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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
October 2, 2016
"Times Change. Where is music going? What is permanent? We don't know!"
The typical cry, you might think, of the music-lover adrift in a sea of contemporary, unfamiliar and incomprehensible music.
Yet the remark was made not today but nearly a century ago; and it was made, not by a befuddled listener, but by a great composer, one of those driving music in new, unfamiliar directions: Carl Nielsen.
Nielsen was referring to the second movement, the disingenuously-titled "Humoreske", of his Symphony No.6, yet he might as well have intended his remarks to apply to the entire work, which he dubbed (again, one suspects, with his tongue firmly lodged in his cheek) Sinfonia Semplice. And certainly, these are almost the only words of explanation [sic] he ever uttered about this strange, enigmatic work, which was premiered in December 1925, a mere six days after its completion.
Given that Nielsen now features regularly on the programmes of the world's major orchestras — Victoria has heard four of the six in the last couple of decades — one might imagine that there was no longer any need for a chamber version of the symphony. And, in purely economic terms, this is probably the case.
However, the purpose of Hans Abrahamsen's 2010 arrangement for eighteen players, would seem to be to shed a new light on the music, rather than simply enable it to be performed more cheaply.
Bill Linwood conducted the Aventa Ensemble in the North American premiere (indeed, the first performance outside Europe) of the transcription, in a reading which made the music sound as contemporary as anything Aventa have ever played, while still leaving one with the feeling that, to quote Bob Dylan, "Something is happening here / But you don't know what it is".
One of the most outré aspects of this work is that it sounds like nothing else, and yet there is not a single bar that could have come from the pen of any composer other than Nielsen. Linwood and his players captured this strangeness beautifully while, at the same time, underlining the continuity between the opening movement's soaring, albeit brief, chorale-like melody and the finale of the Fifth Symphony. The movement's climax — thought by some to be a reference to the series of heart attacks suffered by the composer after the completion of the Fifth — was impressively impassioned.
The Humoreske is, at first hearing, the strangest movement of all. In it, according to a newspaper interview given by the composer, the wind and percussion "quarrel, each sticking to his own tastes and inclinations". It always brings to my mind the percussion variation from Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, yet that was composed almost a quarter of a century later. Despite the fragmentary nature of the opening, Linwood established the pulse immediately; I loved the lilting clarinets with viola and cello and the muted trombone glissandos, to reinforce the music's sarcastic nature (the first version of the score referred to them as "yawns of contempt").
The soulful slow movement was played with great concentration and intensity, although here, if nowhere else, one shortcoming of the arrangement was revealed: the harmonium, while more than adequately filling out the lower regions of the sound spectrum, was indifferently audible higher in its range; indeed, the sound of Robert Holliston's hitting the keys was noticeably louder than the notes produced. (The harmonium in the chamber version of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde suffers in similar fashion.)
The finale is, prima facie, the most straightforward movement: a theme and variations. Yet whereas in, for example, the variation finales of Beethoven's "Eroica" and Brahms' Fourth, there is a clear coherence between the individual variations, in Nielsen's finale it is as though each variation had been flown in from an entirely different work.
Thus it is that, alongside the lyrical and perky bassoon (the excellent Anne Power) of the first variation, the delicate, lilting fourth and the great melodic sweep of the sixth, we have a fairground hurdy-gurdy (brilliantly realised by Abrahamsen on the harmonium) launching us maniacally into the fifth.
Finally, just as one feels that perhaps the music is heading for a reasonably tranquil close, comes the coda, which can be summarised by three F's: Fanfare, Flourish and Flatulence (feel free to substitute another F-word — no, stop sniggering at the back, not that one — for the last).
I would call this performance revelatory, except that I still don't really know what the music is about (and it is clearly about something); instead, I'll simply say that it would be harder to imagine a better.
Ana Sokolovic is a composer whose work never disappoints; in addition to a fine ear for sonorities and an infectious rhythmic sense, her music often has an irresistably infectious playfulness.
The concert opened with the somewhat loquaciously titled "...and I need a room to receive five thousand people with raised glasses...or...what a glorious day, the birds are singing 'halleluia'", a title which would have seemed unbearably twee and pretentious had the music itself been any less engaging.
But engaging it most certainly was, beginning with the ensemble apparently tiring of waiting for their conductor and launching it a fanfare-like figure, which prompted Linwood to literally run onto the stage. He was later required to turn a graceful pirouette while continuing to beat time.
The music was what we have come to think of as typical Sokolovic: fractured motor rhythms, lots of glissandos, wind players blowing through rather than into their instruments, and the like.
The music had a distinct spring in its step, even when that step was hilariously syncopated; and, when the music closed with a sort of slow, lugubrious collapse enlivened by pairs of players playing unisons and standing as they did so, I imagine that every face in the audience was smiling. I know mine was.
Analia Llugdar indulged herself in a slightly less verbose title for her 2007 work "Todos los recuerdos presentes envolvian ese sonido y algo me miró" ("All the present memories enclosed this sound and something watched me").
Llugdar clearly has a fine ear for sonorities and this multi-textured work did not outstay its welcome, although I imagine that being as well played as it was definitely helped; for me, a little "spectral" music goes quite a long way.
It is interesting to reflect that, had this concert taken place half a century ago and programmed the Nielsen with two works composed within the previous decade (the Sokolovic was from 2014), it would have been blindingly obvious which was the oldest music.
Today, though, things are far less clear and there is a good chance that a listener unfamiliar with any of Sunday's pieces would have concluded that the most recent was the Nielsen.
As the man himself said, times change.
Another wonderful evening from Aventa.
The ensemble: Müge Büyükçelen, Cory Balzer, violins; Mieka Michaux, viola; Alasdair Money, cello; Darren Buhr, doublebass; Mark McGregor, flute; Russell Bajer oboe; Keith McLeod, clarinet; AK Coope, bass clarinet; Anne Power, bassoon; Darnell Linwood, horn; Louis Ranger, trumpet; Scot MacInnes, trombome; Aaron Mattock, Carlie Graham, Keenan Mittag-Degala, percussion; Rachel Iwassa, piano; Robert Holliston, piano, bass drum.
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