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Put Guardian critic Andrew Clements in a plush upholstered seat in a concert hall to listen to Shostakovich or Mahler's parodies of popular tunes, and chances are he will wax lyrical in his review. Ask him to walk around outside Snape Maltings and experience a multi-media and amplified opera which includes, horror of horrors, a Beatles tribute band, and he will grumpily find it 'in a word, dreadful.' Fortunately I don't earn my living in London churning out reviews of unamplified Mahler and Shostakovich in twentieth-century concert halls, so here are my pictures, and impressions, of Aldeburgh Festival's new commission, Elephant and Castle.
Opera is the original multi-media art form, and it all started with Monteverdi's Orfeo in 1607. The proscenium arch single location format using natural acoustics has been the status quo for four-hundred years. Isn't it time to at least challenge that status quo?
Director Tim Hopkins sets out his position clearly: 'The arrival of digital technology proposes a new box of tools in this area, within the economic reach of arts projects. It's a bit like the early days of film: the grammar of how you use it and what you can do with it hasn't been decided yet.' Note the last sentence Mr Clements, that explains what Elephant and Castle is about.
The 100 minute opera is in seven scenes using six different locations seen in my pictures here. One scene is in the Maltings concert hall (pictures adjacent to this text), the rest are in the landscape around the hall. Two of the scenes are reflective interludes combining sounds and video. The second interlude samples words from Britten's Peter Grimes 'I hear those voices that will not be drowned'. The irony of that sample passed Andrew Clements by.
Music critics still live in the world of Mahler and Shostakovich, and see their role as answering the profound question - is it great art? Nobody is pretending Elephant and Castle is great art. As director Tim Hopkins explains it is art in progress, precisely as Orfeo was in 1607. To even start to understand Elephant and Castle you need to leave the concepts of great art and conventional performance practice behind in London. Otherwise the journey is wasted.
Now Andrew Clements is safely back in London he may well hear music by that great symphonist Carl Nielsen. As he settles into his seat in the luxuriously refurbished, revoiced and unamplified Royal Festival Hall Mr Clements should reflect on these words by that visionary musician:
'The right of life is stronger than the most sublime art, and even if we reached agreement on the fact that now the best and most beautiful has been achieved, mankind thirsting more for life and adventure than perception, would rise and shout in one voice: give us something else, give us something new, indeed for Heaven's sake give us rather the bad, and let us feel that we are still alive, instead of constantly going around in deedless admiration for the conventional.'
I came away from Snape last night feeling that I was very much alive. Thank you Jonathan Reekie, Tim Hopkins, Tansy Davies, Mira Calix and the Aldeburgh Festival.
All photos taken by Pliable on 21 June 2007, copyright On An Overgrown Path. Quotation from My Childhood by Carl Nielsen, Hutchinson 1973. 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
"There was a Royal Academy exhibition in 1997 about the architect Denys Lasdun. As I recall, there was a photograph of him in wartime on the beach at Normandy wearing battledress, teaching architecture to the army education corps. I thought that was an amazing gesture of hope for the future. I began to think of buildings as hopes, as frail human endeavours, as children that need to be brought up, invested in and looked after. It's also an idea of the architect as hero, as distinct from architect as villain. Lots of things unravelled from that: where did it all go wrong, where did it all go right...
My endowment from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) concerned exploring connections between the historic ambition of opera to combine human expressive arts, and the possibility of contemporary technology. A starting point was to enhance a use of moving image within opera performance. The arrival of digital technology proposes a new box of tools in this area, within the economic reach of arts projects. It's a bit like the early days of film: the grammar of how you use it and what you can do with it hasn't been decided yet.
The question arose as to what kind of musical voice the work could have. The potential to echo the contrasting environment with two compositional styles emerged, and Jonathan Reekie, chief executive of Aldeburgh Music, suggested composers Mira Calix and Tansy Davies. Tansy uses acoustic classical instruments and is inspired by different cultural registers. Mira Calix uses an electronica approach but the source of her sound is often from the natural or found world - rendered into patterns. So both connect to qualities of contrast or duality in the piece within their own work, as well as in contrast to each other."
Tim Hopkins talks about the new Aldeburgh Festival commissioned opera Elephant and Castle which he devised and directs, with music by Mira Calix and Tansy Davies, and text by Blake Morrison. The opera incorporates film, digital sounds, installations and live performance. It is about architecture and aspiration, urban legends and primal myths, past and future, work and play, and children and parents.
The first two performances are today Wednesday (June 20) and Thursday (June 21), and the audience has been told 'dress for the weather' as the performance promenades through the landscape around the Snape Maltings - see picture below. The two images here are computer renderings of scenes from Elephant and Castle. The video artist Tal Rosner is the partner of Festival creative director Thomas Adès. Although Rosner is not connected with the new opera the Festival has a commitment to exploring video and other new media.
In his 1964 Aspen Award acceptance speech Aldeburgh Festival founder Benjamin Britten said "There are many dangers which hedge around the unfortunate composer: pressure groups which demand true proletarian music, snobs who demand the latest avant-garde tricks; critics who are already trying to document today for tomorrow, to be the first to find the correct pigeon-hole definition. These people are dangerous - not because they are necessarily of any importance in themselves, but because they make the composer, above all the young composer, self-conscious, and instead of writing his own music, music which springs naturally from his gifts and personality, he may be frightened into writing pretensious nonsense or deliberate obscurity. He may find himself writing more and more for machines, in conditions dictated by machines, and not for humanity: or of course he may end by creating grandiose clap-trap when his real talent is for dance tunes or children's piano pieces."
Is Elephant and Castle an amazing gesture of hope for the future, and a bridge to new audiences? Or is it just the latest avant-garde tricks? Follow this link for my review and production photos.
Now read about an amazing architectural and musical hope for the future that is not disputed.
Images and Tim Hopkins quote from interview with David Benedict in the excellent 2007 Aldeburgh Festival programme book. Image credits Tim Hopkins and Pippa Nissen. 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
Nicholas Kenyon has been Director of the BBC Proms from 1996 to 2007, he takes over as managing director of the Barbican Centre arts complex in October, and today delivers the Hesse Lecture at the 2007 Aldeburgh Festival. His subject is 'changing tastes and changing programmes over 60 Aldeburgh Festivals and 80 years of BBC Proms, the story of the post-war Festival movement, and the unprecedented changes that now challenge all aspects of classical music.'
Although tastes and programmes have changed, Aldeburgh remains a great international music festival. It is still personal, distinctive and inclusive, and those are the very characteristics that defined the seasons of the great Proms directors such as William Glock and John Drummond. Aldeburgh eschews fads and composer anniversaries, and instead challenges with the best new music. Aldeburgh ignores the touring brand-name orchestras with their jet-set maestros and tired war-horse programmes, and instead commissions innovative work such as Yoshi Oida's acclaimed production of Death in Venice, and the multi-media Elephant and Castle. And in Thomas Adès, Aldeburgh has an artistic director who refuses to trade in spin, who is internationally recognised as an artistic visionary, composer and performer, and who is a man of culture.
By contrast, at the BBC Proms Nicholas Kenyon has presided over a festival that has become increasingly anonymous, bland, and exclusive. In a July 2006 Guardian interview Kenyon listed the following among his achievements as Proms director - big screen TVs in Hyde Park, text-message information service, digital television relays, avoiding positive discrimination in favour of women composers (think about it), lots of guest orchestras from Europe and the US, and 'taking people with us'.
In his 1960 essay Landscape and Character Lawrence Durrell wrote 'the determinant of any culture is after all - the spirit of place.' This spirit of place in hugely important in music, and we find it in Bach's Leipzig chorales, Haydn's London Symphonies, the works of the Second Viennese, Manchester and Darmstadt Schools, and elsewhere. Aldeburgh has a very powerful spirit of place, and it has nothing to do with Suffolk fishermen and windswept beaches. It is about passion for new music, passion for inclusiveness, and passion for the visual arts, architecture and new media.
The BBC Proms no longer have a spirit of place. You can experience them at home on the radio, around the world via the internet, or anywhere, anytime - in a park near you. The Proms no longer offer a personal vision, instead they present the 'cookie cutter' programmes of the touring orchestras. The Proms are no longer a music festival, they are a global entertainment brand that stands for audience friendly and risk averse programming.
When you stand in front of Snape Maltings you see the place shown in the photo above. But you also feel the spirit of music from the Renaissance to the contemporary, of the visual arts from Barbara Hepworth to the latest video installations, and of culture from Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, through Mitslav Rostropovich to Thomas Adès, Mira Calix and Tansy Davies.
I hope Nicholas Kenyon feels that spirit today.
Image credit Arts Council. 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
'Music demands more from a listener than simply the possession of a tape-machine or a transistor radio. It demands some prepararion, some effort, a journey to a special place, saving up for a ticket, some homework on the programme perhaps, some clarification of the ears and sharpening of the instincts. It demands as much effort on the listener's part as the other two corners of the triangle, this holy composer, performer and listener' ~ Benjamin Britten. Photos taken at Faster Than Sound, RAF Bentwaters Cold War base, part of the2007 Aldeburgh Festival. For the full story of that special place take this overgrown path.
Quote from Britten's On Receiving the First Aspen Award (Faber ISBN 0571100236). All photos copyright On An Overgrown Path, taken on 9th June 2007. 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
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
The BBC’s privileged position as broadcaster, promoter, orchestra manager and new music commissioner guarantees maximum media coverage for their Promenade Concerts. The Proms may be the biggest music festival in the world, but it is not the only show in town. Some of the other festivals can teach the BBC a thing or two about innovative programme planning – here’s a taster of the events I will be attending, and writing about, in the coming month:
Norfolk & Norwich Festival
May 4 ~ Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Paul Hillier, Kedrov, Pärt, Kreek and Rachmaninov (All-night Vigil excerpts), at Norwich Cathedral.
May 6 ~ afternoon, Monteverdi: 1610 Vespers, Eastern Early Music Forum conducted by Philip Thorby (not part of the official festival), evening, Bobo Stenson Trio at Norwich Playhouse
May 13 ~ Matthew Halls harpsichord, Bach Goldberg Variations at King of Hearts
Aldeburgh Festival
June 12 ~ morning, Luigi Nono portrait, a performance of Hay que camino’ soñando for two violins, Vive a Venezia - film about Nono, and a talk by the composer’s widow Nuria Schoenberg Nono, at Jubilee Hall and Aldeburgh Cinema.
June 12 ~ evening, Death in Venice, Benjamin Britten. New staged production of the only Britten opera written for Snape, directed by Yoshi Oida, at Snape Maltings.
June 13 ~ afternoon, Jakob Kullberg cello, Per Nørgård, Bach, Bent Sørensen, and Britten at Jubilee Hall.
June 13 ~ evening, Monteverdi Il Sesto Libro de Madrigali, Concerto italiano directed by Rinaldo Alessandrini at Snape Maltings
June 21 ~ morning, Masaaki Suzuki organ, Guilain, Byrd, Purcell, and Bach, at Framlingham Church
June 21 ~ afternoon, film: Gesulado, Death for Five Voices directed by Werner Herzog, Aldeburgh Cinema.
June 21 ~ evening, Elephant and Castle, a new opera using film, digital sounds, installations and live performance. Music from classical composer Tansy Davies and DJ/electronica artist Mira Calix. It’s at Snape Maltings but our tickets say ‘outdoor promenade, come dressed for the weather’.
Artistic Director Thomas Adès has certainly created an innovative programme for the Sixtieth Aldeburgh Festival. But it’s interesting that the first two events to sell out were Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach B minor Mass, and a showing of Visconti’s film Death in Venice. If you can't be there, be here On An Overgrown Path.
Now read how music rose from the wreckage at Snape
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
