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This is a place-holder for a review of the world premiere of Sally Beamish and David Harsent's The Judas Passion, as performed at Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, Essex, on Sunday 24 September (after broadcaster Tom Service had hosted a pre-concert talk with them from 7.30 p.m.)
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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20 December
Three members of Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia), with a guest pianist in Huw Watkins (also a well-known composer), gave the first in the Sinfonia’s series of At Lunch concerts this season at Cambridge’s West Road Concert Hall (@WestRoadCH) : leader (Jacqueline Shave), principal viola (Clare Finnimore), and principal cello (Caroline Dearnley).
Mozart (1756 – 1791)
However, it was only in the closing work, that we heard all four voices together, as the concert opened with the slow movement from one of Mozart’s violin sonatas (in E Flat Major, K. 481). Watkins and Shave impressed straightaway that the piano could be heard with, not under (or through) the violin, and he played with poise and clear articulation.
There was a pleasing contrast with the tenderness of the string part, which was not played with a mute, but in which Shave brought out an inward quality, whereas the piano line felt as if it soared and was almost semi-operatic in character, not least in its use of ornament. Overall, the eight-minute Adagio felt as if it exuded gracious ease, and was not in the full ornate style of Mozart’s later classical works.
Lutoslawksi (1913 – 1994)
Bukoliki, for viola and cello, dates from 1962, and contains several Polish folk melodies. This short work, in five sections and lasting just five minutes, by twentieth-century Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski started off as one for piano solo, but was rearranged ten years later its composition. (Its title is the same as our word ‘bucolic’, meaning just pastoral.)
Lutoslawski made a nice expanded choice of instrument, because they are a good fit, both for each other, and for the series of miniatures, or moods. In the first, he uses the cello as a drone, and then gives its some very vigorous writing in the second – the use of dissonances between what cello and viola is notable, as is being in folk idiom (which we may know better from Bartók).
The third has effects that made one feel that one was going off the scale of Western music entirely, whereas the fourth, akin to the second’s feel, was more sombre and introspective, leaving the piece to end on a lively dance (and the overall construction of Bukoliki is not unlike Bartók’s Dance Suite. The main feature of this finale was relentless motivic and rhythmic energy and rotation around an interval.
Sally Beamish (1956 –)
The King’s Alchemist, in four movements, is a commission that had been given its world premiere the preceding Wednesday, and it shows that, in the early sixteenth century, people (James IV, specifically) did not know their Canterbury Tales, or they would not so easily have been allured by alchemist John Damian (what’s in a surname !).
The work begins with Cantus (which is a word with a variety of meanings in the musical world, perhaps reflecting the shape-shifting ambiguity of Damian), which makes use of open strings, also contains some difficult stopping, and has a keening air to it, as it is led by the violin at the top of its register. In comparison, in Aquae Vitae*, the instruments feel more equal, and they are very fluid**, with cross rhythms, and a lively ending.
The third movement, Pavana, not the kind of stately dance with a ground bass that I expected, but it built up to the use of discord at the end. Given the story told of Damian in Beamish’s programme notes, including the fact that he tried to fly to France from the battlements of Stirling Castle, one was led to expect the character of Avis Hominis, in the nature of a drunken dance (though not à la Max and The Orkneys), with, using harmonics, chirps and whoops from Shave – it was never going to end well (for Damian), and the final strokes denoted his demise. Beamish, a well-respected and innovative composer, was in the audience (with the Sinfonia’s David Butcher), and took a well-deserved bow.
Fauré (1845 – 1924)
Finally, longer by ten minutes than the rest of the programme put together in the estimated timings, Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor, and all the performers together. The quartet opened with an Allegro molto moderato, the first of three marked (with some qualification) Allegro, and was straight in, with themes stated by Watkins on piano that mutated into a sense of rumbling, almost as of the tossing of the sea, before returning to its tempestuous opening.
The shorter Allegro molto that followed had a syncopated theme given by the piano, which had an oriental feel to it. After some difficult runs, the movement ended with a bang. The third, an Adagio non troppo, opened with the piano and some musings from Finnimore on viola. The previous oriental atmosphere continued with arabesques, and Shave making languid cadences on violin, which developed into heady, exotic textures, which swayed hypnotically, as if under the thematic influence of Saint-Saëns (1835 – 1921). When the opening material returned, Fauré had it build, then subside by chordal progression, as if imitating passion sublimated.
The energetic start of the finale, another Allegro molto, reminded of an elephant’s gait (Saint-Saëns again ?) – the chords from the piano were taken up by the trio of strings, with the violin to the fore, before settling down to ensemble playing. The thematic material gave way to more quirky patterns on the piano, and then worked up into a furious mood, before the returning of the opening theme. An excited coda led to a triumphant conclusion, and the work felt as though, in its third outing in this programme, the players had achieved a mature balance between them and real, intelligent interplay.
A good set of pieces to set one thinking about how compositions in different ages go about the business of writing for small combinations of instruments.
End-notes
* The old name for what was effectively whisky, which is a name that derives from the Gaelic word for aquae vitae, usquebaugh.
** No pun intended.
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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1 March
Well, I have now witnessed the much-vaunted Thomas Adès (I was sceptical, but The Tempest - almost like The Artist (2011) - seemed to have everyone enthralled, i.e. in slavery), and he does not, at any rate, look like a man who is comfortable with himself: it could be fanciful, but he struck me, in dress and demeanour, as more like a harassed postmaster (or, maybe, an astonished station-master) than the director of an evening's programme of music.
In fact, he did not direct at all: he conducted, arms jutting out to give cues and the like, and he even conducted a very small chamber group, of no more than half-a-dozen players, almost as if, with a string quartet performing one of his works, he would do the same.
As to his music, it may not be pastiche as such, but these were my brief impressions of his concerto Concentric Paths (which, I also believe, was meant to sound more clever than it was - some people want to claim about Chopin that his solo piano works sound very difficult, but are not really that hard to play):
If I had not known that I was listening to the first movement of this concerto for violin, I would have sworn that this was a piece of Ligeti, and that made me feel that Adès does not have his own voice.
(Sally Beamish has just been on Composer of the Week, and, Undertow, a piece by Tansy Davies was played to-night on Radio 3, and neither of those composers sounded so like anyone else.)
In the second movement, it appeared to be a variety of composers' influences (two British) that I was hearing: in writing this, I did forget, for a moment, who all three were, but it was Shostakovich, Maxwell Davies, and Nyman.
In the case of Nyman alone, he continued into the finale: unlike with what sounded like a piece of Ligeti, the music just seemed immensely in the shadow of Nymanesque concerns and approaches (and maybe, as Adès looked, not happy with them).
