Alternative to New Year in Vienna - Chinese Radetsky

Love how the audience doesn't quite take it in at first !

Gerald Finzi's New Year's Eve Epiphany

Chosen Hill in Gloucestershire is one of those "power spots" which attract creative energy. In the early 1920's, shy, repressed Gerald Finzi started to visit. He met up with Detmar Blow and other arts and crafts types, who introduced him to exotic things like yoghurt and alternative living. In many ways, Finzi's life was an extension of the William Morris ideal.

Ivor Gurney used to come here most days, walking the 5 miles from Gloucester each way. But it was worth it – from this hill there's a panoramic view across the Cotswolds, only broken by mists on the horizon (or smog). At the top of the hill is a church tower, dangerously poised on a cliff – parts are now blocked off. Below is a tiny cottage, low slung, almost invisble from the road. On New Year's Eve, 1925, Finzi went to a party in the cottage. At midnight, they came outside, into sharp frost, the night sky filled with stars, and "heard bells ringing across Gloucestershire from beside the Severn to the hill villages of the Cotswolds".

Stephen Banfield, Finzi's biographer, calls this the "hilltop epiphany", for it released in Finzi a surge of original music. This was the inspiration for In Terra Pax and Nocturne whose sub-title is in fact New Year's Music, filled with bells and joy. Finzi needed an impetus to find himself and something happened that night under the stars. "I love New Year's Eve," he told a friend later, "Though it's the saddest time of the year..... a time of silence and quiet". And soon after asked himself "must knowledge come to me, if comes at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by the familiar process (of reading other's work)?" ie Finzi was learning to trust his own artistic instincts.

Chosen Hill remained so dear to Finzi that nearly 30 years later, he took Ralph Vaughan Williams up the steep hill. The new tenants of the cottage had small kids. Finzi, weakened by cancer, caught their illness and died three weeks later.

In Terra Pax was also the last piece Finzi conducted, on 6th September, at the Three Choirs Festival (which is how he and RVW came to be on Chosen Hill that week)

"A frosty Xmas Eve, when the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone, where westward falls the hill,
And from many a village in the water'd valley,
Distant music reached me, peals of bells a-ringing"

Then an angel appears and sings "Fear not, fear not, fear not!" and the choir bursts into a song like multi layered pealing of bells, the orchestra throwing out chords like shards of light.

"The old words came to me by the riches of time,
Mellowed and transfigured as I stood on the hill,
Harkening in the aspect of th'eternal silence"

sings the baritone, and the choir sings "Peace, goodwill towards all men".

1968 and the Raft of the Medusa

1968 was a watershed year like 1789, 1848 and 1914. So why haven't we remembered ? That was the year of the Prague Spring and its brutal crushing by the Soviets (remember them ?). It was the year of Red Rudi and the Paris riots. In Vietnam, the Tet Offensive. There was a huge massacre of civilians in Hué In the US it was "the summer of love". 1968 changed a lot of things.

Oddly, what I remember (apart from knowing a family wiped out at Hué) was the furore over Hans Werner Henze's Raft of the Medusa. It was only a small paragraph in a provincial paper, but somehow it jumped out at me. At the premiere of the new work someone raised a red flag. No big deal, given the spirit of the times and student revolt everywhere. But the police were called and the performance stopped. Henze was ostracized, his prosperous career destroyed.

What was all the fuss about ? Henze's political views were well known. He was a Communist, an opponent of the Vietnam War. The Raft of the Medusa was dedicated to Che Guevara. Its subject is pretty obvious, the suppression of the poor and weak. So why the self-righteous recrimination about the red flag being raised ? Anyone reading the score beforehand should have figured what it was about.

Until that point Henze and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau were an item, artistically. Hans Neunzig, DFD's biographer (and hagiographer, some say) describes how DFD chased Henze to write music for him. Read what Neunzig says, he gives the original correspondence. So we have masterpieces like Elegy for Young Lovers, and much else. In his memoirs, Henze writes bitterly about someone who let him down. Read his exact words, too. So it's interesting to listen to the recording of the Raft of the Medusa, made the day before the scandal. It's still a powerful, hard-hitting piece. What has happened to music since ? We have had many wars and things to protest about, but composers are silent, now.

After a traumatic break Henze came up with Versuch über Schweine, a cry of anguish so primal it's painful to listen to. But Henze has integrity. Perhaps now, after forty years he can get the respect due to him. When I was young there was no chance I could have heard Henze's music, but the news of the flag fiasco started me reading about Géricault, Fanon and other naughty things. So I owe Henze a lot, indirectly.

Auf ein altes Bild

In the blossoming summer landscape (here distinctly German !) the child without sin plays with his mother. Yet the tree that will become the Cross is already growing in the woods behind.

In grüner Landschaft Sommerflor,
Bei kühlem Wasser, Schilf, und Rohr,
Schau, wie das Knäblein Sündelos
Frei spielet auf der Jungfrau Schoss!
Und dort im Walde wonnesam,
Ach, grünet schon des Kreuzes Stamm!

The exact painting about which Eduard Mörike wrote this poem is unknown, but the scene is pretty typical of the early German school which linked biblical themes to naturalist reality. The poem was set by Hugo Wolf. As Eric Sams said of the song, "With a modal tonality and slow rhythms, the melodies of voice and piano move by step in contrary motion, all within a very limited compass. This gives the song an otherworldly quality of timelessness, .....a motionless summery haze within which the vision is concentrated from a whole landscape into one tree. The small quiet phrases of voice and piano lead up to one stab of pain at the last words, where a transient discord is introduced and resolved. Then, the postlude relives the timeless scene: and if the song has made the proper effect there is eternal grief in that eternal summer".

Jauchzet, it's Bach, in Macau !

A concert by the Macau Orchestra, from Xmas last year. Watch it for interior scenes of S. Domingo Church - isn't it gorgeous ! Leipzig it may not be, but this is truly unique. Then look at this, also by MacauMusic. It is filmed in the Dom Pedro V theatre featured below on this blog (where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears played in 1956) When the offstage trumpeter plays, you can see him backlit in the baroque balcony. Almost nobody gets to see that ! Well off the tourist track.

High relief in the A Ma Temple, Macau

These are the "frescoes" in high relief in Ma Kok Miu, the oldest temple in the Macau area. Note how the pattern of white, fern-like tendrils is regular and vaguely "western" like the tracery in S Domingo church (see below). This is just a side gate, the temple itself goes all the way up the hill, with sacred rocks etc, one of which carries an inscription written by an Emperor in Sung times. Part of the temple experience is that you walk around, commune with the idea of landscape in compressed form. Below in the courtyard, it's crowded, noisy. Up in the summit it's calm.

The goddess A Ma was a girl from somewhere on the Zhekiang coast before 1000. During a typhoon, she appeared, walking on the waves, to save some fishermen from being drowned. So she's the principal deity all along the South China coast. Inside this temple there are massive boulders with images of junks carved on them, and some ancient models of ships. Opposite is a superlative museum of maritime history. But look at the stucco relief - isn't it wonderful ? And the glazed tiles on the roof, another regional speciality.

HILARIOUS video clip !!!!

This is hilarious !!!!! But there is a serious value to it because it shows how different types of Indian music "work". The rhythms are fascinating. Count the talas, get into the spirit !

Vingt Regards sur L’Enfant Jésus

Concert of the Year ! I've been addicted to Aimard's recording of this for years (made just after his baby son was born), but wasn't prepared for just how good this recital would be. It figures. This was Aimard's personal hommage to Messiaen, one of the key concerts in the whole Messiaen centenary year. The performance of a lifetime ! I could hardly breathe ! Neither could the audience, many of whom were seriuosly big name pianists.

So in the midst of the holiday hooha and Enforced Jollity, this is a chance to contemplate something deeper than crashing your credit card on things that won't last. This will. This is the gift of deep meditation, whatever your religion might be.

Vingt Regards sur L’Enfant Jésus is quintessential Messiaen, but perhaps the "inner sanctum" without loudness or abandon, a core of extreme peace and stillness. Catholics follow the Stations of the Cross because the visual images are an aid to contemplating the meaning of the crucifixion. So in Vingt Regards, Messiaen presents a series of images in sound, each stage illuminating a different aspect of Christ’s birth. Messiaen’s “stations of the Nativity” is an inner pilgrimage.

Vingt Regards begins in silence, long before a single note is heard. Aimard sat utterly still for a while before even reaching out towards the keyboard. Obviously, he reveres the music and the composer, who was like a father to him. Yet this moment of reverential calm is artistically crucial. It is a transit from the bustle of the outside world into a mood of mystical veneration. Aimard played the first Regard du Père with such controlled pace that the gaps between notes seemed to hover, creating space for the images to unfold gradually in the imagination. He managed too, to extend the vibration of the piano strings for an extraordinarily long time, so they floated long after the keys fell still, soundwaves extending into the void. It was as if the piano were being played by an invisible presence. Perhaps it was, for Messiaen’s intention was to express the divine through music.

The central mystery of the Nativity is the idea that God becomes man. Medieval paintings depict the Madonna gazing with rapture, yet also emphasize the human nature of her relationship with her child. Again, Messiaen portrays this intimacy in his music by the gentle, unhurried atmosphere. Aimard brings out detail, like the steady ostinato of the Virgin’s heartbeat, rising with excitement as the Angel announces her pregnancy. Later Le Baiser de L’Enfant-Jésus interlaces the divinity theme with playing of great warmth and delicacy. It was ecstatic here.

Yet always in the background is the Crucifixion. The sixth Regard, Par lui tout a été fait, frantically turns back on itself, as if in time itself. The ostinatos scream and the glistening “starlight” chords shoot backwards as if they were being sucked back into a black hole. Aimard makes virtuosity seem easy but it isn’t. So perfect was his discipline in the 19th Regard, Je dors, mais mon cœur veille, that, although the pace was again extended, each note flowed lucidly. Then Aimard launched into the magnificent final Regard sur l’Église d’Amour. The colours here were exquisite. Again and again that confident ascending line appeared, with flourishes and sudden descending bass, as if it could also stretch out into infinity. Each time, Aimard revealed new, shining nuances. It was utterly exquisite. I wanted time itself to stand still, hardly daring to breathe.

This really was a historic performance. Aimard knows how important this South Bank tribute is, and how it will affect Messiaen’s reputation for decades to come. He spared nothing. This was perhaps the performance of a lifetime, eclipsing the remarkable 1999 recording in terms of depth and maturity. At the end, he looked shattered and ecstatic in equal measure, for this is music that refreshes the soul even though it must be gruelling to perform. But he must have felt rewarded that the entire QEH audience was standing in ovation. This wasn’t at all the kind of audience that goes to piano recitals to chase celebrities, rather than caring what music is being played (as long as it’s safe). On the contrary, this was an audience who were genuinely interested in Aimard’s approach to Messiaen. There were many composers and musicians present, some from France, Germany and Japan; but whatever their backgrounds, most people at this concert were there because they sincerely wanted to engage with this amazing music. Aimard, too, had his priorities right. He bowed several times to a small group of students seated on makeshift seats beside the piano, where they could watch his fingering and pedal in greater detail than could be seen in the stalls. One day, perhaps, it will be students as enthusiastic as these who will take on the mantle of performance, bringing Vingt Regards to audiences still unborn.

Macau - Sao Domingo Church

This is the church of Sao Domingo in Macau. This particular building is early 19th century, but there was a church of very similar design here from the mid 16th century. It's covered with elaborate filigree decoration like icing on a wedding cake. In Chinese, it's called Mui Kwei Tang (Rose Temple) as the filigree looks like vines and roses.

Interestingly, there are very similar themes in the oldest Chinese temple in town, The Ma kok Miu, which was founded around 1100, from which Macau takes its name. Perhaps the same craftsmen did the building work ? The Chinese and Macanese had a lot in common - both worshipped female deities, the Chinese the goddess Tin Hau and the Macanese the Virgin Mary. In Macau one of the favourite manifestations of the Virgin Mary is "Stella Maris", where she holds a small ship in her hand.

Also significant is the way the church was built to maximize air flow. It's hot in Macau, and humid. In the days before air conditioning sitting in a church packed with parishioners would not have been fun. So the nave is surrounded by a series of outer corridors, with windows placed strategically for maximum air flow. Note the windows ! They are kept open in summer even though birds fly in. The choir loft is directly behind these windows, airily above the nave.

Inside, it's roccoco fantasy ! The altar is gorgeous, encrusted with white filigree. In the middle is a Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. The sculpture was made in Goa in the 1700's which is why she looks Indian. In the corridors around the nave are several side chapels with more saints and Virgin Mary's including one which is supposed to have miraculous powers. I've tried, she works! She gets taken round town in processions each year to bless the community. The statue of the Chinese goddess Tin Hau also gets processioned around town, too, with similar reverence.

At the side of the church is an amazing museum of religious art. Some of it is the usual baroque gold and silver finery, (HUGE silver catafalque used in processions) but some is specifically Macau. For example, the santos, exquisitely detailed ivory carvings made locally or imported from India. When the Tokugawa expelled Christians from Japan, most of them ended up in Macau, hence a strong Japanese influence on Macau art. The church was run by the Dominican order who fought like blazes with the Franciscans and the Jesuits.

The church is just off the main square in town, near important buildings like the Santa Casa di Misericorda, built in the mid 16th century as a sort of "welfare office" because there were lots of single women with children, dependent on charity. Opposite is the town hall, known as the "Leal Senado" or loyal senate, which held out against the Spanish when they claimed the crown of Portugal.

There is much more on this blog on Macau and Chinese culture, look at the labels on right. There is a big post about the Ruins of St Paul Ruinhas de Sao Paolo with fantastic pictures taken by me. The photo of Sao Domingo is by Kevin Tierney, one of the best.

Lieder pianists - the unsung heroes of song

A few years ago, at a reception after a major Lieder recital, I noticed the pianist in a corner on his own. Since he is very famous in his own right I asked him how he felt about the attention being focussed on the singer. “That’s alright”, he answered, “it’s the music that counts”.

Lieder pianists may be unobtrusive but they are absolutely essential to performance. A good pianist is much more than mere “accompanist”, but interacts with the singer.

Accompaniment is a very special skill, quite distinct from solo playing. A soloist needs only to think of his or her self. The egotism solo performance requires doesn’t lend itself easily to song. A good song pianist, however, empathises and listens, shaping the piano part in relation to what the singer is doing

Fortunately, many good soloists have what it takes. Imogen Cooper, for example, spent much of her childhood fairly isolated, so the Sensucht of Lieder came naturally. Pianists who play a lot of Schubert and Schumann develop such an affinity with the composer’s idiom that they’ve got lots to offer when accompanying singers. Alfred Brendel is a perfect example. Moreover, he adapts to different singers. With Fischer-Dieskau, he’s fairly restrained, yet with Goerne, he challenges, so they both achieve something extraordinary. Their partnership raised the bar to unprecedented heights.

Yet some of the best Lieder pianists have spent their entire careers working with singers. Graham Johnson’s Song Maker’s Almanacs at the Wigmore Hall are legendary. He puts together such interesting, imaginative programmes that even if you’ve heard the songs before a hundred times, you get something new from these concerts. He’s also been the leading light behind many projects, like the groundbreaking Hyperion Schubert series. Who cares if he doesn’t play solo? His contribution to the art of Lieder is tremendous. Truly, he is a “Living National Treasure”.

Specialist pianists do a lot more than “accompany”. They develop performance by enhancing and supporting the singing. A few weeks ago Johnson demonstrated this unusual skill in a concert with Dorothea Röschmann. Her voice is delicate, best suited to songs of youthful purity. So Johnson devised a programme that highlighted her strengths, and played in a way that let her voice shine.

There’s now a whole breed of specialist Lieder pianists, like Julius Drake, Malcolm Martineau and Roger Vignoles. Sholto Kynoch studied with Martineau and Johnson, but has made his name with the Oxford Lieder Festival, which he founded seven years ago. It’s the biggest song festival in Britain, supplemented by masterclasses, workshops and a year-long series of recitals. And he’s still just under 30 years old. Being empathic, and being able to bring out the best in others is an unusual gift. His love for Lieder is inspiring, his enthusiasm infectious, and he knows his material. So cheers for specialist pianists ! There’s a lot more to accompanying than merely spinning notes !

The pic shows Vogl wowing the girls. But look who's behind him, quietly playing. The guy without whom there would have been no party.

Elliott Carter Centenary Knussen, Barbican London

It’s unusual that any conductor can premiere three works written this year and two more, up to eight years old. But when the composer in question has reached his 100^th birthday, it’s phenomenal. But then, that’s what Elliott Carter is like. There’s more life in him than many a third his age. “If I didn’t compose, I don’t know what I’d do”, he says, laconically.

As the late Edward Said wrote in his volume On Late Style, getting old can be liberating. What Carter is doing now is entering a distinctive new phase of development. His “late late style” as he puts it, shines with calm, confident lucidity. “I can doodle more easily than I used to”, says Carter but these “doodles” simple as they are, are quite profound.

One day in 2007, Carter and Oliver Knussen were having lunch, when the idea of an exercise in pure texture cropped up. Thus was born Sound Fields. Since Carter’s written so well for string quartet, it’s surprising that this is his first work for string orchestra. Yet, despite the larger numbers, it’s diaphanous, a gently wavering sequence of chords. There’s a single chord played by twelve sub-groups in the orchestra, startling density yet achieved by simple, elegant means. Although Carter’s still writing explosive pieces like Caténaires, where notes race in tumult, Sound Fields is slow and smooth, the chords gradually enfolding out of each other. It starts with slow timbred cello, evolving towards a simpler, barely audible final chord, also cello, that seems to evaporate into nothingness. All in barely four minutes.

Wind Rose, completed on 8^th August this year, grows from Sound Fields, adapting the concept for wind ensemble. Here the chords evolve even more slowly, the almost static effect created by long planes of sound. Wind instruments breathe. The title refers to weather charts showing invisible currents of wind blowing at different velocities and direction. Thus, each instrument is chosen carefully. There’s a whole line of different clarinets. Even when they play together, their different pitches shade the sonority, extending depth. There’s also a group of six flutes, piccolo at the top, bass flute for lower register. The steady, unhurried pulse creates a sense of timelessness, as if each sound remains suspended in space, the chords turning serenely. Knussen said “We won’t get this many clarinets together again soon”, so he conducted the piece a second time, enhancing the idea of eternal, uninterrupted growth. It’s exquisite.

Between Sound Fields and Wind Rose, Knussen placed an “old” piece - from 2000. It was perceptive. Carter has written a lot for cello over the years, so it’s a way of expressing different levels of time simultaneously. The Cello Concerto also has references to Japanese moss gardens, where plants seem motionless but are growing, imperceptibly. The passage of time is marked by the steady drip from bamboo taps. The cello plays a long quasi melody, which over seven episodes reveals different aspects of the instruments' character.The transits are marked by sharp staccato from the orchestra, developed three times into protracted Interludes. Within each section there are interesting vistas – the dramatic, edgy Giocoso where the cello plays with angular, untuned percussion, and the Tranquillo, where the cello sings in ethereally high register. Yet there’s a strong sense of direction. The soloist is walking through the garden, engaging with it but has a separate identity. In this London premiere, Anssi Karttunen played with a firm sense of purpose, his journey uninterrupted by the wonderful sounds of the orchestra.

Knussen introduced another “level of time” with Mad Regales. It was written in 2007 but harks back to the vocal music Carter wrote seventy years ago. Some years back, the BBC Singers gave a concert of Carter’s early songs and the madrigals that inspired him, so one could hear where he learned the polyphony that was to influence the characteristic intricate tracery of his later style. Mad Regales, however, is different conceptually. its three songs have sparer textures, where voices operate on different levels, and where single words pop out of the main vocal line to be savoured on their own accord. It’s an interesting non linear approach, and the six singers here operated like a chamber ensemble.

Like the Cello Concerto, the Horn Concerto, premiered in 2007, unfolds through a series of seven episodes with one orchestral interlude. It’s just over half the length of the Cello Concerto, but soloists need a break. The horn player, Martin Owen, is encased by the orchestra, interacting with different sub groups of instruments. Towards the end, horn and tuba (named Sam Elliott, oddly enough), join in conversation.

The Boston Concerto is a feat - almost a "pizzicato symphony" where string instruments are plucked, beaten, strummed, as well as bowed. They are reinforced by harp, piano and vibraphone, creating sparkling, fast paced rivulets of sound, contrasted with smoothly floating woodwind legato. Carter dedicated this concerto to his wife Helen. It's based on a poem by William Carlos Williams where love is described like rain, bringing life to the earth.Paul Griffiths, who wrote the excellent notes speaks of sequences of "musical raindrops.....rain seen in rainbow light". Like rain, textures vary. When the ensemble plays staccato on different levels, it's like a storm. Later, a single double bass takes up the theme, like a trickle after the storm has passed. “It’s fun”, says Carter. Perhaps that’s the secret of his longevity and irrepressible creative renewal. Why shouldn’t classical music be fun, and cutting edge ?

Renzo Piano's Shard of Glass

Renzo Piano's new building is named "Shard of Glass" because it's a clear glass spike due to shoot out of the Southwark skyline at London Bridge in 2012. In fact, two of them big momma and baby. Architects and modern art fans, drool. But also fans of Luigi Nono. Prometeo was premiered as a performance installation in a structure designed by Renzo.

Prometeo is all about clawing onto the shards of civilization in a collapsing world. Things can shatter at any time, everything's fragmenting, dissolving. So Piano designs a boat like structure, hanging suspended from the roof of a derelict baroque church. The musicians were seated on planks, little more than boards across space. Scary ! The performance must have captured that edge of danger which the sedate concert at RFH this year missed. So, concept and music combined.

Read about Prometeo by following the links on the list of subjects on the right of this page. It's an experience, its message even more prescient now than in Nono's time. Read about Piano's Shard of Glass in the Times, or by googling Renzo Piano Top of His Game. Photo by Keturn. There is a lot about architecture on this blog considering it's a music blog. Please look on the labels list at right, lots on architecture and its interface with music, incl Xenakis and Le Corbusier, and composers whon think music as architecture, so PLEASE keep coming back. Also pieces on non western architecture, and visual art.

Und's Wort hab' ich vergessen

Last night I had the strangest dream. I was in a concert hall, vaguely churchlike, listening to a fantastic new piece of music - poetry, song, dance combined. Such a beautiful experience I could swoon like the Pre-Raphaelite and her rose..... The remarkable thing was that every word of the poem was clear, and I marvelled at its wisdom. Such ethereal music. Next part of dream, I'm transported to an open air site vaguely like Oxford but clean and uncrowded. And there the performers were again. The main soprano, a redhead, five others behind her in greys, blues, greens. Again the words so powerful ! Then suddenly I woke
"Und's Wort hab' ich vergessen"
Not even a Strauss von Zypressen to show for it

Wagner, symphonist- Jurowski Mahler South Bank

We’ve all heard Tristan und Isolde sung magnificently. This time we were here to listen to the orchestra. Seldom are concert performances of Wagner so definitively focussed on the music, rather than the glamorous outward trappings of opera. Indeed, it was a relief that the singing, with few exceptions, was below par, so could be largely ignored, the vocal parts heard from memory.

Whatever doubts I’d had about attending a concert of “bleeding chunks” were dispelled by Jurowski’s intelligent approach to how the music unfolds. Pairing the second act of Tristan und Isolde with the Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth drew out the reference in the first two sections of the Adagio to the opera which Mahler loved so dearly. Yet it also anchored the symphony in the context of what was happening in Mahler’s personal life. Not long before, he’d discovered that his wife Alma had been having an affair, and was so devastated he seems to have had some kind of crisis of confidence. He consulted Freud, who said Alma saw him as a father figure. So Mahler as Marke ?

Yet, significantly, the Tristan references soon fade. By the third development we’re hearing pure Mahler. The ebb and flow between the two main themes here was distinct. If it emphasized the “Romantic” aspects of the piece rather than the more complex elements, that was perhaps understandable in the circumstances. We weren’t here to think about the other movements or indeed about Mahler, but to hear how the piece enhances our appreciation of Wagner as orchestrator.

Jurowski conducts so vividly that the inherent drama in the music comes through so clearly that stage action seems unnecessary. The voices here are the instruments, the singers the soloists. The first violin at last gets the attention it is due. Its role is elusive, yet significant. The cor and bassoon, for example, extend King Marke’s lines vividly, even when he isn’t singing. Above all, Jurowski gets such a tight, muscular pace in ensemble. The sense of movement is palpable : the sea and all it symbolizes, “speaks” in this Act, too, propelling the action forward. The characters don’t stand a chance against inexorable fate.

Incidentally, László Polgár was singing with a bad cold. He’s superb in the role of King Marke. Indeed, he used the roughness in his voice to advantage. Marke sounded genuinely infirm, ravaged and old. This is intelligent musicianship, making the most of a difficult situation. I’d come specifically to hear him and wasn’t in the least disappointed.

Elliott Carter centenary Boulez, Aimard London II

My thoughts on the Elliott Carter centenary concert below, to be read in conjunction with Mark's on boulezian blogspot (see link on right). Just like Carter's music, with different but complementary strands, celebrating friendship.

“I think the importance of music …is a sense that one can produce something that has a special and rather strong meaning, because we’re increasingly surrounded now by things whose meaning is cat food or God knows what…..the problem of consumer life has become universal. I don’t feel I’m writing for consumers. The wonderful thing about music is that you don’t consume –it’s something that is like a spirit: a lively spirit that gets into people and shows them all the different kinds of feelings they might have in life, even if they don’t experience them themselves”

(Carter in an interview with Marshall Marcus, Dec 2008)

Ponder and reflect on what Carter is saying, because it’s a key to understanding so much about modern music. The more dependent society gets on “soundbite thinking”, the more we need music that makes us think and feel. Carter’s music is not populist and probably never will be “easy listening”, but, as Pierre Boulez says, “A progressive and stubborn discovery with various and original means”. Music is a journey of awareness, which never ends, either for composer or listener.

This centenary tribute was in many ways a “meeting of friends” and communication. Dialogues, for example, is based on a fairly simple cell of patterns but is the basis for a vibrant exchange between piano and orchestra. Sometimes they are in harmony, sometimes they disagree, but it is an engagement. It’s a concerto, but one with such a lively sense of surprise that it feels like a freshly-minted concept. Aimard plays with lightness of touch, to emphasize the good-natured humour. Boulez shows that the soloists have “voices” here as if they were characters. The cor anglais is particularly droll.

More on the theme of fellowship followed. Matribute was written for James Levine to commemorate his mother, and Intermittences refers to chapter in Proust where Marcel is overwhelmed by memories of his grandmother. Both pieces are combined with Caténaires, written very recently for Pierre-Laurent Aimard who played it on the First Night of the Proms this year. Caténaires are the cables that link electric pylons, enabling the flow of electricity. Personal relationships mean a lot to Carter. By combining the three pieces, he’s showing how people connect and react off each other.

Hence the incredibly rapid rhythms, like the constant hum of electric cables. There’s a “buzz in the air” so to speak. Also striking are the sudden switchbacks and changes of direction. Each instrument is distinctly individual, yet they entwine like a cable, binding different but disparate threads into something new and strong. It’s a one-line piece with no chords. As Carter describes it, it’s a “continuous chain of notes….a stream of semi quavers constantly fast but also constantly fluctuating in register and in smoothness or irregularity”. Then, suddenly it ends, not broken, but as if it’s leaped into another atmosphere.

Since the Proms premiere, Aimard has grown even deeper into the piece, playing unbelievably fast flurries of notes so they seem to fly off the keyboard with a life of their own. Ensemble Intercontemporain, too, is in a totally different league from the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms The Ensemble was founded by Boulez as a specialist new music ensemble, each player chosen for his or her virtuoso status. The clarity Boulez gets from them is phenomenal, as it needs to be in music as precisely defined as this : truly the effect was electric. Many in this audience were musicians of the first rank, who really appreciate what it takes to play at this level. The tumultuous applause that followed was heartfelt.

Commissioned by Boulez for Ensemble Intercontemporain, Carter wrote the Clarinet Concerto specifically for Alain Damiens, the ensemble’s eminent soloist, whom we heard in superb form. Carter builds the piece around what he calls “family groupings” of instruments of different types, rather than the more usual blocks, which creates an unusual balance. Each of the seven movements has a distinct character, with sweeping swings of mood. Damiens moves between the different groups, creating a level of unity, a “caténaire”, so to speak, each new position subtly changing the dynamics. The final part, the Agitato is vigorous, all the players in action but in discrete cells.

Choosing Boulez’s own Dérive II to complete the tribute to Carter was an inspired idea. Carter and Boulez have been so closely associated for so long that the piece continues the idea of confraternity central to this programme. But it’s significant on a deeper level, too. Even at the age of 100, Carter is still writing, still finding new sources of inspiration. As he says, there’s “late Carter” and “late, late Carter” ! Dérive II exemplifies that open-ended, ever-renewing approach to creativity. The spirit that drives Dérive II is the spirit that drives Carter. This music isn't pre-packaged consumer product "like cat food", as Carter said, but "gets into people", constantly growing in their psyches. It was a perceptive affirmation of Carter's enduring vitality.

Dérive II grows out of Dérive I. Both explore the idea of development from simple cells, but with five extra instruments the possibilities expand exponientially. Sounds interweave and morph, sometimes pivoting on a single note, presaging, perhaps the switchbacks in Caténaires. It moves, unfolds, spirals, like a plant shooting out of the soil, its tendrils unfurling, turning towards the light. There are even lyrical passages where snatches of near-melody flit past, tantalizingly elusive. It feels like being in an enchanted forest of sound, each tree, branch, leaf vivid and different. Sometimes the forest is dense, sometimes the music opens onto clearings that reveal new ways of listening. Like Carter's own music, Boulez's is vital and vigorous, still evolving. Perhaps there will be "late, late Boulez" too, if he makes 100. Cat food fans beware !

It goes without saying that this was an astounding performance for this orchestra is so acutely attuned to Boulez's idiom that it was quite magical. I hope someone taped it for Carter to listen to. He would beam with delight !