Ensemble L’imaginaire play the music of Richard Barrett at St John’s Smith Square

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Ensemble L’imaginaire (above): Keiko Murakami (flute), Adam Starkie (clarinet),        Philippe Koerper (soprano saxophone), Maxime Springer (piano), Adaq Khan (sound engineer)

St John’s Smith Square, London; Sunday 16th October, 2016

the light gleams an instant (1996)
Zungenentwurzeln (1997)
fold (2016)
Katasterismoi (1999)
dying words II (2013)
epiphyte (2016)
interference (2000)

The Sunday afternoon concert series from St John’s has been a welcome development on the London calendar – not least when it means the appearance of such as Ensemble L’Imaginaire, the Strasbourg-based group currently touring this programme of music by Richard Barrett.

Swansea-born and now Belgrade-based, Barrett (b1959) has long had a cult following in the UK with just the occasional high-profile premiere (notably by the BBC) serving to reacquaint listeners of his importance. An ambitious and questing conceptualist, numerous pieces have been planned as components of larger and evening-length projects – making this afternoon’s selection of works from the past quarter-century a viable ‘composition’ in itself; not least in its focussing on those scientific and arcane issues that have long been central to his activities.

This sequence began with the light gleams an instant – part of the larger work Tract, whose interplay of filigree activity in the right hand with headlong motion in the left gives rise to an exacting and meaningful virtuosity that Maxime Springer took audibly in his stride. Between these instrumental pieces came electronic ‘interludes’ themselves related to larger projects – the first being Zungenentwurzeln (‘‘the uprooting of tongues’’), with its inspiration in Paul Celan and visceral anatomical sound-imagery. Next was fold, originating as a piece for oboe and here transformed for soprano saxophone that underlined antecedents in Roscoe Mitchell (and a reminder that Barrett has enjoyed a productive association with Evan Parker) besides setting a tough assignment for the performer which Philippe Koerper acquitted with panache.

This was followed by Katasterismoi (‘‘transformations into stars’’), embodying astronomical reflections past and present through a tactile process of developing variation. Its sound source was the biwa, making for a tangible link into Dying Words II – whose flautist also intones an ancient Japanese text on the impermanence of things in the natural world and in which Keiko Murakami’s performing from memory was an unarguable fete. The last electronic item was epiphyte, its analogy to intruding while not parasitic plant growth represented by a dextrous texture unfolding in stealthy terms. Finally, interference alludes both to electromagnetic and quantum theories via a circuitous solo for contrabass clarinet informed by bass drum strokes and apocalyptic fragments from Lucretius as Adam Stirkie coordinated with evident aplomb.

The fact that this programme was presented as a continuous sequence lasting for just under an hour should evince no qualms, but it was a pity that the sequence could not have been heard without interruption so as to underline its highly integrated nature as both the composer and performers intended. All four of the performers – not forgetting sound engineer Adaq Khan, who throughout secured an impressive sense of musical space and definition in the reverberant acoustic of St John’s – duly took the stage at the close for renewed and enthusiastic applause.

The audience of barely more than two-dozen punters was regrettable given the stature of this composer. Not that Barrett will be tempted to succumb to the blandishments of much present-day music, but his combative and provocative work deserves much wider acknowledgement.

Richard Whitehouse

Ensemble L’imaginaire ends its UK tour of Richard Barrett at Canterbury University on Wednesday 19th October at 1.10pm. Further information can be found at the Ensemble l’imaginaire website

Café Budapest Contemporary Art Festival – Steve Reich at 80

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Jon Jacob attends the Steve Reich 80 concert at the Cafe Budapest Festival on Sunday, 16 October 2016.

Steve Reich’s music occupies a special place in the hearts of its devotees. Concerts attract earnest (in some cases obsessive) crowds, but the spirit of inclusivity borne out of the audience’s high expectations and infectious enthusiasm in undeniable.

To mark Reich’s 80th, the Amadinda Percussion Ensemble joined forces with the Kelemen Quartet and the UMZE Chamber Ensemble to perform a selection of music by the composer.

Mallet Quartet received its world premiere in Budapest in 2009, the culmination of a 25-year collaboration between the Amadinda Ensemble and Reich himself. It’s a thought-provoking work, taking us on a journey from textbook, upbeat, joyous Reich, through pensive reflection, onto a celebratory conclusion tinged with a hint of unease. What joy there is at the beginning of the work is tempered by an unshakable tension at the end.

The most musically satisfying of the composer’s larger ensemble works, City Life also happened to turn out to be the performance highlight of the evening.

The Kelemen Quartet accompanied by UMZE Chamber Ensemble played with heart and grit in equal measure, taking us through a range of aural cityscapes, some grim, others terrifying. In the fifth movement – Heartbeats – the distinction between live music and recorded ambience was indecipherable creating what at times appeared like a nightmare vision of urban life.

In some respects hearing Reich’s music in the opulent surroundings of the Lizst Academy in Budapest seemed incongruent with the images he conjures up in his writing. The acoustic, whilst generous, sometimes muddied the rich lines from the percussion instruments. The Quartet – a work for two vibes and two pianos for example, highlighted the acoustic challenge which in turn drew attention to the demands placed on the Ensemble placing chords and ensuring unison lines were uniformly played.

Radio Rewrite – a collaboration between Reich and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood – is different in character and, in some ways, musically less satisfying. The phrases Reich uses are longer meaning the driving rhythms we come to expect from his creation are lost in favour of complex seemingly ever-changing time changes. There was as a result a perceptible lack of punch to proceedings made the work feel a little long.

Jon Jacob writes about classical music at the Thoroughly Good site. He’s ThoroughlyGood on Twitter.

Wigmore Mondays – Nicholas Angelich plays Chopin & Liszt

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Nicholas Angelich

Chopin 2 Nocturnes, Op.55 (1842-4) (12 minutes)

Chopin 3 Mazurkas, Op.59 (1845)

Liszt Piano Sonata (1854)

Listen to the BBC Radio 3 broadcast here, until 9 November

Arcana’s commentary

A very satisfying blend of poetic 19th century piano music from Nicholas Angelich. By beginning with a well-chosen selection of Chopin he set the scene perfectly for the drama that is Liszt’s Piano Sonata, one of the great works for the instrument and a real test of any pianist’s clout.

First, though, the Chopin – and two contrasting works that bear the title Nocturne. This was a form of music that was more or less invented by the composer John Field and taken up by Chopin, who found it an expressive means with a relatively free form. The first of the two (from 1:46 on the broadcast) was distracted in mood and more than a little downcast. Thoughtfully played, it gradually became more animated before calm was restored with the theme at 5:58. The second nocturne (7:43) had a more open sound, with an almost constant ripple of watery accompaniment.

Angelich’s performances of the Mazurkas showed just how different Chopin’s interpretation of this dance could be.

The last of the three (22:10) was the most dramatic, shifting tellingly from major to minor key at 23:08, and ending there from 25:31.

You could say that Liszt’s Piano Sonata is a one-act play in four scenes – or you could equally say that it is a four-act play. Such is its formal design that both approaches work across the course of half an hour, and it really is one of those pieces the listener can be totally absorbed in.

For that you need the right performance of course, and this one from Nicholas Angelich fitted the bill in every way. The drama should begin even before the first soft, low notes are sounded, and here the period of silence beforehand built the anticipation nicely.

Then once we were under way at 27:30 Angelich set out the musical arguments, allowing the first movement to build its tension through to the start of the faster music at 28:20. After this the music really got going, though it was around the 36:27 where the tempo was really flying, leading up to a grand statement of the slow theme from Angelich at 38:05, a great demonstration of both power and grace at the piano.

This performance really came into its own in the slow movement however (from 41:00), setting a restful and uncommonly sublime mood, until a warning at 48:05 where the music from the start revealed itself again. Other points of note to look out for in the recording are at 48:43 where the fugue begins.

Angelich made a real and clear sense of this tricky passage, beginning with the theme and continuing at 48:55 with the ‘answer’ – as fugues are wont to do. Then the pyrotechnics ensued, a showy movement but one that Angelich kept under control, especially at 52:13 and a triumphant return of the big, slow theme. The coda, from 57:38, was exquisitely paced, and the end, when it came, was soft and petered out to the silence with which the Sonata began.

A performance as impressive for its quiet moments as its loud ones – and a Liszt sonata packed full of incident, drama and romance the whole way through.

Further listening

Angelich has very helpfully recorded something of a ‘concept’ album that begins with the Liszt Sonata. This work was dedicated to Schumann, so we also get that composer’s set of eight fantasy pieces Kreisleriana, one of his very best piano works. Completing the album are two Etudes by Chopin, the subject of Schumann’s dedication.

by Ben Hogwood

BBC Symphony Orchestra & Martyn Brabbins – Havergal Brian’s ‘Sinfonia Tragica’ + Rubbra & Grøndahl

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Richard Whitehouse on the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Martyn Brabbins (above) in a concert recorded at the orchestra’s home in Maida Vale

Rubbra Symphony No.11 Op. 153 (1979)

Grøndahl Trombone Concerto (1924)

Brian Symphony No.6 Sinfonia tragica (1948)

Jörgen van Rijen (trombone), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins

Maida Vale Studios, Tuesday 11 October

The BBC Symphony continues to schedule some of its most distinctive concerts at its Maida Vale studios, and this afternoon saw Martyn Brabbins at the helm for a sequence of English and Danish music – all being pieces that are rarely, if ever, encountered in UK concert halls.

When Edmund Rubbra’s Eleventh Symphony received its premiere at the 1980 Proms, it must have felt appreciably more distant in aesthetic than it now does. Yet timelessness was central to the composer’s music; nowhere more than this 18-minute summation of both his symphonic and orchestral thinking. Its two continuous sections – a ‘moderate’ Andante, then a ‘calm and serene’ Adagio – offer only incremental expressive change, though the cumulative emotional impact as Rubbra evolves intervallic motifs via a seamless process of developing variation is undoubted; as also his fashioning of alternately diaphanous and granitic instrumentation. This latter was superbly rendered by the BBCSO, with Brabbins attentive to the music’s wealth of detail and its by no means untroubled emergence towards an eloquent plateau of tranquillity.

jorgen-van-rijenNext came a welcome revival for the Trombone Concerto by Launy Grøndahl, best known as a conductor (he premiered Robert Simpson’s First Symphony in Copenhagen) but who, on the basis of those pieces to have been recorded, evinced a modest while appealing compositional talent.

The outer movements of his concerto alternate between trenchant and lyrical ideas, the latter having a deftness to offset the hints of rhythmic stolidity elsewhere, but it is the central Andante – in its initial blues-inflected theme and resourceful deployment of piano – that most readily confirms its composer’s prowess. Here, as throughout the piece, Jörgen van Rijen (above) was unfailingly perceptive – underlining the extent to which Grøndahl, a violinist by training, had mastered the technical range of an instrument whose overall potential remains to be realized.

During the break, Van Rijn performed Slipstream by the German-born composer and metal guitarist Florian Magnus Maier (b1973) – its interplay of live playing and recorded repetition, via a loop-station operated by the musician, affording a fresh twist to Reich-style minimalism.

Brabbins has championed Havergal Brian extensively on disc; his live advocacy so far limited (!) to a revival of the Gothic symphony at the 2011 Proms. At just under 20 minutes, Sinfonia tragica comes near the opposite end (albeit conceptually) of his orchestral output. Envisaged as the prelude to an opera on J. M. Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows that was soon abandoned, it was not incorporated into his canon for two decades, yet its symphonic status is not hard to discern.

The BBCSO duly had the measure of its progress, as unpredictable as it is inevitable – from the fugitive gestures of its opening section, through the (surprisingly?) long-breathed melodic writing at its centre, to the eruptive activity and stoic processional of its final pages. A persuasive reading of a piece that ranks among its composer’s most immediate utterances.

Indeed, this was a persuasive concert overall – one that made light of the turgid accusations sometimes levelled at Rubbra, or the unplayability too often associated with Brian. Hopefully the BBCSO and Brabbins will continue their exploration of this rewarding music at future studio concerts.

This concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 during November – further details to follow

The Borrowers – Robbie Williams: Party Like A Russian

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What tune does it use?

The Dance of the Knights from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet.

Arguably Prokofiev’s most famous piece of music, Romeo and Juliet has some fantastic music and tunes – and the Dance of the Knights is one of its most impressive calling cards. It has recently gained extra exposure as the opening titles for the BBC programme The Apprentice.

How does it work?

Williams uses the two heavy bass notes from the start to power the chorus:

A bigger sample gets used for the first chorus:

Then some snippets from later in the dance are incorporated:

The Prokofiev material appears to be replayed throughout, and Robbie adds a big male chorus for some bits, but unfortunately the bluster of verse and chorus, plus some really clunky rhyming (Russian – concussion!), mean the song itself is relatively unmemorable. The posturing in the video takes away from the music – of which Prokofiev’s contribution is arguably the most memorable.

What else is new?

Williams made far more effective use of a sample in his UK no.1 hit from 1998 Millennium, where a loop of John Barry’s You Only Live Twice tied together with a beat and a much more memorable chorus:

Prokofiev is no stranger to pop music, and has been used by Emerson, Lake and Palmer on a number of occasions. Here is their slightly foursquare take on the Dance of the Knights:

A much more effective Prokofiev transcription can be found with their transcription of the Scythian Suite – its second movement, The Enemy God Dances with the Black Spirits:

Where can I hear more Prokofiev?

The playlist below gives an introduction to Prokofiev’s symphonies and includes his Classical Symphony and Symphony no.5 – with brilliant tunes at every turn:

The second album is music for the stage, a brilliant collection under Claudio Abbado that includes Alexander Nevsky, Lieutenant Kije (with the brilliant Sleigh Ride as used by Greg Lake!) and the Scythian Suite:

Let’s also not forget Peter and the Wolf…here voiced by none other than Alice Cooper in a new version!