Handel's Suites are miracles

'Interesting to listen once again to this 'historic' recording. I know the general public didn't really take to it, so that the people who sell these things clearly didn't make any profit (will it suffer the same fate as Berg's Concerto?.) And why? Audiences (in every country) prefer to buy Bach - out of habit - and because, in doing so, they think they are showing 'greater musicality'. They undervalue Handel or else they ignore him completely. During their own lifetimes, it was exactly the opposite. Handel travelled everywhere in a carriage, while Bach humbly played the organ at the Thomas-Kirche.

Now for Gavrilov and Richter. As soon as I started to listen, Gavrilov struck me as infinitely more interesting (in spite of a certain irreproachability to Richter's playing). Everything about his playing is fresher, more alive, freer. There's nothing studied about it. Only occasionally does he allow himself to be carried away by the fortissimo passages, and here he has a tendency to bang.'

Oddly, the friends who were listening with me and to whom I didn't say who was playing what, often thought that Gavrilov was me and vice versa. If I'd not known, I two could have mixed the two of us up. Clearly there's a reciprocal influence here. Be that as it may, these Suites are veritable miracles, laminated in gold but with virtually no patina.

From Sviatoslav Richter's Notebooks and Conversations edited by Bruno Monsaingeon. Richter, who was the mystery source of my Xenakis quote, kept detailed notes on concerts and recordings he heard by a wide range of performers and composers. There is an almost Zen like avoidance of duality in his observations on music ranging Bach to Boulez and Stockhausen. His detachment and openmindedness is a lesson to us all. I wouldn't mind playing the piano like him either.

The recordings of the Handel Keyboard Suites that he made in 1982 with Gavrilov are indeed veritable miracles. Despite his lack of confidence in their longevity they are still in the catalogue here and here. But given the current shenanigans at EMI that may not last. If they are not in your collection buy them while you can.

Now read what happened to Andrei Gavrilov.
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Xenakis - the eyes have it

'This is the first time I've heard any music by Xenakis; it's completely bowled me over, even though I'm not sure I've really understood it (or not understood it). Intuition? But can one always trust it? ... It seems to me that this, in fact, is what I'd call real 'new' music.'

Which famous musician seen in the photo above said this? The image will gradually enlarge until the correct answer is posted. Hear Xenakis' Komboi on my Future Radio programme tomorrow,
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Messiaen and Xenakis - Oiseaux Exotiques

This photo shows Olivier Messiaen pinning the award of Chevalier de la légion d'honneur on Iannis Xenakis in his Paris apartment in 1977. Xenakis was a pupil of Messiaen and I will be playing music by both of them on my Future Radio programme on Sunday April 13 at 5.00pm UK time (repeated 12.50am April 14).

The programme opens with Xenakis' Komboi and closes with another award winner, Angelin Chang, John McLaughlin Williams and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony's Grammy winning recording of Messiaen's Oiseaux Exotiques. The two works are separated by music from a composer who shared Messiaen's deep Catholic faith. Hildegard of Bingen is the earliest composer with a detailed biography and her music drama Ordo Virtutum is considered to be the prototype of the art form that became opera and eight centuries later came full circle in Messiaen's massively underrated Saint François d'Assise which only had its U.S. premiere in 2002. I will be playing the instrumental lament and Scene 3 from Hildegard's Ordo Virtutum performed by Sequentia directed by Barbara Thornton and Benjamin Bagby on Sunday.

Now here's a little quiz. Which famous musician said this after hearing tapes of Xenakis' Mists and Synaphaï?

'This is the first time I've heard any music by Xenakis; it's completely bowled me over, even though I'm not sure I've really understood it (or not understood it). Intuition? But can one always trust it? ... It seems to me that this, in fact, is what I'd call real 'new' music.'

To finish some quick visual arts trivia. Olivier Messiaen died on April 27, 1992 and the figurative painter Francis Bacon, whose masterpiece is the disturbing Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, died the following day. Staying with the visual arts remember Iannis Xenakis also composed in glass.
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Contemporary music without tears

Free music is all the rage and a long-running series of free concerts is being used to boost audiences for contemporary music in London. Music of Today is an innovative eight concert series given by the Philharmonia Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall before regular evening concerts of mainstream repertoire. The deal is you turn up for the free concert at 6.00pm which features an introductory talk by series director Julian Anderson plus a free programme (is the UK alone in having outrageously over-priced programme books?) before paying normal prices for the main concert at 8.00pm. You don't need to buy tickets for the main concert to attend the free one, you can simply enjoy the contemporary music and go home if you choose.

The 6.00pm concerts are not 'bolt-ons', but are meaty and challenging programmes with a different conductor specially booked for the event. Last Thursday we were in London to hear Diego Masson conduct Iannis Xenakis' Anaktoria and Thalleïn in the free Music of Today concert, an event that drew a gratifyingly large audience. The 73 year old Masson is one of the great champions of contemporary music with an incisive stick technique that is rarely seen today and which really fired-up the group of players from the Philharmonia. He is also a great speaker and worked with Xenakis and many other composers, he told how Xenakis struggled for performances in the 1950s, adding that Boulez didn't like his music. A quick cross-reference to Joan Peyser's biography of Boulez confirms this, there is not one mention of Xenakis in it.

In the days when Pierre Boulez was at the BBC the 8.00pm concert would have been Thalleïn in the first half with a Mahler symphony to follow, and the hall would probably have been full. But those days have gone and it was film music all the way with Mozart K467 in the first half and Mahler's Fifth Symphony after the interval. In the Mozart François-Frédéric Guy played very non-Elvira Madigan cadenzas by Marc Monnet - the CV says it all. One of today's hot 'box ticking' young conductors was on the podium. 33 year old Swiss born Philippe Jordan has ticked quite a few boxes already; he has conducted at Covent Garden, the Met and Glyndebourne, has ticked Parsifal in Munich, is signed with leading agency IMG Artists and has a Ring in Zurich and the directorship of the Paris Opera soon to be ticked. Thursday was London and the Mahler 5 box, and it was duly ticked with a performance as mannered and uninvolving as any I can remember.

But congratulations to the Philharmonia for programming contemporary music without tears. But just a couple of questions. Why didn't the 73 year old Diego Masson conduct the Mahler and Mozart, and the 33 year old Philippe Jordan the Xenakis? Could it be that there is no Xenakis box to be ticked on a hot young conductor's CV these days?

My header photo was taken a couple of weeks ago and shows Henry Moore's Reclining Figure in the grounds of Dartington Hall where Diego Masson will follow in the footsteps of Boulez, Stravinsky, Elliott Carter, Bruno Maderna and many other great musicians when he teaches there at this year's Summer School. See Stravinsky in another Dartington header photo here.

* I'm playing Xenakis' Komboi for harpsichord and percussion on Future Radio on April 13. Also in the programme are Scene 3 from Hildegard of Bingen's Ordo Vitutum and John Mclaughlin Williams' Grammy winning recording of Messiaen's Oiseaux Exotiques.

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Indeterminacy in music blogging

Stockhausen, Xenakis, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia, Mozart and Mahler beckon from London - as one savant wrote about the contemporary music scene in England over on Sequenza21 "I do hate ... the lack of diversity in performance (not much range/choice) and all the self aggrandising anti-’intellectual’ inverted snobbery regards the ‘continentals’". I'm away from the keyboard for a few days enjoying the live music, so below is the schedule for my Future Radio show for this Sunday (March 16) plus the following five weeks with links to related articles.

March 16 - Angela Hewitt recital:
* J.S. Bach Toccatas
* Messiaen excerpts from Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus


March 23 - Celebrating Easter with A Love Supreme
* Yuval Ron Ensemble play music from Iraq and Muslim and Jewish Andalucia
* John Coltrane's jazz suite A Love Supreme

March 30 - Vaughan Williams anniversary
* Thomas Tallis Felix Namque for organ
* Vaughan Williams Third Symphony 'A Pastoral Symphony'


April 6 - Contemporary Karajan, to mark the conductor's centenary his recordings of:
* Berg Three pieces from the Lyric Suite
* Honegger Symphony No 3 'Liturgigue'.


April 13 - Pupil and teacher
* Xenakis Komboi
* Hildegard of Bingen lament and Scene 3 from Ordo Vitutum
* Messiaen Oiseaux Exotiques

April 20 - Modern English music
* Maxwell Davies Missa Parvula
* Rubbra Symphony No 6


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A brand new sexy audience ...

Between January and June 2006, a series of ‘classical music club nights’ took place in London’s fashionable Shoreditch. This monthly ‘club’ night went by the unfortunate handle of TI4U, which when translated out of its yoof txt spk unravels as This Isn’t For You – a moniker that exemplifies classical music’s traditional warm welcome to we thicko neophytes. Presumably, like everything else in Shoreditch, the name was supposed to be ironic, but then who knows? Classical music being elitist? There’s always a first time for everything.

I went along to one of these evenings with my friend Paul, although I honestly now can’t remember why we went at all. The whole idea of a classical music nightclub seemed bizarre to us; we had no idea what to expect - would TI4U be down in some dark and dingy underground club space, with a huge speaker system, dry ice and coke-queuing in the lavs? Light show? Lasers? Comin’ on like an augmented G-minor seventh sense? Or was this whole ‘club night’ thing merely canny marketing spin – an attempt to attract those who wouldn’t be seen dead in a traditional concert hall but were now in their mid-to-late 30s and worried that perhaps they soon oughtn’t really to be seen in a normal club any more either? Was this a pointer towards the future, or another cynical sign of the times? Would the prospect of a bar that remains open during the live performances (oooh!) and an invitation to ‘dress down’ for the evening succeed in pulling in the relatively young punters? Of course not! But still. It was a brave idea anyway.

Paul and I arrived on the steps of Shoreditch Town Hall neither mashed to the gills on hallucinogens nor decked out in Paul’s usual clubbing garb of rubber bondage gear and nipple clamps; rather we had arrived dressed club-soberly, as if for, say, Aphex Twin’s funeral. And Shoreditch Town Hall turned out to be a rather elegant bona fide town hall and not a heaving, scabrous underground pit, so that was that one cleaned up too. So far: as ditchwater. We entered the town hall and went through to the main, erm, hall bit, which was a large, brightly-lit wooden-floored you know, hall-type thing, with a table up one end with wine and beer on, upon whose wares we began to intoxicate ourselves in order to be in an inspirational frame of mind for the music. Up at the other end of the hall was the DJ - a mousey young lady sitting on a chair by a pair of CD decks with mounted speakers on either side. This was, wonderfully, ‘DJ Eleanor’.

Drinks in hand, Paul and I went over to watch DJ Eleanor spin her blazing wheels of burnished pewter. She was wearing a nice Laura Ashley dress and selected classical CDs to play from out of a faux-leatherbound folder. There were no shout-outs or anything, just nervous-looking Eleanor putting on some Purcell, and then some Schubert, and then some Byrd, and then a risqué soupcon of Webern. None of these were ‘mashed-up’ either. It was so sweet. A few people stood around the edge of the hall, looking awkward in suits with their ties self-consciously removed, like a hall full of perspiring, Becks-clasping David Camerons. There was also the occasional rakish chap in devil-may-care leather jacket. Less Brando, more Lovejoy.

Then the live music started, and it was like a ‘flash mob’, I think, ish, in that the chamber musicians just set up anywhere on the floor of the hall and started to play, willy-nilly. The punters self-consciously gathered around. It was pleasant enough. When they had finished, we dispersed back to the bar and the walls and DJ Eleanor went back to work, smiling shyly. It went on like this for a few hours, until a lone cellist came out and played some Bach and everything changed.

I find that Bach, especially his six solo cello suites, always manages to evoke a general fatalistic resignation to everything. Not just to one’s boring old lot – thought that does come into it – but everything else you can think of too: the sun the stars, the clouds, the Earth, air, trees, toy dogs, traffic wardens and so on, plus, most importantly, one’s own place in the Greater Context (utter and fundamental meaninglessness). This was like a kind of mass hypnosis; a shared consciousness-raising (or lowering, depending on how one’s dealing with the meaninglessness) experience for all within earshot.

You could just tell, by glancing around, that everybody was on the same trip. Was it just the algebra? Bach’s music is famously mathematically rigorous – are such collective ‘trances’ simply a subconscious reaction to the logic that’s underpinning the notes we can hear? Or are there deeper forces at work? Was Bach simply a genius who was able to thread into his music, even 250+ years down the line, specific and innate elements of profound transcendence? I suspect the answer is a little bit of both and a bottle of beer. Or however many we had. Fourteen or so. Plus the ketamine.

Would I go again? Yes, were we not now banned. And especially if they focused more on the ‘challenging’ 20th century stuff (Cage, Xenakis, Schoenberg, more Webern et al) rather than the same old Baroque (Bach excepted) and Romantic chamber music standards. But this is just personal preference. I’d also kind of prefer it if they raised DJ Eleanor’s volume at least double, turned the lights down by half, and actually banned people wearing suits from attending. I mean, if you’re serious about attracting a non-traditional audience, at least encourage the traditional audience who you can’t really stop from attending to pretend to be otherwise. If not, you’re just prolonging the status quo, Shoreditch or no Shoreditch.

It says on their website that TI4U will ‘have a new home’ from June 2007. If these dudes are truly looking to bring classical music to the attention of a brand new, sexy audience (without dumbing down to Katherine Jenkins levels of hatefulness), they need to take this underground somehow – make it weirder and darken its hues. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always Stringfellows. OK that’s the end now.

Seb Hunter writes in Issue 6 - Clubbing of his Bitterest Pill ezine, subscribe for free here.

For the back story read Rock me Amadeus
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Is this new music's Woodstock?

In 1971 the pacifists Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears purchased the Chapel House in Horham, Suffolk because the noise from US fighters flying from the RAF Bentwaters base near Aldeburgh was disturbing Britten's composing. It was in Horham he wrote his late works, Death in Venice, Phaedra and the Third String Quartet. Britten died in 1976, and RAF Bentwaters closed in 1993 at the end of the Cold War, after 43 years with a US presence on the base.


Now, in an inspiring example of 'we have overcome', Britten's Aldeburgh Festival, under the direction of Thomas Adès, is reclaiming RAF Bentwater, and on Saturday the former Cold War base joins Snape Maltings, the Jubillee Hall, and Orford Church as a festival venue. On June 9th the disused military facility hosts 'Faster Than Sound', a six hour sound event which joins the dots between music genres and digital art forms. During the evening artists from a wide range of backgrounds are collaborating and exploring the worlds of electronic music, contemporary classical practice and interactive visual arts.

There will be a range of immersive installations, musical collaborations, a wireless walk in the woods, illuminated cold war military buildings and a large dome filled with contemporary music - all the photos here were taken before the 2006 event. Sonic Arts Network are performing works by Luigi Nono, Iannis Xenakis, and Luc Ferrari, and other performers include Mira Calix and Tansy Davies. More details on the Faster Than Sound website.


On Saturday afternoon we are at Orford Church, where Britten's Curlew River was first performed and recorded by the composer, for a concert by the adventurous Exaudi. Their programme is Gesualdo, a UK premiere by Salvatore Sciarrino, Niccolo Castiglioni, Monteverdi, Giacinto Scelsi, and Luigi Nono. Then, together with many others, we will travel the short distance from the historic church to the Cold War base of RAF Bentwaters for an evening of experimental music. Update - see the 2007 event via this link.

Faster Than Sound has all the excitement of those wonderful 1970s London Roundhouse concerts when Pierre Boulez and William Glock ruled at the BBC, and Classic FM was still two decades away. Could this be new music's Woodstock? Even if it isn't, the 2007 Aldeburgh Festival lays to rest all that nonsense about classical music being dead.


For a photo report on the 2007 Faster Than Sound follow this link, and get into the Woodstock spirit with Benjamin Britten - we shall overcome.
Photos of 2006 Faster Than Sound from FM Buckeymedia. 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