Gurrelieder Salonen Philharmonia London 1

Gurrelieder was written in two stages, over 11 years. In the intervening years Schoenberg had developed so much that its successful premiere left him feeling almost angry. Couldn’t the audience hear where he was heading? Nearly a hundred years have passed since that first performance, so we’re in a better position to understand Gurrelieder’s place in the repertoire. On Saturday 28/2/09, Esa-Pekka Salonen led the Philharmonia in a superb performance that made it clear why Schoenberg was to have such an influence on modern music.

Wagner’s impact on music was so revolutionary that even in 1900, a young man like Schoenberg had to engage with it before he could find himself. Hitherto Schoenberg had only written Lieder and chamber music. Suddenly, Gurrelieder bursts into his imagination, epic in scope and realization. Wagner’s influence is unmistakable. Yet Schoenberg is doing something quite distinctively his own.

The music in the first part is like Verklärte Nacht writ infinitely larger. How delicately the strings, harps and horns introduce the dream-like mood, and how the textures gradually build up in sweeping arcs. Salonen listens past the Wagnerian wrappings and hears Schoenberg, already distinctive and original. The orchestra may be huge, but he doesn’t let sheer volume overwhelm the innate refinement in the music, even in the explosive climaxes. It’s an interesting approach, cognizant of Schoenberg’s other music, rarely overburdened by excess. Salonen knows what he’s doing, and doesn’t mistake the riches in Gurrelieder as sub-Wagnerian, despite the obvious connection.

Indeed, like my friend Mark Berry writes in his blog boulezian, (link at right), it would be fascinating to hear Salonen conduct Wagner. Last year I heard Salonen conduct Sibelius at the Barbican. That was a shock as many are used to Sibelius being conducted like Tchaikovsky manqué, romantic and dreamy, which Sibelius himself couldn’t stand. Salonen came to Sibelius late, so he wasn’t constrained by preconceived tradition. He’ll be coming to Wagner late, too, perhaps with the same fresh approach.

Soile Isokoski sang Tove, with the assurance of experience. This is a role she’s made her own, developing it beyond the merely decorative. “Wunderliche Tove” is as gentle as a dove, but like doves, she’s strong. Her attraction to Waldemar is that she makes his mind “so klar, ein wacher Frieden über meine Seele”. They sing of death, but don’t get off on it. In any case, Tove thinks it’s only an interlude “wie ruhiger Schlummer” before awakening once more to life. So, no screaming histrionics need.

The Waldtaube‘s music is Erda-like, for she sees all, and represents a kind of earth conscience. Schoenberg clothes the part with music that evokes the Waldtaube’s panoramic vision : she sees the monk tolling the Angelus, we heard the orchestra solemnly creating it in sound. Monica Groop’s voice has mellowed nicely as she’s matured. Stig Andersen has sung a lot of Wagner, and it shows in the way he shapes the mighty “Herrgott, weisst du” sequence.

This is just part one, so please see part two HERE In many ways this is the more important part because it's where Schoenberg breaks new ground artistically : Magnificent music whoich proves that new and atonal can be passionately moving. The CD ius now out : The original programme notres underplayed Part 2 soit maybe useful to read about part 2 here if you get the CD,

Vienna as myth "City of Dreams"

"Vienna, City of Dreams, 1900-1935" is a series of concerts, exhibitions and other tie-ins running in 18 different European cities this spring and summer. It will be a huge commercial success because it builds upon the popular image of Vienna already ingrained into our minds.

Not for nothing the series gives great prominence to illustrations by Gustav Klimt. Klimt pervades commercial culture. We've all got the posters, postcards, CD covers, t-shirts, fridge magnets. So the series has inbuilt, instant "branding". You can't knock Klimt anymore than you dare knock motherhood or apple pie.

But therein lies the contradiction. Klimt's art may be glamorous, glossy and impressive but it reflects only one aspect of what was really going on in Vienna at this time. ' Read the link below, where Waldemar Januszczak describes him as "a pygmy seen through a microsope".

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article4025174.ece

The concerts focus on well-known standards like Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg and Zemlinsky. That's no disadvantage as this is good music and it needs to be heard. The Philharmonia are an excellent orchestra, who deliver. Esa-Pekka Salonen is much underrated. His Sibelius series last year was brilliant, shattering the cosy sub-Tchaikovsky image many still have of the composer. So it is no defect at all if the series ignores composers like Krenek, Eisler and Schreker. It's a good thing if it brings good music, and good music needs to heard.

Basically, this is Second Viennese School, without using the term because it would scare the crowds away. In the last ten years, coinciding with the rise of internet message boards and similar founts of infinite wisdom, it's become fashionable to blame all modern music on Schoenberg and dodecaphony. Anti-atonality fanatics can't get their heads round the fact that Schoenberg adored Brahms and that there have been lots of different types of modern music. One of the best things in the programme book that comes with the series, is that it states that such ideas "belong to a cartoon account of music history".

It was good then that Julian Johnson, the series organizer, gave a talk before the Gurrelieder concert which emphasized the affinity the work has to Wagner. While most people who know Wagner can make the Gurrelieder connection, there are many more who don't, so this was a perfectly valid way of legitimizing Schoenberg by placing him in context. But there aren't many composers who weren't influenced by Wagner and the love/death obsession that runs throughout 19th century thought. And Wagner was a revolutionary. The talk hardly touched on the second part of Gurrelieder, or the new ground Schoenberg was breaking. It might have been an opportunity to explain these new aspects, but caution seems to have won out. The booklet refers to the "regret" some have that Schoenberg didn't continue to write in a late Romantic style, and that others dismiss it as "romantic excess". But artists can't help doing what they do. They are driven to create and can't choose, as such. And one of the finest recordings is by Boulez. In any case, people who have shelled out huge money to hear Gurrelieder are probably open to learning more about it.

It's a Faustian pact. Getting mass audiences may mean pandering to populist anti-modernism, but that in itself amounts to an attempt to refute nearly everything the period stood for. Of course people looked back on the past, but the reason the period is so fascinating was because there was so much happening that was new and innovative. The series bases its spiel on parallel developments in literature, psychology, politics etc. Playing down the modernity in the music contradicts the whole basic premise. Vienna 1900-1935 was a hotbed of intellectual change. That's why it is important : it was the birth of so much that is "modern".

It's Faustian, too, balancing how much information to give. The booklet is lavishly produced, full of one-line quotes. Especially impressive are Edward Timms's diagrams of the circles connecting people. These diagrams are justly famous because the influences are elaborate. But there's no context. How many people reading this know, or care, about the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Social Party? Or many of the people named therein ? If they did, they'd know Timms's books on Vienna anyway. The diagrams are there to add an illusion of authority and gravitas.

This imbalance of specialist knowledge and generalist simplification is worrying because a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. There are things in the booklet which over-simplify to the point of being misleading. But that's no big deal given that anyone can find out more if they want to. But the question is, will they ?

We live in an age where there's so much information around that it's easy to mistake quantity for quality. We have the illusion of knowledge, but not the intellectual depth to process it. Of course the series will inspire many to listen and think further, but there is also many who won't. It's not the series's fault that our culture values appearances rather than content. So the Klimt connection is apt. Looking at Klimt makes us think we know more than we actually do about secessionist Vienna and what followed. But it's shiny wrapping paper, point of sale attraction. There is absolutely nothing wrong about being commercial per se because it "spreads the word". What matters is the substance of what is being sold. Certainly in terms of music this series delivers but I'm less convinced by the packaging. Unfortunately, the medium is often the message, so it does matter how the subject is represented.

Modernity is the Elephant In The Room. It may not be easy to sell, but it needs to be acknowledged because that's what Vienna 1900-35 was about.

Dr Atomic ENO London (2)

To say that Dr Atomic landed in London with a bang is shocking, but the subject it deals with is meant to be disturbing. Unlike the scientists at Los Alamos, we can't live in denial of the wider implications of their work. This isn't history. It's a universal dilemma, as relevant now as it was in 1945.

On the surface, there’s little overt action. Oppenheimer and his colleagues stand about talking, but therein lies the drama. Remember “Waiting for Godot”. The angst is existential, directed inwards. There is no overt commentary in the libretto, either. Instead, texts are taken from documents and letters of the time, presenting evidence without explicit judgement, for there are no easy answers. The words hang in limbo, like the photograph of the wall in Hiroshima standing amid the rubble, a mute witness to horror.

If the action drags at first, it recreates the suffocating atmosphere at Los Alamos, which is central to the drama. It's hard to express tedium without being tedious, but Adams takes the risk because it contrasts the banality of the scientists musings with the savagery of what they are about to unleash. Someone said (Hannah Arendt?), that evil grows from the mundane. This frustration the scientists feel is supposed to spur us to question. Perhaps it isn't theatre as we're used to but Adams is making an interesting conceptual leap forward.

How do scientists, men of reason, get caught up in barbarity ? Oppenheimer himself was an educated, civilized man who was later persecuted for his political beliefs. The scientists on the Manhattan project didn’t know the full consequences of what they were doing and were in denial. Audiences at Dr Atomic have images of Hiroshima and the Cold War seared into their memories and cannot escape.

The lyrical episodes Adams builds into the opera are essential to the whole meaning of the opera. Oppenheimer quotes Donne, Baudelaire and other poetry. It’s an escape to a more ideal world, but he’s deeply conflicted. The song “Batter my heart” is Ground Zero in this opera, utterly pivotal and beautifully written. Gerald Finley sings it with conviction, and doesn’t flinch from its irony. “Reason….me should defend, but is captived, and proves weak or untrue”. It’s so powerful that it would obliterate anything that followed. We leave the first act stunned, to ponder it in the interval.

Perhaps the secret to this opera is not to expect action from the words, but from the music. Orchestrally, this is surprising rich and beautiful, the choruses in particular well supported. The ENO chorus and orchestra have performed Adams before, most recently Nixon in China but this isn't traditional repertoire, so they deserve credit for achieving such good results. Lawrence Renes conducted the European premiere of the original staging at Der Nederlandse Opera in 2007. Experience shows.

This production, by Penny Woolcock, who directed the Death of Klinghoffer film, makes much of the Teva Pueblo. Just as the scientists do the bidding of politicians, the Pueblo serve the scientists. But they observe, they are the conscience of nature. The production starts with a wall of photographs showing the scientists formally posing, as if for mug shots. Later, they are replaced by Pueblo, standing in the cavities of the wall, as if in a massive canyon. They sing from the Bhagavad-gita, prophesying doom. “Your shape stupendous”, they repeat, to booming percussion, “All the worlds are fear struck”.

Special mention should be made of Meredith Arwady’s dark contralto, seething suppressed passion. Pasqualita is a small part, but essential. Kitty is too distressed to mother her baby, but Pasqualita nurtures.

The final scene is overwhelming, as it should be. The orchestra builds up to a harrowing climax, rolling thunder as it the skies were rent asunder. As the cast stare upward, transfixed, the bomb explodes. The whole auditorium is bathed in unearthly yellow light. This is what “awesome” really means – it is magnificent as theatre. But lest we be too impressed, the voice of a Japanese woman cries out for water. All that power, all that knowledge, was to be channelled for destruction.

Superb singing from Gerald Finley who has made Oppenheimer his speciality, and also from Brindley Sherratt who was impressive recently as Pimen in Boris Gudonov. Sasha Cooke characterizes the brittle Kitty well. The whole cast is strong but chorus and orchestra ground the production with firm purpose. The ENO has long had a reputation for choosing innovative and challenging work : this Dr Atomic epitomises what the ENO stands for.

More to come soon, and production pictures, too.
http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/02/at_covent_garde.php

Dr Atomic ENO London (1)

My father had lived in a busy city (not Hiroshima). After the surrender, he returned to find the whole city bombed flat, nothing but rubble, no way to find your bearings except by following the line of hills. This really hit him as the view of the hills had formerly been obscured by what were then high rise buildings. Suddenly, all the building were gone. He hitched a ride on someone's bicycle and the two of them ventured into the eerie landscape. Every now and then there would be a dull thud – the sound of buried bodies exploding from the gas emitted by decay.

So I really didn't know how I was going to cope with John Adams' Dr Atomic. Would I stand up and cry "murderers "? Adams is concerned with the dilemmas faced by the scientists at Los Alamos who worked on the bomb, denying even to themselves where their research might lead. They live in a vacuum far removed from reality. True, they didn't make political decisions, but what they did gave politicians power. Recent studies indicate that the real purpose of the bomb was to scare Stalin. Japanese civilians were "collateral damage".
FOR MY REVIEW PLEASE SEE HERE
But Dr Atomic the opera is compelling. The scientists theorize, imagining the dangers to themselves. It's angst, even if it's more existential than actually being in the blast and living with the aftermath. Indeed, if images of the devastation are inescapably seared into your memory, it's even more haunting because you "know" what they're trying to avoid. This is a seriously good opera. Go, especially as there are £20 offers on tickets at the moment.

Edward Seckerson has written one of the most perceptive reviews so far. Read it and listen to the podcast where he interviews those involved with the production. Look up other posts on this blog under Hiroshima. It's not a subject "from the past", but utterly relevant to now.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/reviews/adams-doctor-atomic-english-national-opera-london-coliseum-1632716.html

Der fliegende Holländer London Terfel

This Der fliegende Holländer was eagerly awaited as it hasn’t been heard at the Royal Opera House, London, since 2000. With Bryn Terfel’s return to Covent Garden as the Dutchman a full house was guaranteed.

Terfel's admirers would not have been disappointed. His voice boomed majestically, even when he had to walk carrying a heavy rope, and wade through real water at the foot of the platform. In this production, however, by Tim Albery, he wasn't really called upon to develop the Dutchman's character. As he said to one interviewer, he hasn't been challenged enough yet. He is capable, so it's a pity that it wasn't needed in Albery's concept of the opera.

At the recent ENO Boris Gudonov (see label list at right), Albery gave us Gudonov as stolid, mild-mannered bourgeois. This Dutchman is his kin, by no means a ravaged, cursed "pale man", no more haunted than Daland. Later, when his men appear, they're all neatly dressed in uniform. No way have they been roaming the oceans for centuries. Perhaps there's a rationale for this. When the Norwegians call out to the doomed ship, they face the audience in the orchestra stalls, shining torches in their faces. Is this a hidden meaning? I don't know. The production was generously supported by wealthy patrons. But then, Wagner himself was not above cocking a snoot at his benefactors. But I suspect the real reason was that the concept wasn't completely followed through.

For me, this production worked musically because it focussed on Wagner's underlying techniques, at a period when he was finding his own direction. Particularly interesting is the way he mixes the banal pop songs the sailors sing with the altogether more extreme wildness of the Dutchman's music. These songs and choruses reminded me of Der Freischütz, another tale in which happy peasants meet demonic forces. This duality runs throughout the opera, so there's constant turmoil in this music. Like the sea itself, ever churning, it's not fixed on firm ground. Wagner is moving away from established German aria-based opera to something altogether new. Marc Albrecht, the son of George, not Gerd, who conducted this opera at Covent Garden 30 years ago, focussed on the more traditional elements of the work. It's still a "numbers" piece with set vignettes and "local colour". If Albrecht didn't get the grand sweep of Wagner's later vision perhaps it's because he was focussing on his earlier influences. This performance was a reminder that Wagner was still young when he wrote it, and how far he still had to go.

But music must work with staging, and it wouldn't have been any more right for Albrecht to go for panoramic wildness any more than for Terfel to do what he might have done with a more ravaged Dutchman. Thus it was interesting to watch the Overture unfold. This is an essential part of the opera, not merely an opener, for it sets out the themes that are to come at considerable length. Here it was played against a backdrop of green light, with projections of rain on glass and vague forms flitting from left to right with minimal variation. Perhaps that's what being at sea is like, but there's a lot more development in the music, which goes through very distinct changes as it progresses.

And conflict is what the opera is about. Wagner wields leitmotivs about like weapons. Particularly wonderful is the Third Act where crosscurrents of different music are thrown against each other, with the force of violent waves. Just as there's a storm at sea in Act One, there's a storm on land in the Third, an echo of a more cosmic storm of the soul. In the Third Act, the Royal Opera House Choruses show how exceptionally good they are. They carry the intricate counter-forces with precision and committment. No denying the in this opera now. At last the production came vividly to life.

Bryn Terfel was obviously the big draw, but it's Anja Kampe who I'll remember. What a huge voice, from such a tiny frame! Maybe it's good miking, but she gave Terfel a run for his money. Again, the production downplays her inherent hysteria. She's fixated on the Dutchman long before he appears, clinging to his image like a teenage Goth obsessed by symbols of doom. Of course she's virginal and sweet but even her mates think she's a bit warped. Senta is the prototype Wagner heroine, who equates love with death, and needs to find herself through sacrificial redemption. A bit like what Wagner expected of the women in his life. Kampe should go on to do interesting things in this vein. She's singing Isolde at Glyndebourne this summer.

Please see what Mark says about this on Boulezian and also Intermezzo (link at right)
And photos
http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/02/at_covent_garde.php

Audi Partenope Wien Schäfer

As Sue Loder says in her review linked below, Handel's Partenope is like London buses. You wait ages and then three come along at once. She's writing about the Vienna production directed by Pierre Audi in Vienna with Christine Schäfer, David Daniels, Florian Boesch and Les Talens lyriques, providing period instrument ambience.

".........It is this finale which cleverly encapsulates Audi’s vision of Partenope’s latently violent world: the confrontation becomes an actual boxing match set inside the villa, complete with ropes, hanging microphone, glitzy scorecard girls and the protagonists in lurid red and white towelling robes. The watching characters seem to hold their breath as Arsace makes the winning blow: his opponent must fight, like him, bare-chested (and thus betray her sex). This cruel twist breaks her spirit, and reveals all the treachery and immorality lying beneath the sham glamour of their lives. Handel’s final chorus is oddly abrupt and Audi leaves us wondering whether any of them will ever love each other again. No heroes here in Vienna, just a baroque opera for the 21^st century, and none the worse for it. "

Read the whole piece here with production pix:
http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/02/no_home_for_her.php

Handel Festival, London

Get a handle on Handel this year in London! Below is a link to Melanie Eskenazi's article on the celebrations. This will be Handel Total Immersion, as there will be so many concerts, talks etc, even walking tours, as the composer spent so much time in England. The London Handel Festival, which starts 23 Feb, features some of the greatest oratorios, Theodora, Alessandro and Jephtha.

"The highlight of the Festival is surely Jephtha. Laurence Cumming, the conductor and Festival director, has been “saving up for this as it’s such a dark piece, with such complex issues being grappled with. It’s a work in which everything is inherent in the drama, with nothing more needed to bring it out than the right singers.” John Mark Ainsley considers the title role one of the greatest and most challenging: “I’ve recorded it once and would love to have another go at it now that I’ve got so much more life-experience under my belt – I’ve always liked the piece for its top-class Handelian lyricism, and its combination of superlative music with an involving text.” The clearly-defined narrative is “as much about moods of the protagonists as it is about actions”, and he loves the almost Shakespearean nature of the text, which he says you can speak “without cringeing”. After a relatively long absence from the role, Ainsley is looking forward to finding out “what new colours I’ve got in the paintbox.” Ainsley has a special closeness to the Festival, since he sang his very first Handel oratorio in St George’s and learned a great deal from performances there by an earlier generation of singers. He credits Laurence Cummings with the new energy that is evident in the Festival, owing not only to his musical invention but also to his enabling, “yea-saying” approach. He feels that we don’t really celebrate Handel enough as a Londoner, but this Festival gives the chance to do just that in the composer’s anniversary year."

Read the whole article here
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_features.php?id=6809

Architecture as music Kowloon Walled City

In 1965, my friend went to a talk by Xenakis. Yesterday we went together to the big Le Corbusier exhibition at the Barbican. First weekend - queues for tickets, packed with earnest looking students and a few familiar faces, not that architects are as high profile as rock stars.

The Poème Électronique room is particularly good because you can see the whole film in its original black and white starkness - clips of Godzilla, ancient art, Belsen, Madonnas. Profound and found objects, thrown together. Sit where you can see both the film and the colour overlay on the other side of the room. At the Philips Pavilion both were shown together : at the Barbican, use your imagination to put them together and in the context of the undulating, walls not made of solid concrete but shards attached to a metal frame, hanging in the air, defying gravity rather than solidly ignoring it.

So, a few random and non-technical thoughts. Mandelbrot patterns are supposed to show how all creation evolves in a systematic sequence even though it may look infinitely chaotic. One striking thing about the patterns in Le Corbusier's work is the way simple grids multiply themselves, becoming ever more complex. It's really not so different from so much new music. Which is why for me new music is as organic as nature, cells dividing and expanding in sequence. And why I don't buy rigid tonality versus atonality doctrines which inflict labels on what is beyond classification. Time to reverse dogma and simply listen.

Architecture is a way of "enclosing space" even when they integrate light, air and landscape. Xenakis described the three planes of the Philips Pavilion as a "cow's stomach", an inner space where ideas are digested. Music too is a way of enclosing sound in structure, creating sculptures with sound. More on this soon after Xenakis Immersion Day on March 7.



Architecture isn't just buildings. The exhibition featured a lot on Le Corbusier's thing for urban space. Cities don't usually grow by planning. except when there's a disaster like the Lisbon Earthquake, or the upheavals in Paris in the 19th century. In the third world there are/were lots of urban environments which defy any principle of urban order - people just build where and how they can. The "traditional" Third World city is a maze-like warren of random structures. Electricity is "borrowed", sewers connect to water supply. There used to be a place in Hong Kong called the Kowloon Walled City which was a vertical burrow of conjoined structures where you never had to reach street level, if you knew how to navigate corridors, illegal bridges etc.

Note in the photo above, extensive gardens were created by the government - not the city inhabitants - to counteract the claustrophobia of the Walled City. (the photo enlarges if you click on it). The gardens acted as a kind of cordon sanitaire around the conurbation. Previously, it had been surrounded by multi storey building, only separated by a narrow city street. Had fires broken out or plague or cholera, it would have easily spread to the rest of the area. Moreover, since the Hong Kong government had no legal jurisdiction, triads ruled : the Walled City was a crime hotspot. Surrounding it with public gardens meant that police surveillance was possible. When the Triads ventured out, they could be stopped. In theory, anyway. The gardens weren't about aesthetic design, but served a grim, practical purpose. Town planners with their drawing boards sometimes don't understand.

Eventually the Chinese and Hong Kong governments made a deal to end the historic anomaly that allowed the Walled City to exist, and the whole place was razed.

So back to my beef with the Barbican. Originally the idea was that the mini-Metropolis should reflect the warren that was medieval London. The ancestors of my friend who heard Xenakis in 1965 lived under what is now the Barbican Hall. The difference is that, in a medieval village people knew their way around because they didn't travel far, and adapted to the higgeldy-piggledy maze by habit, not optimum convenience. People don't build warrens for fun, they just come about piecemeal. Ordinary people don't have big budgets they just improvise. "Traditional" cities aren't a "model" for anything.

The Barbican's systems are utterly counter intuitive to logic and rational movement. Even the lifts (elevators) when they condescend to appear, don't all go to the same floors. And when you get in them they decide for themselves where they are going to go, complete with sado-mechanist voice machinery. The Barbican was not designed for the disabled, elderly, children, or anyone who wants to get from point A to B without going round the block ten times. here's no natural flow of movement. And the feng shui is hopelessly stagnant. The Barbican complex is a structure that actively hates people.

Discovering Glazunov - Serebrier

When I was young, Glazunov and early Russians were often played by leaden Soviet era orchestras, dutifully earnest and plodding. So I was completely taken by surprise when I started listening to the series of Glazunov symphonies recorded over the last few years by José Serebrier and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Not my thing, I thought, but listened, and discovered how much fun they could be. Serebrier thinks the symphonies anew. It’s like scrubbing stale varnish off a piece of furniture, to find the rich wood beneath.

This Glazunov is vivacious, fluid and witty! Currently I’m listening to Symphony No 6, a recording which has been nominated for the 2009 Grammy awards, and raved about by lots of different people, some of whom don’t usually agree. It isn’t easy for me to write about repertoire I don’t know well, but this is great fun. These recordings prove yet again how important thoughtful performance can be, not "going through the motions" but expressing genuine enthusiasm for the music. I love listening to these recordings because they fill my heart. Which is as good a recommendation as any in these difficult times.

Le Corbusier, Xenakis and Varèse Philips Pavilion

Think back to the Brave New World of 1958, after grim years of war and austerity. Philips, the then technology giant, wanted to dazzle the postwar world with the ultimate in artistic modernity. Thus Poème Électronique was conceived. It was an amazingly ambitious, visionary venture : it’s hard to imagine what an impact it made on audiences then who weren’t used to techno anything, far less an extravaganza of electronic music and visual effects in a building that looked like something from a sci-fi movie

Le Corbusier wanted to create a Gesammstkunstwerk. As an architect he understood how people experience space and fill it with sight and sound : Poème Électronique is a concept that juumps straight off the theoretical draftboard into reality. That's why he threatened to quit altogether if Philips wanted to drop Edgard Varèse. The whole point, for Le Corbusier, was that Varèse, neglected and frustrated, represented the new frontier, mixing technology with art.

Looking back on 20th century modernism , that's a trend that keeps recurring from the Italian Futurists to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, and George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique. But the Philips Pavilion was a multi-dimensional experience on a huge scale, where vistors and space were part of what was happening. Thousands filed through the Pavilion, herded almost like animals, through corridors in which they were bombarded with bizarre sounds, flickers of images blasted so quickly they hardly had time to absorb them. In 1958, before most people even had TV, this was amazing. No way would a multinational today even dare consider something so adventurous.

There's plenty to read, even diagram by diagram plans of how the pavilion was built. Here is a clip of what folks in 1958 saw :

What a succession of images! And how strange they must have seemed to people who still watched movies in black and white. And how shockingly prescient - multiple Hiroshimas, right in the middle of the Cold War.

A lot of fuss is made over who did what and when in the development of the Philips Pavilion project. But such nitpicking misses the point. Architects, unlike composers, can't work on in isolation. Moreover, Poème Électronique was a fusion, not merely a series of events. As Xenakis himself said, there was an alternative son et lumiére installation Philips wanted to use, but it just didn't work in quite the same way.

Although Varèse didn't see the pavilion before he wrote the music, he understood the concept of sound being created as part of an environment. This idea – which dates from the Middle Ages – is very much live today. Think Stockhausen's sculptures in sound like Cosmic Pulses (Proms 2008) or "architectural" music built for specific spaces. Think Simon Bainbridge, Magnus Lindberg, Luigi Nono, where performance space is part of the experience. The images were projected onto the fluid lines of the building, the sounds adapting to the acoustic.

Furthermore, although Xenakis only wrote a short prelude before Poème Électronique, he designed the structure of the pavilion on principles that relate mathematics, architecture and music. In 1955, he'd written Metastasis, distinctive for its glissandi that shoot upwards and outwards like arches. He said "If glissandi are long and sufficiently interlaced, we obtain sonic spaces of continuous evolution. It is possible to produce ruled surfaces by drawing the glissandi as straight lines. ... my inspiration (for the Philips Pavilion) was pinpointed by the experiment with Metastasis". He goes on to show, via diagrams, the causal chain of ideas which led him to formulate the architecture from his earlier piece of music. The music grew from architecture and vice versa. It's way of thinking in pliable shapes.

This is why Poème Électronique is still significant after 50 years. Varèse never had the facilities which IRCAM, computers and modern electronics gave those who came after. But like a wild and woolly John the Baptist, he showed the way (See a wonderful 1920's arty shot of him by clicking on his name in the labels list on right). Conceptually, Le Corbusier, Xenakis and Varèse are still in the vanguard, their achievement still not fully understood. Follow the labels list on tight - lots on the architecture and music interface, Xenakis etc.

Big Le Corbusier retrospective London

A major Le Corbusier retrospective starts Friday 19th Feb in London at the Barbican. It's an important exhibition which covers Le Corbusier's whole career- architecture, design, philosophy - and his influence on others. There's a tie in with the Xenakis Total Immersion Day on 7th March.

The exhibition, which runs to 24th May includes, according to the Barbican blurb, the "monumental mural painting, Femme et coquillage IV (1948) from his own office at Rues de Sèvres, Paris; a reconstruction of his Plan Voisin for Paris (1925); a complete original kitchen by Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand from his famous Unité d’habitation, Marseille (1947-50); original models of Ronchamp (1950-55), Unité d’habitation (1945-52), Parliament Building Chandigarh (1951-64) amongst others; and the film version of Le Corbusier and Edgard Varèse’s Poème Electronique (1958)." This later is a must for anyone interested in 20th century music, as it led to IRCAM and so much more. Lots of Picassos, Legers etc too.

Later I'll write about Le C, Xenakis, Varèse , the Philips Pavilion and Poème Electronique so watch this space - this blog can be bookmarked and subscribed to. In the meantime, here's a link to the article in the Times about the retrospective. There aren't any Le Corbusier buildings in England, so holding the show at the Barbican is as close as it gets. Pity that even after 25 years, I loathe the Barbican's demented anti-human, anti-intuitive architecture, with its appalling feng shui, as much as I love the clean tangents of Le Corbusier's work seen from photos. The photo above, Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp is by Guigui Yoshito.

Times article :

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/architecture_and_design/article5725116.ece

George Benjamin Into the Little Hill

The big news about the long-awaited London premiere of George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill was that it wasn't. A power cut minutes into the performance and that was it. Read about it on boulezian and intermezzo's blogs (follow link at right). Intermezzo has pix!

Since many people don't live within taxi distance, the "solution"to the power cut was pretty unfair. Lots of people are out of pocket and not just for tickets. Next time let's hope they do the right thing and offer refunds. There must be insurance for these things.

Luckily, I had cancelled my tickets for the first night and caught the whole show on the second night. For a change I hit the jackpot. This was a wonderful performance with Benjamin himself conducting the London Sinfonietta. Claire Booth and Susan Bickley, often raved here on this blog, sang the vocal parts. This is a new production by The Opera Group. Follow the link below to read more about them and the background to the opera. Their site has photos, video and audio clips - recommended!

Into the Little Hill reminds me of many things - the cartoon/novel Maus, even Michael Jackson's truly creepy song "Ben", where the disturbed kid makes friends with a rat. The story is desolate. A man appears in a little girl's bedroom. He has no face...no nose...no eyes. Yet the father does a deal with the sinister stranger and swears on the little girl's life. Seriously sick. The whole opera pivots on ideas of dissimulation, concealment, crawling into dark recesses, nothing is safe from being gnawed away.

This production seems, from pictures, to be more atmospheric than the French one. A circle of black gauze screens orchestra from singers. That's very well thought through, for even the music here is cloaked in disguise. You hear something eerie, or harps or bells. Sure enough, look behind the screens afterwards and there's a cimbalom right in the heart of the orchestra. You hear something tense, tinny and shrill : it's a banjo, and conventional strings being played like banjos, strings plucked high up the shaft, not bowed. Much emphasis is on low toned instruments like bass flute and bass clarinet, whose sensuous, seductive themes weave through the piece like a narcotic night blooming flower. At one point it sure feels like there's a sound so high pitched that the human ear can't quite hear it : but rats can hear at higher frequencies than we can....

Benjamin's writing for voice is a revelation. Unlike Thomas Adès, he doesn't force voices into painful contortion. While the lines are extremely challenging, they flow naturally, almost as speech even when they range up and down octaves. Part of this may be the texts themselves, written thoughtfully, like haiku, allowing the listener's thoughts to form. "The hum of a refrigerator in summer" sings the mezzo, and you know what she means and why it's relevant. Bickley and Booth don't sing "roles" and often their lines are reported speech, echoes perhaps of the ancient tradition of story telling. But there's no mistaking the modernity of this truly disturbing, ambiguous piece. It has a force of its own, which I suspect, even Benjamin and his librettist, Martin Crimp, have channelled as opposed to having consciously written.

What a brilliant idea, too, to pair Into the Little Hill with Harrison Birtwistle's At the Greenwood Side, from 1969. The whole Punch and Judy ethos gives me the creeps, whatever its artistic validity, because it is sick and unhealthy. Perhaps that's the point Birtwistle is making. The mummers and their play are frauds, utterly sordid. You can almost smell their stench in this production. But there's a thin line between ironic comment and the celebration of sickness. At least At the Greenwood Side is concise and gets to the point without too much fuss. And Booth's bag lady murderess is so clearly nuts, she's sad, not vicious, unlike the male characters. Nice touch, too, that the London Sinfonietta are dressed in white tie, which for them is "costume". This distances them from the drunken tramps the actors portray. Pity though that the piece is more speech than music. But then is Birtwistle implying that the barbarians have breached the gate ? This piece feels like graffiti in the meanest sense, smeared on art. Good performance and production though. Perhaps that's why it's so effective (and upsetting).

Here's The Opera Group's link, with photos, video clips and audio samples:

http://www.theoperagroup.co.uk/productions/more/into_the_little_hill_down_by_the_greenwood_side/

Tristan Murail Terre d'ombre

Terre d'ombre is a shade of brown frequently used in oil painting because it adds a warm "burnt umber" glow. The colour, for most people, connects to nature, the soil, growth, fertility. Murail's choice of this name for this piece refers to his father, a painter, and to Messiaen for whom colour was inextricably connected to music. "Spectralists" (to use a horrible blanket term) extend the concept so that visual connotations are as valid to the musical whole as any other reference. Just as painters extend the depth of colour by adding density, composers can "paint" by intensifying sound.

Murail's Terre d'ombre, though, also references Scriabin's Prometheus, the Poem of Fire. Scriabin was probably clinically synaesthetic, unlike Messiaen who would have liked to have been, so again the reference is to the concept of colour in music.

Perhaps too much can be made of Murail's fondness for quotation. In many ways it's a good thing because it helps access since it gives those new to the music something to relate to. But it's also misleading because it underplays the originality of the work. God forbid that the anti atonality fundamentalists get hold of Murail and use him to beat up on modern music. These extremists, who don't usually actually listen, are crazy enough, so it's a real threat.

Here Murail uses a massive orchestra, no less than 12 cellos, 8 double basses, a swathe of violas and a panoply of dark brass. Cue the idea of "ombre", earth tones, depth of shading. He uses a large orchestra because that in itself allows a wider range of sound, getting round the problem of fine tuning or de-tuning instruments and working out modulations and micro tones which only the most sophisticated musicians can play. Electronic projection is still an important feature, but it doesn't act like a soloists in a concerto, like the piano part in Scriabin. Rather it works with the orchestra, extending its range. This is a much bigger piece than Gondwana, and more sophisticated.

Terre d'ombre also refers to the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods, bringing light to mankind. Murail's treatment is no way as profound and passionate as Luigi Nono's Prometeo (see links to that amazing piece in the subject list on right, below). Nontheless the dark, throbbing resonances do evoke a sense of primeval struggle. Poeme d'Extase it isn't. Note that even fifteen years before this, Murail was quoting passages from Scriabin in Gondwana, with its slowly building mountains of sound, themselves reminsicent of Messiaen's shifting tectonic plates.

Terre d'ombre is a spectacular piece, perfect for large scale auditoriums like the Royal Albert Hall, where its dark richness will wow the audience. The piece is only five years old, and Proms planning has a run in of several years. It is an ideal Proms piece and would be a huge hit. Much fuss has been made of the fact French music doesn't get Proms coverage "because of Boulez" which is a laugh, since even Boulez and Birtwistle were relegated to the "ghetto" of late night slots in recent years. So much modern French music, specifically Maurice Ohana and Dutilleux, is chamber music, not suited to the Proms ambience. Besides, why shouldn't the BBC favour British composers, even if they choose Thea Musgrave et al year after year?

Murail himself uses the metaphor of cooking to explain what he does. With his FM and computer generated calculations, he's working out the "chemistry". Boulez is more like an intuitive cook who just "knows" by instinct and experience. FM allows precise perfection. Boulez doesn't do much electronic/computer enhancement but without him, there would have been no IRCAM, no Ensemble Intercontemporain, no springboard for so many French (and British and German) composers. And in this Murail Immersion day, let's not forget, we heard Hugues Dufourt. (see the link below or use the subject list at right)

Photo of the paint pigment is from www.iconofile.com

Yi-kwei Sze Chinese Lieder song

Shanghai born bass baritone Yi-kwei Sze (1915-1994) is famous in the west because he moved to the US in 1947. He was highly acclaimed. Some of his recordings are still available, more should be. Tcherepnin wrote his op 95 for him, Seven Chinese Folksongs. No longer in print, but there's a copy in the New York Public Library (Music).

The song above, though is "How can I forget her?", written by Zhao Yuanren, (1892-1982), a scholar and linguist who developed a system for romanizing Chinese characters. The poem is by another linguist Liu Ban-nung, his friend. Composer, poet and singer were all exiles, as most people were in those war torn decades from 1931 onwards. The Sensucht the song expresses, though, applies on many levels. The song has become a classic, so firmly embedded in Chinese culture that many people don't realize it was art song. Part of the reason Chinese composers and poets get relatively forgotten is that their art has become absorbed in everyday culture.

The second video clip shows a soprano version, taken from a movie in the 1950's. In the West, art song and popular song are separate. In China, however, even though western classical tradition started to take hold from the late 19th century, there was less division. Film, above all else, was the art form par excellence of modern China, an extremely important means by which ideas spread. Indeed, film helped unify the country in the face of war and hardship.

Please see the Yi kwei sze website HERE for more information.

Here's a translation. Note that in Chinese "he" and "she" are the same word.

In the sky, floating clouds;
On the earth, a gentle breeze.
The cool air blowing through my hair;
How can I not think of her?

The moon in love with the sea;
The sea in love with the moon.
Ah, on this sweet, silvery night
How can I not think of her?

Blossoms drifting on the water;
Fishes sporting in the stream,
Swallow, what is that you're saying?
How could I not think of her?

Bare trees shivering in the wind;
Wildfire aflame in the evening glow.
The sun still colouring the western sky;
How could I not think of her?

Lincoln and Darwin birthdays

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin share Feb 12 as a birthday. Lincoln of course was a giant among men in every way. Here he is with ex slave and campaigner, Sojourner Truth. Apparently Darwin's family were abolitionists, too.

Walt Whitman's poem on Lincoln's death was set by Paul Hindemith when Roosevelt passed away. Horribly difficult lines to set.

"When lilacs last in the door yard bloom'd,
And the great star early drop'd
in the western sky at night,
I mourn'd - and yet shall mourn
with ever-returning spring".

Offhand I can't think of any songs that commemorate Darwin. But John Updike's worth remembering, too. Brian Holmes's Science Songs are based on Updike's poems. These songs are becoming quite a cult on the song circuit as they are lively, witty and fun to sing. Great in recital. Brian is a physicist and brass player, all round interesting person. To hear clips of his Science Songs, follow this link about halfway down the page:
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/performancetoday/fredlines/