On paper – The Durutti Column – A Life of Reilly by James Nice

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The Durutti Column – A Life of Reilly
by James Nice
Burning Shed 2024 (hardback 272 Pages, ISBN: 978-0993303647)

Reviewed by John Earls

The guitar playing of Vini Reilly has been described as understated (which is not to say that it is not hugely influential and affecting). One could say the same of the man himself. So, the arrival of this authorised biography of the musician and his band The Durutti Column is both timely and welcome.

Written by James Nice, author of Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records, it is a well-researched and compelling account of the band and one of the most unique guitarists ever. It is particularly gripping if you are interested in the Manchester and Factory music scene in the 1980s.

The book is also beautifully produced and presented in hardback with quarter bound cloth spine reminiscent of much of Factory Records’ own output (however, it’s a shame there wasn’t a bit more diligent proof-reading).

It opens with Reilly’s early years growing up in Manchester, with him cocking an ear to his engineer Dad listening to jazz and classical music, tinkering on the piano and switching to guitar under the tutelage of Miriam ‘Mimi’ Fletcher, a German expatriate who escaped Nazi persecution before the war and was to become Reilly’s first significant creative mentor.

Already exposed to classical composers such as Tchaikovsky through his father’s musical listening, ‘Mimi’ broadened Reilly’s exposure to include others such as Bach and Bohuslav Martinů (who Reilly cites as a favourite). It is after discussing Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony that Reilly goes on to outline his own thoughts in respect of responses to music:

“For me there are three main responses to music: the physical response, which is the most basic, where you dance about to it; an intellectual response, where you listen to the construction, evolution and development of the piece; and third, and most important to me, the emotive response, and this really is the greatest expression of emotion anyone has ever managed to write”.

The music of Vini Reilly and The Durutti Column certainly hits those spots.

We then get taken through Reilly’s playing with punk band Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds, coming into contact with then local TV personality Tony Wilson, the formation of Durutti Column and the release of their first album The Return of the Durutti Column in 1980, also Factory Records’ debut album.

Needless to say the presence of Factory supremo and Durutti Column manager Wilson looms large. The, at times difficult, relationship between him and Reilly is revealingly and sensitively handled, sometimes movingly so with Reilly reporting “I owe him my career…I loved him, really. He was almost like a father figure to me. He was also really generous spirited”.

There are some great reminiscences. I particularly liked the story about former Chelsea and Everton winger Pat Nevin (who had a Durutti tune Shirt No.7 dedicated to him) and Reilly (apparently no mean footballer himself in his youth) visiting one Steven Patrick Morrissey of The Smiths and having a kick about in Morrissey’s back garden. Reilly played guitar (along with Stephen Street) on Morrissey’s first solo album Viva Hate and the book delves into its writing, recording and records the reflections of involved parties (not always harmonious).

As well as Reilly’s guitar playing, we are also reminded of his musical innovation, such as the use of sampling on the album Vini Reilly (1989) which preceded Moby’s Play (1999) of which Reilly is still scornful.

The concentration on the 1980s – nearly each year from 1979-1990 gets a dedicated chapter – is where the book goes deepest. There is a chapter on 1991-1999 (‘A Turbulent Decade’) and 2000+ (‘Requiem’, all of two pages). The final ‘Interlude’ (there are several interspersed between chapters) is 2009: ‘A Paean to Wilson’ featuring a 2010 interview by Wilson Neate.

The omission of the latter years which include the Chronicle album and performance, Chronicle XL and Reilly’s deteriorating health is noticeable and unexplained.  

Finally, the other significant and consistent presence in the book is Bruce Mitchell, stalwart Durutti Column drummer and latterly also Reilly’s manager and organiser.

Reilly has long been self-critical often openly so in the music press to the detriment of the albums he was supposed to be promoting. Mitchell comes across as not only a loyal friend (“the best friend I’ve ever had” says Reilly) and simpatico musical colleague, but one of Reilly’s best advocates:

‘Vini doesn’t really listen to his old stuff,’ jokes Bruce, making light of the maestro’s chronic and enduring lack of insight. I just wanted to say that I’m proud of them for him’.

Amen to that.

John Earls is Director of Research at Unite the Union. He tweets / updates his ‘X’ content at @john_earls

For more information on the book and to explore purchase options, visit the Burning Shed website

In concert – Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Sinfonia of London / John Wilson: Hesketh, Shostakovich & Rachmaninov @ Barbican Hall

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Sheku Kanneh-Mason (cello), Sinfonia of London / John Wilson

Hesketh PatterSongs (2008)
Shostakovich Cello Concerto no.2 in G major Op.126 (1966)
Rachmaninov Symphony no.1 in D minor Op.13 (1895-7)

Barbican Hall, London
Tuesday 15 October 2024

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Picture (c) Mark Allan

This memorable concert enhanced the Sinfonia of London’s status as orchestral game changers. Conductor John Wilson re-established the ensemble in 2018 as a group taking on special projects, both in the studio for Chandos and in the concert hall. To date these have included early musicals, with Oklahoma! and Carousel in the bag, alongside top drawer recordings of orchestral works by Korngold, Ravel and Rachmaninov. The latter’s Symphony no.1, set down the previous week, completes a cycle of his symphonies.

Before that, we heard an orchestral tour de force from Kenneth Hesketh, fully established as a striking voice in British contemporary music. PatterSongs is a dense orchestral collage of music drawn from his opera The Overcoat, after Gogol. Its colourful score is decorated and ultimately dominated by the woodblock, part of a vibrant percussion section whose contributions bring the piece to theatrical life. They were brilliantly played here, as Wilson kept a tight grip on proceedings. With moods ranging from exuberant to grotesque, the sonics panned between slithering trombones, luscious strings and smoky, jazzy interludes with a slow drumkit. All contributed to the spirit of the dance in an ideal modern concert opener.

The Cello Concerto no.2 by Shostakovich offered a marked contrast. Sheku Kanneh-Mason has a special affinity with the composer’s music, having won the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2016 with a performance of his first cello concerto. Since then he has also played the scarcely heard Cello Concerto by his contemporary and close friend Weinberg. The second concerto is a very different animal to the first, a private and often worrisome affair whose attempts at jollity and light-heartedness are compromised by music of latent menace. The personality of the concerto’s dedicatee, Mstislav Rostropovich, is never far from the music’s mind.

Kanneh-Mason and Wilson found the work’s qualities, if not its beating heart. This was down to a desire to push for faster tempi, their account not always pausing for breath where it might, as though the silence between notes might give something away. The first movement Largo was ideally pitched, questioning and with the occasional hint of a smile. Ultimately it succumbed to the brooding, omnipresent lower strings, who often finished the soloist’s sentences. The Allegro released this tension with impressive solo cadenzas from Kanneh-Mason, who inhabited the outbursts of energy but received the ideal complement in similar phrases from the outstanding horns (Chris Parkes and Jonathan Quaintrell-Evans), bassoons (Todd Gibson-Cornish and Angharad Thomas), timpani (Antoine Bedewi) and percussion (the superb quintet of Alex Neal, Owen Gunnell, Paul Stoneman, Fiona Ritchie and Elsa Bradley).

The transfer to the finale, while Allegretto as marked, felt breathless, the cello’s recurring sweep up to a top ‘B’ robbed of the room it needed for maximum impact. Similarly the macabre ticking of the percussion was clipped. In spite of this, however, Shostakovich’s feverish statement – direct from the sanatorium where he spent his sixtieth birthday – still made a profound impact. As a side note, how gratifying it was to see Kanneh-Mason, a gracious soloist, acknowledge the orchestral contributions mentioned above, before a well-chosen encore of Weinberg, the 18th of his 24 Preludes for solo cello.

Rachmaninov’s Symphony no.1 received a famously disastrous premiere in 1897, one that would affect its composer’s mental health for many years. Indeed he did not hear the work again in his life, the memory of its ragged and disrupted performance under an intoxicated Glazunov fuelling monumental bouts of self doubt. This account could hardly have been more different, John Wilson presiding over a performance of feverish intensity and white hot rhythmic precision. The Sinfonia of London were simply outstanding, led by a first violin section so fully invested in the music they were practically burning a hole in their musical scores!

Wilson clearly loves this piece, and as they set out the immediate drama of the first movement fugue the Sinfonia added clarity to their list of qualities. The silvery strings and rolling timpani of the Intermezzo were beautifully turned, Wilson heightening the connections with Tchaikovsky, whose Pathétique symphony predated this piece by just one year. It was possible to sense a passing of the baton between the two, such was the strength of feeling generated in this performance.

The slow movement had heavenly strings, its central section with increasingly fractious brass that dissolved with the return of the main theme, Wilson crouching towards the floor as he cajoled the strings to greater heights, with hints again of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.

Everything cut loose in the finale, a thrilling drive to the finish from the jubilant main theme to the crash of the gong at the end – where the percussion section were once again on top form, the full force of Rachmaninov’s orchestra laid bare. In these hands it was difficult to see how the first symphony could be perceived as anything other than a masterpiece, its lean structure supporting powerful emotions and meaningful tunes. Wilson and the Sinfonia of London had them all in spades, finishing a concert that will live long in the memory. My ears are still ringing!

You can find more information on further 2024 concerts of this program at the Sinfonia of London website

Published post no.2,333 – Wednesday 16 October 2024

New music – Sasha: Da Vinci Genius (Night Time Stories)

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published by Ben Hogwood, using the press release.

Sasha returns to Night Time Stories with his latest project – Da Vinci Genius – an immersive exhibition celebrating the work of Leonardo Da Vinci, the great Italian Renaissance polymath.

His 2016 release Scene Delete’ on the same label, an imaginary movie score, saw an adventurous but logical left-turn for the veteran DJ/producer. Now he is fully embracing the world and structure of classical music, combined with the deep sonics for which he’s renowned. He used his experience as an electronic music producer – and movie buff – to re-frame his work, enlisting Scene Delete veterans Dennis White, Dave Gardner and Barry Jamieson to assist in this complex task.

“I’ve never written music for a project like this before, so it was really exciting and interesting to work with the show’s designers Flora and Fauna Visions (FFV) on this incredible brief. 

The show is a past-present-future peek into Da Vinci’s mind, presenting a lot of his iconic work, using computers to play around with it, and creating a stunning visual experience. We needed the music to support and enhance that.

We wanted to capture some of the atmosphere of those incredible film scores we love, and the modern electronic composers we were inspired by. People like Nils Frahm, Jon Hopkins, Steve Reich, even Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre. We were inspired by Kubrick’s approach to using classical music in his films, but also the modern film composers like Hans Zimmer, who use classical movements with amazing electronic sounds around them.

We also managed to find some beautiful medieval choral music of LDV’s era from a Renaissance composer Josquin des Pres, which inspired some of the more ambient sections. When we started the score we hadn’t seen any of the visual, so had to be guided by FFV’s mood boards. It was a different, challenging way of working.” Sasha

A dream-like journey from start to finish, the nuances, atmosphere and melodic layers of compositions such as Mosiac, Equality and Clouds are woven into soft melodies and emotive timbres, and are perfectly presented. It’s only with compositions such as the beatific Super Hero (with Sentre) and Into The Metaverse where Sasha reverts to more familiar sounds. Listen to the trailer below for an idea of how effective Sasha’s blend of his own language and newer influences can sound:

With Da Vinci Genius, it feels like Sasha is very much at home in unfamiliar territory – revelling in the simply beautiful and undeniably moving music he has created. He recounts, “I really wanted to take something classical but flip it on its head, make it modern. Although the show focuses on Leonardo’s original art, in most points of the show it’s getting messed with electronically. For instance, the Mona Lisa appears out of thousands of digital fragments, and some of his other famous portraits melt into electronic visual glitches. I wanted to frame the show with a classical mood, but then allow electronics to pulse behind it. It was a wonderful collaboration with FFV and I’ve loved doing this.”

Da Vinci Genius debuted in Berlin in 2021 and then transferred a year later to Amsterdam. The show is set to wow audiences in Florida, USA and India at the end of this year, with more details to be announced.

You can pre-order Sasha’s album here:

Published post no.2,332 – 15 October 2024

In concert – Leila Josefowicz, CBSO / Thomas Søndergård: Richard Strauss, Adès & Brahms

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Leila Josefowicz (violin, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Thomas Søndergård (below)

Richard Strauss Don Juan Op.20 (1888)
Adès Violin Concerto, Op.24 ‘Concentric Paths’ (2004)
Brahms Symphony no.2 in D major Op.73 (1877)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 10 October 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Tom Zimberoff (Leila Josefowicz), Chris McDuffie (Thomas Søndergård)

He may be spending more time in the US than in the UK these days, but Thomas Søndergård tonight made a timely reappearance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a programme such as placed a highpoint among recent concertos between two established German classics.

Richard Strauss‘s Don Juan poses few technical issues for an orchestra these days – the only proviso about this performance being its almost too easy unfolding, the initial stages seeming suave rather than impetuous and emotional contrasts following on almost too seamlessly. Yet the central ‘love’ episode featured a melting contribution from oboist Lucie Sprague, with horns duly firing on all cylinders in a unison theme ultimately capped by a silence of tangible anticipation then a postlude of hushed resignation – heroic aspiration submerged in an aura of starkest fatalism.

If much of Thomas Adès’ music the past two decades has been of a conceptual brilliance that outweighs its intrinsic content, the Violin Concerto is destined to endure and rightly so given these Concentric Paths complement each other in a finely balanced totality. One, moreover, with which Leila Josefowicz identifies wholeheartedly: despatching its brief outer movements with an energy and a panache so that Rings conveyed a volatility channelled towards greater affirmation in Rounds; between them, the relatively expansive Paths proved a chaconne as methodical in evolution as it was affecting in its suffused intensity. Assured in her handling of the solo part, Josefowicz dovetailed it unerringly into orchestral writing as resourceful as any the composer has written. Those in the audience unfamiliar with it were most likely won over.

Many of those present were no doubt looking forward to Brahms’ Second Symphony after the interval, where Søndergård (above) and the CBSO did not disappoint. Outwardly its composer’s most equable such piece, this yields more than its share of ambiguities and equivocations that were rarely absent here. Not least in the opening movement, its unforced progress duly taking in an eventful development whose granitic culmination set its easeful themes at a notably uncertain remove, then with a coda whose restive horn solo was eloquently rendered by Elspeth Dutch. Søndergård was no less probing in the Adagio, flexibly paced so its autumnal main theme did not override the more whimsical and anxious elements which inform its longer-term progress. Certainly, the closing reflection on that theme cast a potent shadow on what had gone before.

The other two movements are usually thought to present few if any interpretative problems, so credit to Søndergård for finding no mean pathos in those reiterations of the Intermezzo’s main theme – not least when it returns as a winsome coda. Nor was the final Allegro lacking in incident, such as that spellbinding transition into the reprise whose epiphanic aspect was not lost on Mahler. Given its head without sounding at all rushed, the coda then emerged as the ebullient though never grandstanding peroration which Brahms himself surely intended.

A resounding close to an impressive performance, and there should be more music-making on this level next week when the CBSO is joined for the first time in many years by former chief guest conductor Mark Elder for an enticing programme of Brahms, Janáček and Shostakovich.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about violinist Leila Josefowicz, conductor Thomas Søndergård and composer Thomas Adès.

Published post no.2,331 – Monday 14 October 2024

Switched On – Trentemøller: Dreamweaver (In My Room)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Andreas Trentemøller follows up his 2022 album Memoria with a new long player, presented with Icelandic vocalist Misa, who has been a regular collaborator since that time.

What’s the music like?

Dark in hue but wonderfully spacious. Trentemøller is a versatile producer and gets the ebb and flow of the music just right here, so that we move between uptempo energy and downtempo musing.

The voice of Misa is key to that, her cool tones the ideal complement to the starry eyed, wide screen productions.

The impression given by these airy tracks is atmospheric and moody, but Trentemøller ensures that tracks like Nightfall work on two levels, as an intimate song and also as a wider panorama.

The stately progression of the title track brings Beach House to mind, while In A Storm packs an impressive punch. Meanwhile Winter’s Ghost is appropriately shadowy.

Does it all work?

It does – and with evidence that Trentemøller’s songwriting prowess is becoming more evident with every new release.

Is it recommended?

It is – another compelling piece of work from the Copenhagen maestro.

Listen & Buy

Published post no.2,330 – Sunday 13 October 2024