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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
October 27, 2019
We tend, naturally, to imagine that everything in our modern world is faster and more intense than what our parents and grandparents had to deal with.
Yet this is not always the case, particularly when one considers the transmission of works of art. Although, for example, Elgar's Symphony No.1 was first performed in December 1908, well over a century ago, within just over a year it had received a hundred performances, in Britain, Europe (and once again, it seems, we shall soon need to emphasize their difference) and even North America.
Compare that with the opening work from Sunday's Aventa season-opener: Per Nørgård's Scintillation, which is over a quarter of a century old, having been premiered in London in March 1994, yet only now reaching Victoria. Nor was that piece alone in its relative longevity: the evening's eponymous work, Gérard Grisey's Vortex Temporum, was completed only two years later, in 1996.
Are Aventa, one found oneself wondering, turning into what many mainstream orchestras are accused of being: a museum for music by dead European male composers?
Firstly, one should point out that, although Grisey is, tragically, no longer with us, having died in 1998 in his early fifties, Nørgård (born in 1932) is still alive and kicking: 2019 marked the seventieth anniversary of his first serious composition, a sonata for piano. Moreover, although parts of the Grisey have been played here before, this was probably its first complete Victoria performance; as for the Nørgård, this way well have been its Canadian premiere and possibly only second North American performance.
Secondly, it should also be noted that the other work on the programme, Everything is...distorted by Bekah Simms, dates from a mere couple of years ago. And, moreover, that Sims is alive, female and Canadian.
Finally, of course, it is the very fact that Aventa's repertoire is normally drawn from the last few years that made the preponderance of the twentieth century in Sunday's programme noteworthy.
After its premiere, Scintillation was described by London critic Nicholas Williams as "rebarbative", which makes one wonder whether either he did not know the meaning of the word ("repellent" or "irritating") or assumed that his readers would not, or simply that he was the wrong person to review it.
While not music I would choose to lull me to sleep, Scintillation has much to recommend it, from the opening low cello drone, with piano notes damped by the player's left hand inside the instrument, to to the work's fragmentary close.
Throughout I had the impression of different strands of thought proceeding at different tempos and of an overall sense of busy-ness.
As is typical of any performance directed by Bill Linwood, no matter how diffuse the material, the pulse was always present. (Squaring the circle would seem simple by comparison.)
I admit that I was immediately attracted to Bekah Simms' Everything is...distorted by virtue of its title, nor was I disappointed.
This proved to be mainly slow-moving music replete with a bevy of mostly extremely subtle live electronics, indeed it was not always apparent (at least to me) precisely where the live sound left off and the electronics began.
As an exercise in endlessly-fascinating sonorities the work held my rapt attention throughout its duration, in fact so much so that I could not actually tell you exactly how long the music lasted. Certainly not long enough for me.
Gérard Grisey is considered a founder of the "spectralist" movement in music, although he had rejected the label by the time he died.
And perhaps he was right so to do: most of the "spectral" music I have previously encountered has been a good deal less interesting than Vox Temporum (The Voice of the Season, according to Google Translate; my Latin is no longer up to the task).
The work is clearly divided into three, contrasting, parts. The first opens in extremely busy fashion (with hints of the birdsong of Olivier Messiaen, one of Grisey's teachers), giving way to asymmetric string patterns with the wind players breathing audibly through their instruments, before climaxing in a brutal (the mot juste I believe) lengthy piano cadenza, in which the spirits of Ives and Nancarrow seem to "duke it out" with, as Linwood suggested to me afterwards, just a hint of Antheil (as referee, perhaps?) This cadenza was dazzling played by Roger Admiral and, judging by the storms of applause which greeted him afterwards, I was not alone in this opinion.
The second part conforms more to what I imagine as "spectral", beginning with almost inaudible strings, with some delicious descending glissandos from the cello and wonderful deep sonorities from the bass flute and bass clarinet. The music was slow-moving with much use of harmonics.
Finally part three resumed the busy-ness of the first part, the music, in a sort of pointilliste pizzicato, interspersed sustained passages with outbursts of violence.
Another enthralling evening from Aventa.
Aventa Ensemble: Müge Büyükçelen, violin; Robin Streb, viola; Alasdair Money, cello; Mark McGregor, flute, piccolo; AK Coope, clarinet, bass clarinet; Darnell Linwood, horn; Aaron Mattock, percussion; Roger Admiral, piano; Kirk McNally, electronics.
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