MiV Home
Alix Goolden Performance Hall
March 5, 2016
The conceit behind this concert's title was triggered by a passage in Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which the god of sleep, Hypnos, lies on the floor of an inaccessible dark cave, deep in a grotto, dreaming the dreams which will be visited by his three sons on the night lives of sleeping humans. Morpheus, in human form, Phobetor in animal or catastrophic form, and Phantasos as the kind of delusional force especially likely to invade kings' (or ambitious politicians') dreams. The Narrator, in opening and closing with this theme opened us up to, not so much an out-of-body experience as a much more than usually embodied one. The heightened sense, underlined in the repetition at the close, that the whole performance was a kind of dream, more real than real, served to deepen the multi faceted layers of consciousness and imagination evoked by the body of the programme, which also extended the modes of perception in a form not often encountered in traditional music.
The very programme titles, Tryptich for the first half, and Mirror Image after the intermission, affirmed that this was to be as much a visual encounter as as auditory one — even the huge projection screen hanging above the stage was surrounded by an ornate gilt frame, which at the outset reflected the audience back to ourselves as if we were already sitting among the musicians. The Grand Tour laid out for us was a journey through five famous houses in Europe, known for their extensive collections of art and musical gatherings of all kinds. The massive amount of research into the five houses, their history, occupants, art collections and contributions to the cultural ethos of their times, introduced in the pre-concert talk (to an already full house, such was the buzz for this occasion), documented in the written programme and skilfully drawn upon by the narrator, necessarily posed a serious challenge to the musicians - how was the music itself to remain a central and integrated experience amid this wealth of visual detail?
The first stop was at Handel's London townhouse. Literally guided by the narrator up the stone steps through the front door and up to the main reception room, we were immediately in another world, privileged guests of Handel himself. His portrait, his spinet, the paintings of guests drinking and laughing on his walls, even his burgundy bed contributed to a sense of intimate presence — at one point, even a musician in a painting magically appeared to be one of the musicians on the stage. Hearing the vivid brightness and bold delight in his music, the wonderful attack and gorgeous tone of the instrumentalists in this context — was it the champagne, or were we dreaming? With a backdrop of an archway into an enchanted forest, quietness exuding from its sun-drenched leaves, dreamy sensuous lines from the "Dances from Alcina" recreated the rehearsal that took place in this very room four days before its premiere at Covent Garden. The sheer joy of the occasion, and the certainty that your favourite composer has transcended all his earlier achievements (as expressed at the time in a letter from one of the other guests) led to the conclusion of the set, the musicians virtually dancing themselves as the screen panned away from the tambourine in a painting to the carefree guests, winds and tambourine welcoming the "Songes Agréables" in a brisk and lively Gavotte and Tamburino. Then, the evening successfully over, the camera returned to Mr. Handel's bed, from which could be seen his Canaletto of Venice, providing the perfect segue to our next port of call.
A house on the Grand Canal, belonging to a successful English merchant, Joseph Smith and once described as "the most perfect union of all the sciences and arts." An utterly charming melody opens the set by Vivaldi on that most intimate of instruments, the lute. I am struck by the beauty of the golden lozenges in the tile work on the walls of a palace as the imagery takes us outside. An Allegro for two oboes is as boldly vigorous as the fresh air and outdoors requires, evoking the happiness of a crowd on a Venetian plaza, followed by another Allegro for bassoon played with a quirky mischievousness and panache that perfectly complemented the costumes and gestures of the haggling market sellers and their array of goods, including their own ideas of good paintings and birds in cages. Next, onto the Canal with two cellos, their rich sonorities somehow just like the deep ochres and burnt umbers of the passing walls. The sudden awareness that the colours of some of the instruments had a painterly significance, in particular the pale yellow of a violin and the chestnut body of a cello reinforced the decidedly synaesthetic nature of the experience, and was magically reinforced in the moment by a photograph of a golden moon rising over the scene.
The gently sombre mood of the harpsichord playing a J.P.Sweelinck composition called "Engelse Fortuin" (an interesting reminder of how the fortunes of all these European houses were interlinked) introduced us to the third house in Delft, once, in spite of its modest proportions, home to an astonishing collection of 21 Vermeer paintings. Almost immediately the vivid yellow of the spinet, the ubiquitous presence of brilliant Persian textiles serving as carpets, table coverings and just about any purpose, and the rich red of a skirt, placing us so unequivocally inside these rooms where music from Purcell seemed perfectly at home. The extraordinarily expressive (and today, very familiar) portraits of three very different young women hanging on these Dutch walls were captured with no less verve and character by the three violins — I will now never be able to separate the girl with the red hat from the violinist with the red hair. Or the creamy pale complexion of the third portrait from the dancing flaxen hair of her counterpart on the violin below. And speaking of flax, the narrator's eloquent disquisition on the many and magical uses of linen from brilliantly blue flowering fields to the immaculate closets and clothes of the householders to the painter's canvases themselves made the third Purcell piece a veritable elegy for that marvellous fibre.
The glittering Palais Royale formed the backdrop, with its gilt mirrors worth more than the price of a Rembrandt (whose paintings on these walls along with Titian's, Tintoretto's and Correggio's contributed much of the mythological subject matter of both the art and music of the day), to a deeply moving telling of the devoted lovers Ceyx, son of Lucifer, the herald of daylight, and Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus, the King of the Winds. The narrator provided us with the bones of the myth: the troubled King compelled to set sail to consult an oracle, resisting his beloved's desire to accompany him; she, knowing all about the danger of winds at sea, preferring to die with him than live without him; the storm at sea; Ceyx's drowning and Alcyone's dream (Morpheus again, assuming the form of Ceyx) of her husband's desire to be wept for; Alcyone's anxious vigil on the shore; the body washing towards her as she runs, then finds herself soaring towards him to meet him in death. The subsequent return of the two as birds each year for a brief period of "Halcyon days" to nest on the ocean and lay their eggs. Martin Marais' Suite from Alcyone opened the set with the brisk drumming of tambourines creating a sense of unpretentious fun, the epitome of cheerful entertainment. Then, the Marche en rondeau had the musicians swirling about the stage as if the music was pouring out of their bodies, their instruments no more separate from them than their lips or fingertips. The action moved inexorably towards the great drum beat heralding the storm, a thunderboard and frantic strings recreating the wind-lashed waves in the painting overhead. Ceyx's prayers for help expressed in the gentle pleading strings, followed by Morpheus' visit to Alcyone whose search on the shore morphed into an image of two birds in flight. A sense of joy transcending sorrow as the music broadened and resolved into an amazingly complete sound, every instrument playing. The magnificent backdrop of changing cloudscapes drew the narrative arc of the myth and the music to a close — but there was something about the change of image from high flying sea birds to a nesting pair (I wish I knew what they were — there was something very domestic about them) that momentarily caused tears to spring to my eyes. There followed a short period of music with no images which felt like a kind of death, a great peace.
The fifth house in Leipzig, featuring the music of Bach (whose own house was next door) included paintings by Holbein, Rubens, Cranach, Veronese and Breughel the Younger providing a lighter, but oh so pleasurable climax to the Grand Tour. Opening with the solemnity of bassoons and horns in a Gigue, somehow reflecting the red, gold and silver in the fixity of a tankard, apples and a bowl with a spoon, followed by the dignified beauty of an Adagio from Cantata 42 in which oboes and bassoons reflect the soundness and formality of a copper and chocolate brown bowl relieved by white eggs, culminating in the consummate assuredness of two violins with an athletic singing tone only matched by the careless splendour of the rugs, cushions, violin and lemons in the painting overhead. To conclude, the pristine clarity of the Overture to Telemann's Wassermusik — and the satisfaction, if not bliss in the glorious blue of water and lapis lazuli saturating our eyes in the brilliant mineral that became as essential as linen in the production of these great works of art.
Utterly sated by the journey, the final reprise section of the programme allowed us to go home to London, savouring memories of the journey, the canal, the spinet, full sized portraits now of the Vermeer girls, the doppelganger violins, one of them surely Puck personified, the quirky bassoon, some fresh (or not remembered Vermeers) with a sense of the sadness of farewell, tempered by the comfort of Handel's welcome. In short, I found this a compellingly brilliant production which made me wonder if music without images and fully embodied and dancing musicians would ever feel enough again.
MiV Home