Showing posts with label Sergei Rachmaninov. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sergei Rachmaninov. Show all posts

Monday 30 November 2015

Russian Connections - and our connections to musical life and musicality

This is a review of a recital given by cellist Joy Lisney at Kings Place, London

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


30 November


This is a review of a recital given under the title Russian Connections by cellist Joy Lisney with her father, pianist James Lisney, a debut for both in Hall One at Kings Place, London, on Monday 30 November 2015 at 7.30 p.m.


Igor Stravinsky (in collaboration with Gregor Piatigorsky) ~ Suite Italienne (1933) (an arrangement, for cello and piano, of numbers from his ballet-score Pulcinella (1920))


In the Introduzione, one straightaway realized what, sometimes, is the great and overt immediacy of Joy Lisney’s playing, and the richness of the interpretative means open to her in furtherance of that aim. Apart from this untamed opening, which was fiery in its own right, and no longer merely pleasant pastoral fare, lifted from Pergolesi, it could also just be the way in which she gave us that prominent held note (in the Serenata), or the muscularity, spontaneity, or sheer inventiveness with which she performed the third-movement Aria. Come the next movement, and her emotional dialogue with the work had her letting rip, giving the Tarantella full throttle.

Predictably (despite a listing of five movements in the programme-notes, but with a dance predicated on wild abandon, even madness), no one had counted that there had only been four, so James (@jameslisney) and Joy Lisney (@JoyLisney) had to wait for keen applause to subside¹ before we could hear that Stravinksy does not intend the suite to end on that high-point, but with a Minuetto e Finale. Here, just as some sculptors say that they find the form within the block of stone, Joy seemed to be sensing the music within the instrument.

So, she responded to a definite pulse in the piano part, to which her part adds pizzicato notes, and energy was released as and into figuration, passion and the unplanned (though one reference that Joy and James had clearly picked up, in preparation for the event, was a little toreador mention). This was very good communication and listening, with James clearly watching for cues of Joy starting a phrase or coming off at the end of a long, bowed note, and fitting in with the inspirational nuances of the moment, and necessarily the piece was well received at Kings Place.


Benjamin Britten (dedicated to, and first performed by**, Mstislav Rostropovich) ~ Suite for Cello No. 3, Opus 87 (1971)

Joy Lisney gave us a few comments before presenting us with this most challenging, and assuredly insufficiently well-known, work for solo cello by Britten. She mentioned the Rostropovich connection, which is a fascinating fact of life to be reminded of, at the personal level between composers and muscians (and at the time of so much political distrust), how one is aware of more than one voice at some points, and, in this respect, how one could hear that Britten had been influenced by Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello (BWV 1007–1012).


The suite is in nine parts, but performed without a pause, with – for being sure of the work’s progress – all that that entails. In the opening, marked Introduzione : Lento, one was quite aware of the intense theorbo-like resonance that Joy achieved (i.e. that instrument’s long, open bass-strings), and how this had the effect of rooting it in a ground-bass : not unlike with an undisclosed jazz standard (where one might not quite be able to put one’s finger on it, but know that one hears something 'in disguise'), Joy had also said that Britten has written variations on themes, but that he only clearly gives them to us at the end².


Along with listening out for Bach’s voice, this description informed one’s listening, and, from the first, had one trying to assimilate often fragmentary elements of tonality and melody. In the Marcia : Allegro, perhaps there seemed to be a little hint of Shostakovich (and, later, Bartók ?), and the tone-quality of a pizzicato gesture that, in octaves, now resembled the fretted strings of a theorbo / lute, as it chimed alongside another line of music. Soon, in the Canto : Con moto, it was more like that of a guitar (or a plucked lyre), and Britten sounds to be in dialogue with Bach's Suite No. 1 (BWV 1007).

Probably having already reached Dialogo : Allegretto (via the Barcarolla : Lento), it certainly seemed a just description of what could be experienced – the competing demands of the poles of the player’s physical athleticism around the strings, and the expressiveness of the instrument and the texture of the composition. In the rapt space of Hall One, and at a crux where the material was ceasing to be difficult (and to become more open), one could see that Joy was self-aware as a performer, and fully alive in the act of being one, as she asserted what she found in this suite.


As one can safely state, without the need to give many more examples, Joy demonstrated in the concert-hall both the very great expressive possibilities in this work, and the variety of means through which she could give rise to them. (Likewise, one is trying here to outline the scope of a work that is best, as on the night, heard live – which, of course, is just as true of the Bach suites. That said, it assisted a little to have noticed the words Moto perpetuo earlier, and, knowing that one was hearing one, be able to place roughly where one was.)

More explicitly than earlier (what Britten had written had been more like hints at parts before), we heard the very lowest register openly talking to the top string, and then addressing an even higher, fluting / piping one. This progress towards integration of disparate voices not only put one in mind of the extreme fragmentation of musical lines in some of Bach’s writing for solo violin, but also indicated the sense of cohesion that presumably gives the performer the conviction to propel this piece across a fully felt trajectory to its conclusion.

Reminiscent of summative or restorative concluding movements in Bach’s writing for solo cello, there was a soaring, folk-dance quality to the final Passacaglia : Lento solenne (which, again, reminded fleetingly of Bartók). In the event, Britten ended not with rejoicing, but throaty, breathed, very quiet utterances, and one long sostenuto. After a long time of reflective appreciation, the audience burst into applause for this highly impressive playing.




* * * * *


At the end of the recital (but relevant to mention now), it was intended as a compliment to Joy’s playing and to James’ and her choice of repertoire to say that it had been a very varied programme – except that even a definite form of spoken words can bear a range of meanings in a recipient’s mind. Or the fact that some might say so, but one could validly interpret that they were thereby imputing something negative³, without being direct ?


Completed in November 1901, the main work in the second half was written 70 years earlier than that with which we had concluded the first, and so the two short arrangements (by Piatigorsky again) of Tchaikovsky that preceded quietly helped bridge the gap with something as different as the Britten (which were Valse Sentimentale and None but the Lonely Heart (Op. 51, No. 6. (1882), and Op. 6, No. 6 (1869), respectively)) – suffice to say, long, lyrical lines, and a sense of yearning.



Sergei Rachmaninov ~ Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor (1901), Opus 19 :

1. Lento - Allegro moderato
2. Allegro scherzando
3. Andante
4. Allegro mosso


The opening Lento of the Sonata for Cello and Piano is exploratory, elegiac, and one heard that Joy was both giving an awareness of the music reaching, and saying that it cannot, on the scale of the whole, yet be felt to be reaching too far. Particularly here for piano, under James Lisney’s adept hands, Rachmaninov’s writing felt very typical of his Piano Concerto No. 2, so it fits well to find that he was composing it at this time (between autumn 1900 and April 1901, his Opus 18, in C Minor) : in terms of chordal progression, and the way in which the cello part develops, one already gets the sense that its voice is more modest, or at least that it feels more difficult for it to be as exposed as the piano part.

Though excellently weaving their roles together, James reflected standing, as if in orchestral terms, more in relation to an ensemble and to tutti passages, with the cello having the work of finding the most fleeting, innermost tenderness, and of giving a real emotional turmoil, especially in freer passages. When Rachmaninov intimated nearing the movement’s end, still he gave us more gradations of feeling, and led us, not yet into a coda, but to James giving us the principal theme on piano. In this way, and in service of the form of the composition, the duo had brought us to where the sonata felt more relaxed, and with a little glimpse of serenity, before a coda that – when it came – held off.


At the start of a movement marked Allegro scherzando, we heard the electricity of the raw, vital bass-line, with Joy expressionistically sawing the note, and, again with a hint of serenity in the midst of what else Rachmaninov is about here (including echoing the cello in a rumble on the piano) : there is tension to be found in this C Minor scherzando, amidst a part for cello that Joy gave a vocal character, and with one for piano that seemed both near and attentive.

In the year of this sonata, Rachmaninov also wrote his Prelude in G Minor (which, with nine others (as No. 5), was published as his Ten Preludes (1903), Opus 23), and one again has a sense of those kindred works. Moving away from the tension in the writing, he sets the cello off onto a statement, but soon enough brings it back to where it was : throughout the movement, Joy kept us gripped with the sensation that, in musical terms, she could help us glimpse whatever it might be to which the work was pointing, whether regret, yearning, or loss. In this way, Rachmaninov felt quite Schumannesque, alluding to what parts of the surface of the work want (at this stage) to deny.


The Andante has us hear the piano alone first (again, in Rachmaninov’s familiar idiom), and which is then above the cello-line when it enters – whose endeavour, under Joy’s hands, was building the beauty of the given theme, although there continue to be moments when we hear piano solo. If there is a sense of being on a scale where the music is reaching to be elsewhere, restraint is still being exercised, but we had a gradual feeling that the mood was easier, and more restorative, as the parts meshed and engaged with each other :

Partly that impression comes from their greater interchangeability as to which was in the higher register. Although the piano is placed briefly above the cello near the end of the movement (following, together and separately, some quietly insightful keyboard writing), it ultimately ends with them on a soft par, but with the final notes from piano solo.


In talking about the opening movement (above), it was mentioned that the composition of this sonata was contemporaneous with that of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (in C Minor), which is famous not least both through his status as a concert pianist⁵ and its place in the soundtrack to David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945) : it is worth saying that it was not used for nothing by Lean, so to remind us that Rachmaninov makes it easy for us to build (our own) narratives around getting to such exuberance as we are to find in the closing Allegro.

Having kept us waiting (even if the very opening of the sonata is a subtle foreshadowing ?), what he presents us with here is the biggest melody in the piece (along with, in the light of it, the cello’s continuing apparent path of adaptation of its part to its circumstance). James had some coy downwards arpeggios preparatory to, and then providing contrast to, Joy’s searching in and exploring the lusciousness of this material – and then, of a sudden, Rachmaninov signals a change, with a decisive gesture from the cello, and with marching rhythms written just for the piano.

With an earnest tone set, and as the cello voice begins some gentle arpeggios, one senses that it is still in need of, and responding to, a form of encouragement, and it becomes further in accord with the piano-writing : in the growing self-realization, vigour develops, and Rachmaninov, rhythmically and in energetic terms, creates feelings of being on the verge of ending, and so of resolving what is happening with the theme.

From the piano first, a few reflective notes end up being all that the cello requires in order to lead to and address the full implications of the main theme, but, having done so, there is a need for a few quieter moments, as of breathing and mentally working through feelings. After the cello has joined in with a soaring peal, and the march-like figure has recurred, we revisited that more tranquil status, but the certainty and enthusiasm of the conclusion was secured now – as was the very great applause with which this performance was received, with a number of people in the audience standing to show their approval !




The compellingly framed performance of the sonata closed this debut evening at Kings Place, full of energy, invention and passion.


End-notes

¹ Also, having heard this happen before, when they gave this work another time (and Joy approached it as a less adventuresome performer than now), it almost deserves the health warning : when the piece sounds as if it is over, hold back, as it does not conclude there !

² Joy has talked on her blog more about the Russian Connections tour, and the repertoire, the composers, and other connections. The first performance was at The Maltings, Snape, on 21 December 1974.

³ In terms of a ‘traditional’ way of putting concerts together, maybe so, but it is not for nothing that some value the approach of ensembles such as Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) : at lunch-time the following day in Cambridge (at West Road Concert Hall (@WestRoadCH)), for the first of this season’s one-hour At Lunch series, three members of the Sinfonia gave us Beethoven (from 1800), a new commission (by Edward Nesbit), Brahms (from 1853), and a work (from 2008) by the orchestra’s principal pianist Huw Watkins (@WatkinsHuw).

⁴ If we consider that Britten was established as a composer by 1935 at the latest, and since Rachmaninov lived until 28 March 1943 (and, probably not helpfully to his survival, was working to the last), the men do actually have a significant overlap to their composing lives.

⁵ Although they have wrongly and for too many decades been disregarded – along with many of his works – he had toured with that work, his third concerto (in D Minor, Opus 30), and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Opus 43.




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

Thursday 16 October 2014

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IC)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IC)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


17 October


What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IC)


On Friday 17 October at 7.30, Cambridge Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) hosts the first in its annual Cambridge Classical Concert Series

The programme for Friday has Natasha Paremski (@natashaparemski) as soloist in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (@rpoonline) under the conductorship of Fabien Gabel

According to the score, Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) wrote his Rhapsody between 3 July (Franz Kafka’s birthday (in 1883)) and 18 August 1934 - which seems a reasonably short time, but see what follows.


Rachmaninov and Brahms

Some people like to see it as something Russian – as if pigeon-holing helps* – that Tchaikovsky’s response to success was often introspection and melancholy, or that, on the other hand, Sergei Rachmaninov was sensitive to new works of his being poorly received. (So much so that, around the turn of the century, he lost faith in his powers as a composer, but seemed to find help through hypnosis from, and conversation about music with, Dr Nikolay Dahl, an amateur musician.)

Neither composer can have been helped by the fact that the standards to which we have become accustomed to-day, not only of musicianship and of time and space to prepare works for performance, but also of seeking more to be objective in reviews of concerts and new music, did not always obtain, even at the turn of the nineteenth century. Well into the twentieth century, indeed, as well as having to make a living / become accepted as a composer, since Rachmaninov was still performing in the winter of 1942–1943 (in support of war relief) – it is thought that it was partly because of it that he died, on 28 March 1943 (in Beverly Hills, California).

The length of time that Brahms took to write his Symphony No. 1 (in C Minor, Op. 68) has been mentioned elsewhere in writing about the relatively short gestation of his Symphony No. 2 (in D Major, Op. 73) : essentially, a question at that time of seeming cramped, or inhibited, in the symphonic form, by feeling himself to be in Beethoven’s shadow.

The further link with Rachmaninov is that some premieres of Brahms’ works suffered equally for lack of orchestral preparation, not to mention the entrenched hostility of some critics : if, though, we were still paying regard to what they wrote after the first performance (in Leipzig) in January 1859, we would not be listening to Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1* (in D Minor, Op. 15). (In it, he affected to transmute material from a predecessor to the Symphony No. 1.)

As many will know, Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Op. 43) is indeed rhapsodic in nature. Yet by way of what could potentially have been episodic, because it consists of a set of twenty-four variations on the theme from Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 in A Minor (itself a Tema con Variazioni), but made effortlessly flowing.

And the piece comes with much musical / numerical resonance with, amongst other comprehensive compositions, Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (Das Wohltemperierte Klavier) Book I (BWV 846–869) and II (BWV 870–893), Chopin’s Preludes (Op. 28)**, as well as his own two sets of Preludes (Opp. 23, 28) : in total twenty-three, which, with the early Prelude in C Sharp Minor (from the Morceaux de fantaisie, Op. 3), cover all the major and minor keys***.

The Rhapsody is famously complete with Rachmaninov’s favourite evocation, the theme of the Dies irae, and the inestimable, graceful beauty that is variation XVIII. Not uniquely amongst his compositions, it cries out for dance, and the ballet is where, new to his work, it was first heard : the sophistication of the orchestration, the inventiveness of the inversions and transmutations, the subtlety of the transitions, must have thrilled Baltimore in 1934 at its world premiere, and its first British performance in Manchester in 1935…


Michael Kennedy’s trusty third edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music**** (though, for some purposes, one would not refuse the donation of a new edition…) rightly calls it one of his finest works, for it is simply glorious – energetic, lively, thoughtful, passionate, but also abstracted, and slightly matter of fact in a tongue-in-cheek way.

So that is certainly something to relish in the coming season !


End-notes

* Or helps anything – other than further viewing someone different as ‘other’, whereas one could try to understand him or her.

** Plus two sets of twelve Études, Opp. 10, 25.

*** There is also, of course, the so-called Revolutionary Prelude, in D Minor.

**** Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980.




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

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IB) - uncorrected proof

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IB)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


16 October (updated 17 October)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IB)


On Friday 17 October at 7.30, Cambridge Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) hosts the first in its annual Cambridge Classical Concert Series

The programme for Friday has Natasha Paremski (@natashaparemski) as soloist in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (@rpoonline) under the conductorship of Fabien Gabel



According to the score, Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) wrote his Rhapsody between 3 July (Franz Kafka’s birthday, in 1883) and 18 August 1934 (which seems a reasonably short time, but composition was not always so).

It was first performed on 7 November that year, with Leopold Stokowski conducting The Philhadelphia Orchestra, and Rachmaninov playing the solo part, and they then recorded it on Christmas Eve (please see Rachmaninov and others, below).

Also in the first half is Schumann’s ‘Overture’ to Manfred, Op. 115, and, in the second, Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73.


Rachmaninov and I

When I started at university, I began to get to know the works of Rachmaninov through a friend – some of which maybe I had maybe heard in passing, in that casual way of cliché because of David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945), itself a sort of brief encounter with compositions that, on closer listening, had a lot to offer (a view that has come to Sergei Rachmaninov more generally in the intervening years).

My friend played piano well (he had – or was to have –some impressive teachers), as well as having dedication, technique, enthusiasm and interpretative powers. So, through him, I came to love Rachmaninov’s principal Concertos for Piano (and soon bought a recording of the whole set) – as well as, at some stage (and amongst other works), the Symphony No. 2 (in E Minor, Op. 27) when he was developing / sharing his passion for it, and the B Flat Minor Sonata for Piano (No. 2, Op. 36) during his learning it…

Yet, in the days after the close of the first Lent Term, when I was spending a few days in a friend’s flat on my way home (via London), I had no notion that meeting up with another new friend from university, to go to favourite places of hers (such as The National Portrait Gallery), would introduce me to the work on this programme :

For the suggestion of going to the ballet and sitting ‘in the cheap seats’ (since we were undergraduates) seemed as good an idea as any – and there proved to be a lot of music on the bill (possibly also a ballet based on The Enigma Variations* of Elgar ?). But the obvious highlight, for dance, score and dazzling execution, was the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, and being enthralled by :

* The unfolding of the variations (from the famous statement of the theme, as used for The South Bank Show)

* Possibly realizing that this was Rachmaninov (we may not have troubled with a programme) ?

* Knowing Rachmaninov’s trademark use of Dies irae theme – and hearing what he did with it here (first in Variation VII)

* The sumptuous, tender variation (Variation XVIII**), along with how the principal male dancer interpreted it

* Even spotting that Rachmaninov was using inversion here as part of his compositional repertoire


Rachmaninov and others

On which, for those who learn aurally, The Proms 2013 – in the person of Steven Hough – gives examples in a very good, brief introduction.

Or one can, again via YouTube, hear Rachmaninov himself in the beginning of the work (seemingly conducted by Stokwoski – taken from the recording made with the same forces as for the premiere ?)…



Coda : Please look here for a connection, of sorts, between Brahms and Rachmaninov (plus a plethora of further Opus Numbers !)…


Post-concert Tweets :






End-notes

* Properly, Variations on an Original Theme for Orchestra (‘Enigma’), another Op. 36.

** An Andante cantabile, in D Flat Major.



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

Monday 21 October 2013

I was looking forward to the sheep... !

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


21 October (updated 23 October)


62 = S : 11 / A : 13 / C : 10 / M : 13 / P : 8 / F : 7 

A rating / review of Killer of Sheep (1977)


S = script
A = acting
C = cinematography
M = music
P = pacing
F = feel

Mid-point of scale (all scores out of 17) = 9


If I were told that Killer of Sheep (1977) came to be made because its director and cinematographer had been working on a commissioned documentary about an abattoir, and thought of weaving a human story around that of the sheep, I would readily believe it. They might also have had some unstaged footage of black children playing, which they could supplement.

One could almost jump mentally straight from there to Dinah Washington singing over the closing shots of massed sheep being herded up a ramp. The sheep have been far more alive than the adults talking to each other, encouraging action or belief, or heavily making a mess of an engine that they have troubled to bring down an exterior staircase and put on the back of a pick-up – though it must be said that this latter sequence, concerned as the abattoir is with motion and process, is nicely shot and put together.

Where life is utterly lacking is in reaction-shots, where it is abundant that what we have just seen is not what was being looked at, or where Stan’s wife (Kaycee Moore, seeking to allure), in an excruciatingly slow dance that feels like sleepwalking or involuntary movement during a coma set to a blues, touches his bare torso in a way that looks so forced that it is no wonder that it does not arouse Stan (Henry G. Sanders).

Some scenes of those children playing feel the same, and as fake as when two guys lug a t.v. over a back fence, but none of this has the ring of artifice that would have us know it as such, because one would not, at the same time, have a boy hiding behind a piece of panel, and only artfully reveal that the projectiles hitting it are part of a big military game, where positions are besieged or stormed. The film is, essentially, very uneven, and too rooted in the manners and behaviour of its time, as if, in themselves, they provide interest.



At one point, we suddenly hear Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 4, at another the unmistakeable voice of Louis Armstrong with a fine clarinettist (‘West End Blues’), but both just steal from what is on screen, rather than adding to it – fine music cannot simply build up what has been filmed, if one is suddenly more aware of and drawn to those sounds and into identifying them.

There are a few nice touches, such as when Moore comes into the kitchen where Sanders and a friend are playing dominoes, and we have both heads momentarily telescoped together as if it were her point of view, but the camerawork only generally comes alive with action such as the engine, and hence the feeling that the parts of the film and their styles do not belong together.

Yes, the film wants to say something to us through the meaning of the Washington song ‘This Bitter Earth’ and the sheep (and Samsara (2011) could have its roots here, as Cloud Atlas (2012) might), but it has taken too much strain to get here, and it is simply a source of gratitude that, in some form, the end has now come.


Put another way (not to seem so hard on the film) :

Maybe the film is deeply clever, but it still seems like a one-trick pony : nice interchanges about the cousin, the uncle, the woman rubbing cream on her leg, but all just leading up to the sight-gag of the engine falling off the back - Laurel and Hardy with no laughs, no infuriated recriminations, just sheep-like acceptance.




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

Sunday 3 March 2013

Morten and Eric

This piece is about Shining Night : A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen (2012)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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3 March

This piece is about Shining Night : A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen (2012)

Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen are huge names in the sacred choral music tradition in America.

To-day, on a Sunday afternoon, the latter is in Cambridge, conducting a rehearsal just now before a screening of Shining Night (2012), a new film about him at 4.00, complete with a Q&A with the director and him. (Later, the concert for which the rehearsal.)

There may be more relevant and compelling things to ask in the wake of the film, but my question, as presently envisaged, is:

If you agree that certain composers have a distinctive voice or sound, is it fair to characterize that as their harmonic language, and, if so, what are the elements in your harmonic language are of which you are aware, and, if not, how would you describe what makes your compositions yours ?


Michael Stillwater's film gave an affectionate appreciation of Lauridsen the man, the composer, and the participant in rehearsals where his work is being performed, as well as of Waldron Island in Washington, where he lives part of each year, looking across to Canada. Certain messages, apart from the power and cohesiveness of the work, came across very clearly :

* Lauridsen is almost a poet in his approach to composition, as well as a sociological and historical scholar in putting the texts that he sets in context

* Indeed, as he revealed in the Q&A, he reads poetry every day, and begins every class at university with a poem (and the opportunity for others to share poetry)

* He is quite aware of musical language, and so, in setting O magnum mysterium, says that he did not want anything to interpose itself between the text and the hearer

* He alluded to a wealth of notes 'discarded' to get 'the right ones'

* The natural world and the silence of where he chooses to live are supremely important to him

* The sense, as he later confirmed, of being a private person, but one who feels deeply for history, for those who will hear his compositions, and for those who sing them, having deliberately made Lux Aeterna within the capability of choirs of competent singers, rather than just highly skilled ensembles

* Having to pawn one of his two instruments or his typewriter to get by, he had not had things easy in early days


Initially, Lauridsen answered questions from two members of the music society at Queens' (his hosts that day).

When I got to ask a question, I asked whether being front of the camera and talking about himself had felt intrusive - in a very long answer, he was quick to say (and quite defensive in saying so) that he is used to talking in public as a university teacher. However, the fact remains that there was at least one moment that Michael Stillwater had caught on camera in his documentary where Lauridsen looked choked by what he was remembering or talking about.

What I had wanted to know was whether Stillwater had had to do anything to make the experience easier for Lauridsen, especially at those moments, but he wanted to suggest that he was not even aware of the camera.

He said that, when he had responded to Stillwater's approach to make a film, he had freely invited Stillwater to film him in rehearsals and performances, first in California, then in Scotland, but it sounded as though he hoped that he would not have to be filmed on his retreat in Washington, in an unquestionably beautiful location that Stillwater's cinematography showed to good effect (despite the limitations of the digital capture of certain qualities and characters of light).

Stillwater was equally clear that he had felt - rightly - that, in effect, the heart of the film would have been missing without Waldron. Good for overcoming both Lauridsen's reluctance, and for making the presence of the crew a happy one for other residents !

As for whether one is with those such as Giles Swayne who do not regard Lauridsen as 'a real composer', I believe that how one views his work is a matter of opinion, but that his conviction and integrity when it comes to what he views as important in life and in his work (inseparable as they may be) come across and deserve not to be denied.


Friday 9 March 2012

Max Bruch is most famous for...?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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9 March

Not for inventing the dishwasher (as Max Christian Friedrich Bruch didn't, having been born, on the day of Epiphany in 1838, too early to do so), but, from more than 200 compositions, arguably for that Concerto for Violin (in G minor No. 1, Op. 26 (1866))*, or, if not that for you, for one of three other pieces (with very close opus numbers, and even corresponding dates of composition):

* The Scottish Fantasy in E flat major, Op. 46 (1880)

*Kol Nidrei, Op. 47 (1881);

* Symphony No. 3 in E major, Op. 51 (1883)


It is not that his work was not received well by audiences in its time (apparently, his cantata Frithjof, in the early 1860s, was met with great enthusiasm), but it didn't help either that, on account of the second of the works listed above, it was assumed that Bruch had Jewish ancestry and so was not performed in countries under Nazi control, or that music critics since seem to have sidelined him.

And there is, of course, a huge element of chance in what makes it into the repertoire. I have always loved the symphonic music of Vaughan Williams, but it is taking a figure such as Andrew Manze, as conductor, to make out a case for listening to symphonies that I have long valued. I also repeatedly remember how important Mendelssohn was, in a similar way, in making sure that works of Bach such as the B Minor Mass were heard, and also - love or loathe what he did with it - there is the influence of Glenn Gould's first recording of the Goldberg Variations.

With Tchaikovsky, it is rare to hear (least of all live) the Piano Concerto No. 2, and, despite how it was famously received at the time, it is almost always No. 1 that is played. There are also four Concertos for Piano and Orchestra by Rachmaninov, but it is relatively rare for the first or the fourth to be heard.

As to Bruch, although some sources say that he thought that the third concerto was as fine as the first, he seemingly knew where he was in history, and that the reputation of Brahms would overshadow hs own. In an unascribed comment**, he said:

Fifty years from now he [Brahms] will loom up as one of the supremely great composers of all time, while I will be remembered for having written my G minor violin concerto.


In their concerti for the instrument, both men owed a debt to the great Joseph Joachim (violinist, but also composer, as had been Pisendel before him), and - although it is another story - where would either work have been without him?



End-notes

* There are two others, both in D minor.

** Taken from The Rough Guide to Classical Music (London, 2005).