In conversation with Petroc Trelawny before the performance, Matthews reveals that his string quartet rate of composition has been approximately one every ten years, but that the gap is now narrowing.
This work was written for the 75th anniversary of the Tanglewood Festival and is conceived in a single movement. “I wanted to do something very different from the others”, he says, and the silences are a starting point. “The work begins very hesitantly”, he explains, and works up to only one big climax.
Did you know?
Colin Matthews worked as Britten’s assistant in the last few years of his life, and was essentially his right hand man for proof reading and even composition. You can read an interview about his exploits here
Initial verdict
It is possible to detect the hand of a mature composer at work here. So many new pieces rely on shock tactics and volume to make themselves heard, but Colin Matthews shuns all of that with an economic approach that actually brings forward greater emotion.
The faltering start from the quartet, together, becomes a distinctive motif that runs through the piece, and although the music does indeed build and get to a more secure footing, it never fully shakes off the uneasy start from the muted quartet. It is at times reminiscent of a Bartók quartet slow movement, or even Britten, in the intensity of its expression, though it never fully sounds like those composers. The Fifth Quartet says a lot in a relatively short duration, convincing in spite of its emotional doubt, as it retreats into the shadows at the end.
You can look at the music itself courtesy of Luke Bedford’s publisher, Universal Edition, here
In the introduction on the same page, Bedford sets the scene for his new piece. “Ideas in this piece are torn apart by a strange energy and reform in new, dynamic relationships. There is a constant tension between growing and collapsing. That which seems durable can vanish in an instant. The piece will include the Albert Hall organ, a detuned orchestra and possibly the first use of a cricket bat in an orchestral piece.”
Reflecting the world we live in and experience. Was going to be a set of movements but is now in one continuous duration. Cuts between ideas in an unexpected and dramatic way. Some of the orchestra – wind and brass – play a quarter-tone lower.
Did you know?
Initial verdict
As the BBC Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny observes, Instability is a piece that vividly captures the uncertain and often overwhelming times that we live in. It is a very edgy piece indeed!
From the start (35:22 on the link) some quiet murmurings among the orchestra but then a sudden outburst that changes the whole dynamic of the piece. Bedford writes some striking music for the orchestra, a dramatic set of contrasts that perhaps intentionally leaves the listener completely on edge with the huge rumbles of sound. There is not so much melodic, as the big chords are walls of sound, but there is a good deal of pent-up anger released with them it would seem.
The organ is integral to the music, tending towards the upper end for a shrill sound, but cutting through around the 44’ mark with an emphatic blast of C major tonality. After this the piece becomes uncertain and wary again, with some creepy sounds and ominous, held low notes.
I couldn’t hear where the cricket bat comes in but assumed that to be in the percussive section around 41:30, where it feels like a lot of pipes are struck.
From around 48:55 on the link the cellos and violas intone a solemn melody, but the rest of the orchestra seems hell-bent on breaking this up and smothering it. Then the forces bang into each other chaotically before cutting out to near silence. Then what seems to be a coda starts, with another quite solemn and drawn out melody broken up by metallic chords from brass, wind, percussion and high organ.
To me this piece feels like an attempt to live a proper life in a society that is chaotic, uncertain and full of dread. At the end this tension is unresolved.
Second hearing
tbc!
Where can I hear more?
You can watch a portrait of Luke Bedford in this video uploaded to YouTube by the London Sinfonietta:
Leila Josefowicz playing DuendePhoto (c) Chris Christodoulou
“Historically”,– says Luca Francesconi, “duende is the demon of flamenco. As Federico Garcìa Lorca explains, it is a subterranean force of unheard-of power that escapes rational control. To recover a primitive force in the instrument that perhaps most embodies the history of the West it is necessary to make a perilous descent into the underworld of dark notes, or a flight beyond the orbit of the earth. Which amounts to the same thing. Extremely difficult. But without duende we remain bolted to the ground.”
The work, for violin and orchestra, is a joint commission from the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Leila Josefowicz, the violin soloist, has expanded on ‘duende’. “We acknowledged that we both have Duende, which cannot be learned…this is something we knew we could share with the world, he with his composition and me being the interpreter and musical messenger. I appreciate his incredible musical imagination, his scores bursting with colour and drama”.
Did you know?
Francesconi, born in 1956, has studied with both Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio. His chamber opera Quartett, about the end of the world, was heard at the Royal Opera House in 2014.
Initial verdict
This is a striking piece, right from the start, where the violin begins with some feather light string crossing at a very high pitch, seemingly evoking night time insects or other sounds. There are some incredibly taxing passages for the instrument early on, which Josefowicz is completely equal to.
There is some frenetic activity both from violin and orchestra, but at around 7 minutes in the violin really soars, making a rather beautiful sound easily audible even above the glinting, treble-heavy accompaniment.
Around 13’10” there is a notable gear change, the violin digging in for some seriously virtuosic and demonic passages. Then at around 17” a slow, nocturnal atmosphere asserts itself, with various whistles and clicks from the violin to long-held notes from the orchestra.
I found it a little more difficult to hold attention with the piece in the closing stages, but it is doubtful that is the fault of the composer. A second hearing will confirm!
Second hearing
tbc!
Where can I hear more?
You can watch a performance of the Piano Concerto no.2, completed in 2013, below:
We definitely undervalue the BBC orchestras when the Proms take centre stage. I say that because this was one of the most colourful orchestral Proms it has been my pleasure to witness, and much of the credit for that should go to the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, a riot of bright shades under Juanjo Mena in Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphony. Yet while that performance will inevitably take centre stage, it was another work that stole the show.
John Foulds has spent a long time languishing in the musical wilderness, but in the last ten years he has begun to reach a bigger audience. A good deal of thanks for this should go to conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo, who recorded two discs of his orchestral works with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. They enchanted us with Foulds’ inventiveness, and most importantly his eagerness to incorporate Eastern cultures within an extremely Western art form. In this respect he was in line with Gustav Holst.
One of the finest works in this respect is the 3 Mantras, thought to be part of a massive Sanskrit opera, Avatara. Very sadly that never came to be, and 300 pages are lost from the score, but the 3 Mantras survive and make a very accomplished and unusual orchestral piece. The colours are simply beautiful, achieved through a wide variety of percussion, harps and shimmering strings, all of which Mena marshalled to show the detail of Foulds’ inventive orchestration.
It is the second piece, the Mantra of Bliss (starting at 8:13 on the link above) that is the most striking, a meditation of radiant orchestral beauty, where Foulds uses a wordless female chorus to enchanting effect. Holst had done this before, in Neptune from The Planets, but rather than that cold emptiness Foulds creates exotic warmth.
The outer two mantras are very different; the first a bustle of activity that slows for a moving slower melody; the third an almost barbaric dance that wheels out of control and wields a fearsome set of percussion at the end. This was a terrific performance from the BBC Philharmonic, showing off Foulds’ gifts to a new audience that will hopefully look to discover more of the music of this remarkable composer.
Want to hear more
You can hear a playlist from BBC Radio 3’s CD Review, where Andrew McGregor explores recordings of John Foulds’ music, by clicking here
There will be more Under the Surface features as the Proms progress, exploring lesser known pieces and composers at the festival
Four Proms premieres in one concert here, given by the ever-enterprising Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. They begin with Johannes Schöllhorn’s arrangements of three BoulezNotations, plus a transcription for ensemble of a fragment from each of the thirteen originals – one bar from each, in fact! The arrangements are Notations 2, 11 & 10, while the collage is La treizième.
Shiori Usui’s piece has an extremely macabre background, and is not for the faint-hearted! Ophiocordyceps unilateralis s.l. is a nasty little fungus – as in an infectious fungus that completely eats up the ants that are unfortunate enough to capture it. Usui was struck by an image of one in a nature magazine, and this gave her the sounds she wanted to create.
Betsy Jolas, meanwhile, says of Wanderlied in an onstage interview that “I was trying to make the listeners imagine an old woman going from town to town as a storyteller”. The old woman in this case is a cello, accompanied by the instrumental ensemble – and we are warned of a ‘surprise’ at the end.
Finally Joanna Lee’s Hammer of Solitude, for singer and ensemble. This was written with Boulez in mind, and when she looked at individual movement titles of his she was taken to writing about the poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, and her life, using text by Rory Malarkey. This is a bleak piece indeed, for Lee chooses to devote the last of the three songs to Plath’s suicide.
Did you know?
The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group has premiered over 160 works in its 27-year existence. It was born from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 1987.
Initial verdict
Johannes Schöllhorn – Notations 2, 11 & 10; La treizième
An energetic set of pieces, benefiting from incredibly well drilled performances. With sharp phrases, these brief thoughts are distilled into really short paragraphs, with only the briefest period of relaxation. There is a wonderful rumble on the bass drum to finish La treizième, which is a great concept if rather difficult to follow!
Usui has certainly picked a grisly but rather captivating subject for a new composition, and given the scenario the music is very vivid – uncomfortably so in fact!
There is a striking, bluesy clarinet solo midway through, but, but by this time the ant appears to be giving up the ghost.
Then we hear some very ominous loud brass with a thumping bass drum, before macabre sounds signal the beginning of the end for the ant. Usui captures the forest and its clicks and murmurs with some imaginative scoring, while also conveying the really grotesque side of Mother Nature.
Betsy Jolas – Wanderlied (from 21:28)
The cello feels restless from the beginning of this piece, while the rest of the ensemble appear to be painting the picture of a wider expanse, through which the old woman is travelling.
Not surprisingly the old woman takes the lead in the conversation throughout, and is very expressive. Its tone of speech is very much in the human range
The ‘surprise’ appears to be a form of hidden track, where the audience think the music has stopped, and begin to applaud, and then find that it hasn’t.
Joanna Lee – Hammer of Solitude
The first song, Hammer Alone In The House, features a very distinctive half spoken / half sung vocal from the alto, above some atmospheric orchestral colouring. The Love Song has a little more tenderness, but The Suicide is much less forgiving. It is surely very difficult to portray such a bleak and decisive moment in music, but Lee does so powerfully.
Second hearing
Tbc!
Where can I hear more?
Right here! Embedded are sound clips for each composer’s work:
Arcana.fm 