Barbican Boulez Pintscher Ensemble Intercontemporain

A quick glance at this stage - what else but Pierre Boulez sur Incises, with Ensemble Intercontemporain, the orchestra he founded, and Matthias Pintscher, at the Barbican Hall, London, 28tth April 2015, part of the continuing Barbican Boulez at 90 celebrations.  This photo (courtesy Ensemble Intercontemporain) shows the symmetry that underpins so much of Boulez's work.  From strong structural foundations, the music bursts forth arising, ever fresh and organic. That's why Boulez rewrites and revises: ideas don't evaporate with the last stroke of the pen, but grow and proliferate.  Uncreative folk will never understand ! This concert also showed how Boulez's creative thrust continues to thrive, inspiring younger composers. Boulez's legacy lies in Ensemble Intercontemporain, through IRCAM,  through the new Philharmonie de Paris and through the many artists who've absorbed  the spirit of his music.

But first, Claude Debussy, to whom Boulez has paid so much hommage. Sophie Cherrier was the soloist in Syrinx (1913), a particular Boulez favourite.. It's exquisite,  the plaintive, seductive sounds of the flute rising from silence, as if probing and searching the universe. High, delicate Pan-pipes,  yet strong and confident. It felt as though we were in the Garden of Eden, before the fall.  This miniature segued into Boulez's Mémoriale (....explosante-fixe...Originel). From a simple basic sequence of notes, the piece grows in the interaction between flautist and small ensemble.

Yann Robin's Asymétriades (2014), premiered last year by Ensemble Intercontemporain, continued the concept of explosion. There isn't much in the repertoire that showcases the double bass to this extent. Nicolas Crosse demonstrated a dazzling array of bowings, fingerings and other techniques so spectacular that the sheer audacity of his playing mesmerized.  Virtuoso pieces like this can sometimes overwhelm the rest of the music ( I'm thinking of Unsuk Chin's Cello Concerto)  but there's so much energy and inventiveness in Asymétriades that it could stand on its own merits as an invigorating, joyous jaunt. Serious music could do with more good humour!

The first chords of Matthias Pintscher's Choc (Monumento IV)  evoked Boulez so strongly that perhaps this early work, written when Pinstcher was 25, was chosen as a memorial to Boulez, While Robin's Asymétriades rushes along like a cheerful, madcap romp, Pintscher's Choc contrasts shock with sudden, tense breaks, to make listeners listen. 

Highlight of the evening, though, was Boulez sur Incises. Ensemble Intercontemporain was founded by Boulez to specialize in new music, so they have the idiom as second nature.  This was easily the best performance of anything so far in this current Boulez series - sharp, vivid, no falling off or smoothing out (unlike Fischer's  Pli selon Pli with the BBC SO, reviewed here) From this basic formal structure - three harps, three pianos, three percussion parts create elaborate maze-like patterns that proliferate, fragment and reconstitute.  The percussion parts include marimba, vibraphone, tubular bells and glockenspeil, so the soundscape is luminous,  shimmering with light and perpetual motion. As always, Paul Griffiths puts things like a poet. "The effect is of a piano hurtling through a hall of mirrors which copy oir distort its sound. Or perhsps it is a maze of mirrors, since every so often the tumult comes to an end, the tempo slows, and the fast figurations fall apart again, only for the music, after a while, to speed off again in another direction".

Barbican 2014-15 (2) BBCSO plus

There's hope for classical music in London!  The Barbican 2014-2015 season is a lot stronger than it looks at first glance. It's a relief to get away from gimmicks and back to "own curated" series created by musicians rather than marketing men.

To prove the point, the Barbican is hosting a traverse of Carl Nielsen's symphonies, where Sakari Oramo will be conducting the BBCSO.  Starting on 11/10, (running til May)  the Nielsen series complements Rattle's Sibelius series with the Berliner Philharmoniker which runs from 10-12 February 2015. That's inspired programming ! It will be interesting to compare and contrast two of the greatest Scandinavian composers, performed by two of the best bands and conductors in the genre.

The BBCSO is perhaps the backbone of the Barbican because its resources are so big that it can draw on a wide range of conductors and specialities and forms. Plenty of mainstream concerts ahead, spiced up, in BBC tradition, with excursions into new-ish music.  They're doing a John Tavener Total Immersion on 8/10 supplemented with extra concerts by the Britten Sinfonia and the BBC Singers.

Even more important (and more my thing) is the Boulez at 90 on 21 March 2015. Hopefully Boulez will be present, but even if he's not, this will be not to be missed under any circumstances, since François-Xavier Roth is conducting Pli selon Pli, Notation I-IV and VII, Éclat/Multiples and Piano Sonata no 2. Roth is a quirky but very original conductor. I've not heard him do Boulez before but I think we can count on him. Read my account of  Pli selon Pli with Boulez, Hannigan and Ensemble Intercontemporain when they did it in October 2011, which may have beeen Boulez's last concert before his illness. Then on 28/4/15 Ensemble Intercontemporain themselves come to the Barbican conducted by Matthias Pinscher, doing Sur incises, Mémoriale, a Pintscher piece and a Boulez favourite, Debussy Syrinx. Unmissable. Barbara Hannigan is singing two concerts with the Britten Sinfonia on 6 and 7 May.

Wolfgang Rihm was the subject of a Total Immersion a few years ago (read more on this site)  Now he gets a second Total Immersion, based around the UK premiere of his Tutuguri on 31/1. Kent Nagano makes a rare UK appearance conducting the BBCSO which alone will be a draw. Hopefully, Rihm himself will be at the talks, because he's a character.
 
The BBC Singers are another of the assets that come with the BBC's association with the Barbican. This year, they're giving even more concerts than usual and some very challenging programmes too, including a keynote James MacMillan concert on 12/2/15, part of the year-long MacMillan series which also features the Britten Sinfonia. Even  more adventurously, they'll be singing Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland on 8/3/15 in a Netia Jones video semi staging.I thought the original Munich straging (with the big eyeballs) was by far the best part of the opera, so who kmows? We might be lucky if the edition performed is the one by Lloyd Moore, first heard in Santa Fe; the thing with new music is that things take time to settle. For every Barry, Dean or Muhly who gets big money backing there must be many others writing good music that we don't get to hear. But the business has always been this way: it's nothing new.

Joyce DiDonato, Mathias Goerne and Ian Bostridge ensure that  vocal music will be well served this year. I'm also booking quicksmart for Smetana's Dalibor on 2nd May 2015. This was once a huge hit, conducted by Mahler, no less. Jirí Belohlávek returns to the BBCSO with his loyal Prague singers.  Belohlávek brought so much Czech repertoire to Britain that it was a dark day for true music lovers when he quit. Pretty boy pianists are a dime a dozen, but there are very few truly specialist conductors with such a passionate and idiomatic feel for unusual repertoire.

Tomorrow, I'll write about the Barbican's Early Music and Baroque plans for 2014-2015 and the Academy of Ancient Music. Please come back, because the Barbican is proving to be London's greatest centre for this repertoire.

Also see an overview of the Barbican 2014-15 season with an emphasis on the LSO and international orchestras

And a guide to the Barbican's Blockbuster Baroque season coming up

Hérodiade Fragmente - Matthias Pintscher Prom

Matthias Pintscher was born only in 1971 but his music has already made waves. Boulez conducted his Osiris this May in London and Boulez  doesn't conduct things that aren't worth doing. Hérodiade Fragmente was premiered by Abbado in Berlin in 1999 with Christine Schafer : not minor league ! Of all the "new" music in this year's Prom season this was easily the most intriguing - listen to the re-broadcast.

The text is to Mallarmé's epic poem, a fin de siècle drama of sexual repression and undefinable longings. "J'attends un chose inconnue" sings the soprano. Pintscher leaves the line unadorned, the voice alone and unsupported. It's the still, silent heart of the piece. Read the whole poem to get the full context. Hérodiade is a girl surrounded by sensual excess, which fascinates and repels her. Pintscher focuses solely on her dialogue with the mirror, intensifying the surreal mood. The vocal line is sensual, lovely sighing vowels, but emotions are cut off in sudden cries, their import too much for the girl to handle. But the mirror doesn't shirk. Pintscher's orchestral writing is superb. The mirror takes on a powerful life of its own, commenting and reflecting what words can't express. The strings shimmer, dense and opaque, a smooth hard surface that reflects without relenting. It seems still, and calm. But then the music shatters into jagged, angular staccato. Glass is fragile, it can break into lethal shards. Pintscher also writes eerie circular figures, like the sounds of wet fingers rubbing on glass. It's spooky yet childlike, reminding us how young the girl is. Eschenbach gets wonderfully subdued playing from the Orchestre de Paris - long, barely audible humming, even from the brass, which is quite a feat. This captures the suppressed emotion in the poem, feelings so painful they can only be whispered at. It's beautiful, yet sinister. As the girl's "froides pierreries" drop away in "les sanglots supremes et meurtris", the music explodes in wounded sobs, the percussion ringing bells that could either be celebration or calls of alarm.

Mallarmé knew he was entering dangerous new territory with this poem. He needed symbols that were oblique, to "paint , not the thing itself but the effect it produces". So Pintscher's music profoundly reflects the spirit of the poem - like a mirror, quiet but unflinching.

Review of Mahler 1 will follow shortly, watch this space.