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Bruno Maderna was a close friend of Pierre Boulez. In 1958 Boulez and Maderna were conductors of two of the three orchestras in the fraught premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gruppen, the third orchestra was directed by the composer. My picture above, from the Stockhausen archive, was taken at a rehearsal for the premiere in Cologne. Left clicking on the image will enlarge it. Stockhausen is conducting orchestra 1 on the left, Maderna orchestra 2 in the centre, and Boulez orchestra 3 on the right. The photo at the foot of the article shows Boulez, Maderna and Stockhausen in Darmstadt in 1956, and, interestingly, was taken by Hans Keller. .
Maderna's relationship with the BBC Symphony Orchestra was established before Boulez's period as the orchestra's chief conductor, and was one of the many fruits of William Glock's period as BBC Controller of Music between 1959 and 1972. Maderna made his debut with the orchestra in 1959 when he gave the first public performance in Britain of Schoenberg's Op. 22 Songs, together with the symphonic extracts from Berg's Lulu and Stravinsky's Les Noces.
Maderna conducted the BBC Symphony in the notorious premiere of Luigi Nono's uncompromisingly left wing opera Intolleranza at the 1961 Venice Biennale. Protests included stink bombs thrown at the orchestra in the first act, and after the interval Maderna turned up the volume of the pre-recorded chorus parts to drown out the dissenters. In those pre-Classic FM days the BBC relayed the performance live from Venice.
In his invaluable autobiography Notes in Advance (OUP ISBN 0198161921) William Glock writes ~ Maderna himself was one of the most sympathetic human beings I have known, a man of great warmth and amplitude, always generous to other musicians without being blind to their failings. A familiar sight (at Dartington) was to see him with a bottle of wine under each arm and a hamper of food, which he would then cook and devour with friends with the gusto that marked everything he did. As a conductor he achieved authority and friendliness together, and would congratulate individual players on some felicitous phrases in their performance. But, though he was a leader of the avant-garde to whom many others such as Luigi Nono owed a great deal, he did not shut himself away from the music of the past, and more than once I played the Mozart Sonata for two pianos with him, and saw the way he revelled in it".
In 1970 Maderna premiered his Quadrivium with the BBC Symphony, a performance that prompted a perceptive critic to describe the work as - "a large piece, around half an hour long, full of exuberant, romantic, well-wined music, expertly constructed, beautifully scored." Maderna was a regular guest with the orchestra while Boulez was chief conductor, and it was during this period that I was fortunate to see Maderna conduct. I have already praised his Mahler Ninth here which I heard in the 1972 Proms, an interpretation which critic Dominic Gill described as - "both convincing and moving. In human, dramatic terms often very impressive...the final pages were absolutely right." Maderna was also a champion of Elisabeth Lutyens, and programmed her Music for Orchestra 1 with the BBC Symphony.
In March 1972 Boulez conducted Maderna's Aura in place of a new work of his own which was unfinished. In the autumn of that year Maderna was to have conducted a BBC Symphony concert including his Third Oboe Concerto, but he fell seriously ill and withdrew. In November 1972 Maderna died, and this tragedy provided the inspiration for Boulez to complete his unfinished commission.
Rituel in Memoriam Maderna is one of a series of musical memorials by Boulez, which include the Tombeau added to Pli selon pli for Prince zu Fürstemberg, ..explosante - fixe... for Stravinsky, and Messagesquisse for Paul Sacher. Rituel is scored for eight separate groups of instruments, including double percussion in one group. The clarity of structure and Eastern sounding percussion makes Rituel one of the most accessible of Boulez's compositions, and William Glock described it as "the majestic processional in memory of Bruno Maderna". The photo above shows Pierre Boulez at the BBC Maida Vale studios in 1969, before a rehearsal for the premiere of Pli selon pli with the BBC Symphony.
The premiere of the BBC commissioned Rituel in Memoriam Maderna was given by Pierre Boulez and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in April 1975. In November 1976 Boulez and the orchestra recorded the work for CBS in the Henry Wood Hall, London. The fine recording, produced by Paul Myers and Roy Emerson and engineered by Bob Auger, is still in the catalogue at mid-price. It still sounds wonderful, and is highly recommended both as a valuable document of Pierre Boulez the composer, and a moving tribute to Bruno Maderna the musician. The CD couplings of Eclat and Multiples were recorded with Boulez and the Ensemble InterContemporain at IRCAM in Paris.
Staying with Pierre Boulez, IRCAM and the Ensemble InterContemporain, Deutsche Grammophon has just re-released important recordings of three of his later works, Sur Incises (1996/1998), Messagesquisse (1976-1977) and Anthèmes (1997). The CD was recorded in Paris in 1999 with the composer conducting the Soloists of the Ensemble InterContemporain in the first two works. Wonderful music, wonderfully recorded, and in today's crazy music market it is retailing in the UK for just £6.99 ($13). Both this re-release and the CD of Rituel In Memoriam Maderna are musts, both for card carrying Boulez fans, and for any readers who haven't yet been fortunate enough to discover his special sound world.
For more Bruno Maderna resources follow this path,
Picture credits. Pictures 1 and 3 Stockhausen archive, picture 2 BBC. Nicholas Kenyon's excellent book The BBC Symphony Orchestra contains invaluable listings of the premieres given by that great orchestra. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "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
'Another difficulty I find with many composers of your generation is, that inspite of the considerable interest and ingenuity of the colour of the music, I often find a lack of interesting shapes in the phrases. Lack of basic ideas can become boring after a time' ~ Benjamin Britten writes in 1968 to a twenty-nine year old Jonathan Harvey.
Although Britten may have had reservations about some of the new composers of the 1960s he had no such reservations about Jonathan Harvey. On Britten's advice Harvey studied with Erwin Stein and Hans Keller, and an invitation from Pierre Boulez in the early 1980s started a longstanding relationship with IRCAM which continues to this day. Today he is one of the leading exponents of electro-acoustic music, and more than eighty CDs of his music have been recorded. His new opera Wagner Dreams was premiered in Luxembourg in May 2007 to considerable critical acclaim. The opera is based on the true story that Wagner was planning an opera, Die Sieger (The Victors), on a Buddhist theme. This was to be based on the story of Prakriti, the untouchable who falls in love with the Buddhist monk Ananda.
There are also Buddhist themes in a highly recommended new CD, Angels, of Jonathan Harvey's choral music sung by Les Jeunes Solistes directed by Rachid Safir. Angels takes its name from the the work commissioned by Kings College, Cambridge in 1994, and the CD also includes Harvey's Missa Brevis written for Westminster Abbey in 1995. The spiritual dimension of Jonathan Harvey's music is underlined by two other outstanding works on the new CD. Marahi is a hymn to the Divine Feminine in the form of the Virgin Mary and the Buddhist Goddess Varahi and sets Sanskrit mantras. The extraordinarily satisfying spiritual path is completed by How could the soul not take flight, a setting of a poem by the Sufi mystic Rumi.
Angels is released on the French Soupir label which is distributed by Nocturne. The Soupir label specialises in contemporary music and little-known classical repertoire. The performance of Les Jeunes Solistes is exemplary, and the sound quality reflects the techical philosophy of this enterprising independent label. The recording was made in the IRCAM Centre in Paris, and has a surprising amount of bloom for a studio recording. Only two microphones were used, and their output was taken directly into the digital recorder without any equalisation or sound-shaping in the signal path. Congratulations to Joël Perrot for a superbly engineered CD.
Jonathan Harvey's Angels will certaily be one of my CDs of 2007. I was delighted to pay full price for it in the UK, but note that it can be bought direct from the Nocturne website for an astonishingly cheap €9.90 - that has to be the new music bargain of the year.
Now read about Stravinsky's Tibetan connection.
Photograph copyright On An Overgrown Path - taken outside my garden shed actually! Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "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
Elgar was the first of the new. Since Purcell, England had not produced a composer for the European common market. Against -much against- the background of academicians who were destined to remain dilettanti, there emerged a self-taught amateur destined to become a master.
At the time of Elgar's birth Brahms was 24, Dvorák was 16, and Wagner 44. When he died, Vaughan Williams was 62, Walton was 32, Britten was 20 and Schoenberg 60. Elgar's musical fathers were far away; many, almost all of them were of the Austo-German tradition, with Brahms, rather than Wagner, as the most powerful influence; and none of them English.
In a penetrating article in the current issue of Music and Letters Donald Mitchell goes so far as to submit 'that to find Elgar today specifically English in flavour is to expose oneself as the victim of a type of collective hallucination.' Elgar's early success on the Continent, and with Continentals, was indeed striking. It needed a Continental - Hans Richter - to introduce the Enigma Variations, The Dream of Gerontius and the first Symphony (dedicated to him) to English audiences, and Düsseldorf heard Gerontius before London.
Hans Keller writes in Music and Musicians in June 1957, and contradicts the currently fashionable view that Elgar was not appreciated outside England.
Now playing ...
The Dream of Gerontius conducted by Benjamin Britten. The decision of the 'East Anglican' Britten (left) to record Elgar's Gerontius, with its hardline Catholic text by Cardinal Newman, was a surprising one. As a young music student Britten recorded in his diary in February 1931 that he listened on the radio to '1 minute of Elgar Symphony 2 but can stand no more,' and a few months later he condemned the Enigma Variations for their 'sonorous orchestration' which 'cloys very soon'. But in his sleeve note for the original LP release the composer William Alwyn described Newman's text as a 'Passion Play', and this may have appealed to Britten the composer of church parables.
Britten conducted an Aldeburgh Festival performance of Gerontius on June 9 1971, and the recording was made in the same month in Snape Maltings. William Mann described the concert performance as 'urgent, unsentimental and totally lacking in bombast', and Alan Blyth described the original LP release as 'a searing re-creation of the drama that I find at all times involving and convincing...Britten removes the veneer of sentimentality, even sanctimoniousness, that has for long come between us and Elgar's compulsive vision.'
The 1971 recording made by Decca, with the 'dream' cast including Peter Pears (left) and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, is one of the classics of the gramophone. In the section that leads up to the life affirming chorus Praise to the Holiest in the height Britten shows his masterly control of the large forces, and the pre-digital sound is outstanding both for the lower registers and the three dimensional sound-stage captured by the Decca recording team. Elgar was a master composer, and Britten a master musician, this Dream of Gerontius is now back in the catalogue, buy it before it is again deleted.
Inclusiveness is out of fashion in classical music today, which means if contemporary music is your scene late-romantics like Elgar are the musical equivalent of dead meat. Next month we will be at Yoshi Oida's new production of Death in Venice in Snape Maltings. We should all remember that Britten recorded Elgar's great late-romantic masterpiece, Gerontius, in July 1971 in Snape Maltings while he was composing one of the great twentieth-century operas, Death in Venice, for performance in the same venue.
I started by quoting Hans Keller's view that Elgar was 'the first of the new'. We should also remember that Keller (left) championed Britten's music from the 1940s when it was still viewed as 'new' by the establishment. He was joint author of a Britten symposium in 1952, and the composer's 1975 String Quartet No. 3, with its last movement quote from Death in Venice, is inscribed to him. Britten died on December 7 1976, and his String Quartet No. 3 was given its first performance by the Amadeus Quartet two weeks later in Snape Maltings.
Benjamin Britten and Hans Keller recognised the greatness of Elgar's music. They also recognised the importance of inclusiveness, and embraced composers from Purcell to their twentieth-century contemporaries. Two very important messages as the 150th of Elgar's birth on Saturday June 2 approaches.
The music of Britain, and Britten ...
Hans Keller's headline, the first of the new, is a wordplay on the title of a patriotic 1942 film that Elgar would have approved of. The First of the Few was a biography of R.J. Mitchell (left), the designer of the Supermarine Spitfire (the film was renamed Spitfire for US release). The title comes from Winston Churchill who used these words to describe the Battle of Britain aircrews: "Never in the face of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." And this overgrown path leads us to another great twentieth-century English composer; the soundtrack of The First of the Few, including the famous Spitfire Prelude and Fugue, was written by William Walton.
Contemporary music was as bitchy in the early twentieth-century as it is today. Elgar was not a fan of Walton's music, and said about Walton's Viola Concerto that the composer had murdered the poor unfortunate instrument. Elgar and Walton only met once, according to Lady Walton it was in the lavatory at a Worcester Three Choirs Festival concert. After the Second World War Walton fell out with Britten and Pears, and supposedly said that the all-male Billy Budd should be retitled The Bugger’s Opera or Twilight of the Sods (original production shot above).
Another late-twentieth-century composer who was a surprising champion of Elgar was Michael Tippett whose overseas concerts often included Elgar's music. In his autobiography (Hutchinson ISBN 009175307) Tippett describes a "stunning" Enigma Variations in Brussels with him conducting his beloved Leicester School Symphony Orchestra, and tells how 'afterwards a Belgian composer came to me and said, "What an extraordinary work - more interesting than Brahms' St Anthony Variations!"', 
and Tippett describes another Enigma played by the Saint Louis Symphony in 1968 under his baton as "one of the best performances (of the work) in the USA I guess". Tippett (left) was inclusiveness personified and embraced everything from Tallis (he made the first-ever recording of Spem in alium in 1948) through Elgar to the blues. But he also shared some of Walton's reservations about Billy Budd. Tippett stayed at Britten's house in Aldeburgh while the opera was being composed and told the story of 'a marvellous remark in the libretto - I think it got changed - when they were going to clear the decks in order to let off the gun, and the wonderful order, given by Claggart or somebody, "Clear the decks of seamen" I roared with laughter!'
Walton may have been irreverent about Billy Budd, but when the chips were down he came to Britten's aid. In 1942, the same year as The First of the Few was made, Walton appeared as a supporting witness at Britten's successful appeal for registration as a Conscientous Objectors. Britten's pacifism, like Tippett's, was controversial, but if his appeal had failed Britten could well have joined young composers such as Ivor Gurney and George Butterworth whose careers had been cut short by the previous World War, and who were lamented in the elegiac 1919 Cello Concerto of Edward Elgar. Which is where this path started.
For more on Elgar read the excruciating boredom of pure fact.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "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
