Report from York Early Music Festival 2015 : The Early Opera Company

This reviews Early Opera Company in Charpentier / Purcell, York Early Music Festival

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

6 July

This is a review of The Early Opera Company’s performances of
Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon and Henry Purcell’s Dido and Æneas at York Early Music Festival on Sunday 5 July 2015 at 6.30 p.m.

At The Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall at The University of York (@UniOfYork) for York Early Music Festival (@yorkearlymusic), Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon was realised for two transverse flutes, viola da gamba, bass violin, theorbo, two violins, and harpsichord continuo (played by director Christian Curnyn). The introductory sections to the work had a melancholy tone, with restrained use of adornment : amongst them, were the brightly famous melody, and another that, part of the fluidity within moods, created one from repeated note-patterns.

The Scène première began urgently, and moved into and back out of reflectiveness, as Actéon (sung by Ed Lyon) engaged us in story-telling, his enthusiasm kept clean by very little vibrato, and with an instrumental ‘tail’ to this Scène. The next began with two dances, the first more lively, the second more measured.

Singing Diane (Sophie Junker), unforcedly understated her voice in a way that conveyed both substance and, through these more inward means, the evocation of desire, and which made the one large accentuation that she made all the more effective. The impression of the Scène was open and relaxed for the Chœur des Nimphes, with flutes and theorbo, before becoming more like a state occasion. The setting of the text was matched, nigh phrase for phrase, by the instrumentalists, the violinists leading our way, and into a delicate feel to Gardez vous, importuns amants, / D’en troubler les douceurs parfaites.

With a resemblance to a ground on the bass violin, as Arthébuze’s (Ciara Hendrick's) section alternated with that of the Chœur, and she used a different tone-colour when she came to the fore (partly achieved at the cost of swallowing the sound a little ?). As if bringing down an excited heartbeat, the instruments slowed slightly to a soft close.

Those seeing @yorkearlymusic from Friday say that @EarlyOpera is the best event : massively complementary works by Charpentierand Purcell !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 5, 2015

In the Scène troisième, Actéon lyrically engages with his experience : the poetry is in the music, the music in the poetry, as he is hoist by the raptures of his own words, in S’il vient m’attaquer, […] Il verra ses projects se tourner en fumée, the verbal trap of setting himself up as a challenge to his [notion of] Dieu. Only too late does he rein himself in, with a slight hesitation in the final words, and, here, we are in the territory of Euripides (in a play such as The Bacchae), dramatizing those overweaning urges that we all are prey to, and making from this very familiar story our common experience :

Plaintive violin and theorbo bring out the bright resonance within these textures, and, as Actéon continued to boast his bluff naivety in the shorter block of verse about Liberté, the ensemble goes up tempo, and he – with all the meanings of the words – got simply ‘carried away’, fully as if he were William Harford (Tom Cruise) in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), embracing he knows not what dream, and with the enchantment first in the tones of theorbo and of Reiko Ichise’s [viola da] gamba, and then, with the flutes joining in, in Eligio Luis Quinteiro giving his playing a particularly plucked quality, as – so quickly – Actéon is seduced by the notion of cette route inconnue / M’offrira quelq’endroit propre à les [Diane et ses sœurs] écouter.


In the closing Chœur des nimphes, the writing is highly accented, and Charpentier reduces down to just the voices, to herald, at the start of Scène quatrième, extreme effects on the gamba (whose aesthetics endeared it this specific age, where it had its heighday ?), as Ed Lyon finds himself struggling to utter human sounds : the Ovidian transformation did not need staging to be fully real to us, a lightning disintegration of the kind that, in Die Winterreise’s much slower descent, takes us to the cold horror, beyond feeling, of the disintegration in and of Der Leiermann ? Actéon’s closing words, acknowledging l’estat ou je me voys and ma honte, show that he knows his fate, and we close with harpsichord and violin, then nothing.

Nothing, that is, until a theme couched in pain that will soon usher in the penultimate Scène, where, known but to us (as yet), the dramatic irony of words such as Un spectacle si doux ne s’offre pas deux foix, addressed to Actéon (imagined absent), will ring false and belie the sentiment (though, mimetically, one is ahead of one’s self : please see below). In the meantime, we have a tortured, suffering quality – and are we not inevitably a little reminded (though without, of course, redemption) of the tenor aria from Bach’s St John Passion ? :

Erwäge, wie sein
blutgefärbter Rücken
In allen Stücken
Den Himmel gleiche geht


This is the very nub of this music, what it has been written for, so that it would lead here : we heard this material alluded to in the instrumental introduction, we know the familiar story, and it was all preparing us for this point (not unlike, again, the Bach, although Charpentier died more than twenty years earlier ?), with its slide and Sul ponticello effects, which, in an interlude, give us very great subtlety of note-painting (Charpentier’s and this ensemble’s), and heartfelt feeling (albeit Actéon’s full plight is undercut by reverting to four vocal parts at the finish).

The Scène cinquième, prefigured above, comprises the Chœur des chasseurs alone, ironically with bright, female voices urging Quittez la resverie [Kubrick, again, with what is dreamt, what ‘real’... – though dream is eternal, older than Chaucer, and The Boke of The Duchess], but, with a recursion of the central section, male voices are becoming more evident :

Having said that the work had built up to Actéon’s despairing transformation, and the unknowing members of the hunt’s delight in seeing him cornered, the final Scène consolidates it all, starting with a difficult quality to Junon’s declaring and – in triumph – enjoying his death, delighting in his fate. Especially its manner (par ses chiens dévorés), as a lesson to les mortels odieux, the tone being set to Actéon’s retinue by the word ‘Ainsi’.

Risking we know not what wrath, they briefly dare plea for his worthiness, and her howl and leonine roar shout them down with passion : her reasoning, rooted in sharp jealousy and Hilary Summers’ real relish of this stage fury, turns out to be politics, and above all mortal issues of merit and justice (Gloucester has it in Lear, ‘As flies to wanton boys’ ?). (Thankfully for them, one supposes, and their little moment of protest, someone has to survive to tell the tale, if there is to be deterrent…)


Quietly (as suitable for one subdued), the Chœur des Chasseurs revolves the final three sections of text – with Ed Lyon (who had been our Actéon) joining in with the male voices, after a while, before, at Faisons monter nos cris (which begins the central section), all gave voice for what is, at heart, another posture at defiance / more posturing (from a place of safety). Since the text is not just set once, it is not a final gesture, after all, when bass is added to the female singers and a tenor voice, and Charpentier instead revisits Faisons monter, feigning, with the violins accenting the last word, to end with Qu’ils pénètrent jusqu’aux enfers.

However, the female voices, leading all to sing with them, take us to the preceding section of text, where the taxing question, Quel cœur, à ce malheur, ne seroit pas sensible ?, separates off from the other lines, and – somehow – Charpentier even seems to make it right to conclude on a concord, and to very much applause at The Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall (about which there was no doubt !).

No distinction between vocal / instrumental performers, constructing a work of drama as effortless as this took real work from @EarlyOpera.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 5, 2015

Some less-detailed impressions of Purcell's Dido and Æneas - noting throughout 45 minutes of drama, in Part I, leaves one just wanting to sit back for Part II...

As to both works given, this is living, breathing music, with an assurance to all aspects of the staging of the performance by The Early Opera Company under Curnyn, and there were almost religious sensations at play here, as if of litany.

It deserved a standing ovation. (But maybe they don’t do that at Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall… ?)


In instrumental terms (and with the addition of a viola, compared with Part I), Purcell had set out his stall of more complex grief and grieving in the very opening of the Overture to Dido and Æneas.

Emilie Renard*, as Dido, has a voice to describe whose qualities all of these characteristics are applicable : strength, uncomplication, clarity, immediacy, pliability. Opposite her, Callum Thorpe (as Æneas) had palpable directness, with power in his bass, projecting the words and feeling alike of the role.

When Renard’s colleagues Sophie Junker and Ciara Hendrick sang as a duo, working their voices together in pursuit of her character’s downfall, they did so with honeyed diction, and little vibrato – the former did so with particular ease.


Here, a link to a review (by James Whittle) in The York Press



End-notes

* Who had also been singing roles in Part I, but the credits appear incorrect in the programme :

@THEAGENTAPSLEY I sang Daphne; Ciara sang Hyale, and Aréthuse's little verses. Does that help? :)

— Emilie Renard(@eflatmajor_) July 8, 2015

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

Report from Thaxted Festival : The Gould Piano Trio on fine form

This is a review of a concert given by The Gould Piano Trio at Thaxted Festival

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

30 June

This is a review of a concert given by The Gould Piano Trio at Thaxted Festival
on Friday 26 June 2015 at 8.00 p.m.

John Ireland (1879–1962) : Phantasie Trio in A Minor


The concert opened with John Ireland, in a lively, spirited mode of writing : as his one-movement Phantasie Trio* developed, it seemed to fill Thaxted Church (for @ThaxtedFestival) with the sunshine of his expression**. An impression of excitement grew, and, with the composer having revelled in his thematic material, the work ended joyously.


The only comparison that comes to mind is the old Beaux Arts Trio; the combination of jeweler-like precision and a musical fire that ignites from the first bar

The Washington Post (quoted on The Trio's (@GouldPianoTrio's) web-site))

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) : Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49

1. Allegro molto ed agitato

2. Andante con moto tranquillo

3. Scherzo

4. Finale



In introducing the piece, pianist Benjamin Frith told us that Schumann had called this Trio the greatest work for this combination of players since Beethoven’s so-called Archduke Trio (the Piano Trio No. 7 in B Flat Major, Op. 97), and offered it to us as ample evidence that Mendelssohn was not ‘running out of steam’ (and as a work that cellist Alice Neary had already had the chance to record with the Trio) :

It opened, with an Allegro molto ed agitato, and the wonderful, full sound of the cello – the ensemble was rich, and Frith brought a great lightness to his playing. Next, came an Andante con moto tranquillo, where the instrumentalists brought out beautiful, affecting qualities in the music, and where it was not only played with tenderness, but also a well-judged sense of pace – and for placing notes within the texture.

Energetic playing marked the Scherzo, full of richness, and sharpness of tone, and brought it to a witty end. The Finale was highly expressive, with the vibrant sound of Neary on cello. Lines were passed so easily between the members of the Trio, and there was such evidence of very good listening going on between them, that it was a pleasure, often complete with a broad smile, to listen to them.



Franz Schubert (1797–1828) : Piano Trio No. 1 in B Flat Major, Op. 99 (D. 898)

1. Allegro moderato

2. Andante un poco mosso

3. Scherzo (Allegro)

4. Rondo (Allegro vivace – Presto)


The feeling of the Allegro moderato was that it was both lyrical and rhythmic, with the sounds of the instruments, even as before, being so integrated, and the players so responsive to each other. As the movement progressed, it felt as though it had its own flow, with moments – or under-currents – of the dance. In the second movement, marked Andante un poco mosso, peace reigned, and there was a melding of sounds. Then, the mood became more sombre, before some delicate playing by Frith led to an evocation of a dream, as if in a Schumannesque vein. Finally, on violin and piano, and brought back from the opening, a version of the theme that gave the sensation of the end of summer.

The third movement, marked Allegro, has some more gestural writing, expressively brought out by Lucy Gould (on violin) and with a more ‘brittle’ quality in the piano part. Just when we think that the Scherzo might already be over, Schubert gives a central section, which felt more inner than what had preceded it, standing back from it, and making a vivid contrast when the initial mood resumes.

The Rondo (Allegro vivace) opened with a jaunty violin theme, on which the cello made comments, before – as with the Scherzo – Schubert goes into another world of feeling, this time one of fleeting, mini-variations, amongst them a mixture of modulations and moods, from carefree to serious (but punctuated by the five-note Rondo motif, essentially rising, but with a fall after the first interval). When the opening material finally returned, the Gould Piano Trio managed to hold back, as it pushed on to the end, and rapturous applause.


End-notes

* The Trio, with its former cellist, made an all-Ireland recording [not in that old sense, of bragging] for Naxos, which includes his two other Piano Trios (of which Trio No. 2 (in E Major) is also in one movement, of similar length), whereas this line-up brings us another album :

** It was, indeed, a very pleasant evening, not just for the (for some reason) relatively unappreciated genre of chamber music (for an offer had been made that made it quite impossible, having heard cellist Alice Neary play live, not to invite a friend...), but also for delicious maple and pecan cake in the interval (the nuts had been toasted perfectly).


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

Doublethink in Mecca : being devotional despite inflicted modernity ?

This is a Festival review of A Sinner in Mecca (2015)

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

27 June (29 June, Post-script added)

This is a Festival review of A Sinner in Mecca (2015), which screened at Sheffield Documentary Festival 2015 on Tuesday 9 June at 6.15 p.m.

This remains the most perplexing film from Sheffield Documentary Festival, with its themes – almost at poles away from each other (please see below) – having tumbled around in one’s head, in search of supremacy, throughout the screening. Although, in fact, none ultimately found any, and one’s hopes for a considered response were then jostled by a good deal of immoderately detailed criticism, and even hostility, in the Q&A* (so what one first wrote – please see below – was not an ideal appreciation) : it was painful that there was the palpable affront to, and taken by, director Parvez Sharma (@parvezsharma) at being asked why he had made A Sinner in Mecca, and what it was about (as he pointed out, to these people who had just watched his film, there was insult in so doing).

These themes in the film [its official web-site is http://asinnerinmecca.com], which refuse to stay together and be quiet, are fairly simply stated (though it is not intended to be reductively done) :

(1) The desire to complete a Hajj to Mecca and show that one is a good Muslim

(2) How the traditional elements of a Hajj (specifically the environment and manner in which they are carried out) have been influenced or even changed by the Islamic tradition to which the ruling Saudi royal family adheres (the Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam)

(3) A prohibition on filming at Mecca and the other religious sites (whereas we have footage, and much contemporary audio, of everything that Sharma does to complete his Hajj)

(4) Recent executions, by beheading, of men just for being gay


It is partly in the interaction of themes (1) and (2) that tension arises within the viewer : Sharma is clearly sincere in wanting to carry out the traditional steps of a Hajj, and seek acceptance from God for his pilgrimage, but he in no way refrains from doing so and at the same time pointing out how a shopping-mall, for example, complete with a branch of Starbucks, is a matter of a few hundred metres from the most sacred Islamic site, The Kaaba (or Ka’aba), in the mosque Al-Masjid al-Haram [the link is to the Wikipedia® web-page]. It feels like a remarkable doublethink on Sharma’s part, trying to engage with the significance of all these ritual acts (and their meaning to him), but at the same time as criticizing what the ruling family has done to holy sites (or, later in the film, seems to have allowed to happen to them).

One is reminded that, in the Christian tradition, all four Gospels have accounts of Jesus driving the money-lenders out of the Temple (e.g. Matthew 21 : 12–17, 23–27), and Islam has equivalent passages of zeal for God’s house :

At the culmination of his mission, in 629 CE, Muhammad conquered Makkah with a Muslim army. His first action was to cleanse the Kaaba of idols and images.

Narrated Abdullah: When the Prophet entered Mecca on the day of the Conquest, there were 360 idols around the Ka'bah. The Prophet started striking them with a stick he had in his hand and was saying, "Truth has come and Falsehood has Vanished.. (Qur'an 17:81)"

—Sahih Al-Bukhari, Book 59, Hadith 583


Since, from what Sharma says in the film, we do not know whether theme (3) is a religious prohibition (or an administrative one), and in the light of a harsh state religious penalty from theme (4), one might imagine – and hence be anxious – that he risked execution to take his footage (please see below). Here lies what appears to be a further conflict : even if a person decides for himself, irrespective of such a penalty, that a good Muslim can be gay (or lesbian), why would he (or she) flout a prohibition not to film in sacred places ? As with the pull between themes (1) and (2), so, in that between (1) and (3), one spends time not quite fathoming why Sharma has chosen to film his Hajj – and that gnaws at one, as one watches the film :

Is he – if a real distinction is being made here – filming it as proof for himself that he did it, or to show us ? (Although, if he is showing it to us, we may not (easily) understand what this series of acts means to him spiritually, especially the final one, which is alarming.) If he had not filmed, of course, there would not be a documentary (not in this way, at any rate), but does the film, as we watch, leave us with the uncertainty how he can be both sincerely pious and simultaneously documenting his experience, if (and we do not know) filming is against a religious ordinance ? Or do we maybe need to throw ourselves into a world such as that of Chaucer’s pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales (or of Gide’s Les caves du Vatican), and not try to separate religious experience from humanity from human nature ? (With the example of Jesus and Muhammad, after all, we see how they concentrate on what is holy about the Temple / the Ka'bah, and dismiss the unworthy human additions : does the pilgrim, too, undertake certain steps to reduce his or her unworthiness ?)


Quite often (maybe through not being a Muslim ?), one wonders whether Sharma must be ‘going through the motions’ in his Hajj (or, in part, feel that he is ?), since he is commentating so pointedly on what has become of its elements in modern Saudi Arabia – that, though, does not quite identify our question, but is an attempt at understanding what it must be like to be in locations that have now been ‘reinterpreted’ so radically (not his word, but a euphemistic analogy). For example, Sharma tells us of the history that gives symbolic significance to the activity of running between two mountains (and we are shown a moment of animation) : they are mountains, now that the space has been enclosed, that we cannot see, but only what resemble (again, not his word) ‘soulless’ modern corridors.

Using the word ‘soulless’ is not, of course, at all meant to denigrate the inherently sacred nature of this spot (for Sharma himself indicates that he does not relish what has been done here). It is an attempt to say what it looks like, as a space that one would think lacked significance, and even much humanity – as when we castigate planners for giving us an unwelcoming underpass, or a corridor that we have to tramp down to get to platforms on an Underground line. Sharma, however, must somehow keep everything holy in his soul and heart, despite the fact that this and other settings for elements of the Hajj have been changed so much that we wonder how the religious acts themselves can remain. (Likewise, he shows us what disgusts him in traffic-jams on a coach that last for hours, and in having to make devotions in a city full of discarded rubbish that no one deals with.)

Somehow (or mentally somewhere : as if in a minimal area of overlap between themes (1), (2) and (4), in a Venn diagram ?), despite being critical that Saudi cemeteries / monuments have been destroyed (because the Wahhabi faith of the royal family discredits praying to idols), Sharma sees himself as capable of making a Hajj that is acceptable to his God – yet, in so doing, rejecting / critiquing what has now been done to the religious centres, including the fact that his sexual orientation stands condemned and that filming is banned (theme (3)). This seeming confusion of attitudes is why, early on and for the round-up portal-page for Doc/Fest coverage, this comment was made :

Despite director / cinematographer Parvez Sharma’s hope that his film was not self indulgent, and the insights that he wished to share – through going on a Hajj – about Mecca and other holy sites, and the ruling Saudi dynasty and its attitude to the past, how he pursued, and attained, the object of his quest seemed to stay very personal to him and his experience


The more reflective step, before starting to analyse the film’s themes (as attempted above), was to consider the case of Arthur Koestler, who (in the summative Bricks to Babel, which probably excerpts an earlier work for this material) reported his experience of being so far ‘inside’ the ideologies of both first Communism and then Christianity that objections to them could be heard, but never penetrate to or undermine belief : the internal logic of each belief-system had a self-sustaining answer for everything that challenged it. Here, one needs to come to a realization that none of the negative associations involved in what we see of Saudi – such as the Wahhabi accretions / rulings / modernizations – affect Sharma’s core relationship to his faith, and, more importantly, what he ends up telling us that he has nevertheless taken from the Hajj : He feels accepted by his God, and he is vindicated as a Muslim who is also gay.

However, for us as viewers, that part of what happens in the film is utterly internal to him, with (especially, again, if we are non-Muslims) only his words as mediation between his experience and us – not least if we do not relate to the notion of, or what is needful in, a blood sacrifice [in the tradition of Ibrahim / Abraham]. Moreover, the path that Sharma is shown having chosen, to travel to Saudi (despite being gay), and intending to film, is a very narrow one : on account of a sequence at the opening of A Sinner in Mecca, which, quite from choice, seemed to front-end what followed, but never to be returned to**, one was left, as one watched (despite the fact that, flesh and blood, the film-maker had introduced his film), more and more anxious at the risk that he had run to make it (and whether there was still a possibility of reprisal, against him or those who screened his film ? – on which, please see the Post-script).


In the event, perhaps it could have helped one focus on other aspects of the film, if one had known beforehand what one came to learn in the Q&A : one device that Sharma had been using to film had actually been confiscated, and what he had filmed was deleted (so he had had to replicate it later on), but nothing worse had happened***. Even so, it may be that the nature of the themes that Sharma is handling here (as teased out above) just inevitably mean that it feels in conflict with itself, and that we are likely to stay external to his understanding of himself in relation to Islam and his God ?


Post-script

Synergistically with working on the above review, and en route to and from The Stables for a folk gig last week, Richard Thompson’s album The Old Kit Bag was being replayed.

One had forgotten that, in part two (The Pilgrims Fancy, titling tracks 7 to 12), was a song called ‘Outside of the Inside’. It begins provocatively with God never listened to Charlie Parker / Charlie Parker lived in vain, and calls his jazz ‘monkey music’, and him ‘Blasphemer, womaniser’ – the first of several take-downs of Western figures such Albert Einstein, Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Van Gogh and Botticelli.

Towards the end, we have these rather chilling lines :

I’m familiar with the cover
I don’t need to read the book
I police the word of action
Inside’s where I never look


The review of the film that appeared in The Guardian (by Safa Samiezade’-Yazd), now read, tells us : Parvez, who is gay and Muslim, has had death threats for making the film, leading to increased security at the festival screenings. (In retrospect, then, the search of our bags in the way into the screening at Doc/Fest had been nothing to do with trying to restrict pirating…)

As the review also has a short interview, at the end, with the reviewer as a sympathetic questioner, it is well worth a read to give the film’s director a chance to talk about A Sinner in Mecca, without (as we had twice in the Doc/Fest Q&A) a point-by-point insistence on the ways in which he had misrepresented Islam and its tenets, for example :

This is a film about the change that needs to happen within Islam. It’s a direct challenge that has never been mounted to the Saudi monarchy. It’s a call to action to all Muslims to take back singular authority over their faith.

Seen at Sheffield : Doc/Fest films with full reviews


End-notes

* Except that one did not wish to get caught up in the emotion behind these harsh comments, and see a film-maker who has brought a film be attacked, was it possible that the fact that, in themselves, they were being made almost provided sufficient justification for having made A Sinner in Mecca ?

** A little stagily, though, in fact, the staginess proved to help convey the sense of fear and desperation of the director’s correspondent, and thereby to leave one, later, in trepidation for his safety.

*** Even so, the fact that he had made A Jihad for Love (2007) connected him, as a film-maker, with being gay, so he had clearly heightened the risk of being identified, when in Saudi Arabia, by filming. (And, as was put to him in the Q&A, his film had been open about his marriage to his gay partner in New York City at the start of film, but, in some parts of the States, legislation against same-sex marriage was being passed, so the negative attitudes were close to home.)


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

The best of Sheffield Documentary Festival 2015 : in the John Akomfrah retrospective

This is a Festival review of The Nine Muses (2010)

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

24 June

This is a Festival review of The Nine Muses (2010), screened at Sheffield Documentary Festival 2015, in a retrospective of Director John Akomfrah’s work,
on Monday 8 June at 12.00 p.m.

The Nine Muses (2010) was easily the best film seen at Sheffield Documentary Festival 2015 (@sheffdocfest), and, this Tweet, from the previous night, proved prophetic :

So far, two main approaches from @sheffdocfest films : a broadly chronological unfolding (sometimes in real time) and complementary strands.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 7, 2015

The film opens with large, beautiful vistas, as if of Scandinavian fjords, across which we slowly pan, left to right.

They are perfect, but we sense the coldness in their perfection – and, when we come nearer to and look at the land from a craft, it seems washed out in a grey, inhospitable way (perhaps an effect achieved by colour grading ?). So these views stir something in us already, which builds with the accretion of readings from classic sources such as various episodes from The Odyssey and the opening Cantos of Dante’s Inferno (from The Divine Comedy*) : quite likely, director John Akomfrah intended, with this vivid, unmistakable choice of a land of ice and snow, that we should already be reminded – have stirrings – of ancient lore, such as in the following passages, mentioning a land of winter (and an ideal realm, too) ?

HYPERBOREA was a fabulous realm of eternal spring located in the far north beyond the land of winter. Its people were a blessed, long-lived race free of war, hard toil, and the ravages of old age and disease.

[…] To the south the realm was guarded by the bitterly cold peaks of the near-impassable Rhipaion mountains. […] Directly to the south lay Pterophoros, a desolate, snow-covered land cursed by eternal winter.

From Land Hyperborea

From that first implication, visual images of snowbound land- and cityscapes, and aural images of journeys, deception, captivity and slavery – as Odysseus and others revolve patterns of voyage, shipwreck, and escape combine and complement each other, whilst thoughtfully chosen archive footage** establishes a freezing Britain. Also established, by a title, is the theme of the Muses***, though it is probably harder to keep in mind the film’s apparent Muse-by-Muse taxonomy (or even to be certain whether that scheme is seen through to the end ?).

On a first viewing, certainly, it seemed more convenient to allow the film’s mutually reinforcing elements to work, as it were, impressionistically. For, apart from the ‘purely visual’, one is quite occupied with texts that appear on title-cards (e.g. from Emily Dickinson****), readings (much from Samuel Beckettt’s novels****, with some repeated passages), and music (such as Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel). (Director John Akomfrah went on to direct The Stuart Hall Project (2013), similarly rich in content for a single viewing, and seeming longer than its 103 mins.)

Meanwhile, as the film develops, with the specially shot scenes juxtaposing their more nearby context in the natural, material world with a figure***** in a synthetic jacket (sometimes two figures – if so, in jackets of different colour), we hear words of dislocation and disassociation from Beckettt (or Finnegans Wake, 'The Song of Songs', or Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy), and maybe reflect on the appropriacy of needing to belong where one is :

Beckettt, brought up in the halfway world of being Anglo-Irish, and all too easily appropriated as an English writer (though he actually learnt his craft by writing in French, and came to translate his prose into English), and finding himself by meeting Joyce in Paris and exiling himself in France – starting with Watt, for some, the worlds that he found to express in his novels, and which Akomfrah has fittingly and adeptly alluded to here by quotation.

Retrospective screening of our acclaimed #TheNineMuses today at @sheffdocfest by the visionary John Akomfrah! pic.twitter.com/D41rXeBsyA

— Miikka Leskinen (@Miikka_Leskinen) June 8, 2015

Achieving potency by its layering of material, The Nine Muses (2010) easily laid down a challenge to other film-makers at Sheffield to think to their craft (and worryingly many in the screening did not seem drawn by this work and willing to stay for the duration) – a challenge not, if this is regarded in essay style, necessarily to work within this format, but to remind them :

Cinema, when it is at its strongest and best, is not grounded or rooted in only the visual (and with what is found to accompany it), but in being a total entity, and, in a different sphere, one might think of the conception and execution of Tarkovsky’s final piece of work :

@ICALondon One for the diary... Tarkovsky. Amazing film maker, and artist. The Sacrifice was the film he made once leaving Russia..one year

— Katherine Da Silva (@KathyDaSilva2) June 23, 2015

Seen at Sheffield : Doc/Fest films with full reviews


End-notes

* All were credited as being on Naxos Audiobooks.

** Sacrificing concern at any grainy quality (or other issue) to concentrate on content and significance of the imagery.

*** A title tells us that they are the nine female children of Mnemosyne (the Goddess of Memory), fathered by Zeus.

**** Also, T. S. Eliot ('The Journey of the Magi' ?), and e e cummings. With Beckettt, Molloy and The Unnamable are credited (though one could have sworn that Malone was there, too).

***** There are credits for wearers of a blue jacket, two yellow jackets (one of whom was Akomfrah), and two black jackets.


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

He’s the daddy ! : Colin Currie DJs at Saffron Hall (Part I)

This reviews Colin Currie Group’s all-Steve-Reich concert at Saffron Hall (Part I)

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

23 June

This is Part I of a review of The Colin Currie Group’s all-Steve-Reich programme, with Synergy Vocals (in Part II), at Saffron Hall on Sunday 26 April at 7.30 p.m.

The review is in two Parts : Music for 18 Musicians (1974–1976) is here

Music for Pieces of Wood (1973)

The Colin Currie Group (@ColinCurrieGrp), led by Colin Currie (@colincurrieperc), opened the gig with a piece that echoed (though not literally) Saffron Hall’s (@SaffronHallSW’s) interior furnishing or appointment, Music for Pieces of Wood (1973).


By analogy, as each player joined in with a tock-tock sound, one felt that one could be listening to, and through, the line- and clause-breaks of John Milton’s verse in Paradise Lost, with its accentuated language of intonation : it was all there in these pitched instruments, and their cross-rhythms and overtones. (Colin Currie came in third, and there was a thudding, almost dully brutal quality to the timbre and pitch of his instrument, compared to those struck by his peers, and of whom we became less and less aware that they were beating different patterns.)

As we got used to the shape of the piece, we could hear the clear acclimatization of the fourth voice, and ourselves became acclimatized, as it began falling into rhythm (or step) with its neighbours, and speeding up its pace (this video may just confuse, but purports to let one visualize what happens with the various patterns). With all five players introduced and bedded in, and after a small crescendo (at 3 : 04 in the video), the iteration wound down, with beats dropping out, until we were back to the unceasing first two players.

Maybe we were just waiting, maybe expecting for Currie to join in again, but we could be more free this time around (if it was, exactly, another time around**), and just absorb the experience – at times, feeling as though we were trotting with the percussionists, or as though it was the cream of the fringe-effects of Ligeti’s Clocks and Clouds (composed the year before, in 1972).

At any rate, the effect was persuasive and impelling, one that must have been intense within the sound on stage. Its cessation, when the final iteration was through**, was met with a roar of approval.



Quartet (2009)

As the programme-notes told us, Quartet (2009) had been commissioned by the CC Group, but only first performed in 2014. They go on to quote Reich as calling it one of the more complex of his compositions.

It was the major work, in terms of length (but still as a balance to a bigger second half), but, as one might imagine, not a quartet in the sense of strings*** (although two instruments rely on them) :

Two concert grands, facing each other, and, likewise, two vibraphones, in a work marked Fast / Slow / Fast – a form that, as Reich comments, is not only played without pause, but is also one familiar throughout history (from publishers Boosey & Hawkes web-page for the work).


Fast turned out not to be all that fast, in a movement that was joyous, but restrained, and where the players laid easily on the beat. It was distinguished by the gorgeous tone of the instruments, and the use of accents and rubato. At one point, very near the end, we were brought down in scale to a softness of some subtlety, and then up to a dynamic high, before a pause brought in a four-beat close.


The slow movement that succeeded it had the feeling of being at night, but not in any way like that of Béla Bartók’s famous movements with an ‘inner’ shadow, and rather by of Reich moving on from what went before, using open chords (as well as discords, later) to give the sense of introductory material. From there, it moved with delicacy, and with the sense of sounds precisely being placed in the air (fully as much by the score as by the playing).

The central part employed the resonant qualities of these forces, making use of a jazzy riff, spread-chords (which had a querulous, questioning tone to them), and what were nearly chimes (but without overplaying any notion of Night). On, though, we went, with further discord that led to full-throttle reverberation, but it proved to be words such as ‘rubato’ and ‘restraint’ that characterized the moment on which we ended.


There, strangely, more words, by the same amount again, for Slow than for Fast… And here, maybe reflecting that the second Fast built upon – and ‘wrapped up’ up – what it followed, some short comments :

The movement had a quality that seemed to be of assured urbanity, maybe evoking a city like New York. It, too, left chords in the air, again not quite chimes (because they were unresolved in the bass-notes of the piano), and, as it approached the intensity of its conclusion, one was keenly aware of all the methods of, and need for, clear and close communications between Colin Currie and the three others.

As if Quartet's grand pianos weren't enough, Music for 18 Musicians, with @ColinCurrieGrp @SaffronHallSW, deployed two more, plus marimbas !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 27, 2015

Part II of the review (Music for 18 Musicians (1974–1976)) is here



End-notes

* Which, if one studies recorded performances, can be seen to be signalled by a nod (as is the moment of dissipation down to two musicians), as here (at 9 : 36). (Or one can see performers, unlike these or those of the Colin Currie Group, using non-cylindrical, actual and rough pieces of wood.)

** The programme-notes tell us that the time-signature tightens, each time, from 6 / 4, to 4 / 4, to 3 / 4, but maybe even the trained ear prefers to get lost in the changing impressions : as mentioned above, this video purports to let one visualize what happens with the various patterns...

*** Publishers Boosey & Hawkes' web-page for the work, giving Reich’s Composer’s Notes, has him observe : Quartet, when mentioned in the context of concert music, is generally assumed to mean string quartet.


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

Boulez at 90 : Aldeburgh Festival at its niche best

This is an account of Boulez Exploration at Aldeburgh Festival’s Boulez at 90

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

22 June

This is an account of the Boulez Exploration day, on Thursday 18 June at 3.00 p.m. (and 11.30 a.m.), at Aldeburgh Festival’s celebrations of Boulez at 90

On the face of it, Boulez Exploration sounds like a strange activity, but, with a strong communicator and respectful guide in the composer Julian Anderson (and the apt collaboration of Florent Boffard to give and bring out examples from the score (in the morning, it had been Quatuor Diotima : see below)), it was a chance to realize, during Aldeburgh Festival (@aldeburghmusic), just how much there was to explore in the realm of the compositions of Pierre Boulez.

Regarding Piano Sonata No. 3, one might have thought that one had heard a recording, but it became clear that the notion of incompleteness in itself meant that we did not have all the material, and Boffard even had a piece, in manuscript and courtesy of Boulez himself, that might not have been played in public before : at the end of Anderson’s exposition of the work to be heard, and before Boffard gave his performance, one questioner, envisaging that Boulez might not live forever, seemed quite perturbed that we might be left with no definitive version of the sonata...

Meanwhile, we had heard how Boulez had debated, and corresponded with, Stockhausen and Cage about the use of aleatory techniques (which Cage, we learnt, preferred to call ‘chance’), and had, after blasting them both (but without naming them) in an article in 1957 called Alea, had maybe shown them how it should be done in this piece. He had started with criticism, of other things, of Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI, and its apparent scope for random performance of its elements : for Anderson and Boffard were agreed that the scope for playing such works from sight, and with decisions made on the spot, is limited, because one actually ends up needs to prepare one’s approach to the piece in advance (defeating what Stockhausen seemed to have aimed at, with elements that could be played in any order ?).

By contrast, and objecting to anything so arbitrary (if it were possible to play it that way), Boulez had provided choices, and, between them, Boffard and Anderson talked us through the instructions that he had given to the performer, and which were at their simplest in those for the middle movement (Formant 2), called Trope (a word, we heard, denoting a section inserted into a plainsong text) : start with any one of its four sections and play all four, from that point until one got back to where one began. (The titles of those sections (Texte, Parenthèse, Glose, Commentaire) are all evocative of the layers of interpretation of mediaeval religious texts (of all kinds).)

Before, Constellation-Miroir (Formant 3) was an assemblage from sections that were, essentially, individual notes (Points 1 to 3) and groups of notes (Blocs I and II), and, afterwards, Formant 1 (extracts from Antiphonie) had simple-form and elaborated versions of each verset and RÉPONS (the lower- and upper-case descriptions, respectively, denoting them - only one version was to be chosen to be played) : Boffard gave us the simple and elaborated versions, but none of this really served as a guide to listening in the performance (as the effect was too overwhelming to want to keep track of whether one was hearing VERSET II, or already onto verset 3), but an understanding of Boulez’ care as composer, and of his integrity in doing what he believes in.

Tonight - Pierre-Laurent Aimardand friends. Some phenomenal music making. pic.twitter.com/c2WpVktxpo

— Aldeburgh Music (@aldeburghmusic) June 20, 2015

Pictured a few nights later, Florent Boffard is the last figure on the right

What one saw was how Boulez had given freedom to prepare a version of the sonata for performance (arguing against what he saw as the extreme liberty of his contemporaries in letting their work become too random), and could then listen to Boffard’s pianism and precise articulation against that theoretical and musical background.

A superb event – but what else would one expect of Boulez at 90 at Aldeburgh Festival ?

In the morning, and in a different approach (not least as one ticket-price admitted one to both sessions), Julian Anderson had played us, as DJ, extracts from a constellation of other works by Boulez that surrounded his Livre pour quatuor, and we had heard from members of the quartet how they had gained his trust (by suggesting a pairing to bring its sound into relief). From that point, they had worked with him to ease certain difficulties in a score that is itself, we gathered, virtually unobtainable, such as how to interpret a tempo-marking Vif consistently with sustained playing (Anderson liked the short extract that they played at that original speed, but had to agree that it was punishing on them), or the lack of dynamic-markings or a means of making a reasonably playable transition from one note to another that was quite separate on the strings and finger-board for the next.

An earlier, and more linear, score than that of the sonata, and brought to us with great sincerity and interpretative skill by Quatuor Diotima : one immersed oneself in the sound of their playing, and, rare for a live performance, avoided watching the performers in order better to do so.


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

He’s the daddy ! : Colin Currie DJs at Saffron Hall (Part II)

This reviews Colin Currie Group’s all-Steve-Reich concert at Saffron Hall (Part II)

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

27 April

This is Part II of a review of The Colin Currie Group’s all-Steve-Reich programme, with Synergy Vocals, at Saffron Hall on Sunday 26 April at 7.30 p.m.

The review is in two Parts : Part I is reviewed here

Music for 18 Musicians (1974–1976)

Impressionistically, let us start where (after a beautiful first half) we ended the night at Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW), with the huge feat that is Music for 18 Musicians, and which only commenced after a sacred silence :

Hive of activity on stage setting up for @ColinCurrieGrp music for 18 musicians & yes there are 4 grand pianos! pic.twitter.com/SIAQ2jf8nO
— Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW) April 26, 2015

This was music heard as it really should be, live, not as we might know it, say, from YouTube (@YouTube), Spotify®, our own collection of physical recordings, or from the Live In Concert programme, on week days on Radio 3 (@BBCRadio3)…

Though orchestral concerts may still be their own type of monumental enterprise, which usually guarantee that we will hear, for example, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 more or less as we know it, those things will not bear comparison with what is outside the everyday – the stuff of what is, say, uniquely best at Aldeburgh Festival (@aldeburghmusic) [e.g. Gerard McBurney's A Pierre Dream at The Maltings, Snape], in Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (@HCMFUK), or in a jazz-gig that is devastatingly in the moment**.

What had Colin Currie (@colincurrieperc), with Colin Currie Group (@ColinCurrieGp) and Synergy Vocals (@vocalsynergy) wanted to bring us in Music for 18 Musicians ? One cannot usefully summarize this work, but best feel for its over-arching structure, behind the sensation of pulses within pulses, patterns within patterns :

Probably, Reich predominantly does not wish us to be in wonder per se – as might seem to be what Michael Nyman’s** music expects of us – or, as with that of Philip Glass**, to be mesmerized ? No, something else, here – part of which is to do with, in purely visual terms, how the percussionists, as well as some of the singers and pianists, moved around the Saffron stage, and gave us sounds that cohered, coalesced, metamorphosed, and fragmented***.

As one example, how the playing of the large, bright-golden shakers (which were also shaped as if to resemble ice-cream cornets) was passed, baton style, to pianist Huw Watkins (@WatkinsHuw) : Watkins started shaking a second set in tandem with, but more quietly than, the percussionist whom he was relieving, and then the latter, between shakes, deftly dropped out, to be free to play another part, and which gave Watkins variety from the piano riff that he seemed to have been repeating.

Or likewise, on marimbas, the fact that someone else in the ensemble, who, on another of the concert grands, had been doubling up (with bass-textures), slipped into the pattern of first the right-hand pair of beaters of the person from whom she was taking over, and then both, so that he could walk around her – and away, to his next role. Even more so, say, than when (in a move that, too, mimics dance in a larger-scale orchestral setting) an entry can be seen to have been given to the second desk of violins, but just so that the first desk can come in with the key entry, or counter-response, this appearance of instrumentalists in sympathy / synergy with each other was almost balletic : Seeing is hearing.

For words such as sympathetic (for co-resonating strings, etc.), concord, consonance and harmony are all, not without reason, integrated into the language of music and musicality : as was joyously noted, during this performance, When I lose faith in what humanity is, or exists for, moments of this kind tell me.

As if Quartet's grand pianos weren't enough, Music for 18 Musicians, with @ColinCurrieGrp @SaffronHallSW, deployed two more, plus marimbas !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 27, 2015

With any concert, of course, even if only through a video (where one cannot choose what to see), one can enhance one’s understanding of the sound that is being made (when, where, and how, and by what means), and can learn to view one’s way into what is being heard, e.g. which instrument / player is contributing a tone or effect. Just as, here, one could identify, from the movement of her lips, the high soprano (credited as Joanna Forbes L’Estrange) from the four seated and loosely microphoned singers – all of whom, at times, came to resemble wordless angel-voices… (Or, from the distribution of the parts in other repertoire, isolate the singers with exquisite vocal-colour in Stile Antico, maybe, or The Sixteen.)


All was in keeping with the poetic formality of the lay-out of the stage (no doubt specified in the score (as since confirmed by buying the recording pictured)), with two ranks of sopranos looking at each other across a paired violinist and cellist, who faced twin clarinettists (on B flat and bass instruments). Far back, two twinned grand pianos, and forward of which, in the intervening space, several pairs of likewise twinned marimbas, a golden vibraphone centrally, and, behind it, two facing xylophones. All with feedback monitors, and with a sound engineer at the back of the auditorium, who later confirmed that, when he detects interference fringes, or the xylophone is played with attack near the end of the work, he can bring up the sound a little to give those things emphasis.

Adding or taking away layers, we saw the care with which Colin Currie curated the performance, clearly signalling each change of section (as, on a smaller scale and amongst nods and other gestures, we saw the principal clarinettist doing, by raising the bell of his instrument, seeming to mark the number of iterations) : it felt as though Currie oversaw it, and maybe had licence (from Reich or his score), to vary the emphasis of each section, given by its duration.

Afterwards, no wonder that those eighteen people linked hands : to us, they were linked in our hearts and souls already, and this was their triumph, that they had communicated something so special, and in all its fullness – we were full of magic, and of admiration for Reich’s, and their, conception of this work.

hi @ColinCurrieGrp thank you for an amazing concert @SaffronHallSW tonight. Honestly felt like a profound experience. pic.twitter.com/V7b9VTnSNU
— David Sheppard (@artpod) April 26, 2015

Part I of the review (Music for Pieces of Wood (1973) and Quartet (2009)) is here



End-notes

* Let alone one such as Jan Garbarek’s one-set Barbican Hall concert at the time of the Dresden album (2010 ?)…

** One has to suggest that there is little more than a superficial relationship between any of these actually quite different and differentiated composers, or, indeed, between most of those who are thought of as together as writing minimalist compositions.

*** Fragmentation – fragmented, only by us, so that, in the repetitions (or near-repetitions), we could focus on what the cello contributed, or some other instrumental, or human, voice.


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