Stravinsky - oh wow sacred cow!

'The more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives ... It turns out that unless we continue to learn new things, which challenges our brains to create new pathways, they literally begin to atrophy, which may result in dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases. No one is sure why, but scientists speculate that getting out of routines makes us more aware in general' This extract from a New York Times article by Janet Rae-Dupree could be the mission statement for the Michael Clark Company's Stravinsky Project.

Last night's double-bill by the company at the Norwich Festival, showed the power of working outside comfort zones with an ultra-modern Rite using nudity in the sacrificial dance as a talisman against dementia. Budgetary comfort zones also took a battering as the forty-minute Rite in the first half used the economical four hand reduction, while for the second half two more Steinways, a supplemented Britten Sinfonia, four soloists, the New London Chamber Choir and conductor Jurjen Hempel were added for a marginally less modern, but still sublime, twenty-five minutes of Les Noces - see header production shot.

Visual comfort zones were also up for grabs, with the second half of Les Noces (except it wasn't - see below) opening with a stunning video of Stravinsky himself conducting the closing pages of The Firebird (how did the players ever follow his beat?), with the maestro's virtual performance drawing enthusiastic applause from both the live and recorded audiences before the real dancing started. The Stravinsky video filmed at the Royal Festival Hall was courtesy of the BBC, and is a timely reminder of the priceless riches locked away in the BBC archives while their 'culture channel', BBC4, fights Alzheimer’s with challenging programmes such as Val Doonican Rocks.

Aural comfort zones become dead-meat with the Michael Clark Company with the exemplary musical forces 'benefitting' from substantial amplification and remixing via a state-of-the-art sound system. Strange when the words don't actually come from the mouths of the New London Chamber Choir, but if it stops dementia who is complaining? (Apparantely some of the audience did by walking out of the previous evening's performance of a different programme which featured very loud music by the Sex Pistols and Wire).

Pesky box-office comfort zones were also ignored by billing the two works as Mmm.. and I Do rather than The Rite and Les Noces. Thankfully there are some big sponsors behind the Stravinsky Project, but I wonder whether the 40% audience capacity would have been bigger had the publicity talked a little bit more clearly about a good old fashioned Rite of Spring?

But overall one of the most stimulating and dementia defeating evenings we have spent in the theatre for a long time. And the headline is for real, it is back-projected during The Rite, sorry Mmm... .

Now watch a video sample of Mmm.. here, read about the four pianists in Les Noces here and about the piano reduction of the Rite here, while Stravinsky has a topical Tibetan connection here.
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Thomas Ades out - Pierre-Laurent Aimard in

Just received - a press release announcing that Pierre-Laurent Aimard (photo above) will succeed Thomas Adès as Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival for three years with effect from 2009. As the Independent commented following his BBC Prom earlier this year: "At 50, the French pianist-conductor still has the eager simplicity that induced Messiaen to make him his protégé at 12, and the luminous brilliance that persuaded Boulez to install him at 19 as resident pianist for his brand-new Ensemble InterContemporain. . . .”

Pierre-Laurent Aimard explained: “It was a big surprise to receive Jonathan Reekie's proposal to become Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival. It was only after long reflection that I realised it was the right and possibly natural progression for me in terms of musical challenge and engagement. I love the exploration of musical confrontations and the encounter with various creators and performing partners - embracing the literature of different eras and cultures in such a way as to let the pieces enlighten each other. So what a joy to share with audiences and colleagues music as a living and growing art form in the context of an annual festival rather than a one off event in time. How we can continue to expand on the inspired concept and spirit of the original Aldeburgh Festival will be a fascinating journey in which I hope that we can do justice to the richness and diversity of music today.”

Pierre-Laurent Aimard has an international reputation not only as a great performer but also as a programmer of real invention. He will give three performances at the 2008 Aldeburgh Festival: as soloist/director with the Britten Sinfonia on Saturday June 14th, in recital on Friday June 20th, and performing chamber music with Tabea Zimmermann and Martin Fröst on Sunday June 22nd. All three concerts will feature works by György Kurtág, composer in residence for the 2008 Aldeburgh Festival. Other international curatorial projects led by Pierre-Laurent which form a backdrop to his new role in Aldeburgh include artiste etoile at the Lucerne Festival (2007); Pianist in Residence at the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (2006-07); Domaine Privé at the Cité de la Musique (Spring 2008), Carte Blanche at the Vienna Konzerthaus (2006-07), his own Perspectives series for Carnegie Hall (2006-07); and Artistic Directorship of Southbank Centre’s 2008 Messiaen festival.

Jonathan Reekie, Chief Executive of Aldeburgh Music said: "After an inspirational ten years with Thomas Adès at the helm, in our search for a replacement we were looking for an outstanding, original musician and programmer, who would both respect the Aldeburgh traditions but also stamp their mark on the Festival. In Pierre-Laurent Aimard we have all those qualities, rare in one person - a brilliant performer with a flair for creating concerts and Festivals. His performances here have been the talk of recent Aldeburgh Festivals and we are very much looking forward to working with him."

The 2008 Aldeburgh Festival, Thomas Adès’ tenth festival as Artistic Director, opens on Friday 13th June with a new opera commissioned from Yannis Kyriakides. During the festival Adès will conduct BCMG (Sunday June 15th) and two days later, with Steven Isserlis, will give the premiere of work that he has written for Isserlis. Associate Director of the festival, composer John Woolrich, will remain in this role, working alongside Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

“Every distinguished artist who has been chosen to present a series of Perspectives concerts at Carnegie Hall has used the opportunity to make connections among music of different styles and eras. But no one has taken this kind of exploration to the exhilarating extremes of the brilliant French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. . . . By mixing and matching short pieces or excerpts from longer ones (46 in all), he created, in effect, an original, evening-length, five-section patchwork composition that audaciously leapt across centuries, defying stylistic categories.” New York Times, May 14th 2007

Now read an exclusive interview with Jonathan Reekie
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Karl Amadeus Hartmann on demand

Much interest in the recent Britten Sinfonia concerts directed by Alina Ibragimova which I wrote about here and here. The programme included the first performance of a Tansy Davies Bach orchestration, Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto Funèbre, and Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. Hartmann is seen in my header photo (credit Wikipedia).

Listen to the concert on demand on BBC Radio 3 until Nov 9 via this link, including a short interview with Alina Ibragimova.

And some thoughts on recording Schoenberg here.
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The Well-Tempered Concert

J S Bach Violin Concerto No 1
J S Bach arr. Tansy Davies Prelude and Fugue No. 20 in A minor (first performances)
Hartmann Concerto Funèbre
Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht

This programme is being given in Cambridge, Norwich and London this week by the Britten Sinfonia. The 22 year old Russian born violinist Alina Ibragimova (left) is soloist in the Bach and Hartmann concertos, and directs all the works. She has just released a CD of Hartmann's music on Hyperion.

Before the concert in Norwich Cathedral tomorrow, ( Tues 23 October) there is an 'In conversation' event at 6.30pm. In living proof that youth is not a time of life but a state of mind, this event features Alina Ibragimova in conversation with me. As well as discussing the two concertos with Ms. Ibragimova I will be following some recent paths with her. These will include the challenges of a programme spanning baroque and contemporary music, and how composers such as Karl Amadeus Hartmann are victims of music fashion.

I will also be asking Alina about her project with British rap star Lethal Bizzle, and how far she, Tansy Davies and their contemporaries can push the boundaries of classical music. If any of my far flung readers have questions for Alina Ibragimova, email them to me and I will try to include them in our discussion.

Now read about the Britten Sinfonia's inspirational work with new music. And the orchestra is also an inspiration on equality. After this week's concerts, which have Alina Ibragimova as soloist/director and a commission for Tansy Davies, their next two concert series have Imogen Cooper as soloist/director in one, and their leader, Jacqueline Shave, as soloist/director in the other. It's no longer jobs for the boys in this part of the world.
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Royal victory over spin

Good to see Kate Royal winning the category for Young Artists at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards last night. Kate (above) featured here for her performance in Britten's Turn of the Screw last year when I described her as a 'startling new soprano', and in the chamber version of Mahler's Fourth Symphony back in 2005 when I described her as a 'rising star'. Gustavo Dudamel was runner-up.

Also good to see On An Overgrown Path featured artists and local band the Britten Sinfonia win the Ensemble category. Even better to see the Royal Philharmonic Society getting it right for a change, because usually industry awards are a sore point.

This is what you are missing

Brief posts today for the very good reason that we are at a concert this evening. If you can't make it to Norwich Cathedral this what you will be missing:

Poulenc Quatre motets pour un temps de penitence
Poulenc Exultate deo
Poulenc Salve regina
Messiaen Les offrandes oubliées
Poulenc Gloria

Susan Gritton soprano (left), Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge ,
Polyphony and Britten Sinfonia
Stephen Layton conductor

Now, that is what I call a concert! But if you can't make it to Norwich, fear not. The concert is being repeated in Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge (where Stephen Layton has recently been appointed Director of Music), tomorrow (April 14). If you can't make that don't sweat, the programme is then being recorded by Hyperion for future release.

I wonder how many of the London-centric critics who bang on endlessly about the death of the classical recording industry will be at either of the concerts, or for that matter how many are even aware they are taking place?

Now read how Polyphony and Hyperion rejuvenated CD sales with the music of a contemporary American composer.
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Classical music flowers in springtime Britain

Academy of Ancient Music, Chief Executive - £na
The Conservatoire, Director of Music - £32k
Scottish Ballet, Head of Development - £32 - 38k
Music at Oxford, General Manager - £na
London Symphony Orchestra, Head of LSO Discovery - £38 - 43k
Britten Sinfonia, Marketing Director - £na
London Sinfonietta, Development & Marketing Managers - £na

It's a beautiful spring day here, and the header photo was taken five minutes ago in our garden. On BBC Radio 3 this afternoon was a stunning performance by Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of that British masterpiece, Elgar's Symphony No 2 in E flat major. Today's Media Guardian lists the music vacancies above. Last Saturday we heard the Pergolesi Stabat Mater and Rachmaninov Vespers in Norwich Cathedral. On Friday it's Prokofiev and Stravinsky at Snape, and on Saturday Schütz and Pärt in Blythburgh Church.

But it's all a mirage. Read here about the death of live classical music, and here about the death of the recording industry.
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New music lunch box

Do we all agree that contemporary music needs a new audience?

And do we also agree that reaching that audience takes imaginative commissioning, innovative programming, a very wide reach, and some damn hard work from the musicians?

Well, I’ve just returned from the first in the new season of Britten Sinfonia at Lunch concerts in Norwich, and I challenge anyone to show me an ensemble that are doing more to reach new audiences with contemporary music. First let’s take the concerts. The 2005/6 Britten Sinfonia at Lunch project comprises five separate concert series. Now listen to this. Each concert series consists of four lunchtime concerts played over five or six days, and not only are all the four concerts in different venues, but three are here in East Anglia, and one is in the Philharmonic Hall in Kraków, Poland, which is 750 miles away. But stay with me, it gets even better. Everyone of the five concert series features a world premiere by a contemporary composer, and to complete the virtuous circle all the concerts are being broadcast from Cambridge in BBC Radio 3’s lunchtime concert slot.

The players each deserve a medal for their sheer commitment. The East Anglian concert venues are Aldeburgh, Norwich, and Cambridge, and the Polish concerts are made possible by the budget airline flights between Standsted Airport, near Cambridge, and Kraków. In December this concert series involves an ensemble of oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn (not to mention pianist), playing in Aldeburgh at 1.00pm on a Saturday, and Kraków at 12.00pm on a Sunday. I think someone planned that schedule before the current security restrictions on cabin baggage! You can catch up with the travel tales of the Sinfonia’s peripatetic oboeist via Nicholas Daniel’s own blog.

The Britten Sinfonia is a flexible ensemble and the At Lunch concerts use chamber sized groups. There are some real gems in the series, including first performances from female composer Tansy Davies (right), John Tavener, and Tarik O’Reagan, and rarely performed 20th century masterpieces including two of Peter Maxwell Davies’ arrangements of Bach’s Prelude and Fugues (a commercial recording PLEASE of those), Berio’s Folk Songs, and de Falla’s Harpsichord Concerto. This is imaginative and innovative programming with no Puccini Chrysanthemums or Copland Shakers to blunt the challenge.

Today’s concert was played by the trio of the Russian Alina Ibragimova (violin), Joy Farrall (clarinet) and Huw Watkins (piano), and contained two astringent 20th century masterworks in the form of the reduced concert suite from the Soldier’s Tale Suite Stravinsky’s and Bartók’s immensely challenging Contrasts, which was written for Benny Goodman. Balancing these were two contemporary works including. Michael Zev Gordon’s Fragments from a Diary. dates from 2005 (photo below), and here is a description in the composer’s own words.

’My music tends to pull between two very different characters: the passionate and the contemplative. The former is often expressed through kinds of lyricism, the latter through subtly altered repeating patternings, quite often broken into fragments. Sometimes these occur in the same work, and the music’s course has to do with moving away from “heat” into serenity. In others, the temperament is more a kind of steady state. Stylistically, my music often bridges quite different musical types too, frequently at the border between tonality and atonality. Recently, this has crystallised into a number of works rooted in a wide range of other music, including Dowland, Couperin, Chopin and Tom Jobim. Quite different to transcription, my pieces dip in and out of these past works - structurally exploring ideas of merging, layering and juxtaposing materials

At the time of writing I considered the seven short of Movements of Fragments from a Diary almost as private jottings to myself, hence the title. Most are brief and fleeting. The tone is often one of fragility. They each ‘look’, in the main at one musical object. Still I was interested in exploring how much can be ‘said’ in such short, immediate utterances. Kurtág was a contemporary point of departure; so too was the 19th century ‘confessional’ piano miniature. The title of one comes from a poem by Primo Levi, the titles of three others are words by Rilke.

Today’s first performance was Huw Watkins’ Dream. The 30 year old composer, who was also pianist, studied at Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, and King’s College, Cambridge, and his teachers included Robin Holloway, Alexander Goehr, Peter Pettinger (biographer of Bill Evans) and Julian Anderson. Here is Dreams in the composer's own words - 'I wanted to use the same instruments as Bartók’s Contrasts, but to create something atmospheric rather than showy, exploring just one mood. Dreams evokes the feelings and moods associated with night and sleep .. It begins with gentle, hypnotic music played slowly and quietly on all three instruments. As the piece progresses there are faster, more troubled outbursts, but eventually the mood returns to that of the opening.'

All too often today, appealing menus of new music turn out to be measly meals relying heavily on technical gimmickry, self-serving cliques, bitchiness and cynicism. By contrast the Britten Sinfonia at Lunch project is a nourishing meal whose courses include imaginative commissioning, innovative and open-minded programming, a truly international perspective, and some damn hard work from the musicians.. But don’t take my word for it. Here are the words of clarinettist Joy Farrall as she introduced the Huw Watkins premiere at lunchtime - ”It is great to see such a large audience for this concert, and it is also really nice to see so many young people here today.

Other contemporary music groups and promoters please take note.

For more new music advocacy take An Overgrown Path to Hildegard comes to Norwich via IRCAM and Darmstadt
With acknowledgements to the Britten Sinfonia for use of programme notes. Bento box image credit Internetkookboek . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk