Showing posts with label Britten Sinfonia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Britten Sinfonia. Show all posts

Friday, 4 September 2020

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms : Anoushka Shankar with Gold Panda, Manu Delago, Jules Buckley and Britten Sinfonia

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms : Anoushka Shankar, Gold Panda and others

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

4 September

Live-Tweeting from The 2020 Proms : Anoushka Shankar with Gold Panda,
Manu Delago, Jules Buckley and Britten Sinfonia































Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday, 22 January 2020

At Lunch Two (2019 / 2020 season) : With Britten Sinfonia at West Road Concert Hall (work in progress)

At Lunch Two (2019 / 2020 season) : Britten Sinfonia at West Road Concert Hall (work in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

21 January

At Lunch Two (2019 / 2020 season) : With Britten Sinfonia at West Road Concert Hall
(work in progress)


 Piano Trio in D Major, Op. 2, No. 8 (1728) ~ Jean-Marie Leclair (1697 – 1764)

1. Adagio
2. Allegro
3. Sarabande
4. Allegro assai


The initial theme of the Adagio, and its gestures, wholly attract our attention – to the extent that it almost sounds as if the movement (or, therefore, the work as a whole) has opened near the end (or, at least, in the middle of what might be expected of such a work). We soon notice that the violin and viola are echoic – the latter, certainly, repeats the former (though does not mimic it per se), if not vice versa, and the writing is in an especially expressive tone, which one could, of course, rely on cellist Caroline Dearnley to bring out beautifully from her wonted instrument.

In the Allegro, again an element of the catch or round, if not of antiphony. However, now with the piano* more obviously joining in, and with a 'frisky' overall ambience, which, as the psychology of music tells us (though perhaps not consciously), operates by way of preparation for what follows within the composition as a whole : the succeeding Sarabande - as so often with the Bach Suites for Solo Cello (or the keyboard or violin Partitas, whose dates of 1685 to 1750 virtually mirror those of Leclair) – is the heart of the piece.

Here, there is a melding of the string-sounds of all three instruments - maybe we forget to our cost that, though some might encourage us to think of the piano as percussive, there are strings (just not bowed (or - in this repertoire - plucked)). The balance that John Lenehan achieves with his fellow...


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Bukoliki (1952, 1962 (arr. comp.)) ~ Witold Lutosławski (1913 - 1994)

1. Allegro vivace
2. Allegro sostenuto
3. Allegro molto
4. Andantino
5. Allegro marciale


To begin, 'an intensity' of very vigorous writing for cello in the Allegro vivace, but which is, as the movement plays out, a contrast to the succeeding section's more meditative or musing nature – and which, as the set of pieces plays out, is part of a pattern of juxtaposition. And then, Lutoslawski has Clare Finnimore (viola) and Caroline Dearnley (cello) jump back, at least to Tempo I and to the initial variety of affect, but not to a note-for-note reprise, but another re-working of the material. Then, more or less betokening the close, a re-working of Tempo II follows – which is a sort of ABAB that we might associate with, or recognize from, Bartók ?

In the Allegro sostenuto, there is – more evidently (or as one adjusts to this set of pieces ?) – a juxtaposition, at the start, of a deft pizzicato cello and a languidly legato viola – another alternation of an ABAB kind ? – whereas, in the third piece, maybe Lutosławski has sufficiently stated his folk-music credentials to pass the work off as that, but then sneaks in some illicit jazz chord-progressions or intervals**, and, as if he is a covering-up naughty school-boy, behaves as if they were never there... ?

Of the set, the wildly atmospheric Andantino had open sounds and spaces, which spoke of yearning and tenderness, and which also provided yet another point of contact (as well as of contrast), this time with the rhythmicity of the final Allegro marciale : its emphasis is on metrical stress, as the material is first presented us, but then on employing it teasingly – leading us on, and holding us off from, our expectations.



No surprise at all that these accomplished musicians***, so used to each other (and to us) from their time with Britten Sinfonia, and to each other’s playing, should play the Lutoslawski so compellingly, but - as is the norm rather than the exception with the Sinfonia programming - rather how this beacon of composition shone in its setting in this hall and in this selection of At Lunch works !


[...]


End-notes :

* Surely, in 1728, not written for even an early forte piano ?

** In Ida (2013), Pawel Pawlikowski seeks to use his authorial / directorial position to allude to the Polish underground jazz-scene, but only as part of a tale with a would-be ‘conversation’ between the secular and sacred (or, rather, the sacred and profane), which was probably better left to Hermann Hesse ?


Joanna Kulig - who ‘migrated to’ Cold War (2018) - as ‘Singer’ in Ida (2013)


*** Both the composition / arrangement and the accomplishment reminded of when Thomas Gould and Clare Finnimore had played a selection of Béla Bartók’s Duos), in At Lunch 4 (2015 / 2016 season).




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tuesday, 17 April 2018

At Lunch Three with Britten Sinfonia

This is an account of Britten Sinfonia in At Lunch Three on Tuesday 17 April 2018

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

17 April
This is an account of At Lunch Three, as given by members of Britten Sinfonia at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Tuesday 17 April 2018 at 1.00 p.m.
Thomas Gould (ThomasGouldVLN) introduced the concert, and welcomed Tom Poster (@PosterTom) to play with Clare Finnimore (viola), Caroline Dearnley (cello) and him in two works for piano quartet (and mentioned the deftness of Poster's playing in the latter). The first, a world-premiere performance of a composition by Caroline Shaw, Gould described as ‘pretty beautiful’, and invited interested members of the audience to stay for the post-concert talk with Tim Watts from The University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Music.


Caroline Shaw (1982-) ~ ‘Thousandth Orange’ (2018) :

 Several iterations of what seemed like it was to be a piano ostinato (the ‘very simple 4-chord progression’ to which Shaw’s programme-notes referred) began the piece. Before the material was shared with, and widened out, by the string-players, we then began by hearing them harmonizing it in different ways. Although, as a whole, the piece tended towards tonality, it did not do so simply in a sunnily emphatic way, but with edge, instruments rising and swelling - or playing pizzicato (with bowed cello) - at different tempi.

 The work sounded quite filmic in its approach, and one could have imagined that it was a close reading of a cinematic short. However, it by no means needs visuals, but – as Shaw had also said in her programme-notes – she was evoking seeing, and the act of looking, and so ‘Thousandth Orange’ relaxed into the general rhythm of, and gave the impression of, different shots or alternative takes (but not at all in a Cubist way) : Maybe after the tenth, or the hundredth, or the thousandth time one paints an orange (or plays a simple cadential figure [sc.as she differently describes that ‘4-chord progression]), there is still yet more to see and to hear and to love.

 The piece had a quiet, but effective ending, with a version of the cadential figure – as envisaged earlier on – partitioned between pizzicato strings, and just hanging in the air.


As with the Brahms that followed¹, this was quality playing as of a unit, and well received by the audience : the work plays again at Wigmore Hall on Wednesday 18 and at St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, on Friday 20 April, and one trusts that there will be other opportunities to hear it afterwards.



Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) ~ Piano Quartet in G Minor, Opus 25 (1861) :

 1. Adagio

 2. Intermezzo – Allegro ma non troppo - Trio : Animato

 3. Andante con moto

 4. Rondo all Zingarese : Presto
Rather than reviewing the whole performance, which was excellent (and caused one person, on leaving the venue, to say that she never knew that Brahms could sound like that – almost everyone seemed to have found the work and its playing electric), here are just the written-up form of a few comments that were noted along the way.


The Allegro opens with a sun-lit statement in simple form, and we were fairly immediately in that initial lyricism that Shaw captures in her opening chords : she had chosen this work ‘as a natural partner to her new commission’². What one most wonders at is whether such a cello-line as that of Brahms could be contemporaneously written, or with such easy vibrancy or enthusiasm ?

 In the Intermezzo, Gould, then Poster, could be heard to be prefiguring the Finale, and imbuing it with sadness in the repeat. In talking of the movement's exuberance, the programme-notes used the phrase ‘nervous sense of disquiet’ to say that it is kept in check ; however, the words fit better as a description of the Andante con moto, with its motif of repeated couplets, before it hints at and then builds up to grandeur, fuelled by energetic playing by Poster : eventually, out of the ashes of a huge explosion from the piano, Dearnley’s cello and Finnimore’s viola emerge and prove to have survived. (Likewise, in the Rondo, an elaborate cadenza drops down just to Gould's violin³ - imagine Brahms, as a man of 28 (exactly a year after Clara Schumann has given the premiere), making his playing and compositional début with this piece in Vienna in November 1862 !)

 As the piano part established itself again, the other instruments could be heard, modulating beneath its harmonic forms : one keenly sensed that Brahms has a massive compositional structure at this point, which he is keeping aloft, until he finally pulls away into a close.


The Rondo started with lively string-tones and with Poster’s piano luminous in its upper register, but soon descended to just keyboard, with then the addition of pizzicato strings. We may know Brahms’ version of Hungarian from [his orchestration from piano four hands of ten of] his Hungarian Dances, but the most enduring theme here is a stately progression of chords in a theme of orchestral proportions - as is often said of this work as a whole, which Schoenberg indeed took the trouble to orchestrate.


Not maintaining this head of steam that he has built up, Brahms lets some of the pace off, as he can be heard doing in the Symphonies or Concerti, by adopting a dance-form (a waltz ?) – prior to that dramatic cadenza, mentioned above, very shortly before the end of the work, and in the context of a summative visitation of the principal themes, en bloc, before some fast playing. He still has time to be meditative once more, however, until an onward current of piano notes drives us to the conclusion, and an even-faster passage that makes what passed before seem like a canter.


Tremendous acclaim met this thrilling playing of an exciting piece – as the audience-member remarked, this was a Brahms that she did not know !


End-notes :

 ¹ Except when Caroline Dearnley momentarily seemed to be awaiting overlong a cue, from Tom Poster, that he was ready to come in.

 ² Shaw is quoted, in the programme’s introduction, as saying This new piece for piano quartet is a kind of deep dive into my own memories of rehearsing and performing Brahms’ Piano Quartet as a violinist.

³ Albeit quickly joined by the other string-players.




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday, 22 November 2017

Music is a thing of togetherness ~ Nik Bärtsch

This is a review of At Lunch One, with Britten Sinfonia at West Road Concert Hall

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

21 November

This is a review of At Lunch One, with Britten Sinfonia at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Tuesday 21 November 2017 at 1.00 p.m.


 Programme :

 1. Sarah Kirkland Snider ~ Pale as Centuries

 2. Mark Bowler ~ Deep Green

 3. Nik Bärtsch ~ Module no. 5

4. Judd Greenstein ~ City Boy

5. Bärtsch ~ 9_3_7



1. Sarah Kirkland Snider (1973-) ~ Pale as Centuries (2011)

 (1) Pale as Centuries begins with what sounds like a riff, on electric guitar (James Woodrow), which, after the other instruments have made their introductions, re-enters. Flute, clarinet, piano and double-bass are all heard with varying degrees of attack in the piece, and, in time, that difference in attack passed to Woodrow, too, and – via some use of effects-pedals – some very vigorous sounds. A circular work, but one that feels obliged to end explosively (although Mark Bowler, composer of the next work on the programme, made a different choice with his OPUS2017 composition).



2. Mark Bowler (1980-) ~ Deep Green (2017)

 Written for clarinet, flute and double-bass, (2) Bowler’s Deep Green, when the woodwind players are at the height of their pitch in the opening section, draws out the similarities in their timbre (with Joy Farrall on clarinet, and Thomas Hancox on flute). When Roger Linley (double-bass) starts the next one, he is playing – unusually for this instrument - sul ponticello, and leading into a passage with open chords that seemed reminiscent of Debussy (or of early Stravinsky ?). After an episode of faster writing, a deliberately drawn-out rallentando to close (after a very low note on the bass) on solo flute.



Tim Watts (pictured upper), from the Faculty of Music at University of Cambridge, hosted the post-concert event with Mark Bowler (lower) (and Nik Bärtsch – pictured below)


Asked, in the post-concert event, about whether it is fair to hear those other composers' sound in Deep Green, when his programme-note had referenced a Ligeti Etude, Bowler did not seem to engage with the question, but to state where he had quoted the source-material to which he was alluding : co-curator Nick Bärtsch commented that he liked the exchange for showing the contrast between what the composer wants to point to as in and influencing the piece, and what the listener may otherwise hear in it...





3. Nik Bärtsch ~ Modul 5



Nik Bärtsch seemed to be referring to (3) Modul 5 in the post-concert talk (with Mark Bowler and Tim Watts - pictured above), appearing to say that he had been playing the piece for ten to fifteen years before learning how to realize it in, and play it in, public : did this fit with his comments about the use of prepared piano, and with one's having wanted to ask – if there were such a thing ? – whether this had been ‘a typical performance’ ? It felt as if (as with the famous Cologne concert of Jarrett, and another case of the piano that one arrived to find at the venue and ended up having to play) it might have begun in improvisation…

 Whatever quite this work is, it begins in fascinating analogue sound-manipulation, and – exploiting the semi-tone – with over-tones and bell-like fringe-effects. As, though, its sound-palette broadened, one’s attention luxuriated in the assurance of, as Bärtsch described afterwards, the piece being presented to us at its best*, and stopped concentrating on exactly what sound one was hearing (or the mechanics of its production - as one did when Maggie Cole performed Ligeti's Continuum (1923-2006)), and very glad that this work – which was not included in the printed one – had been part of the programme.



4. Judd Greenstein (1979) ~ City Boy (2010)

 Scored for the quintet of Instruments, and - after Quiet City (1939), and despite an ostentatious ostinato on electric guitar - not implausibly referencing a near-mid-twentieth-century American tradition, (4) City Boy sounds quite Coplanesque : when one looks to form, and beyond the actual individual Instruments, bass and guitar stand, in a way, for the typical harmonic lines of a symphony orchestra.

 Initially, in the second section, there is a ‘jazzed-up’ treatment, and, when those elements recur, they just subside : hence the composer’s programme-note to the effect that, with the work’s rapid movement from idea to idea, relatively – fans of Zappa, Brittelle, Babbitt, or Brian Wilson will be disappointed. When we hear the original material on Woodrow’s guitar, it is via the effects-pedal-mediated world of reverberation and distortion. At a signal, and after Copland-like rain-drop effects on flute (whilst the piano has the ostinato), the players all come off together.



5. Bärtsch ~ 9_3_7 (2017)

 Maybe (5) 9_3_7 seemed like a punked-up (?) iteration of what preceded it, to which Bärtsch was explicitly responding. He employed some interesting writing for the bass versions of the standard orchestral clarinet and flute, which were also less aurally ‘defined’ than the bass or the guitar. To his own part, Bärtsch brought both jazzy intonations and intelligence in deploying the sound of the held piano notes. Ending, after a slow introduction, with a slow, fumry?? coda, he used the space to work over the four-note motif (with its longer, final note).


Introducing works from the stage, as well as talking afterwards, Nik Bärtsch had been at pains to say how the works had been programmed, including leading to the choice of Mark Bowler's piece as the OPUS2017 award-winner : Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) is, of course, renowned for its novel and thoughtful approach to programming, and here, in works that (in two cases) one could only have heard before by being at Wigmore Hall (@wigmore_hall) on the preceding Friday, was a set of pieces where they 'talked to each other' and had their place, and quite apart from the customary exemplary playing (the hard work that goes into which we should never take for granted) !


End-notes

 * Bärtsch told us that he has heard the notated work played twice by two other pianists and not – he did not use this word – related to it, and thereby throws up the larger question – before there was an established performance-practice (unless that was through Ralph Kirkpatrick's monograph, or in the encores of Vladimir Horowitz ?) – how, say, we know what Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas do, or should, sound like, i.e. from where do we now derive what we think is how Scarlatti played (or heard his royal pupil play) these pieces ?

 Relatedly, if Leon McCawley plays, for example, the whole of a set of Rachmaninov Preludes (Opus 32) in the chapel at King's College (@ConcertsatKings) – or Joanna MacGregor a set of four Chopin Nocturnes at The Fitzwilliam Museum (@FitzMuseum_UK) - we know [what] ‘the famous one(s)’ ['are meant to' sound like] (with which no pianist can thus take many liberties), but how do we relate to the surrounding compositions, which may - despite such family-groups - very much feel like strangers to us ?




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday, 13 May 2017

Joy Lisney's 'Thread of the Infinite'

Thomas Gould directed Joy Lisney’s ‘Thread of the Infinite’

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 May

An account of the world-premiere performance of Joy Lisney’s ‘Thread of the Infinite’, by Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra and directed by Thomas Gould, at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Saturday 13 May at 7.30 p.m.





Thomas Gould, associate leader of Britten Sinfonia (at #UCFF, both much blogged about)


An intriguingly plaintive, repeated motif on solo oboe¹ is the genesis of this attractive and engaging short work (running, Joy Lisney said in advance last night, to around ten minutes²) : in attempting to write review-notes for new music, one knows that a piece is attractive and engaging, because one then wishes that one had a better memory for musical detail, and could instead dispense with almost all notes and listen whole-heartedly, but just write something straight off afterwards (which must be a blessing to those who can do it).


And God made him die during the course of a hundred years and then He revived him and said :

 ‘How long have you been here ?’

 ‘A day, or part of a day,’ he replied.
The Koran, II 261

[Quoted, by Jorge Luis Borges, in the guise of a motto to head his story The Secret Miracle' ('El milagro secreto’ : the link is to a PDF version in English). All of Borges' stories are short stories, some very much so]


With timpani, and employing tremolo, a small group of strings joins in, before we revert to an iteration of this opening from principal oboe, then strings. From here, and in tonal uncertainty, further material begins to emerge, now with pairs of clarinets, bassoons, flutes and both oboists, to which are added two horns and two trumpets (con sordini). At this point, the full realm of the percussionist is evoked, with snare-drum plus marimba (sans vibrating mechanism, so as more to resemble a xylophone³ ?), and then within the musically and emotionally resonant lower range of the marimba (now, with resonator engaged).

As the development section continues, accented pulses establish themselves between and within the full orchestra, but the contrasts between the sizes of forces being brought into being continue in tandem, and so we drop down to a few woodwind instruments, just before - with a different tone to it - the oboe motif recurs, and Joy uses the effect of flutter-notes from the flautists. Again, the sound of the ensemble swells into a tutti, with a very vigorous texture to it.


Sounding as if his role had moved into that of playing an obbligato instrument⁴, Thomas Gould – who had, when not needing them to play, been directing with his hand (or bow) – passed the directorship to a fellow violinist for the moment. Joy brought viola and marimba (qua xylophone ?) into prominence, with chimes (or struck crotales ?) straight afterwards. Even if this violinistic feature were no conscious nod to Tippett (and to his own to composers of other climes), we could enjoy the gracious, sweet tones of Gould, as this section reached another crescendo.


With, if cinematic images are evoked for a brief while, ones that are of a rainy and darkish scene, we entered what sounded like a moody coda, in which Joy sets woodwind (principally clarinet and flute) against soft pizzicato. Next, a horn is added, and both trumpets, in the sort of accretive layering that we have encountered earlier. Yet the work closed quietly - with Gould on violin, and with principal oboe.




To the musicianship in hearing Joy play (at Kings Place (@KingsPlace), as a duo with her pianist father, James Lisney - as above on 28 February 2017, on a leg of their Cello Song Tour, at West Road (@West RoadCH)), and also direct in her own right [from the cello] (with Seraphin Chamber Orchestra (@SeraphinCO) - please see below), could now be added the musicality of an adept composer, writing a work that transcends its physical length and scale, and making, once more, that connection with cinema : where a strong short film can say far more, in such a timescale, than in the scope of some very average feature-length ones.



At the time of posting, but now reviewed here, what was another forthcoming⁵ date for your diary... :





End-notes :

¹ It resembled and reminded of something in nature, or in music – perhaps it was not birdsong notation à la Messiaen, but did it, say, remind of the theme for one of the characters in Peter and The Wolf (Prokofiev’s Opus 67) ? (It may actually have been, as this review suggests, on a lower-sounding instrument, the cor anglais...)

On checking, there proves to be a tenuous reason to mention Franz Kafka (whose surname is Czech for 'crow'), because the title of the work derives from Victor Hugo in Les Misérables, which is seemingly (because finding a verifiable citation for quotations can be arduous) :

À la jambe de chaque oiseau qui vole est attaché le fil de l'infini


² As with the best of film, where screen-time – if one but desists from looking at how many minutes have elapsed / are to run – shows how illusory our notion can be of duration, and of over what period what we have seen happen took place.

³ During the performance, one could not quite see the instruments being played, at all times, because the percussion was behind the trumpeters and the rostrum on which, behind a group of string-players, they were standing.





⁴ Though Joy, speaking momentarily afterwards, said that this had not been a nod to Sir Michael Tippett, and his Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli (which was the other item in the first half), because she did not know the programme at the time.


⁵ If, without thinking about it, you now say 'upcoming', when you used to say 'forthcoming', you might wonder whether that is such a good thing... ?




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday, 15 April 2017

Tweets from Easter at King's 2017

Tweets from Easter at King's 2017 (and a night at Cambridge Modern Jazz)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

Tweets from Easter at King's 2017 (and a night at Cambridge Modern Jazz)





Tuesday 11 April :








Wednesday 12 April :










Maundy Thursday [at Cambridge Modern Jazz, with Arnie Somogy's 'Jump Monk' Quintet] ~ 13 April :



Not in any formally aleatoric way, but just because that was how pieces had fallen from, and been restored to, his music-stand, leader Arnie Somogyi (double-bass) deviated from the set-list, and so there was an uneven spread between what Thelonius Sphere Monk and Charles Mingus had written :

This went well, because we knew that we were in for an evening of Monk and Mingus staples – the latter had even written ‘Jump Monk’ for the former (even if most of Monk’s puns or wordplay remained just as obscure). When frontmen, Tony Kofi (alto) and Jeremy Price (trombone) stepped aside, we reduced to the cohesive form of the classic trio, with Mark Edwards (piano) and Clark Tracey (drums) playing tightly with Somogyi, and not even averse to a solo, all of which rarely did not have us nodding along to what these exponents of their art were devising.

Price and Kofi are very different players, so they did not try to compete with each other’s style, and Price’s playing complemented the improvisation that we had heard from Kofi : they each listened with care to the other, and, whereas Kofi’s is a more right-ahead sound, Price played with an inward-out manner that focused on a rounded tone-quality. As the audience did, who were really getting into these developmental lines, Somogyi must have liked long-form solos, and he would only sparingly call in any of the players, when he wanted to shape where the number was going. All in all, a very full and good night’s jazz !



* * *








Good Friday ~ 14 April :







Holy Saturday ~ 15 April :













Easter Monday ~ 17 April :










 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday, 15 February 2017

'Energetic and energizing' : At Lunch Two with Britten Sinfonia

This is a review of Britten Sinfonia's recital At Lunch Two on 14 February 2017

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 February

This is a review of Britten Sinfonia with At Lunch Two at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, at 1.00 p.m. on Tuesday 14 February 2017


Programme :

 1. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) ~ Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914¹) [4 players]

 2. Mark-Anthony Turnage (1960-) ~ Prayer for a great man (2010) [2 players]

 3. Oliver Knussen (1952-) ~ Cantata for oboe and string trio (1977) [4 players]

 4. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) ~ Introduction and Allegro (1905) [7 players]

 5. Turnage ~ Col (2016) [8 players]

 6. Stravinsky ~ Concertino for String Quartet (1920) [4 players]



Stravinsky I ~ Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914¹)

 1. Danse

 2. Eccentrique

 3. Cantique


(1) Vibrant tone-colour from Jacqueline Shave (1st violin) and vigorous pizzicato on cello (Caroline Dearnley) characterized the first impression of the work, with Miranda Dale (2nd violin) making lively interjections in the brief Danse. Even so, we hear that Stravinsky’s writing is of a contrasting nature, and – in the overall somewhat atrophied sounds of the opening bars of Eccentrique – is juxtaposing inertia and lyricism. Before, that is, the intense flowering of the development section, and a return to this quirky form of spikiness, and the opening material’s serving partly as punctuation, partly as an ending.

 Last, sensitively rendered by the violinists and more mournful, Cantique resembles a less-uninformed version of Beethoven as processed in Strauss’ Metamorphosen : quicker, but a mutated theme. Again, the writing relies on a contrast between passages and their affective colouring, but evoking a memory that is rooted, not in nostalgia, but in grief.



Turnage I ~ Prayer for a great man (2010)

(2) Prayer is uplifted, and positive, if stoic – it is, as with the preceding work, a fascinating blend of sounds, those of cello and of the horn – Martin Owen – with all its connotations of the martial, the inward, and the rustic. As the short piece progressed, we were aware how Caroline Dearnley’s freely-flowing cello-line worked with the latter : in the string legato, melding tones, although there was a deliberate, gentle mismatch with the horn’s timbre. A final, muted, section perhaps seemed to speak of adieu, or farewell.



Knussen ~ Cantata for oboe and string trio (1977)

 Before Oliver Knussen’s instrumental (3) Cantata, the statesman-like tone and appearance of Nicholas Daniel (later, in a post-concert workshop (with / for Jago Thornton’s prize-winning composition), maybe less so ?), who said that we could expect to hear some of the instruments in tempo, others playing ‘out of time’ : as he put it, Strict, but flexible – parenting, I suppose ?

 Nicholas Daniel also told us that he favoured – over Knussen’s own account of the work – when Knussen had shared, with Sinfonia players, that it is ‘like a series of diary-entries’, but ones that are technically connected. Compared with other works, rehearsing this one had apparently been more intense, but also more rewarding, and, although Daniel says that he is usually hesitant to say the word ‘masterpiece’, he promised (not wrongly) that Cantata was one - and jewel like…


Characterizing – or trying, and failing, to characterize – the mood or feel of such diary-entries, when Knussen is deliberately being holistic with them, would not let his work be the centre-piece that it was of this superbly wrought and planned Sinfonia recital. Here, the incalculably strong overall effect of a moving entity, comprising people and a feeling of place, of being placed into the timeless eternity of Time :

As one would know from typically thoughtful Sinfonia programming, pairing how the Stravinsky ends with Turnage’s reaction to the passing of his father-in-law naturally fits with Knussen’s conception of Cantata - with all the changeability that we are aware of with, say, Bach’s portraits of the facets of the seeking of a soul in penitence [counter-tenor Robin Blaze with BWV 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust], or Handel’s Un’alma inamorata, HWV 173 [Mhairi Lawson, with La Serenissima (LaSerenissimaUK)].

 Or, of course, it could be Handel’s much more famous and beautiful da capo aria Lascia ch’io pianga [Almira / Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno / Rinaldo], or Bach’s even more famous Erbarme dich, so beautiful where it comes in St Matthew Passion (BWV 244) : at such times, what is Time ?



Ravel ~ Introduction and Allegro(1905)

Maurice Ravel, though, has a radiance that is rarely outshone, and so we aptly heard next, in the familiar (4) Introduction and Allegro, his feeling for poesie and fantasie in the intensity of an imagined world : in the first harp solo, it became very clear that Ravel, in being commissioned to write this work to show off a new make of harp (pace Donald Macleod on Radio 3, that self-same day, with the evening repeat of Composer of the Week [#COTW]), is scoring in the spirit of writing for piano.

 Further on, and starting with the delicacy of the cello (Caroline Dearnley), the other players (Miranda Dale and Clare Finnimore) joined her in pizzicato to accompany Jacqueline Shave's bowed violin, before another gorgeous, rapt harp solo from Lucy Wakeford. With the ensemble embodying faerie and fruitfulness, we came to the flowering and fecundity of the Allegro section – with the very lovely phrasing of Lucy Wakeford, who was given a well-earnt accolade by her fellow Sinfonia performers.



 Turnage II (1960-) ~ Col (2016)

 A tradition in music of The British Isles that goes back well before Elgar’s variations presents portraits in music (of a sort, Façade (1918-1923) is also one). Unfortunately, this is what Mark-Anthony Turnage does in (5) Col, in a piece that starts in open terms, but becomes first ruminative, and then – with or at the return of that initial material – becomes downright maudlin.

 This is unlike the spirit of Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin (1914-1917), Arvo Pärt in In memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977), or Stravinsky’s Epitaphium (Für das Grabmal des Prinzen Max Egon zu Fürstenberg) (1959), for flute, clarinet and piano, [or Double Canon ‘Raoul Dufy in Memoriam’ (1959)], and, rather, a requiem that is yet a birthday cake, but which serves as neither : though it is imperfect, one may be better hearing Colin Matthews the man, by watching Barrie Gavin’s Colin Matthews at 70 [seventy minutes or so of film about Colin Matthews, as screened at 2016’s Aldeburgh Festival of Arts and Music² (on which, see more, below)]…



Stravinsky II ~ Concertino for String Quartet

 NB The programme-notes (by Jo Kirkbride) credit the (6) Concertino as dating to 1952 – having wondered about this, and then checked more authoritatively than on the Internet³ [Wikipedia®], the Concertino actually dates to 1920⁴, and its arrangement for small ensemble to 1952…

 Given that L’histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) (1919) was from the year before 1920, it seems to endorse the comment above that one can hear hints of that work here. The Britten Sinfonia String Quartet plays the Concertino with aplomb : they happen, all, to be women, but the important point is that they are excellent musicians and communicators, and it is by their quality, not their gender, that one would commend their musicianship⁵.



In this work, as brought out here, the motivic elements underlie, but do not belie, its meditative qualities – the recapitulation that we heard was brimful of feeling, and tacitly contradicts a conception of Stravinsky as cool and unemotional. Just as did, one reflects, this string quartet with the Stravinsky piece(s) with which it / they opened a tribute to Louis #Andriessen at Milton Court last year (at The Barbican).


End-notes :

 ¹ Please see the note at the beginning of the section (below) for the second Stravinsky work for string quartet (and its dependent end-note⁴).

² One way in which the Festival is on a human scale is that, during the interval of a concert that had featured Matthews' work last year, one had the informality to address him on the stairs - to shake his hand, and briefly thank him.




Sadly, at some more 'protective' venues - unlike, for example, The National Centre for Early Music (NCEM / @yorkearlymusic) - one may not approach performers, even though they are just a small distance away (though not evident, stewards are there to prevent it) : those on stage have to be at a signing, or otherwise choose to come out into the foyer, for approaching them to be permitted.

³ In Roman Vlad's monograph entitled Stravinsky, pp. 79-81 (Oxford University Press, London (1978)).

⁴ With Three Pieces for String Quartet, it initially seemed that they were written in 1914, revised in 1918, but probably not published until 1922.

Roman Vlad (ibid, p. 50), after saying ‘Although very little known, these pieces are extremely significant as far as Stravinsky’s stylistic development and inner artistic motivation are concerned’, and then devoting several pages to them [in which, by analysing them, Vlad explains their importance to Stravinsky's and other composers' works], goes on to tell us (p. 54) :

Stravinsky himself was always greatly attached to [the Three Pieces], so much so that in 1917 he transcribed them for orchestra under the titles of ‘Danse’: ‘Excentrique’ : ‘Cantique’ [my emphasis] […].

⁵ On which point, initiatives such as Holly Tarquini's F-Rating (F-Rated (@F__Rating)) at Bath Film Festival (@BathFilm), or Cambridge's Reel Women (@ReelWomenUK), might take pause ? [Unless, of course, one claims that inclusion in a programme at the latter, or the former's Festival, is an absolute guarantee, per se, of outstanding quality.]

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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