Beat Furrer FAMA London Sinfonietta

Photo: ; Markus Sepperer

Beat Furrer's FAMA came to London at last, with the London Sinfonietta. The piece was hailed as "a miracle" at its premiere at Donaueschingen in 2005 by Die Zeit: State of the Art New Music, recognized by mainstream media, which proves that the market for contemporary music lies with lively audiences. FAMA is music as theatre in the widest sense, operating on multiple levels.  In the last ten years, it's been performed many times, and there's a recording on Kairos. Experiencing it live, however, is essential  since it was created as an experience to be enacted live, for maximum impact. It's a multi-sensory immersion: participation is not passive.

Ostensibly, Furrer's text comes from Arthur Schnitzler's novel Fräulein Else, about a girl who likes a fancy life and makes money from entertaining men, but it would be a mistake if this were taken too literally. The narrative isn't straightforward. The opera begins in Latin. then flows into a stream of consciousness, where ideas constantly mutate. What "is" Else's story? We aren't told in straightforward narrative. We learn through induction, empathizing with the clues in the seemingly disjointed text,  and in the oblique imagery in the music.  As we learn in real life.  Significantly,  FAMA begins with a discourse from Ovid, Metamorphoses Book XII, in which Fama the goddess of Rumour intuits meaning by processing what she hears around herself.  What we knows, or think we  know, grows through interpreting impressions from a non-stop flow of data.

Sparkling bell-like sounds, voices intoning fragments, beautifully pitched but elusive, long  elliptical phrases in the orchestra shooting forth, patterns that move and draw back. The first two scenes in FAMA suggest teeming, vibrant happenings, just beyond our grasp.  "Ich höre das Feuer.....ich höre den Regen..... ich höre in meiner Erinnerung.....ich höre das Schweigen."  Then Else emerges, or rather Isabelle Menke intoning Else's words rapid-fire. The syntax isn't conversation, it doesn't communicate. It's an internal monologue, free associating, random thoughts from which we might, or might not, deduce who Else is. Perhaps Else herself is still figuring things out, asking questions, deducing, unsure.  The ensemble reveals little: barely audible  clicks and brushing sounds, as if the players themselves were listening and watching. As Else's  voice rises, tensely, the orchestra bursts into manic life: cacophony, cut through by long, clear metallic lines, replicated by the voice. It's as if the voice and ensemble were reaching out, feeling out to invisible walls,  gauging distance by sound waves.  High, clear notes, flutes and clarinets feeling the way, hesitating, interrupted by sudden flashes of percussion. Sounds come from all directions, often out of sight, often distorted. Else's voice sometimes seems to materialize in the air.  Piano sounds, accordion sounds, are heard as if from great distances across time.  Ticking sounds, sometimes percussion, sometimes bows sawn against strings in bizarrely mechanical fashion.  Every noise matters, no matter how subtle.

"Wie hübsch!" said Menke, with a demented smile.  "How cute it is to walk around naked"  Figuratively, she's watching  herself in a mirror wondering what others think, and what she should be thinking of herself.  The strings bow violent, mechanical angles, the brass blow mocking raspberries. The text describes how Else puts on a coat and walks naked through a hotel lobby. No-one knows.  Then, at first quietly, the sound of a contrabass flute takes over where Else's words end.  Contrabass flute: an instrument which looks so bizarre that just looking at it is an act of theatre.  It's huge, silvery and metallic but, full blast, it's like a siren, blaring menace and mystery.  This contrabass flute interlude is a magnificent coup de théâtre. The whole orchestra screams in response, then falls quiet as the contrabass flute, played by Eva Furrer, continued unchallenged, like a strange dancer, moving and singing with grave but bizarre beauty.

The words "Else, Else, Else" are projected onto the walls. A point is being made, visually, though the words are barely heard, the voices of Exaudi singing pure sound, materializing as if in dream.  The effect was both magical and sinister.  We don't know what happens to Else, but we could hear the swirling tumult in the orchestra. Walls of sound crashed around us, giving way to uncanny chords resonating in near silence. The contrabass flute led a section that seemed almost fugue-like in its grave but quirky dignity.  Else returned briefly. Her last words were "Adresse bleibt Fiala". Whatever that's supposed to mean, I do not know, but the effect was powerful, and lingers tantalisingly in the mind.  FAMA is more focused than Furrer's earlier Hörtheater Begrehen, first released on DVD in 2008, which also deals with multi-level concepts of time, space and sound.  Thus FAMA  lends itself well to semi-concert performance, as we enjoyed at St John's, Smith Square. Although we didn't see the cool, blue walls of the original, the plot. such as there is, predicates on a kind of mental imprisonment.  The gold and burgundy of St John's,  with its elegant chandelier, suggested the outward luxury of Else's profession, which could take place anywhere, not just in the Dolomites.  The drama, and the genius, of Furrer's FAMA is that, through art, we may have come closer to understanding what goes on in Else's soul.

Thank goodness for the London Sinfonietta, returning to their roots in cutting-edge repertoire.  For a while, they seemed caught up in sponsor-pleasing "education", but good work is, in itself, educational.  Any orchestra can do education, but what the London Sinfonietta does is new music better than anyone else.  This FAMA will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at an undisclosed date, but make sure you book for the next London Sinfonietta concert at St John's,Smith Square on December 6th when they'll be doing Hans Abrahamsen's Schnee, with Fool is Hurt, a new work by Simon Holt.

This review also appears in Opera Today.  

Easter Weekend Highlights, London, Aldeburgh

Fancy something for the Easter weekend? A friend greeted me "Happy Easter", then corrected himself. "It's not about chocolate eggs and bunnies, it's a time for reflection". 

Good Friday is the only day in the Christian calendar when Mass is not celebrated. The devout pray and contemplate. Not everyone else needs to do so, though. This Friday, there are no less than three performances of Bach St John's Passion BVW 245 . Richard Egarr conducts the Academy of Ancient Music at the Barbican with James Gilchrist, Sarah Connolly, Christopher Purves, Andrew Kennedy, Elizabeth Watts and Matthew Rose. Stephen Layton conducts the Orchestra of the Enlightenment and Polyphony at St John's Smith Square. More unusually, at the Union Chapel, Islington, is Benjamin Britten's English language version of St John's Passion. David Soar sings, so that's reason enough to go. He's good.

 The London Handel Festival is on, too, which is a big event. Laurence Cummings conducts the London Handel Orchestra in Bach's St Matthew's Passion BVW 244 on Friday at St George's, Hanover Square. With Lukas Jablonski, Tim Mead and Anna Starushkevych singing, this will be worth going to. Historic setting, too - this was Handel's local parish.  On Monday, go for Handel La Resurrezione HWV 47 with the same singers. Adrian Butterfield conducts at the Wigmore Hall..

On Sabbath day in the Passover, Verdi's Nabucco at the Royal Opera House, to remind us of context.  Whether the timing was planned or not, I don't know, but it's good.

You could also steer well clear of the city and go to Aldeburgh, where there's a mini Festival this weekend. Christian Curnyn conducts Purcell Dido and Aeneas at Orford Church (not Snape). "The subject matter and the dominance of fate and faith may be rooted in antiquity, but Purcell’s genius assembles compelling dramatic tableaux round an axis of an intense human tragedy, love, leave-taking and lament, sorrow and solace. Removed from theatre or concert hall to a church that resonates to Britten’s own music dramas, these concert performances promise to envelop an audience in the work’s intimacy, power and lyrical beauty – what Britten referred to as ‘those very Purcellian qualities of clarity, strangeness and tenderness’.  Two performances, starting at 9 pm. Before that, Exaudi sings an eclectic programme built around Britten's Sacred and Profane.  It includes Harrison Birtwistle's  Carmen Paschale, where a "medieval text sees the natural dovetail with the divine. His celebratory motet – with birdsong organ solo – premiered ten years before Sacred and Profane at the 1965 Aldeburgh Festival."

Goebbels stages John Cage Prom 47

Probably the biggest event this whole John Cage Centenary year!  Heiner Goebbels stages John Cage's Europeras 1 and 2 at the Ruhr Biennial. Read Shirley Apthorp in the Financial Times. 
Cage's Europeras 1 and 2  take fragments of numerous different operas and reprocesses them, much in the way that a kaliedoscope turns fragments of coloured glass into new patterns with new movement. "The paradox", says Apthorp, is that "Chaos only works if fastiduously structured".

Cage is important not so much for what he writes but why he writes. He challenges the very basis of creativity. Kaput to the idea of composer as auteur. Instead the idea of random chance, multiple stimuli which the listener must process in realtime, parameters like duration within which nothing is defined.  The onus is always on the moment and on the listener. In the I ching, you throw a coin and look up the runes in the Book of Changes. These suggest images, but it's up to the person interpreting them to use his other own intuition. Every person, every time a consultation is done, everything depends on how the interpreter can reach into his or her own psyche. It's not divination so much as spiritual and mental discipline.

Paradox again! Despite Cage's reticence, much of his music is exquisitely beautiful, when done well. Listen online to Exaudi doing ear for Ear Antiphonies and then Four (2). Though the sounds they make are so abstract, they feel primeval. Perhaps the echoes of medieval plainchant, projected into the cosmos?  Or even the feeling of sound moving around the perfomance space, creating "music" that isn't even made by the performers? It doesn't matter, as long as you're responding and listening on a deep level. I much prefered these ensemble pieces to Experience II (Joan La Barbara) precisely because they're wordless, and liberate your imagination.

Publicity about the cactuses is misleading because Cage's music isn't about gimmick or novelty. More than ever, this is music that challenges you to think, and gives back what you put in : the creative process turned on its head.  Personally I find Cage surprisingly relaxing, like zen meditation, but it's perfectly OK to be bored witless. But tomorrow it might be the other way round. Like the I Ching, the runes tell you about yourself at a specific time.

Cage is so utterly an original, there's almost no precedent. Learning the technique of composition doesn't make you a composer anymore than reading a wiki makes you Einstein. And Cage was a philosopher as much as a musican.  Listen to the broadcast (link above) because the commentary is very good indeed.  Read Ivan Hewett's review of Cage Day Prom 47 (Ilan Volkov) and my review of The London Sinfonietta Prom 44. 

Monteverdi comes to Spitalfields

Monteverdi and Italian baroque masters materialize in Spitalfields, London, an area which one might charitably call rough. Bars all round, noise, traffic and drunks, The church itself has been under renovation for years. But in this unpromising setting, the Spitalfields music festival thrives.

Tomorrow, Wednesday 5th La Venexiana and their director, Claudio Cavina, specialists in Italian baroque, present a concert of Monteverdi madrigals - this should be good as La Venexiana are very well established in their field. This is their first time at Spitalfields.

Friday 7th is an all -day Monteverdi Exploration. At 10.30 am  there's a special presentation for primary schools on Monteverdi's Seventh Book of Madrigals. Primary schools? Yes, and why not? Properly done the concert plus narration could  inspire kids too young to have been brainwashed into  thinking they can't somehow like classical music, even something as relatively esoteric as Monteverdi. This may well be the event to attend, just to see how the kids react.

Two concerts that evening : Exaudi at 6.30pm, always exciting, singing Madrigals Book 3. Later at 8.30 pm  Retrospect Ensemble perform instrumental music by Monteverdi and his contemporaries. In between, on Thursday, Paul Agnew will give a concert performance of Orfeo Act V with Mahan Esfahani, David Miller and Jonathan Manson (harpsichord, theorbo, gamba). Charpentier, Caccini and Lanier, too.

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.

Aldeburgh Festival 2009- big on the European circuit

The Aldeburgh Festival is very much a fixture on the European music circuit. Far more than any other British composer, Britten saw himself as European at heart, so the Aldeburgh Festival has always had an international, progressive outlook, with strong connections abroad. Londoners don't know what treasures they have "in their own backyard".

Britten's ideals come to fruit in this year's Festival, titled "Glitter of Waves". It's Pierre-Laurent Aimard's first full year as artistic director, and he brings sharp new focus. Even the buildings have been extended to provide new theatres and workshops, at last fulfilling Britten's vision for Snape.

Harrison Birtwistle's two new chamber opera set the tone. Dowland's Semper Dowland, semper dolens, is "theatre of melancholy, in which Birtwistle adapts Dowland's Seven Teares figured in Seven Pavanes and interweaves them with Dowland's songs. Early English music reinvigorated with modern British music.

The big premiere is The Corridor, a scena for soprano, tenor and six instruments. As Orpheus and Eurydice escape the Underworld, he looks back on her despite being warned not to do so, and he loses her forever. "I see the Corridor as a single moment from the Orpheus story magnified, like a photographic blow-up", says Birtwistle. Given his long standing fascination with primeval myth this should be interesting. Libretto is by David Harsent, who wrote The Minotaur and other important Birtwistle milestones, so expect limpid, lucid poetry in direct modern speech - extremely moving on its own terms. Mark Padmore and Elizabeth Atherton sing the lead roles. The London Sinfonietta, Britain's best modern music ensemble, will perform. VERY high profile indeed. Even if it's repeated in London, seeing it first at Aldeburgh is part of the experience, for it was here 41 years ago that Britten and Birtwistle met. Britten apparently wasn't impressed. But Birtwistle's come a long way since Punch and Judy. Perhaps Britten would now be pleased, for Birtwistle has developed and is now an Elder Statesman himself, undisputedly this country's foremost opera composer.

Next morning there's another Sinfonietta concert featuring bits of The Io Passion, and the 3 Settings of Celan - Claire Booth whom we hear everywhere and for good reason! Then Harrison's Clocks where Hideki Nagano plays the brilliant Birtwistle piece as part of an installation around the new buildings at Snape - very unusual. That same evening, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, with ensembles, will produce a "free thinking musical fantasy". Moto perpetuo movements from Beethoven and Bartok are interlaced with serene moments from Brahms and Messiaen. The finale is Ligeti. Aimard excels in imaginative juxtapositions like this - see the links on right for what he did last year at Aldeburgh with Bach and Kurtag. That's just the first weekend, 12th and 13th June.

The following week starts with a Britten song symposium, more performances of the Birtwistle operas, and some very interesting recitals including Christiane Oelze, (highly recommended!), Zimmermann, and Exaudi. Vladimir Jurowski conducts a chamber orchestra on Wednesday 15th - Gabrieli, Stravinsky and Birtwistle. The big concert on Friday night, 19th June, has George Benjamin conduct the BBCSO, in two premieres, Julian Anderson's Fantasias and Benjamin's Duet for Piano and Orchestra - with Aimard as soloist. Of course this will be broadcast, but the atmosphere at Snape is part of the fun, you want to "be" there.

Elliott Carter is the focus of the second week. In fact, he's planning to be there in person, scheduled to talk with Aimard, with whom he goes back decades. Carter's presence alone should make attendance compulsory, for he is an icon. He's closely connected to so many involved with this Festival, including Oliver Knussen who will be conducting the keynote Saturday night concert on Saturday 20th. This features yet another Carter premiere, On Conversing with Paradise, a song cycle to poems by Ezra Pound, for baritone and orchestra. This is rumoured to be powerful stuff. In recent years, Carter's style has distilled into intense zen-like depths, perhaps well suited to Pound's verse, which Carter has long loved.

This second week is the week to come for more Elliot Carter, Birtwistle and Thomas Adès chamber music. Ian Bostridge, Louis Lortie, Mark Padmore and Nicholas Daniel will appear in recital, too. The blockbuster concerts, though, will be the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, one of the hottest bands in Europe. This was founded by Claudio Abbado. Daniel Harding's been seminally involved since 1998. He's now principal conductor, but their first concert on 25th (Hadyn, Ligeti, Birtwistle) will be conducted by Susanna Mälkki, the charismatic conductor of Ensemble Intercontemporain. Aimard plays Birtwistle's Slow Frieze. Aimard conducts the second concert on 27th, another eclectic mix, Haydn, Stockhausen and Beethoven. Since the Mahler Chamber Orchestra is exceptionally good, and rarely heard in the UK, these are concerts that shouldn't be missed.

Then, on Sunday 28th, Masaaki Suzuki returns to conduct Bach's St Matthew's Passion. Suzuki's Bach is legendary. He's working with the Britten-Pears Orchestra. Its members are young, but enthusiastic. Britten and Pears would be thrilled.

Seats sell fast and accommodation gets hard to book, so check Aldeburgh Music sooner not later.