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Baumann Centre
February 16, 2018
"People point to Reading Gaol and say that is where the artistic life leads a man. Well, it could lead to worse places."
These are the first words (although not the first vocalisations) uttered by the "speaking pianist" performing Frederic Rzewski's setting of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, the remarkable 50,000 word combination of love letter (to Lord Alfred Douglas, aka "Bosie") and artistic credo composed by Wilde during his incarceration.
Although Wilde's testament was completed (written, under stringent conditions, one page at a time, which was then taken off him) in 1897, it was not published until 1905, five years after the author's death, and that in a truncated edition. The complete text did not see the light of day until 1962.
The usual translation of the Latin renders "De Profundis" as "From the depths", however the title itself is not Wilde's, but was given it by Robert Ross (journalist, friend and former lover of Wilde) to whom he entrusted the manuscript on leaving prison. The title is from the opening of Psalm 130, "De profundis clamavi" ("from the depths I have called"), although one could also translate the Latin as "about" or "concerning" deep matters, which, given its ruminating on the nature of art and the "artistic life", would not be inappropriate.
Rzewski composed De Profundis in 1992; it is a remarkable work requiring the pianist not simply to play the piano (and its closed lid), but also to speak, whisper, shout, sing, sound a hooter and strike his or her own body. One of the most remarkable features is the fact that none of this comes across as gimmickry.
Kimberley Farris-Manning's performance of what I would unhesitating call a masterpiece came as part of an "installation [which] addresses questions of human identity through formal, structural and contextual means. The manipulation of audience seating/movement, sculptural materials, and acoustic and amplified sound isolates the body and the mind, challenging their relationships to memory, time, motion and space".
To which I can only respond "Et in academia ego".
As we entered the Baumann Centre's performing space the audience was faced by four double rows of chairs set out so as to form a cross, with, at its centre, a cage-like structure, whose "walls" were black translucent cloth and at whose centre was the piano.
It was undoubtedly an atmospheric setting, but for me the main event was undoubtedly the music which, I am delighted to report, Farris-Manning had the measure of, both technically (Rzewski is a formidable technician) and emotionally.
Indeed it was the latter aspect of the performance which really resonated, whether it was the panting which accompanies the opening bars, summoning up the treadmill which was part of Wilde's punishment, or the desperately sad description of his standing on the platform of Clapham Junction station, in prison garb, while onlookers jeered, or his extraordinary final acceptance of his lot and even an optimism about a "new beginning".
For the thirty minutes or so that the performance lasted, I was mesmerised; I gather that Farris-Manning immersed herself in the piece for something like a year — it showed.
As I remarked earlier, I believe De Profundis to be a masterpiece and Kimberley Farris-Manning gave it the performance it deserves.
Superb.
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