Visionary Stockhausen Donnerstag : Royal Festival Hall

Event of the Year - Karlheinz Stockhausen Donnerstag, at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Sinfonietta  (Maxime Pascal conductor) fully staged by Le Balcon. Those lucky enough to have been there will never forget !  Stockausen is so visionary that it's almost impossible to constrain his work. Hence the importance of approaching it as sensory experience, so it operates on the mind and imagination. In Stockhausen's Licht ideas of Music as Light and Enlightenment are presented as mega saga, shaped in the context of cosmic struggle.  Donnerstag was the first opera written in the series, so it's an ideal introduction to the saga and to Stockhausen's work as a whole.  There's no need to grasp it in its entirety : listeners are participants in a continuing creative process. To be human, as Stockhausen implies, is to be sensitive and open minded.  

Donnerstag starts even  before the audience enter the concert hall  A small ensemble play a "Greeting", a prelude that will be matched by an epilogue at the end.  The First Act, "Michael's Jugend" is relatively straightforward, by Stockhausen standards, and loosely autobiographical.  Even as a child, Michael is confronted by polar opposites, a loving mother who may be insane and a brutish father who can't comprehend.  In miniature, the cosmic battle that is to come. Each character is muliplied, to develop different  facets of the avatar.  Michael himself is potrayed in several guises : as a boy who moves but does not speak, as a trumpeter (Henri Deléger)  and two different tenors, Hubert Mayer and Safir Behloul.  The mother Eve is shadowed by a trio, Iris Zerdoud (basset horn), with Elise Chauvin (soprano) and Suzanne Meyer (dancer). Michael's identification with his mother connects to his sexual awakening and thus to his creative birth as an artist.  Negqtive forces are represented through Luzifer (Damien Pass, bass, Mathieu Adam, trombone, and Jamil Attar, dancer).

This multiplication of roles also extends to the orchestra. The London Sinfonietta, conducted by Maxime Pascal, is augmented by the Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble. Even more radically,  physical instruments are shadowed by the invisible" that is the sound desk, projecting sounds that bounce and resonate to fit the dimensions of the performance space,  "organic" sounds seemlessly blending with computer generated technology. The music on stage and from the sound desk  (Florent Derex, Augustin Muller) is further developed through video design (Yann Chapotel) and atmospheric lighting (Christophe Naillet)., and even more by the  staging by Benjamin Lazar.   
Lazar’s staging  is very perceptive, amplifying the meaning in the score. Stockhausen's fascination with patterns, codes and the symbolism of numbers is not accidental. Runes exist in all cultures, on this planet and perhaps in places beyond our comprehension.  Runes are a means of expressing  the unexpressable.  The detail in this staging by Le Balcon is not accidental, either. Dancers, singers and musicians move in stylized patterns,  emphasizing connections, evoking mysterious ritual.  At first Michael's voice is the tenor ( Hubert Mayer), but as his identty develops,  his musical avatar, Michael-as-Trumpet takes over. The part is huge and demanding, but Henri Deléger holds the whole opera together, from beginning to end : a true virtuoso performance, full of depth and intensity.   The trumpet, too, is shadowed, paired with basset horn and clarinet, each well defined : both of them are Woodbirds to the trumpet, leading it, like Siegfried, on a journey of self discovery.  These three instruments joyously interact,  reinforcing the concept that positive relationships are inherently creative. 

In contrast, the Trombone (Mathieu Adam) represents negativity and repression.  Stockhausen grew up during the Third Reich and knew how destructive authoitarianism could be. If he was often obsessive in his own life, it was more a matter of focusing things in his own mind than forcing them on others.  The trombone is Luzifer's signifier, surrounded by a gang of bassoons, contrabass and other winds.  Gang members don't question. But what to make of the tuba, with an even deeper range ? At first the tuba supports the trombone as it duels with the trumpet, but it's placed centre stage, by the piano, gradually moderating until it supports the trumpet.  While "Michael's Journey Around the World" is colourful (Balinese bells, African drums)  the second half of the Second Act is much more rewarding musically because the instruments tell the story on their own.  The physical world "outside" pales into comparison with the inner world of creative relationships.  Michael and Mondeva  (trumpet and basset horn) dialogue in harmony.

This sets the stage for the critical third Act, "Michael's Heimkehr". As a child the young Micheal guessed where his identity might lie.  In word games on his name he sang "Mich-a-hell", "hell" meaning "brightness" in German.  The three Eves return, representing not the Three Graces so much as the embodiment of light and growth. The  "Young" Michael the dancer's hand gestures suggest upward growth, rustic diagrams of trees being projected on the screen behind.  The singers are no longer alone. Members of the New London Chamber Choir, file into the auditorium, supplemented by more singers in the upper balcony.  Voices fill the performance space. Even when they exhale wordlessly, they represent humanity.  Luzifer had been the highest of angels but rebelled when God chose to be recreated in man.  God punished him by imprisoning him in hell (in the English sense of the word), the bowels of the earth, where he lurks, waiting to cause trouble.  suddenly the calm on stage is shattered by violent tumult.  The trombone blares and a grovelling figure crawls in, his head hidden by a globe, which may reference Michael's travels, but more pointedly refers to the struggle between God and Luzifer over mankind.  Michael as trumpeter does battle with Luzifer as trombone and Luzifer retreats, enraged.  

In the last scene, "Vision", the three Michaels (tenor, dancer and trumpeter) materialize, as a Trinity.  They are surrounded only by light, symbolizing the ideals of creative truth.  Donnerstag doesn't end there, though. Just as the "Greeting" at the beginning was a prologue, the Epilogue"Donnerstags-Abschied"  takes place outside, with five trumpeters playing in unison in the open air, in this case the fifth floor balcony of the Royal Festival Hall, looking out over the Thames and onto a night sky with moon (Mond-Eva) and stars.  The London Sinfonietta have had their ups and downs, but in Donnerstag they were in their true element. Stockhausen is, and should be, a London Sinfonietta thing : audiences can rise to the occasion if they're given something as good as this to engage with.  Exceptional solo playing, and solo singing too : Deléger and Adam, with Safir Behloul (wise Michael) and Damien Pass (Luzifer) utterly impressive.  
Lots more on this site re Stockhausen and the London Sinfonietta

Stockhausen Cosmic Prophet at the South Bank 2019

Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Stockhausen Klavierstück XI with Hr-synphonieorchester Frankfurt in 2016

Please read my review of Donnerstag HERE  Stockhausen Cosmic Prophet, a new Stockhausen series at the South Bank, London, scene of so many great Stockhausen events over the years. This one's special.  (Please click on my label "Stockhausen" below and right for more).  The big highlight is  Donnerstag aus Licht the first UK staging since 1985 of Stockhausen's fourth opera in his Licht saga.  Maxime Pascal conducts the London Sinfonietta, staged with light, computer music design and video.  Stockhausen needs to be experienced live for full impact, to achieve his visionary ideals. His is music that's more than music, but conceptual art that provokes and stretches boundaries.  All round surround sound event, even in the constraints of the Royal Festival Hall.  Some seats still available.
On the weekend of 1st and 2nd June, Stockhausen In Depth, two full days of performances supplemented by talks and workshops.  On Saturday night, in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Pierre-Laurent Aimard does Klavierstück I; Klavierstück II; Klavierstück III; Klavierstück IV; Klavierstück V; Klavierstück VI; Klavierstück VII; Klavierstück VIII; Klavierstück IX; Klavierstück X; Klavierstück XI and Kontakte for electronic sounds, piano, percussion. Aimard is a brilliant Stockhausen pianist, so this should be a must. Aimard will be joined by percussionist Dirk Rothburst of Ensemble musicFabrik, with sound design by Mark Stroppa, the composer and former head of music research at IRCAM.  Stick around too for the late night performance of Stimmung with the London Voices.
On Sunday 2nd June at 2.30, Apartment House do Für kommende Zeiten (For Times to Come) "intuitive music", which grows from interaction between performers. Even more stellar (deliberate pun for the Man from Sirius, Zyklus for percussion; Mantra for 2 pianos with 12 antique cymbals, woodblock & 2 ring modulators (and shortwave radio/tape) where Pierre-Laurent Aimard is joined by Tamara Stefanovich and Dirk Rothbrust percussion and Marco Stroppa sound design
Earlier this week, Marc Bridle was at the Royal Festival Hall for Actress x Stockhausen Sin {x} II, Actress being Darren Cunningham, a new work that takes its cue from Stockhausen's Welt-Parlament, the first scene from Stockhausen's Mittwoch, the third opera in the Licht saga.   Please read Marc's well-informed analysis of the new work, discussed in the context of Stockhausen's Cosmic Pulses and Mittwoch, as it was staged in Birmingham a few years back. (More on both pieces on this site, too) . Please read Marc's review in full, HERE In Opera Today

Stockhausen Tierkreis Trans, London Sinfonietta, RFH

Stockhausen Trans from the 1973 film "Trans ,...und so weiter"

 Stockhausen Trans and Tierkreis (Zodiac) with the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Pascal Rophé. at the Royal Festival Hall, Wednesday.  Stockhausen is important because he reminds us what music might be. Throughout human history, music has always served an extra-musical function.  Stockhausen's creations are "total experience" on many levels.  Trans came to Stockhausen in a dream, full of portent, its meaning elusive.  Behind a curtain of gauze, the orchestra sits, facing the audience. They don't interact with each other or with the conductor, but reflect the audience mirror image.

The seating plan is significant, too - the musicians are lined up in rows, double basses at each end, in symmetry.  The vaguely grid arrangement develops diagonal patterns when the bows of violins are dragged as slowly as possible, the players’ arms held as rigidly as possible. It's as if the players are suspended in time, operating like machines calibrated by some invisible metronome.  What sounds do we hear ? The drone of bows, repetitive click clacks of percussion, a strange drone-like pulse. Perhaps we're in some infernal mechanism. One recurrent theme, the  movement of pods, similar to the shuttles in weaving loom.  The shuttles move in fixed formation, arranging disparate threads to form fabric, which can then again be transformed into other objects. The shuttles don't change, ever, but what they produce keeps changing. This idea of inanimate forces surfaces again in the image of a toy, a wooden drummer-boy. He clearly isn't real to us, but to children, he's an object of wonder.   Stockhausen's sounds hypnotize, freeing the mind from analysis. To "get" Stockhausen, it helps to think like a child, questioning, without rigid preconception.

Snippets of Ravel, Stravinsky and Schumann are woven into the piece, too, as familiar points of reference which disappear before they can quite be grasped. At various points individual musicians are drawn out of the mass : a trumpeter climbing a ladder in the background (the only visible non-string player), violinists who stand up and play weird disharmonies, and most memorably a music stand that’s wheeled on stage, causing a cellist to suddenly break ranks and play what’s on the stand. As the stand is removed, he tries to follow it to keep playing, When it’s gone he sinks back into the mass.  “All that rigid conformity, yet the unruly individual can’t be repressed !” said my ever perceptive companion in 2008.  Indeed, what the strings are playing are unnaturally slow extended figures, their functions seems almost more ritualistic than musical. The music wavers vertiginously : the musicians heads flop from side to side. They are automatons, collapsing like a pack of cards ! Suddenly all sound is sucked into nothingness, and the players are caught freeze frame for so long the wait itself becomes unsettling.

Trans is theatre, and surreal theatre at that. It is also concert and anti-concert.  The players are working "in concert" but the concert isn't what they do but how we in the outside perceive what they're doing. "Trans", as in transition, transference, etc. Stockhausen's conundrums are part of the total experience. Block out the mental puzzles and miss the point.  I don't know if the London Sinfonietta will be doing Trans twice in succession, as Stockhausen wished.   By now, we're used to his oddball quirks,  to get it first time round, but the idea of two Trans together reiterates the idea of things happening in interlocking patterns.   The first time I experienced Trans, it was done twice with Harmonien, also done twice. Half the audience ran out ! But the joke was on them. It's supposed to be mind bending.    Please read more here. 

The first time I heard Tierkreis (Zodiac), I hated it and groaned when Oliver Knussen gleefully turned to the audience and said "Let's hear it all over again !"  I still don't like Tierkreis because it's too obvious. Each sign is described in fairly straightforward form. Taurus, for example, roars like a bull.  But many people like Tierkreis for that very reason - it’s hilariously funny ! No surprise it's an Ollie favourite.  Enjoy !

Stockhausen blasts Barbican ! Cosmic Pulses, Stimmung

Ed Chang's brilliant GIF on Stockhausen's drawings for Cosmic Pulses (For link, read below). 

Stockhausen lives again !  Cosmic Pulses and Stimmung at the Barbican Hall, London. Two pieces which need to be experienced live for maximum impact; and what an impact they made at the Barbican Hall !  Cosmic Pulses reaches outward : the performance space becomes an instrument to be played by sound waves. Stimmung reaches inwards : like incantation, the sounds release inner space.  Programming them together isn't easy and I had wondered what might happen.  But the Barbican rose to the challenge. Thrilling experiences !


Stimmung, conceived during the Summer of Love, 1968, deals with the concept of "coming together". The word "Stimmung" means convergence, the concept of disparate forces being drawn together.. Attunement through tuning forks !  Harmony is achieved through a process of distillation,  a series of 51 segments or "models" which can be arranged in different ways and like throwing dice, the sequence can fall in many ways. Within each segment there are some fixed points but also much room for choices made in the course of performance. This isn’t straightforwardly notated music by any means: Stockhausen gives basic templates, but within them, there’s great freedom of invention and the onus remains with the performers, whose artistic responses “create” the piece anew each time. Yet, personal as the artists' choices may be, the ultimate goal of Stimmung is to rise above ego, and seek a kind of transcendence through interaction.   Stockhausen specifies that the singers sit in a circle around a glowing globe that emits light, providing symbolic focus.   The singers sit on soft mats, wearing loose clothing, so their bodies relax : meta-yoga, where physical and mental flexibility go together. The segments create a formal patterns, which Stockhausen, in his meticulous way, specified in great detail.  Yet within the formula, there's improvisation. The lead singer leads, but listens, and sound passes from singer to singer.

Is Stimmung ritual magic ?  The names of deities surface quite clearly above the hubbub.  The atmosphere is reverential: perhaps the electronic sound effects represent some invisible spirit.  Years ago, I heard Singcircle do Stimmung  at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building in Oxford.  The performing space is small and cosy,  and the roof rises upwards like a steeple. Not unlike a wigwam.  As the singers did their thing I thought of Native American rituals, where people cleanse themselves spiritually by sitting together in claustrophobic smokehouses, seeking wisdom through meditation.  The singers on this occasion were Gregory Rose (director), Jacqueline Barron, Zoë Freedman, Heather Cairncross, Guy Elliott and Angus Smith.


Cosmic Pulses is the 13th of the planned 24 hours in Klang, Stockhausen’s visionary epic.  It's not opera, but definitely a theatrical experience.  Please read more about it and on Stockhausen on Ed Chang's website : Stockhausen - Sounds in Space.  Stockhausen's elaborate diagrams for Cosmic Pulses  are almost obsessively detailed but in practice, the specifications adapt to improvisation, depending on the physical qualities of the performance space.  No performance can ever be the same. 


I first heard Cosmic Pulses in 2008, soon after it was completed in the most extravagant performance space of all, the Royal Albert Hall.  There, in a cavern that seats 6000, with a huge dome, Cosmic Pulses had room to grow.  Massive light beams flying across the arena, whorls of colour and light thrown long distances and bouncing back. At the RAH surface aren't flat, but curved and ornate, thus refracting sound even further, dispersing it and forming new, complex patterns.  The Barbican Hall, being much smaller and shoebox shaped, doesn't offer such complexities, but the impact was powerful, concentrated in a relatively small place.  Again, patterns in sound. Long, direct explosions, spiralling emanations, waves that expanded and shrank. The show was thrilling - light sabres and swirly whorls.   But I kept hearing more than the visuals showed.Traceries of broken fragments  for example, bursting like machine gun fire: Towards the end these appeared in lines of dot and dash.  With Kathinka Pasveer doing the Sound Projection we had a wonderful ride. But what might Stockhausen have achieved had he more fully embraced computer aided design ?


 Please read my other pieces on Stockhausen.

Stockhausen lives ! Barbican Cosmic Pulses

KarlHeinz Stockhausen lives !  For my review of Stimmung and Cosmic Pulses please read here. Two major Stockhausen events coming up. Cosmic Pulses and Stimmung at the Barbican on 20/11 and Trans and Tierkreis with the London Sinfonietta (Pascal Rophé) at the Royal Festival Hall on 6/12.  
Stockhausen needs to be heard live . His music was created to be experienced through all senses, each performances unique to the place in which it is re-enacted.  That's why Stockhausen Verlag CD's cost a fortune !  Fools they be who think he can be possessed like a consumer product.  Performances are created anew each time,  for whatever performance space in which it is re-enacted. Re-enactment, because a Stiockhausen event is a kind of group ritual  in which everyone participates, using their minds. Conceptually, Stockhausen means more than ever now, in a era when technology expands consciousness. It is not Stockhausen who is an anomaly, but the idea that music must be trapped on plastic in fixed formats. That's an aberration of the recording era.  Stockhausen reminds us that in all cultures, at all times, the message means more than the medium. 
In Cosmic Pulses, Stockhausen dispenses altogether with the idea of orchestra as fixed entity.  The performance space itself becomes "the instrument". Hence the term "cosmic pulses", since the sound desk emits pulses projected into space. As sound waves hit a surface, they refract and reverberate.   Stockhausen doesn't do movements in formal symphonic terms, but movement, in its purest form, is fundamental to his work.  Nothing stays still, except in terms of non-movement : even silences mark passage.  Imagine visualizing the sound waves as they bounce back and forth, often in patterns   At the Barbican, the sound desk will be managed by Kathinka Pasveer, Stockhausen's  muse and acolyte. What will happen, when she, too, travels to the stars ? New interpreters, new technology, adapting the principles further and further.  
This is the third Cosmic Pulses in London in about ten years.  The most recent was at the Roundhouse in 2013. In 2008, the instrument was the Royal Albert Hall, as big and as grandiose as halls can be. An extravaganza for sound desk !  For once, I wished that the blue mushrooms didn't  stop sound dissipating into the emptiness of the dome. Imagine, sound waves rising up, escaping through  the roof, dissipating into the air outside ! Do sound waves die or do they travel endlessly into space, imperceptible to human hearing   My late friend,  Michael Gerzon, who worked on psycho-acoustics , believed that the wonders of the universe have hardly been unlocked by modern science. That's the kind of creative, conceptual thinking he liked so much in Stockhausen. "In three hundred years", Michael said "we might come closer". 300 years before our time, Isaac Newton was still alive. 
Cosmic Pulses is the 13th of the planned 24 hours in Klang, Stockhausen’s visionary epic.  It's not opera, but definitely a theatrical experience.  At the Royal Albert Hall, darkness descended, the dome lit up by tiny lights, like stars – Royal Albert Hall as planetarium !  That Proms season opened with Messiaen Dieu parmi nous, when the 9999-pipe RAH organ blasted full force.  For a few moments we could have been in the presence of the divine, or whatever you might call something beyond normal..  Stockhausen was Messiaen’s student.  The Barbican Hall is much smaller, built with wooden floors and walls that absorb sound in a different way. The hall is also fan-shaped, wider than it is deep. For once, the upper galleries might be a good place to be, assuming that sound can travel without being blocked by the overhangs.  The Barbican has hosted other Stockhausen experiences, like Hymnen, (read more here) not quite as large scale as Cosmic Pulses but also thrilling.
Before Cosmic Pulses, Stockhausen's "greatest hit", Stimmung, with Singcircle, led by Gregory Rose.  The word "Stimmung" means convergence, the concept of disparate forces coming together through a process of being attuned.  Not for nothing it was conceived in the Summer of Love, 1968 ! It’s a series of 51 segments which can be arranged in different ways and like throwing dice, the sequence can fall in many ways. Within each segment there are some fixed points but also much room for choices made in the course of performance. This isn’t straightforwardly notated music by any means: Stockhausen gives basic templates, but within them, there’s great freedom of invention and the onus remains with the performers, whose artistic responses “create” the piece anew each time. Yet, personal as the artists' choices may be, the ultimate goal of Stimmung is to rise above ego, and seek a kind of transcendence through interaction.  I've heard Stimmung numerous times - it keeps coming round (pun !) , and also with Singcircle.  Should be good.

New Year New Music Stockhausen Hymnen

New Year New Music! Hooray for BBC Radio 3 starting 2016 with a celebration of Karlheinz Stockhausen!  The party started on New Year's Day itself with a unique broadcast of Hymnen, part from the original tapes made for WDR and a performance a few weeks ago conducted by Wolfgang Lischke  with the London Sinfonietta, the RAM Ensemble, the Manson Ensemble and Sounds Intermedia. The broadcast is available in stereo and also surround sound, but you should also use your imagination, which is very much part of the creative process.  I've heard Hymnen  live in a concert hall, but its freakiness works better I think, in a kind of isolation chamber where you aren't inhibited by the presence of "normal" people. This time  I listened alone, in the dark, to get the full surround-sound experience, and what a blast it was!

The title "Hymnen" refers to national anthems, which Stockhausen collected, mixing and changing the sounds so they form a vast universe of strange, conflicting harmonies. At around the time Hymnen was written, I used to play around with long and shortwave radio, switching stations in and out, in many different languages, some being deliberately jammed by others.  People forget what the Cold War was like, but that context does bear heavily on what Hymnen might be about.  Maybe I was preordained to understand Hymnen as a composite of soundwaves beamed off our planet by aliens in Outer Space. The star Sirius, of course, in Stockhausen terms.  Absolutely pertinent on New Year's Day when people watch fireworks displays in succession all over the globe and singing Auld Lang Syne, in a strange dialect hardly anyone actually speaks.

And so we hears snatches of Deutschland Uber Alles but do not necessarily pick up on the negative context which would have borne so heavily on Stockhausen and his generation. We hear it as Haydn, knowing that the text was written in 1841 when nationalism was something positive. Similarly the strains of the Horst Wessel Lied are "cleansed", rendered neutral as noise, meaningless without power. So we hear God Save the Queen and the Internationale, but the real message is that things get distorted, and one anthem is intrinsically  no more important than the next. We also hear objets trouvées, street sounds from China, and horns that quack like cacophonic singing ducks. We also hear snatches of Stockhausen himself talking, recorded by accident and unplanned which also informs meaning. all blended into a kind of inter-stellar cosmos of electronic and instrumental sound. In "Region 4", Hymnen reaches outwards, words and long screaming sounds projected as if communicating endlessly into space.

Stockhausen is this week's Radio 3 Composer of the Week

Stockhausen Klang at the Roundhouse

The Royal Albert Hall isn't the only round powerhouse for music in  London. Karlheinz Stockhausen's mega saga KLANG is coming to the Roundhouse NW1 on 22nd August. Kathinka Pasveer, Stockhausen's muse and interpreter, will be on hand to recreate four of the 24 hours of Klang. For maximum impact, Stockhausen needs to be experienced. It's not enough to just listen. The Roundhouse, being round with a high dome, resembles a spaceship, which is utterly appropriate since Stockhausen believed that he came from the star Siriius. His horizons were extra-terrestial. At the Roundhouse, we'll get the right cosmic vibe.

Together with the London Contemporary Orchestra (Hugh Brunt), Kathinka will be bringing us Paradies (hour 21), Hoffnung (hour 9), Balance (hour 7), and Cosmic Pulses (hour 13).  Cosmic Pulses was a fantastic success at the Royal Albert Hall in 2008. Read about that HERE. The Roundhouse isn't quite so huge but it should be fascinating. Hoffnung, Balance and Paradies are London premieres, the last in a new version for 8-track mixing. .Before Stockhausen, the Roundhouse is hosting a performance of Claude Vivier's Zipangu. This too is a remarkable piece of music by an esoteric composer, one of my favourites. Read about his  Orion, Kopernikus HERE.  Vivier worked with Stockhausen but was not one of the hard-core obsessives. His music is oddly exotic, even beautiful. Zipangu is an ancient European name for Japan, (not a Japanese name) so the piece is an exploration into exotic mysteries. Brunt and the LCO are quite into Vivier and Gerard Grisey. I wrote about their 20111 Spitalfield's performance HERE.  Also please read about this year's Stockhausen Prom 11 on the subject of Stockhausen's concepts of space and sound.  Stockhausen was the great great grandad of sampling and DJ mixing. All the more reason to catch Stockhausen at the Roundhouse, where dozens of legendary gigs have happened since the 1960's. Loads on Stockhausen on my site. Mainstream classical audiences are often too uptight to relate to Stockhausen, but he's extremely important as a conceptual artist.

Simon Smith at the Edinburgh Festival

One of the delights of the Edinburgh Festival is its ability to throw up unexpected gems. One of these was yesterday's recital given by pianist Simon Smith, to commemorate Stockhausen's would-have-been-birthday.

Whereas larger scale events were taking place today and yesterday – here in Edinburgh a ballet set to the Helicopter Quartet (a piece also streamed live from Birmingham Opera); the first ever staging of the opera, 'Mittwoch' in Birmingham …. - this was a tribute on a smaller scale. Nevertheless it was a serious and important tribute to this challenging composer by a musician who knows and appreciates his works really well. It was an honour and a privilege to be able to watch this dedicated and inspiring performance – perhaps the highlight of this  year's festival so far for me  -  and to boot, it was free (retiring collection for church funds/concert expenses) !

Watching this performance was exciting, and the repertoire chosen gave a good insight into Stockahusen's work and the evolution of his style, ranging from 1955 to 1984. The opening piece, Klavierstuck XIV, subtitled 'Birthday Formula' – with its chanted German numbers and hissing and clacking sounds - showed the debt to this composer which is owed by George Crumb's 'Black Angels'. A range of earlier pieces wer then offered; one dedicated to Pierre Boulez on the occasion of his 60^th birthday; one exploring the resonances the piano could give to the single note of middle C sharp and one where the durations of notes , bars and gestures is determined by the Fibonacci mathematical series. A longer final work, 'Lucifer's Dream' then concluded the recital, based on the opening scene of the opera 'Samstag' from the sequence 'Licht', originally for bass voice and piano. It is the most dramatic of the pieces and includes extended techniques and two bundles sof Indian bells suspended at the ends of the piano.

Simon Smith studied with Giles Swayne and has performed and recorded the complete piano music of James MacMillan, whose music was also performed at a later event in Edinburgh on the same day, as well as piano work by Stuart McRae, whose new chamber opera I will be reporting on next week.

 By Juliet Willaims

Participation Art - Stockhausen Mittwoch Birmingham

Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht live from Birmingham Opera Company broadcast in full.  With Stockhausen, listening is not enough. Stockhausen is a "Happening" as they used to say in the 60's. Listening is not enough, you need to experience the whole mentality to get the full impact. Being there, with other people, sharing the dream, is part of where it's at. Participation Art.

On the other hand,  watching online has advantages. You can wander off and get a stiff drink, which makes you more receptive. You wouldn't dare do that in Wagner, who demands such concentration that you feel drained and high at the same time. Yet you can't miss too much of Mittwoch either, because details count. There's method in this madness. The pulsating gradations act like hypnosis, worming their way into your mind. Everyone knows about the Helicopters, but we're prepared for them by seeing other players suspended from the ceiling as they play. They're strapped in, but the cellist's hair falls over her face - how does she see? She must be terrified, playing on auto pilot. The trombone threatens to tip the trombonist over. In comparison, the string players in the helicopters are having an easy ride, and that's part of the "meaning". As someone in the audience asked, "Are the pilots performing, too?" Perceptive comment. Who's controlling whom?  Technology or humans or some extra terrestial force we don't even recognize? Which is, incidentally the story of Michael the archangel and his cosmic spiritual saga. Throughout Mittwoch, the idea of ascent and descent, ladders, pulleys, helicopters, patterns that replicate in the sounds we hear, and in Graham Vick's thoughtful visual images. Danger, insecurity, dottiness.
 
Once you get into Stockhausen's  mindscape, things fall into place whether they make sense or not. Like an intense dreeam in a parallel universe, where you're learning the new vocabulary of an ancient, alien culture.You begin to recognize the patterns in those hypnotic pulses. No wonder Stockhausen fans are mesmerized by the complexities. A man "sings" into a boombox (cutting edge in Stockhausen's day, prehistoric artifact now). A voice intones "coloratura" against technologically-induced white noise. A soprano sings disjointed "coloratura". It's utterly irrelevant to approach Stoockhausen in conventional music terms. Everyone is a performer. Originally the Arditti Quartet played the Helicopter bit, virtuosi playing in the antithesis of what a string quartet should be. Here, it was the Elysian Quartet interacting with rotorblades. Machine-generated electronics, mixed by men. Musicians mixed with non-musicians. Mittwoch is the highest form of communiuty opera around, a lot more sophisticated conceptualy than the gags the Helicopters provoke.

Audience participation too, though not as one might think in the Q&A session around the famed quartet. Stockhausen builds that into Mittwoch, to make us think. Why the Birminghgham Opera Company chose the inane DJ, I have no idea. Perhaps it's a joke, though a very childish one, because almost anyone in the audience could have done the job better. Nihal was just plain embarrassing, resorting to insulting his audience in the way an incompetent stand-up comic deflects attention away from his own failings. This audience wa far too polite to boo the bumbler. When someone said the music was bollocks, the audience cheered because it was a real, genuine response, not the hyped up hysteria the fake DJ was pretending to show.  This was an audience who know their Stockhausen well, who see through hyperventilating presenters. The joke, ultimately, was on the joker, showing up the crass stupidity Stockhausen eschewed.

Lots more on this site on Stockhausen. Venture forth. 

Claude and Karlheinz candles

Two birthday boys with a lot in common: Claude Debussy (who'd be 150 today) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (who'd be a mere 84).

Claude gets complete box set reissues of some of the finest  ever performances of his music, from Deutsche Grammophon and Decca. A complerte Boulez Debussy/Ravel edition (Cleveland Orchestra and Berliner Philharmoniker)  It's so much more convenient to have them all in one place and downloadable so you don't need to cart CDs around.

Karlheinz gets a rare performance of Mittwoch aus Licht which would be great to go to live (as Stockhausen needs to be heard). Next best, part of it, the Helicopter String Quartet, is online from 7 tonight GMT. That's ace because thousands will be able to experience Stockhausen who might not have been exposed before.That broadcast is on thespace.org,  And tomorrow, the whole opera is available live on the Birmingham Opera website (note that you need to register),

Incidentally I'm worried about thespace.org.  Britain desperately needs an umbrella arts site like Arte or Medici. The potentail for thespace is huge. It has some brilliant headliners eg Britten War Requiem (CBSO) and Berlioz Les Troyens (ROH) but there doesn't seem to be any consistent vision. It's a jumble. Nor does there seem to be any forward planning. It seems to be compiled by IT geeks with no real interest in the arts, or in arts management, and little concept of how the businesss works. Surely the Arts Council can do better than this, especially with the weight of the BBC and BFI  and Shakespeare circles behind it?  Let's hope it gets properly managed, and developed rather than collapse into a half-hearted cock-up. Why bother to do something with this much scope and not do it well?

Juliet Williams says of Stockhausen, "The missed oppportunity of the year was that his Hymnen – a collage of a piece made up form the national anthems of many countries - was not prominently performed in this Olympic year. Flags, nations, radio transmissions - just right for the bombast of the Olympics .But maybe the "Cultural Olympiad" stayed clear because they figured what Stockhausen might have meant? Read more about Hymnen here.

Music as space : Philharmonic 360 New York

Music as spatial experience: Philharmonic 360 with Alan Gilbert and members of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. "Philharmonic 360", because the musicians were embedding the music 360 degrees round the whole performance space. Conceptually, it was brilliant, a reminder that music isn't confined to 19th century concert halls. Sound came from different parts of the auditorium, audience and musicans integrated, not artifically segregated. Lit in neon pink and sapphire, people loomed out of the darkness. At the centre, Alan Gilbert stood alone, under a single white light. Obviously they had the sightlines right, and Gilbert was clearly communicating with his players, but the effect must have been quite magical. Great theatre!

Philharmonic 360 started with Giovanni Gabrieli's Canzon XVI. A fanfare of three sets of five brass players, calling out to each other across space. Sixteenth century music was often heard 360, in the round. Although this isn't opera as we know it, the quintets function as voices, communicating with each other. Alan Gilbert is no fool. He was preparing the audience for two monumental pillars of modern repertoire,  by connecting them to music history. Even audiences who aren't familiar with new music can appreciate it in this context.

Gilbert was wise, too, to choose Pierre Boulez's Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna as the centrepiece of the programme. Like Gabrieli, Maderna was a Venetian, and grew up aware of the function of music in society. It's significant, too, that Luigi Nono, who also pioneered music with spatial dimensions, was also Venetian. Gilbert's choice of programme was an inspired reflection on the interrelationships behind the piece, and also on the intricate connections within the piece.

Boulez's Rituel commemorates Maderna on many different levels. On an obvious level, it's a ritual procession. The orchestra is divided into eight unequal parts, moving at different paces and in different ways, just as mourners follow a cortege, seemingly disparate but with common purpose. Solemn percussion, often hollow, evoke the image of a funeral, but also serve to measure time and its inevitable passing. This percussion functions like a heartbeat, so the sudden interruptions, changes of direction and pauses feel organic. Boulez's Rituel has been heard as a commentary on Maderna's own music and his place in music history, yet it's also psychologically intense, as if through the formality of the structure, Boulez is coping with extreme emotion. Maderna was like a father figure to Boulez, and was instrumental in persuading him to conduct as well as compose. Anyone who still swallows the myth that Boulez is cold and clinical needs to listen to Rituel. Significantly, solo clarinet functions prominently, weaving past the regulatory percussion, like a lone mourner wailing. I've often imagined Rituel as if it were a chorus in a Greek tragedy, for it sounds primeval. Superbly disciplined playing from the orchestra, so the complexities in Boulez's score are clear, as they should be, throwing its deeply-felt spirit into high relief.

The picture above shows Boulez (seated) with Bruno Maderna and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen in 1955, around the time Stockhausen's Gruppen was wriiten. It's such a classic that it's hard to believe how advanced it was for the time. Three orchestras functioning as independent units, the music as much in the convergences and breakings away as in the separate parts. On this occasion, Gilbert was joined by Magnus Lindberg, no less, formidably important, and by Matthias Pintscher, less famous perhaps now, but still young . (lots about him on this site). Pintscher is moving heavily into conducting, so again, Gilbert is ahead of the game, picking Pintscher to work with.  What a constellation. Sorry, I couldn't resist that dig at Stockhausen's later preoccupations, which distract from the visionary innovation in his work.

Stockhausen's Gruppen is powerful, conceptually and musically. It was written to work in conjunction with the performance space where it happens. At the Royal Albert Hall in 2008 (read more here) it was an overwhelming experience, almost cosmic, "beyond" mere music. A close friend was at the London premiere in 1967, also at the Royal Albert Hall, listening from up in the gallery. Perhaps the Park Avenue Armory in New York doesn't do it justice, for this performance didn't come over nearly as well as Boulez's Rituel. 

Sandwiched between Boulez and Stockhausen was Mozart! This was the real test for the audience. Would they figure out why? Choosing the ballroom scene that ends Act One of Don Giovanni was a stroke of genius on Alan Gilbert's part. No gorgeous extended arias, but instead, tightly crafted ensembles. The three groups of protagonists converge upon one another, some hidden behind masks, others pretending to be what they are not. Mozart defines the parallel groups with three seperate small ocrhestras, each operating as a unit, but together creating a coherent logic. Mozart's writing Gruppen 200 years before Stockhausen!

It would be a complete mistake to judge this bit of Don Giovanni in conventional opera terms, because it wasn't being presented as opera as such, but as an example of spatial music. The stylized, witty staging was sending out signals. It didn't matter that the singing was so basic. What we were supposed to be listening for was the orchestra, and how deftly Mozart constructed the music.

Philharmonic 360 ended with Charles Ives The Unanswered Question. The question is answered in the programme! The Unanswered Question is an 8 minute study in disparate parallells, three orchestras and  flute quartet. Ives's Fourth Symphony might make the point better, but it's too long and ambitious to fit into a programme like this. And it aso shows Alan Gilbert's sense of humour, for it's a companion piece to Ives's Central Park in the Dark. Both were titled "Contemplations", of Nothing Serious and Serious, in Ives's wry irony. Some in the audience at the Armory in Central Park must have known! How wonderful to emerge into the night, hearing the diverse sounds of the city.

Any conductor can throw together a programme but very few indeed do it with Alan Gilbert's erudition and wit. Any conductor can keep an orchestra (or multiple orchestras) from falling apart, but it's a rare gift to have a conductor who can communicate like this and develop the audience. Often, as an outsider reading the NYC press, I wonder at what poiltical battles are happening behind the scenes, and why the negativity toward change. NY needs Alan Gilbert. If they don't appreciate him, it's their loss. Watch this programme streamed on medici.tv. The filming is done by a crew who know what to focus on, without losing the big picture. Which is what Philharmonic 360 was all about.

Knussen's Surprising Puzzles Prom 15

You can just bet that media reaction to Oliver Knussen's Prom 15 will be rabid. Why did he programme pieces that take 3 minutes to play and need 20 minutes to set up? But that's Ollie all over, having fun and confounding expectations. Quite possibly the same Pretty Plastic Pundits who think random applauding is clever will howl when Ollie gives them exactly the kind of concert where "rules" for clapping don't apply.

Much horror too, because Knussen programmed Stockhausen with Schumann. Again, this is no big deal - Simon Holt's a table of noises was the surprise hit of Prom 13,  where it unexpectedly won over an audience who'd come for Schumann and Strauss. Mixed programming is nothing new, unless you've spent the last 100 years under a rock. Henry Wood did it too.

So what's Ollie's point? Confounding assumptions = shaking up preconceptions.  First, no-one died  because they had to hear Stockhausen's Jubilee. It's joyous, celebratory, fill of "starburst" cadences, twinkling tracery and trumpets heard off stage like angels in the heavens. Dramatic and even benevolent, not "difficult" at all.  Jubilee is Stockhausen's tribute to the folk music of his native homeland, the star Sirius.

Then Harrison Birtwistle's Sonance Severance 2000 (1999), only three minutes long, but requires massed celli, basses and brass. Again, that's the point. Massed brass herald the first theme,winds and strings develop it and suddenly it snaps shut with a humorous bleat from single trumpet. A symphony compressed to its essence which lies hanging, hinting that more is yet to come. It was written for the reopening of Severance Hall in Cleveland, so the idea is perfectly cogent.

Sonance Severance connected Stockhausen's Jubilee with Colin Matthews's Violin Concerto (2009). I wasn't knocked sideways, though my companion was impressed, but so what? First reactions are first reactions. On rebroadcast I've grown to appreciate why I liked Leila Josefowicz's high, flowing legato so much. It's elusive, floating dream like, sognando, about the constant flux in the orchestra.  My partner was much taken by the alternations in the sections of the second movement.

Then, the culmination of the first part of this programme, with its sparkling stars, fairy violins and magic trumpets.  Luke Bedford's Outblaze the Sky (2006). Another tiny, six minute work that packs a punch many larger pieces cannot equal.  Exquisite  passages, shimmering on densely resonant background. Immediately I thought of Britten's Sea Interludes, though  it's certainly not like them, and they weren't on Bedford's mind when he wrote the piece. He was thinking in terms of poetic dream. He says "I imagined the piece to have a warmth and certain haziness, ....virtually every pitch is scored with glissandos, harmonics, flutter-tonguing, tremolandos and molto vibrato".

I loved the way Outblaze the Sky draws you into these mysterious undercurrents, then suddenly erupts in upward chords of illlumination. Waking towards the dawn? A flash of insight into some mystery? It doesn't matter, it's a beautiful piece of music and uplifting. (lots more on Luke Bedford on this site)

At first, it seemed odd to switch from this luminous mode to music about the mighty Rhine. Bernd Alois Zimmermann Rheinische Kirmestänze (1950) was paired with Robert Schumann's Symphony no 3 also known as the Rhenish, because it was inspired by the Rhine. "Only connect" Knussen seems to say. Knussen's programmes are often like intricate puzzles, with myriad cross-references that illuminate the works in new ways.

Both Zimmermann and Schumann loved the Rhine. Rivers are a powerful metaphor for creativity. In the case of the Rhine, it springs from the Alps, right through the heart of Germany. After the demonic Prom 4, no-one attentive shouldn't recognize what the Alps mean in terms of the Romantic imagination. (another intelligent undercurrent in this year's BBC Proms).

For Schumann, and for Zimmermann, the Rhine isn't simply a tourist trip, decorated by Rhinemaidens.  Both Zimmermann and Schumann were deeply intellectual, both prone to depression. Schumann tried to commit suicide by junping into the Rhine, Zimmermann, who grew up on its banks, was more successful.

It is very significant that Zimmerman's Rheinische Kirmestänze was first written almost exactly 100 years after Schumann's suicide attempt, for Zimmermann knew Schumann's music very well. The Rheinische Kirmestänze are most definitely not quaint or folksy. The war had just ended, Germany was occupied, and the trauma of Nazism and the Holocaust hung heavily , especially on a left liberal like Zimmermann.  Zimmermann uses references to kitsch  like brass bands but completely undercuts any sense of gemütlich by smearing the certainties with strange cross-rhythmic distortion. Though they're lively, these Rheinische dances are haunted.. (lots more on Zimmermann on this site, use "search")

Then Knussen springs another surprise! So far in this Proms season,. all the Schumann so far (except for Manfred with Petrenko, Prom 4) has been indifferently performed at best, especially disappointing in this Schumann year. Then, Knussen, with his reputation made in new music, goes and conducts the finest Schumann performance of all! This worked for me because it accessed the wilder aspects of late Schumann, which I don't think we've really begun to appreciate.

Wonderfully alert, energetic playing from the  BBC Symphony Orchestra, the top BBC orchestra by far.  This was a joy to hear - listen to the repeat broadcast online, it beats many better known versions. Again, it's inspired by Knussen's feel for musical puzzles. Listen to the final part of the last movement, the Lebhaft (derived from Leben). A similar apotheosis to the final upthrust in Bedford's Outblaze the Sky and Birtwistle's Sonance Severance!  "New" and "old" are silly labels. The sooner people listen "as music", the more they'll get from it.  If only Schumann, who adored cryptic musical puzzles, could have heard Knussen's Prom.

Stockhausen sends Xmas Greeting

Sacred dogma to people who don't like 20th century music is that modern music "cannot" be warm, emotional or witty. The more a cliché gets repeated, the less willing people are to challenge it. "The Rest is Noise" has become a fundamentalist's holy text. Ditch that, read a real book like Paul Griffiths. Or even listen without mufflers.

Stockhausen funny, warm and irreverent? He had lots of crackpot ideas which he couldn't see past but in many ways K H was at heart still a small boy serving at Mass, filled with wonder at the mysteries of the universe. Sometimes he's downright whimsical. Perhaps that's why Oliver Knussen loves him so much.

Stockhausen muses on stars and light forms, and visitors from other planets. Michael is recognizably a relative of Michael the Archangel who appears in the old Testament and beats up the demons of death and darkness. Licht and Klang could probably occupy analysts for years the way Dylan and Tolkien kept people busy in the 60's. Stockhausen, in his sincerity, is much more genuine and creative that the crass commercial takes we usually get.

Glanz (Brilliance) from KLANG (10th hour) is a reincarnation of Harmonien, KLANG's 5th hour. It's a "magic seven" ensemble. Four low, murmuring outer voices - trombone, tuba, oboe and trumpet- and a central core of three - viola, clarinet and bassoon. Within the core, in the middle of the performance space, stands an object which glows luminously with unnatural brightness. This "shining sculpture" is part of the composition even though it makes no sound,. It seems like a pivot emitting centrifugal power. The other players (and I mean "other") circulate around it and move in orbits of their own. It's a kind of hypnotic, ritual procession. At one point the clarinet seems to break away, veering off in an ellipse, but the other instruments call him back.

The four outer core players emerge from different parts of the performance space. Suddenly appearing out of the darkness, three of them appear like angels, or heavenly messengers, their white robes illuminated by a dazzling spotlight. Perhaps there's infrared or something in this light because it casts an unearthly glow - no soap powder gets whites this white! Then the central trio bursts into song, disjointed snatches and phrases which gradually emerge as Gloria in excelcis Deo, et in terra pax in hominibus bonae voluntatis. Is this Stockhausen's Nativity -lay, with a green glowing pyramid for a crib? Stockhausen, Son of Sirius, meets The Son of Man.

Then the tuba emerges, from behind the stage, playing slowly and fitfully. "Like a bear emerging from hibernation", wrote Stockhausen. Gradually the "bear" wakes and the tuba plays a cheerful sort of melody, as if the bear was dancing in sunshine. In Star Trek, Spock and his Vulcan friends may be clever but they don't do humour. Humans are flawed but wit keeps them going even when reason falls short. Not all humour has to be obvious belly laughs. Some of the most radical is pretty subtle, which is why it's subversive - not everyone can pick up on it. Trolls, for example, go berserk if you make a pun! So KHS is giving us the gift of levity.
Please see the other posts on this site about Stockhausen - more on this site on new music than most anywhere else.

Claude Vivier Orion Kopernikus Prom 60 Rêves d’un Marco Polo

Claude Vivier's Orion is at last receiving its UK premiere at the Proms, conducted by Charles Dutoit. From the commentary, it's being presented as a kind of upmarket Star Wars to fit the theme of astronomy. Which is a real pity, as Orion stems from a much larger, much more radical work, Vivier's opera Kopernickus.

It's poignant that Vivier is still so unknown in the UK. He was an extremely influential figure, but most famous in the popular imagination for writing a piece which was found on his desk, possibly incomplete, after he was murdered in exactly the way described in the song. But Glaubst du an der Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Do you believe in the immortality of the soul?) is a masterpiece whatever the circumstances around it. Obviously there's no connection between the song and Vivier's death, but since when was fate logical?

That's an idea to bear in mind when listening to Vivier's music. Rêves d’un Marco Polo is an Opus Arte DVD, so it's more widely available than a lot of recordings of Vivier's music. It's an "Opéra fleuve in deux parties" . Part one is the opera Kopernickus, while part two is a programme of various Viver works, including Glaubst du, performed as a group in a staging directed by Pierre Audi, filmed at the Holland Festival in 2004. This was a hugely important concert for it put Vivier on the map. The notes say the two parts fit together "like shadow and light, forming a dreamlike ritualistic experience". Whatever, but it's certainly interesting, and the performances are extremely good - the Asko and Schönberg Ensembles, conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw and including excellent singers. Also included is a documentary about Vivier's life, and how it pertains to his music. Vivier was a loner, something of a Marco Polo, who ventured into territories still unexplored.

In Kopernickus a woman named Agni (Susan Narucki) enters a mysterious landscape. A strange man speaks about a melody, more tender than a mother's caress, which will reveal a new dawn , where the sadness - and evil - of this world will be forgotten in "the dreams of the night that is over". Like Alice in Wonderland, Agni is on a journey where she meets strange and wondrous ideas, expressed in musical references. "Visionaries of all times, gather together !" These encounters are not at all literal, as they're introduced by figures dressed in similar costumes. But that's the point, I think, you don't know who's really significant til they're gone.

Orchestral players walk around the stage, painted, masked and costumed like the singers and actors, further integrating the music into the whole. They weave their way through the action – each soloist a "player" in every sense. It's odd, but once you get used to the strangeness it starts to feel real. It's surreal, and faintly ludicrous, but it's meant to confound, to make you lose your bearings. The strange man whom Agni thought was Lewis Carroll starts to expound crackpot theories of the universe. Logic has no more meaning here than the physics of time and space. Sometimes invented words replace language altogether.

"We shall see God!" the voices sing and Agni looks transfixed by something we can't see, the strange man waving his hands behind her head like wings, or an aura. It's an image that keeps recurring, sometimes as subtle as blinking. Once you divest yourself of the usual signposts of literal meaning, Kopernikus comes together in a magical way. Musically this is a marvel, long swaying arcs of sound, trumpets, flutes, profound clarinet, mad violins. Audi's staging and choreography - the best way to describe the complex interactions between people and objects in stage - is wonderfully inventive and expands detail in the music. In the film we see important close-ups, like a man listening to a long tube into which a clarinet is played. It's a powerful image conveying the idea of sound travelling distances through different dimensions, which in many ways is what the whole opera is about.

Gradually it dawns on Agni that she's not dreaming at all, but in another plane of reality, vaguely sinister. A trumpet calls out and Claron McFadden appears on high, a rope around her neck. An indication perhaps of what has brought Agni to this strange place. Not for nothing Vivier subtitled this work Opéra rituel de mort. It's not a fantasy game, but a solemn and purposeful progression, despite the hallucinatory quality of the images. Suddenly the bird-like masks of the players falls into place. In Egyptian ritual, bird spirits accompany the soul on its transition to death. As Pierre Audi says in his notes, this is "the closest music theatre has come to the medieval mystère, a form that is able to stretch from deep meditation to the extreme grotesque". Brian Ferneyhough goes on to do something similar in his astounding opera Shadowtime.

Hence the figures who chant about "monks who abandon themselves to mystic rituals in secret". Agni proceeds roward the "purifying waters" of a river that marks some kind of major divide, a clear reference to the River Styx. As she approaches, she "sees" "Herr Mozart" and asks him if it's true that on the other side there is music so beautiful that even gods and angels swoon. Do people communicate by music, the "songs of all of the people of all dimensions are in harmony with cosmic rhythms". It's enticing: Agni imagines she'll be able to dance from "galaxy to galaxy".

Now individual concerns don't matter. The strange man sings "Truth is not to be found in short term things but in ideas. Uppermost is the idea of good". He gathers up the Christmas lights that amused Agni for a while: brightly coloured bulbs, not the idea Christmas commemorates.

"You shall hear Orion's music", the voices sing as Agni, transfixed, listens to trumpets heard from a distance, and sees the heavens revealed as the gates of Paradise are thrown open. The strange man tells of philosophers and astronomers of the past, and their contribution to knowledge and the mysteries of the universe. It's a procession from the ancient past towards greater wisdom, and a procession Agni is about to join. She heads offstage. leading the singers and musicians behind her in solemn single file. They head into the auditorium, into the darkness and beyond. You hear echoes of the music from afar. Then Agni runs back, to check on the strange man, but he slams the book he was reading from at the beginning. No more answers. The last image is Agni's face, deep in shock.

Of course as a stand alone, Orion works as beautifully vivid music, conducted with authority by Charles Dutoit who premiered it years ago and knows why Vivier is such an important composer. It's published as a completely independent orchestral work, but both Orion and Kopernickus were written at the same time (1979) and there's a great deal of quite explicit overlap, the same material being used in both, even the faint chorus "Die-u, Die-u". the Middle Ages, astronomy was a dark art, only slightly more respectable than alchemy, so Copernicus was lucky he wasn't born earlier, wen his ideas might have been thought heresy. So it's useful to think of Orion in the context of Kopernickus, as it gives it greater resonance and opens up windows on Vivier's work. "Opening the curtain", as the strange man said at the beginning. Vivier is very profound, deeply interesting: and he died aged only 34.

I wonder whether Stockhausen heard Orion ? He knew who Vivier was, for sure. Vivier went to Europe, hoping to study with him, but Stockhausen could not stand the guy and took him on in sufferance. Yet Vivier had his head in the stars just as Stockhausen did, except Vivier didn't believe for a moment he came from them, and had much more literary and cultural underpinnings. Listen to Stockhausen's Michaels-Abschied from his LICHT cycle. Trumpeters sound out from way on high, the sounds they make arching into the heavens. Orion got there first.

When i get time I'll write about the second disc on the Opus Arte DVD which has other Vivier treasures like Wo bist du, Licht, the Lonely Child, Zipangu and the masterpiece Glaubst du an der Unsterblckheit der Seele. There is a lot that could be said and needs saying but another time. Please come back to this site, subscribe and bookmark for more ! (Lots here too on Gerard Grisey and others influenced by Claude Vivier)