Tag Archives: Edgard Varèse

In concert – CBSO, CBSO Orchestral Residency / Edward Gardner: Varèse & Adams

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City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, CBSO Orchestral Residency Musicians / Edward Gardner

Varèse Ionisation (1929-31); Amériques (1918-21, rev. 1927)
Adams Harmonielehre (1985)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Friday 17 July 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

It was likely coming after the ‘official’ end of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s season that brought a disappointingly low turnout for this concert, itself the culmination of the initial CBSO Orchestral Residency. This saw some five-dozen musicians, aged from 21 to 25, working alongside the orchestra’s musicians for an intensive week of rehearsals with Edward Gardner – principal guest conductor of the CBSO during 2010-16 and whose expertise across a broad range of repertoire was duly demonstrated by the ambitious programme heard tonight.

A first half devoted to Edgard Varèse ensured a testing workout for percussion in particular – 13 of them placed across the rear of the platform for the scintillating interplay of timbre and texture that is Ionisation; not the first such piece for the concert hall, but certainly the first of consequence. A pity that remarks by the conductor and Residency musicians did not precede rather than follow it, allowing the climactic entry of tuned instruments (chimes, glockenspiel and piano) to fade into the solo flute as commences Amériques with spellbinding immediacy.

Long notorious in terms of scale and impact, the latter work has now become something of a showpiece as this builds from post-impressionist musing, via passages alternately speculative and strident, to an apotheosis where jousting brass underpinned by a ‘walking bass’ uncannily anticipates symphonic jazz a generation hence. Under Gardner’s guidance, there was no risk of its losing focus – the players responding with discipline and no little relish to music as has lost none of that capacity to provoke and enthral just a century after its Philadelphia premiere.

The CBSO has an association with Harmonielehre stretching back more than 30 years to the recording (only the second) made with Simon Rattle. That this orchestra, with its Residency contingent, now brings greater freedom and flexibility says much about the development in orchestral playing over that time – along with the integration of John Adams’s work into the repertoire such that, far from being a polemic for reasserting the supremacy of ‘tonality’, it now yields all the attributes of a showpiece and may even be thought of as a crowd-pleaser.

Symphonic in aim if not necessarily intent, let alone attainment, this is music that can easily sprawl and it was to Gardner’s credit the un-titled first movement – with its alleged imagery of a super-tanker taking flight – maintained the impetus of those seismic opening chords, via music of expressive luxuriance, to a conclusion that fairly hit the ground running. Even finer was The Anfortas Wound, its brooding sombreness suffused with wrenching starkness on the way to a climax whose anguish references a comparable passage in Mahler 75 years on.

As with many symphonies actual or otherwise, the finale seems more a rounding-off than a resolution of the issues at stake, though there was no lack of purpose in Meister Eckhardt and Quackie as this imaginary encounter between a Medieval theologian and the composer’s infant daughter yielded unstoppable momentum prior to a headily affirmative close. Nor was there any doubting the conviction by which an expanded CBSO brought this work, and with it the whole concert, to its impressive conclusion. Roll on the Orchestral Residency for 2027.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2026/27 season, visit the CBSO website, and to read more about the CBSO Orchestral Residency. Click on the names to read more on conductor Edward Gardner, and composers John Adams and Edgard Varèse

Published post no.2,953 – Monday 6 July 2026

50 years on – an appreciation of Edgard Varèse

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varese

Fifty years ago today, the man known as the father of electronic music died at the age of 81.

Edgard Varèse is frequently held up as a torch-bearer, a composer whose originality was startling even in the age of Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Webern. Varèse provided the blocks from which many composers, electronic or otherwise, have taken their lead.

Given that Arcana takes its lead from a Varèse piece, it is only right we mark the composer in this way. And so, over the last two months of this year, we will embark on an appreciation of Varèse, get to know his works better, and try to understand why his was such a visionary mind.

To do that we will benefit hugely from your involvement, so if you have any thoughts about Varèse, any appreciations you want to offer, or indeed if you want to join in the listening, then just get in touch – editor@arcana.fm

It promises to be quite a voyage of discovery! And to kick things off, here is his Poème electronique:

Welcome to Team Arcana!

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arcana-purple-25

Welcome to Arcana.fm! It’s great to see you here.

Arcana has been set up to give you the chance to step into classical music with no fear or pressure – just the chance to enjoy and read about good music!

The name Arcana comes from a forward-looking orchestral piece written by the French composer Edgard Varèse in the 1920s. Varèse was a visionary, an early sign of the direction electronic music was to take some fifty years later – and I want to capture something of that sense of discovery and originality in a number of ways through the site.

To do this I am treating all musical styles as equals, enjoying what they take from each other – pop drawing from classical, as in The Borrowers series that will begin with Manfred Mann‘s Joybringer, and vice versa – an example for starters being Philip Glass and his symphonies from the work of David Bowie. If Taylor Swift or Muse suddenly go classical, you’ll be the first to read about it!

There will be an extended look at classical music as used for TV and film in Screen Grab, beginning with the score for the Russell Crowe-led seafaring epic, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and looking at TV adds and promos, too. What’s the music Channel 4 are using to promote The Jump? You’ll find out here (it’s the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin‘s opera Prince Igor!)

There will be a series of guides for online concerts, which in the case of the BBC iPlayer will then be available for 30 days’ enjoyment. There will be interviews – a couple of whom are tenatively lined up for the next week or two in the shape of Emika and John Tejada. There will be reviews of new relevant recordings, both pop and classical. We will go on a Richard Strauss Odyssey, inspired by the composer’s centenary last year – and fellow centurion Sibelius will follow! Later, in a more ambitious series, we will take music year-by-year from 1700, so we can start with the very best the Baroque period had to offer. There is also Under the Surface, a look at underappreciated composers or works.

What matters most at this or any stage is your feedback and suggestions. Arcana is not just for my enjoyment – I want everyone to get as much as possible out of it. So tell me what you would like to see more / less of on this site, what music you like and dislike, or anything else – through Twitter, Facebook or e-mail.

Let’s enjoy the music!

-Ben Hogwood