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.  

Wilhelm Killmayer, visionary, in memoriam

Wilhelm Killmayer died this week, just one day short of his 90th birthday.  Killmayer was utterly unique, even among the many inventive minds in music over the last 60 years.  Killmayer was deeply immersed in European culture, re-examining its soul and creating anew. Listening to Killmayer is like visiting a sanctuary, where the ur-sources of creativity flow pure and clean, endlessly refreshing the artistic imagination.  Think on that idea of an eternally clear fountain, springing from great depths, sparkling in the sunlight.  It captures the spirit of Killmayer's music.  "All that white!" a pianist once exclaimed, looking at a score. 

But as Killmayer said, "Silence liberates us.  It helps us to listen to
ourselves. Music can make us forget ourselves. It can also make us
become aware of ourselves."  

That's a very zen concept. In Chinese painting, blank spaces are an essential part of composition because they balance literal with imponderable, letting the viewers exercise their minds.  Killmayer's music is luminous,  transparent. and incredibly

beautiful.  It's radical because it's both challenging and intuitive, activating mind and soul.  Killmayer connects to the idealism of Ancient Greece, or rather the German Romantic  reinvention thereof. One of his heroes was Friedrich Hölderlin,  the poet and thinker who crossed boundaries to the extent that he ended up incarcerated at Tübingen in a tower that had been part of the medieval city wall,. He'd sit singing to the moon and writing poems so odd and so spartan that many thought him mad.  Yet Hölderlin's late period has perhaps been even more influential in the 20th century. Perhaps, in his isolation, that 19th century mystic speaks for the modern soul.  

Killmayer's two cycles, the Hölderlin-Lieder, (1986 and 1988) are an extraordinary achievement.  Like Hölderlin's fragments, the songs begin and end as if materializing out of the ether.  Some are little more than disconncted phrases or passages of prose which don't make logical sense though their poetic import feels profound.   Strange harmonies, extremely high, taxing tessitura, delicate matching of voice, solo instruments (flutes and piano) and string lines that stretch into space.  Lots of silence, when the music seems to hover unheard except in the mind of the poet. As he listens, we listen too, blanking out the detritus of mindless noise that is normal life.    

All this variety, lit by an immaculate but unworldy, unnatural glow,  The word "Greichenland",  for example, suddenly bursting forth, sung with exquisite rapture.  For as Hölderlin glimpses an unattainable, ideal vision beyond reality, we too can ponder a world beyond.  Killmayer's Hölderlin-Lieder are, to me, one of the truly great masterpieces of the 20th century, which is saying something, given that there was so much music then that it's still hard to process.  I turn to the Hölderlin-Lieder whenever I need to clear my head of muzak and refocus.  "Sonnenschien !" "Wahrheit".  And gosh, it's beautiful, once you get into its magical vibe.  Kind of like being in Ancient Greece with a solitary shepherd and his lute.  Or flute). So what if Killmayer isn't populist mass market ? Like  Hölderlin, Heine and Goethe, significant artists and intellectuals are often way ahead of their time.  

"A single note is very precious for me - like a crystal or a flower" . (Wilhelm Killmayer)

Wilhelm Killmayer was born in Munich and trained with Carl Orff.  His ideas on magical realism may or may not have come from Orff , though probably they were in Killmayer all along. Killmayer was also a man of the theatre, working with the Munich and Frankfurt opera and ballet houses.  Hence Yolimba, one of his greatest hits. Most of his work, however, is orchestral and chamber music, and for me, his art song to German poets.  So much to choose from ! A long and rewarding journey.  Killmayer's influence is substantial.  Wolfgang Rihm is his highest profile admirer, but there are many. But perhaps what I love most about Killmayer is his humanity. His work is informed by warmth and gentle humour, values not sufficiently respected in this age where might means right.   Orphaned at the age of six, at 66 Killmayer became the father of twins.  A lifestyle change if ever there was!  Killmayer took to the experience with characteristic goodwill. "I need to write more, now", he apparently joked.  Fortunately, he left us with a solid body of work to cherish and explore, though more of it should be recorded.  

Die Sonne glänzt, es blühen die Gefilde,
Die Tage kommen blütenreich und milde, 

Der Abend blüht hinzu, und helle Tage gehen
Vom Himmel abwärts, wo die Tag entstehen. 
 Das Jahr erscheint mit Zeiten
Wie eine Pracht, wo Feste sich verbreiten,

Der Menschen Tätigkeit beginnt
mit neuem Ziele,
So sind die Zeichen in der Welt,
der Wunder viele.
 
Friedrich Hölderlin , first song in Killmayer's Hölderlin-Lieder

Nightscape with Dog : Knussen, Reinbert de Leeuw

In Prom 26, Oliver Knussen conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Reinbert de Leeuw and Brahms. Knussen was a teenager when he first met de Leeuw. They have much in common, both specialists in contemporary music, extraordinarily good interpreters of other composers' work, to the extent that they themselves have had to put writing on the backburner. Both have also headed the Aldeburgh Festival. But as we know, when Knussen writes, he writes so well that he creates remarkable work. So news of Reinbert de Leeuw's biggest work in many years was eagerly anticipated.

Reinbert De Leeuw Der nächtliche Wanderer  is based on a poem by Friedrich Holderlin  It's very different to the poet's earlier, elegaic visions of idealized Classical Antiquity, but heroic nonetheless in its intensity and depth. It's worth quoting in its entirety since like most of his poetry the meaning and syntax are so intense that they are almost impossible to translate.

Hu! der Kauz! wie er heult,
Wie sein Furchtgeschrei krächt.
Erwürgen - ha! du hungerst nach erwürgtem Aas,
Du naher Würger, komme, komme.

Sieh! er lauscht, schnaubend Tod -
Ringsum schnarchet der Hauf,
Des Mordes Hauf, er hörts, er hörts, im Traume hört' ers,
Ich irre, Würger, schlafe, schlafe.

( Huuu, howls an owl, whose terrifying screams, strangle and squeeze the life from Ajax, the the hero in Greek mythology.  And nearby circles the Shrike, another nocturnal bird of prey.  Notice the syntax, umlaut u's one after another, as if the speaker is choking.  Yet "Komme, Komme" Maybe the poet sunconsciously wills it? See! He (Death) laughs, sneering, encircling the snorting heap (ie the body). As the heap is murdered it hears, it hears, in a dream hears. I go mad. Shrike, sleep, sleep.   It's not, I think a poem about insomnia or a grimmer Der Wanderer an den Mond,  but a gruesome mix of death and insanity. Again, notice the syntax and relentless repetitions. )

De Leeuw Der nächtliche Wanderer begins with the sound of a dog, barking in the distance : a warning.  From a background of low, rumbling sounds, a viola emerges, tentatively probing its way. As the chords stretch, they're illuminated by flashes of sparkling light.  A sense of circular movement yet also of stillness. Muffled drums beat and the large string section creates an elliptical swirl of sound.  Small quiet sounds, deliberately elusive, contrasting with the broad sweep in the strings and rising, angular figures in the brass, themselves interrupted by clicking sounds. In this dream, how the sounds are made is less material than what we might think they are.   Tension mounts. Bells call out, tolling with hollow hardness. 

Whirling, rushing figures, then silence broken by dull thuds.  This quiet interlude is surprisingly beautiful, suggesting not just the moon but the infinite darkness beyond. This time, the viola emerges  playing a kind of melody which I found poetic and very moving.  This time the melody continues, its tessitura rising higher and higher til it suddenly breaks over, hovering in a sense beyond our ears.  Then, from the quietness, flashes emerge and oscillating figures. Do we hear distant trumpets playing in cacophony?  The BBC SO play with deftly defined detail so the different directions in the score aren't muffled into mush. Frantic tumult: a panic attack in music, yet deftly, carefully orchestrated and performed.  

Cymbals crash: are we in the the throes of a death struggle ? Distorted moans from the strings.  More thoughtful contemplation, from which a disembodied man's voice emerges, whispering the text of the poem  The orchestra surges to life, sprightly dancing figures and animated swirls of sound, woodblocks and searching chords. This time, though, the mood is more confident. When the bells ring this time they sound present and bright, and the woodwinds play a passage that reminded me of the viola melody., especially when joined by the strings evoking the passage with rising tessitura.  Perhaps De Leeuw's wanderer has woken, wiser? 

De Leeuw's  Der nächtliche Wanderer reminds me of Der Leiermann in Winterreise,which heralds change, but one which is elusively equivocal. Der nächtliche Wanderer is intruguing because it's so evocative and repays thoughtful listening. . 

Preceding De Leeuw, Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat, Op.83 with Peter Serkin, another Knussen buddy. Another big beast, and nicely done. When Knussen first met de Leeuw, Knussen looked like the young Debussy. Now he resembles Brahms. But this Prom will remain in the memory for De Leeuw and his Der nächtliche Wanderer.