Category: New York

The Philip Glass Ensemble at the Barbican Hall review ****

The Philip Glass Ensemble

Barbican Hall, 30th October 2019

Philip Glass – Music With Changing Parts

Of course it was a disappointment that PG himself wasn’t up to appearing but the old boy is coming up to 83 years old and was poorly. Hopefully he is better now. Anyway this was still a proper occasion, involving many of his long term collaborators, in a performance of this pivotal work from 1970. PG didn’t hand over performance of his large scale compositions until the 1970s. Prior to that he wasn’t sure other outfits were up to the task. So it was his own eponymous band that premiered this, Music in Fifths, Music in Similar Motion and Music in Contrary Motion, (all from 1969) and Music in Twelve Parts, composed through 1971 to 1974, and the only work comparable to this.

MWCP has had a few outings since then, though not here, but had fallen out of the PGE’s regular repertoire. However, after hearing other recent performances PG decided to revisit the score and enlarge it with brass and a vocal ensemble. The new version premiered in NYC and SF in 2018 and this was its first airing in Europe.

The “new” MWCP is near 90 minutes long, unbroken, and is built on shifting keyboard and woodwind melodies, which are, towards the end, semi-improvisatory, though don’t panic, the PGE knew exactly where they were going, The addition of the brass, courtesy of the London Contemporary Orchestra, and the choir, here drawn from the boys and girls of the Tiffin Chorus, (which extends beyond the eponymous schools into Kingston and surrounding areas), doesn’t detract from the hypnotic vibe, but it does provide far more texture than the original which is proper psychedelic, hippy-dippy. Harmonies emerge, expand, enlarge and retreat and there are contrapuntal contrasts but not to the extent of the breakthrough Music in Twelve Parts, last heard in these parts in 2017. But MWCP has the distinct advantage of not going on for 5 hours plus.

It isn’t possible to hear all of these PG classic pieces. You will drift off, to the mundane, (I composed my admittedly short Xmas list), as well as the memorable, that is part of the experience. But there will also be times when the sound just takes over. The keyboards of Mick Rossi and Nelson Padgett basically churn out repeated semi-quavers throughout leaving the woodwind to generate the shifting ostinati and the voices, delivered with military precision under choral conductor, Valerie Saint-Agathe, the complexity. This is hard work for such young voices, rapidly repeating same note patterns, sometimes in unison and sometimes divided, which vary in length and intensity, The brass, when it got going, did rather drown out the rest, and the Barbican’s acoustic, even with the tinkering from Dan Bora and Ryan Kelly, PGE’s sound designer and audio engineer, wasn’t helpful. Though maybe the reverberation was the effect they were aiming for.

The absence of PG wasn’t too much of a handicap musically as PGE’s director Michael Riesman stepped in to conduct from the piano. He, and Lisa Bielowa on keyboards (though she normally sings), have been in the PGE for ages, and helped create the new orchestration of MWCP with PG. There is no doubt that all these extra layers have created a work much closer to PG’s recent work than the “classical” minimalism of his youth. Whether this is a good or bad thing, not having heard the original version, I couldn’t tell you. Though as a fan of the more ascetic I guess not. Still, like I say, you have to grab these opportunities when they arise and I, and the whole audience based on the genuine ovation, am pleased I did.

Apparently the last time MWCP played in London, 48 years ago, there were a couple of groovy cats in the audience by the name of Bowie and Eno. They went on to highlight PG’s influence on the Berlin trilogy and, as all you PG fans will now, he went on to compose, eventually with Lodger earlier this year, symphonies based on those three classic albums. That alone justifies the existence of MWCP.

A View from the Bridge at the Royal and Derngate Theatre review ****

A View From The Bridge

Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 24th October 2019

The Tourist’s last exposure to Arthur Miller’s oppressive tale of an ordinary man brought low by his particularly disturbing brand of hamartia was Ivo van Hove’s stripped bare psychodrama with Mark Strong at his very best as Eddie Carbone, alongside Nicola Walker as wife Beatrice and Phoebe Fox as woman-child orphan niece. Miller’s debt to the Greeks is rarely hidden. Here Ivo and Jan Versweyveld didn’t spare us one iota of gut wrenching intensity as Eddie tumbled into his hell of shame and betrayal.

Juliet Forster, the Associate Director at the York Theatre Royal, the co-producer, takes a more traditional, naturalistic path, with an Eddie in Nicholas Karimi who, as his disgust at the passage of Catherine, (Lili Miller in a commendable professional debut), from child to woman and her relationship with the, in his eyes, effete Rodolpho, (a nuanced Pedro Leandro), boils over, lashes out with tragic consequences. Robert Pickavance as the lawyer Alfieri, the chorus who frames the story, locates us slap bang in 1950s Red Hook, the Italian-American neighbourhood in the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge, dominated by the longshoremen who work the docks and their families. Rhys Jarman’s set, enclosed by steel beams and metal staircases, slips unobtrusively from the main room of the apartment where the Carbones live, and where most of the action takes place, to the docks themselves and Alfieri’s office. Aideen Malone’s lighting creates atmosphere without gloom and Sophie Cotton’s sound accents appropriately.

Eddie’s repugnant desire for Catherine, and the dearth of physical intimacy with Beatrice are not underplayed, but it is the way in which this represses and displaces his ungovernable emotions, mixed up with the machismo of his Sicilian background, that powers the obsession which breaks him. We cannot empathise with Eddie, he is wrong, but we can see how he is what he is. The more he strives to preserve his reputation and honour the more they dissolved.

The plight of the immigrant, the uncertainty of work, home and status, the conformity of community, the role of the law, gender stereotyping, all themes with relevance, and which Miller is careful to explore, are underplayed here in deference to the plot. There are some very fine supporting performances not least from Laura Pyper, whose dignity and commitment to her man never wavers, and especially, Reuben Johnson as Marco, the virtuous elder of the cousins, whose restraint when talking about the family he has had to leave behind contrast with the explosive anger he lets loose when he finds out that Eddie has denounced him and Rodolfo to the authorities.

So all the elements are there in this production, the pacing is never hurried, the lines are never snatched, the tension builds progressively. It just lacks the punch that comes from great Miller interpretations. Solid if not spectacular. But with Miller that is normally enough. Though clearly not for the numbnut who felt the need to unwrap a few sweets in the last 20 minutes or so at the back. You wonder why he didn’t just stay at home in front of the telly.