Risør at the Wigmore Hall Honneger Stravinsky

This weekend, the Risør Festival came to the Wigmore Hall, London. Sunday night's concert was the most intriguing because it showed the characteristic  Risør touch - eclectic repertoire, unusual ways of hearing familiar works, and above all, an unusally intelligent approach to programming. That's what you get when serious performers get together to play for each other. Please follow this link to read the review in Bachtrack (highly recommended listing site)

"Because Risør is a festival for musicians, it's adventurous.......
Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Not the ballet, but a version for keyboard here heard on two pianos with Leif Ove Andsnes and Marc-André Hamelin. The austerity concentrates the mind, focusing on the basic structure of the music......."

Ralf Wallin's Under City Skin "described as a way of hearing things on different levels, seeing archetypal myth beneath the grim reality of a cityscape. Hence the "footsteps", sounds that move forwards and backwards, from different angles. It's deliberately disorienting, especially at the Wigmore Hall where we're conditioned to hearing from only one dimension. The result is that there's a constant battle between what we recognize as conventional music and this strange disembodied counterpoint. It's a good way of shaking up auto pilot listening. Risør does counterpoint in the widest meaning of the term......"

"Arthur Honneger's Symphony no 2 for string orchestra and trumpet. Austere, spartan restraint, but also the clarity you get on a chill morning, when there's little background distraction. Yet Honneger contrasts the elegance with strange, wailing themes, "smeared" notes which counterbalance the formality. Is it an incantation, or a cry of anguish? Hearing Honneger after Stravinsky focuses the mind on the idea of ritual as means of placating fate and cosmic dangers. Significantly, Honneger was writing in 1940-1. The references to Bach confirm the idea of faith (of any type) in times of tribulation. Counterpoint again! In the third and last movement, Vivace non troppo - presto, a trumpet materializes in an archway, usually closed off, above the platform. Trumpets symbolize angels, of course, but musically this is powerfully effective. The strings aren't alone. Their chorale-like theme is reinforced by the deeper and more strident tones of the trumpet, playing in parallel".

Risør comes to the Wigmore Hall

Leif Ove Andsnes's innovative Risør Festival comes to the Wigmore Hall this week. It's very special because it's aimed at performers, playing for each other and sharing ideas. Everyone stays together in this small Norwegian coastal town, so people get to know each other closely, which adds to the  atmosphere - very conducive to good chamber music. Because it's a musicians' festival, the focus is on experiment - unusual repertoire, unusual ways of hearing the familiar. Risør's creative, and attracts the eclectic. Please read this account:  "Revolution in Risør"

Part of the Risør ambiance is Norwegian - clear, clean air, sea breezes, forests, remoteness, long evenings that don't get dark. That doesn't travel but at the Wigmore Hall this week, we'll get a chance to hear some of the music.

On Friday 26th, Leif Ove Andsnes presents a programme framed by Grieg's Violin Sonata No. 1 in F Op. 8 (presumably with Henning Kraggerud as soloist) and Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor Op. 25 (could be either Marc-André Hamelin or Andsnes himself). In between a series of songs - Wagner, Duparc, Liszt, Chausson. Measha Brueggergosman won second prize the year the Wigmore Hall Song Competition didn't award a first prize. She's developing well. She impressed as a sassy but smart Jenny Smith in the recent Barcelona Kurt Weill  Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. She's had recent major heart surgery and proudly bears the scars - good for her! Her stamina will improve,  and these songs will show her to advantage. She's specially good at sensual French chanson.

The concert on Saturday 27th sold out ages ago.  Look at the programme and see why. I'm going on Sundat 28th though, because the programme's more daring. Andsnes and Hamelin play The Rite of Spring? This is the two piano version!

Ralf Wallin's Under City Skin is completely new to me, but my friend Douglas Cooksey wrote "Conjuring up the frenetic sounds of a day in the life of a city from the sinister and dangerous sounds of running high heels in the early morning to the stress of the rush-hour, there was an impressive energy culminating in a downward ride in a skyscraper lift, almost a ride to the abyss; unfortunately,Wallin seemed reluctant to quit whilst he was ahead, rounding off the piece with a tediously soporific slow section which dissipated all the tensions previously generated. Like Satie's mischievous comment about Debussy's La mer when he commented that he liked the bit at quarter-to-eleven in the opening movement ('Dawn to Midday on the Sea'), Wallin should have stopped when we got off the lift!"

Arthur Honneger's Second Symphony, and Alban Berg  4 Pieces for clarinet and piano Op. 5 too! And if that's not enough, there's an 1130 Sunday morning concert too.

Revolution in Risor - Norway

Twenty years ago, Leif Ove Andsnes and friends founded the Risør Festival as a kind of summer camp for chamber musicians, where they could come together in a quiet Norwegian coastal town and make music for their own pleasure. Many concerts take place in an 18th century stave church in the Norwegian style. Because it's a musician's festival, it attracts performers like Heinrich Schiff, Ilya Gringolts, Severin von Eckardstein, Truls Mørk, Christianne Stotjin and others. A few years ago Ian Bostridge went, delighted by the congenial atmosphere where musicians engaged with each other's genres.

Douglas Cooksey is a regular. Read his report on Risør 2009 HERE. It's a beautiful piece of writing - enjoy ! This year's theme, of a sort, is revolution, featuring lots of Beethoven, Shostakovich and Schoenberg, each revolutionary in his own way. "Risør is nothing if not eclectic", says Cooksey. So among the Bach, Schubert and Beethoven, there are three new works by Ralf Wallin, and something called "Pictures reframed" where Andsnes plays Mussorgsky's Pictures from an Exhibition in a fish factory with visual images screened behind him. This is due to tour in London, Berlin and the US. Says Douglas: "It will be controversial".

"Similarly controversial although oddly memorable was Reinbert de Leeuw's extraordinary re-imagining of Schubert and Schumann's most famous song-cycles with orchestral accompaniment. Schubert and Schumann it certainly was not, and Barbara Sukowa has no voice to speak of, frequently resorting to parlando … but it was mesmerising theatre nonetheless and somehow completely true to the extreme spirit of the Romantic Era, capturing its joys and pains.

With Sukowa visually acting out every song as she wandered through the audience, it was all gloriously over the top and at certain moments – 'Meerestille' lingers in the mind like one of those magical Dutch marine paintings by de Cuyp where the sailing ships hang motionless on a glassy sea – it was also deeply affecting. 'Heidenroslein' too, ending in a shriek, retold the true story of the original song – it is about a rape – far more effectively than those coy renderings to which it is often treated by famous singers."

Anyway, read the whole article (link above), and visit the Risør website HERE
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