Monday, 7 March 2016

Two now-celebrated film directors talk via an interpreter

This is a Festival review¹ of Hitchcock / Truffaut (2015)

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


6 March

This is a Festival review¹ of Hitchcock / Truffaut (2015)

Two film directors, both of whom later turned out to have been near the end of their careers (and lives), agreed to meet for week-long interviews, the younger man [François Truffaut] asking questions, via an interpreter [Helen G. Scott], of the older [Alfred Hitchcock] : the result of their meeting was not only deepening friendship, but also Truffaut's book Hitchcock², of whose existence and history Hitchcock / Truffaut (2015) is right to remind us.


Frontispiece of Truffaut's Hitchcock

Hitchcock / Truffaut is a documentary that is worth watching for what it tells and shows, though not always for how it chooses to do so (please see below). Also, more importantly, because one could easily tease out its various strands³ [which are identified in the end-note] and ask whether one or more could have been given more weight - with the others as subsidiaries, or not included at all.

Since Leeds International Film Festival asks one to rate everything from 1 to 5 (5 being the best), one agrees to slot into that snapshot way of thinking, and - as there had been better films – one eliminated giving it 5, but then it had to merit 4 (as it certainly was not 3). In fact, it is deserving of being scored as 4 just to hear Martin Scorsese talk with masterful intelligence about Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960), which, whatever its aims may have been, is the heart of film : his analysis makes us delightfully aware of the cinematic stature of both Hitchcock and of him.



What this Tweet says may, indeed, be what publicity for the film wants to tell us, and, in some senses, we do get a good feel for how all those interviews went – as well as how some of the ironic photography came about, including that used for the poster (in the Tweet above). (If we want to know what resulted from all that interviewing, though, one reads the book itself², of course [and the film does not much tell us how, or how much, the interviews - as conducted and recorded - were 'tidied up' for publication].) On other levels, hearing simultaneous translation prominently taking place at some length can, for those with some ability in French, be confused and confusing, just in the way that watching a film in, and with sub-titles in, one’s own language can be a distraction (even without any discrepancy between them...), if one is needlessly drawn to reading the latter, rather than listening to the voices and what they are saying :

As the whole point of using the footage was to give that sense of the interviews in progress, Helen G. Scott translating simultaneously into French needed to be audible, but it might have been better suited to Hitchcock / Truffaut’s purposes to adjust the volume of her voice, and that of the two men, for its English-speaking audience : relatively speaking, did we actually need to be able to concentrate on (a) Hitchcock and on (b) what Scott translated Truffaut asking or commenting to him (and less so on (c) her translating Hitchcock’s words for the benefit of Truffaut, and on (d) what he said for her to translate for Hitchcock) ?


Presenting the material, just as it was, and expecting the viewer to accommodate to it was one thing that deprived the film of being rated 5. Another, already alluded to (above), was that of director Kent Jones insufficiently deciding, and being clear about, the relative importance of the five or so strands within the film³ [identified in the end-note], and it has been said that Scorsese’s contribution is vital to its appeal and worth. (It does not quite fit in the last of these broad strands, as, unlike some of those interviewed (one just happens to recall Wes Anderson⁴), Scorsese was working in film at the time, and got to see Vertigo through being in film circles, since it was not available otherwise.)


The end-note⁴ has just mentioned that Hitchcock / Truffaut seems too keen to prove to us that it has people who make comments (under one or more of its strands) whose opinions actually matter, and (above) that it seems too undetermined, in what it ends up saying, about what is important : at the danger of overpraising Scorsese’s words, he was actually seeing films such as Vertigo alongside, and without needing the insights of, the Truffaut book. So the film has us stray, without being either sign-posted or having a justification, into valuing Hitchcock’s direction (and his work of preparation for a shoot) as if it is somehow just part of the thesis that the book importantly benefited both Truffaut and Hitchcock’s reputation.


Finally, no doubt it did, but that does not, in and of itself, prove to make a good reason to order the book, expecting from it a good filmic read. Historically, the re-valuation of Hitchcock that it achieved may have been overdue, but it does not mean that the exchanges between the men come off the page (as against in the live segments of interview that we see) with vivacity, or even that some of the territory into which either man wishes to take us may be of interest (except to them) : by contrast, in the Faber & Faber series that may owe it its origins (where film directors are interviewed about their work), a title such as Woody Allen on Woody Allen⁵ takes more time on each film, by usually devoting a chapter to one (whereas five or six are looked at in each of Truffaut’s chapters).


As the sub-title suggests, Faber & Faber's Hitchcock on Hitchcock : Selected Writings and Interviews (1995) offers something different

As against the Truffaut book, cinematographer Stig Björkman’s conversations with Allen have been more closely edited, for its chapters to be flowing and thematically arranged within them, of which one has far less sense with Truffaut's Hitchcock. Although Truffaut did produce a revised edition, Björkman and Allen have had the luxury, since the first UK edition⁵ (it originally appeared in Sweden, in 1993) of re-visiting the work with the passage of time and the appearance of new films. It survives the test of being readable and informative now, whereas – for all the significance of Truffaut’s – maybe it does so not have so much to say now... ?


Post-script :

To dilate, as an antidote to the above, on considering Hitchcock / Truffaut in wider terms [from ‘Actors are cattle’: when Hitchcock met Truffaut, Stuart Jefrries writing in The Guardian (@guardian)] :

'In the book of the interviews,' says [Kent] Jones, 'Hitchcock came over as stilted and formal, which you can hear he isn’t.

Thanks to critics such as Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, Godard and indeed Truffaut (all of whom who would become the iconoclastic hipster directors of the Nouvelle Vague), cinema for the first time became, as director Olivier Assayas puts it in Jones’s film, self-conscious. For the first time, it reflected on itself as art rather than dismissing itself as mere entertainment. The Hitchcock-Truffaut interviews were part of that revolution.



End-notes

¹ Seen, during Leeds International Film Festival (@leedsfilmfest) 2015, at Hyde Park Picture House (@HydeParkPH).

² Hitchcock by François Truffaut, with the collaboration of Helen G. Scott : Secker & Warburg, London, 1968. (First published as Le Cinéma selon Hitchcock : Robert Laffont, Paris, 1966.)

³ * Contains spoilers * :

(1) How Truffaut (and his peers) came to esteem the films of Hitchcock, and for Truffaut to approach him with his request

(2) Their correspondence leading up to Truffaut’s visit

(3) The interviews themselves and artefacts of those sessions

(4) The resultant book Hitchcock / Truffaut** and the effect that Truffaut desired from it, i.e. for an appreciation of Hitchcock’s films as works of film-making, not merely as entertainment (not least of all what made them work as ‘thrillers’ in the first place)

(5) Plus some 'talking heads' - other directors, or writers or critics, few on the screen long enough for their contribution to amount to more than bulking out the numbers.


⁴ If, as one is glad to do, one knows films of Anderson’s, there is another form of distraction, but this time on the screen : not only do we have this director (or writer, critic, etc.) identified by a caption (which is always useful, and can easily be taken in), but, in another part of the screen, a short list of films, publications, etc.

The tendency, then, is is to wonder why this film has been mentioned, but not this one (rather than focusing on what Anderson is saying…). So who is this film for that, there and then (rather than built into the credits ?), it needs to be sure of establishing the credentials of those who are shown saying how important Hitchcock or this book of interviews is ?

Stylistically, there is a like tendency, which comes out strongly at times, towards having too much archive / documentary material in view at once : we do not simply have a text on the screen for us to be allowed to read [such as Hitchcock’s quite gracious response to Truffaut - although that actual letter was accepting, but short]. Rather, at the same time as highlighting passages in it, the visual-design of Jones’ team over-busily has it transit across the screen, as well as changing the focus, and shifting us on, by moving other pieces of original material into play : almost akin to some Harry-Potter-like notion of an interactive museum, where, as the Hogwarts portraits do, the exhibits have a life of their own – perhaps entertaining or enchanting, but not an aid to concentration (or low anxiety) ?


⁵ Faber & Faber Limited, London, 1995. (It was originally published as Woody om Allen.)




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

Wednesday, 2 March 2016

Great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia (The Winter's Tale*)

This is a review of Wreckers (2011)

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


26 April

This is a review of Wreckers (2011)

* Please be aware that, without giving the plot, there may be significant detail revealed *

Great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia

In context, these words - in the opening lines of the first theatre production where I was so involved in the mechanics of the text and how it was delivered that it amounted to immersion in the play's world and language - do many things all at once:

* They introduce Camillo to us straightaway (and by name), because the speech is addressed to him - he has a difficult and all-important decision to make just scenes away, and we need to know who he is

* Established at once, in these words, is that we are in Sicilia, but that Bohemia and it, where Camillo has come as part of an embassy, are - the person speaking to him thinks - poles apart

* So we know immediately that we are in a royal court**, and that it is with the lives of such people and those, such as Camillo, who are employed by them that we shall be concerned

* But my last point is my main point: wherever Bohemia and Sicilia may be (and I had very little conception at the time of that production where they are - after all, I think that finding Illyria on the map might prove rather taxing), they are not here

* It is a depiction of things happening that is openly declared to be somewhere else


Dictynna Hood's first feature (Wreckers (2011)) is, itself, almost immediately and unequivocally established as being set somewhere specific. That place is not specified (except by how David and Nick, who grew up there, speak, if one had an ear for that accent (and there is a credit for the person who worked with them and others to make them sound from that area)), but it is not Bohemia or Sicilia, but rural England.

Which is part, of course, of what makes it so disturbing - just fleetingly, just at times. That feeling is reminiscent of, but also very unlike, Pinter's vision of what could be happening in everyday scenes set in unremarkable streets, maybe does happen. The things that we don't know about, or - more like it - pretend that we don't guess at or are not interested in.

And this is a village in Britain, where (although they would always claim not to be nosy) everyone knows everyone else's business: we are even told, in (I think) a scene on a street in the village itself that a man was known to sleep with his daughter. This place where even incest is something that, although not exactly witnessed, isn't anybody's business to report (just to be aware of), is where a drama plays out that involves Dawn and David, their neighbours, and their not entirely welcome visitor Nick, David's brother (or are we even so sure of that?). So, Dictynna Hood seems to be saying (and I mention this topic, not becase it is what happens, but because sexuality and the urge to have sex, to procreate, is shown to be a strong force).


Slight diversion (but not really)

T
he veneer of our society is of such a kind that, if an unheard-of businessperson and his or her colleagues and / or business associates or would-be clients, go to a live sex show, then So what? It's a free country!. These claims, perhaps less made now, about freedom, and the reality of when such private matters suddenly become public, do clash, however:

For it would be better for that businessperson not to become a Cabinet minister and continue to do such things, or not to have concealed (as best he or she can, by any means he or she has at his or her disposal) all trace of ever having done them (now or in the past), because politicians, in the UK at least, are meant to be above reproach. (Even if the reproach sometimes comes from members of the press who would have no objection to personally doing whatever they state they are condemning.)


Back to the film...

I hinted at Pinter, but it is an edginess of its own that Dictynna has shown us here, one that inhabits these people, their behaviour, maybe where they live. Much is not spelt out, although (and there may be doubts whether what he says is true) it seems that Nick has some sort of experience of post-tramatic stress, the brothers have lied (but which one?) in a way that attributes their actions to the other and vice versa, and that there are immense and largely unadmitted feelings of jealousy, anger, rage and hatred.

They are almost, without in any way diminshing from how they are drawn, characters who step forward momentarily as if an everyman or -woman, an archetype, and then step back into being the sorts of people that we may find it hard to admit that we are ourselves deep down, in this England where there is still a show of respectability, and what goes on in the bedroom - and who is in the bed - is best not known or talked about.

This sense, quite a subtle one, of one standing for all makes this a powerful and resonant film, and I just hope that I have the chance to see it again, ideally on a big screen.


End-notes

* I have posted already that it is often enough wrongly called A Winter's Tale.

** Not The Royal Court!


Monday, 29 February 2016

Spotlight on a winner of Academy Awards in 2016


Some film-references and an accreting list of comments about Spotlight (2015) :

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


29 February

* Contains some spoilers *

After some film-references (not to be much explored), an accreting list in not much order of comments about Spotlight (2015) :



* L’enquête (The Clearstream Affair) (2014)
* Mea Maxima Culpa : Silence in the House of God (2012)
* Philadelphia (1993)
* Philomena (2013)
* Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)


* Howard Shore’s score was inventive and employed a range of instrumentalists – however, at one point, it may have inappropriately suggested a positivity (to the progress of the investigation) that was not in keeping with what, at that point, was being investigated

* Dramatizing the telling of a true story – at best, we forgive such dramatic retellings for the voice that they have given to someone whose trust has been abused and his or her own voice silenced ; at worst, why not a dramatic reconstruction (for those whose choice would not be Mea Maxima Culpa (2012)), rather than having to adapt character and content to fit the inflexible standard notions of the elements of a drama ?

* Misdirection A : With the help of the score, in spy-film mood, to suggest that corruption or ill-will on the part of one or more of those higher up at The Boston Globe might have prevented earlier researches into these issues, but then let that dissipate with a curiously thin explanation, covered by newly arrived editor Marty Baron's (Liev Schreiber's) worthy speech about the rewards of having hindsight¹

* In contrary motion, and questions of billing apart, that purposive importing of notions of suspicion and intrigue is at curious odds with no one much, other than Baron, seeming to have a grasp of what about a story makes it in the public interest, and with how both the methods of investigative journalism and yet a lack of knowledge of worldly ways is portrayed

* As a screenplay that is now acclaimed, it is fine that we have three Christmases established : the latter cases give a sense of time and scale, but the first five minutes or so - which make quite sure that we do not miss the decorations - are hardly necessary, even in a linear narrative, to provide a historical perspective or tell what happened in that time-period

* Generally, the film fails too much just to tell², and chooses instead to show, and, at the same time, it tends to have characters talk, or even arrange to meet, when what is said (in legal terms) is solely for the benefit of an audience of supposed lay people : the characters would know not even to spend the considerable time involved to ask for what, answered in terms of principles of client confidentiality or professional legal practice, is bound to be refused



* Of course, one cannot judge how this would appear to those who have not practised law (or banking procedures, in L’enquête (The Clearstream Affair), to those not versed in finance), but surely no such journalist would register surprise at the lack of evidence in the courts of settlements made without proceedings having been issued³ : if agreements could not be made between claimant and defendant without everyone knowing what they were, there would be no point to them

* Misdirection B : A little as with Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films, and as part of generating the sense of suspicion that was mentioned above, we hear that someone’s heart had been in the right place after all (except not only that, if someone is asked to do what he has already done, one would imagine that he would simply say so, but also that he has no reason to claim instead that he cannot, which is falsified by having done what he did)

* Spotlight is about an obviously important subject being covered up, but this award-winning screenplay has its infelicities⁴, and, though it is approach that can work in the right place, does just allow significant characters, such as Marty Baron and Eric Macleish, to occupy some twilight part of the film, from where they are engaged when needed, but then sent back off to the wings

* Yet we spend more screen time, ‘on the beat’, with others, whose contributions seem tangential or to lack a corollary⁵, and who and whose professional roles are sometimes sketchily drawn : even if that were how it was, it even seems something of a surprise that the journalists do not write up the story as a team, but that it falls to Mike Rezendes, working on his own (quite apart, in a film about the lawyerly influence on public life, our seeing Baron, without attorneys checking it over, making the decision about what to print)

* As for real intrigue and a committed journalist who is personally laying everything on the line, though, it cannot compete with L’enquête and how, in a film that is more than twenty minutes shorter (this one is, in places, less well paced), it makes its far, far more complicated networks of transactional and interpersonal information at least as digestible - except that the latter is a French-language film, which still wrongly rules it out for this sort of consideration, and so much more !


Seen on the opening night of Cambridge Film Festival 2015



Post-script :

In his review, writing for The New Statesman, Ryan Gilbey comes up with other cogent reasons why the film does not work, starting with :

If we sympathise with the heroes of Spotlight, we have delivered some indefinable blow to institutional child abuse, just as anyone who paid to see Twelve Years a Slave (an earlier Best Picture winner) was also purchasing an invisible 'I Hate Racism badge. If we support The Big Short, we have done our bit to avert the next economic collapse, or at least to ensure we can discuss it with authority when it comes. But good intentions are not always synonymous with great film-making.


In The Hollywood Reporter, concluding his review, Todd McCarthy sums up :

In the end, this material can't help but be interesting, even compelling up to a point, but its prosaic presentation suggests that the story's full potential, encompassing deep, disturbing and enduring pain on all sides of the issue, has only begun to be touched.


End-notes

¹ Although one might infer a submerged plot-line about the effects of hierarchy on having the courage of one’s convictions ?

² At the same time, we hear the Spotlight team talking about what they are working on / what they are being asked to postpone doing, but we are not bothered with more than the necessary traces of the substance of what that is, since we would simply gain nothing by knowing : the film can trust its judgement there, but errs elsewhere with this issue of having to have people say what we do need to know.

³ Or (though this question did not arise), equally, to imagine that the judicial system, where cases have settled out of court, will show the settlement reached.



⁴ For example, as a matter of tone (whose key does not match), rather than a moment of humour, when the others go down to the basement and, asking what the smell is, they are directed to a dead rat – as if someone would wish to start researching without removing it ? Or why Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) is both asked by Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci) whether his surname is Italian (it does not sound remotely so) and, with some disbelief at the answer, where he is from.

⁵ Such as the retired priest, and just on the door-step, being garrulous about having molested (but, he says, not raped) boys in his flock - before being shut up from within.




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

Tuesday, 23 February 2016

The best of duo partners (Part I) : The music is almost an excuse to hear them play

Part I of a review of Maxim Vengerov in Recital, with pianist Roustem Saïtkoulov

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


21 February

This is the delayed¹ Part I of a review of Maxim Vengerov in Recital [Part II is reviewed here], which he gave with pianist Roustem Saïtkoulov at Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, on Saturday 20 February at 7.30 p.m.

The first part of the recital that Maxim Vengerov gave at Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW) with pianist Roustem Saïtkoulov comprised two sonatas for violin and piano. [Part II is reviewed here.]

They were written in the first two decades of the nineteenth century and within fifteen years of each other (although Schubert was more than a decade, and his work was not to be published until 1851, which, if it is the publication-date that we notice, might make us fail to realize that he lived his live almost entirely within Beethoven's life-time).



Programme (Part I) :

1. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) ~ Sonata for Violin and Piano (‘Grand Duo’)

2. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) ~ Sonata No. 7



Franz Schubert (1797-1828) ~ Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major (‘Grand Duo’), Op. Posth. 162 (1817), D. 574

1. Allegro moderato
2. Scherzo : Presto
3. Andantino
4. Allegro vivace


In the Sonata’s opening Allegro moderato, the tone of Roustem Saïtkoulov’s playing was open, as if of song accompaniment. The writing for violin, meanwhile, was developing into complexity, with expressive cadences, and with Maxim Vengerov using a great variability of string-tone between, say, feeling free or sweet, exuberant or jolly. With the repeat, ease was the overriding sense, leading into a hint of nostalgia, and then new (agitated) material, with loud piano gestures. Momentarily, the duo chose to hesitate over the recurrence of the original theme, and then brought the movement to lively and uncomplicated close.


A horn-like motif, as if acting as a fanfare, opened the Scherzo (and was to make further appearances, following boisterous gestures the next two times). Schubert next variously gave us (punctuated by use of the fanfare) a passage built around repeated and syncopated notes, and a sinuously flexible line for Vengerov, whilst the piano had a sort of trotting pattern : that sound had already reminded of another composer, and, when the horn-call had come back triumphantly, the piece then duly transformed, in its ending, into a piece of Beethovenian theatre.


The third movement had a song-like opening from Vengerov. That theme was ultimately to be passed to Saïtkoulov, but a feature of this Andantino was trills on piano, violin adornments, and modulations. Those modulations, when the theme was on piano, led to harmonic uncertainty, and then it was passed back for a mood of mellifluousness that alternated with one of earnestness. More modulations, and trills, first on piano, came before the movement concluded, but with a slight feeling of irresolution.


Having once read Jo Kirkbride’s programme-notes, one necessarily listened with awareness that it was youthful Schubert. The Allegro vivace opened with what seemed to be a variation of the start of the work, with a ‘jogging’ passage connected to it (a little like the earlier ‘trotting’ figure ?). Just before a theme was passed to the violin, one was aware that the piano part was reminiscent of Schubert’s later style in keyboard sonatas.

Generally, this movement seemed more mature than the others, with a feeling of equal partners, and it had energy and dramatic tension, from performers and composer : Schubert’s piano-writing is sympathetic, and both Saïtkoulov and Vengerov brought a lightness of touch to this finale, but coupled with expressiveness. Schubert ends the piece with enthusiasm, but it is unannounced, in the usual ways, in the writing, and so catches us somewhat short.


As with the Sonata that we were about to hear, this was playing engaged on a passionate purpose, with sympathy and communication between the players, and much appreciated by those who had been listening at Saffron Hall.




Beethoven ~ Sonata No. 7 in C Minor (1802), Op. 30, No. 2 :

1. Allegro con brio
2. Adagio cantabile
3. Scherzo : Allegro
4. Finale : Allegro ; Presto




Beethoven gives us, in the opening Allegro con brio, a pair of note-clusters that, with their contrasting note-values, balance a third, longer one, and Vengerov and Saïtkoulov clearly relished this rhythmic material. The composer’s assurance in writing and handling it was matched by theirs in bringing it to us, and, in co-curating the performance with him, and so a march-like passage felt rendered quite anew when it returns.

To some extent, elements of music inevitably, if well imprinted on the first occasion, will feel fresh when the composition has it repeated, by virtue of the differing context. Yet this was all part of the performers’ nuance and intonation, to have us take in themes in passing : at another point, we would be able to notice that Vengerov used under-statement before the material reappeared – both men were clearly feeling alive to the sensitivities and revelations in the Sonata. So, musically, the group of three vigorous down-strokes on violin need to fit where we hear them, and, if they do (as they did when Vengerov played them), they do not resemble gratuitous loudness (or even aggression ?), but make musical sense.

When that martial utterance comes back one final time, before a gloriously confident end to the movement, does it now seem to pre-figure what we hear in the so-called 'Eroica' Symphony ? (The Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major (1804), Op. 55, was completed within a year of its publication*.)


When Roustem Saïtkoulov opened the next movement (marked Adagio cantabile), Maxim Vengerov was observing him keenly, during the introduction for solo piano : one had the sense that he wanted to absorb, with all available senses (not just that of sound), how this was being played, and, when he made his entry, it was with a most beautiful tone on violin, and phrased for the light piano chords.

There was the intonation and feeling of close duo partners, with Saïtkoulov performing figures, below Vengerov’s playing, and of an overall effect that, as the writing is, was balanced, with grace amidst a sense of solemnity. Just as with those three lively down-strokes from Vengerov in the Allegro con brio (please see above, in the penultimate paragraph), so Beethoven puts two massive rumbles into the piano-writing (in the form of pairs of very abrupt scales) : maybe curious in itself at first, but, with delicate violin following and adding to it, there was a devotional feel to how we heard violin with piano.


By now, although we still had two movements to be heard, they are (in a typical performance) shorter in length, put together, than the preceding Adagio cantabile. Yet music is not, of course, to be ‘sold by the pound (or kilo)’, and so, just as the emotional centre of a work may be found in a relatively short Adagio (because of what has come before it, and prepared for it), so the effect that these last movements can have will be built and be sustained by our experience of the earlier part of the Sonata.

The Scherzo movement opens with what, to Western ears could be an erratically accented dance-line (maybe in homage to the its fellows and its Tsarist dedicatee² ?), from which players and Beethoven extract thematic material. At times, with Saïtkoulov following Vengerov, it sounded imperial in nature; at others, perhaps more like a hymn of thanks – radiant and glorious.


Of course, it is not actually that the Scherzo is any more brief than is typical with any other movement so marked, but that the Finale is no longer. However, with rhythmically inventive writing and playing, and more use of syncopated off-beats, almost everything (please see below) about the tone and structure of the movement is predicated on its doing as we expect :

Beethoven makes a fugal use of a form of the theme, and we could see and sense the satisfaction of both men, in this music and in the performance, as they built from this point. Despite indications to the contrary, in a moment of almost stasis near the end, with violin and piano moving strophically, a Presto coda, signalled by Vengerov, was to bring the Sonata to a close, and to very much applause and sincere appreciation from Maxim Vengerov and Roustem Saïtkoulov on stage at Saffron Hall.



The link here is to the review of Part II of the concert


End-notes

¹ By way of explanation for this Part (Part I) of the review not appearing when intended :




² The publication of this set of three Sonatas, Beethoven's Opus 30 (dedicated to Tsar Alexander I of Russia), had been in May 1803 (they had been written between 1801 and 1802).




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

Monday, 22 February 2016

The last Prelude and Fugue, and onwards : Reich, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Bach celebrate (with) Louis #Andriessen

A review of Britten Sinfonia at Milton Court for / with Louis #Andriessen (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)


18 February

This is the first part of a review of a concert given by Britten Sinfonia under Andrew Gourlay (and with soprano Allison Bell), as part of a BBC Louis Andriessen festival at The Barbican Centre, presented by Tom Service at Milton Court on Saturday 13 February at 3.00 p.m.


Soprano Allison Bell sang in #Andriessen's Dances (1991), the only work in Part II of the concert (which is reviewed here)



Programme (Part I) :

1. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) (arr. Louis Andriessen (1936-)) ~ Prelude No. 24

2. Bach (arr. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), compl. Andriessen) ~ Prelude and Fugue No. 24

3. Stravinksy ~ Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914)

4. Steve Reich (1936-) ~ Duet (1993)

5. Andriessen (arr. strings, Marijn van Prooijen) ~ Miserere (2007, arr. 2015)



It has to be said that, even with the benefit (and delight) of having heard Peter Donohoe (@PeterHDonohoe) play Book I of Das wohltemperierte Klavier entire (at The Stables at Wavendon, Milton Keynes (@StablesMK)), there are still pairs of Preludes and Fugues that one feels that one is less confident of knowing well¹ :

So it is that, although recordings of Book I abound (and are listened to, e.g. by Glenn Gould, András Schiff, Richard Egarr, Keith Jarrett, etc.), those Preludes and Fugues from around No. 19 onwards never quite get as much attention / exposure as they might, or should – from that personal perspective, therefore, hearing the original work first might have helped one listen out better for what first Andriessen, then Stravinsky, had done to Bach's structures and textures…



Bach (arr. string quartet, Andriessen) ~ Prelude No. 24 in B Minor, BWV 869, Das wohltemperierte Klavier (1722, arr. 2006)

1st violin, Jacqueline Shave ~ 2nd violin, Miranda Dale ~ Viola, Clare Finnimore ~ Cello, Caroline Dearnley

(1) In the part for cello, we apprehended serene, stately movement beneath that of the other strings, and, as we resumed da capo, there were moments of tenderness. When, later, the writing for cello could be perceived to have a step-wise character, the other string-parts had a fluidity to them, and there was an excitement to the music’s build and fall.



Bach (arr. strings, Stravinsky, compl. Andriessen) ~ Prelude and Fugue No. 24 (1722, arr. 1969)

(2) A little as when Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) played Mahler’s arrangement, for chamber string orchestra, of Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D Minor (‘Death and The Maiden’), D. 810, there was not an impression of a much fuller sound, though it appeared capable of being more sweeping in its effect, and gave a ‘larger’ crescendo.

In this version, the sadness came out in the theme that Bach takes for a fugal subject : its intensity was not lessened by a group of instruments playing the long opening trill (the Prelude also contains trills). Its motifs, and the use of falling intervals against contrary motion in the other parts, are suggestive of mourning, and, as the culmination of Bach’s educational enterprise (we know that, in class, he used playing it through as one), it is almost necessarily far removed from the Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 846, with which Book I begins.


As to the impression given, especially of the Fugue, by making the arrangement, one factor has been mentioned above (i.e. the relative unfamiliarity of items towards the end of Book I), but, even compared with Die Kunst der Fuge, BWV 1080 (which is still sometimes thought recondite), does this material seems harder to shape ?



Stravinksy ~ Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914²)

The quartet was made up exactly as for the first piece in the concert :
Jacqueline Shave and Miranda Dale, Clare Finnimore, and Caroline Dearnley

The work had no titles for the movements until 1928, when, alongside his Étude pour pianola, Stravinsky arranged them for orchestra (under the title Quatre études), and they became called, respectively, Danse, Eccentrique, and Cantique : the stridency of the first of these was characterized by vigorous pizzicato notes on cello (Dearnley), and an emphatic part for first violin (Shave), with occasional prominent strokes from second violin (Dale).

Stravinsky opened the second Piece by employing a heavily accented and slurred sound (as of his notion of an eccentric³ ?), but then there was an abrupt change of tone and mood, more extreme, in its rhythmic freedom and energy, than even much of Bartók’s writing for string quartet. When the initial material resumed, there was less jollity about it, and less slurring.

The last Piece was very different again – and one wonders what, in arranging it for large orchestra, Stravinsky might have changed. It began with a few gestures, which conjured to mind, perhaps, a waste space, before developing into what resembled a hymn (or someone praying).

Yet we were to keep reverting to those more stark gestures, as if to a distillation of his Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) from the previous year – and a work of whose influence on him Louis Andriessen was later to tell. Towards the end, the part for lead violin had a fugue-like subject, and, amidst these unlikely fragments, to the credit of the Sinfonia’s string-players (as well as of the composer), there was warmth.

Appreciative of a sensitive performance (and it could be that this felt like the first substantive piece ?), the audience at Milton Court called the players back for applause.



Reich ~ Duet (1993)

When they were leaving the concert-hall after the first part of the concert, one heard a couple of men talking in a way that showed that they did not realize that they had already heard Reich’s Duet.

Even for those who did not have the programme, as maybe they also did not, it was clear enough, not just because Tom Service (@tomservice), for the BBC (@BBCRadio3), had announced, and talked about the pieces in, the running-order of the Louis #Andriessen Immersion Day concert (through to the composer’s own Miserere) : for one thing, it was not as if it did not, in aural terms, resemble Steve Reich's style, but, for another, one imagines that (as with Music for 18 Musicians) he would have specified where on the stage, and so in visual terms, the duo should be – the familiar Sinfonia violinists Jacqueline Shave (leader) and Miranda Dale (principal second violin) had been facing each other across the performance-space.


This was a completely other sound-world from that of Stravinsky (as heard from 1914), with its use of echo / delay, i.e. in the person and playing of the performers, and sustained notes. Reich then added in patterning, in the form of rhythms from the double-bass (Roger Linley) and, for this piece, a third cellist (Rowena Calvert), deploying a flat bow to tap the strings.

For those who had been listening to Ligeti recently (because of Britten Sinfonia’s At Lunch 2), utterly different from the effect that he sought – open sounds, but with dissonance introduced, and the interaction of the parts of Reich’s duetting pair of violins, conspiring to throw the equilibrium off balance. With a light, open texture, the Sinfonia brought the work to a close.



Andriessen (arr. Marijn van Prooijen) ~ Miserere (2007, arr. 2015)

Interviewed by Tom Service, Louis Andriessen told us (wanting, as he said, to avoid giving us a lecture’s worth on it, as he had formally done elsewhere recently) that he had written Miserere for Amsterdam Sinfonietta as a requiem - as at, and for the fact of, their final concert : he had done so at a time when funding for the arts had been in the hands of people whom he described as ‘gangsters’, and this ensemble (and four others ?) had lost its grant.

However, another and happier aspect to its genesis, at the outset, had been a simple figure, written as a birthday present for his sister, and which #Andriessen said that even he could play on piano. The work had originally been written for string quartet, and Andriessen approved of the present arrangement (for string orchestra), which had been made by the Sinfonietta’s bassist, Marijn van Prooijen.


Alas, it had been intended that the review-notes, on which the comments that follow are based, would be amplified, with the piece (fresh) in one’s memory : nothing wrong with the intention as such, as an effort (as with Andriessen’s Dances, in the second half) to detach oneself from the activity of formulating immediate and specific responses, and, rather, making a comment on the overall impression⁴...

At first, the work fell into sections, with contrasts occurring between the sections. Then, as Andriessen had said to Service by way of an introduction to his composition, it becomes more ‘disquieting’, and less ‘conventional’, which we heard as the texture felt itself to be twisted (or tortured ?). When that feeling did subside, there was a quality of expansiveness to the writing, which was a little reminiscent of such moods in Copland (or Sibelius ?) – till, at the end, it had richness, as of Britten.


Part II of the concert is reviewed here



End-notes

¹ As, say, with a concert that includes complete Rachmaninov’s Preludes, Op. 23, nothing can alter the fact that some are celebrated (e.g. No. 5 in G Minor, marked Alla marcia), and so one less easily relates to their neighbours, heard in between.

² Although it was completed in 1914, it appears that it was not published until 1922 (and Stravinsky had revised it in 1918).

³ Assuming that Stravinsky did not conceive of that description after the fact, although Book II of Claude Debussy’s Préludes had first been performed in London in 1913, of which No. 6 (L. 123 / 6) is marked Dans le style et le mouvement d'un Cakewalk, and sub-titled (at the end of the piece) Général Lavine – eccentric.

If, of course, it had happened - whereas, it had then seemed natural, just after hearing Allison Bell (@bellAsoprano) sing, to write up notes for the second half.




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

Sunday, 21 February 2016

The best of duo partners (Part II) : The music is almost an excuse to hear them play

Part II of a review of Maxim Vengerov in Recital, with pianist Roustem Saïtkoulov

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


20 February

This is Part II of a review of Maxim Vengerov in Recital, which he gave with pianist Roustem Saïtkoulov at Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, on Saturday 20 February at 7.30 p.m.


After a dark concert-suit in the first part of the concert (to a review of which this links), a change of repertoire and ambience was signalled by a change of suit for Maxim Vengerov, a grey lounge suit with a black collar



Programme (Part II) :

3. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) ~ Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2

4. Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) ~ Violin Sonata No. 6

5. Wilhelm Ernst (1812-1865) ~ The Last Rose of Summer

6. Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) (arr. Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962)) ~ Theme and Variations on ‘I Palpiti’





Ravel ~ Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2, in G Major (1923-1927), M. 77

1. Allegretto
2. Blues. Moderato
3. Perpetuum mobile. Allegro


The Sonata's opening Allegretto, from which the central movement is often detached (please see below), felt full of mystery and allusiveness : maybe there was birdsong in the discords, maybe car-horns (tying in with apparently invoking Gershwin in the last movement ?), but resolving into harmonies. From composer and performers, a sense of conjuring something into existence with this sound-world…


The central movement is often heard outside its place in the whole work – typically with great relish of the passage with that bluesy ‘bent’ note (if to the exclusion of much else ?). After extreme pizzicato gestures to begin with, Maxim Vengerov was then rightly relatively restrained with that familiar passage :

One can only appreciate what has been singled out to be known by accepting it to be so, when fitting it back into its musical context. Afterwards, as the piano ‘muses’, he used very much more gentle pizzicato to bring in subtle timbres, and, when it came to the often unacknowledged sub-theme, carefully accented it to bring the line of melody within it out to us. A little more pizzicato, this time with intensity, came before Ravel’s quiet, and somewhat moody close.


In the final movement, the Ravel of Gaspard de la nuit (1908), especially ‘Scarbo’ (its third movement), seemed evident here : the exactly terrifying effect of a moto perpetuo when put alongside the edginess of his piano-writing.


Remission came in the form of overtly jazzy piano (from which we might infer - wrongly¹ - that Ravel is quoting George Gershwin, in An American in Paris), and the violin skating above it, only to return to the anxiety of the moto perpetuo against chords from Saïtkoulov. A recurrence of that jazz-infused material then relieved us - now, the parts of piano and violin came to us in a more integrated form (and, although finishing the piece with the gesture of a closing cadence, Ravel seemed to do so without a harmonic resolution ?).



Ysaÿe ~ Violin Sonata No. 6, in E Major (1923), Op. 27


Eugène Ysaÿe


This solo work seemed to have - as the first encore was likewise to suggest - a Neapolitan character to it (and perhaps, near the end, even a reference to Carmen ?) : now playing alone, Vengerov’s virtuosity and ease of playing were being exploited, and tested.

However, amongst all that was going on and being asked of him, everything proved - played with this level of skill and insight - to be part of the whole. The adornments and extras were there, not for themselves, but in the service of lyricism, and of the music’s emotional content.



Ernst The Last Rose of Summer² (Étude No. 6) (1864) : Introduction, Theme, Four Variations, and Finale

After an introduction, we would have recognized the theme, complete with left-handed pizzicato. By 1846, the status of the song ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ had been established for decades (since Beethoven had used it twice, the first time in Irish Songs (1816), Vol. 2, WoO 153)². As the work progressed, we could hear how a variation would go away from, and come back to, home – or of the theme’s expressive enhancement (if almost to disintegration ?).


Given its popularity, then and now, it was illuminating to hear the theme so variously treated, with, after a ‘straight’ form of variation, next more left-handed pizzicato, but performed as a kind of ‘twang’, almost as if to undermine a serious bowed line. (Some other effects were read as comic, rather than in the nature of further challenging technique, with a number in the audience actually laughing – not that smiles or laughter are to be banished at the door of the concert-hall, but it was unclear that what we heard was meant to be taken that way.)



Paganini (arr. Kreisler) ~ Theme and Variations on ‘I Palpiti’ (1819), Op. 13 (arr. publ. 1905)

Again, a piece in variation form, but, coming from a celebrated violinist, it seemed employed to the end of conveying character through, rather than in, the chosen matter, and with the relative simplicity of the part for piano. The balance of the piece, and of the performer, was between the elements of ornamentation and bringing out its qualities of expression, and Kreisler’s importance and memory were clearly close to Vengerov’s heart (not just because the first two encores were by Kreisler, but in his approach and playing).


Fritz Kreisler, with his dog, in October 1930


Encores :

(1) The Caprice viennois, Op. 2, was given to feel and be reverential of Kreisler, but in a dreamy, if also matter-of-fact, way [Kreisler seems, judging by this recording from around 1942, to have chosen to play it with orchestra].

By contrast, in Kreisler’s (2) Tambourin Chinois³, Op. 3, Vengerov was obviously enjoying himself, with its pentatonic taps or fast bow-strokes. Yet, even more so, the tempo of the slower, central section – with its richness of tone, it was reminiscent of moments in the Ravel.



In retrospect, it was a shame not to have started a ripple of applause to second the sentiment that Maxim Vengerov wished that there could be more concert-halls like Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW).


Finally, a very well-known piece, (3) the ‘Méditation’ from Massenet’s opera Thaïs (where it originally served as an intermezzo) : Vengerov is a great player, but there was not a sense of ego here, but of loving the music, and loving playing it. As earlier in the recital (e.g. with the Ravel), what was well judged was in seeing what is lovely about it – the depths of expression, rather than exploiting it for its familiar capacity to move to tears.

Here, the concert concluded (as signalled by the duo coming back to the stage violinless) : in any case, one would not have wanted anything else to follow this choice. Many of the audience who had not already stood took the opportunity to do so, and take one last curtain-call with these performers.




The link here is to the review of Part I of the concert


End-notes

¹ I.e. that when, in 1928, Gershwin composed An American in Paris (after his second trip to Paris), he was the one paying tribute. It is a story often told that Gershwin and Ravel were in correspondence (before Gershwin's first visit, in 1926), because Gershwin wanted to take lessons in composition from him. When, however, Ravel saw what the other was earning as a composer, he joked that he should be taking lessons from Gershwin.

On meeting Gershwin in 1926, Ravel did not find himself able to teach him, and suggested Nadia Boulanger as a teacher. (Gershwin was not to meet her until the second trip : almost as famously, she urged on him that, true to himself, he was already a first-rate Gershwin, and should not try to become a second-rate [version of] Ravel.) In between, Gershwin helped persuade Ravel to make a lucrative concert-tour to the States, and the further contact between the men led to Ravel's making a generous commendation of Gershwin to Boulanger.

² The traditional tune ‘Aislean an Oigfear’ (‘The Young Man's Dream’) had been transcribed in 1792 (by Edward Bunting). The poet Thomas Moore then not only set words to it (i.e. his poem ‘The Last Rose of Summer’), but published Bunting’s transcription (in A Selection of Irish Melodies (1813), Vol. 5).

What one finds is that Ernst was by no means alone in finding it an attractive musical subject : we may well know of Britten’s arrangement, but, in the intervening two centuries, it has proved one to dozens of other composers, amongst them Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Kuhlau, Glinka, Gounod, Reger, and Hindemith.

³ Vengerov announced it as a second Caprice by Kreisler, setting one’s heart racing at the idea that he might, as Kreisler did, have passed off one of his works as that of another…




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

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

To Dick Cavett [who asked Janis Joplin how he would know that she was not doing heroin] : Who would care ?

This is a review of Janis : Little Girl Blue (2015)

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


16 February

This is a review of Janis : Little Girl Blue (2015)





Film references :

* Let’s Get Lost (1988) [Chet Baker]
* Mavis ! (2015) [Mavis Staples]
* Orion : The Man who Would be King (2015) [Jimmy Ellis]



One member of Joplin’s first band, Big Brother & the Holding Company, said of her that it could be seen that she had already been hurt, over and over.


Her sister put things somewhat differently, saying that going to San Francisco was an Opportunity to make your life fit your values - although Laura Joplin talked elsewhere on camera of ‘social acceptance’, her words did sound a rather negative formulation to describe what Joplin had felt that she needed to do in her life¹.


What impresses most in the film is how it has been put together. Not simply at the level of how to decide to narrate the story of Joplin's work and life, and how to allow opinions (such as Laura Joplin’s) to stand unweighted alongside those of others (and what include / what leave out), but also in terms of how the visual elements interact with the audio.

In particular, director Amy J. Berg chooses to use imagery, whose metaphorical import can proceed our actively comprehending : before we ever come to know what it relates to and means, we see pieces of footage of movement along a rail-road, and Joel Shearer’s music [IMDb (@IMDb) does not credit him, so it is as well that his name crudely noted during the credits] dares to be ambiently effective, without trying to fit her bands’ styles.


[...]


End-notes

¹ Excerpts read from letters from Joplin to her parents and vice versa (with a variety of ways of presenting them on the screen), as well as the short initial part of the film that talked of her early times at home in Port Arthur, Texas, suggested that knowledge of her promiscuity or drug-use was not going to be met with understanding, let alone without judgement.




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

Sunday, 14 February 2016

Pierrot sings of an unlucky love

A review of Britten Sinfonia at Milton Court for / with Louis #Andriessen (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)


14 February

This is the second part of a review of a concert given by Britten Sinfonia under Andrew Gourlay and with soprano Allison Bell, as part of a BBC Louis Andriessen Festival at The Barbican Centre, presented by Tom Service at Milton Court on Saturday 13 February at 3.00 p.m.



Second part first, in this review (as the notes more naturally cohered as prose when being typed up, in a quiet spot on level -2 at Milton Court). Dances (1991) is, for a change with lyrics, settings from a novel, Winged Pharaoh. (Joan Grant’s historical novel, which, when published in 1937, apparently first garnered strong interest in her work.)

After a long first part, and with no Louis Andriessen (#Andriessen) to hand for Tom Service (@tomservice) to talk to about Dances, he called for the audience to welcome soprano Allison Bell (@bellAsoprano), Britten Sinfonia, and - conducting again - Andrew Gourlay.


The cover of the first edition of Winged Pharaoh (1937)

The introductory part of the work (Section I (without voice)) had some chiming notes (from percussionist Jeremy Cornes), which were at least piercingly on a par with Stravinsky’s chords, from four concert grands, in Les Noces (though, without having heard that piece live, it is hard to be sure), and with elements added by harp and grand piano – that temporal reminder alternated, for a while, with some sparse solo material on viola (Clare Finnimore). With a texture becoming established, comprising sustained notes on strings, and the harp to introduce / effect / signal sudden modulations (in a slightly Steve-Reich way ?), the key element was an ostinato on vibraphone.

In Section II (what we would normally want to call the second movement), where Allison Bell first had a role, another ostinato was set up, but this time on harp (Lucy Wakeford), alongside a variety of percussion (from Cornes and Karen Hutt) and energized strings. It took a little while to acclimatize to the text, the mistake being to assume (not having it to follow) that it was going to be in Dutch, when it is English, but then, although elements of these words seemed sententious, it is inconceivable afterwards that Joan Grant was unfamiliar¹, amongst other things, with Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps² (The Rite of Spring).

Quite aside from the words, their delivery was felt, but also hypnotic, in the spirit of a work that seemed all in a dream. With some very rhythmic writing for both cellos (Caroline Dearnley and Julia Vohralik) and piano (Catherine Edwards), played with liveliness, we built to what ‘the music’ and ‘drums’ in the prose told us was ‘a mighty storm’, so the lyrics were co-creating this loud passage with the score itself, only for us to relax into this type of living torpor (before, towards the end, arpeggios on the harp), which appears to speak of Symbolism and / or Surrealism – one easily thinks of the somnolent expectancy of the canvases of Paul Delvaux, or Giorgio de Chirico :

[T]hey were as still, as trees upon a silent evening¹


For Section III, the review-notes become more sparse (partly because trying to make, and then jot down, observations can easily come to distract from listening - from taking in the scope and scale of the whole). It was characterized by the use of see-saw intervals, hints of Sprechstimme (?), and more florid language, though – at odds with itself – to express a form of aristocratically promoted self-control [associated with the days, not then past, of The British Empire], which is neatly summed up by stressing the need ‘to keep a stiff upper lip’ [please see also below] :

[N]or if the outline of my eye was smudged, could I throw the wax upon the floor, as I sometimes longed to do. Always I had to preserve an unflawed calm, as though the light around me shone like pearl instead of being flecked with the red of anger.


None of this emotion could stay suppressed, and Allison Bell was called upon for her specialty of the very high soprano range, with the Sinfonia strings most furiously played. Yet, as with Section II (and its words ‘quietness’ and ‘peace’), all returns to where it was, and Section III ended with a note on vibraphone, held until Gourlay’s signal.


The Disquieting Muses (1918) ~ Giorgio de Chirico

Some important words that came out in, and through, Bell’s rendition of the text in Section IV were ‘companionship’ and ‘longing’, seeming to speak with yearning, as well as sadness : [T]he loneliness of all women who do not have a man to share their lives seemed to be the voice’s position in life, but here seemingly not from lack of a partner (in fact, however, the voice's fellow ruler is her brother³), but because of not being able to share, for He would be sorrowful, if he knew. In the orchestra, an alternating pair of notes on vibraphone developed into the pattern of the initial ostinato, and with modulations, again, on the sound of a chord from the harp, and then a passage on the strings, with definite down-strokes. Dances concluded as the previous movement had done, quietly.

Andrew Gourlay was necessarily intent on Allison Bell taking due recognition : as we knew, in herself she was probably feeling under par, but this was a performance richly deserving acknowledgement alongside that of Britten Sinfonia, and she was brought back to the stage with enthusiastic applause.


Allison Bell (on another occasion) ~ @bellAsoprano ~ http://allisonbellsoprano.com


We were left to think about the timbre of this piece, whose effect was as of a song-cycle, with the narrative of those who appear to have their appointed role in ceremonial rites (Section II) juxtaposed with the permanent position of majesty (Section III) and the lack of a consort to whom one dare to reach out to share (Section IV) : it is almost as if, in Andriessen’s selection of material, we hear of an Egyptian ruler modelled on Elizabeth I (but not informed by such works as Lytton Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex (published in 1928)), but with the sentiments of Schumann in Frauenliebe und –Leben


End-notes

¹ Whatever the context in the book, the chosen passage is discrete and compact (fewer than 170 words) - wonderfully complete in itself, it evokes the phases of a cycle, as if of vegetative growth : at a time when Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough, now apparently much discredited, was still in its heyday ?

² As Jo Kirkbride's programme-notes now confirm, after this review has largely been written, the composition was a huge early influence on Andriessen, so he has found his source-material for a reason.

³ The programme-notes also tell us that the soloist represents the Princess Sekhet-a-Ra, joint Pharaoh in The First Dynasty with Neyah, her brother.




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