Friday 24 July 2015

Czech classics in Cambridge

This is a Festival review of Melvyn Tan and The Škampa Quartet

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

24 July


This is a review of a concert given, as part of Cambridge Summer Music Festival, by Melvyn Tan and The Škampa Quartet at West Road Cancert Hall on Friday 24 July 2015 at 7.30 p.m.

Cambridge Summer Music Festival (@cambridgemusic) has, in years past, given opportunities to hear both the Quartet and Melvyn Tan – one well remembers the latter in Messiaen (Quatuor pour la fin du temps – same page-turner !), and in a piano recital (also at West Road : @WestRoadCH) – and the former at The Union Society (@cambridgeunion), and here they were together !


West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge



Beethoven ~ Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109

Janáček ~ String Quartet No. 2 (‘Intimate Letters’)

Dvořák ~ Piano Quintet No. 2* in A Major, Op. 81



The review begins with what is most immediate in one’s mind, where Melvyn Tan (@Melvynbetan) and The Škampa Quartet played together



Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) ~ Piano Quintet No. 2* in A Major, Op. 81

1. Allegro, ma non tanto

2. Dumka : Andante con moto

3. Scherzo (Furiant) : Molto vivace

4. Finale : Allegro


The huge scale of Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 (in A Major, Op. 81) (from 1887), is necessarily influenced by the scale of the quintets by Schumann (1842) and Brahms (1864), and its principal themes will not fail to be known to and impress us.

So Dvořák gives us one of his telling melodies on cello, before it is passed to the first violinist (Helena Jiříkovská) : we could not only see, later, Melvyn Tan’s facial pleasure at how she rendered it, but also smiles from Adéla Štajnochrová (second violin), Lukáš Polák (cello) and Radim Sedmidubský (viola) at playing this music from their homeland, which they were going to develop for us with commitment and verve :

Into the structure of the movement, Dvořák inserts dance measures, and we hear him, through them, reaching to make a grand assertion with the material. Then, when Polák brings back the theme, it is controlled, with piano set against it, and Tan goes on to punctuate and facilitate the movement, with the music revealing itself, and its expressive potential, in the repeats, and with the intervallic leaps giving us a sense of reaching for the stars.

The scoring seems to use the piano and the quartet as if they are desks of instruments in an orchestra, ranging the former against the later, and, in the rise and fall, do we hear echoes of the composer's symphonic sound from the late 1880s / early 1890s ? (It is a different approach from the more integrative one of Brahms, but with the same orchestral possibilities at work.) With the sound of the piano closing the movement, there was a strong feeling of excitement in the ensemble to be performing this work.


At the opening of the second movement, Tan placed the theme before us with articulation and great delicacy, and then, as the others handled it, continued to do so in the capacity of embellishing and enriching it. We are a little reminded, by a melodic line in the cello part, of the slow movement of the Schumann quintet, and then Dvořák lulls us, again and again, into a restful state with each time that the piano restates the initial theme.

New vistas open with a feeling of holidaying (or journeying), and, with an undercurrent from the cello, of traversing summer meadows. Very tender playing from Polák, with the merest of gestures on violin, brought in a section of enchanted quietude : the other players were profoundly hushed as he played tremolo writing with a powerful strength of feeling. Then, full of energy, a new motif, and Tan’s face said it all, as that motif turned into a modified form of the theme. Just before the end, the holiday mood resumed, and so did the magic, in this respectfully unhurried and quiet music-making – almost a lullaby.


Albeit in proportion to the rest of the work, this is a biggish Scherzo**, and it is almost an anthology of themes, with the same feeling of yearning / journeying. This was playing with every appearance (though we know the hard work that it belied) of effortlessness, and Dvořák makes us feel a measure of ease, though he is shifting the tonal centres, and also playfulness, with Tan giving us a profound legato, echoed by the string-players. That moment of yearning briefly recurs, before the use of variation-form reminds us of the Beethoven Piano Sonata, and the Scherzo closes with very definite, clear strokes.

The Finale is written with, and was played with, graciousness and also propulsive force, and Dvořák subdivides, by sounding the violins against the cello and the viola : the stage arrangement chosen, with the first violin to audience left, and the viola to the right, was good visibly, but also separated the voices here. Rhythmic patterns are used in the scoring, as well as little, playful gestures of the notes of another key, and the effect of small pulses.

As the Allegro moves, it develops into a fast, modulating fugue with a lively piano voice, but then bringing back a theme from an earlier movement. The harmony becomes ambiguous, and there is a play-fight of a tussle as to where we are rooted, before reducing to a hush, for a simple statement on violin, to which the other strings add descending figures.

They provided exceedingly quiet harmony to a piano passage, before what must have been one of the softest sections of pizzicato ever. From there, first violin Helena Jiříkovská took the lead, but, with competing material that desired to come to the fore, Dvořák left us guessing right to the closing bar to see how he would end this thrilling, lively piece.


One took great pleasure in and in hearing this work, and was most impressed both by the integration of all the players into the work, and by the deployment of what Ralph Vaughan Williams (in praising a performance under Sir Adrian Boult) called a true pianissimo (or ppp). The Festival audience was abundantly happy to have finished the varied programme with this compelling playing, where attention had been intense all round.


* * * * *


Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) ~ Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109

1. Vivace ma non troppo / Adagio espressivo

2. Prestissimo

3. Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung. Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo


Melvyn Tan (image from www.nmcrec.co.uk)


Performances vary as to whether the two sides of the first movement are ‘run together’ with another in that of the second movement, but these so-called five (or six) ‘Late’ sonatas are their own kind of beast : probably, one guesses more (as one listens), not because Beethoven only came technically to think in terms that broke the mould at this stage in his life, but because, as Bach was, he must have been aware of his legacy, and could dare to say the things that had been in his heart for a long time ? [For CRASSH (@CRASSHlive) in January (also at West Road), Murray Perahia’s compelling analysis of, and guided performance with The DoricString Quartet (@doric_quartet) of movements from, the original form of Beethoven’s Opus String Quartet Op. 130 revealed the roots of his thinking, and of his future-proofing compositions.]




Melvyn Tan, who saluted the one nearest to him, clearly had not seen before the distended urns, bearing plants with green foliage, that had been arranged at either end of the piano : as they did not disturb him, they served to give a certain balance to the backdrop of what can, visually, be an exposed stage at West Road. As is usual with him, he seems to catch himself as much as us by surprise in starting to play, i.e. without any grand preparation of holding the arms aloft above the keyboard :

He threw us straight into something that causes us to ask what Schubert (1791–1828) would have made of this theme (or of the use of variation form ?) – he whose mere thirty-one years alive were, apart from the last twenty months, coincident with when Beethoven was alive (1770–1827 : as we do not always realize ?). Beethoven gives us here – with typical, and undimmed, Beethovenian fire, drive and energy – a mix of feelings and techniques straightaway, with a great sense of balance, and of modulation, momentary touches of great beauty, and the hands gradually separating to the ends of the keyboard.

In all this, Tan felt immensely prepared, but not to have premeditated the exact interpretative choices that he brought to the performance – which is what one values so much in his approach, the sense of freedom within full facility with the score – except that it was always going to be rhythmically very live, and played from the inside outwards.


A Schubertian theme of tenderness (or Schumannesque, ahead of its time ?), which was right at the outset of the Andante, Tan repeated slightly more softly. Pacing the playing as if it were breathing, he brought out its quality as a chorale, and, emphasizing some of the not obviously significant internal lines, led us into the variations : the heart of the matter, infused by dance-forms, and also with wonder at what the world might have made of this music at the time...

If one had judged by appearance, and been unable to hear Tan’s playing, he did not look at ease, and one would not have imagined that he was creating such a beautiful, appropriately precise sound much in his approach, the sense of freedom within full facility with the score – as part of which, as the variations progressed, he also brought out some spikiness in the writing. In working on Beethoven with The Doric Quartet (as mentioned above), Murray Perahia talked about a moment when, to try to paraphrase the religious conception that he evoked, Heaven comes to meet Earth, and we had that feeling from Beethoven here much in his approach, the sense of freedom within full facility with the score – and then building to an expansive treatment.

Yet, at root (as with, say, The Goldberg Variations), all that development comes back to a simple statement, and then further decoration / ornamentation, in which we hear Tan exposing the full feeling within this sonata, and enwrapping us in it : we are willing it on, to where we hear it to be going, and he is maintaining our engagement, by keeping something back. It is, though, in a simple statement again that Beethoven, through Tan, seeks a conclusion, with much in his approach, the sense of freedom within full facility with the score – reminding us of the chorale element much in his approach, the sense of freedom within full facility with the score – a nigh Lutheran, quiet close to this thoughtfully vibrant interpretation.


* * * * *


Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) ~ String Quartet No. 2 (1928) (‘Intimate Letters’)

1. Andante – Con moto – Allegro

2. Adagio – Vivace

3. Moderato – Andante – Adagio

4. Allegro – Andante – Adagio


The Škampa Quartet (but one got away, Adéla Štajnochrová) : Radim Sedmidubský (viola), Helena Jiříkovská (first violin), Lukáš Polák (cello)

The opening Andante sees paired violins against, first, viola in an extreme Sul ponticello, then cello : in all this, there is the assurance of mastery of language and form from, especially here, Radim Sedmidubský (viola) and Lukáš Polák (cello). Propelled by writing for the latter, the work opens like a flower, but one that is both vibrant (energy, passion, enthusiasm, from Janáček and his interpreters) and, at the same time, shy and delicate, exemplified by an almost imperceptible Sul ponticello passage from Polák. Throughout, the members of the quartet are communicating to each other, as well as to us, links in its episodic structure, where it moves from a slow and reflective feeling of the rhapsodic to intensity. Brought in by quiet writing for viola and touches from the violins, the movement came to a high, bright close.


The Adagio starts with sinuous writing for viola, which passes back and forward with the second violin : we hear not only the full, rich sound of the quartet, but also Janáček’s pleasure and skill in writing for what is best in the viola. Beginning with very fast figurations for lead violin, the Vivace is heartfelt in its harmonies, but there are also ambiguous notes and discords – as it progresses to the rhythms of a march or dance, there is the ambivalence of Will it, won’t it ? to the mood.

We noticed the quartet’s careful use of a range of dynamics, and how contributions to the dialogue from the viola are a significant part of the work***. It is with a sensation of inner irresolution (in some version of Janáček whom we fictionalize having all these experiences of mood- and thought-patterns) that we conclude.


Led by first violin Helena Jiříkovská, the third movement has a formal, but not icy, tone, before sounding triste and regretful. Just for, initially, a short episode, it is like a folk lullaby – when, after other material, it recurs, it is quieter, but with intensity and feeling in the realisation. With an element of squeakiness (from the score), the violins quietly proceeded, but, then, the players are on full, with an alternation of a dance and a firm pulse. With a highly energized section, from which a frenetic version of the lullaby emerges, and we come back – and back – to its theme, it is as if the music (as art is sometimes thought to be) is therapeutic. Janáček seems to be seeking a soft resolution, and, twice, ushers in an open sound, although it is to be with the end of its outbursts that it is over.


As we had been used to, The Škampa Quartet brought overwhelming musicality to the familiar theme with which the last movement asserts itself – then, a quiet interlude, before a little moment of fireworks, and resuming the theme, now full and clear. Still, all is not well with the interaction between the inner and outer in this work, and Polák had some stark statements to make on cello, and there are tensions in the harmony, and with keys and rhythms pulling against each other.

A first use of playing pizzicato (first the viola, then the two violins) led into a ‘jogging’ line for cello, of which the violins were then mimetic. In this, a sense, still, of unease and even pain, and a reduction to a very gentle dynamic. However, there is no way except up, and then all four elements of the quartet in several bars’ worth of a hugely scratchy, amorphous character : it is to resume, louder and longer, but, before it does so, the viola gives us the big theme. On the edge of our seats with the emotion in the viola part – and somewhat as with the Dvořák quintet (please see above) – we are asking where does / will / can this music end.

But end is what it forces itself to do, and we know that we have heard what offers great understanding of this soul-searching piece : Yes, factually the players are Czech, and share that with the composer, but they really felt, on some quite different level, to be magnificently in tune with this repertoire, and to have done far, far more than entertain us with it : taking us into their world.



For now, the review ends there, with a continuation / completion to come...


End-notes

* Wrongly identified, in the Festival programme, as Piano Quintet No. 1, which was Dvořák’s Opus 5 (in the same key) : although he destroyed the manuscript soon after, it did have a premiere, and one understands that it was having borrowed a copy to revise the work, fifteen years later, that caused him to write anew, and produce this masterpiece in the tradition of those already mentioned.

** Not unlike the scale of that, marked Andante, of Schubert's Piano Trio No. 1 in B Flat Major, Op. 99 (D. 898) ?

*** Maybe it was an instrument favoured by Kamila Stösslová, who (despite being a married woman who did not return his feelings) corresponded with Janáček for many years, and was with him when he died ? (We understand that she was Janáček’s inspiration for Kát'a in Katya Kabanová, the vixen in The Cunning Little Vixen, and Emilia Marty in The Makropulos Affair.)




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday 23 July 2015

Cambridge Open Studios 2015 : Images kindly supplied by Cathy Parker

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

23 July

 In two versions, the paintings described in the companion posting Cambridge Open Studios 2015 : Sunday 12 July (Weekend 2) – Happy viewing ! :



Images, speaking for themselves














And / or



Images, with intended characterization underneath


* North York Moors [CP2] – oil, £290



The view is characterized by ruddy clouds, with water represented, as it recedes, by purples and violets – what we feel most clearly in the landscape is the flatness, and the sense of distance



* Wicken Fen, November [CP8] – watercolour, £190




The eye is drawn to cherry browns, with yellow touches in the sky, and the blue-grey rendering of the trees that skirt the scene



* North York Moors [CP7] – watercolour, £190



In the heavy blackish brown of the foregorund, there is a detail of green, with, in the distance, a wash of cloud, and bluey-purple hills





 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday 22 July 2015

Cambridge Open Studios 2015 : Sunday 12 July (Weekend 2)

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

22 July




On 12 July, a day had been planned – despite the rain, which was not light at one stage – to visit the Cambridge Open Studios displays of three favourite artists...


Anna Pye






And now :





Gina Ferrari

Then (after elderflower at Anna's) a no less welcome invitation from Gina Ferrari (@FanMyFlame) :











Cathy Parker

Later, deliberately to see Cathy Parker’s work (which had been long admired, and often got one’s literal vote, at exhibitions by Cambridge Drawing Society), one ventured out to the church of St Mary the Virgin (?*) at Swaffham Prior : there turned out, still, to be relatively little of Cathy's on display (although there were some unframed works, notably a watercolour, Wicken Fen, Baker’s Fen [UF7]), but one engaged more with it than with that of her fellow exhibitors.




Here are some highlights, described :


* North York Moors [CP2] – oil, £290
The view is characterized by ruddy clouds, with water represented, as it recedes, by purples and violets – what we feel most clearly in the landscape is the flatness, and the sense of distance


* Wicken Fen, November [CP8] – watercolour, £190
The eye is drawn to cherry browns, with yellow touches in the sky, and the blue-grey rendering of the trees that skirt the scene


* North York Moors [CP7] – watercolour, £190
In the heavy blackish brown of the foregorund, there is a detail of green, with, in the distance, a wash of cloud, and bluey-purple hills


A good round of visits during Open Studios – before needing to make it to Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW) to review Neil Brand's (@NeilKBrand's) score for Blackmail (1929), performed by The BBC Symphony Orchestra (@BBCSO), conducted by Timothy Brock


End-notes

* None of the web-sites seemed, despite the fact that there are two churches in one churchyard, to take sufficient trouble to tell one which is which, so the venue was – as Cathy Parker kindly advises** – actually the Church of St Cyriac and St Julitta (dedicated, according to the detail of the Wikipedia® web-page, to Saint Quiricus and Saint Julietta)...

** She has also usefully provided images of the three paintings described : for those who like the words on their own first, they have been put in a separate posting...




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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An environmental thread at #CamFF 2014 : Energized and (incomplete) Last Call

An environmental thread at Cambridge Film Festival : Energized (2014) and Last Call (2013)

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

22 July

An environmental thread at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 : Energized (2014) and (incomplete) Last Call (2013)

There is synergy (no pun intended !) between Last Call (2013) and Energized (2014), which is why they should be being reviewed together. (That said, a clash of programme at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (#CamFF)* meant that only the last part of Energized could be seen – and the review of Last Call has been ‘forever’ finishing itself, so it will continue to linger, and we hope that it may follow…)



The latter seems more focused, because its sections, although in some ways discrete, bleed into each other – in a short space of time, we get a good sense of the energy-independency of Murnau, in Austria, with examples, facts and statistics concisely given, and then move on (via narration and then a caption) to a related topic. This is the style of the film, which means that it can cover much ground by linking segments in this way.

Who benefits from large-scale solar arrays, the possible merits of a super-grid for power distribution, and the competing claims about power loss when conveying electricity over vast distances were all presented – quite apart from France’s near-total reliance on nuclear as a source of energy, and the concerns about the integrity of how its nuclear waste is kept (nothing to do with the risk of terrorists gaining access, but the relatively poorly understood systems of storage that were apparently used in the early years (as mentioned in the review of Containment (2015) at Sheffield Doc/Fest (@sheffdocfest)), but which no one, except the campaigner shown (who installed them), seems to want to acknowledge and revisit) – the film is a compendium of issues that affect the choices that nations make for the future of Earth’s resources.



Yet one simple example hits home very hard, that of a farmer growing sunflowers on one-tenth of his farmland. He told us that harvesting crops (one assumes that he meant the whole process of planting seeds, spraying, harvesting, tilling and levelling) uses 23% of the world’s consumption of fuel. However, he has converted his machinery to be powered by the sunflower oil that he produces (and in a way that satisfied his wife that he was not ruining the machinery) : the oil not only provides fuel for his farm, but gives him the means to plant and harvest future sunflowers.




By contrast, Last Call (2013) takes a longer view, because its ambit is from when the study The Limits to Growth was published (in 1972 – we see footage of the hopeful launch), how it came to be written, and what has happened since. It suffers – not inevitably – on this account, because, at times, its focus seems to be on where its authors were twenty years on, a subtle shift from how the study itself is being viewed at that remove (although, for those still alive and campaigning, there is common ground).

With the fortieth anniversary, it becomes even less clear whether we are following the authors’ fortunes or that of their work, some of whom, such as Dennis Meadows, are still addressing conferences, whereas others, such as his ex-wife Donella, set up an environmental community (and had died before the anniversary)… The narration also suffers from the fact that the voice used seems to have a patronizing tone to it, which tends to make one feel that one is not being given credit for what one already knew :

 For example, Geography lessons at school (shortly after the report had appeared) had treated things such as the impending population explosion as understood – even if, when it comes to governments, they generally have not, of course, had the resolve to do very much to address it, despite the related problems of increased consumption of limited resources…

 What one did not appreciate, until now, was the existence of The Club of Rome (as instigated by the invitation of Aurelio Peccei and Alexander King), which had a significant role in the publication of The Limits to Growth, because it sponsored the visit to MIT and commissioned the report. Likewise, one does not recall footage of Jimmy Carter addressing the American nation about the challenges that it faced, and also putting solar-panels on The White House :

That with which one is more familiar is the attitude that ignored or disdained the possibility that mankind might be having any effect on the environment, typified by further footage, this time of Ronald Reagan, dismissing any idea of limits to growth as unthinkable – as if growth were a God-given right, even an undeniable virtue, and so anyone talking of limiting it were calling for a curb on the American spirit itself, if not pronouncing anathema.

 One takes from the film the idealism of the writers of the report, imagining that their views would be influential for good, and their not expecting a vigorous and very hostile reaction against them, which in the press – as a file of newspaper clippings show – rarely, if ever, engaged with the real issues, or represented the writers’ arguments for what they were.

 The report had been a scholarly plea, based on the best modelling available of the world’s interrelated and potentially ungovernable infrastructure (i.e. if left until out of control), to consider what growth upon growth would yield for the Earth’s future : just as Carter embraced the possibility of changing path to ensure mankind’s survival, so – because politically motivated – Regan’s administration ridiculed it.

 Probably (though other advocates are not much mentioned) they ridiculed Isaac Asimov, a scientist as well as a science-fiction writer. Green-house gases, and the effects that they may have had on the environments of other planets in the solar system, may have been fine for extraterrestrial science, but it was only in the little knee-jerk ban of CFCs (carbon fluorocarbons), when a hole was found in the ozone layer, that we have seen any obvious response to a consideration of Earth’s atmosphere.

 For Dennis Meadows, even if the point may have been passed when the foot could have been taken off the throttle with regard to the effect on Earth, he keeps on campaigning and fighting for this cause. [...]


End-notes

* Watching Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday) (1930), with interpretative commentary from Neil Brand and Jeff Davenport, meant that one was elsewhere at Energized's start-time of 5.00 p.m.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tuesday 21 July 2015

People Watch People Watching : New work from Streetwise Opera

This is a review of the premiere of Streetwise Opera’s People Watch

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

21 July

This is a review of the premiere of Streetwise Opera*’s People Watch, which opened Tête à Tête / The Opera Festival at The Place Theatre, King’s Cross, on Tuesday 21 July 2015 at 7.00 p.m.




The mise-en-scène was we, looking at them, looking at us. Beneath a banner that was to be lit differently for a different theme (and most clearly visible in the image that is embedded in the Tweet at the foot of the review), we had The Ligeti Quartet (@LigetiQuartet), dressed as black cats** and on a dais, with sideboard and dresser, and the various performers – as when we entered – of Streetwise Opera (@StreetwiseOpera), ranged on sundry items of furniture across the stage before us.


Streetwise Opera’s voices and those of The Ligeti Quartet in an integrated ensemble

Photograph by, and by kind courtesy of, Claire Shovelton


Near the opening of Stef Conner’s (@StefConner's) score, we heard strokes in the cello against voices, which gave way to laughing, and for which cellist Val Welbanks provided an ostinato. Right at the start, director Timothy Burke had brought up the sound of the voices, which were talking quite naturally, but there was now a deliberately forced Hee-hee quality to the laughter as it developed, accompanied by hypnotic, circular writing.

After a short pause, a huge laugh (almost alarmingly so, and no longer seeking to be in rhythm with the quartet ?), overwhelmed us, and we became aware that singer Susannah Austin (@SusannahAustin), who had already been noticeable for being dressed in a silken dressing-gown, had stood. With an unfussy, clear voice, she performed against string-writing that seemed vestigial – in sounds, the instruments began to pick up the character of her words, and of their cadences. She brought us the words Quiet, and Silent, and whoever she may have represented, there was a Slavonic feel to the instrumental sound :

Susannah Austin, who has risen from within the ensemble to sing

Photograph by, and by kind courtesy of, Claire Shovelton


As Austin sang We keep our peace, the quartet sounded set apart from the tenor of her voice, as a separate strand. She continued, rendering Our reaction is gentle, with an initial threefold repetition of ‘gentle’. As she continued to sing the word, we heard a sound as of keening, and, led by Richard Jones on viola, the quartet built up volume until the chorus joined in, their voices restful in the ensemble. Gentle, Austin urged – when the tone became one of yearning, she reflected it, and sat down.

Interjection after the fact :
One is now reminded of the delightful moment of corporate calm, at the end of the filmed sequence in The Answer to Everything (#ATEOpera), where Elizabeth Watts (@LizWattsSoprano) has charmed troubled breasts with a lovely arrangement of Handel’s beautiful lascia ch’io pianga – what, after all, Streetwise is all about bringing to people and their lives* ?


Familiar as The Chairman of the Board in #ATEOpera, Rob Gildon, as Gary, heralded a section that parodied t.v. advertisements, with Squirt The Dirt, which closed with a brief rodeo style of transitional theme, and a squeaky tremolo on viola. It was at this stage that we came to appreciate that this was not just one huge living-room, in some sort of group home, but that the central armchairs and sofas were a resource that allowed the cast to move around, and for other faces to come in and out of prominence and form new configurations. A tense, pulsing feel accompanied the realization that Children in Need was on the imaginary screen : Not that again ! came the reaction to the BBC’s big charity campaign.



The post-modern response to seeing natural history on t.v. :
booking a trip on one’s phone to go to see it ?

Photograph by, and by kind courtesy of, Claire Shovelton


The rodeo section recurred, and we were brought to confront the different attitudes about that dog – ‘Look at him go !’ – from Britain’s Got Talent, before positions switched back, with a tremolo from viola. From ridiculous admiration for the canine to the sublimity of exclaiming It’s so beautiful, and a hypnotic quality to the quartet-writing, with the viola appearing against short repetitive passages in the background – it was as if material were in the act of emerging, as we listened.

Dressed for night, like some goddess of sleep, Susannah Austin stands again, and moves to those whom, now that there are spots on them, we notice (also dressed in white) in a group stage left (though there are individuals stage right [one is visible in the first image (above)], whom she later visits, with comfort). The chorus gives a wordless hum : the instruments have a ‘summery’ feel to them, but there are discords in the writing for first violin. Also, a sense as of keening, and with tremolos being played sul ponticello. Lyrical writing for violin is joined by cello, but with a ‘squeaky’ tremolo on viola, and then the quartet gives us bowed harmonic effects, up and down the fingerboard, as Austin sings, again, her soft encouragement.


Fellow singers in white from amongst the Streetwise Opera performers
Photograph by, and by kind courtesy of, Claire Shovelton


A riff is interjected by speech, then repeated, and the tone becomes ironic, and squeaky. The rodeo theme ushers all the voices in, and Austin sits again, before another switch over on stage, the quartet punctuating the vocal exchanges.

The musical mood has gone to melodrama, and, again different reactions to what is seen : It’s just so wrong !, objected one of three women in black, but no one will ultimately turn it off. The chorus sang Beautiful, but with tired undertones, which undercut the word***. The quartet tentatively, through cello and violin, stated material, before a short pizzicato section for the three women, and the re-emergence, after the rodeo phrase, of Gary with Squeaky Shine (which apparently had a testimonial for polishing pets ?).

All stood, to solemn playing, to which a ‘scratchy’ tremolo was added, and we noticed a red coloration to the banner, behind everyone, and with its six silhouetted heads. Not for the first time, a ‘sinking’ sensation, as there was a sliding move down the fingerboard. We heard the words Permanently confined to his home, but with ‘sour’ undertones, and the discord fed into the instrumental writing, as the gold stars on the banner became clearer.

We pick out where the quartet is attempting to establish a theme, as Austin sings Quiet, and the others reply Silent, her words initially on three notes (the first syllable split over a pair), and theirs, si – lent, on a falling interval. It is a meditation, with a Sepphardic sound to it, and it turns into a paean, with a recursive sense of ensemble :

What we see, and as we listen, sung with full force, as the banner’s stars show brightly – What we make of what we take in, with Austin singing Quiet into the midst of the emotions expressed.

To questioning tones from the quartet, lighting comes on full, and we hear the chorus singing open chords. The three more mobile members of the quartet stand, and silently hold their instruments, as if turned back into china cats. Almost in a round, the choir’s voice and Austin’s mesmerically follow each other, again and again.






When Timothy Burke brings the piece to a close, it is to much and buoyant acclamation, with several standing in the audience. Stef Conner and director / lyricist Bill Bankes-Jones (@billbj) were enthusiastically fêted, and it was all that the ushers could do, as everyone was being clapped off the stage, to try to encourage the audience to leave and make way for the next event in a busy opening night for Tête à Tête...





After-thought :




Though, as composer, the final word should go to Stef Conner :



Stef Conner (pictured with wordsmith, etc., Bill Bankes-Jones)

In its early days, opera entertained the masses and then somewhere along the line people started associating it with classical literature, etiquette, fine dining and posh gloves



End-notes

* Streetwise Opera (@StreetwiseOpera) is an award-winning charity that uses music to help people who have experienced homelessness make positive changes in their lives. It runs weekly and termly music programmes in homeless centres and arts venues across England and Wales, and stages critically acclaimed opera productions.

** Fortunately, one checked with lead violinist Mandhira de Saram (still so dressed – and with what proved to have been vivid rims to her eyes, which had made placing her gaze as she played disconcerting), otherwise that would have read black mice : the concept was apparently that china cats come to life from time to time to comment.

*** Sometimes, as within depression (though that really seems like the wrong word for some people’s experience, which is more like suppression ?), we can know that something is glorious – our family or friends, or the natural world – and that we should take joy in it, but we do not, and we cannot :

It is as if the body’s responses are suppressed (to protect it, and us, from engaging with a world beyond us ?). The knowledge, in one’s head, that something is wonderful or in which one should take pleasure (the nagging words of our own, and others’, criticism in the deepest of depression), does not connect with the feelings of the heart (itself under attack at knowing that it does not do as it ‘should’). We sense our confusion and our woundedness (yet even that only partly, not in full aliveness)...



Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday 15 July 2015

Containment - the vessel and the djinn

This is a Festival review of Containment (2015)

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

15 July (account of the Q&A added, 16 July)

This is a Festival review of Containment (2015), which screened at Sheffield Documentary Festival on Sunday 7 June at 12.15 p.m., followed by a Q&A with directors Robb Moss and Peter Galison

This review – started on 7 June – has been a long time coming : not for want of what to say, but how to organize it (it failed, in every way, to write itself)




One could not fail to be struck, at the beginning of the film, by the graphics that directors Robb Moss and Peter Galison had commissioned for Containment (2015), which were based on the outcome of a US government project [the ‘far future’ consultation group], to engage viewers with another era, and with [fears about] what mankind’s knowledge-base* might be in AD 12,000 : as the film unfolded, it is ironic that it had been conceived that, at that remove, people might stumble across the thitherto undisturbed site of WIPP, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad (New Mexico), and – of course, because one simply would – just start digging through the surface there, not knowing what lay below.



Therefore, the consultation group had been tasked with establishing means to warn those people, ten millennia distant, not to do so – and why. The strongest emotional conception, built on the notion that somewhere that felt physically very unsettling would deter them from wanting to be (or stay) there, is used in the poster for Containment (as above). And yet talking about the project – perhaps quite unnecessarily ? – took up [what felt like] quite a bit of space in a running-time of 81 minutes (?)*

The reason is that there is a significant issue of balance with having included that topic [much as one knows, e.g. from the participation, in the film's Doc/Fest Q&A, of the script consultant of Match Me ! – How to Find Love in Modern Times (2014), that some films need several strands ‘to work’] : containment, in the sense of rendering (and keeping safe) nuclear materials, even in its own terms (please see below), is such an unexplored (or poorly explored) area that to consider imagining that one had succeeded (both during and after the process of nuclear fission – which is another widening of the film’s scope), and succeeded so well that 3,500 generations later maybe people knew too little about what had been done not to be at risk of harming themselves, seemed a leap**. Even more, an arbitrary one (regarding the remit of the project), since ten thousand years is not even what we are told is one half-life for Plutonium-239 (Pu-239), one of twenty radioactive isotopes of Plutonium*** (link to the Wikipedia® web-page).




In this connection, it has to be a fault of Containment (but an easily rectifiable one, by adding on-screen text, or a voice-over, at the first reference) that it does not take a moment to say what ‘a half-life’ is (i.e. the time in which, through radioactive decay, one ends up with a mass of the substance half that with which one started : that radioactive isotope will constitute 50% of the mass of the material, whatever isotope(s) of that (or another) element [radioactive or not] it may have broken down into) : as suggested by the words quoted in the Tweet above, to have assumed that all those watching the film will already know and understand the jargon takes away its power to present this topic widely and coherently, when the safety of keeping nuclear material is of obvious relevance to us all.

Actually, as mentioned, the treatment in this film of what might be meant by the theme of ‘containment’ is itself wide. (It is also arguably at least as conventional to use it in the context of nuclear fusion (rather than fission, the process that a nuclear reactor is engineered to induce), denoting how to contain [or the problem of containing] the matter to be combined at phenomenally high temperatures.) That said, we do not even know, from sequences that deal with WIPP, how much Pu-244*** it was trying to store, or how, because that isotope will necessarily be around for a very long time to pose a threat (yet, from the way that we see the waste physically handled (please see below), one would not know it).



Instinctively, though, one always thought that it was highly presumptuous to imagine that, far into the future, one would get to that position (please see below). (Not least in the light of the qualms about the storage for waste in France (a country that has made itself wholly dependent on nuclear power) that are expressed in Energized (2014) [to a highly overdue account of which that now links…] by the person responsible for its design : as one recalls, his concerns came to affect his health (which, in our world, served to undermine his credibility), but he came to regret what he saw as the faults in the methodology whose implementation he had overseen.) For picturing the far future assumed (a) the lack of any site-specific mishaps, let alone (b) the survival of members of the human race who might mistakenly intrude. (Watching Last Call (2013), the companion film (for review purposes) to Energized, does not exactly leave one hopeful on (b)’s account…).




A little impressionistically, the film takes WIPP as just one of several foci for the purposes of looking at containment, including a secret US government site on the Savannah River, and the Fukushima nuclear plant, in Japan, and the landscape around it that remains contaminated – albeit not, seemingly, contaminated enough for a woman not to visit the nearby town, and the family restaurant there where she had last had lunch, or a man to go back to his former home most days ? (In the Q&A (in which Robb Moss and Peter Galison both took part : more on the Q&A below), the last, rather pointed question – seemingly put by someone with expertise in these matters – observed, having asked after figures for measurement of contamination in the area, that the film had simply not quantified the levels of radiation that surround Fukushima, or even made a comparison with Background Radiation (link to a definition from Wikipedia®)).

At other points in the film, we had had to wonder (as the film left us doing so) why a man was handling a turtle from the Savannah River whose shell he had said was contaminated with radioactive Caesium – so he seemed to be saying, as Robb Moss had to agree, in conversation afterwards, it did sound [although Moss went on to interpret the turtle as having previously been contaminated (or that others like it had been ?)]. Or why thin rubber gloves sufficed to protect employees at WIPP from the vessels, containing nuclear waste for storage, with which they were working. In themselves, in the orthodoxy of scientific understanding, there might have been reasons why this is [thought] adequate protection / safe, but the film did not explain, and thereby (as it wants to tell us itself) hangs quite a tail about what anyone really does know of these matters :

* Containment gives time, just before showing us the turtles, to show us a minister of religion on a vessel on the Savannah River, commenting on the proximity of the site to where people from his church live (although he takes it that they are deemed not to be in enough numbers for them, or any risk to their health, to be a consideration ?), and how the warning notices about fishing relate not to privacy, but to radioactivity in the fish

* What happened at Fukushima, the result of a tsunami consequent upon an earthquake, had revealed the flaws in its design, in that the pools that contained the spent fuel-rods from the reactor had been deprived of supplies of coolant, and so the danger that was posed was as much from them overheating as from the reactor(s) doing so – though, as was commented in the Q&A, it appeared that the set-up would not have survived the smaller size of quake that it had been intended to withstand ?

* Towards the end of the film, we hear how there has been an explosion at WIPP (in 2014 ?), which is not only attributed to human error in the design of the vessels constructed to hold waste (in making them, the word ‘organic’ had been misinterpreted for ‘inorganic’ (or vice versa ?), which led to using constituents that, combined, gave rise to a chemical reaction : the simple mistakes that threaten great consequences), but also proves that the underlying assertions about how geological layers, between which the storage is taking place, and which are supposed to work to guarantee its integrity, are simply wrong – since radiation did, after all, escape to the surface


The last that we hear is that operations at WIPP have been suspended – as is usual in life, or politics, it takes a mistake to displace [over]confidence such as that of The Mayor of Carlsbad, and the claims of the geologists, which would otherwise be accorded credence : all that thinking about how to alert people to the existence of a secure facility that has been discovered not to be secure…

In essence, the film contains a lot of material, as well as reminding one vividly of the situation of Meryl Streep, Cher, and Kurt Russell in Silkwood (1983) : one does have to ask oneself how far we have really come since then, or, indeed, how close is the world of that film, still, in terms of our competence, of what we really understand about dealing both with nuclear waste – and what our experiments with nuclear fission have done with Earth (and left us with*) ?


Detail that emerged in the Q&A (and later…)

In the Q&A, it was put to Moss and Galison – when asking about the ‘far future’ project – that they had given space to this aspect, but had also, by contrast, not chosen (or chosen not ?) to pre-date the circumstances of Fukushima by referencing what had (or could have) happened at Chernobyl (or Three Mile Island) : with little explanation of what this actually meant, Containment just told us that there had been ‘three meltdowns’ at Fukushima (another tacit assumption of knowledge on the part of the viewer ?), albeit it suggested that the situation had very nearly been much worse (yet without saying in what way, or how).

Although it seems to turn out that the scenario first envisaged by Ralph Lapp in 1971 (and retained by the world of film in The China Syndrome (1979)) is more of a fictional one, and that, if this popular description is therefore used (in the nuclear field), it denotes a lesser catastrophe, one asked, for example, how close to that syndrome events at Fukushima had been (and the rest of the Wikipedia® article goes into detail about such nuclear meltdowns, which, in their answer, the directors did not).

They said, but without a complete explanation for not doing so, that they had considered talking about other sites, such as Chernobyl (and may have said that they had been there), but that they wanted to look at linguistic and sociological aspects of the subject, by making part of the tone of the film to imagine the future, too – to suggest a measure of distance on what was being shown. As well as having an artist realise some of the designs, they achieved this aim with and through stylization (e.g. we see an animated sequence both of naive discovery, and of deploying an earth-boring machine that is distinctly reminiscent of The Mole from Thunderbirds).




In the event, the question that was mentioned above (about contamination at Fukushima, compared with that at Chernobyl), elicited nothing from them in terms of units (or doses), but generalizations : although the mountain area was further away, it had higher levels than a flatter one that was nearer, because of the direction of the wind, which had changed twice at the time.

In the bar afterwards, some viewers were heard (who must clearly have approved of the film), critiquing the questioner for having challenged the film-makers (presumably because of the enquiry about Background Radiation) – as if in the same breath as those who had (once) advocated dumping nuclear waste in the oceans (which he was not remotely proposing)… ?

Before that, in the space just outside the screen, there was a lot of chat going on with Messrs Galison and Moss, which is where that query about the turtle was made (please see above). As to the handling of containers at waste at WIPP, Moss made the puzzling assertion (which then had to be checked – please see below) that one can hold a piece of Plutonium with no ill-effect, because the danger is inhaling its dust into one’s lungs. One’s knowledge of radiation, though one could not grope for the word isotope (in the depths of one’s memory), suggested that a substance, almost by definition, had to emit, at the very least, alpha-particles to be radioactive : as one recollects, one did blurt this out to Moss, to which he countered, by saying that a piece of paper will stop them.

As, by now, the lateness of the hour had made one abandon plans for what to watch next and (after making notes, and coffee, in the bar) head for a drink****, the word ‘Becquerel’ came stumbling into one’s mind (a standard measure of radiation). Over a pint, one was soon checking – on the Internet (when the source of information about isotopes (above) was found) – what had been claimed about Plutonium (apparently, according to Wikipedia®, first made by bombarding U238 with deuterons) :

The web-page confirms that Plutonium 238 (Pu-238, with a half-life of 88 years) emits alpha-particles, and talks about the significance of the spontaneous fission of Pu-240 in connection with terms such as ‘weapons grade’ Plutonium. Thus, ’Supergrade plutonium’, with less than 4% of plutonium-240, is used in U.S. Navy weapons stored in proximity to ship and submarine crews, due to its lower radioactivity.

Somehow those statements about safely holding a piece of the element begged the question what sort of Plutonium one was talking about…






Seen at Sheffield : Doc/Fest films with full reviews


End-notes

* And, having said that, some of its ideas had saved – as if it has an inherent, rather than a given, meaning – the symbol on a yellow ground with a round core, and a triangle of pulses that, almost sonically, emanate from it (pictured below, in one of several versions). If we have, in these postulated far-off generations (and we saw endless scenarios that had been envisaged), forgotten about nuclear waste, why, then, will that symbol signify ? (Surely, a fantasy that we will be nuclear free, with the States and others so keen on their arsenals ?)



** As an abiding problem, only briefly touched upon as [the idea of] the safety and integrity of WIPP was talked up by Carlsbad’s Mayor (as well as addressed, in general terms, by Allison MacFarlane – who chaired the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2012 to 2014, and who seemed to have more questions than answers).

*** Plutonium-239 (Pu-239), with a half-life of 24,110 years, may have to be seen as a major headache that the twentieth century has caused, but others are far more persistent : the half-life of Plutonium-242 is more than 15 times longer (373,300 years), and that of Plutonium-244 a staggering 80.8 million years.

**** For those interested, The Sheffield Tap (@SheffieldTap) was a good discovery at Doc/Fest :






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