf

A ‘solid object’ can be formed as a punctuated, clearly defined musical phrase. This can be ‘melted’ into a flowing, nebulous continuum of sound. There can be all manner of transformations and interactions between these two ways of writing. Equally important, however, this piece is a contemplation of dawn, a celebration of the colours and noises of daybreak. - See more at: http://www.fabermusic.com/repertoire/at-first-light-761#sthash.q7E7q1ka.dpuf

Elegiac Arabesques) Songs With

Elegiac Arabesques) Songs With

Hindu Hillbillies ? Messiaen Turangalîla-symphonie, Salonen

Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie, with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia, Royal Festival Hall, London.  A magnificent performance, infused with true insight into the whole  trajectory  of Messiaen's output.  Turangalîla is a strange, exotic beast, quite unlike anything else in the repertoire, confusing and contradicting easy assumptions.  Salonen, however, is one of the best Messiaen exponents of our time, and understands the idiom well. This was a performance of great insight.
 
When Turangalîla premiered in 1948, one writer  referred to its “fundamental emptiness… appalling melodic tawdriness…..a tune for Dorothy Lamour in a sarong, a dance for Hindu hillbillies”. He had a point. If ever there was music in Technicolor, this is it, complete with cinematic swirls of the ondes martenot.  These days, when we hear the ondes martenot, we don’t associate it with cutting-edge Varèse, but with Béla Lugosi. They don’t even make movies like that anymore.

Perhaps Turangalîla suffers from having been premiered in the wrong time and place. In 1948, Messiaen was largely unknown in the United States, so Koussevitsky's commission was very high profile indeed. The premiere was given by Leonard Bernstein, who probably relished the Hollywoodesque extravagance of the piece.  Although Bernstein didn't work with Nadia Boulanger, her influence over American music was overwhelming.  Boulanger and Messiaen both worked in Paris but occupied completely different spheres. Boulanger believed that music stopped with mid-period Stravinsky. She was a forceful personality,  idolized without question by her largely American (English-speaking) students. She despised |Messiaen, who ignored her, The Great Divide between European and American approaches to music was thus entrenched and continues to this day.

Salonen met Messiaen, learning the music direct from the scores, and from Messiaen's  favourite student, Pierre Boulez. For this London  performance, Pierre-Laurent Aimard played the all-important piano part, he too a great Messiaen interpreter closely and personally associated with the composer.  They were joined on this occasion by Valérie Hartmann-Claverie, who studied ondes martenot with Jeanne Loriod.  Now that the Loriod sisters are gone, and Boulez no longer conducts,  there can be few more authoritative performers than these.  There will be two more Turangalîlas this year, at the BBC Proms and at the Three Choirs Festival, but Salonen, Aimard, Hartmann-Claverie and the Philharmonia will easily be the best.

Instead of milking  Turangalila's lurid psychedelic effects for their own sake, Salonen emphasized its startling energy. From the first bars, great structural forces are at play as in Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (more here). This isn't coincidence, for Turangalila deals with time and the transcendance of time. Hence the wild, volatile piano part.  No room for fuzzy approximations here: Aimard's passages flew with lucid savagery. The "male" voice, and the "statue" theme  express a vivid life force which can neither be contained nor extinguished. Against this the "female" of "flower\ themes of Claverie's ondes martenot, yielding seductively and langorous.   Turangalîla was conceived when Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod fell in love. Their love was forbidden by the restraints of their religion, so found expression in the zany, extra-terrestial nature of this music with its exotic "Peruvian" and gamelan flourishes, all part of the French fascination with non-western traditions, which Messiaen was to explore further, visiting Japan and the Far East. The ostinato operates like a heartbeat: throbbing with intense, erotic exhilaration, finding release in the sighs of the ondes martenot, taken up by lovely, circular shapes in the strings and winds.

This exoticism isn’t there for decoration, but stems from Messiaen's profound belief that all things reflect God’s bounty, even extra-marital love. Turangalîla. is a celebration of life, of love, and of creation in all its glory. Getting an orchestra of this size to move as a single organism takes some doing, but is also part of meaning. Diverse as the world may be, all things exist in purposeful union. Salonen's diamond-hard precision sharpens the impact.  Every note counts, even the tiniest. Messiaen was a devoted bird watcher who could pick out the individual song of the smallest birds amid the cacophony of a dawn chorus.  This insight, too, underpins Salonen's use of contrast. Many instruments play at the same time, but they don’t blend, as such. Instead the shapes come from precise stops and starts, clearly focussed decelerations and accelerations. We stop and listen to the silences, as we should, in nature, and in relationships. .

The ten parts of the symphony unfold in connection with each other. Tender chantes d'amour alternate with passages of extreme fervour. The subject may be love, but the idiom is a kind of religious ecstasy, beyond the comprehension of those who don't understand the zany logic of altered states. Fluttering notes, like the fluttering of wings, or post-coital heartbeats, then, shimmering veils of sound that cast a magical glow, like enchantment.  Turangalîla is a thing of beauty, its gossamer whimsy concealing great strength. Again, the importance of clarity and purity, and the definition which Salonen, Aimard, Claverie and the Philharmonia brought to this performance.  Aimard's playing of the more whimsical passages was glorious, as if he were teasing the orchestra , inspiring brightness of tone in the percussion, followed by great waves of sound.  Some hear in the sassy passages, echoes of Cole Porter (Love for Sale)  but Messiaen's images are far more audacious. The interweaving of themes, the alternating moments of dense sound and quiet  passage suggest something surprisingly organic, as if we were experiencing the creation of the cosmos itself.  But then, Turangalîla is so explosive, and so liberating that it is an act of creation  One can imagine, perhaps,  the stars shining in the universe and the large, angular sections, the shifting of tectonic plates, ideas which Messiaen would develop throughout his work. The final section, Modéré, presque vif, avec une grande joie:is a kind of apotheosis. The orchestra plays in unison, the lovers are united with each other and with God and Nature in glorious sublimation. Listen to the blaze of that  last coda!

Messaien and Loriod didn't have children (apart from favourites like Boulez, Aimard and |George Benjamin)  but their relationship led to the birth of some of the most remarkable music of the 20th century, its quirky, creative freedom  contradicting silly notions that modern music follows rigid rules. True artists don't operate in schools, like fish, or sheep,  but like the birds Messiaen so loved, but thrive as distinctive individuals. 

The programme began with Debussy Syrinx (Samuel Coles, principal flute) and  Debussy La damoiselle élue with Sophie Bevan,  Anna Stéphany (mezzo-soprano) and the ladies of the Philharmonia Chorus. The text is based on Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Blessèd Damozel.. The love there is forbidden too, but poisoned. No doubt Debussy, with his fondness for  Maeterlinck would have been aware of Rossetti raiding the grave of his beloved to retrieve his poems, tainted by the bodily fluids of death.  Not something Messiaen would have contemplated.

Listen again on BBC Radio 3

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."

Eclectic Aldeburgh Music Festival 2012

The British don't appreciate Aldeburgh. Indeed, many don't appreciate Benjamin Britten's unique place in British music history. Just as the town faces the North Sea, Britten's horizons were European. The Aldeburgh Festival brought Shostakovich to the west, and the Hesse connection brought German interest. To truly understand Britten's artistic nature, appreciate Aldeburgh for what it is. Britten's vision was English, but eclectic, not insular.

What a pity he missed meeting Béla Bartók, who came to Aldeburgh in 1923, in a concert organized by a teacher in a girls' school. In those days, it wasn't unusual for artists to circulate outside big cities. When I was transcribing Elizabeth Schumann's papers she was organizing pianists and concerts in tiny, out of the way places in England to supplement on her visits to England.  Béla Bartók's visit to Aldeburgh is explored in a talk on 22/6. His music features throughout the festival including three important recitals by the Keller Quartet, who specialize in modern Hungarian composers, and an unmissable recital with Dezső Ránki on 15/6. He's playing late Liszt, Bartók, Hadyn and a premiere by Barnabas Dukay.

Three recitals by Miklós Perényi, a recital and a masterclass with Menachem Pressler, two concerts by Peter Serkin, one with Gabriela Montero and Alfred Brendel, talking about Liszt and illustrating with piano. And of course Pierre-Laurent Aimard himself, on his own and with Matthias Goerne. The Arditti Quartet and Helmut Lachermann, whose music also comes under the spotlight. Lachenmann will be there himself and Ensemble Modern, the great European ensemble who rarely grace our shores. Seriously important figures, attracted to a small seaside town by Aimard and Aldeburgh's reputation.

Oliver Knussen's Aldeburgh connections are impeccable, too. He's a former director of the Festival and still a major presence, and lives up the road! Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are and Higgelty Piggelty Pop! will be this year's opera offerings. They were inspired by the tales of Maurice Sendak, so reflect Knussen's quirky imagination. He read the stories to his daughter, "the Muse of Higgelty Pigglety Pop!". The operas are coming to the Barbican later in the year, semi straged by Netia Jones. Excellent cast, including Claire Booth, Susan Bickley, Rebecca Bottone and others. These are more than "children's operas" (a concept Britten would have loved)  and will remind us how important Knussen has been for music in this country.

Knussen's British but spent his formative years in the US. So it's significant that he's included in his keynote concert Charles Ives' Washington's Birthday as well as a new work of his own.  A rare chance to hear Charles Ives' uncompleted Universe Symphony on 24/6. This is its European premiere, and will be conducted by James Sinclair, Ives scholar, "using every corner of Snape Maltings its airy acoustics and unique idyllic natural surrounds as a single vast performance space".  Interesting to compare the ideas with John Cage Musicircus, the day before, this time with Exaudi.  Every Cage musicircus is different - there's one on March 3 at the ENO, by Cage's intimates.

Perhaps the last thing Britten wanted was to turn Aldeburgh into a theme park for his music, attracting day trippers and English Defence Leaguers after "The Britten/Britain Experience". He'd be rolling in his grave to think of himself and the ethos he loved rebranded in that way. Instead, Aldeburgh honours Britten by reecognizing what he really stood for, which is artitsic integrity and creative growth. Aldeburgh is a Festival for and by musicians.

Real Britten fans know his music well enough to cope with things like Before Life and After, Netia Jones's dramatizations of Britten, Finzi and Tippett with James Gilchrist as soloist. When this was on at Kings Place in 2010, it was excellent, and should be even better at Aldeburgh.  Britten's music doesn't need to overwhelm the Festival, for his ideas pervade the whole Festival, encompassing music, walks, community events, visual arts, early and modern music, film and achitecture. Booking starts this week. Complete brochure here.
Please look at the many things I've written about Aldeburgh in past years, and about the various composers featured. Also tips on food and shopping!

photo: William M Connolley

Boulez, Aimard, Abbado, Bruckner South Bank

Exquisite Labyrinth, the name for a Boulez extravaganza at the South Bank on 2nd October 2011, Pierre Boulez conductes Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Royal Festival Hall. They're doing Pli selon Pli with Barbara Hannigan. From noon that same day, Pierre Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich play three Boulez concerts : Notations I-XII, Piano Sonata 1 to 3, Incises and Structures Book 2. Aimard also gives a talk about Boulez before the big evening concert. A genuine "total immersion" now that the BBC Barbican series has gone horribly downmarket (of which more later, and about Ferneyhough who deserved better)

Members of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra (of whom many are Berliner-Philharmoniker) will be present at Boulez Day, some playing in the evening concert, some listening in. Because Claudio Abbado brings the extended Lucerne Festival Orchestra to the South Bank on October 10th and 11th. Both nights are built around Bruckner's Fifth Symphony. First night companion piece is Schumann with Hélène Grimaud, second night, Mozart's Haffner Symphony.

This year there's a Liszt Forum on 15/10 and two Aimard concerts 8/11 and 7/12 where he'll be playing Liszt in context - Wagner, Scriabin, Bartók and Stroppa (featured composer at Aldeburgh this summer)

Snowbound Clevelanders jam in pizza joint

More mozzarella with your Mozart? Thanks to my friend Bruce Hodges, whose blog Monotonous Forest carries this story.   As everyone knows half of the US is enjoying arctic conditions, while much of Queensland was underwater or stormed on. The Cleveland Orchestra couldn't fly out to Chicago where their next scheduled concert was cancelled because of snow, so they jammed in a local pizza restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan, instead. And then who should turn up but Pierre Laurent Aimard, doing impromptu Brahms on a rinky tink piano! Read the whole article by following the link above.

Happy Birthday Elliott Carter, 102

Courtesy of Harrison Parrott here's a clip of Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Elliott Carters Two Diversions/2

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..

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.

Aldeburgh and Hugues Cuénod

Aldeburgh and Hugues Cuénod -  much deeper connections than you'd think.  Hugues Cuénod, who turns 108 tomorrow (see main posts on him on this site) went to Aldeburgh nearly every year. Britten, of course, had a passion for Monteverdi, Bach, early polyphony, Elizabethan lute songs etc. so naturally they had a lot in common. (If you get to Red House, see Britten's collection of baroque and early music scores). Britten transcribed Bach, folk song and much else: eclectic mixes have been a feature of Aldeburgh since the start. The tradition goes on, with Birtwistle transcriptions of Bach, etc etc. "Montage Collage" is central to the whole idea of Aldeburgh.

Britten loved hosting artists from far away - he was instrumental in helping Shostakovich and getting him established in the West. Fruitful exchange of ideas and it spurred new work. So naturally he wanted to write music he, Pears and Cuénod could perform together. But the two tenors could not have been more different. "Like harnessing a horse and a steer" said Cuénod, diplomatically. This year is Peter Pears centenary, so Aldeburgh is full of him - film, exhibition, talks, walks. And as for me, I'll be celebrating the quirky mélange that has always been Aldeburgh. Right from the start, this frisson has inspired new work, new music, new artists.

Please explore this site, where there's lots on Aldeburgh, Britten, Cuénod, Carter, Messiaen, Aimard, Knussen, Benjamin and connected themes. Look at the photo at the top of this page - also "Aldeburgh" in the sense of eclectic mix. Orchestra of animals, procession to a Chinese Buddhist abbot.  One day I must write more about that place, where there are/were hundreds of things like that. Below a clip from Aldeburgh Music showing why Aldeburgh is such a great experience.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Composer? Collage Montage

Collage creates something new from found objects getting the mix right in a creative way. Pierre-Laurent Aimard's Collage-Montages are artistic creations in their own right.  This year he's put together Collage-Montage 2010 for solo piano, which is now available on BBC Radio 3 for seven days online, on demand.  Do listen, it's great fun.

First time round I listened unprepared. Your ear catches recognizable fragments and then suddenly they switch into other things. Whimsy! Yet this is a purposeful collage, with intelligence behind it. Next time round, listen analytically to the logic and the way the forms act on each together.

On third listening, it's sheer delight, absorbing the myriad colours and shapes, and the lively sense of movement. A kaleidoscope for the ears!

Collage-Montage 2010 evolves in five movements  like a miniature symphony. Prélude élémentaire,  Sostenuto and Capriccio speak for themselves, but into this Aimard throws real caprice, "3x3" and Cloches d'Adieu for a finale.

The first section starts with fragments from Ligeti's Musica Ricercata no 1, composed around a single A which leads to a D,  via Bartok, Schoenberg and Webern to Boulez's Notations (no 8)  where the two notes repeat. In Sostenato, the goal is to sustain seamless flow from a minimalist moment in Kurtág’s Játékok to a fulsome conclusion, via Janàček, Skyrabin and Beethoven (Diabelli v20)

Then Aimard gets really provocative, in 3x3.  Patterns within patterns. First, ragtime moves from Scott Joplin to Stravinsky's Piano Rag to Georg Benjamin's Relativity Romp. It's balanced by three waltz fragments (Schubert , Stravinsky, Ligeti) and three pieces based on mechanical movements, parts of Birtwistle's Clocks, Lyadov's Un tabatière á musique and a moment in Stockhausen Tierkreis.
 
 No fewer than eight pieces in Capriccio, rounding Beethoven themes with Scarlatti, Joihn  Cage and Schumann. The combination's so witty, I burst out laughing, it's so light hearted.  Cloches d'Adieu plays with the idea of bells as coda: Delightful switchbacks, Tristan Murail, Ravel (Gaspard de la Nuit)  and of course The Great Gate of Kiev (Mussorgsky).  "The goal", says Aimard, "is to be a little lost while travelling from place to place....mixing fore-knowledge with the unexpected."   

He's being modest. Humorous as it is, Collage-Montage 2010 is meticulously constructed, lots of internal links, very carefully planned. Thirty seven fragments in 80 minutes. Not a note wasted.

The talks at Aldeburgh this year really up the intellectual ante. Music and the Brain, they're modestly called but dwell on the science behind performance and perception.  Before this concert, there was a talk called "The Pianist's Brain, a two-part Invention", where Eckart Altenmüller spoke about how hands and brains work together to produce music. Not dumbed down, this Aldeburgh.

The picture above is Kurt Schwitters Spring Picture (1926). Schwitters did a lot of collage, bringing together ordinary objects like scraps of newspaper and formal painting. He was  a pal of Hannah Hoch. Some collages are a bit obvious. I chose this picture because it's subtle, magical, a lot like Collage Montage 2010. .

Aldeburgh Festival June 2010

FOR REVIEWS OF CONCERTS please follow link "Aldeburgh 2010" on right, or use searchg facility. Lots on related topics, too.

Booking's already well under way for this year's Aldeburgh Festival. This year's big opera is George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill, seen last year at the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House.

This time it will be paired with Luciano Berio's Recital 1, instead of the rather oppressive Birtwistle piece heard in London. Berio's Recital 1 is more in tune with Benjamin's magical world, where whimsy and horror combine. Read about Into The Little Hill by following the link above - it's a masterpiece. Recital 1 is every performer's nightmare. The singer starts a recital but the pianist has disappeared! So she improvises....

Those who have seen Into The Little Hill will want to hear it again, especially with Berio, but be warned, it clashes with Rumplestiltskin, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group's smash hit (seen in Birmingham and Huddersfield) performed at the Spitalfields Festival in London. You could wait for the next weekend's performance but that clashes with the first night of Idomeneo at the ENO.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays the big First Saturday Night concert with Bach and Benjamin's transcription of the Canon and Fugue from Kunst der Fuge. Piano fans must book this weekend: Leon Fleisher plays the Sunday concert. Fleisher suffered neurological damage in the 1960's. Gradually he regained the use of his left hand, but the crisis let him blossom as teacher and conductor. He's giving a masterclass, too, which should be good.

There's a film about Fleisher too, because one of the major themes of this year's Aldeburgh Festival is "Music and The Brain". This sounds fascinating. Lots of different talks, concerts and films about the way the brain processes music, and fuels the creative process. One is about synaesthesia, backed with a concert featuring (of course) Messiaen and Scriabin.

Alfred Brendel's back, too, giving a talk on the theme "Does classical music have to be entirely serious?" Everyone who's heard or read Brendel knows this will be more intelligent and more original than most. Royal Philharmonic Society take note!

Very unusual indeed will be the event on 20 June when Aimard and a neuroscientist will explore how the brain allows two hands to move in contrary motion. Can we adapt to ambidextrous skills? A stimulating programme not only for pianists, I think.

There'll be a workshop on "Togetherness" about how chamber ensembles communicate. Motion-capture technology will show how players relate to each other by many complex social and musical interactions.

More brains too the second week. Pierre Boulez and members of Ensemble Intercontemporain talk with Aimard and play works by Boulez and Elliott Carter. The next day Aimard and Thomas Zehetmair play Mozart, Schoenberg and Boulez. June 26th is the Big Day, when there'll be two concerts with Ensemble Intercontemporain, with Boulez conducting. Guess what? The world premiere of Elliott Carter's What are Years? Carter should know, he's 101. Plenty more Boulez music this week, and George Benjamin, too. And this being Aldeburgh, new music is interspersed with early music - Exaudi and the amazing polyphony of the Huelgas Ensemble and Bach Mass in B Minor (Monteverdi Choir and JEG).

Plenty of respect too for the Aldeburgh tradition of musicians-as- Directors. There's a big feature on Peter Pears and concerts of music by previous directors, such as John Woolrich, Thomas Adès, Oliver Knussen and of course Benjamin Britten himself. This year's festival is the best I can remember because it's uncompromisingly UNsuperficial : top quality music, placed in relationship to life and original thinking. Definitely not dumbed down but all the more fun for that. Wonderful programmes this year - make the effort and be rewarded. This 63rd Festival is so good that it is worth travelling a long way to get to. Click on photo to enlarge for detail. It's a cliff near Aldeburgh. The coastline there often crumbles : now you can see WHY Peter Grimes's house became dangerous. Britten knew first hand, and made sure the danger came into his music. The apprentice's death was an accident waiting to happen.

Elliott Carter, 100 1/2, at Aldeburgh

"You can't keep a composer away from his music," quipped Elliott Carter, explaining why he'd travelled all the way from New York to Aldeburgh in rural Suffolk, where many of his works – and several premieres – are being played.

Bright and early on Saturday morning 20th June, he spoke with Pierre-Laurent Aimard in the new Britten Studio. Carter has known Aimard since Aimard was a boy, and has written many pieces for him, so this wasn't the usual run of the mill talk, but something much more personal and intimate.

Carter walked into the room dressed in a natty suit, with bright red polo shirt and crimson socks, and changed to sapphire for the evening concert. "Old age is liberating", he said in an interview last December. "You don't have peer pressure". And so it is with his music, too, as individualistic as his personality.

Carter has now become as famous for being old as for being a composer, and why not? He is inspiring to everyone, musical or not. All Aldeburgh seemed to be buzzing about the "Hundred Year Old composer" and rightly so, he's wonderful. At the age of 100 1/2, he's lively, brighter than many a third his age.

And the publicity is good for music, too, because people may be drawn in to listen. Carter's music is more accessible than people realize. He told Aimard about a man who'd written to him after hearing one of his string quartets on the radio in the early 1950's. The man was a coal miner, nothing fancy (coal was still mined in the US in those days). "I love your music", said the man, "It's just like digging coal."

So there are many ways into Carter's music. Perhaps what keeps Carter so lively is that he's still inventive and creative. His "late, late style" as he calls it, is very different from the multiple layers of complexity he used to write. Now it's as if he's concentrating on fundamentals, getting straight to the essence of things, a sort of zen-like purity.

Carter and Aimard discussed the two new pieces, commissioned by James Levine, not yet officially premiered. They extend Carter's Matribute, premiered in Lucerne in 2007 and heard in London last December. Vaguely they relate to Levine's brother and sister, so they're called Fratribute and Sistribute! This joyful, impish wit has always been present in Carter's work, which throws those who think serious music should be deadly dour.

Fratribute is simple but steady, with sequences up and down the scale. Sistribute is altogether more sparkling, one hand playing triplets while the other plays four fingers. It's in a very high register, a kind of squeaky cantabile. Whether it reflects Levine's sister or not, it's expressive, happy and spirited. "Typical Carter," said Aimard, ""like sparkling drizzle."

It's so new that Carter hadn't heard it played before in this way. "Not as bad as I thought," he said when Aimard played it through. Previously he'd spoken to Aimard about changing the dynamics so Aimard tried the amendments out then and there. "I think I like the original better after all," said Carter. So we were witnessing Sistribute at its very moment of inception. At one point, Carter got up and played the piano himself. "Not as good as you," he grinned at Aimard,

More typical Carter puzzles in Retrouvailles, written for Pierre Boulez in 2000. It takes up the ideas in Esprit rude/esprit doux 1 and 2, written for Boulez's 60th and 70th birthdays. Embedded cryptically into it are the letters of Boulez's name. "Two personnages", said Aimard, describing the way the two voices dialogue, "like Bach". Which is a good point, since Carter and Boulez have been close friends for decades and Carter's love for baroque polyphony goes back to his days at college.

Then 90 Plus, Carter's tribute to Goffredo Petrassi, written for Petrassi's 90th birthday in 1994. Ninety little staccato notes that tail off rather than end, wishing Petrassi long life to come. (He made 98.)

In the evening, Carter's On Conversing with Paradise was premiered. It's a special commission for Aldeburgh and was conducted by Oliver Knussen, another intimate of the Carter circle. The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group know the Carter idiom well, so orchestrally this was top notch from the mysterious horn opening, punctuated by profound thwacks of timpani, to the full, dramatic crescendo towards the end.

The text comes from a poem by Ezra Pound, whom Carter actually met many years ago. "People called him mad, but I didn't think so." The soloist was the baritone Leigh Melrose. It's not easy to judge a piece the first time it's heard, but the texts are so amazing that I felt it might be even better with a voice with more authority, to stand up to the powerful orchestral writing.

This is a compelling work, whose title comes from Blake and includes parts of the Pisan Canto 91 and the unfinished Canto 121 where Pound states "I have tried to write Paradise". Most of the page is left blank. Then, simply, Pound says "Do not move let the wind speak that is paradise".

Carter's settings of poetry have often recognized the importance of blank space on texts, and the way lines fragment and roll over round the printed page. This is perceptive, because these devices are essential parts of the poem. Pound despairs of being able to write paradise in a perfect poem, so he breaks off elusively and suggests listening, instead, to the wind.

As Carter said, earlier in the day: "Maybe silence is the answer, and also the biggest question, too".

photo credit Meredith Hauer
Read the article in classicalsource HERE

Aldeburgh Festival - Aimard, Anderson, Benjamin, Carter, Debussy, Ravel

With Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the helm, the Aldeburgh Festival is even more than ever the place to be in terms of musical excellence. In June, in England, there's so much going, but for me. Aldeburgh takes priority because there's always something very special you don't get elsewhere.

Aldeburgh has, of course, been a cradle for British composers, but, as Britten intended, it's not insular but has a wider international outlook. So the concert on 19th June placed the UK premiere of George Benjamin's Duet for piano and Orchestra (2008), with Benjamin's spiritual forebears, Debussy, Ravel and Elliott Carter. Aimard was the soloist, Benjamin conducted, and in attendance was Elliott Carter himself, aged 100 1/2, still sprightly and full of vim. No doubt this music will be heard many times in years to come, but being present on this occasion felt like being part of a family, of a creative community such as Britten and Pears envisioned when they started the Aldeburgh Festival 62 years ago.

Indeed, Benjamin’s new piece was written specially for Aimard, and premiered last summer at Lucerne. 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. This programme may not have included Messiaen, but he was there, in spirit. 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 pontilliste, like detailed embroidery, but here there’s sharpness in design, and clarity of direction.

Julian Anderson's Shir Hashirim f0r soprano and orchestra was included in the programme, replacing the scheduled Fantasias.

Hearing Benjamin in the context of Debussy, Ravel and Elliott Carter demonstrated Benjamin’s roots in the French tradition. Benjamin conducted Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d’un faune with a feel for the purity beneath the langorous sensuality. Exquisite playing by the BBC SO’s principal flautist.

Elliott Carter, too, has roots in the French tradition, His father had business connections in France, so Carter grew up bilingual, spending long periods in Paris. The first of the Three Occasions celebrates the 150^th anniversary of the state of Texas, so it’s exuberantly lively. If Benjamin’s approach wasn’t quire as free as the spirit of the piece, he more than compensated in the way he conducted the other two parts, Remembrance and Anniversary. Hearing the latter, on the occasion of this concert, was particularly moving as it was written to celebrate Carter’s 50^th wedding anniversary. Carter and his wife Helen were extremely close : when she passed away, those who knew them worried, as one does when partnerships that close end. Benjamin brought out the tenderness of the piece beautifully. When Carter stood up, unaided, to acknowledge the applause at the end it was intensely poignant : an experience I won’t forget.

Yet Aimard’s performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand was by far the highlight of the evening, musically. This also brought out the best in Benjamin and the orchestra the slow lugubrious sections full of portent: the contrabassoon solo especially well played, its sonorities evoking inchoate emotions. This is a piece I love dearly, but hearing Aimard’s intense, uncompromising fervour made it feel almost shockingly fresh and vivid. The piece was written for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost a hand in the First World War, career death for a dedicated pianist. Hence the manic “military” overtones, deftly executed. Passion doesn’t have to mean sentimental excess. With dignity and strength of attack, Aimard proved that one hand, playing with such defiance, is more than a match for full orchestra.

HEAR THIS CONCERT on BBC Radio 3 at 1900 on 25th June (online too)
To come TOMORROW : Elliott Carter at Aldeburgh ! watch this space LOTS on this blog about Carter

See the REVIEW here

Aldeburgh Festival 2009- big on the European circuit

The Aldeburgh Festival is very much a fixture on the European music circuit. Far more than any other British composer, Britten saw himself as European at heart, so the Aldeburgh Festival has always had an international, progressive outlook, with strong connections abroad. Londoners don't know what treasures they have "in their own backyard".

Britten's ideals come to fruit in this year's Festival, titled "Glitter of Waves". It's Pierre-Laurent Aimard's first full year as artistic director, and he brings sharp new focus. Even the buildings have been extended to provide new theatres and workshops, at last fulfilling Britten's vision for Snape.

Harrison Birtwistle's two new chamber opera set the tone. Dowland's Semper Dowland, semper dolens, is "theatre of melancholy, in which Birtwistle adapts Dowland's Seven Teares figured in Seven Pavanes and interweaves them with Dowland's songs. Early English music reinvigorated with modern British music.

The big premiere is The Corridor, a scena for soprano, tenor and six instruments. As Orpheus and Eurydice escape the Underworld, he looks back on her despite being warned not to do so, and he loses her forever. "I see the Corridor as a single moment from the Orpheus story magnified, like a photographic blow-up", says Birtwistle. Given his long standing fascination with primeval myth this should be interesting. Libretto is by David Harsent, who wrote The Minotaur and other important Birtwistle milestones, so expect limpid, lucid poetry in direct modern speech - extremely moving on its own terms. Mark Padmore and Elizabeth Atherton sing the lead roles. The London Sinfonietta, Britain's best modern music ensemble, will perform. VERY high profile indeed. Even if it's repeated in London, seeing it first at Aldeburgh is part of the experience, for it was here 41 years ago that Britten and Birtwistle met. Britten apparently wasn't impressed. But Birtwistle's come a long way since Punch and Judy. Perhaps Britten would now be pleased, for Birtwistle has developed and is now an Elder Statesman himself, undisputedly this country's foremost opera composer.

Next morning there's another Sinfonietta concert featuring bits of The Io Passion, and the 3 Settings of Celan - Claire Booth whom we hear everywhere and for good reason! Then Harrison's Clocks where Hideki Nagano plays the brilliant Birtwistle piece as part of an installation around the new buildings at Snape - very unusual. That same evening, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, with ensembles, will produce a "free thinking musical fantasy". Moto perpetuo movements from Beethoven and Bartok are interlaced with serene moments from Brahms and Messiaen. The finale is Ligeti. Aimard excels in imaginative juxtapositions like this - see the links on right for what he did last year at Aldeburgh with Bach and Kurtag. That's just the first weekend, 12th and 13th June.

The following week starts with a Britten song symposium, more performances of the Birtwistle operas, and some very interesting recitals including Christiane Oelze, (highly recommended!), Zimmermann, and Exaudi. Vladimir Jurowski conducts a chamber orchestra on Wednesday 15th - Gabrieli, Stravinsky and Birtwistle. The big concert on Friday night, 19th June, has George Benjamin conduct the BBCSO, in two premieres, Julian Anderson's Fantasias and Benjamin's Duet for Piano and Orchestra - with Aimard as soloist. Of course this will be broadcast, but the atmosphere at Snape is part of the fun, you want to "be" there.

Elliott Carter is the focus of the second week. In fact, he's planning to be there in person, scheduled to talk with Aimard, with whom he goes back decades. Carter's presence alone should make attendance compulsory, for he is an icon. He's closely connected to so many involved with this Festival, including Oliver Knussen who will be conducting the keynote Saturday night concert on Saturday 20th. This features yet another Carter premiere, On Conversing with Paradise, a song cycle to poems by Ezra Pound, for baritone and orchestra. This is rumoured to be powerful stuff. In recent years, Carter's style has distilled into intense zen-like depths, perhaps well suited to Pound's verse, which Carter has long loved.

This second week is the week to come for more Elliot Carter, Birtwistle and Thomas Adès chamber music. Ian Bostridge, Louis Lortie, Mark Padmore and Nicholas Daniel will appear in recital, too. The blockbuster concerts, though, will be the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, one of the hottest bands in Europe. This was founded by Claudio Abbado. Daniel Harding's been seminally involved since 1998. He's now principal conductor, but their first concert on 25th (Hadyn, Ligeti, Birtwistle) will be conducted by Susanna Mälkki, the charismatic conductor of Ensemble Intercontemporain. Aimard plays Birtwistle's Slow Frieze. Aimard conducts the second concert on 27th, another eclectic mix, Haydn, Stockhausen and Beethoven. Since the Mahler Chamber Orchestra is exceptionally good, and rarely heard in the UK, these are concerts that shouldn't be missed.

Then, on Sunday 28th, Masaaki Suzuki returns to conduct Bach's St Matthew's Passion. Suzuki's Bach is legendary. He's working with the Britten-Pears Orchestra. Its members are young, but enthusiastic. Britten and Pears would be thrilled.

Seats sell fast and accommodation gets hard to book, so check Aldeburgh Music sooner not later.