Often, when considering a new score for a TV show, film or game, the listener is presented with a series of short, inconsequential cues, with little of musical substance to make for satisfying listening. Ian William Craig is on a mission to change that, returning with a bold approach to soundtrack writing.
The Vancouver-based artist has written a substantial piece of work to accompany a computer game, Magnesium 173. This creation from Graham Johnson is described as ‘an elegant puzzle game inspired by quantum mechanics’. In response, Craig has fashioned a dozen pieces of music running for 80 minutes. The tracks evolve with the use of modified tape, electronics and Craig’s own voice, multitracked and manipulated to create a series of choral perspectives.
What’s the music like?
Haunting and otherworldly. There is a peculiar intensity here, taking hold as the sound begins to grow in volume at the start of the soundtrack, and barely letting up throughout. The presence of the human voice is deeply powerful, for although there are no obvious words the vocals command the music’s direction and colour.
Blue Suit Glitch finds a glitchy response from modular synthesizers, while a haunting choir hesitantly rises up out of the weather-beaten tundra on It’s A Sound, Not An Ocean, their sonorous voices soon dominating the landscape on the album’s longest track. A Crack And A Shadow is much shorter, but benefits from a distinctive, sighing motif that gets cut up and worked against a steady rhythm of snowy footsteps.
Viridian is another ambient yet intense piece of work, with falsetto and deeper bass vocals set in contrary lines. The music drifts through thick electronic clouds, as it also does in the weightless Sentimental Drift. Prisms is warm and fuzzy, while Attention For It Radiates exhibits a brighter, wide open choral sound. Meanwhile a wall of bright musical ambience awaits the listener on Sprite Percent World Record, richly coloured with heat-soaked drones, pierced on occasion by a solo voice.
Does it all work?
Yes, it does – and although the emphasis is on the ambient properties of Craig’s writing, there is intensity and poise throughout, along with a keen sense of direction. In spite of its slow moving trajectory, the music is always travelling somewhere.
Is it recommended?
Yes, enthusiastically – fans of Tim Hecker, Fennesz or the Glacial Movements label, to name just a few like-minded sources, will love it. Ian William Craig has made something rather special here.
Wojciech Świtała (piano, below), Silesian Quartet [Szymon Krzeszowiec and Arkadiusz Kubica (violins), Łukasz Syrnicki (viola), Piotr Janosik (cello)]
Bacewicz String Quartet No. 4 (1951) Weinberg String Quartet No. 3 in D minor, Op. 14 (1944) Zarębski Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 34 (1885)
Wigmore Hall, London Monday 17 October 2022
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
In existence now for 44 years and with only a change of leader during that time, the Silesian Quartet has amassed a broad repertoire taking in the extent of the Austro-German tradition along with that of its Polish heritage – as was evident from this latest Wigmore Hall recital.
The rapid upsurge of interest in women composers has been of real benefit to those such as Grażyna Bacewicz, whose sizable output of essentially abstract music went too long under the radar and not least a minor masterpiece as her Fourth Quartet – its first prize at the Liège Competition in 1951 vindicated. Its three movements are dominated by the first of these – a sombre Adagio introduction as variously infiltrates the lively ensuing Allegro, such that the coda essentially becomes a stretto between such contrasted expression. The central Andante finds this composer at her most lyrical, with the ‘giocoso’ marking of the final Allegro not necessarily implying any lessening of formal and emotional focus, as this builds toward an impetuous conclusion that clinches the unorthodox if methodical design of the whole work.
The Silesian gave a superb account of a piece it knows well – having recorded all Bacewicz’s quartets – as it did of Mieczysław Weinberg’s Third Quartet. On a similar scale, this also has a similarly overarching intensity – not least when attacca markings between movements were scrupulously observed as to give the overall design its unity within diversity. The unchecked energy of the initial Presto is by no means offset by the bittersweet poise of the Andante – its taciturn unease continued in an Allegretto affording only the most tenuous, even provisional closure. One reason, surely, why the composer restructured this piece when recasting it more than three decades later as his Second Chamber Symphony, which is hardly to deny the sheer fascination of the music at a crucial stage on the way to Weinberg’s mastery of this medium.
Had he died before writing his last work, Juliusz Zarębski would barely have been a footnote in musical history. His Piano Quintet confirms an acute feeling for Lisztian harmony, allied to a commanding formal sense as should have been the springboard into an eventful maturity and is not so far behind those by Brahms, Dvořák and Franck in being a major contribution to its medium. The Silesian had the measure of the first movement’s quirky take on sonata form – its vividly contrasted ideas merged in a tensile development then varied reprise and dynamic coda. The Adagio frames its lilting central section with a melody of rapt fervency, as is itself framed by music of ‘Forest murmurs’ aura, while the Scherzo likewise frames its wistful trio with music of an intently rhythmic propulsion. The final Presto is essentially a cyclical reprise of earlier ideas as this picks up where its predecessor left off, before pursuing a sonata-rondo trajectory such as culminates in a fervent recollection of the work’s opening theme. That this piece remains the summa of Zarębski’s creativity does not lessen the extent of its attainment.
The Silesian and Wojciech Świtała had prepared no encore, instead reprising the final pages of the Zarębski to close this programme in fine style. It is part-way through a recorded cycle of Weinberg’s quartets, another of which will hopefully feature in a future Wigmore recital.
For the latest in their long running Back To Mine series, now 23 years old, DMC turn to Scott Hansen, the San Francisco producer, artist, designer and songwriter better known in these circles as Tycho.
He is a completely logical addition, already known for some incredibly relaxing chillout music through albums Dive, Epoch and Weather, which offer sunshine-infused meditation to even the coldest listener.
What’s the music like?
As so often with the Back To Mine series, it feels like DMC have caught the right artist at the right time. Tycho’s specialities tend to lie in the electronic field, and that is well represented here, but there are some really nice contrasts and bends in the road to navigate as the mix progresses. It hits just the right balance of moving forward but also enjoying the musical scenery on the way.
Bibio’s remix of Tycho’s own Spectre is the ideal place to start, setting a nice walking pace within a woozy dynamic as the guitar ambles along. Some spacey productions follow, with an excellent bit of serious electronic pop from Panama standing out, the clean textures of Destroyer dating from 2013. Happily the music never veers too close to the mainstream, as Schneider TM’s hybrid track Frogtoise testifies. Tycho’s remix of Little Dragon’s Little Man is the perfect fit to bridge from this to the hypnotic cross rhythms of Luke Abbott’s Modern Driveway, after which the amiable grooves of Weval’s You Made It (Part II) are ideal.
Ulrich Schnauss is a logical inclusion, his brand of weather-beaten electronica leaving a strong impression with In All The Wrong Places, before Tycho’s PBS brings a cool groove to back its probing riff. By the time Slowdive’s Sugar For The Pill kicks in we are more or less horizontal, a feeling reinforced by Octo Octa’s Beam Me Up, the Please Take Me Away mix by Eris Drew panning out rather nicely.
Does it all work?
It does – as you would expect from someone with Tycho’s love of perspective, foreground and background. Like the best Back To Mine compilations it brings a satisfying juxtaposition of familiar names and unfamiliar grooves, sitting alongside each other with the maximum ease.
Is it recommended?
It is indeed – another excellent addition to one of the longest running compilation series around. Even in this era of online mixes and playlists, there is still room for an hour Back To Mine.
Mendelssohn Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Op.27 (1828) Elcock Wreck Op.10 (1998) [World Premiere] Britten Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes Op.33a (1945) Elgar Sea Pictures Op.37 (1899)
Kathryn Rudge (mezzo-soprano), English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods
Malvern Theatres, Great Malvern Saturday 15 October 2022
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
This first full-length concert in the English Symphony Orchestra’s new season focussed on the sea in all its varied qualities, taking in four works whose encompassing a span of almost two centuries also identified crucial aesthetic differences as to what music itself can express.
Not least as it comes between masterpieces of the early Romantic era (A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Hebrides), Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage has often been overlooked on its own merits. Yet this concert overture, as inspired by two of Goethe’s best- known poems, is a fine example of the still-teenage composer’s prowess – Kenneth Woods securing a rapt intensity in its introductory phase, then steering its characterful continuation through to a grand while not unduly bathetic peroration with the sea accorded the final word.
From here to Steve Elcock’s Wreck is to encounter more elemental, even existential forces – what the composer refers to as a ‘‘symphonic allegory’’ portraying a ship’s struggle against intemperate weather at sea. This unfolds as a constantly evolving design, juxtaposing music of unchecked aggression with that of fraught serenity, while highlighting Elcock’s mastery of large-scale formal and expressive contrasts, toward a seismic culmination whose gradual subsidence makes possible the sustained closing section. Here, off-stage mezzo sings in an invented (hence unknown) language what he describes as ‘‘a message of salvation beyond despair, of consolation beyond grief’’ but even this is tempered by encroaching doubt. The ESO gave its all in a piece as demonstrably commended itself to the appreciative audience.
Marine vignettes rather than epics came after the interval. Woods had an audible grasp of the diverse moods in the Four Sea Interludes that Britten drew from his opera Peter Grimes, but more notable was his successful segueing between them – the keening plangency of Dawn leading into the equivocal assurance of Sunday Morning, emergent tonal and emotional blur of Moonlight, then the visceral conflict of Storm with its yearning oasis of calm and brutal closing onslaught. A few failings of ensemble hardly offset the intent continuity of the whole.
The ESO previously recorded Elgar’s Sea Pictures in an arrangement with chorus by Donald Fraser, but it was good to hear this song-cycle as Elgar realized it for mezzo – not least when Kathryn Rudge (taking her customary place at front of stage) proved so eloquent an exponent. The troubled pathos drawn from Roden Nole’s Sea-Slumber-Song was duly complemented by the whimsical charm of Alice Elgar’s In Haven (Capri) – tension rising accordingly for Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sabbath Morning at Sea, its larger emotional contrasts well defined. Expressive nuances in Richard Garnett’s Where Corals Lie might have been more subtly pointed, but there was no doubt as to Rudge’s identification here or in Adam Lindsay Gordon’s The Swimmer with its anxious though determined progress to certain affirmation.
It set the seal on a rewarding programme and fine start to what will hopefully be an eventful season for the ESO. More concerts will be announced soon, but for now the recent release of Adrian Williams’s First Symphony (Nimbus NI6432) confirms this as an orchestra on a roll.
Trad. arr. Oskar Lindberg Old Swedish Folk Song (unknown) Kristina Arakelyan Modal Reeds (2021, world premiere) Albinoni arr. Balsom / Lapwood Concerto in D Minor (1722) Debussy arr. Lapwood Clair de Lune (1905); Syrinx (1913); The Girl with the Flaxen Hair (1910) Britten arr. Lapwood Sunday Morning from Peter Grimes (1945) Eben Okna (Windows): Green Window ‘Issachar’; Gold Window ‘Levi’ (1976) J.S. Bach arr. Balsom / Lapwood Chorale Erbarm dich BWV 721 (unknown) Owain Park Images (2018) Alain arr. Balsom Litanies (1937)
Alison Balsom (trumpet), Anna Lapwood (organ), Sam Mendes (lighting director)
Chapel of St. Augustine, Tonbridge School, Tonbridge
15 October 2022
by Ben Hogwood
This was an inspirational evening of music, cleverly conceived and executed as the first in an impressive set of concerts to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Tonbridge Music Society. In its existence the society has attracted a stellar cast of classical and jazz artists to the Kent town, where they have a number of fine performing venues at their disposal. Even by their standards, however, this was an auspicious event.
Powered by a series of common musical denominators (and a shared love of Chelsea buns!), trumpeter Alison Balsom and organist Anna Lapwood created an immersive sequence of music for the striking Chapel of St Augustine in Tonbridge School. One of the many inspirations behind this was Alison’s teacher from the Guildhall School of Music, and her thank you gift took the form of an inspiring and memorable evening for many young performers, who in a ceremony afterwards were presented with a series of Diamond Music Awards given by TMS to support local musicians between the age of 5 and 18.
Both performers have a strong belief in giving back to their communities and passing on to the next generation of performers. The week leading up to the concert featured a master class given by Balsom for students of the school, and Lapwood’s continued personal and virtual encouragement for her many followers under the #playlikeagirl hashtag is bearing fruit if the young audience was anything to go by. Both showed why they can be lasting inspirations, their craft borne of a shared passion for the music they play.
Complementing the music was a lightshow, under the direction of Sam Mendes – Balsom’s husband, clearly relishing a more vocational night away from his film director profession. Running smoothly and logically, the music began with solo organ – and few would have been prepared for the immediate and bare emotion of the Old Swedish Folk Song arranged by Oskar Lindberg. We heard a counterpoint from Kristina Arakelyan, who was present for the world premiere of her similarly moving Modal Reeds. A cinematic piece led by Balsom, this had striking parallels to the film music of Thomas Newman in its rich harmonic palette and distinctive, bright textures. It made a strong impression.
The chapel was bathed in blue at this point, a subtle counterpoint to the music. Balsom then fell under the spotlight, moving to the organ loft for a spirited account of Albinoni’s Oboe Concerto in D minor, its natural arrangement for trumpet making much of the heartfelt second movement, proving there is more than one Adagio bearing the composer’s name! Lapwood’s choice of registrations on the organ throughout the evening was ideal, but here especially she found a rewarding balance and sensitive phrasing.
A Debussy triptych followed – a mellow-voiced Clair de Lune, in the organist’s own arrangement, segueing neatly into Balsom’s account of Syrinx, the solo flute piece taking flight in its arrangement for trumpet. Both instruments combined in a plaintive account of The Girl With The Flaxen Hair.
The evening’s centrepiece was to follow, prefaced by a fiendishly difficult arrangement of Sunday Morning, second of Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes. The longest stop on the organ came into play, rumbling beneath a vividly pictorial account where Balsom added a treble line. From here we moved to two substantial segments from Petr Eben’s Okna (Windows), a 1976 piece inspired by four of Marc Chagall’s stained glass windows. Coincidentally, only three miles down the road stands Tudeley parish church, the only site in England to feature original windows by the artist.
This piece is clearly special to Balsom, and the two gave a penetrating insight into Eben’s writing, taking two substantial excerpts. Lapwood exploited the organ’s colour, the mottled Green Window gathering intensity with some raucous interventions against Balsom’s fluid line. The steady build in the Gold Window was something special indeed, reaching an apex in what Balsom termed ‘the loudest B flat chord ever for non-amplified instruments’. It certainly left its mark here!
Great control was required for the floated melody of Bach’s chorale Erbarm dich before the evocative Images from Owain Park, to which the trumpet added a playful yet poignant treble line. Jehan Alain’s Litanies also benefited from this, the organ piece given an extra-ceremonial air to close proceedings. We were not fully done, however, as a softly played encore arrangement of Shenandoah held the audience rapt a little while longer.
Both artists should be applauded for their creativity and collaboration here, two words that sit towards the forefront of their thinking. The balance was ideal, a notable achievement given the familiar problems of tricky sightlines and the distance between the two performers. Mendes, too, should be credited for a sensitive response that cast a spell on those in the chapel, moving from cool blue hues to dramatic outlines in gold. A special evening indeed – how about reproducing it as a late-night Prom?
For more information on Anna Lapwood’s new Images album, featuring the piece from Owain Park, click here. Meanwhile for more on Alison Balsom’s recent release Quiet City, click here– and for more information on her debut album for EMI Classics (latterly Warner), containing a complete account of Petr Eben’s Okna, click here
Arcana.fm 