Showing posts with label Colin Matthews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colin Matthews. Show all posts

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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Sunday 19 June 2016

From Sheffield to Southwold* : Planning one's time... (work in progress)

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

19 June onwards




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Tippett & Britten II ~ Saturday 18 June at 3.00 p.m. ~ St Bartholomew's, Orford










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End-notes

 * For, respectively, Sheffield Doc/Fest and Aldeburgh Festival** : in 2016, their respective 23rd and 69th incarnations (they bear a relation : for example, one is one-third the age of the other, one may note).

 ** No doubt (?), Peter Bradshaw (@PeterBradshaw1) would wish to insist that Aldeburgh is, properly, Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts ?




Judging, at any rate, by his word-wasting pedantry (please see below) in ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass review – large as life and twice as phoney’, his a skatingly thin review of Alice Through The Looking Glass (2016)...


Bradshaw takes, that is, many a word (a sentence of thirty-four, in fact) to make yet another highly catty observation about this work (even if the film may not bear examination, as, for some, its Burton-directed predecessor did not...) : Using only the title and some characters from Lewis Carroll’s own 1871 sequel – in fact called Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There [The Agent’s emphasis] – this new movie is just machine-tooled CGI fantasy fare’.


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday 27 June 2012

Tamara Stefanovich is in love with Scarlatti (and Bartók)

An account of when Tamara Stefanovich re-created Béla Bartók’s recital in Aldeburgh

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

23 June

An account of when Tamara Stefanovich re-created Béla Bartók’s recital in Aldeburgh

You could see it in her face (which I saw in profile) as she read the scores and came to passages that engaged and enchanted her. (She played the Debussy beautifully in the programme that she was repeating from Béla Bartók’s recital in Aldeburgh, and even gave an encore of his prelude Footprints in the snow, but the look wasn’t there.) There was a definite smile, and there was the sort of reaction as if she were studying details of a lover’s face and suddenly finding a new expression, or a new way of the light catching it.

 According to the quotation from Diderot that Richard Sennett had read at his lecture two days earlier, if it had not betrayed immersion in the communion between the composer’s score (between her and that of these three male composers), making faces during a performance would have been a bad approach to playing. As for me, I liked it, seeing her light up, sometimes even surprised (at a score that she also played yesterday), because she was obviously so much at one with what she was playing.

 With Bartók, I noticed that she relished passages with cross-rhythms, the more declamatory statements of a theme (as towards the end of the Romanian Folk Dances of 1915), and also had a fondness for the fay and fantastic, the swaying movement or the outlandish gesture.

 I was paying less attention at the outset of the recital, which had three Scarlatti sonatas that I do not recall hearing before – not, then, so much good for Bartók in his choice (and, I gather, he had made an edition), as shame on us in this century (and the last) that we still play just relatively few. Nonetheless, it was clear that Stefanovich was delighted at the articulation of a new theme, and how the music developed in certain places.

 With regard to the way that the programme itself built up, Bartók had made a selection that worked well. For example, his Three Burlesques (started in 1908) could have been written in the knowledge of Debussy’s Pour le piano (finished in 1901), and Bartók might, for that reason (or because he anyway thought that they would lead well into the other composer’s world*), have placed them where he did.

 Likewise, the Allegro barbaro had space, before and after, just to be itself, not throwing the other pieces into relief, but providing a contrast. Stefanovich made this programme her own, seeming quite at home with it: playing the composers with equal conviction, and giving us the subtlest dynamic variations, after the liveliness of the opening Prélude, in Pour le piano. Debussy himself then seemed especially sure of the bewitching power his themes in the second and third pieces (Sarabande and Toccata).

 Happening to speak to Tamara Stefanovich briefly later, I clarified with her whether she had seen her remit to recreate Bartók’s performance. She told me that, although she had listened to recordings of his playing and had noted how he varied his adherence to time, she had not set out to imitate him, but to interpret the music as herself in the light of what she had heard.

 It was a very impressive and thoughtful recital of seventy minutes without a break (I imagine that a break would not have been feasible on the original occasion, with a schoolful of girls to be settled in the church hall). My only doubt was, when it was not – as it no longer exists – the church hall in which Bartók played, what point there was in having the recreation recital in somewhere not ideal.

 In fact, the Yamaha grand piano dwarfed the stage, leaving little room, on one side, for the wonted upright, and, on the other, the performer: I simply do not know how authentic such a black beast would have been to a performance in a town in the 1920s. I suspect that Bartók’s music may have proved a bigger beast, because it was my perception that the piano went out of tune.


 An addendum :

 I have since belatedly read the entry for these events (Stefanovich had given the recital, at the same place, the day before, after the lecture by Malcolm Gillies about Bartók's visits to Britain), and I need to say that there had been a reason, although a slightly tenuous one, for using the church hall in Aldeburgh (rather than a room better fitted to the quality of both the playing and the programme). It turns out that this hall had been the former chapel of Belstead Girls' School, and had been re-errected for the parish as its church hall.

 However, although Bartók's programme for the recital is known (in his lecture, I am fairly sure that Mr Gillies had not - whether he had one - displayed an original printed document that set it out), and also that Bartók had been invited to play at the school itself. The performance was mainly for the benefit of the girls (although others could pay to be admitted : Mr Gillies showed the document that advertised the concert, which specified no programme, only five shillings for a reserved seat, otherwise two and six).

 The venue remains unknown : the advertising does not give it, and, although Mr Gillies had the chance to interview a pupil (part of which he shared with us), it appears that doing so did not shed light on the question. So it may may have been the chapel, now serving as the church hall, but it may not...


End-notes :

 * I come back to what I wrote about Colin Matthews and his orchestrations, feeling again that – just as it does a hand – the Debussy fitted its instrument like a glove.
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Thursday 2 February 2012

Colin Matthews or Does the world need more orchestrations?

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

3 February

I wonder what Colin Matthews would say if I commissioned another composer to orchestrate one of his very fine string quartets¹...

Presumably, to be consistent, Matthews would just have to go along with it, for, if he did not, what I heard on Radio 3 in mid-December would seem to be hypocrisy :

For the concert, in the Afternoon Performance slot, featured what the web-page describes as 'exquisite versions' of six of Debussy's preludes (three in each half), including such prominent ones as 'The Girl with the Flaxen Hair' ('La fille aux cheveux de lin') in the first part, and 'The Submerged Cathedral' ('La cathédrale engloutie') in the second. (Whether 'versions' is a choice of word that came from Matthews, I do not know.)

Now, I must have been very busy with what I was doing - and I was at work on something - or even asleep in my wakefulness, because, although I heard the concept announced (and marvelled, later, when told that all 24 preludes had been given the same treatment²), I failed to identify either piece that I have named (and I couldn't have missed them both). All that I actually registered was an inundation rather akin to that which did for the cathedral - it all sounded like some murky seascape, and did not sound unlike Debussy in that regard, but I cannot say that it added, for me, in a helpful to what Debussy wrote in 1910 :

Oh, the audience at City Halls in Glasgow seemed appreciative enough, but I do wonder what they had gained from the experience. For I cannot honestly say that, even in an exercise to challenge the too familiar³, these preludes are calling out to be listened to in a different way. (And, for that matter, maybe The Planets didn't need Matthews to produce a Pluto - although I believe that, since he wrote it, it is no longer deemed a planet.)

As it is, Mussorgsky's piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition may stand as part of the virtuoso repertoire (though one hardly ever hears it broadcast) and, I would equally argue, was in no need of embellishment, that ever-present arrangement by Maurice Ravel (in which, admittedly, 'The Great Gate of Kiev' is very powerful and stirring)⁴ is what many people probably only ever hear, and miss out on the beauties of the original suite.

Mussorgsky wrote it in 1874 as a tribute to his artist friend Viktor Hartmann. Without what Ravel did (and Henry Wood apparently withdrew his own orchestration, made in 1915, because he thought Ravel's version superior), many people would not know of this work, but do they ever, in fact, hear it, if they never come to a knowledge of the piano original ?⁵

Well, none of us chooses what he or she is remembered by - the successful writer, who had something like forty West End hits to his name, is thought of as having written Winnie-the-Pooh, after all.


Postlude³ :






End-notes

¹ As, having heard it played live, Mahler rather pointlessly seems to have done with Schubert's String Quartet No. 14 in D minor (amongst other works) - he does not take liberties, thankfully, but what is gained by having more instruments to produce the sound, when that is not what the quartet, in my view, is about ?

(According to Michael Kennedy's book about Mahler, that arrangement, although one of two made in Hamburg, rankled with the orchestra in Vienna when he took up the baton, because they were viewed as complicit in what he had done with the likes of Beethoven and Schubert in these arrangements. I believe that some reckoned that Beethoven had known well enough how to orchestrate his Symphony No. 9, without an extra little beefing up here and there.)


² The Radio 3 web-page says that they were 'orchestrated for the Hallé Orchestra between 2001 and 2007.

³ And, to chip away the veneer on Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, I found Liszt's piano transcription very rewarding. His other such works, including the concert paraphrases, similarly endear themselves to me.

⁴ And there are at least twenty others, including one by Vladimir Ashkenazy (in 1982) that takes issue with what Ravel did (in 1922, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky).

⁵ Even Night on a Bare Mountain is usually in the edition by Rimsky-Korsakov, and, for Fantasia (1940), Stokowski orchestrated it afresh.


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