Julian Anderson Total Immersion Barbican

Julian Anderson Total Immersion at the Barbican with the BBC SO. yesterday.   The evening programme was a well chosen retrospective.  Anderson is prolific to a fault, so he can be uneven, so this was a good opportunity to relive his Greatest Hits.  Nearly all these pieces are available on the NMC recording The Book of Hours (Knussen, Sakari Oramo, Martyn Brabbins etc) so it was good, also, to hear them conducted anew by Edward Gardner, who started conducting Anderson even before he started at the ENO.  Indeed, Gardner conducted Anderson's Symphony in his very first concert at the Barbican 10 years ago (see my review).

Despite its non-committal title, Anderson's Symphony, too, was inspired by art and nature; in this case Axel Gallen-Kallela’s painting of Lake Keitele. It doesn’t matter what the picture looks like,, since the piece isn't literal but an abstract mood piece. For a full minute, all you can hear are vague sounds, like the rushing of a stream almost at freezing point. It’s wonderfully impressionist – you imagine the cold and the stillness, the wind, birds flying overheard. Ultimately, though, it’s the inventive, multi-layered orchestration that entrances. Flurries of harmony take off in different directions, and melody starts in one part of the orchestra, to be completed in another. Symphony isn’t formally divided into parts, but the development is fascinating. 

Anderson's Eden (2005) was inspired by Brancusi’s sculpture ‘The Kiss’, where two solid figures become one monolithic whole through their kiss.  Despite the plangent textures, this isn't the Eden of the Bible so much as Adam and Eve before the Fall, animal instincts without knowledge of sin.  It's not a literal representation.   Viola and cello curlU sensuously around each other, embracing, so to speak, in melody. The spirit is passionate, yet austere and simple, as clean as the lines of Brancusi’s style. As the orchestra takes over, the melody expands into something much more open and primeval. Anderson’s use of "medieval" references evokes the timeless imagery of ancient sculpture.

He uses "hockets", melodies shared out between two or more instruments, which create a fluid sense of movement. It evokes thoughts of medieval part-song, as well as of the pealing of bells. The unsteady timbre of non-tempered tuning adds to the sense of strange unworldliness.


Eden and Imagin'd Corners are companion pieces, which explore the potential of non-tempered tuning in the latter case for five horns and orchestra. These make a more "natural" sounding intonation.. Early music in a sense, but also verging on atonality while connecting to a more ancient tradition.  Four of the soloists move from different parts of the hall in a pattern that recreates "imagin’d corners", while one remains ensconced between brass and woodwinds. In this exuberant piece, the trumpet calls out, answered by the horns in joyous non-harmony.
Best of all, the most recent work (2015), Anderson's In lieblicher Bläue based on the poem by Friedrich Hölderlin.which inspired Hans Werner Henze's Kammermusik 1958 (Please read my review of the landmark new recording by the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin).  Anderson's version is scored for violin and orchestra (soloist Carolin Widmann) . Though wordless, it's almost music theatre since Widmann moves around the performance space coming in and out of view, eventually turning her back on the audience.  Channeling  Hölderlin, isolated in his visionary fantasies, cut off from the "real"  world, not giving a damn !  Thus the single chords, the violin tentatively "exploring" space, responding to the "moonlight" shimmering in the orchestra  first with long stretching lines. then with vivid bursts of excitement.  A huge arc of orchestral sound, swirling and spinning round as if the moon were illuminating the poet's troubled mind. Delicate touches of poercussion, bell-like sounds but also violent chords.  The violin emerges again, long beautiful lines behind which the orchestra rumbles disturbingly.  Then a flurry of single plucked notes: too disjointed to form melody. Hölderlin's fragmented mind.  Scurrying figures and high tessitura. Squeaks of excitement ?  Darker angular chords in the orchestra and elusive figures, half-formed and a more haunted terrain.  The violin (and Hölderlin)  remained unperturbed, long serene lines lit by "moonlight". No resolution. Gradually the textures thinned out and the violin sang , alone sound so high thatn it dissipated into silence.  

More than Pictures at an Exhibition - Volkov Julian Anderson Liszt

Ilan Volkov photo: Alastair Miles, courtesy Maestro Arts

The Imaginary Museum - Julian Anderson's Piano Concerto at Ilan Volkov's Prom 16 with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the most innovative Prom programme so far, and possibly the best performance, too.  Music doesn't exist in a vacuum, but in a continuum. Volkov's eclectic programme showed how visual images and music connect: a cross-fertilization that reflects the panorama of human experience.  Though the Prom was billed "Pictures at an Exhibition" because Mussorgsky sells, the heart of the programme was Franz Liszt';s tone poem From the Cradle to the Grave (Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe).  In April 1881,  Liszt received a drawing from the Hungarian artist Mihály Zichy. Zichy was preparing a book of illustrations tracing the role of music in life, from birth to death and the afterlife, and wished to portray Liszt as the Muse of Music on its title page.  Liszt was delighted. "Celebrated Artist!", he wrote "Your drawing about the Genius of Music is a miraculous symphony! I am trying to set it to music and shall offer it to you".

Though composed as a symphonic poem in one movement, Liszt's From the Cradle to the Grave unfolds in a series of vignettes, like the illustrations in Zichy's volume. The gentle first phase suggests, perhaps, innocence, though there's no obvious lullaby melody.  Gradually  textures develop, the tessitura growing higher until, ornamented by rich, shimmering strings and a trumpet, one might imagine the fullness of time. Then, silence and rarified calm. Although this piece isn't nearly as flamboyant as Liszt's Hamlet S104 from  1858, it's interesting because it's more inward, almost impressionistc in its abstraction. Hamlet, though, is a jolly showpiece full of colour and drama. An excellent opening piece, setting the stage, so to speak, and a counterbalance to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, (orchestrated by Ravel), where each "picture" tells a story.  An ebullient performance, though, nicely detailed. The BBC SSO are an excellent band, and have worked so long with Volkov that orchestra and conductor understand each other well.   

Julian Anderson is a composer whose visual imagination has stimulated and inspired his music for the last 25 years. Think Poetry Nearing Silence,  Imagin'd Corners, The Book of Hours, the Alhambra Fantasy, Eden (sparked off by Brancusi's The Kiss) and even Symphony, which, despite its non-committal title, is vividly graphic, like a fast-flowing mountain stream such as in paintings by Sibelius's friend Axel Gallen-Kallela.  Or, more recently, Incantesimi (at the Proms last year, with its multi-level layers in perpetual orbit, reflecting early machines used to explain the universe.  Indeed, I think Anderson's best work springs from ideas sparked by visual stimuli, as opposed to literary sources. Thebans, for example, though I liked it (review here) isn't at all typical of his work.

The Imagined Museum isn't typical Anderson, either, but it's a successful new departure for a composer who writes more for orchestra than for single instrument, and this is very much a piece where the soloist (Steven Osborne) is alone, in the foreground.

On the Radio 3 broadcast, Anderson explained how moved he was by a B flat which Steven Osborne played at the end of his encore at the Proms last year, the note echoing into the vastness of the Royal Albert Hall.   That note is thus the "found object" that starts this imaginary voyage.  Thus the title of the first of the six sections is "The World is a Window"  tiny single notes, stretch outwards in space, awakening the flute, then other instruments.  Suddenly, the piano strikes off in a new direction, Osborne playing long fast-moving lines, darker sounds in the orchestra suggesting vertiginous depth. Anderson says the idea came from Janáček's study of wells in Hukvaldy.  Thus time the "echo" is the sound of an object hurtling down a well, into inner space. Another transformation and we are once again in the open, the orchestra surguing as if on the high seas, the piano flying over the waves.  The strings introduce a sea change, and the piano once more defines single note patterns against a backdrop of silence. Where are we? Although there's a programme - of sorts - you listen with your mind. In the fluttering figures in the piano line do we hear a bird, or clear water, or winds in an empty desert?   Poetry is often more evocative than prose.  You could listen to Anderson in purely functional ways,  but I think it's rewarding to listen with an inner ear and wonder how the sounds act in relation to each other, processed through the effect that they have on your imagination. 

Contrasting Figures Julian Anderson Bayan Northcott

Contrasting figures, two very different premieres at the Proms.: Julian Anderson's Incantesimi and Bayan Northcott's   Concerto for Orchestra.  Both composers are big names in British music. Northcott's new work is more ambitious in scale, and impressive as a study of large forces. It seems tailor made for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, reminiscent of standard orchestral fare, big on full-bodied tutti and brass effects, lovely, rippling passages for winds.  A good and worthy piece, though I suspect it needs a more dynamic performance.  Please read the review in 5:4, a very good site on new music, which I wish ran year round rather than just in summer.   "The work comports itself in a conflicted way, on the one hand sounding laboured and stylistically somewhat dated (a sort of ‘post-neo-romanticism’ if you’ll forgive the construction; think Walton with plenty of late 20th century twists), yet with a stream of invention sufficiently cogent to lend it a veneer of freshness. Considering this is Northcott’s first work for orchestra, it displays an impressive combination of complexity and clarity, although many of the ideas could do with a bit less stodge (making it sound as though the conductor is stirring treacle). A little over halfway through it attains a climax that’s made up of many elements; it’s a really nice moment, enhanced by the orchestra’s subsequent enigmatic withdrawal into the middleground. This, and the work’s more pensive episodes, are by far the most immersive; Northcott’s faster music (which dominates overall) feels shallow by comparison, and the abrupt end is an entirely unconvincing cop-out, But notwithstanding these difficulties, plus the fact that it’s not really a concerto for orchestra at all, more a symphonic poem, the piece makes for an interesting enough diversion."

All music is "abstract" in the sense that sounds aren't as explicit as words, and even text can be elusive.  Thomas Larcher's Symphony no 2 "Cenotaph" might have initially been inspired by images of Syrian refugees, but that doesn't at all mean that the music is literal, in any way.  Like Strauss's Alpine Symphony, programmes are like scaffolding, useful as an aid to construction. What really counts is the building itself.  Please read here what I wrote about Larcher and Strauss, and on the programmatic structure.   In any case, music is processed by human minds, so it's not possible to  experience  listening without some human input: what one hears depends on an individual's emotional range, expectations and experience.

And so to Julian Anderson's Incantesimi.. commissioned for Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker.  In theory this piece was inspired by an orrery, a multi-dimensional creation designed to demonstrate the movements and interactions of planets in the universe, each with their different orbits and speeds of  traverse. Science, thus, abstract concepts made visible, helping ordinary people understand the universe. Anderson has always been a remarkably "visual" composer : some people just are. But that doesn't mean that his music is literal.  Anderson describes the five elements in his piece as a Nocturne which has five musical ideas juggled in perpetual motion, interacting but never all at the same time. "Instead of being an outward display of flamboyance, it's an inward display of lyrical qualities and calm meditation, like Giant Chamber Music".

 Thus the growling lower registers from which clean, clear lines emerge. A cor anglais solo, then.  Exquisite, glittering, fragmenting sounds. All held together by a sense of circular movement, shifts in volume and tempi, highlighted by sudden single bell-like chords, then percussion and high winds.  On the re-broadcast, the announcer says the percussive clicks represent a Japanese night watchman signalling all is well. Nuts, I thought. Nightwatchmen exist even outside Japan. If there's extra-musical reference here, consider the Nightwatchman in Die Meistersinger, who signals the restoration of order on chaos, hence the elegant structure of the piece.  Much more than a tone poem, it's a mini symphony in less than 15 minutes, totally to the point.  I hadn't heard Anderson's comments before listening, so I was delighted that I'd guessed the idea without having to be told. Anderson's Incantesimi. is definitely a keeper, proof that good, original new music can appeal without dumbing down or being elitist. Fascinating, imaginative and really quite magical.

Poetry beyond words - Nash Ensemble Wigmore Hall

The Nash Ensemble's 50th Anniversary Celebrations at the Wigmore Hall were crowned by a recital that typifies the Nash's visionary mission.  Above, the dearly-loved founder, Amelia Freeman,  a quietly revolutionary figure in  her own way, who has immeasurably enriched the cultural life of this country. Ostensibly, the concert featured some of the best modern British composers, plus Elliott Carter, an honorary Brit, since his music has been so passionately championed in this country.  But a deeper perusal of the programme revealed even greater depths.. "Poetry beyond Words" I thought, since most of the pieces transformed their original sources in text and visual images into exquisitely original works of art. Lieder ohne Worte: an affirmation of the life force that is creativity.

Simon Holt's Shadow Realm  (1983) gets its title from a poem by Magnus Enzensberger (a favourite of Hans Werner Henze).  ".....for a while/ i step out of my shadow/for a while.....".  Holt's music penetrates the elusive mysteries of the text, going beyond the words to express its spirit. It's structured in two halves, "shadowing" one another, but scored for an unusual combination of clarinet, harp and cello, creating a three-way conversation  creating a further shadow around the duality of its conception. It's a miniature, only eight minutes long, but its concision is so elegant that it puts to shame many works which drown in verbose meandering. Holt was only 25 when it was written: a remarkable original achievement by a composer whose self-effacing manner belies a mind of great originality. It says much about the Nash Ensemble that they commissioned it, long before Holt became famous.

The poems of Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970) pack intense meaning into fragmentary, haiku-like lines, some of which don't even follow grammatical syntax. But therein lies their beauty.(that's her in the photo). Harrison Birtwistle's Nine Settings of Lorine Niedecker (1998-2000), another Nash commission, distils each poem with a kind of almost homeopathic concentration, communicating the spirit of the poems, far more creatively  than mere word-painting.  Claire Booth sings arching lines which reach upwards and outwards, sustaining the legato, while the cello weaves around, without interruption, coming into its own only when the voice falls silent, like an elusive echo, Eventually, the poems seem to move away, beyond human hearing. The music gradually slows down, voice and cello retreating together with melancholy "footsteps", each note expressed with solemn dignity.  Birtwistle recognizes the fundamental structure of Niedecker's text, but emphasizing syllables and single words, rather than phrases. " thru bird/start, wing/drip, weed/drift", though in the text the words are joined. Perhaps this captures the sense of water, dripping quietly in some vast stillness. Yet it's also typically Birtwistlean puzzle-making,  creating patterns within patterns, layers within layers. Beautiful moments linger in the memory, like the "You, ah you, of mourning doves", where the poet plays with the word "you", which sounds like dove call yet also evokes human meaning, while the composer, for once, infuses the word "mourning" drawing its resonance out, like the cooing of the bird.

One of the great joys of Julian Anderson's music is that he's an extraordinarily visual composer. Graphic images inspire his music and enrich its interpretation. His Alhambra Fantasy (2000) was stimulated by Islamic architecture, The Book of Hours (2005) by the miniatures in  Trés riches heures du Duc de Berry, and even Symphony (2003), despite its non-committal title, owes much to the paintings of Sibelius's friend, Axel Gallen-Kallela. Yet again, the Nash Ensemble recognized his unique gift almost from the start.  Poetry Nearing Silence (1997) was inspired by  The Heart of a Humument, a book of paintings by Tom Phillips, where random words from an obscure novel were picked at random, then adventurously illustrated.  See more here.  Just as Phillips transforms words into visuals, Anderson transforms ideas into abstract music. Eight highly individual segments unfold over 12 minutes. Each has a title, borrowed from the book, though the settings as such aren't literal.  In the third segment "my future as the star in a film of my room", one of the violinists plays percussion (a ratchet), which whirrs like the cranking of an old-fashioned camera. In the Wigmore Hall, the sound is decidely disturbing, but that's perhaps Anderson's intention : we can't take what we hear for granted. In theory, the segments travel round Europe - Vienna, Bohemia, Carpathia, Paris. Far away landscapes of the imagination: perhaps we hear references to Janáček's Sinfonietta, crazily buoyant but cheerful. The Nash play at being folk musicians, imitating alphorns and shepherd's pipes.  Everything in joyous transformation!  Gradually, the clarinet (Richard Hosford) draws things together, as silence descends.  Although Anderson doesn't employ voice in this piece, it feels like song, because the instrumentation has such personality.

The recital began with the world premiere of  Richard Causton's Piano  Quintet (2015), dedicated to the Nash. It's lively and inventive. Violins and viola tease cello and piano, provoking and taunting, whiling off in all directions.  Gradually the piano (Tim Horton)  restores harmony with a gracious cantilena.  Peter Maxwell Davies's String Quintet (2014) also received its world premiere. Four movements, each with a different mood and form, the Chacony being the most vivid. Before that, Elliott Carter's Poems of Louis Zukofsky (2008), with Claire Booth and Richard Hosford.  Carter expresses the shape of the poems as they are laid out in print. There are silences in poems which create an impact by the way they look on the page denser scoring where needed, the vocal line calling out into aural space.  Zukofsky's copyright holder issues stern warnings against quotation and use.  A very different attitude to the immensely rewarding creative inter-relationship between different art forms which made this concert so rewarding. 

If I haven't written much about the performances, that's because the Nash Ensemble are always good, and reliable.  The players on this occasion were Tim Horton (piano), Philippa Davies (flute), Richard Hosford (clarinet), David Adams (violin), Michael Gurevich (violin), Lawrence Power (viola), James Boyd (violin), Björg Lewis (cello), Adrian Brendel (cello), Lucy Wakefield (harp) and Claire Booth (soprano), and Lionel Friend (conductor).  This article also appears in Opera Today.

This concert was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 13th June 2015

Julian Anderson Thebans, ENO - BBC Broadcast

Julian Anderson Thebans, from the ENO, can be heard on BBC Radio 3 HERE. Anderson is  adventurous, but by no means difficult. His work is approachable and very "visual" so it was inevitable that he'd get around to writing opera,. I chose the photo above (c Tristam Kenton) because it gives an idea of the layers and colours in the music and the way the textures interweave. Pierre Audi is a director who knows how music operates. Anderson's background lies in the English choral tradition, which shows in the choruses and the vocal writing. We need composers like this.  Thebans is good music, good theatre and a breakthrough by a major British composer

The whole point of Greek tragedy is that it's stylized and undecorated. Effusive wordiness would be pointless: the characters are timeless avatars. Frank McGuiness's text is minimal, so it doesn't overwhelm the beauty of Anderson's music.  Sophocles's plays were not written to be staged together, although they all deal with the same subject. So the fact that Anderson places "the present" last after past and future is perfectly reasonable. The stories are so well known that they should be general knowledge - no special training in Greek needed. No-one would expect any composer to set them word for word.

When Oedipus dies, we know that the curse continues til it wipes out his children. Anderson knows his Greek classics better than his critics do. Audi is one of the great stage directors of outr time. Here the stage action follows the music extremely well, visually and in the movements of the singers.The chorus sings from the upper gallery, powerfully dramatic. You wouldn't want to be sitting up there, but that's OK, the opera would work well either in a smaller house or ne much larger.

The second act is so good that it could be done on its own. I'd certainly recommend this. Don't be put off by the subject - it's been reworked for 2,000-plus years. What a shame it is that when an interesting British opera by a British composer comes along it's met with determined incomprehension. The usual crowd of booers who attack anything the ENO does on principle are fools. PLEASE SEE MY REVIEW HERE.

ENO Thebans Julian Anderson scores for English opera

The English National Opera's Julian Anderson Thebans at the Coliseum, London, absolutely justifies the ENO's mission: opera, in English, and of national significance. Anderson is one of the most influential figures in modern British music. He's always written with a distinctively "visual" personality, translating concrete images into abstract music (Read my article Julian Anderson - visual composer.  Thebans may be his first official foray into formal opera, but he's been heading towards it for years.

"Is this a contemporary opera?" asked someone in the audience. A good comment, since "isms" are irrelevant to art.  Greek tragedy is universal because it deals with concepts that transcend time and place. Its very power comes from abstraction.  Frank McGuinness's text distils the essence of the drama in a spartan (oops) way Anderson can tell the story through his music. Orchestrally, Thebans is so vivid that  I closed my eyes during the First Act to better absorb how the drama was being told by  the orchestra, and the interplay between orchestra and voices. Massive towers of sound suggest the relentless Fate that will destroy Oedipus and his issue. Pierre Audi's staging, with Tom Pye's designs,  reflects the music extremely well.  Strong horizontals against towering verticals giving form to the structure in the score. The choruses are very well blocked, their movements reflecting the movement, and the tension in the music. Towers filled with rock loom over the stage: Antigone, Oedipus's daughter, will be entombed alive in an insane, sterile parody of the womb of the Earth.

Edward Gardner conducts with savage but tightly controlled ferocity. Gardner chose Anderson's Symphony for his high-profile Barbican concert nearly ten years ago, tellingly combined with Walton's Symphony no 1.  He understands Anderson, and his place in British music. Gardner shows how Anderson's textures are created.  Gardner is wise to expand his portfolio and seek further challenges in orchestral repertoire. He could perhaps be the "British" conductor of choice, with a new, distictive approach.

The powerful blocks of sound that create such impact are not crude monoliths  but built up in  carefully delineated levels of density. Anderson knew Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail. He knows how microtones operate. I also thought of Harrison Birtwistle, specifically  Earth Dances, where tectonic planes of sound are shaped by layers of smaller fragments.  Birtwistle's syyle is strikingly organic, as if it grows naturally from great depths. Audi's staging again reflects this musical concept. In the Second Act, The Future, lights shine through the towers of rock, highlighting the invisible gaps behind solid objects (probably styrofoam). The lights suggest fire, perhaps volcanic forces rising from the bowels of the planet. Antigone defies oppression. She is the "light" that leads Oedipus who has gouged out his eyes.

The Second Act, which tells her story, is exceptionally well written, worthy of being staged on its own as a stand-alone. A second interval after a 20 minute act would normally kill an opera, but in this case feels necessary: you need to escape the intensity. The writing for the choruses is also very good indeed. Anderson sings in choirs himself. Like Greek choruses, Anderson's chorus pronounce judgement. From way up at the top of the auditorium, the choruses explode, augmented either in numbers or electronically: the effect is overwhelming, yet the voice types are not muddled.

In this powerful Second Act, music and visuals glow black, white, indigo, red and gold. This intensifies the desolation at Colonus, the portal of Death. The music becomes sepulchral. At times I caught echoes of plainchant. The devastaion is all the more harrowing because we have just seen how the curse on Oedipus outlasts his death.

Roland Wood sang Oedipus. He has been unwell for some weeks, so we didn't hear him at full capacity, so all the more respect to him. I hope he doesn't harm his voice by pushing it for this premiere, important as it is. Julia Sporsén sang Antigone. Lyrical beauty doesn't necessarily come into this role, so Sporsén created the strength in the part well. Peter Hoare's Creon was superb, helped by the oddly sensual passages Anderson writes for the part. Creon's monolgue in Act Two is disturbingly enticing. Anderson also uses countertenor for good effect, so Christopher Ainslie singing connected to baroque style while also suggesting the surreal intervention of Theseus.  The whole Oedipal saga  circulates around Jocasta, though she's swiftly despatched fairly early on.  Anderson gives Susan Bickley a good aria, and Audi's costume designer Christof Hetzer further illuminates the past by dressing her - alone - in royal blue.

Julian Anderson - "visual" composer

Julian Anderson's Thebans comes to the ENO Saturday. I'm intrigued because Anderson has always been a good "visual" composer. Eden, for example, translates Brancusi's The Kiss. Two solid figures become one : viola and cello curl sensuously around each other, embracing, so to speak, in melody.

One of Anderson's "Great Hits", The Book of Hours, takes its cue from Les Trés riches heures du Duc de Berry, illuminated painstakingly by hand and gilded with real gold. That rather describes Anderson's technique, too. Not one slipped note, everything intensely coloured, and enhanced by electronic effects applied at first like fine gold leaf over rich painting. Layers of texture and colour again, deftly applied in careful miniature to create a flamboyant yet deeply satisfying whole. The first part is beautiful, an intricate tracery built around four basic notes. Its exotic textures are interrupted two-thirds of the way through by a strange electronic interlude. After a Luftpause, deliberately creating distance from what has gone before, the second part opens with deliberate distortion - people who listen for sound will get a shock! It´s the sound of a scratched LP, a reminder perhaps that recorded music is artificial and ephemeral. Then the distortion clears and the music reveals itself again, reborn and even more vivid. Towards the end there's an apocalyptic electronic cadenza, which fits in with basic ideas in medieval cosmology, such as "the world overturnn'd". In other words, fate, sudden upheaval, etc, ideas which are strikingly modern in our uncertain modern era. Of course you don't need to know any of this, though Anderson is far too literary a composer not to be aware of this extra dimension.

Edward Gardner is conducting Thebans at the Coliseum. Anderson and Gardner go back a long way. Gardner conducted Anderson's Symphony at his big Barbican debut nearly ten years ago. Symphony was inspired by art: Axel Gallen-Kallela´s painting of Lake Keitele. Gallen-Kallela is the best known Finnish painter of his time, and his works will be known to any Sibelius fan. It doesn´t matter what the picture looks like, this is its spiritual atmosphere. For a full minute, all you can hear are vague sounds, like the rushing of a stream almost at freezing point. It´s wonderfully impressionist - you imagine the cold and the stillness, the wind, birds flying overheard. Ultimately, though it´s the inventive, multi-layered orchestration that entrances. Flurries of harmony take off in different directions, and melody starts in one part of the orchestra, to be completed in another. Julian Anderson is the current composer-in-residence at the Wigmore Hall. Read about his concert last year, which placed his music in the context of Hans Abrahamsen and Salvatore Sciarrino, whose music also contains a strong visual element. Read more HERE.

Julian Anderson Wigmore Hall

Julian Anderson's first opera The Thebans comes to the ENO next year. Any opera by a major British composer is important, so Julian Anderson Day at the Wigmore Hall provided welcome insight.  Anderson has just been appointed Composer in Residence at the Wigmore Hall, the latest acolade in a career that will probably win him a knighthood at some stage.. He's a big figure in British music, as a teacher, presenter and musician. His music is accessible enough to have broad appeal, and original enough to earn respect.

"Harmony" from The Thebans featured at this year's BBC Proms but those few minutes could hardly make much impact, though they reflected Anderson's interest in writing large choral pieces. Ironically, the chamber works at the Wigmore Hall might give better clues as to what The Thebans might be like.

Writing opera is very different to writing abstract music. Anderson, however, has always been a surprisingly graphic composer. Visual images inspire his music and enrich its interpretation. His Alhambra Fantasy (2000) was stimulated by Islamic architecture, his Eden (2004) by Brancusi, The Book of Hours (2005) by the miniatures in  Trés riches heures du Duc de Berry, and even Symphony (2003), despite its non-commital title, owes much to the paintings of Sibelius's friend, Axel Gallen-Kallela. Perhaps it's relevant that Anderson studied with Tristan Murail and others influenced by Olivier Messiaen, a composer who believed in a synthesis of sound and colour.  This bodes well for The Thebans. Not many composers think visually, so if Anderson's librettist, playwright Frank McGuinness, comes up with a good script. the ENO might have a hit on its hands..

Anderson's Another Prayer (2012) isn't visual, but inspired by the untempered pitches in Bartók's original Violin Sonata (1944), so hearing it played by András Keller was specially rewarding. Keller is perhaps one of the greatest interpreters of Bartók and Kurtág, so the wild urgency he brought to the piece felt intuitively idiomatic. Snatches of melody appear, like ghosts of Hungarian peasant dance, untamed and elusive. It's technically challenging, involving subtle changes in bowing technique and pressure. The pace accelerates until it levitate into the highest harmonic pitches the instrument can reach. Quite dramatic. 

"Music is pictures of music", Hans Abrahamsen has said. "....the fictional aspect that one moves around in an imaginary space of music." At the Wigmore Hall, members of the Aurora Orchestra played Abrahamsen's Walden, written thirty years ago. It's the wind quintet precursor of Abrahamsen's Wald, conducted by Oliver Knussen at the BBC Proms in 2010. The horn (Katie Pryce) leads us deeper into this aural landscape. It feels timeless, like the call of an ancient hunting horn. Bassoon and bass clarinet create dark undertones,while oboe and flute play lilting fragments of melody. But this is by no means mere impressionism. Abrahamsen builds up dense textures from independent and interacting instrumental cells. Just as in nature, multiple layers of sound co-exist. We have to be alert to hear the patterns and nuances. It is in this way that Abrahamsen really translates Henry David Thoreau's concepts. We retreat from "civilization"  and received values into a pure state of listening. Walden feels organic, as if it's resonating physical and emotional processes.
 
Anderson's Tiramisu (1994) operates in layers, though it's based on multiple sub groups within the  orchestra and doesn't refer to the dessert. It's a delicious confection, however, where the segments dance along, separately and together.  I thought of whimsical cartoons, from the era when cartoons were created around serious classical music, and were themselves a form of art in visual motion.

With Anderson's The Thebans coming to the ENO, it's a good time to consider Salvatore Sciarrino's approach to music drama.  Sciarrino's Killing Flower (Luci me tradici) was heard recently in London. (Read more here), but he's written extensively for music theatre. Although Sciarrino's music is exceptionally refined, it lends itself well to drama. It's not "grand" opera in the sense of semaphore emotions and bombast  but more esoteric.  In Luci me tradici, words fragment as they do in  normal conversation.  People communicate in many non-verbal ways. Sciarrino's narratives lie in abstract sounds which the listener translates into concrete images. Anderson, of course, might do something completely different!

For me, the key to Sciarrino lies in his chamber music,  so it was good to hear two movements from ....da un Divertimenti (1969-70) at the Wigmore Hall, sections III Romanza, Adagio and IV Scherzo. . They are fragments of a larger piece which hasn't been published. Quite intriguing, stimulating the imagination. Although textures are rarified to an almost homeopathic degree, dissipating beyond the pitch of the human ear, Sciarrino's music grows from firm structural foundations.  Much of the impact of  Luci me tradici stems from the formalized nature of dance, suggesting the restrictions of courtly life from which the protagonists cannot escape. One thinks, too, of Renaissance architecture and the black and white mosaic contrasts of Italian style. In these fragments, we can hear the ghosts of classical form, elegantly poised, evaporating into something totally new, original.and highly distinctive. Such inventiveness com ressed into a small time frame, but also opening outwards.

Julian Anderson's The Comedy of Change (2009) employs similar instrumentation to the Sciarrino fragments. "Comedy" here refers to the Elizabethan use of the term, ie  happenstance and unexpected outcomes. Anderson's starting point was Charles Darwin, and the odd ways evolution creates diversity.  Long plates of sound, interspersed with small, rapidly moving figures. "20 million years in 3 minutes!", says Anderson in his notes, the "lumbering movement of  Galapagos giant tortoises". But it would be wrong to take this music too literally. Rather, enjoy the whimsy and invention, and use your imagination. Oliver Knussen premiered this work two years ago with the London Sinfonietta, an ideal "fit" between composer and conductor. At the Wigmore Hall,  Nicholas Collon conducted the Aurora Orchestra, in a performance of wit and charm.
. .

Powerhouse ENO 2013/14 season analyzed

The Powerhouse fights back! ENO's 2013/14 season suggests we're back to the days when the ENO was London's edgiest opera house. Ten productions new to London next year- that's around one every three weeks. How can they manage that? By linking up with the liveliest houses in Europe, and bringing in the sharpest talent. This is the kind of creative vision that could kickstart a new Powerhouse era.

One huge coup - Pierre Audi! Audi returns at last to London  after 30 years. This is major news because Audi transformed British theatre in the 1980's with the Almeida Theatre. A whole generation has grown up not realizing how radical the Almeida years were, and how it sparked off the ENO's finest years. Peter Brook, David Hare, Harrison Birtwistle, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Steve Reich, the London Sinfonietta: everybody but everybody was part of the buzz. Audi went on to run De Nederlandse Oper,  and later The Holland Festival. His 1999 Amsterdam Wagner Ring is still one of the most striking productions ever. Amsterdam is one of the most exciting music places in Europe and admirably managed, too.

Audi is directing the world premiere of Julian Anderson's Thebans, a saga based on Greek tragedy with a libretto by Frank McGuiness. A brief piece from the Thebans, "Harmony" will be the first item on the First Night of the BBC Proms 2013. Anderson was himself a singer and writes music that's very visual. Anderson's a Proms regular, both on stage and in the Arena. In May 2007, Ed Gardner conducted Anderson's Symphony at the Barbican, in his first high profile concert after being appointed ENO Music Director. So expect good things from the ENO Thebans, and book tickets early though it doesn't start until May 2014.

Here are the other new productions :

Beethoven Fidelio, (from September) directed by Calixto Bieito. whose very name strikes terror into the hearts of those who think that only they know what the composer intended. Yet those who really engage with his work realize that it is quite reasonable. Bieito's Carmen, for example, in a watered down version for British audiences, was a big box office success at the ENO -- one of the big hits of the ENO last November, (reviewed  here and here) which proves ENO audiences are smarter than the reactionary crowd think. Bieito's Fidelio  was first done in Munich in 2010 with Jonas Kaufmann. We'll get Stuart Skelton, who's good and  the production is well worth seeing. Bieito's "prison" is a labyrinth of the mind - click photo to enlarge. Despite his reputation for bums, Bieito is a very deep thinker with a strong politcial conscience, ideal for an opera like Fidelio, which is not meant to be pretty.

Johann Strauss II Die Fledermaus (from September). This is a joint production with the Canadian Opera Company. Here's a link to the COC website with many photos. It looks off the wall! But lots of fun, which arguably is what Strauss II was on about. The director is Christopher Alden, who says "Fledermaus will be fun! It’s a famous, beloved piece and not just because of the totally brilliant and inspired music or that it’s a frivolous New Year’s Eve entertainment, but it’s a wonderful story with great characters and situations.......... It has a lot to say about society, relationships and marriage".

Mozart The Magic Flute, (November) directed by Simon McBurney, whose Complicité brought us A Dog's Heart (reviewed here) which was such theatre-of-genius that the music didn't matter. With Mozart, McBurney has much more to work on. You need magic in the Magic Flute, and Complicité does magic better than most.  This is a co-production with De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam, and the Aix-en-Provence Festival : excellent credentials.

Verdi Rigoletto (February 2014), also a Canadian Opera Company production directed by Christopher Alden. It's set in Verdi's time, not Renaissance Mantua, but those who rage that this isn't "historical" should remember that if contemporary stagings were good enough for Shakespeare, they should be good enough for anyone else. And the Met's Las Vegas Rigoletto didn't cause the skies to fall. Another big plus on this one is Quinn Kelsey, the best of all American imports the ENO has brought us. He sang in the original, so should be well settled by the time the show reaches London.

Handel Rodelinda (February). This is major news, because it's the first product of a new relationship between the ENO and the Bolshoi. London gets first dibs. This is the first ever Handel Opera for the Bolshoi, which is quite remarkable, but they'll be getting the best:  Christian Curmyn conducts, and the cast includes John Mark Ainsley, Iestyn Davies and Rebecca Evans. Director is Richard Jones.

Mozart Cosi fan tutte (May 2014) will be done in English because it's the ENO, but not in an ordinary translation. Instead, it's a new text by poet Martin Crimp (Into the Little Hill, Written on Skin). This will be moving on to the Met in NY, which has had a partnership with the ENO for several years (Eugene Onegin and less successfully Two Boys). Ryan Wigglesworth conducts, Katie Mitchell directs.

Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini (June 2014). The ENO is making a big splash with this because it's Terry Gilliam. Presumably the Monty Python crowds will lap this up and box office receipts will clear what's left of any deficit. His Damnation of Faust was entirely based on himself, rather than the opera, the music or composer, yet was wildly popular, proving that self indulgent "Regie" is loved by the masses as long as they don't have to think or listen. .

Bizet The Pearl Fishers (June 2014). Not, strictly speaking, entirely new, but revamped to make more of the breath-taking sequences where bodies "swim" bathed in undulating blues and greens. I loved this production (directed by Penny Woolcock) first time round and would be thrilled to see it again. This time, Sophie Bevan sings Leila, so even if we don't get Quinn Kelsey again, it will be worth hearing, too.

Thomas Adès Powder Her Face (April 2014). New production, new performance space. Joe Hill-Gibbons directs this modern chamber opera classic in AMBIKA P3, a space for contemporary art at the University of Westminster, "converted from the vast former subterranean concrete hall of the School of Engineering, Baker Street". Photos show exactly that, but I can well imagine the story set in that context. The Duchess did not do worse than the men around her yet the society around her was brutal and rigid. The ENO has been using alternative performance spaces outside the Coliseum for years, and for very good reasons: some operas are better suited to smaller scale. If only the Royal Opera House could find a middle sized external theatre and retire the Linbury for all but the smallest shows! 

Jonathan Belper composer/Matthew Barney director River of Fundament. This is based on Norman Mailer's novel Ancient Evenings, describing the journey of a soul after death, a subject which probably lends itself best to a film/music theatre project.

REVIVALS ! Back by popular demand, classic and much loved productions of Philip Glass's Satyagraha (which I want to see for the fourth time), Puccini Madame Butterfly (Minghella) and  ,  Britten Peter Grimes (the luminous David Alden production and the return of Stuart Skelton))

Statistics: the ENO announced financial figures that show the company to be in better shape than the doomsayers would have.  I hope so, because the ENO is critical to the cultural good health of this country. What it does is unique. It also links London to what's happening internationally, which is good long term.. Also good news is that schemes like Opera Undressed have brought in new audiences, a large number of whom planned to come back again.  This year's new scheme is a sort of "ticket lottery" where you're guaranteed a £20 ticket (in the gods) but might get lucky and be upgraded to somewhere in the orchestra stalls (usually £100 plus).  It's a much better business model than selling tickets off for a song at the last moment, and reminds us in the audience that we can't take cheap seats for granted.

Prom 28 BCMG Knussen Bedford Abrahamsen Benjamin

The BCMG (Birmingham Contemporary Music Group) came to late night Prom 28, with a programme of Hans Abrahamsen, Luke Bedford, Oliver Knussen and George Benjamin. (photo credit Pepe Araneda)

Hans Abrahamsen's Wald (2008-9) is a joint commission between the BBC and the Asko/Schönberg Ensemble, The title hadn't really registered on me before listening, but my first impressions were of dense textures, multiple layers of strange, half-heard sounds, which keep moving forward, into "clearings" of greater lightness. Like exploring a mysterious woodland, where sights are half-glimpsed in shadows, and invisible creatures teem in the undergrowth. Percussion on the right, distanced from the rest of orchestra, clustered around piano and marimba. Layers on layers. A primeval past is evoked by natural horns, and the creatures of the forest by scuttling, scattering techniques on strings and low winds. Read the programme notes by Julian Anderson for more.

"Music is pictures of music", says Abrahamsen. "That is a strong underlying element in my world of ideas when I compose - as is the fictional aspect that one moves around in an imaginary space of music. What one hears is pictures - basically, music is already there." Wald is a beautiful work, which goes far beyond literal representation. It works when you enter the mood, experiencing it on its own terms.

I've written about Abrahamsen's Schnee, which is also very organic, the layers building up like falling snow, muffling and changing what is heard. A good friend thinks it's the most boring piece ever, "like watching snow fall". So the atmosphere doesn't work for everyone, but for me it's like Buddhist prayer, very purifying. It's out on CD now.

Luke Bedford's another exceptionally interesting composer/ LOTS about him on this site, follow the labels and search! Or voit tout en aventure bowled me over when I first heard it in 2006, for it is a truly remarkable piece, one of the most voice-friendly works in the repertoire. Claire Booth looks about 8 months pregnant now, and I worried about the strain on her, but Bedford's lines move like speech, rising and falling  naturally. Crescendi build up gently, so Booth can breathe effortlessly  into the words. Or voit tout en aventure is already something of a perennial, and Booth's been singing it with BCMG from its premiere. This, too, is on CD, an essential, I think. Bedford's written an opera, scheduled for 2011.

More layers with Oliver Knussen's Two Organa (1994). Only six minutes in total, but densely constructeed. The first part uses only white notes, dizzying polyphonic fireworks over a deeper pulse of plainchant. The second adds a secret puzzle: Schoenberg's name is spelt in pitches, concealed in joyous cross-harmonies.

George Benjamin was due to conduct this Prom with his Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra. Although he wasn't there, this was ironically a fitting tribute to Benjamin's bereavement, for one of these inventions was written in memoriam of Olivier Messaien, Benjamin's creative father figure. It quickly segues into the longer, elegaic Lento titled Alexander Goehr, who is most certainly still alive, but the overall thrust feels dignified, respect warmed by love.

I was very impressed by Ilan Volkov, called in at short notice. When he conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, it often felt like something was being held back.  I wonder now that it was the orchestra itself, who may be happier with one of their own. Volkov is young, eclectic and an outsider. He deserves an orchestra that appreciates him. He's still principal guest conductor at BBCSSO, but hopefully, he'll find a niche in London or in mainland Europe.

Niccolò Castiglioni Knussen London Sinfonietta Julian Anderson

Bombarded with the cliché that modern music isn't "emotional", people have learned to think in easy boxes, instead of really listening. (There's even humour in Schoenberg, whose favourite composer was Brahms.) Castiglioni is yet more proof that a capacity for wit lies in the mind!

Niccolò Castiglioni is uncompromisingly avant garde, but his music is so vivacious, it sparkles. It's a pity Alfred Brendel wasn't at last night's concert when Oliver Knussen conducted Castiglioni Revisted with the London Sinfonietta at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. Castiglioni (1932-1996) was a virtuoso pianist, incorporating the piano into most of his music. Brendel's known for his dry humour.. He's giving a talk at Aldeburgh in June about humour in classical music.

Oliver Knussen gets Castiglioni. The man who wrote Higglety Pigglety Pop! and Where the Wild Things Are has conducted Castiglioni many times, most recently in 2008. This concert was even better, showcasing some of Castiglioni's more ambitious works for chamber orchestra and voice.

Capriccio (1991) started with manic frenzy, the pianist (Ian Brown) playing so presto that it seemed the notes were jammed in the keys at the extreme right, straining to go further than the poor machine could cope with. Then suddenly Castiglioni shifts into calmer waters, lyrically beautiful bassoon and bass, before returning to a con brio finale, where all instruments frolic together. The piano, however, has the last word, Brown's hands crossing each other, playing even more gleefully than before.

In 1957, The Diaries of Anne Frank were still relatively "new", so Castiglioni's Elegia (in memoria di Anne Frank) feels immediate, and first person. He seems to enter the mind of the girl forced to communicate in silence, acutely observing small things because the wider situation is witheld from her.  So the soloist, Anu Komsi, sings sotto voce, without vibrato, and in snatches, her voice blending into the background. The instruments  play snatches, too, lines retreating almost before they're stated. Castiglioni explicitly credited Anton Webern's influence.Again, Castiglioni shows that fragmentation and stillness, key themes in 20th century music, can be extremely moving, if you make the effort to listen.

The quiet. thoughtful mood continues in Eine kleine Weinachtsmusik,(1959/60). This isn't "Christmassy" in the sense of vulgar commercial celebration. Rather it's contemplative rapture, played so quietly it's barely audible.  Like Messiaen, Castiglioni understood what Christmas meant. Again deep feeling, but understated, working on the listener's soul.

Così parlò Baldassare, (1980/1) is equally atmospheric. Anu Komsi sings solo, completely unsuppported, but has to traverse snatches of numerous styles. It's music as collage. You think you hear Galli-Curci trilling like a mad canary, then suddenly you hear a growl bluntly squeezed out from the lower lungs, then bombastic  declamation, and high pitched squeaks, as if Komsi's suddenly been pinched from behind.

It's dramatic, in the sense that multi-image frames in film are dramatic. It would make a fascinating movie. The more you identify, the better the kaleidoscope colours. Why Baldassare Castiglioni, the Renaissance writer? Were the two men related? The family was influential in Italian culture, and still thrive today. Perhaps Niccolò is writing an opera in miniature, a panorama of 800 years of Italian history. Maybe that's why the "pinch" is there after the bombast: Castiglioni wit at work.

The text for Terzina (1992/3) comes from Gerhard Tersteegen, a 17th century mystic. Gott ist ein Herzens-Gott, to reach him you sink your head into your heart like a child : Kleinheit, Reinheit, Einfaltswesen. underlined by Castiglioni with cymbals so muffled you can barely hear them. The opposite of what cymbals are supposed to do. In the depths of the soul time, place and worldly concerns with reach depths in the soul no storm can penetrate. Castiglioni builds silence into the music, each word separated by silence, like the tolling of an unheard bell.

Quickly (1994) is strikingly original. It comprised 23 aphoristic Variations. It's a whirlwind..Each Variation is distinctive and witty: a manic woodwind quartet is at its heart, the theme taken up by other groups, which include celesta, harp, harpsichord, harp, glockenspiel and of course piano. Eleven violins enter as individuals, combining in a merry dance punctuated by tubular bells, an unusual combination of ultra high strings and low-resonance metal. The woodwind quartet disguises itself in different forms. At one stage the piccolo player (Frank Nolan) pipes a simple melody, like a child's toy pipe. Seriously well written music, but not serious in portent. It must be exhilarating to play. Knussen knows that the London Sinfonietta relish challenges like this, and keeps them moving so fast, it feels like the orchestra will suddenly levitate.

Was Esa-Pekka Salonen in the audience? He was one of Castiglioni's relatively few students. His own style, as conductor and composer, reflects Castiglioni's ideas of light and brightness, concealing great depth.  Quickly would be fun to hear with the Philharmonia, but it would be a good idea: it might stun the usual Festival Hall audience, and make them realize that very modern can mean very good.

Julian Anderson's latest The Comedy of Change (2009) received its premiere.  I've left it for last, not because it is last in any way, but to do it justice.  I liked this and want to hear it again, soon: Anderson's music is very organic, using sounds that feel like nature's being incoporated into its very heart. Part of the inspiration behind The Comedy of Change is the idea of evolution, and the way living creatures adapt and change. Hence, perhaps, seven movements, some played without a break. Change becomes part of the music. It starts with harp and flute, but sounds timeless, as mysterious as a digeridoo. From this emerges low, languid violin. The percussionist uses something that sounds like crumpling paper : being a visual person, I think "unwrapping", but it's very beautiful : that violin sounds primeval, like the stirring of life.

More organic sound, three violins playing rippling figures, the rivulets deeping with violas.  The percussion (xylophone and marimba) clatter along: Messiaen bird feet scuttling, discovering flight at the beginning of Time.  Towards the end the low voice of a bass clarinet deepens the mood, but the overall feeling, for me, was movement up the scale, plants emerging towards the light, maybe. Anderson's music is visual, but none the worse for that because it feels rooted in real life. Comedy of Change reminds me of his much earlier Symphony, where a thread emerges from great depth, like a stream turning into a river. It's on the excellent Book of Hours CD from NMC.  Read more about it HERE.