Knussen Aldeburgh - Carter, Webern - and Mendelssohn ?

Mendelssohn Symphony No 1, with Elliott Carter's Instances for chamber orchestra (2012), written shortly before his death aged 103. Trust Oliver Knussen to come up with a programme that blends Mendelssohn, Dallapiccola, Carter, Webern and Ligeti, conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Maltings, Snape, Aldeburgh, part of this year's Aldeburgh Music Festival. Knussen's programmes are intriguing, always planned with musical nous and intelligence.

At first, I was shocked. Mendelssohn played with exuberance that veered close to wildness? Definitely not the kind of over-processed, over-manicured performance that puts too many  people off Mendelssohn. Instead Knussen made us think of Mendelssohn as audacious and free-spirited. Our perceptions are shaped by received wisdom, tainted by Wagnerian prejudice asnd boring, safe performasnce practice. Knussen might shock, but boring he never is.

Mendelssohn and Elliott Carter have a lot more in common than one might expect. Geniality and good humoured wit, for example, and an appreciation for stylish bon mot. Carter's Instances for chamber orchestra is an eight-minute piece for a medium-sized orchestra. In the first six minutes "a seemingly random sequence of sonorities and figures are are playfully flung at the listener", to quote Bayan Northcott, who writes serious programme notes, the kind that deserve to be quoted and remembered, infinitely more rewarding than the superficial pap that programme notes have beome (other than at Aldeburgh),  ".... culminating in a surging tutti, suddenly broken off. At this point a slower chorale-like texture previously adumbrated by  the brass, is taken up mainly by the strings in a more sustained and touchingly valedictory coda".  Then a deliberate pause, and a two minute "second movement" asserts itself, reiterating the ideas in the first movement with joyous, epigramatic concision.  As so often with Carter's later work, the piece seems intimate, as if the players were conversing, delighting in exchange.

Hearing Anton Webern's Symphony Op 21 (1928) after Elliott Carter made me realize how much Carter and Webern have in common, too. Two distinct movements within ten minutes, and an orchestra pared down to basics. The first movement "Ruhig, schreitend" employs an "Exposition comprising an intricate double canon, But the lines are so fragmented and criss-crossed " that they seem processional.  The double canon repeats  "but with the note values so altered, and the dynamics intensified, it sounds quite different", adds Northcott. The second movement "Variationen" develops the theme yet again, in even more distilled purity, ending elusively, as if the symphony, such as it is, will play out in the imagination.

A listener request, phoned in by another composer! Knussen has a thing for repeating shorter works in a concert. This time, he repeated the second movement of Webern's Symphony, so we could further savour its elusive, tantalizing promise.

Ligeti's Melodien for orchestra (1971) concluded the programme. Spastic pizzicato suggesting kinetic, oddly organic flickerings, glimpses of half-hidden images barely grasped in the undergrowth.  Carter, Webern and Ligeti forming a trinity  in which the idea of a symphony take new fiorm.  Earlier in the programme, Knussen followed Mendelssohn  with Luigi Dallapiccola's An Mathilde, a cantata based on three Heine poems, Den Strauss, den mir Mathilde band,  Gedächtnisfeier, and An die Engel. The soloist was Katrien Baerts. An interesting piece, which should be heard more, but this concert favoured the orchestra rather than voice and orchestra.

Tonight, Klangforum Wien presents two equally fascinating concerts under Ilan Volkov, the late night concert featuring Tristan Murail's Winter Fragments (2000) and Gérard Grisey's Vortex Temporum I, II and iii (1994-6) Alas, I can't be there but you can read about the pieces HERE and HERE. Klangforum Wien is one of the finest new music ensembles of its kind, so I hope the concert is recorded.

Birtwistle Carter Wigmore Hall

Probably the greatest living British composer, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, turns 80 in July. He'll be the subject of a series at the Barbican and no doubt feted at the BBC Proms. At the Wigmore Hall, the BBC Singers joined the Nash Emsemble for the latest of their series on British and American composers.  Colin Clarke writes in Opera Today :

"So it was that Birtwistle bookended the evening. The first piece was his Fantasia upon all the notes (2012), commissioned by the present ensemble and premiered at the Wigmore Hall in March 2012. Scored for flute, clarinet, harp (the sound of the harp, although not omnipresent, was a Theseus-thread through the evening) and string quartet, the score breathed out a lyric expansiveness, its long lines fully honoured here and leading to a frenetic climax before the piece effectively disintegrated. The basis for the composition (“all the notes”) is the shifting scales of the harp, dependent on the pedals used. In this way, the harp, by no means soloistic, subtly guides the harmonic language of the piece. ........"

"Elliott Carter's Mosaic of 2004 (for flute, oboe, clarinet, harp, string trio and double-bass) began the second half. The harp part is virtuosic but in the pre-concert talk Birtwistle had contrasted Carter's treatment of the instrument to his own: Carter does not let the instrument resonate (and therefore, by implication, be true to its own nature). The complex pedal work is impressive indeed as a performance act and one does have to wonder if this aspect is part of the piece's basis, just as the viola is asked to be contra-itself and be very forceful; very un-viola-like perhaps. It is an interesting piece, certainly, but it was overshadowed to no small extent by the piece that most people had surely come to hear, Birtwistle's recent The Moth Requiem (2012)."

Read the full review HERE. 

And HERE's what I wrote about Birtwistle's Moth Requiem last year.

Fiendish Fun Knussen BCMG Aldeburgh

Serious music doesn't need to be dour. Oliver Knussen connducted the BCMG at Snape, Aldeburgh, in a programme that sparkled with wit and whimsy. Really serious composers have nothing to fear from humour.

Britten's The Sword in the Stone (1939) was written for children's radio, when the media took children seroiously enough to give them real music instead of pap. Bright children could get hooked on real music for life. This is so vivid that any imaginative child can visualize the story. It's very superior music for cartoons, which Britten enjoyed.  Trumpet calls  and mock marches describe the young prince.. Rumbling bassoons suggest old Merlin rumbling along trying to keep his dignity. Who else has drawn a sword from a stone (or rather a World Ash Tree? Britten also parodies Siegfried's journey : the wood dove here sounds like a curlew, suggesting that Britten was hinting at thoughts children as sensitive (and odd) as he would have intuited beneath the surface charm.

Hans Werner Henze was fascinated by Britten and by Aldeburgh, so Knussen returns the compliment with Henze's The Emperor's Nightingale ( L'usignolo dell'imperatore) (1959) . Again, the starting point is fairy tale, and the movements describe the different characters. The Nightingale is defined by flute and the mechanical nightingale by piccolo. Marimba, celeste and bass clarinet suggest exotic, diaphanous mysteries. Like the Emperor, the listener is seduced, Gloriously translucent textures, beautifully realized. 

Pierre-Laurent Aimard joined Knussen and the BCMG for Elliott Carter's Dialogues (2003), with which he has been closely associated. Dialogues evolves from a fairly simple cell of patterns but is the basis for a vibrant exchange between piano and orchestra. Sometimes they are in harmony, sometimes they disagree, but it is an engagement. The soloists have “voices” as if they were highly individual characters having an animated discourse. Rhythms and tempi are also in constant flux. The piano attempts to dominate but is knocked back by the others. The cor anglais is particularly droll and a high woodwind screams in short bursts. The piano growls with menace then launches into a very fast, almost manic run, but is stopped in its tracks by an exclamation from a high-pitched piccolo. I though of a cartoon policeman blowing his whistle! 

Carter's Dialogues II (2010) received its UK premiere. In keeping with Carter's "late, late style" it's pared down to essentials. This time, the piano rumbles, like an angry bull poised to charge. The brass is more assertive. Less whimsical and inventive than Dialogues, Dialogues II feels like a rematch where the combatants are having one last bash for old times's sake. t doesn't feel aggressive though. At the end, there's a wonderful extended chord  where the whole ensemble sings in unison and the piece ends, suddenly, with great emphasis. 

Magnus Lindberg has also long been associated with Aldeburgh, so Red House received its premiere with Knussen, an old friend. The piece is panoramic in concept, a "landscape" piece that evokes the spirit of Aldeburgh. The Red House was Britten's home, secluded in woodland but not far from the sea. Broad, sweeping arcs of sound suggest wide, open horizons. The skies over Aldeburgh, the beach and  the ocean, bracing winds, blowing in from Northern Europe : all symbolic of Britten's music. Lindberg also suggests aspects of Britten;s work, from the diaphanous Sea Interludes to the mock-heroics of the Elizabethan works. The piece is very Lindberg, though. I was reminded of his Seht die Sonne from 2007. 

Witold Lutoslawski's Venetian Games (1961) is a mood piece suggesting Venice, its canals and perhaps its relationship wiuth the seas beyond. Knussen's programming is fiendishly erudite and part of the fun of listening to his choices comes from figuring out his "devious games".  Here he connects Lutoslawski to Henze (where the Emperor's Nightingale premiered) and to Britten, who of course was inspired by Venice. It's an early piece, heavily influenced by John Cage's ideas of chance and adventure. Knussen enters aleatoric mode with playful delight.

Elliott Carter is dead

Elliott Carter - 11th December 1908 - 5th November 2012. Elliott Carter died at home yesterday, aged 103.

So much about Elliott Carter defies stereotypes. Although he was born into a wealthy New York family Carter was thoroughly cosmopolitan. He spoke French like a native, travelling back and forth between Europe and the US. Growing up in the 1920's and 30's, he wholeheartedly embraced the cultural innovations of his time. He personally knew Stravinsky, Bartók, Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse and many others. He attended classes with Nadia Boulanger but she had fixed views on what composers should do, and Carter didn't. His first major compositions didn't happen until he moved out - literally - into the desert to find his own voice.

He was still writing until this year, redefining what he called his "Late, late style".  He used to joke that he only wrote miniatures after the age of 100 "because I might not have time to finish". Some people don't find themselves creatively til late, and some never find themselves at all, but Carter kept developing and refreshing himself.

At Aldeburgh, even the non-musical townsfolk talked about the 100-year-old composer, still playing the piano and taking animatedly with Pierre-Laurent Aimard about works in progress.  That vivacious personality, that chirpy voice! When he was a mere 97, he attended a Barbican Total Immersion, partying up to 2 am with the orchestra, then starting rehearsals the next morning at 10, then flying off to Paris. A dear friend gave me an introduction and gave me a tip: "Don't go up to him, too many admirers around. But go to Virgil and say that I sent you." Sure enough, Carter was surrounded by the head of the BBC and many other household names. Virgil said "X wants you to meet ....". Immediately Carter bursts into a huge grin, and shoves the VIPS aside. I was a complete stranger but his friend meant so much to him that he welcomed me as a friend too, hugging me and giving me a kiss. That was the kind of man he was, totally open and sincere.

Carter couldn't make the 2010 festival at Aldeburgh where one of his premieres was performed. I was sitting behind Virgil and Oliver Knussen. "Do you think they'll let me take a photo for Elliot?" asks Virgil. "I'll GET them if they stop you," says Ollie.  Carter and his wife Helen lived in the same New York brownstone for many decades as the neighbourhood changed around them. A friend used to see them out for walks, but respected their privacy too much to interrupt. They were inseperable.  Once someone phoned up and demanded to speak to Elliott. Helen relayed the message. "He's busy just now." "Don't you know how important I am!" raged the caller. Well, yes, actually, that's why Carter wasn't impressed. Everyone has fond memories of the Carters. who doted on other people's families and were always generous with their time.

Elliott Carter was born a day after Olivier Messiaen. Two immense pillars of western music whose influence reached far beyond what they did on their own. In so many ways it seems that the world is entering a  selfish retrograde cycle, much of what we've learned the hard way through the 20th century erased. It's like the Taliban wrecking ancient monuments. All the more we need to honour Elliott Carter for his music and for his eclectic, open-minded joy of living.

Happy Birthday Elliott Carter, 102

Courtesy of Harrison Parrott here's a clip of Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Elliott Carters Two Diversions/2

Boulez Aldeburgh Ensemble Intercontemporain Carter Ligeti

Pierre Boulez brought Ensemble Intercontemporain to Aldeburgh. This is a major coup, which London venues can't easily arrange. But Aldeburgh can bring Boulez and his amazing orchestra to a hall seating barely 500, in a small country town, because Pierre-Laurent Aimard is Festival Director. They go back together since Aimard was a boy.

This grand finale to the Aldeburgh Festival was much more than a concert, it was a consecration. Ligeti, Boulez, Carter on the programme, but many others invisibly present because of their close connections: Messiaen, Stockhausen, Kurtág and so on. Boulez may not have conducted at Aldeburgh before - he's too expensive - but his "family" of composers have been an integral part of the Festival for years.

Edgard Varèse was the "First Wild Man of Modern Music". Boulez was one of his earliest champions. Varèse didn't have electronics or computer facilties: Boulez created IRCAM so composers of the future would have access to the best technology and support from other creative minds.  It was fitting that the concert should start with Varèse's Octandres. It's not his most famoue piece, but perhaps the most "classically" pure. Seven winds, one double bass -- no klaxons, so no extramusical baggage, but thoughtful exploration.

It was a good prelude to György Ligeti's Chamber Concerto (1969-70) expanding the concept of single instrument protagonists develops into music of delightful but deft complexity. Technically, Ensemble Intercontemporain are of course flawless, but this was truly inspired.  Superb musicianship is liberating, These players don't need to "think",  they play with instinctive freedom. Boulez's conducting style is understated, the merest jerk of a finger, the most refined twist of the wrist, but Ensemble Intercontemporain are so much in tune with him, they catch every nuance.

Some of the most amazing playing in the quieter passages, where the line floats seamlessly even though it's taken up by different instrument.. Perhaps another example of what Ligeti meant when he said his music levitated, like a helicopter. Catch this performance when it's broadcast on BBC Radio 3 online, on demand, internationally for 7 days from 30 June. Studio recordings may be more perfect, but this live performance had élan, vivacity, sparkle. "Breathtaking" is an over-used cliché, but in this case it was apt: you didn't want to breathe lest you miss a moment.  A very well kmown composer/conductor was sitting near me. He sat transfixed.

What are Years is the title of  Elliott Carter's new song cycle, an Aldeburgh commission, in association with the Lucerne Festival and Tanglewood. Aldeburgh is now up there with the biggest. Britten would be thrilled, though some of the British press would rather it became a provincial backwater.  The cycle is to poems by Marianne Moore. Five songs, a group of four which cohere, the final song leading into an unknown, new direction.

Moore's disjointed combinations of phrases without structure suit Carter's vocal writing. Although he was a singer himself (glee clubs and chorals in college)  he doesn't set text in a "singerly" way. Instead, he makes much of Moore's jerky rhythms, sudden bursts of expression, deliberate holdings back and silences. What are Years is certainly not poetry reading but music revealing itself through the framework of text. The voice acts like an instrument, probing and eliding, stretching and pulling the words as if they were abstract music. Claire Booth has the measure of the piece, interacting well with the orchestra, whose role here is critical, enveloping the fragmented nature of the text with a flowing, serene line that suggests the passage of time.

Natural then that Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain ended with Boulez's Dérive 2, written for Carter's 80th birthday, nearly a quarter of a century ago. Now Boulez himself is older than Carter was then. But age is irrelevant when a mind is fertile.  Perhaps that's why Dérive mutates, growing in the imagination. Boulez's music is strongly organic, in the sense that it evolves from deep roots, and grows vigorously. following a definite trajectory, excursions spiralling outwards and growing branches of their own. Again, Ensemble Intercontemporain played vivaciously, energetic but elegant. For me, one of the joys of Boulez's music is the sense of inventiveness and renewal. It may look "difficult" on the printed page, but musicians like Ensemble Intercontemporain reveals its innate liveliness.

Anthèmes II is another Boulez growth-piece, where the violin is augmented by electronics. Jeanne-Marie Conquer and the IRCAM sound desk make sounds that twine round each other symbiotically: which is which, who's leading whom? It's a sophisticated piece, yet approached with wit.

Hearing Dialogue de l'ombre double in the intimate performance space of the Britten Studio at Snape was wonderful. because seeing the movements intensifies the impact of the shifts in sound. It's like a dance bwetween clarinet (Jérôme Comte) and electronics, so seeing Comte change position marks stages in the ritual. The tiniest change of position means a change in sound dynamics. It's a concerto that uses the acoustic of performance space, and sound inaudible to the human ear . Hence the electronics, which pick up things that exist, but we couldn't otherwise hear. It's a multi-layered work, where the boundaries  between clarinet and electronics are deliberately blurred, teasingly up-ended. You have to listen acutely to pick up the subtle shifts and counterbalances, but it's immensely rewarding, especially enhanced by darkness and light as in this performance. Comte emerges from the shadows. Is he playing or is it the sound desk? Again, it's playful and organic, formidable but not at all frightening. If only Varèse, John The Baptist of modern music, could have been with us, too!

Harrison Birtwistle 75th birthday Wigmore Hall

"If anything", said Philip Langridge in 2008,"Birtwistle’s music has become more impressive with time".  "He writes mathematically, in the way Bach writes mathematically, but with great emotion. To sing Birtwistle," he adds, "you have to understand the ‘maths’ first, to get the figures right, to get the intervals right".

To get the intervals right, to respect the silences....... an apt description of Birtwistle's mature work. The Nash Ensemble celebrated Sir Harrison Birtwistle's 75th birthday at the Wigmore Hall, London with a well balanced programme of his music with two premieres, an Oboe Quartet and the UK premiere of Elliott Carter's Poems of Louis Zukofsky (2009)

Framing the two new works with two older pieces was a good idea, because that linked past to present.  Five Distances for Wind Quintet shows Birtwistle (1992) in a cheerful mood. A horn in a wind quartet? Formality is scuttled, the horn chasing and distorting the more conventional wind ensemble. "A fox among chickens", says Stephen Pruslin.  The Oboe Quartet is more open ended. It's not complete, which is rather fun, because you have to use your imagination. The two outer movements are symmetrical and the unfinished middle movement, barely sketched here, may be freer and more improvisational.  Long, searching chords on flute and oboe mix with short, sharp interjections: bass plucked like a giant lute, violin strummed like a guitar.  Because it's incomplete, there's a sense of "tearing" that's appealling. It reminds me of Wolfgang Rihm's "fragmentization"


Which is why it goes well with The Woman and the Hare (1999).  Again, there's a dichotomy between form and freedom. The reciter (Julia Watson) intones  text in notated speech, while the soprano (Claire Booth) sings long arching lines : words barely connected by grammar, crystallized as images. "Moonrise ....landscape awash with dead white light". David Harsent's text is understated, its meaning elusive, coming from the odd pulse and silences as much as from the words. 


Two voices, then two flutes. In Duets for Storab (1983) Philippa Davies and Ian Clarke interact like aspects of nature, birds perhaps, or even eddies of wind. (which is what flutes do) This feels like "earth music", as if it composed itself without human intervention, yet it's beautifully shaped.

Elliott Carter's Poems of Louis Zukofsky takes the idea of silence even further. The poems come with a stern warning that they must not even be quoted without express permission.  How then to comment on Carter's setting? The poems are minimal. Single, disconnected words spread loosely across the page, which Carter sets extremely sensitively. His music incorporates silence, that speaks just as the blank spaces in the poems are part of their essence.  Maybe the Zufofsky estate will try to make money out of silence. Sorry, but it's anti-art, to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. 


To conclude, Birtwistle's Tragoedia (1965). Tragedy is misleading in a way because there's too much wit in the piece to be gloomy. In the centre sits the harpist (Hugh Webb) acting as gate keeper between the 5 winds and 4 strings. Sometimes the flautist doubles as percussion, beating a small wooden block, marking the passage of time, perhaps. The harp's also a stringed instrument, so there are patterns within patterns in this meticulously choreographed piece. More symmetry. Just as the concert began with two pieces that pit formality with freedom, Tragoedia uses the idea of a processional march but enlivens it.  The piece  pivots on the harp, and ends with the same 4 note sequence which framed the various segments.

Please see many other pieces on Birtwistle on this site

The terrifying prospect of Elliott Carter

A reader sent this interesting clip from the Baltimore Sun about a concert to mark Elliott Carter's birthday last week. The pianist was Joel Fan – famous enough that even I know who he is, and Baltimore is of course home to the Peabody Institute. The Carter piece in question was the fairly early Piano Sonata. Nothing else in the programme was scary (Bolcom, Kirchner) So where was the audience?

In every country the audience dynamic is different but the Baltimore writer knows his city. So what is it that generates an audience of 5 (two employees, one journo, two paid seats ) Tim Smith wonders about it and gives clips of Carter's music to show it isn't so bad.

Long ago I often used to be the sole person in audiences but that was for seriously experimental free improvisation, at places like The London Musicians' Collective, where everyone else wanted to gig and my pal was there to tape things. Maybe my presence was "performance installation". Now though the LMC is well established as part of the scene. But Elliott Carter is infinitely more mainstream even though for many people he's more famous for being 101 than for his music. Last year even the shopkeepers in Aldeburgh were all agog about the 100-year-old composer in town, and some were intrigued enough to actually go hear him.

What does draw audiences? Perhaps there's too much negativity now. Oddly enough the internet may be a factor. Far from providing information it often promotes disinformation. Having an opinion is more important that how that opinion is formed. most people go along with what they hear: that's how things work. If Alex Ross says something then it "must" be right and no one dares demur. And so things perpetuate themselves. S0metimes I wonder if we're entering a new age, where mass opinion counts more than free thinking. Fifty years ago, Darwin was accepted. Now "creationism" is taking over. Maybe most people would like the clock put back 150 years but that doesn't mean it should happen.

The answer isn't that composers should write "for the public". There is a difference between music as consumer product and as art. Almost by definition, an artist is an individual who does original things. Some artists, like Richard Strauss, are good enough to clothe their work so crowds flock in. But he's worlds away from the kind of hack who writes mainly to catch the market. Of course there's plenty of very good popular music and some is art, but art is about integrity, doing what needs to be done whatever the market wants.

Elliott Carter's late, late style - new recording

Elliott Carter has lived so so long that his Late style has developed into Late Late style, as he puts it. Some people are senile aged 25 and never grow. Carter keeps being inventive and developing! His later style is pristine. "I don't have time", he quipped, but this discipline instils a purity and preciseness into his more recent work. The beauty of chamber music is that it's direct, precise, lucid: no time to waste in meaningless elaboration. In his "youth" Carter's work was breathtaking for its complexity, but complexity that was carefully structured and defined. Now it's zen-like, no less sophisticated but distilled.

To celebrate Carter's 101st yesterday I listened to Dialogues and the Boston, Cello and Asko concertos again, conducted by Oliver Knussen. It's part of the series on Bridge Recordings, essential listening for any serious Carter fan. These pieces date from 2000-2003, Dialogues in particular being a seminal work. Luckily, I was able to attend these pieces live, Maybe I'll write about the disc in more detail later.

A while back I attended a concert curated by Pierre Laurent Aimard which showcased Dialogues with other pieces, demonstrating its significance in the body of Carter's music. The last time I heard Dialogues was with Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain, on Carter's birthday last year, so any comparison with that would be unfair on anyone. Pity, though, that no one picked up on the brilliant programme put together by Pierre Laurent Aimard, a man who knows what he's doing. It was so interconnected, so witty! It included Carter's tribute to Goffredo Petrassi on Petrassi's 80th birthday. The tribute worked. Petrassi lived another 20 years, passing away just short of his 100th. Carter and Boulez, who are friends from way back, have often paid tribute to each other. For all we know, Carter could be writing something for Boulez's centenary in 16 or so years!

News though is advance publicity for a new recording to be released in Februray 2010. This will be Vol 8 in the Bridge series and will include the Horn Concerto, Sound Fields, Wind Rose, MAd Regales, On Conversing with Paradise and many other very recent pieces. Premiere recordings, of course but again, I was lucky to hear most of them live and on BBC broadcasts. Hooray for socialism! The British taxpayer funds these things so Carter's music can be heard and appreciated by the whole world.

Elliott Carter, 100 1/2, at Aldeburgh

"You can't keep a composer away from his music," quipped Elliott Carter, explaining why he'd travelled all the way from New York to Aldeburgh in rural Suffolk, where many of his works – and several premieres – are being played.

Bright and early on Saturday morning 20th June, he spoke with Pierre-Laurent Aimard in the new Britten Studio. Carter has known Aimard since Aimard was a boy, and has written many pieces for him, so this wasn't the usual run of the mill talk, but something much more personal and intimate.

Carter walked into the room dressed in a natty suit, with bright red polo shirt and crimson socks, and changed to sapphire for the evening concert. "Old age is liberating", he said in an interview last December. "You don't have peer pressure". And so it is with his music, too, as individualistic as his personality.

Carter has now become as famous for being old as for being a composer, and why not? He is inspiring to everyone, musical or not. All Aldeburgh seemed to be buzzing about the "Hundred Year Old composer" and rightly so, he's wonderful. At the age of 100 1/2, he's lively, brighter than many a third his age.

And the publicity is good for music, too, because people may be drawn in to listen. Carter's music is more accessible than people realize. He told Aimard about a man who'd written to him after hearing one of his string quartets on the radio in the early 1950's. The man was a coal miner, nothing fancy (coal was still mined in the US in those days). "I love your music", said the man, "It's just like digging coal."

So there are many ways into Carter's music. Perhaps what keeps Carter so lively is that he's still inventive and creative. His "late, late style" as he calls it, is very different from the multiple layers of complexity he used to write. Now it's as if he's concentrating on fundamentals, getting straight to the essence of things, a sort of zen-like purity.

Carter and Aimard discussed the two new pieces, commissioned by James Levine, not yet officially premiered. They extend Carter's Matribute, premiered in Lucerne in 2007 and heard in London last December. Vaguely they relate to Levine's brother and sister, so they're called Fratribute and Sistribute! This joyful, impish wit has always been present in Carter's work, which throws those who think serious music should be deadly dour.

Fratribute is simple but steady, with sequences up and down the scale. Sistribute is altogether more sparkling, one hand playing triplets while the other plays four fingers. It's in a very high register, a kind of squeaky cantabile. Whether it reflects Levine's sister or not, it's expressive, happy and spirited. "Typical Carter," said Aimard, ""like sparkling drizzle."

It's so new that Carter hadn't heard it played before in this way. "Not as bad as I thought," he said when Aimard played it through. Previously he'd spoken to Aimard about changing the dynamics so Aimard tried the amendments out then and there. "I think I like the original better after all," said Carter. So we were witnessing Sistribute at its very moment of inception. At one point, Carter got up and played the piano himself. "Not as good as you," he grinned at Aimard,

More typical Carter puzzles in Retrouvailles, written for Pierre Boulez in 2000. It takes up the ideas in Esprit rude/esprit doux 1 and 2, written for Boulez's 60th and 70th birthdays. Embedded cryptically into it are the letters of Boulez's name. "Two personnages", said Aimard, describing the way the two voices dialogue, "like Bach". Which is a good point, since Carter and Boulez have been close friends for decades and Carter's love for baroque polyphony goes back to his days at college.

Then 90 Plus, Carter's tribute to Goffredo Petrassi, written for Petrassi's 90th birthday in 1994. Ninety little staccato notes that tail off rather than end, wishing Petrassi long life to come. (He made 98.)

In the evening, Carter's On Conversing with Paradise was premiered. It's a special commission for Aldeburgh and was conducted by Oliver Knussen, another intimate of the Carter circle. The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group know the Carter idiom well, so orchestrally this was top notch from the mysterious horn opening, punctuated by profound thwacks of timpani, to the full, dramatic crescendo towards the end.

The text comes from a poem by Ezra Pound, whom Carter actually met many years ago. "People called him mad, but I didn't think so." The soloist was the baritone Leigh Melrose. It's not easy to judge a piece the first time it's heard, but the texts are so amazing that I felt it might be even better with a voice with more authority, to stand up to the powerful orchestral writing.

This is a compelling work, whose title comes from Blake and includes parts of the Pisan Canto 91 and the unfinished Canto 121 where Pound states "I have tried to write Paradise". Most of the page is left blank. Then, simply, Pound says "Do not move let the wind speak that is paradise".

Carter's settings of poetry have often recognized the importance of blank space on texts, and the way lines fragment and roll over round the printed page. This is perceptive, because these devices are essential parts of the poem. Pound despairs of being able to write paradise in a perfect poem, so he breaks off elusively and suggests listening, instead, to the wind.

As Carter said, earlier in the day: "Maybe silence is the answer, and also the biggest question, too".

photo credit Meredith Hauer
Read the article in classicalsource HERE

Aldeburgh Festival - Aimard, Anderson, Benjamin, Carter, Debussy, Ravel

With Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the helm, the Aldeburgh Festival is even more than ever the place to be in terms of musical excellence. In June, in England, there's so much going, but for me. Aldeburgh takes priority because there's always something very special you don't get elsewhere.

Aldeburgh has, of course, been a cradle for British composers, but, as Britten intended, it's not insular but has a wider international outlook. So the concert on 19th June placed the UK premiere of George Benjamin's Duet for piano and Orchestra (2008), with Benjamin's spiritual forebears, Debussy, Ravel and Elliott Carter. Aimard was the soloist, Benjamin conducted, and in attendance was Elliott Carter himself, aged 100 1/2, still sprightly and full of vim. No doubt this music will be heard many times in years to come, but being present on this occasion felt like being part of a family, of a creative community such as Britten and Pears envisioned when they started the Aldeburgh Festival 62 years ago.

Indeed, Benjamin’s new piece was written specially for Aimard, and premiered last summer at Lucerne. It's a new departure for Benjamin, his first piece for piano and orchestra. Benjamin’s own notes describe it succinctly. “The piano has an enormous pitch compass and is capable of accumulating complex resonating harmonies, but each note begins to decay as soon as it it is sounded. On the other hand, stringed and wind instruments can sustain and mould their notes after the initial attack”. Thus Benjamin tries to find common ground restricting the pitch range of the piano, avoiding the higher registers where decay occurs quickly. Percussion, harp and pizzicato create attenuated sounds that meet the piano on its own ground.

The piano part isn’t elaborately flamboyant : rather it’s spare, single notes occurring in series, like flurries. It evoked the movement of birds – short, quick jerks expanding into flourish as they take flight. This programme may not have included Messiaen, but he was there, in spirit. Duet for piano and Orchestra is a different kind of concertante, where soloist and orchestra don’t interact in the usual way, but observe each other, so to speak. Then, with a punchy crescendo, it’s over. Benjamin’s music often sounds pontilliste, like detailed embroidery, but here there’s sharpness in design, and clarity of direction.

Julian Anderson's Shir Hashirim f0r soprano and orchestra was included in the programme, replacing the scheduled Fantasias.

Hearing Benjamin in the context of Debussy, Ravel and Elliott Carter demonstrated Benjamin’s roots in the French tradition. Benjamin conducted Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d’un faune with a feel for the purity beneath the langorous sensuality. Exquisite playing by the BBC SO’s principal flautist.

Elliott Carter, too, has roots in the French tradition, His father had business connections in France, so Carter grew up bilingual, spending long periods in Paris. The first of the Three Occasions celebrates the 150^th anniversary of the state of Texas, so it’s exuberantly lively. If Benjamin’s approach wasn’t quire as free as the spirit of the piece, he more than compensated in the way he conducted the other two parts, Remembrance and Anniversary. Hearing the latter, on the occasion of this concert, was particularly moving as it was written to celebrate Carter’s 50^th wedding anniversary. Carter and his wife Helen were extremely close : when she passed away, those who knew them worried, as one does when partnerships that close end. Benjamin brought out the tenderness of the piece beautifully. When Carter stood up, unaided, to acknowledge the applause at the end it was intensely poignant : an experience I won’t forget.

Yet Aimard’s performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand was by far the highlight of the evening, musically. This also brought out the best in Benjamin and the orchestra the slow lugubrious sections full of portent: the contrabassoon solo especially well played, its sonorities evoking inchoate emotions. This is a piece I love dearly, but hearing Aimard’s intense, uncompromising fervour made it feel almost shockingly fresh and vivid. The piece was written for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost a hand in the First World War, career death for a dedicated pianist. Hence the manic “military” overtones, deftly executed. Passion doesn’t have to mean sentimental excess. With dignity and strength of attack, Aimard proved that one hand, playing with such defiance, is more than a match for full orchestra.

HEAR THIS CONCERT on BBC Radio 3 at 1900 on 25th June (online too)
To come TOMORROW : Elliott Carter at Aldeburgh ! watch this space LOTS on this blog about Carter

See the REVIEW here

Aldeburgh Festival 2009- big on the European circuit

The Aldeburgh Festival is very much a fixture on the European music circuit. Far more than any other British composer, Britten saw himself as European at heart, so the Aldeburgh Festival has always had an international, progressive outlook, with strong connections abroad. Londoners don't know what treasures they have "in their own backyard".

Britten's ideals come to fruit in this year's Festival, titled "Glitter of Waves". It's Pierre-Laurent Aimard's first full year as artistic director, and he brings sharp new focus. Even the buildings have been extended to provide new theatres and workshops, at last fulfilling Britten's vision for Snape.

Harrison Birtwistle's two new chamber opera set the tone. Dowland's Semper Dowland, semper dolens, is "theatre of melancholy, in which Birtwistle adapts Dowland's Seven Teares figured in Seven Pavanes and interweaves them with Dowland's songs. Early English music reinvigorated with modern British music.

The big premiere is The Corridor, a scena for soprano, tenor and six instruments. As Orpheus and Eurydice escape the Underworld, he looks back on her despite being warned not to do so, and he loses her forever. "I see the Corridor as a single moment from the Orpheus story magnified, like a photographic blow-up", says Birtwistle. Given his long standing fascination with primeval myth this should be interesting. Libretto is by David Harsent, who wrote The Minotaur and other important Birtwistle milestones, so expect limpid, lucid poetry in direct modern speech - extremely moving on its own terms. Mark Padmore and Elizabeth Atherton sing the lead roles. The London Sinfonietta, Britain's best modern music ensemble, will perform. VERY high profile indeed. Even if it's repeated in London, seeing it first at Aldeburgh is part of the experience, for it was here 41 years ago that Britten and Birtwistle met. Britten apparently wasn't impressed. But Birtwistle's come a long way since Punch and Judy. Perhaps Britten would now be pleased, for Birtwistle has developed and is now an Elder Statesman himself, undisputedly this country's foremost opera composer.

Next morning there's another Sinfonietta concert featuring bits of The Io Passion, and the 3 Settings of Celan - Claire Booth whom we hear everywhere and for good reason! Then Harrison's Clocks where Hideki Nagano plays the brilliant Birtwistle piece as part of an installation around the new buildings at Snape - very unusual. That same evening, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, with ensembles, will produce a "free thinking musical fantasy". Moto perpetuo movements from Beethoven and Bartok are interlaced with serene moments from Brahms and Messiaen. The finale is Ligeti. Aimard excels in imaginative juxtapositions like this - see the links on right for what he did last year at Aldeburgh with Bach and Kurtag. That's just the first weekend, 12th and 13th June.

The following week starts with a Britten song symposium, more performances of the Birtwistle operas, and some very interesting recitals including Christiane Oelze, (highly recommended!), Zimmermann, and Exaudi. Vladimir Jurowski conducts a chamber orchestra on Wednesday 15th - Gabrieli, Stravinsky and Birtwistle. The big concert on Friday night, 19th June, has George Benjamin conduct the BBCSO, in two premieres, Julian Anderson's Fantasias and Benjamin's Duet for Piano and Orchestra - with Aimard as soloist. Of course this will be broadcast, but the atmosphere at Snape is part of the fun, you want to "be" there.

Elliott Carter is the focus of the second week. In fact, he's planning to be there in person, scheduled to talk with Aimard, with whom he goes back decades. Carter's presence alone should make attendance compulsory, for he is an icon. He's closely connected to so many involved with this Festival, including Oliver Knussen who will be conducting the keynote Saturday night concert on Saturday 20th. This features yet another Carter premiere, On Conversing with Paradise, a song cycle to poems by Ezra Pound, for baritone and orchestra. This is rumoured to be powerful stuff. In recent years, Carter's style has distilled into intense zen-like depths, perhaps well suited to Pound's verse, which Carter has long loved.

This second week is the week to come for more Elliot Carter, Birtwistle and Thomas Adès chamber music. Ian Bostridge, Louis Lortie, Mark Padmore and Nicholas Daniel will appear in recital, too. The blockbuster concerts, though, will be the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, one of the hottest bands in Europe. This was founded by Claudio Abbado. Daniel Harding's been seminally involved since 1998. He's now principal conductor, but their first concert on 25th (Hadyn, Ligeti, Birtwistle) will be conducted by Susanna Mälkki, the charismatic conductor of Ensemble Intercontemporain. Aimard plays Birtwistle's Slow Frieze. Aimard conducts the second concert on 27th, another eclectic mix, Haydn, Stockhausen and Beethoven. Since the Mahler Chamber Orchestra is exceptionally good, and rarely heard in the UK, these are concerts that shouldn't be missed.

Then, on Sunday 28th, Masaaki Suzuki returns to conduct Bach's St Matthew's Passion. Suzuki's Bach is legendary. He's working with the Britten-Pears Orchestra. Its members are young, but enthusiastic. Britten and Pears would be thrilled.

Seats sell fast and accommodation gets hard to book, so check Aldeburgh Music sooner not later.

Elliott Carter Centenary Knussen, Barbican London

It’s unusual that any conductor can premiere three works written this year and two more, up to eight years old. But when the composer in question has reached his 100^th birthday, it’s phenomenal. But then, that’s what Elliott Carter is like. There’s more life in him than many a third his age. “If I didn’t compose, I don’t know what I’d do”, he says, laconically.

As the late Edward Said wrote in his volume On Late Style, getting old can be liberating. What Carter is doing now is entering a distinctive new phase of development. His “late late style” as he puts it, shines with calm, confident lucidity. “I can doodle more easily than I used to”, says Carter but these “doodles” simple as they are, are quite profound.

One day in 2007, Carter and Oliver Knussen were having lunch, when the idea of an exercise in pure texture cropped up. Thus was born Sound Fields. Since Carter’s written so well for string quartet, it’s surprising that this is his first work for string orchestra. Yet, despite the larger numbers, it’s diaphanous, a gently wavering sequence of chords. There’s a single chord played by twelve sub-groups in the orchestra, startling density yet achieved by simple, elegant means. Although Carter’s still writing explosive pieces like Caténaires, where notes race in tumult, Sound Fields is slow and smooth, the chords gradually enfolding out of each other. It starts with slow timbred cello, evolving towards a simpler, barely audible final chord, also cello, that seems to evaporate into nothingness. All in barely four minutes.

Wind Rose, completed on 8^th August this year, grows from Sound Fields, adapting the concept for wind ensemble. Here the chords evolve even more slowly, the almost static effect created by long planes of sound. Wind instruments breathe. The title refers to weather charts showing invisible currents of wind blowing at different velocities and direction. Thus, each instrument is chosen carefully. There’s a whole line of different clarinets. Even when they play together, their different pitches shade the sonority, extending depth. There’s also a group of six flutes, piccolo at the top, bass flute for lower register. The steady, unhurried pulse creates a sense of timelessness, as if each sound remains suspended in space, the chords turning serenely. Knussen said “We won’t get this many clarinets together again soon”, so he conducted the piece a second time, enhancing the idea of eternal, uninterrupted growth. It’s exquisite.

Between Sound Fields and Wind Rose, Knussen placed an “old” piece - from 2000. It was perceptive. Carter has written a lot for cello over the years, so it’s a way of expressing different levels of time simultaneously. The Cello Concerto also has references to Japanese moss gardens, where plants seem motionless but are growing, imperceptibly. The passage of time is marked by the steady drip from bamboo taps. The cello plays a long quasi melody, which over seven episodes reveals different aspects of the instruments' character.The transits are marked by sharp staccato from the orchestra, developed three times into protracted Interludes. Within each section there are interesting vistas – the dramatic, edgy Giocoso where the cello plays with angular, untuned percussion, and the Tranquillo, where the cello sings in ethereally high register. Yet there’s a strong sense of direction. The soloist is walking through the garden, engaging with it but has a separate identity. In this London premiere, Anssi Karttunen played with a firm sense of purpose, his journey uninterrupted by the wonderful sounds of the orchestra.

Knussen introduced another “level of time” with Mad Regales. It was written in 2007 but harks back to the vocal music Carter wrote seventy years ago. Some years back, the BBC Singers gave a concert of Carter’s early songs and the madrigals that inspired him, so one could hear where he learned the polyphony that was to influence the characteristic intricate tracery of his later style. Mad Regales, however, is different conceptually. its three songs have sparer textures, where voices operate on different levels, and where single words pop out of the main vocal line to be savoured on their own accord. It’s an interesting non linear approach, and the six singers here operated like a chamber ensemble.

Like the Cello Concerto, the Horn Concerto, premiered in 2007, unfolds through a series of seven episodes with one orchestral interlude. It’s just over half the length of the Cello Concerto, but soloists need a break. The horn player, Martin Owen, is encased by the orchestra, interacting with different sub groups of instruments. Towards the end, horn and tuba (named Sam Elliott, oddly enough), join in conversation.

The Boston Concerto is a feat - almost a "pizzicato symphony" where string instruments are plucked, beaten, strummed, as well as bowed. They are reinforced by harp, piano and vibraphone, creating sparkling, fast paced rivulets of sound, contrasted with smoothly floating woodwind legato. Carter dedicated this concerto to his wife Helen. It's based on a poem by William Carlos Williams where love is described like rain, bringing life to the earth.Paul Griffiths, who wrote the excellent notes speaks of sequences of "musical raindrops.....rain seen in rainbow light". Like rain, textures vary. When the ensemble plays staccato on different levels, it's like a storm. Later, a single double bass takes up the theme, like a trickle after the storm has passed. “It’s fun”, says Carter. Perhaps that’s the secret of his longevity and irrepressible creative renewal. Why shouldn’t classical music be fun, and cutting edge ?

Elliott Carter centenary Boulez, Aimard London II

My thoughts on the Elliott Carter centenary concert below, to be read in conjunction with Mark's on boulezian blogspot (see link on right). Just like Carter's music, with different but complementary strands, celebrating friendship.

“I think the importance of music …is a sense that one can produce something that has a special and rather strong meaning, because we’re increasingly surrounded now by things whose meaning is cat food or God knows what…..the problem of consumer life has become universal. I don’t feel I’m writing for consumers. The wonderful thing about music is that you don’t consume –it’s something that is like a spirit: a lively spirit that gets into people and shows them all the different kinds of feelings they might have in life, even if they don’t experience them themselves”

(Carter in an interview with Marshall Marcus, Dec 2008)

Ponder and reflect on what Carter is saying, because it’s a key to understanding so much about modern music. The more dependent society gets on “soundbite thinking”, the more we need music that makes us think and feel. Carter’s music is not populist and probably never will be “easy listening”, but, as Pierre Boulez says, “A progressive and stubborn discovery with various and original means”. Music is a journey of awareness, which never ends, either for composer or listener.

This centenary tribute was in many ways a “meeting of friends” and communication. Dialogues, for example, is based on a fairly simple cell of patterns but is the basis for a vibrant exchange between piano and orchestra. Sometimes they are in harmony, sometimes they disagree, but it is an engagement. It’s a concerto, but one with such a lively sense of surprise that it feels like a freshly-minted concept. Aimard plays with lightness of touch, to emphasize the good-natured humour. Boulez shows that the soloists have “voices” here as if they were characters. The cor anglais is particularly droll.

More on the theme of fellowship followed. Matribute was written for James Levine to commemorate his mother, and Intermittences refers to chapter in Proust where Marcel is overwhelmed by memories of his grandmother. Both pieces are combined with Caténaires, written very recently for Pierre-Laurent Aimard who played it on the First Night of the Proms this year. Caténaires are the cables that link electric pylons, enabling the flow of electricity. Personal relationships mean a lot to Carter. By combining the three pieces, he’s showing how people connect and react off each other.

Hence the incredibly rapid rhythms, like the constant hum of electric cables. There’s a “buzz in the air” so to speak. Also striking are the sudden switchbacks and changes of direction. Each instrument is distinctly individual, yet they entwine like a cable, binding different but disparate threads into something new and strong. It’s a one-line piece with no chords. As Carter describes it, it’s a “continuous chain of notes….a stream of semi quavers constantly fast but also constantly fluctuating in register and in smoothness or irregularity”. Then, suddenly it ends, not broken, but as if it’s leaped into another atmosphere.

Since the Proms premiere, Aimard has grown even deeper into the piece, playing unbelievably fast flurries of notes so they seem to fly off the keyboard with a life of their own. Ensemble Intercontemporain, too, is in a totally different league from the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms The Ensemble was founded by Boulez as a specialist new music ensemble, each player chosen for his or her virtuoso status. The clarity Boulez gets from them is phenomenal, as it needs to be in music as precisely defined as this : truly the effect was electric. Many in this audience were musicians of the first rank, who really appreciate what it takes to play at this level. The tumultuous applause that followed was heartfelt.

Commissioned by Boulez for Ensemble Intercontemporain, Carter wrote the Clarinet Concerto specifically for Alain Damiens, the ensemble’s eminent soloist, whom we heard in superb form. Carter builds the piece around what he calls “family groupings” of instruments of different types, rather than the more usual blocks, which creates an unusual balance. Each of the seven movements has a distinct character, with sweeping swings of mood. Damiens moves between the different groups, creating a level of unity, a “caténaire”, so to speak, each new position subtly changing the dynamics. The final part, the Agitato is vigorous, all the players in action but in discrete cells.

Choosing Boulez’s own Dérive II to complete the tribute to Carter was an inspired idea. Carter and Boulez have been so closely associated for so long that the piece continues the idea of confraternity central to this programme. But it’s significant on a deeper level, too. Even at the age of 100, Carter is still writing, still finding new sources of inspiration. As he says, there’s “late Carter” and “late, late Carter” ! Dérive II exemplifies that open-ended, ever-renewing approach to creativity. The spirit that drives Dérive II is the spirit that drives Carter. This music isn't pre-packaged consumer product "like cat food", as Carter said, but "gets into people", constantly growing in their psyches. It was a perceptive affirmation of Carter's enduring vitality.

Dérive II grows out of Dérive I. Both explore the idea of development from simple cells, but with five extra instruments the possibilities expand exponientially. Sounds interweave and morph, sometimes pivoting on a single note, presaging, perhaps the switchbacks in Caténaires. It moves, unfolds, spirals, like a plant shooting out of the soil, its tendrils unfurling, turning towards the light. There are even lyrical passages where snatches of near-melody flit past, tantalizingly elusive. It feels like being in an enchanted forest of sound, each tree, branch, leaf vivid and different. Sometimes the forest is dense, sometimes the music opens onto clearings that reveal new ways of listening. Like Carter's own music, Boulez's is vital and vigorous, still evolving. Perhaps there will be "late, late Boulez" too, if he makes 100. Cat food fans beware !

It goes without saying that this was an astounding performance for this orchestra is so acutely attuned to Boulez's idiom that it was quite magical. I hope someone taped it for Carter to listen to. He would beam with delight !

Elliott Carter centenary Boulez Aimard London

Here is Mark Berry's superlatively well written review of Elliott Carter's centenary tribute. Often lots of good things on boulezian.blogspot, but this is one of the best ! Read it by clicking on the link on the list on the right - definitely RECOMMENDED !!!

Elliott Carter kissed me

Happy Birthday to Elliott Carter, 100 today ! And he's still going strong, ever creative. What an inspiration ! At the big Barbican retrospective a few years back, he kissed me. It's a long story, but it says a lot about the man. He's surrounded by bigwigs, the heavies in the industry. But he'll take time out to embrace ordinary folk, who love his music.

Elliott Carter speaks to Ivan Hewett

Elliott Carter will be 100 years old on Thursday, the first really important composer to be around for his own centenary. (There is another composer, famous for being old, not for his music.) No such qualms with Carter, who continues to write interesting work. Mentally he's younger than people half his age. Needless to say, everyone's rushing on the bandwagon for interviews as Carter gives a great interview, full of quotable copy. There's one interview around where the writer is completely clueless about music, yet Carter is gracious enough to give the guy sufficient material to write an article that sounds plausible. "Phew!" Carter must have thought, "There's more to me than reaching 100!" Infinitely better is this interview by Ivan Hewett who actually knows Carter's work and knows music history. Carter must have had a lot more fun talking to him! There is also a programme onn BBC Radio 3 where Hewett talks about Carter and plays his music. Go to the site and it's online streaming on demand – Hear and Now usually 10.30 pm Saturdays. This is the interview definitely worth reading.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/12/04/bmcarter104.xml

Prom 45 Varèse Harvey IRCAM Messiaen

I just had a message from someone (not Mark) saying "Just up on Mark's blog Boulezian is a WONDER
FUL review of last night's fantastic Prom". Read it even if you don't care about the composers. This is what music writing can be like. Pass it on !

Whoever devised this Prom should get a medal, too, as it was a masterpiece of intelligent programming. The very idea of electronic music terrifies most people, but it's really no more than using new means to expand the palette of possibilities in sound. Varèse was a fascinating visionary who imagined things beyond the technology of his time. He wrote for ondes martenot 17 years before Messiaen did, and used "found sound" like sirens. Boulez was his first big champion. Five years after Varèse's death, Boulez created IRCAM, giving composers the means to take music into an altogether new dimension. Indeed, IRCAM musicians are creating things that expand the very concept of music as multi-dimensional sound in space. Varèse was a rough-hewn John the Baptist heralding what was to come. Déserts and Poème eléctronique are well known enough I don't need to describe them. Read Mark's review and listen to the BBC broadcast of this Prom. The editorial filler is extremely well informed and accessible. There are little odds and ends I'd tweak but it's a wonderful introduction. Listen and understand how electro-acoustic music can be a natural evolution, opening new horizons. In fact, tape it "for study purposes" as there is a lot to take on board on one hearing.

The broadcast was almost compensation for not being there live. I didn't go because I didn't like Jonathan Harvey's Body Mandala, an earlier part of the series to which the new piece, Speakings, belongs. This proves why it's not smart to dismiss what's strange and new. I will have to listen again and buy the recording ! Speakings is beautiful, ethereal. It's a good introduction to this kind of music because it's about "how" speech evolves, what communication is, why music "happens". Lots of tentative questing sounds, reaching out into space and silence. I suspect this sense of sound physically searching out through the auditorium would have been quite palpable in live performance. When the sounds connect, there's a spark, like electricity, and gradually the connections build up. There's another unexpected connection, to Elliott Carter's Caténaires, heard on the First Night, also about reaching out and finding links. Speakings is based on baby noises, the way babies learn to speak. Electro-acoustic music, or whatever you call it, is a whole new language we haven't yet come to terms with.

This isn't"difficult" either. Technology is used in the service of creating something expressive, not for its own sake. Mortuos plango, vivos voco is an earlier Harvey piece where his son's singing voice mixes with the tolling of bells in a cathedral. The Latin inscription refers to the bell mourning the dead while calling the living to prayer - past and present together. Hearing this with Messiaen's final, unfinished quartet and Tombeau de Messiaen, Harvey's early homage to his teacher, makes further connections, such as to Messiaen's ideas of time existing on many levels. In fact, listening to Messiaen's unfinished Concert á quatre on the BBC's listen again facility was a good idea because, having heard Harvey's open-ended, non-static music, it didn't matter so much that Messiaen never completed it. Instead, it hovers, tantalising us with what might have been. The old man was right. You're not dead just because your body packs in. Nor is Varèse. His spirit lives on in IRCAM.

Prom 15 Elliott Carter

Mark Berry on Carter's Oboe Concerto at the Tuesday Prom :

"Carter’s Oboe Concerto was written in 1986-7, shortly before he was eighty, so doubtless qualifies as relatively ‘early’, given the composer’s extraordinary late fecundity. It is written for solo oboe, a concertino group of four violas and percussionist, and orchestra, actually more of a chamber ensemble, comprising flute, clarinet, horn, trombone, two percussionists, and viola-less strings. Written in one continuous stretch, its twenty minutes or so nevertheless comprise something akin to the classical fast-slow-fast three-movement-structure of a concerto. The performers, all of them, did Carter proud. Indeed, it sounded as if this were a repertory piece, in which the players were as much at home as the composer with its modernity: just what a performance of new(-ish) music should be. Nicholas Daniel drew upon considerable twin reserves of musicality and virtuosity and blended them. He did not mask the sometimes extreme demands – the concerto was written for and inspired by Heinz Holliger, no less – but nor did he allow them to become his principal concern. Throughout, as with all of the players, there was sense to be made of the ever-changing and yet ever-present compositional line. Carter’s polyrhythms came across, as they should, although this is no mean feat, as the equivalent of melody in rhythm. Time played its tricks and kept its command, for which Robertson must be apportioned a great deal of credit. Carter’s skills as a colourist were not denied, the percussionist from the concertino group deserving especial mention in this respect. The sense of temporal progress and sonorous transformation as he switched from vibraphone to glockenspiel was an object lesson in rescuing his orchestral section from the charge of being mere purveyors of ‘effects’. But it was with the oboe alone that the concerto so memorably faded into nothingness."

Full review at http://boulezian.blogspot.com and S&H

Carter wrote this for and with Heinz Hollinger. Carter apparently suggested ideas and asked Hollinger could they be done at all ? Hollinger tried them out and the result is this amazingly beautiful but technically very difficult piece, which requires circular breathing and various other tours de force. When i first heard Daniel play this in January 2006, he made a few minor fluffs but again so what ? Part of the magic of this piece is how a player works "with" it, thanks to its genesis. After that performance, Carter, then a mere 97, bounded onto the platform and hugged Daniel with affection. He is just one amazing person ! Mark makes a good point about this being "mid period" Carter because as a composer he found his voice relatively late. But he's spent 60 years perfecting it !

First Night Proms = the real star !

This isn't a review - anyone can do that and I don't do moreofthesame. Instead I celebrate the real star of the First Night of the Proms, the magnificent organ at the Royal Albert Hall. . Organ's don't tour and the RAH is too big for most concerts, so it was wonderful of the BBC to acknowledge this organ, so often overlooked and underused. Indeed, this was a special experience as the camera took us straight into the loft itself, to see what happens in more detail than you'd imagine from the arena. This organ is a National Treasure, one of the biggest in the world, now restored to its full glory. It has nearly 10000 pipes, 150 stops, 4 fingerboards and many pedals. It'sthe ultimate one-man band.

At first it had to compete with Strauss's rows of shining brass for visual impact but then came Messiaen's Dieu parmi nous, from La nativité du Seigneur. Sudddenly the auditorium seemed to explode with sound and colour. Even if you know nothing about Messiaen and his beliefs, you knew you were in the presence of something utterly extraordinary. and exuberant, obliterating all gloom. If I could write this text in shimmering gold, like the rays of the sun, you'd get an idea of the impact. For those of a non-spriitual bent it was like Battlestar Galactica looming into view, a universe of its own, teeming with life, filling the emptiness of space.

From Messiaen to his "adopted son", Pierre Laurent Aimard, playing a piece written for him by another of his mentors, Elliott Carter, who was born one day after Messiaen, 100 years ago. The title, Caténaires, refers to the spiral structure of rope or cable, which holds disparate things together without obliterating their identity. It's a metaphor for this music, for the relationship between these artists, and indeed for the BBC Proms itself which brings together so many threads of music, and audiences from all round the world.

It's a wonderful, fast paced piece, twisting and turning in continuous circular motion. sudden flicks oi the wrist switching direction like the crack of a lariat. There's more life and spirit in Carter than many a quarter his age. This is a photo of a caténaire in action :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/groume/2333944252/