Intermezzo

Prom 33: even more pianos

Prom 33: London Sinfonietta / Edward Gardner - Royal Albert Hall, 9 August 2009

Antheil Ballet mécanique   John Adams Grand Pianola Music   Bartók Sonata for two pianos and percussion   Stravinsky Les noces

At least the second Prom of ‘Multiple Pianos’ day, unlike the first, stretched to four pianos for a couple of the works on offer. The impact of Antheil’s now-quaint Ballet mécanique was neutered by performing it in the less jazzy and less relentless 1953 update and confining the more outrageous sound effects (aeroplane propellors are specified) to laptop recordings. And couldn’t Edward Gardner have whipped up a bit more volume? Some early 20th century works still have the power to provoke, but this just came across as machine-age kitsch.

The four pianos were fully staffed again for an acoustically-unbalanced Les noces. Tatiana Monogarova and Elena Manistina managed to sing through the robust orchestration, but Vsevolod Grivnov and Kostas Smoriginas were buried beneath – a shame as their exposed solos were ardently and beautifully delivered. The refined voices of the BBC Singers, stranded way behind, floated over the visceral music more like a commentary than a part of the ecstatic communal celebration. It probably came across better on the radio.

In between came the spare textures of Bartók’s Sonata for two pianos and percussion, disappointingly stranded in the cavernous acoustic, and John Adams’s Grand Pianola Music. Like most of Adams’s non-opera music, there seems to be something missing – a cushion of words, or a movie it could soundtrack. Although this one was, according to the composer’s own programme note, booed for its radicalism on its 1982 premiere, it sounds to me like the sort of thing Sting might write on a day off. Adams serves up the superficial characteristics of Reich-style minimalism – the harmonic repetitions, the rippling arpeggiation - without the formal intelligence. The syrup-bathed first section demonstrates how readily the simple becomes banal if it’s fussed-over. The ironically recycled themes of the livelier second part, a sort of stoner Ride of the Valkyries, owe most of their appeal to subliminal recognition.

It was easily the best-performed (and received) work of the evening, but then the Royal Albert Hall acoustic finds it harder to defeat a full orchestra. Another reason to hate the 80s.

 

Test driving Kings Place

London Sinfonietta / Bhavan musicians - Kings Place, 3 October 2008

New venue Kings Place celebrated its opening last week with a five day, 100 concert festival - all tickets £2.50. I missed the first day, 1 October, but settled in for the Friday evening programme, which featured the London Sinfonietta in Hall One and Indian musicians from the London Bhavan institute in the smaller Hall Two.

First impressions? Well, it's a bit further from King's Cross than the 150 metres their website claims. It felt like a long walk battling up bleak York Way on a cold, windy night. And inside, the signage is hard to find, with confusing pictograms instead of proper directions. But the staff were charming and helpful, and once oriented, it was easy to find everything.

Below is the view from the entrance way on the ground floor. Behind the seating is the escalator which goes down to the concert halls, which are situated in the basement. At the very back is a bar/restaurant (packed out when I visited) with views over the canal area. At the rear left is a sandwich bar, and at the rear right is a staircase down to a mezzanine level with direct access to the balcony of Hall One.

 

This is the ground floor sandwich bar. Lots of organic and vegetarian stuff, looked edible, which by London concert hall standards is an achievement in itself, though I didn't try anything. 

 

And here is the escalator to the basement. As well as the concert halls, there's a bar and cloakroom downstairs. And a profusion of ladies loos - so many that there weren't any queues, hooray! 

 

The photos above were taken by me (the house policy is simply no photography during performances), but the two below are from the Kings Place website, where you can find several more. They show Hall One, the 420-seat main auditorium. It may look like an Ikea flatpack jobbie, but it's actually clothed in an acre of veneer culled from a single 500 year old Black Forest oak tree. It smells pleasingly of fresh-cut joinery and new carpet, though not for long I suppose.

 

 

Seats are comfy with plenty of legroom, though the rake is minimal. Which means if you're stuck behind a fathead, as I was for a couple of concerts, you won't see everything.

But the sound is what really matters, and it's excellent. Clear and bright, and highly directional, with a degree of warmth and reverberence sacrificed for clarity, it should suit just about everything that gets played in there.

For their first concert of the evening, the London Sinfonietta performed a new Philip Cashian piece specially commissioned for the occasion, which used a small ensemble and choir with recorded speech. The choir, perched on the balcony behind the stage, sounded heavenly in every sense of the word, and the instruments, scored in pairs, were notably clear. The measured reading of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time which formed their second concert was just as successful acoustically.

They closed the evening with couple of minimalist classics. First up, Steve Reich's Come Out, a stereo-effect recording projected from the front sides of the stage. The directional nature of the acoustic was very noticeable here - there was no sense of the sound 'wrapping' or reverberating or coming from anywhere other than the speakers. Whether this is a positive quality or not will of course depend on what's being performed. Gavin Bryars' Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet was as technically perfect a reading as you could ever hope for, but I've heard it once too often to be dumbstruck .

In between the Sinfonietta stuf I stepped into Hall Two for some Indian music, courtesy of a massive ensemble pulled together by the London Bhavan institute. Heavily amplified, it wasn't the best measure of the hall's acoustic, but it did attract the only musician I spotted in the audience all night - well, the only one known to me, anyway - Seb Rochford. This auditorium seems to be wider than it's long, and has loose school chair-type seating. There's no rake, so with the performers seated on the floor of the low stage, it meant little was visible from anywhere behind the front row. Standing at the back would be a good option here.

One of the best things about Kings Place is the ticket prices, which will start at just £9.50 for early bookers, and another is the emphasis on contemporary music, which has struggled to find a home elsewhere in London.  Over the next couple of weeks and also every Tuesday there should be plenty to explore.

A double helping of Matthias Goerne

London Sinfonietta / Martyn Brabbins / Matthias Goerne / Thomas Larcher - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 30 September 2008
  and
Matthias Goerne / Alexander Schmalcz - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 2 October 2008

Toru Takemitsu Rain Coming
Thomas Larcher Die Nacht der Verlorenen
Thomas Larcher Antennas...Requiem for H
Toru Takemitsu Tree Line
Thomas Larcher Bose Zellen (Piano Concerto)

Dmitry Shostakovich Suite on poems by Michelangelo Buonarroti, Op.145
Hugo Wolf 3 Michelangelo Lieder
Johannes Brahms 4 Serious Songs

I can only assume London wallets are feeling the credit squeeze. Perhaps that surefire audience repellent 'new music' had something to do with the small turnout for Matthias Goerne's concert with the London Sinfonietta on Tuesday, but I was shocked to see the Queen Elizabeth Hall barely a quarter full for his lieder recital later in the week. Of course many of the target audience hit Wigmore Hall instead for the crazily-scheduled competing attractions of Christian Gerhaher, but even so.....

The centrepiece of the first concert was the world premiere of a song cycle specially written for Matthias Goerne by Austrian composer Thomas Larcher. The perfectly-titled Die Nacht der Verlorenen ("the night of the lost") links fragments of unfinished poetry by the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann in a single dark stream of song running through a shifting musical landscape.  Modern if not especially novel textures like high whiny violins, rumbling fundamental brass and damped piano are applied to even older forms.

So its not revolutionary, but Larcher's gift is to hug the text to the music with such extraordinary sensitivity that it is both completion and response. It's so exquisitely crafted to Goerne's dark, melting baritone that it's impossible to imagine anyone else singing it, and he delivered it with utter security and searing commitment.

Larcher is also a pianist. Dressed ninja-style in a long black shirt and pants with little skippy rubber shoes, he performed a couple of his own works, Antennas, a short solo piece, and Bose Zellen (sic) a piano concerto. Both involved poking around in the piano with lumps of metal and stone, something I grew out of at the age of about 7, and still pains me to watch trained and talented musicians doing. Although the results were more melodic and less purely percussive than most work of this type, I'm not in a rush to hear either again. I'd rather have had an immediate repeat of Die Nacht der Verlorenen, a work I fear that despite its quality is not going to get many outings (any info about future performances anywhere in Europe, please let me know).

In the middle of the concert, Fraser Trainer interviewed Thomas Larcher, who came across as rather sweet and humble. He covered much of the same ground in an earlier interview, recorded at Larcher's stunningly beautiful alpine home, below:

Matthias Goerne was on top form again for his recital with Alexander Schmalcz at the piano two days later. His Shostakovich Michelangelo suite was a little effortful - technically secure but lacking that last ounce of connection with the Russian text.

But the second half's Wolf and Brahms saw him on firmer ground. Such was the intensity of the first group of songs that the audience, instead of bursting into applause at the end, sat there transfixed and silent, and the Brahms Serious Songs launched without a break. Gripping and thoroughly inhabited, every bit as 'godless' as Brahms would have wished, and a million miles from the dull piety of most interpretations, it was a performance almost embarrassing in its intensity. What a shame so few people got to hear it.

Nono's quite nice Prometeo

Nono: Prometeo (London Sinfonietta/Masson/Bailey/Richard) - Royal Festival Hall, 9 May 2008

Before this concert started, I had the sneaking suspicion it would turn out to be either (a) one of the musical events of the year or (b) like being chained to a rock having my liver pecked out by vultures. After all, it comes with the unsolicited baggage of labels like 'one of the best works of the last century' and 'the grand statement around which all Luigi Nono's other music orbits'.

It was almost a disappointment that it fell so roundly between the two extremes. No earth-shattering experience, but (nearly always) engaging. The 2+ non-stop hours passed without dragging, but without revelation either. The idea of leaving didn't cross my mind, though I noticed quite a few other audience members disappearing discreetly now and then. Incidentally, although the Royal Festival Hall's contemporary music events usually tend to draw a youngish audience, this was certainly not the case tonight - average age 60 at a guess, and very few under 40's, let alone young people.

And the audience was purposely a small one. To perform the work as closely as possible to Nono's original specifications, the customers were corralled into the front stalls (about 1/3 of the total space) with the many musicians, singers and speakers spread around - on the stage, in the side stalls, and tucked away on the balcony, with even a few in the stage side boxes.

Speakers were used, more to relocate the sound than to amplify it, with some skilful placement and mixing by André Richard separating the sound from its means of production. The music passed around the space from group to group, and matching the drifting pockets of sound to their visual source became near impossible.

With the gentle, ethereal choral singing rarely defined by anything as concrete as a word, and only occasionally broken by rude parps of brass or the mosquito whine of stratospheric violins, it was like a less comfortable and less fragrant version of a relaxing aromatherapy massage.

Perhaps it all seemed more revolutionary and exciting at its first performance in 1984, but that's a generation ago. I focussed in on the sound, as Nono intended, but then, like most regular concertgoers, I don't find it that hard to concentrate on music anyway. Deprived of the option to look at the performers or to understand how the sound was being produced, obliged to sit still for over 2 hours and hemmed in on all sides by sound, I found it hard also to understand how the work exemplified democracy or freedom. Perhaps it's simply a case of unreasonably raised expectations, but it all seemed like just another pleasant Friday night out.

Some programme notes.

III.b - Hölderlin from Prometeo

This (^) is a recording (not the performance I attended) of what is possibly the most 'accessible' part of the work.

Thomas Ades creates the world

London Sinfonietta/Ades - Royal Festival Hall, 28 April 2008

This (^) spectacularly apocalyptic sunset ceilinged wet and miserable London as the premiere of Thomas Ades's new piano concerto, In Seven Days, drew to a close in the Royal Festival Hall. EMI marketing couldn't have invented a better backdrop for the intermission. It echoed not just the new work's subject matter, the Creation story, but also the specially commissioned video which accompanied it, an assemblage of abstracted images drawn from nature and architecture.

Here's what the stage looked like at the start, showing the six video screens and part of the orchestra. A few more musicians were tucked away behind the piano :

Ades conducted, standing (hiding?) behind the piano and sporting a pair of enormous cans. It wasn't clear if these were just for the video synchronisation or whether the speakers at each side of the stage added any subtle pre-recording to the London Sinfonietta's amplified performance.

For the first few moments, I wondered if someone had popped the wrong DVD into the puter. The dark lapping waves which filled the screens were so similar to the ones used in Birtwistle's Minotaur it was uncanny. As the images slowly changed and became more complex, I have to confess brain overload. I had no choice - I had to stop looking. I glanced up now and again to see leafless trees, strange bubbly things and dancing sticks, but I simply couldn't watch and listen properly simultaneously. Although it's described as a 'video-ballet', the music is just too rich and complex to be listened to with anything less than 100% attention. Ades's music is more demanding than it appears, and soft focus reveals only the pastel prettiness of the surfaces.

Although it's nominally a piano concerto, the piano is silent or woven into the orchestra most of the time. Only towards the end of the work does it break free for a couple of brief and dazzling virtuoso explosions.

It's structured in seven sections, corresponding to the seven days of creation. A tiny string figure repeats and mutates organically into ever more complex and lushly orchestrated forms. There are nods to Reich in the relentless figurations, Elgar in moments of dreamy pastoralism, Mahler in the tapestry textures and the big bang that closes the first movement. A sunny glow radiates pervasively - this is the story of birth and life, and the prickling irony of some of Ades's earlier work has been laid aside. It's melodic, memorable and overwhelmingly accessible. Even now I can (superficially) recall large chunks - this is where the 'ballet' description really hits home. I was entranced throughout.

The audience, filled out with bussed-in student groups, but younger than the usual anyway, was excitable and enthusiastic. The ovation was massive and I should also point out the few seconds of rapt silence before it started - lending weight to my theory that it's the older and supposedly more 'experienced' audience members who display the worst concert manners.

A chunk of the audience didn't return after the interval, so they missed a blasting performance of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians by the London Sinfonietta and Synergy Vocals. To be picky, the sound scattered a little in the Royal Festival Hall's still-difficult acoustic, and the London Sinfonietta don't have quite the telepathic polish of Steve Reich's own band of sneakered grandads, but the magic vitality of the performance swept petty criticisms aside.

Royal Festival Hall - Overture Weekend

Overture Festival - Southbank Centre, 8-10 June

The Royal Festival Hall finally threw its newly-refurbished doors open to the public at the weekend with a huge collection of free concerts and other events, the Overture Festival. It kicked off late Friday night, when a choir-packed barge was drawn up the Thames.

Summery temperatures on Saturday and Sunday helped bring in the visitors. With 18,000 mostly amateur performers, and events spread all around the Southbank Centre, inside and out, getting around the place needed patience. In true festival style, the ladies loos backed up one by one until half the facilities were out of action. But at least it wasn't too hard to find a seat, due to the many inflatable cushions provided.

Saturday afternoon saw cellist Natalie Clein bravely tackling solo (and wisely amplified) Bach before a crowd of chatters, crisp munchers and wailing babies. It was surprisingly easy to zone out the background hum though, and heartening to hear JSB cheered as if he'd just scored for England each time Natalie lowered her bow.

Natalie was followed by the astonishingly deft guitarist Xuefei Yang.

Later on, the London Sinfonietta led by Fraser Trainer were joined by students to tackle Terry Riley's minimalist masterpiece In C. The audience gave it five minutes or so of near rapt attention before resuming their chats and chair scraping when the penny dropped that it wasn't going anywhere too quickly.

In the Royal Festival Hall itself, I watched the engaging Flag, a suite of performances by amateur dance groups from all over the country.

Saturday's highlight was an impromptu performance by the London Bulgarian Choir in an upstairs bar. With a helpful mini translation before each number, they sang of rivers, of knitting socks, and of watching the ladies pass by with their colourful jugs. And they got the audience dancing too.

I somehow managed to miss every single one of Billy Bragg's many sets over the weekend, but I did catch fabulous folksters Bellowhead, who appeared in various subgroups and combinations. Here they are as a three piece inducing the audience to dance along.

Banjo wielding New Cross hillbillies Indigo Moss drew a deservedly big crowd, spread across several rooftops.

The various balconies which have been opened up around the Royal Festival Hall provided the best views of many of the weekend's acts - here, Kathak dancers.

One of the weekend's most popular attractions was Jeppe Hein's Appearing Rooms water fountain, first seen last summer. Walls of water spring up and recede around the fountain's centre, and although quick reflexes made it possible to get in and out of it while remaining perfectly dry, many chose the opposite course.

Dotted around the Royal Festival Hall foyer were noticeboards for visitors to add their memories and impressions.

The weekend's final Royal Festival Hall event was a performance of the last movement of Beethoven's Symphony no 9, where the LPO were accompanied by a choir of over 1000 - here they are willing the Southbank Centre's Michael Lynch and Jude Kelly to get on with their final speeches.

Ligeti Nite with London Sinfonietta

London Sinfonietta - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 19 May 2007

Gyorgy Ligeti Self portrait
Gyorgy Ligeti Chamber Concerto
Steve Reich Sextet
Gyorgy Ligeti Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures

If ever there was an argument for live music over recordings, Ligeti's Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures provides it. As a recorded work it's a bunch of discombobulated sounds that's never really grabbed me. But seen as a piece of semi-staged theatre, as it was here tonight, with the integral stage directions faithfully followed, it became coherent, and even, unexpectedly, funny.

The singers Omar Ebrahim, Barbara Hannigan and Mary King produced a rich variety of yelps, squeals, muttering and other less describable noises which merged with the minimal instrumental accompaniment and prescribed rubberface expressions into a story of sorts, the musical relationships explored in the physical performance (hey, opera!). Despite the singers' best gurning efforts, the percussionist was the star of the piece, required to wallop a variety of objects, rip papers, beat a carpet, and, to his evidently great relish, smash a tray full of crockery on to the floor.

Aventures singers

Prior to this, we had Ligeti's Self Portrait, a minimal two-piano piece based on simple pattern transformations, the two parts gently woven and layered. In keeping with the Sinfonietta's rep as London's rock'n'rollest orchestra, proceedings had kicked off a full 7 minutes late and drinks were allowed in - very welcome as the Chamber Concerto which followed felt like harder work than it should have.

One of the Self Portrait pianists

Chamber Concerto ensemble

These were followed by Steve Reich's Sextet, for pianos and percussion. Another piece which benefitted from being seen as well as heard, and another percussionist showpiece, this featured bowed vibraphones, with a bow in each hand played simultaneously. I couldn't work out which would be trickiest, this, or the four-mallet marimba playing of one of the other percussionists. Having seen Steve Reich's ensemble last year at the Barbican, I don't think anything will quite match up for me to the maestro himself with his silver haired and betrainered homies bent over the keyboards. But the London Sinfonietta did a pretty good job, and judging by the mighty applause there were plenty of serious Reich stans in the house.

Sextet performers

In the foyer was a mini exhibition of works inspired by Ligeti by Kingston University students: