Boulez Aldeburgh Ensemble Intercontemporain Carter Ligeti

Pierre Boulez brought Ensemble Intercontemporain to Aldeburgh. This is a major coup, which London venues can't easily arrange. But Aldeburgh can bring Boulez and his amazing orchestra to a hall seating barely 500, in a small country town, because Pierre-Laurent Aimard is Festival Director. They go back together since Aimard was a boy.

This grand finale to the Aldeburgh Festival was much more than a concert, it was a consecration. Ligeti, Boulez, Carter on the programme, but many others invisibly present because of their close connections: Messiaen, Stockhausen, Kurtág and so on. Boulez may not have conducted at Aldeburgh before - he's too expensive - but his "family" of composers have been an integral part of the Festival for years.

Edgard Varèse was the "First Wild Man of Modern Music". Boulez was one of his earliest champions. Varèse didn't have electronics or computer facilties: Boulez created IRCAM so composers of the future would have access to the best technology and support from other creative minds.  It was fitting that the concert should start with Varèse's Octandres. It's not his most famoue piece, but perhaps the most "classically" pure. Seven winds, one double bass -- no klaxons, so no extramusical baggage, but thoughtful exploration.

It was a good prelude to György Ligeti's Chamber Concerto (1969-70) expanding the concept of single instrument protagonists develops into music of delightful but deft complexity. Technically, Ensemble Intercontemporain are of course flawless, but this was truly inspired.  Superb musicianship is liberating, These players don't need to "think",  they play with instinctive freedom. Boulez's conducting style is understated, the merest jerk of a finger, the most refined twist of the wrist, but Ensemble Intercontemporain are so much in tune with him, they catch every nuance.

Some of the most amazing playing in the quieter passages, where the line floats seamlessly even though it's taken up by different instrument.. Perhaps another example of what Ligeti meant when he said his music levitated, like a helicopter. Catch this performance when it's broadcast on BBC Radio 3 online, on demand, internationally for 7 days from 30 June. Studio recordings may be more perfect, but this live performance had élan, vivacity, sparkle. "Breathtaking" is an over-used cliché, but in this case it was apt: you didn't want to breathe lest you miss a moment.  A very well kmown composer/conductor was sitting near me. He sat transfixed.

What are Years is the title of  Elliott Carter's new song cycle, an Aldeburgh commission, in association with the Lucerne Festival and Tanglewood. Aldeburgh is now up there with the biggest. Britten would be thrilled, though some of the British press would rather it became a provincial backwater.  The cycle is to poems by Marianne Moore. Five songs, a group of four which cohere, the final song leading into an unknown, new direction.

Moore's disjointed combinations of phrases without structure suit Carter's vocal writing. Although he was a singer himself (glee clubs and chorals in college)  he doesn't set text in a "singerly" way. Instead, he makes much of Moore's jerky rhythms, sudden bursts of expression, deliberate holdings back and silences. What are Years is certainly not poetry reading but music revealing itself through the framework of text. The voice acts like an instrument, probing and eliding, stretching and pulling the words as if they were abstract music. Claire Booth has the measure of the piece, interacting well with the orchestra, whose role here is critical, enveloping the fragmented nature of the text with a flowing, serene line that suggests the passage of time.

Natural then that Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain ended with Boulez's Dérive 2, written for Carter's 80th birthday, nearly a quarter of a century ago. Now Boulez himself is older than Carter was then. But age is irrelevant when a mind is fertile.  Perhaps that's why Dérive mutates, growing in the imagination. Boulez's music is strongly organic, in the sense that it evolves from deep roots, and grows vigorously. following a definite trajectory, excursions spiralling outwards and growing branches of their own. Again, Ensemble Intercontemporain played vivaciously, energetic but elegant. For me, one of the joys of Boulez's music is the sense of inventiveness and renewal. It may look "difficult" on the printed page, but musicians like Ensemble Intercontemporain reveals its innate liveliness.

Anthèmes II is another Boulez growth-piece, where the violin is augmented by electronics. Jeanne-Marie Conquer and the IRCAM sound desk make sounds that twine round each other symbiotically: which is which, who's leading whom? It's a sophisticated piece, yet approached with wit.

Hearing Dialogue de l'ombre double in the intimate performance space of the Britten Studio at Snape was wonderful. because seeing the movements intensifies the impact of the shifts in sound. It's like a dance bwetween clarinet (Jérôme Comte) and electronics, so seeing Comte change position marks stages in the ritual. The tiniest change of position means a change in sound dynamics. It's a concerto that uses the acoustic of performance space, and sound inaudible to the human ear . Hence the electronics, which pick up things that exist, but we couldn't otherwise hear. It's a multi-layered work, where the boundaries  between clarinet and electronics are deliberately blurred, teasingly up-ended. You have to listen acutely to pick up the subtle shifts and counterbalances, but it's immensely rewarding, especially enhanced by darkness and light as in this performance. Comte emerges from the shadows. Is he playing or is it the sound desk? Again, it's playful and organic, formidable but not at all frightening. If only Varèse, John The Baptist of modern music, could have been with us, too!

Early Music is Modern Music - Aldeburgh

Early music is as much part of Aldeburgh as new.  The 19th century Austro-Gedrman tradition has shaped what most people think of as "music", but it's a relatively recent tradition. Think of western music from a wider perspective, and the straitjacket of what music "must" be starts to collapse.  So many modern composers have turned to early music for inspiration that it's a good idea to listen to early music in order to appreciate what modern music is coming from.

In some ways, the Huelgas Ensemble is the Ensemble Intercontemporain of early music. In France, early music is hugely popular and on a more adventurous scale. There's a renaissance in "modern" early music and new commissions, which has hardly touched the Anglophone world. In England, the closest we get is Exaudi, highly recommended! So when the Huelgas Ensemble came to Blythburgh Chiurch (top picture)  as part of the Aldeburgh Festival, it was special.

The Huelgas Ensemble, founded and conducted by Paul Van Nevel in 1970, grew from Schola Cantorum in Basle (where Andreas Scholl trained), so it combines scholarly erudition with extremely refined performance. Think of the great cathedrals, which were built with precision, long before computer aided design.

The Huelgas sang Clemens non Papa (Clement who wasn't a Pope), Orlandus de Lassus,  Thomas Ashewell and Nicolas Gombert, a programme of the 16th century when Europe was going through cataclysmic upheaval, the certainties of the Middle Ages being shattered by new ideas. The serenity and perfection of this music salved souls, if it didn't save them. The Huelgas's purity of tone and carefully woven harmony was beautiful. They didn't stand in rigid lines, but moved in a circle.. Singing in church was about filling space effectively. Later that evening, Pierre Boulez's Dialogue de l'ombre double showed how sound dynamics shape the form of music. IRCAM isn't all that far from the early music.

The concert is being broadcast on BBC Radio 3 online, on demand, internationally from 28 June for 7 days.

No wonder early music speaks to modern composers and modern times so well.  Complexity, but based on sound architecture and detail.  A few years ago, at Orford, near Aldeburgh,  I heard Exaudi sing some of Brian Ferneyhough's complexities, lines crossing each other, tracing and intertracing like medieval vaulting. 

Please have a look at Iron Tongue of Midnight. Some journalist thinks that science proves the human brain cannot cope with the "Difficulty" of modern music. I won't give the original link, because it will send traffic to a fool, but read the link.  If science knows anything about the brain, it's that the brain's potential is so huge, we don't know the beginning of it. Quoting one source is like saying that the world must have been created in seven days, because the Bible says so. Creationism spreads because it's always easier not to make an effort, whatever the rewards. Music evolves, and adapts. But Creationists don't like Evolution, of course..

At Aldeburgh this year there's been a huge focus on science and art, specifically the neurological basis of creativity.  I don't have time to write that up just now, but keep reading, I'll get it done during July. The picture shows what can happen when people refuse to think. All along the Suffolk Coast, the cliffs are crumbling, just like in Peter Grimes. There once was a huge seaport at Dunwich, now hundreds of metres under the sea.  But this church, at Covehithe, wasn't destroyed by the sea but by men, in the Reformation and after.

Aldeburgh - Bach Mass crowd flock to Boulez and Carter

Pierre Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain came to the Aldeburgh Music Festival. It was the big finale, and such an important concert that I'll write about it in depth later. First, though, the first of the two days with Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain, one of the most amazing orchestras in the world.

Nearly every year at Aldeburgh, Bach's Mass in B Minor gets an outing because it's perfect for Snape. This year, John Eliot Gardiner conducted, guaranteed to sell out within hours. Car park packed with tour buses, full of Bach Mass fans. But the wonderful thing is, many of the Bach Mass crowd came hours early, and heard Pierre Boulez talk to Pierre-Laurent Aimard. They stayed for the concert after the talk - Boulez Incises for Piano, Sonatina for Flute and Piano and Elliott Carter's Duo for Violin and Piano (Dimitri Vassilakis (p), Emmanuelle Ophèle (fl) Hae-Sun Kang (vn))

What's more the Bach Mass Crowd listened attentively. No-one brainwashed them into thinking "Difficult is Dangerous". Maybe they didn't all get it, but they were prepared to listen and think for themselves.  Surprisingly warm applause!  Maybe this audience related to Boulez because he's their own age group, but it felt sincere. A million times better than the stagey fake applause that happens in some places where people think they're proving something by standing up to clap, even for rubbish.

Boulez isn't the demon some sensationalists make him out to be. Nadia Boulanger hated everything about him,. One of the reasons for the schism in American and European tastes springs from Boulanger's jealous antagonism to Messiaen and anyone who might challenge her view that early Stravinsky was what modern music should be. Including Stravinsky himself, later on.

French music's always been different from Austro-German music, said Boulez, and the Nazis weren't going to promote modern music. So French musicians were isolated, especially during the Occupation, when Boulez was studying with Messiaen.  He learned Webern from scores, also hard to come by. Hans Rosbaud was his mentor, indeed, it was Rosbaud who asked Boulez to conduct at short notice when Rosbaud fell ill. Boulez took the train to Germany, and started another career. Learning from the score has been Boulez's mantra ever since. That's why he set up Domaine Musicale, so new music could be performed by top musicians who cared about it. From Domaine Musicale to Ensemble Intercontemporain, and to IRCAM.

Boulez talked about John Cage "from whom I learned so much", about American poetry and painting, which influence his music. Boulez's knowledge of European art and literature is formidable, though he didn't mention it in the talk.  He gave up on serialism and other isms decades ago, "It was too boring. Why twelve tones when you can have so many other possibilities?". But Schoenberg showed the way. Boulez and Aimard discussed various works, Le marteau sans maître, the Piano Sonatas, Cummings ist der Dichter.  They could have gone on much longer, but even at Aldeburgh, time schedules intrude.

Later, there was a screening of the film, Piano du xxe siècle, where Pierre-Laurent Aimard talks through Boulez Piano Sonata no 1, almost bar by bar, showing why it's so interesting. Aimard knows what he's talking about and is so enthusiastic it illuminates the full performance even if you already know the work. It's a wonderful film, made in 1985. lots of extras as background, like a shot of "Boulez's school report", Messiaen's comment on the official record of the Paris Conservatoire. "Un tel musicien! Il aurait un grand avenir."

The film is part of a series for French television, but is most certainly not dumbed down. Boulez, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Ligeti, each documentary filmed to enhance the music itself.  For this film, says Aimard, "we aimed for a risk taking element with the camera, keeping its movements  and gestures improvised, albeit prepared with the greatest of care in order to correspond to the extremely active and free gestures of the music".

Is that the secret of promoting music ? Not just new music, but all music. The film engages with a specific piece, describing how it works and how it came to be. Intelligence, imagination and freedom of spirit - just like the piece itself. No wonder Messiaen used this piece as basic teaching material.  He wanted his students to think,  and create original work. Those who hate  "difficult" music have only themselves to blame.

Aldeburgh and Hugues Cuénod

Aldeburgh and Hugues Cuénod -  much deeper connections than you'd think.  Hugues Cuénod, who turns 108 tomorrow (see main posts on him on this site) went to Aldeburgh nearly every year. Britten, of course, had a passion for Monteverdi, Bach, early polyphony, Elizabethan lute songs etc. so naturally they had a lot in common. (If you get to Red House, see Britten's collection of baroque and early music scores). Britten transcribed Bach, folk song and much else: eclectic mixes have been a feature of Aldeburgh since the start. The tradition goes on, with Birtwistle transcriptions of Bach, etc etc. "Montage Collage" is central to the whole idea of Aldeburgh.

Britten loved hosting artists from far away - he was instrumental in helping Shostakovich and getting him established in the West. Fruitful exchange of ideas and it spurred new work. So naturally he wanted to write music he, Pears and Cuénod could perform together. But the two tenors could not have been more different. "Like harnessing a horse and a steer" said Cuénod, diplomatically. This year is Peter Pears centenary, so Aldeburgh is full of him - film, exhibition, talks, walks. And as for me, I'll be celebrating the quirky mélange that has always been Aldeburgh. Right from the start, this frisson has inspired new work, new music, new artists.

Please explore this site, where there's lots on Aldeburgh, Britten, Cuénod, Carter, Messiaen, Aimard, Knussen, Benjamin and connected themes. Look at the photo at the top of this page - also "Aldeburgh" in the sense of eclectic mix. Orchestra of animals, procession to a Chinese Buddhist abbot.  One day I must write more about that place, where there are/were hundreds of things like that. Below a clip from Aldeburgh Music showing why Aldeburgh is such a great experience.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Composer? Collage Montage

Collage creates something new from found objects getting the mix right in a creative way. Pierre-Laurent Aimard's Collage-Montages are artistic creations in their own right.  This year he's put together Collage-Montage 2010 for solo piano, which is now available on BBC Radio 3 for seven days online, on demand.  Do listen, it's great fun.

First time round I listened unprepared. Your ear catches recognizable fragments and then suddenly they switch into other things. Whimsy! Yet this is a purposeful collage, with intelligence behind it. Next time round, listen analytically to the logic and the way the forms act on each together.

On third listening, it's sheer delight, absorbing the myriad colours and shapes, and the lively sense of movement. A kaleidoscope for the ears!

Collage-Montage 2010 evolves in five movements  like a miniature symphony. Prélude élémentaire,  Sostenuto and Capriccio speak for themselves, but into this Aimard throws real caprice, "3x3" and Cloches d'Adieu for a finale.

The first section starts with fragments from Ligeti's Musica Ricercata no 1, composed around a single A which leads to a D,  via Bartok, Schoenberg and Webern to Boulez's Notations (no 8)  where the two notes repeat. In Sostenato, the goal is to sustain seamless flow from a minimalist moment in Kurtág’s Játékok to a fulsome conclusion, via Janàček, Skyrabin and Beethoven (Diabelli v20)

Then Aimard gets really provocative, in 3x3.  Patterns within patterns. First, ragtime moves from Scott Joplin to Stravinsky's Piano Rag to Georg Benjamin's Relativity Romp. It's balanced by three waltz fragments (Schubert , Stravinsky, Ligeti) and three pieces based on mechanical movements, parts of Birtwistle's Clocks, Lyadov's Un tabatière á musique and a moment in Stockhausen Tierkreis.
 
 No fewer than eight pieces in Capriccio, rounding Beethoven themes with Scarlatti, Joihn  Cage and Schumann. The combination's so witty, I burst out laughing, it's so light hearted.  Cloches d'Adieu plays with the idea of bells as coda: Delightful switchbacks, Tristan Murail, Ravel (Gaspard de la Nuit)  and of course The Great Gate of Kiev (Mussorgsky).  "The goal", says Aimard, "is to be a little lost while travelling from place to place....mixing fore-knowledge with the unexpected."   

He's being modest. Humorous as it is, Collage-Montage 2010 is meticulously constructed, lots of internal links, very carefully planned. Thirty seven fragments in 80 minutes. Not a note wasted.

The talks at Aldeburgh this year really up the intellectual ante. Music and the Brain, they're modestly called but dwell on the science behind performance and perception.  Before this concert, there was a talk called "The Pianist's Brain, a two-part Invention", where Eckart Altenmüller spoke about how hands and brains work together to produce music. Not dumbed down, this Aldeburgh.

The picture above is Kurt Schwitters Spring Picture (1926). Schwitters did a lot of collage, bringing together ordinary objects like scraps of newspaper and formal painting. He was  a pal of Hannah Hoch. Some collages are a bit obvious. I chose this picture because it's subtle, magical, a lot like Collage Montage 2010. .

George Benjamin Into the Little Hill Aldeburgh

For my main review of George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill at the Linbury, Royal Opera House, London, please see HERE.

Major composers like George Benjamin, and major developments like Into The Little Hill don't pop up all the time. So it's important that Benjamin and his opera be showcased at Aldeburgh Festival. Hearing it at Aldeburgh is specially resonant for those who genuinely know and love the Festival (as opposed to tossers who mouth off).  Britten's vision was to create a place where creative new music could be heard, Thoroughly English as he was, he had little time for stereotype "Englishness" in music. Aldeburgh is not 3 Choirs On Sea.

Fundamentally, Britten and Aldeburgh have always stood for a much more cosmopolitan, progressive approach. Heinrich Schütz to Shostakovich, all part of a grand vision that crosses boundaries of time and genre. In Billy Budd, Officers Redburn and Flint "don't like them Frenchie ways". Britten doesn't like them, and writes grotesques around their roles. He should rise from his grave and smite the redneck bigotry we have today.

So Benjamin's Into the Little Hill is relevant.  It's loosely based on the fairy tale about a conformist community who rat on the piper who rids them of vermin. So he rats on them and takes their kids. Martin Crimp's text is bleak. The howling mob demand "Kill! Kill! and you have our vote",. When it suits the Minister to defend rats, he does, but when it means being re-elected, he'll sell his principles. But the story isn't nearly as straightforward as that.

A "man with no eyes, no nose, no ears" materializes in the Minister's little daughter's bedroom. He invades the sanctuary through dreams and through music. "With music I can reach right in /march slaves to the factory/ or patiently unravel the clouds"  Sinister as he is, he's morally neutral - "The choice is yours" he says to the Minister.

Into the Little Hill operates like a half-remembered dream, flotsam flowing out of the subconscious, the reverse of rats and children disappearing into the bowels of the earth. Precisely because it's imprecise, it works on many levels. It's unsettling because we're used to order and explicit meaning. Benjamin doesn't create "roles". Mezzo and soprano sing and speak snatches of phrases, part narrating, part expressing different facets of the story. The Minister morphs into his little girl, who morphs into the sinister Man with No Face..In a dream, things fade if you look too closely, so in Into the Little Hill, the secret is to let it act on your unconscious.

The whole opera pivots on ideas of dissimulation, concealment, crawling into dark recesses, nothing is safe from being gnawed away. So the music here is cloaked in disguise. You hear something eerie, or harps or bells. Sure enough, there's a cimbalom right in the heart of the orchestra. You hear something tense, tinny and shrill: it's a banjo, and conventional strings being played like banjos, strings plucked high up the shaft, not bowed. Much emphasis on low-toned instruments like bass flute and bass clarinet, whose sensuous, seductive themes weave through the piece like a narcotic night-blooming flower. At one point it sure feels like there's a sound so high pitched that the human ear can't quite hear it: but rats can hear at higher frequencies than we can.

The staging, by The Opera Group, (director : John Fulljames), fits the music and the semi-narrative. The Man with no Face operates through music : the London Sinfonietta play on stage, behind a gauze curtain, vaguely visible behind the action.  The stage is dominated by a huge circular frame. "I can make rats drop from the rim of the world" says the man with no eyes. "But the world, says the minister, is round". "The world - says the manm- is the shape my music makes it; the choice is yours"

The floor is scattered with black, soft objects. At Aldeburgh, you can get close enough to touch and smell the acrid stench of rubber. The orchestra and singers must be aware of the smell all the time, unpleasant and sinister. It's an amazing extra dimension, completely lost on those in the posh seats. The man with no face has senses like sight and hearing though he doesn't seem to have the means. The audience doesn't twig but the performers have it all round them. Like music, smell can't be seen but it operates on people. That's also why the opera starts with the image of orderliness trying to sweep the debris, trying to impose neatness onto something that defies order. 

Brilliant decision to pair Into the Little Hill with Luciano Berio's Recital 1. This, too, starts with a cleaner, sweeping the same black stuff. At first it seems like it's a mistake, then you're seduced by the actor's elaborate tattoos. How does a woman whose body is a work of art become a cleaner? And that, in a single frame, is what Berio is after, the concept that things aren't necessarily quite what they seem.

Recital 1 is a showcase monologue for mezzo, which Berio wrote for Cathy Berberian, as a tribute to her range, and to her past. Susan Bickley is magnificent, as the diva spouting stream of consciousness, singing half formed snatches of different music, randomly shifting back into declamation. Sometimes she speaks directly to the audience. I had to force myself not to answer her calls, even though that would have extended what was happening ion stage into the audience, which is not a bad idea, given how Berio is playing with different levels of reality. We could have improvised, Susan and me!

Recital 1 is an inventive game of puzzles, so Berio packs as much into it as he can. It tends to make the idea go on a little longer than it needs, but that's OK. They don't write music this intricate too often. It goes with Into The Little Hill extremely well: maybe they'll be the Cav and Pag of the 21st century.  Last year, Birtwistle's At the Greenwood Side was just too oppressive to be heard with anything else. So hearing Into the Little Hill with Berio is an altogether different experience, far more sympathetic.

Superlative performances, especially from Susan Bickley, who carried off the rour de force that is Recital 1 and followed with the demanding, atmospheric main draw. Bickley is wonderful, at her prime. Claire Booth was excellent too. Some women in a delicate way can't cope with the smell of rubber, so all the more to her credit!  To be honest, Bickley and Booth have Benjamin, and indeed most contemporary British music sewn up, if it can be. Oh, for a DVD of Bickley and Booth and the Sinfonietta, of this production!

In Into The Little Hill, the interplay between the two voices is extremely important.  On the recording, Hilary Summers and Anu Komsi are too different, making the piece deceptively straightforward and confusing, Bickley and Booth, on the other hand, have voices that complement each other so closely that it adds an extra, disturbing element to the piece because their balance is so subtle. 

The photo above shows the Martello Tower at the end of the harbour at Aldeburgh. It was built to repel Napoleon and dangerous ideas from the Continent, like democracy and the metric system. As it happened, Napoleon was more interested in Russia. The tower is on a little hill, as solidly built as a hill itself. Lots of interesting ideas might grow from thinking about it, and Benjamin's masterwork together, but that is, as the Man with no eyes might say, "Your choice"

Please see my other posts on Benjamin, Aldeburgh, Britten and The London Sinfonietta.

Aldeburgh - Britten-Pears Alumni

Britten never was an insular Little Englander. Contrary to some of the nonsense in the press this week, the Aldeburgh Festival was never regressive, Central to Britten's vision was the idea of promoting new music and new talent. Anyone who really knows and loves Aldeburgh - and Britten - knows what the Britten-Pears programme means and why.

Britten and Pears would have been delighted, I think, by this concert of works by young composers who've been through the Britten-Pears Programme. Six young composers, and a young conductor, Hugh Brunt, who stepped in at the last moment but clearly is in tune with this music and mentality.All six composers are in their mid-20's but already quite distinctive, certainly not clones of Britten or anyone else.

Lauri Supponen (b 1988), from Finland, uses the essential elements of conventional symphonic orchestra, but pares them down to single instruments - one violin, one viola etc. Hence the title, Fras which means phrase. As he says, it's about the particles that make up speech.

Much Krazy Kinetics in Francesco Coll García's Piedras. "The rhythm", he says "stable and unpredictably unstable at the same time, envelops the melting middle section." The madcap sprightliness made me think of the surreal cartoons of the 1920's when cartoons were avant garde art.

This spirtit of fun infused Joanna Lee's archy interviews a pharaoah. I hadn't read the programme notes, so this came as a shock to me. Does anyone else remember archy and mehitabel the Don Marquis cartoon  and poem series of the 1920-40's? Always lower case for them because the cartoon series was supposedly written by a cockroach who jumped key by key on a typewriter in a newspaper room. He has the soul of a poet, she, an alley cat, is a Queen.  Imagine a cockroach interviewing a pharaoh, utterly deadpan and matter of fact. Lee's music captures that sense of scratching, tapping edginess. The vocal lines creep and leap, like archy's droll lines do.

The singer was Sonya Knussen, the Muse of Higgeldy Piggeldy Pop and Where The Wild Things Are. She looks like her dad but much prettier and has both her parents' flair and personality. Richly coloured voice shading towards alto. With good training, she'll get the polish and refinement she deserves. Oddly enough my Dad was a serious archy and mehitabel fan, so I wondered where Lee and Knussen fille got their archy from.

Christopher Gendall's Forest for the Trees was interesting, as was Nancie Eloise Gynn's Shadow of the Wind, both descriptive mood pieces. Edward Nesbit's Dance Portraits appealed greatly. It starts with a slow pas de deux between double bass and bass flute proceeding in the space of a few minutes into four sections. Dance as strategic game, figure shadowing one another Good ideas, here.

These six pieces were preceded by Webern, Stravinsky, Castiglioni and Stockhausen, performed by the Britten Pears Composers Ensemble. All Oliver Knussen favorites, and for good reason.  Proof again that those who claim to "know and love" Aldeburgh and think it's a regressive, anti-foreign Britten-only festival are nuts. Clean lines, stylized processions, humour and wit: good things for young composers to master. Perhaps the influences are still a little too strong (several composers use piano strings plucked inside the frame). But that's the spirit of Aldeburgh, too, learning the past while proceeding forwards. LOTS more on Aldeburgh and new music on this site, please explore. Look up tabs on Benjamin George too and Into the Little Hill, which I saw last year and heard again this week and will go to yet again in July at the Linbury.   It is a very important work and desreves another special piece which takes a bit longer and I'm so rushed at the moment. So please keep looking.

Aldeburgh Music 2010 starts today Britten Pears

The Aldeburgh Music Festival 2010 starts today. Every year, my pilgrimage. There is just so much to hear and do.  PLENTY about Aldeburgh (and Britten) on this site, so please keep coming back. I'll be going to lots.  Here's a summary of this year's Festival.  Major themes this year include: Peter Pears celebration, Pierre Boulez celebration, Music and Sensory Experience talks, plus lots of good music and other events.
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This year's featured opera is George Benjamin's Into The Little Hill. Does it mark a complete change in style for the composer? I don't know, but it's excellent.. Paired with Luciano Berio's Recital 1 it should come over really well. Read about the London performance last year, which I attended. If you can't get to Aldeburgh, it's being repeated at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House, in July.

Above is a good short about the Aldeburgh Festival, so watch it if you haven't been and see why it's so loved. Click on the labels at right for more on Britten and more on Aldeburgh.

Coming up in June - multiple Bizet

June is one of the busiest months in the year for live music in England.  It's also the most beautiful month, when gardens burst with peonies, poppies, delphiniums, clematis and roses!  Everything comes into bloom at once before the drought that can come in summer, musically as well as horticulturally.

In London this first week in June is Bizet Immersion - two Carmens and The Pearl Fishers at the ENO. I'm really looking forward to the latter, because it's completely different to the cliché of "pink, glitter and kitsch".

In Bizet's time, the East was an exotic amalgam of fantasy, which served a deeper purpose. People then needed "The East" to disguise their longings onto. At long as something is set in unreality, be it fake-orientalism or fairy tale, it's easier to deal with troubling things like sex and the subconcious. Composers used it as a cloak for musical experiment. Listen carefully to Bizet, how adventurous he is, playing around with ideas, made palatable because he coats them with "other".

Tonight, I will do a full preview of the ENO Pearl Fishers production. Last week, I went behind the scenes of the production, met the people, saw the sets, etc  A lot of work goes into bringing productions to life, and it's team work, moreover. The myth of director's whim doesn't exist very often in reality. Please see my interview with the director, Penny Woolcock HERE.

Today, I'm off to the dress rehearsal of Carmen at Opera Holland Park and on Saturday Carmen at the Royal Opera House. Should be interesting! It is so much a part of modern culture. Everyone's Carmened since they were about three years old, they just didn't realize it was "classical music". Here's a link to a film clip in Mandarin, brilliant take off by the ultimate Modern Girl, Grace Chang.

Combine gardens and music and head for the English Song Weekend in Ludlow,  Shropshire. It's unique, and held only every 3 years. Fantastic ambiance, perfect setting, good music, good talks and excellent company. This is the best season ever and I was seriously planning to go but so much else gets in the way. I know I shall regret.

Glyndebourne continues, it's magnificent, an incredible achievement because it was founded from one man's vision. It's Britain's Bayreuth but with a wider focus. Garsington, too, mixes opera with gardens and picnic. I'll be at Rossini Armida, but also Britten Midsummer Night's Dream, which will be wonderful in the Garsington open-air setting, as night falls outside. Stars courtesy of the Universe.

Then, there's Aldeburgh. Aldeburgh has always been "European" in outlook, because Britten identified with European composers like Shostakovich, Mahler and so on, much more so than the Cotswolds crowd.  That's part of what makes Britten unique, he's English but "not" English at the same time, in a creative way. With Pierre-Laurent Aimard as Artistic Director, this distinctiveness will grow. Read my analysis of Aldeburgh 2010.here. Pierre Boulez is coming, in person, to talk.He doesn't turn up at any old "local" festival, but he does for Aldeburgh, and for Aimard. Great countryside, beaches, food and gardens too.

Another really important mini-festival, if you can call it that, will be the Theresienstadt Terezin Weekend at the Wigmore Hall. Curated by the Nash Ensemble, it features music from composers who were in the camp, but it will also be a kind of remembrance as they'll be doing films, talks and something on Hans Krasa's children's opera Brundibar. Some of the people who performed the original, in Theresienstadt, as children, may be there. Reunions like these can be quite poignant, you almost feel you shouldn't be intruding on privacy, but Theresienstadt music means a lot and must not be forgotten.

Wolfgang Holzmair will be singing. Read about his recording of Theresienstadt music HERE and about Anne Sofie von Otter's concerts and CD. There is a lot on this kind of music on this site, because it means a lot to me.  I'll be writing more about the music at this particular weekend later, so keep coming back.  If the only thing I can do is to make this site a resource for suppressed music of all kinds, it's small recompense.

Also, the Spitalfields Music Festival in London, a gritty part of the East End now trendy: Rumplestiltskin from Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. And the City of London Festival, held in private Guildhouses, real medieval Guilds but members don't ply their trade in the same way now.

At the Barbican this first week, two important concerts - Daniel Harding and Thomas Adès, and Kabuki at Sadler's Wells. That's just week one, lots else elsewhere.

Aldeburgh Festival June 2010

FOR REVIEWS OF CONCERTS please follow link "Aldeburgh 2010" on right, or use searchg facility. Lots on related topics, too.

Booking's already well under way for this year's Aldeburgh Festival. This year's big opera is George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill, seen last year at the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House.

This time it will be paired with Luciano Berio's Recital 1, instead of the rather oppressive Birtwistle piece heard in London. Berio's Recital 1 is more in tune with Benjamin's magical world, where whimsy and horror combine. Read about Into The Little Hill by following the link above - it's a masterpiece. Recital 1 is every performer's nightmare. The singer starts a recital but the pianist has disappeared! So she improvises....

Those who have seen Into The Little Hill will want to hear it again, especially with Berio, but be warned, it clashes with Rumplestiltskin, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group's smash hit (seen in Birmingham and Huddersfield) performed at the Spitalfields Festival in London. You could wait for the next weekend's performance but that clashes with the first night of Idomeneo at the ENO.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays the big First Saturday Night concert with Bach and Benjamin's transcription of the Canon and Fugue from Kunst der Fuge. Piano fans must book this weekend: Leon Fleisher plays the Sunday concert. Fleisher suffered neurological damage in the 1960's. Gradually he regained the use of his left hand, but the crisis let him blossom as teacher and conductor. He's giving a masterclass, too, which should be good.

There's a film about Fleisher too, because one of the major themes of this year's Aldeburgh Festival is "Music and The Brain". This sounds fascinating. Lots of different talks, concerts and films about the way the brain processes music, and fuels the creative process. One is about synaesthesia, backed with a concert featuring (of course) Messiaen and Scriabin.

Alfred Brendel's back, too, giving a talk on the theme "Does classical music have to be entirely serious?" Everyone who's heard or read Brendel knows this will be more intelligent and more original than most. Royal Philharmonic Society take note!

Very unusual indeed will be the event on 20 June when Aimard and a neuroscientist will explore how the brain allows two hands to move in contrary motion. Can we adapt to ambidextrous skills? A stimulating programme not only for pianists, I think.

There'll be a workshop on "Togetherness" about how chamber ensembles communicate. Motion-capture technology will show how players relate to each other by many complex social and musical interactions.

More brains too the second week. Pierre Boulez and members of Ensemble Intercontemporain talk with Aimard and play works by Boulez and Elliott Carter. The next day Aimard and Thomas Zehetmair play Mozart, Schoenberg and Boulez. June 26th is the Big Day, when there'll be two concerts with Ensemble Intercontemporain, with Boulez conducting. Guess what? The world premiere of Elliott Carter's What are Years? Carter should know, he's 101. Plenty more Boulez music this week, and George Benjamin, too. And this being Aldeburgh, new music is interspersed with early music - Exaudi and the amazing polyphony of the Huelgas Ensemble and Bach Mass in B Minor (Monteverdi Choir and JEG).

Plenty of respect too for the Aldeburgh tradition of musicians-as- Directors. There's a big feature on Peter Pears and concerts of music by previous directors, such as John Woolrich, Thomas Adès, Oliver Knussen and of course Benjamin Britten himself. This year's festival is the best I can remember because it's uncompromisingly UNsuperficial : top quality music, placed in relationship to life and original thinking. Definitely not dumbed down but all the more fun for that. Wonderful programmes this year - make the effort and be rewarded. This 63rd Festival is so good that it is worth travelling a long way to get to. Click on photo to enlarge for detail. It's a cliff near Aldeburgh. The coastline there often crumbles : now you can see WHY Peter Grimes's house became dangerous. Britten knew first hand, and made sure the danger came into his music. The apprentice's death was an accident waiting to happen.