Queen Elizabeth Hall – At Home He Feels Like A Tourist

Catching up (Part 2)

March 2020

First week of March 2020. I see that I was still out and about but I also see that I avoided a few entertainments before the cancellations started in earnest and the first lockdown kicked in. I remember feeling a little nervous but obviously no precautions taken apart from the space my bulk and air of misanthropy usually commands.

Four Minutes, Twelve Seconds – Oldham Coliseum. 4th March 2020. ****. A visit with the SO to Manchester for theatre and family. In retrospect, like our wonderful trip to Andalusia a couple of weeks earlier, not the smartest of moves as the virus dug in, but we weren’t to know. The Tourist is very keen on the Oldham Coliseum and here the OC AD Chris Lawson, together with Natasha Harrison, alighted on James Fritz’s 2014 play, Four Minutes, Twelve Seconds, as a worthy and cautionary tale to bring to the good people of Greater Manchester. I was very taken with JF’s Parliament Square and The Fall and this didn’t disappoint (the original Hampstead Downstairs production secured a West End transfer). At its centre is teenager Jack, groomed for success, but who never actually appears. Instead the reaction of his parents, Di (Jo Mousley) and David (Lee Toomes), his feisty ex girlfriend Cara (Alyce Liburd) and his conflicted best mate Nick (Noah Olaoye), is what drives the action and debate. For Jack has posted a “revenge” sex tape on line without Cara’s knowledge and its repercussions allows JF to explore issues of class, power, privilege, consent and shaming without sacrificing the believable human concerns of the protagonists. Anna Reid’s set was a bit tricksy with a mirrored frame (allowing rather too many blackout jump cuts) surrounding the immaculate family home and Andrew Glassford’s score occasionally intruded. JF’s disclosures occasionally stretched credulity, Jack’s parents are very protective/forgiving, but his sharp dialogue, snappy pacing and characterisation is still spot on. The central performances of, especially, Jo Mousley and Lee Toomes more than did justice to the script. Hope to see more of JF’s work and very interested to know what he is working on right now.

Wuthering Heights – Royal Exchange Manchester. 4^th March 2020. ***. I sensed from the off that the SO was dubious about this adaptation. But I reminded her how brilliantly Sally Cookson brought Lottie’s Jane Eyre to the stage and crossed my fingers. Unfortunately she, the SO, was right. I can see what co-MRE AD Bryony Shanahan was aiming for in her production of Em’s only opus, let’s call it “elemental”, but there’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and lip. WH is a great book, or so the SO who is an expert in these things tells me, for it is a long time since I have read it so can’t properly vouch for the skill of Andrew Sheridan’s adaptation, but it did seem a little haphazard, promoting detail and odd linguistic effect over plot and narrative arc and little concerned with the ending. When compounded with the rock n roll, live score of Alexandra Faye Braithwaite, Zoe Spurr’s nerve jangling lighting design, an earthy, obstacle course, set from Cécile Trémolières, a Heathcliff from Alex Austin that tipped into full teddy-boy werewolf (yep that’s what I meant) and a Cathy from Rakhee Sharma tinged with Gen Z petulance, it was all a bit rich for my blood. And yet. I quite liked it. After all at its core this is a Gothic tale of unhinged love. jealousy (bags of that in Gurjeet Singh’s Hindley) and revenge and in tone, if not timbre, this production got it right.

Our Man in Havana – Spies Like Us – Vault Festival. 5^th March 2020. ****. OK so descending into the packed, dank tunnels underneath Waterloo which host the Vault Festival didn’t seem, even at the time, to be that smart a move and I canned a couple of later visits, but in this case my recklessness was rewarded with the kind of hour’s entertainment that only “fringe/festival” theatre can provide. Spies Like Us are a seven strong physical theatre ensemble formed in 2017, based at the Pleasance Theatre in London, with four productions under their belt, an adaptation of Buchner’s tragedy Woyzeck, comedy Murder on the Dancefloor, latest work whodunit Speed Dial and this, their first production, Our Man in Havana, based on Graham Greene’s black comedy about the intelligence service. Impecunious vacuum salesman Wormold (Alex Holley) is an unlikely recruit, via Hawthorne (Hamish Lloyd Barnes), to MI6 in Batista’s Cuba who fabricates reports, and agents, to keep the bosses happy. The stakes rise when London sends him an assistant Beatrice (Phoebe Campbell), who helps him save the “agents”, and the Russians try to take him out. He exacts revenge and tries to outsmart a local general (Tullio Campanale) with designs on his daughter Milly (Rosa Collier). All is revealed but finally hushed up with Wormold getting a desk job, a gong, the girl and cash for his daughter’s education. I confess there were times when I wasn’t absolutely sure what was going on or who was who but, under Ollie Norton-Smith’s direction, Spies Like Us play it fast and very funny. No set, minimal props (the actors themselves provide where required), doubling and tripling of roles. It is all about the sardonic script, accents, movement (choreographed by Zac Nemorinand}, sound, light and, especially, timing, and this caper was honed to perfection.

Love, Love, Love – Lyric Hammersmith. 6^th March 2020. ****. My regular reader will know i have a soft spot for the ambitious and fearless writing of Mike Bartlett. Love, Love, Love may not be his best work for theatre (I’d go with Earthquakes in London, Bull and King Charles III) and the issue it explores, generational conflict, may not be original, but, as always, there is heaps of acutely observed dialogue to lap up and a punchy plot to carry you along. In the first act set in 1967, free spirited Sandra (the criminally underrated Rachael Stirling) dumps dull, conservative boyfriend Henry (Patrick Knowles) for his rakish brother Kenneth (Nicholas Burns), a fellow Oxford undergrad. Fast forward to 1990 and the now married, and tanked up, couple are bickering in front of kids Rose (Isabella Laughland) and Jamie (Mike Noble). Finally in 2011 the consequences of their baby boomer generation’s selfish privilege are laid bare at Henry’s funeral, via the undiluted fury of Rose, now well into her 30s and with no assets, career or family of her own. As she says her parents “didn’t change the world, they bought it”. As usual with Mr Bartlett there are a few moments when you think, “nah he can’t get away with that”, and a few of the comic lines are jemmied in, but the way he combines the personal and the political, like a modern day Chekhov, is never less than entertaining and the satire more effective for its relative gentility. Joanna Scotcher’s sets are brim-full of period details, marking the couple’s increasing wealth, and Rachel O’Riordan’s direction was faultless. This was a smart choice by Ms O’Riordan, the play may be over a decade old but the generational stresses it explores are perhaps even more pressing, and, with A Doll’s House and the revival of Martin McDonagh’s, The Beauty Queen of Leenane (generational conflict of a different hue) completes a trilogy of hits from her since taking the helm at the Lyric. And the 2022 season she has just announced matches anything else served up in London houses as we return, hopefully, to “normality”. She will be directing the prolific Mr Bartlett’s new play, Scandaltown, which sounds like his take on a contemporary Restoration comedy, and there is also a revival of Patrick Marber’s Closer, a welcome update of Racine’s tragedy Britannicus, Roy Williams’s take on Hedda Gabler, and a new play Running With Lions. And the directorial talent on show is top drawer: Michael Buffong (Talawa Theatre), Atri Banerjee (Hobson’s Choice), Claire Lizzimore (another Bartlett specialist) and Ola Ince (Is God Is, Poet in Da Corner, Appropriate). Buy tickets for 3 of then and pay for 2. Which comes out at barely a tenner a seat. In a lovely, friendly theatre with acres of space and perfect sight-lines. Surely a bargain.

Red Peter – Grid Theatre – Vault Festival. 7^th March 2000. ****. Back to the Vaults for the penultimate visit to the theatre before I chickened out and the curtains starting coming down. As it happens I was able, in fairly short order, to contrast this take on Franz Kafka’s short story, A Report to an Academy, adapted and directed by Grid Theatre’s founder, Chris Yun-Ward, and performed by Denzil Barnes, with a later version, Kafka’s Monkey, from 2009, with the human chameleon Kathryn Hunter as the eponymous ape, directed by Walter Meierjohann and written by Colin Teevan. This latter was on a screen, deadening the impact of what is a tour de force of individual physical theatre, but then again I could watch Ms Hunter open a letter. However, and putting aside the benefit of being in the, very, atmospheric room, (this was one of the Vault spaces with full on train rumbling overhead), Denzil Barnes was mesmerising. In order to escape captivity Red Peter has to learn to behave like a human telling his story via a lecture to an imagined scientific audience. Not difficult to see where Kafka’s absurdist metaphor was targeted, the cruelty of the humans in the story is contrasted with the nobility, patience and eloquence of our hero, but just to be sure there is plenty of philosophical musing on the nature of freedom, assimilation and acculturation to ram home the post-colonial point. Which means Mr Barnes had a lot to say, as well as do, at which he was very adept. But it is the doing, when being chased, when incarcerated in a cage in the hold of a ship, when being paraded like a circus freak, where he excelled. The play is sometimes unsettling, often funny, and always thought-provoking. Not difficult to see why it has been showered with fringe-y awards.

The Revenger’s Tragedy – Cheek By Jowl, Piccolo Theatre Milan – Barbican Theatre. 7^th March. *****. So Thomas Middleton was a big, and prolific, noise in Jacobean drama. Equally adept in tragedy, history and city comedy. As well as masques and pageants which paid the bills. He may even have helped big Will S out in Timon of Athens and revised versions of Macbeth and Measure for Measure. The Changeling, Women Beware Women and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside all get run outs today though the Tourist hasn’t yet had the pleasure of any of these (though not for want of trying). He has however seen A Mad World My Masters in Sean Foley and Phil Porter’s 2013 version for the RSC. A devilishly clever plot, dealing with greed, avarice, hypocrisy, seduction, virtue and the like, the usual concerns of city comedies, which the creative team didn’t quite pull off (ha ha seem what I have done there) by relocating the action to 1950s Soho. In the Revenger’s Tragedy, Cheek by Jowl, together with their new Italian collaborator partners Piccolo Theatre, were altogether more successful. Vindice (Fausto Cabra) and his brother Hippolito (Raffaele Esposito) hatch a scheme to get revenge against the Duke (Massimiliano Speziani) for murdering Vindice’s fiancee. This involves disguises, deceits, bribes, conspiracy, treachery, infidelity, imprisonment, voyeurism, murder, execution, beheading, rape, suicide, assassination and, implied, necrophilia. All in the guise of a comedy. Or maybe better termed a black parody since Middleton took the guts, literally, of a revenge tragedy from a couple of decades earlier (itself derived from Seneca) and bolted on the satire and cynicism of a city comedy, all in the service of taking a sideswipe at the increasingly corrupt court of James I. If this all sounds a bit OTT remember sex and violence in the name of entertainment is still a streaming staple but Middleton, his peers, and contemporary audiences, at least used it for a purpose beyond vacuous titillation. Maybe more like a Medieval morality play then, albeit with a knowing wink, plainly acknowledged in this production, than the straight line tragedy of Shakespeare. Performing in Italian courtesy of Stefano Massini’s translation, (which means surtitles, as well as a clever introduction, can help with plot and character in the Act 1 set up and cuts through the dense text of the original), an ingenious “box” set from Nick Ormerod which opens with the word Vendetta scrawled across its width, seasoned with a kinetic energy which mirrors the action thanks to Declan Donnellan’s brilliantly detailed direction and Alessio Maria Romano’s choreography and movement across the 14 strong cast, this is how to lend contemporary resonance to C17 drama. Which CBJ incidentally has a long history of doing. The satirical target may be modern-day Italy but the hypocrisy and venality of the ruling class is sadly generic. It is a great regret of the Tourist’s theatre viewing career that he has come so late to the CBJ party but he is resolved not to miss anything from here. As theatre though this was on a par with their French Pericles from 2018.

Also in March, my last trip to the cinema to see Parasite, (no I haven’t seen the latest Bond yet, at this rate Dune will probably come first), a slightly odd programme (Mozart, Penderecki and Mendelssohn) from the English Camber Orchestra and oboeist Francois Leleux at the QEH, and my first go at lockdown theatre on a screen, Peter Brook’s take on Beckett from Bouffes de Nord. And, as it turned out, one of the best.

Pergolesi and Vivaldi: OAE at the Queen Elizabeth Hall review ****

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Katherine Watson (soprano), Rowan Pierce (soprano), Zoe Brookshaw (soprano), Iestyn Davies (counter-tenor), Katharina Spreckelsen (oboe), Choir of the Age of Enlightenment

Queen Elizabeth Hall, 11th November 2019

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736) – Stabat Mater
Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (1671-1751) – Oboe Concerto in D minor, Op.9 No.2
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) – Gloria RV 589

Last year a Pergolesi Stabat Mater with BUD from the AAM. This year the OAE take with MSBD and Katherine Watson (braving a cold) and Iestyn Davies in the soloist chairs. I’ve already banged on about Pergolesi before. This is his most famous work. Written just before his early death from TB. More than a hint of the comic opera about its style, which are, largely, his other, authenticated contributions to Baroque musical history, (I have a recording of some of his instrumental offerings). Though certainly not its serious religious subject, a C13 poem depicting Mary’s vigil at the foot of the Cross. Took the European musical world by storm and, on and off, has been a favourite ever since. Immediate, direct and very effective, it is impossible not to be carried along by the lean, melodic strings offset with deliberately nostalgic stile antico effects, (from the time before Monteverdi revolutionised Western music). These include prolonged cadences and delayed resolutions. Feel the pain. Lovely but a couple of times a year is enough for me.

Albinoni was a prolific composer, around 80 operas, 40 chamber cantatas, 60 concertos and 80 sonatas, and was, in his day, as popular as Corelli and Vivaldi. Though not quite as good IMHO. Then again he only really considered himself a violinist and, being a rich toff, didn’t have to work. SO we should applaud his industry. And, in the oboe concertos, he did come up with some of the finest music ever written for the instrument. His Op 9 set contains 4 for solo oboe and 4 for two oboes and this one, No 2 is considered the best of them. It kicks off with an elegant medium paced Allegro, follows with a sublime and generous slow movement, with an aching, bel canto solo line against a rocking string ripieno, (which MSBD was much taken with), and a bouncy, scurrying finale, which again gives the soloist plenty of opportunity to show off. And, when it comes to Baroque oboe, very few can match the OAE’s Katharina Spreckelsen.

Last live listen to Gloria was with MS and MSC at the Cadogan Hall with the ECO, so it has become something of a family affair, (even the SO and BD have grinned, and, to be fair, more than bore it, in the past. Famously AV wrote the Gloria for a full SATB choir. despite their being, at least officially, no blokes in the Ospedale della Pieta, bar carrot top himself. Which means they were drafted in, or perhaps, in the array of talents in the convent, there were females basses or at least voices low enough to take the parts, maybe with the whole pitched an octave higher. The contemporary audience would never have known, the young women being concealed behind a grills at the balconies where they performed. We had the OAE’s dedicated chamber choir, thankfully in full view, a scratch outfit of professionals perfectly matched to the OAE’s beefy sound. This I can listen to more than a couple of times a year.

Music of the Spheres: Aurora Orchestra at the Queen Elizabeth Hall review ****

Aurora Orchestra, Nicholas Collon (conductor), Pekka Kuusisto (violin), Kate Wicks (production design), William Reynolds (lighting design)

Queen Elizabeth Hall, 5^th June 2019

Max Richter – Journey (CP1919)
Beethoven – Molto Adagio from String Quartet in E minor, Op.59 No.2 (Razumovsky)
Thomas Adès – Concerto for violin & chamber orchestra (Concentric Paths)
Nico Muhly – Material in E flat
Mozart – Symphony No.41 (Jupiter)
David Bowie – Life On Mars

‘There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.’ – Pythagoras

You get your money’s worth from the Aurora Orchestra. A concept, linking music and the cosmos, the “music of the spheres”, (which preoccupied the big minds of Greek philosophers and those that seized upon their ideas in the Renaissance), a light show, animation, narration courtesy of Samuel West and this Orchestra’s trademark, memorised, largely standing, performance of a classical music classic, this time from the Classical period, in the form of Mozart’s Jupiter. All for a tenner.

The QEH was packed and for once the Tourist was one of the older patrons rather than one of the young’uns. Whoever is in charge of the AO’s marketing deserves a pay rise, though Gillian Moore, (who can always be seen at these gigs – good on her), and the rest of the music team at the SouthBank Centre also seem to have nailed the programming at the QEH and Purcell Room since the re-opening.

Now I enjoyed the show. Or at least all the various elements especially the lighting, (at times the floor was lit up like Heathrow on a busy Friday evening). However the concept, whilst long on design came up a little short on ideas. No matter. It was, at the end of the day, the music that mattered most. And, on that front, the AO and chums delivered.

I have bored you at length about the glory of the Jupiter elsewhere following relatively recent outings from the Philharmonia under Philippe Herreweghe and from the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Both were on modern instruments, though HIP informed, and both were high on drama. The AO’s take was in a similar vein. High on energy and exuberance and high on happiness. You wouldn’t know Wolfgang was on his last legs, dragged down by family misery, from this interpretation. Nicholas Collon played a bit fast and loose in places with tempi, but deliberately; in the Andante cantabile to underline the mystery of the string harmonies and in the five way fugal Finale, to spotlight the initial theme based on a motif derived from plainchant “The Creator of Light”. See space/religious stuff in line with the evening’s theme.

However the main event for the Tourist was “Concentric Paths”, Thomas Ades’s Violin Concerto Op 24, which was premiered in 2005 by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. It comprises a slow central movement, Paths, sandwiched by two faster movements, Rings and Rounds. As usual with Ades the score is rhythmically complex, endlessly inventive, with a wide dynamic range, especially right at the top of the register, and combines cycles for violin and for the small scale orchestra, which complement and occasionally clash, but together create an atmosphere of constant. circular motion. Back to the theme see. Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto coped with everything Mr Ades threw at him and the AO were sublime with notable contributions from the flute and piccolo of Jane Mitchell and Rebecca Larsen. Mr Kuusisto encored with one of the deceptively simple, but oh so effective, post minimalist pieces from Nico Muhly’s Drones and Violin.

The evening kicked off with a new commission from another post minimalist Max Richter, Journey (CP 1919). It consists of a series of repeated rising lines, Part-like, which pulsate at different speeds. It doesn’t really resolve, just keeps going up and it is intended to be played in darkness. The relationship between the lines is intended to reflect the way that ancient astronomers mapped the orbits of the visible planets and the properties that their modern successors have identified in pulsars. Pleasant enough but since there is no real development a few minutes was probably enough. Mr Richter studied with the genius Luciano Berio and, in his solo albums to date, he has collaborated with the estimable likes of Tilda Swinton, Robert Wyatt and Wayne McGregor, and has plundered the likes of John Cage, Antonio Vivaldi, Gustav Mahler, phone ringtones and various heavy duty poets in his work. The boy plainly likes a concept and a bit of political commentary but doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously. And he has no qualms about film and TV composition. His score was used for Nosedive, still one of the Tourist’s favourite Black Mirror episodes.

A little bit of a music lesson from big Sam to introduce the Molto Adagio from the No 2 Razumovsky courtesy of a scratch string quarter drawn from the AO. It is, as the programme says, “a work of radiant and mysterious beauty”. Not best served by the context. Extracting it from the complete work and setting it in this busy evening didn’t do it any favours. It’s Beethoven so cannot be criticised but I’ve heard it played better.

Now if I tell you that the encore was a version of Life on Mars, initially from Sam Swallow on piano, before the AO gradually joined with an orchestral accompaniment, with a giant glitter ball, you will get some idea of just how hard the team worked to press those cross-over buttons. It should not have worked but it did. Mr Swallow is a go-to fella when it comes to orchestral arrangements of pop and rock with an eclectic client list. The most important of which is Echo and the Bunnymen, who, as I am sure you already know, are the greatest rock’n’roll band of all time.

Nice ending to a cracking evening. Can’t say I care for the next leg of the AO’s outreach programme, some Berlioz, but next year they are back here with Pierre-Laurent Aimard for an evening of Beethoven. Tempting. Unfortunately in all the Beethoven 250 year brouhaha of next year they have been trumped by no less than Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique who will be rattling through their version of the Choral. Which might just be the standout gig of the year.

Stockhausen chamber music at the Queen Elizabeth Hall review ****

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Tamara Stefanovich (piano), Dirk Rothbrust (percussion), Marco Stroppa (sound design)

Queen Elizabeth Hall, 2^nd June 2019

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Zyklus for percussion
Mantra for 2 pianos with 12 antique cymbals, woodblock & 2 ring modulators (and shortwave radio/tape)

I confess. I was defeated by the performance of Donnerstag aus Licht by Le Balcon and the London Sinfonietta in the Royal Festival Hall a couple of weeks before this. This is the “accessible” Thursday instalment of Stockhausen cycle of operas taken from the days of the week and mixes his own personal history with that of the Germany of his youth before, and this is where I ducked out, going off into a load of cosmic mumbo jumbo as was the maestro’s want. That is not to say that I wasn’t fascinated by the first act and a half, musically and in terms of the performance, just that I couldn’t engage with whatever message is being conveyed. And I was a bit tired.

So maybe I had to conclude that I was just not up to the task of understanding the work of the man who revolutionised contemporary classical music. I would expect that the vast majority of you, (vast in this context being an abstract concept), if you can even be bothered to YouTube a bit of Stockhausen’s music, will think it a mighty load of old shite. I sympathise. But if you find yourself being stealthily drawn into the world of modern and contemporary classical music, for sure there are no tunes but structures, forms, sounds, ideas, emotions, inventions, in fact everything music is, is all still present and correct, and you are of a slightly nerdy bent, fascinated by the “maths” of music, then old Karlheinz needs to be tackled. Even if he was a grade A space cadet, believing he emanated from the star Sirius.

So imagine my surprise when, here in this recital, and in other smaller scale and earlier works I have subsequently explored, I discovered that there is far less to be intimidated about that I had imagines. In fact some of KS’s music positively rocks.

Case in point. Zyklus for percussion. Zyklus means cycle I gather in German. So the instruments are arranged in a circle. The “score” in a ring binder. The soloist can start where he/she likes and go round until he/she gets back to where he/she started. The notation is readable either way up as well. The keyed instruments, (marimba, vibraphone), are represented with traditional notation, but only for glissandos, but for the unpitched instruments, (drums, tom-toms, cymbals and other assorted metal and wooden paraphernalia,) KS dreamt up a new, graphic, depiction of the rhythms. All instruments are within easy reach of the player.

Given the freedom afforded the percussionist, and the vast array of instruments, this is as much theatre as music. Dirk Rothbrust, who works out of Cologne, is plainly a dab hand at this sort of caper and a born showman, channeling his inner Bonzo Bonham. However, clocking in at 15 minutes, Zyklus avoids the worst excesses of the 1970s heavy rock gods. And it is way more interesting in terms of textures and qualities.

The main event, the Mantra for 2 pianos and other stuff, was a far meatier affair. Over an hour in fact. I was expecting much from Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich, who are the unparalleled champions of this sort of music. And they delivered. This is a heck of a piece of music. Can’t say I was transfixed throughout but there is still much to take in, admire and, yes, even enjoy.

The piece, premiered in 1970, marked a return to fully notated music after the years of experimentation with more esoteric “indeterminate” instructions for performers. It wears its Asian musical influences on its sleeves and, surprise, surprise, it actually has a tune you can hum. Namely the counterpointed melody, (“formula” in Stockhausen speak), of the “Mantra” which is subsequently subject to seemingly endless expansion and contraction. Not the kind of easy to follow repetition offered up by minimalism, nor the classic theme and variations, (as no notes are varied), but, mostly, very structured transpositions and transformations of the four segment, thirteen note, mantra, initially just four very condensed chords.

With electronic manipulation via ring modulators, (nope, me neither, but fortunately your man Marco Stroppa in the middle of the hall was handy with electronics), and some antique cymbals (crotales) and wood blocks thrown in for texture and to allow the two pianists to signal the change of sections to each other. Quick, slow, loud, quiet, inversions, oscillations, vibratos, some burbling morse code from a short wave radio, (it was the 1960s kids, no mobiles or Spotify), fights between the two pianos, even some vocal squawking from M Aimard and Ms Stefanovich at one point. It all ends with a kind of 10 minute speeded up reprise of the previous hour before the mantra growls into the end.

Read Wiki if you want to learn more about the ingenuity of the structure. Let’s be honest though it will only make sense to the ear of the expert. But, I repeat, what is amazing is that even a dummy like the Tourist, whose only qualification for enjoying this sort of stuff is open enthusiasm, can discern the patterns and can be intrigued, and at times amazed, by the results. Like Zyklus the “performance” adds to the impact of the music.

OK so it won’t be the opening number at the next demeaning shindig Chez Tourist, nor am I likely to invest in a recording, but this was undeniably worth the investment of a few quid and an hour. And the QEH has the ideal acoustic to present such a piece now all the junk has been cleaned out. Certainly better than the RFH next door.

Go on give this sort of stuff a whirl. I dare you. You never know.

Bach Orchestral Suites: OAE at Queen Elizabeth Hall review ****

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Margaret Faultless (director/violin), Lisa Beznosiuk (flute)

Queen Elizabeth Hall, 14th May 2019

Okey dokey pig in a pokey. There has been a grumpy tone in the last few posts that the workshy Tourist, courtesy of an imagined pep talk from Pauline, is resolved to shake off. So let’s park up the portable pulpit and climb back aboard the cheery charabanc of cultural criticism.

Mind you what can I tell you about the Four Orchestral Suites. I’ve come a fair way on my journey with Bach, who is the composer whose music I have begun to appreciate more than any other in recent years, (only a fascination with Ligeti has come close), but I still have a long way to go. If I am honest I will leave others to lead me through the vocal music and I doubt I will ever truly enjoy the sound of an organ of which he wrote profusely. There’s also still a lot of work to be done outside the obvious starting pieces in the works for keyboard but I reckon I have finally got my head around the chamber music and orchestral works. By which I mean I roughly know in what format and for what instruments he wrote. Not much I know but at least now I can properly start listening.

Any newbie to Bach is going to come across the Four Orchestral Suites pretty early on. And recognise plenty of the tunes. And what tunes. They are based on dance forms. Which makes then easy on the ear. But this being Bach there is so much more. The old boy termed them Ouvertures, referring to the form which preceded the dance movements in each of the suites. The French overture was all the rage in the Germany of Bach’s day. It was made. up of a stately majestic opening section in relatively slow dotted-note rhythm in duple meter, followed by a fast fugal section, then concluded with a short recapitulation of the opening music. Even if you know nothing about the Baroque, French, German, Italian or otherwise, but you have you seen any film which has toffs in preposterously big wigs behaving badly you will recognise the grooves. (Though not The Favourite. Like everything else about that film every piece on the soundtrack was chosen by someone who knows their stuff).

JS Bach wasn’t as prolific as some when it came to the suite, Telemann for example. But that would be because he was a glum pious bugger and was tied down by the religious day job. Or was it? The general consensus now is that he didn’t originally conceive these four works as a set and that they came together not when he worked in Cothen, (though he had the opportunity here), but after he landed his dream job, in 1723, as Music Director in Leipzig and Cantor at St Thomas’s School. This is when he was at his busiest but also when he sought to develop his music outside the confines of the church. From 1729 JSB became the director of the concert society, the Collegium Musicum Leipzig, which every Friday met at the same coffeehouse for a jam session. And it was for this group that he wrote the Orchestral Suites, albeit recycling some of his favourite riffs from previous work.

The Collegium though was all about exploring contemporary musical trends, which explains the form of the suites, but it was a serious, scholarly outfit, which is why JSB was able to serve up something much more than a clever pastiche of the genre. Which is why their immediate attractions, this is Bach at his most “galant”, then give way to something deeper and more satisfying.

The OAE, led on this evening, as is its raison d’être, by one of its own, co-leader Margaret Faultless, (whose inspirational contribution to HIP sort of matches her surname), kicked off with No 3 which probably dates from 1731. Here we get three oboes, a couple of trumpets and drums alongside strings and continuo, which explains the march-y, fanfare-y feel of the ouverture, which precedes that Air (on a G string). Now it always takes 10 minutes or so for my brain and ears to catch up with period ensembles and this was no different so it was only after the air that I was in the swing. As it happens the OAE’s violist Max Mandel stepped out after the Suite to ask if we liked the tempo that they had taken it at. I was one of the tiny minority who wanted it faster. Thus proving that, for me, and even in the slow movements, it can never be too fast or too loud in the Baroque and Classical. Well maybe not blast-beat chaotic but you get the drift.

Anyway I was warmed up by the two hop-along Gavottes, and the following rousing Bourree and swinging Gigue where the trumpets link back to the ouverture. By contrast Suite No 1 which followed is scored for two oboes and a bassoon, so with no trumpets and drums is a much less public and triumphant affair. The woodwind double the strings in the first theme but then operate as a solo trio weaving between the strings and continuo in the manner of a Handelian concerto grosso. The Courante which follows, in 3/2 metre, starts off bouncily enough but then turns into one of those shifting, swirling things of wonder, but it’s gone in a flash. The Gavotte, Menuet, Bourree and Passepied which follow are arranged in pairs with the second a variation on the first, sometimes just for wind sometimes just for strings, sometimes both, as in the second Gavotte where the strings imitate trumpet fanfares. This is JSB at his genius best. Something so simple becomes, er cliche alert, just sublime. The unrepeated dance, a Forlance, some sort of Slavic jig, is another little, pastoral gem.

No 2 came much later maybe 1739, (the numbers are not chronological), in fact it was probably JSB’s last orchestral work. It certainly sounds sterner, in the opening dotted march and then in the ensuing fugue, and when they come together we are in JSB’s world of pure musical invention where the old boy just never missteps in solving his mathematical and aesthetic puzzle. The dances include a Rondeau, another pair of Bourees, a Polonaise and finally a Menuet and Badinerie ,(which you will recognise – yep the Nokia ringtone favourite). These movements are where the OAE’s flautist Lisa Beznosiuk was able to strut her stuff, and strut she certainly did, (here’s the first page of the original flute part above). Yet for me the sweet, sweet Sarabande might just be the best movement of the suite. This is JSB in love. If you think the old boy’s music is too “intellectual”, which is b*llocks anyway, then listen to this and think again.

No 4, like Nos 1 and 2, similarly started off sans trumpets but, so uplifting is its opening Ouverture, that he quickly added 3 of them as well as drums. He also pinched the tune for his Christmas cantata in 1725. It is obviously Bach and obviously Baroque but there are times in this if I close my eyes when I could be listening to Mozart or early Beethoven. The dance movements, again with paired Bourees and Menuets sandwiching a Gavotte, highlight winds, trumpets and strings alternately, before a final Rejouissance which lives up to its name.

The OAE, for the most part standing, was on top form. The continuo of Stephen Devine (harpsichord), Luise Buchberger (cello) and Cecelia Bruggemeyer (bass) pushed and pulled throughout. I’d set these three along side my favourite ever rhythm sections any day of the week. * I would also call out the oboes of Katherine Spreckelsen and Alexandra Bellamy. A good night. An opinion shared by the entire MSBD sibling crowd whom it was my pleasure to accompany.

Since you are asking. Tony Thompson/Bernard Edwards, Benny Benjamin/James Jamerson, Al Jackson Jr/Donald Dunn, Paul Chambers/Jimmy Cobb, Sly & Robbie, Ashton and Carlton Barrett, Dennis Davies/George Murray, Brown Mark/Bobby Z, Les Pattinson/Pete de Freitas, Steve and Paul Hanley, Dave Allen/Hugo Burnham, Peter Hook/Stephen Morris, Tina Weymouth/Chris Frantz, Graham Lewis/Robert Gotobed, Bill Ward/Geezer Butler, John Paul Jones/John Bonham, Neil Peart/Geddy Lee.

Spira Mirabilis at the Queen Elizabeth Hall review ****

Spira Mirabilis

Queen Elizabeth Hall, 15th May 2018

Beethoven – Symphony No 7 in A Op 92

Spira Mirabilis is a group of talented young musicians from around the world who play in various European orchestras. They hole up in Formigine in Northern Italy near Bologna to learn from each other and devote themselves to intensive study of major orchestral works of the canon which they then take around Europe to entertain us punters, and, more importantly, show us how it is done. I suspect they also have a bit of craic along the way.

The twist is that they have no conductor. Which means, in the spirit of a chamber ensemble, they have to “immerse themselves in the score with the aim of reaching an interpretative consensus on a shared vision and a complete synthesis with the work”. Now if you thought that the conductor of an orchestra, as I did a few years ago, was just there on the podium to provide a bit of visual light relief, you would be very much mistaken. Someone has to impose a musical vision on even the most detailed score involving all manner of decisions on tempi, dynamics, who does what where, when and why, and all manner of other stuff way above my pay grade. If you dump his or her direction then I imagine you are collectively setting yourselves up for one hell of an away day. Yet this is exactly what they do with the intention then of trying to explain to us how they did it. Wonderful.

In this case they just happened to pick, IMHO, the most perfect piece of music ever written. I believe Beethoven to be the greatest of composers, the symphony to be the most complete musical form and this to be his best. Though I can see why others might disagree with any and every part of that statement. Moreover I admit that there are individual pieces by modern composer/performers in popular music genres that would just edge it for me on the eponymous desert isle. (I should probably post something on that).

Spira Mirabilis have in fact already been through an entire Beethoven cycle, good call, so this constituted something of a revival. Yet there was still a palpable sense of excitement in the Hall ahead of, and through, this performance. When Beethoven wrote this his hearing had significantly deteriorated and he had retired to the spa town of Teplice in order to gee himself up. There is no programmatic intent, unlike its predecessor the Pastoral, yet it is an astonishingly uplifting, happy work. That maybe because it is essentially dance music. Anyway it was a hit from the off and it is easy to see why.

The first movement starts slowly but when the “dotted” rhythmic figure finally kicks in LvB proceeds to push and pull it around in so many ways that it barely seems plausible that it can tolerate this level of innovation. If you ever need to understand Beethoven’s genius in taking simple material and wrestling it into music of unparalleled emotional and intellectual power through progressive variation, it lies here. This is the longest movement of any of the symphonies.

Then there is the Allegretto. A funeral march where the ostinato is repeated and repeated until it attains monumental proportions. Strings largely in minor keys, woodwinds take the major. If you need to give someone important to you a good send off, alive or dead, this is the music you need. It is the most hummable tune ever written. The Presto that follows is joyous and funny and contrasts with its central hymnal trio and the Finale cuts loose completely. I’ll warn you. Avoid sitting next to a fat bloke, likely in shorts, probably leaning forward, imperceptibly wiggling his fingers, in time just about, if the Finale of the Seventh should be playing. He might just start sobbing. With joy. Truly pathetic.

It takes a marvellous performance to overwhelm me and I have to confess this wasn’t quite there. It was insightful in glimpses, especially in the third movement, the negotiation between the players was intriguing and there was a slippery quality I liked. Tempos were sensible but I might have preferred something a little brisker in the first two movements, especially in the second subject of the Allegretto. But I still think the necessary compromises made everyone hold back just a bit. A sense of “after you Claude”. I am all about consensus in the “real” world but in the realm of the creative democracy can only take you so far.

I also have to confess that I didn’t stay for the post match replays and interviews. No good excuse other than wanting to see the SO and LD that evening. Though they of course completely ignored me when I got home early. I discovered that Spira Mirabilis had repeated the second movement, this time whilst randomly sitting in the audience. Damn. I wish I had stayed for that.

Still overall a fine performance of a transcendent work intriguingly delivered.

Ligeti in Wonderland at the South Bank review *****

ligeti1

Ligeti in Wonderland

Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, 11th, 12th and 13th May 2018

Pierre–Laurent Aimard (piano), Tamara Stefanovich (piano), Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Marie-Luise Neunecker (horn), Daniel Ciampollini (percussion)

Ligeti – Poeme symphonique for 100 metronomes,
Ligeti – 3 pieces for 2 pianos (Monument, Selbstportrat, Bewegubg),
Ligeti – Trio for horn, violin and piano
Steve Reich – Clapping Music
Ligeti – Etude No 8 for piano and percussion
Conlon Nancarrrow – Piano Player studies Nos 4 & 9 arr. for 2 pianos
PL Aimard – Improvisation for 4 hands on Poeme symphonique for 100 metronomes
PL Aimard – Improvisation for piano and percussion on Ligeti’s Etude no 4 (Fanfares)

Shizuku Tatsuno (cello), Katherine Yoon, Yume Fujise (violins), Tipwatooo Aramwittaya, Ilaria Macedonia (harpsichords), lantian Gu, Laura Faree Rozada. Joe Howson (Pianos)

Sonata for solo cello
Ballad and Dance for two violins
Continuum for solo harpsichord
Passacaglia Ungherese for solo harpsichord
Musica Ricercata for solo piano

Pierre–Laurent Aimard (piano)

Etudes Books 1,2 and 3

Pierre–Laurent Aimard (piano), Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Marie-Luise Neunecker (horn), Nicholas Collon (conductor), Aurora Orchestra, Jane Mitchell (creative director), Ola Szmida (animations)

Chamber Concerto
Piano Concerto
Hamburgisches Konzert
Violin Concerto

Hello. The review starts down here. As you can see the Tourist, along with many others, similarly intrigued and maybe enraptured by the music of Gyorgy Ligeti, put in a shift enjoying this weekend of music dedicated to his music.

Not one second was wasted. Some of the pieces stood out, the Trio, the piano works especially the Etudes and the Violin Concerto, but overall this was a fantastic array of performances of this brilliant composer. Wonderland for sure.

Now it takes a few decades before the new in all art forms is appreciated. Classical music, even in its most saccharine form, is not going to be for everyone. Yet it seems pretty clear to me that Ligeti, ahead of the other big name Modernists who transformed Western art music in the middle of the last century, is the one most people would choose to listen to. There is innovation and extension in his sound world for sure, there is intellect aplenty and there is memorable structure, though not the mathematical -isms of his peers, but most of all there is a depth of expression that anyone, even this muppet, can grasp. Add to this rhythm, of sorts, power, humour by the bucketload, and it’s easy to see why he gets performed a fair bit more than his contemporaries. He wasn’t sniffy about minimalism and he embraced music from other cultures. If you want to dip your toe in the modern classical world then this is definitely where to start.

There is a grand, ambitious, searching quality to his music, audible even in these smaller scale chamber and solo works. More often than not the works teeter on the brink of chaos but always, one way or another, resolve so I think it is optimistic on the whole. And, importantly, as with Luciano Berio, (another favourite for me alongside Xenakis and Penderecki), the history of art music is not smothered or ignored.

Where, variously Romania, Hungary, Germany and Austria, when, the War, (only his mother survived the concentration camps from his Jewish family), the Cold War, the 50s, 60s and 70s, what, as he moved through electronic and the Cologne School, to “micropolyphony” and then “polyrhythm”, all tumble out of his music like an avant garde encyclopedia. Know all those sounds that inhabit movie and TV soundtracks, when the creatives what to think big, go cosmic or generally scare the pants off you. Ligeti kicked it off, when Kubrick nicked his grooves for 2001. Music as texture. He even looks the part.

One more thing before I end this wall of pretentious guff. He always knew when to stop. Twenty minutes tops, even for the concertos. Most works clock in under ten minutes. Even opera Le Grande Macabre is under two hours. Genius.

The first concert kicked off with the Poeme symphonique for 100 metronomes. Yep there are 100 metronomes on stage set up with different beats. The performers skip on and set them off. Randomly. Of course it’s a joke, intended to explore the notion of chance in music (a la John Cage) but it becomes hypnotic, even a bit tuneful as patterns emerge from the chaos, and the gambler in me was desperate to have a punt on the last metronome clicking as it were. The survivor. An important concept for Ligeti given his personal history.

Pierre- Laurent Aimard was joined by regular collaborator Tamara Stefanovich for the two player piano pieces which preceded the Etudes. The first, Monument, sets up a cyclical rhythmic pattern which is then toppled with both players ending up at the very top of the keyboard. The second is an homage to minimalists Reich and Riley, fast scales and arpeggios with a backdrop of “silent” keys. This ends up in the bass. The third, Motion, is a canon, if you concentrate, which echoes the first piece.

The Trio is apparently an homage to Brahms. Search me. I suppose it does have a more Romantic structure than the polyrhythmic later Ligeti pieces. There is a sonata form opening, followed by a rapid ostinato with folky tunes wrapped around it, then a crooked march and a finale nicked from chords in Beethoven’s Les Adieux sonata. The main interest lies in the way the natural horn, with no keys and therefore lots of “out-of-tune” strange notes contrasts with the mannered piano, leaving the violin to hop between the two given its ability to produce natural harmonics. Since Ligeti dedicated his horn concerto (heard in the last concert) to Marie-Luise Neunecker, PL Aimard is the towering interpreter of Ligeti’s piano music and Pat Kop is my absolute favourite violinist in C20 music, there is no way this could have been bettered.

Then the fun started as PL Aimard and Daniel Ciampollini gave us a short rendition of Reich’s Clapping Music, (if you don’t know it the clue is in the title), which segued into Liget’s eighth Etude with Mr Ciampollini playing around it on his percussion kit, Nancarrow wrote his 49 Etudes for player piano because they were unplayable. Not so it seems, for these two particular studies, when four hands get involved. Then our percussionist interrupted on PL Aimard’s piano, and then both page turners, so all five were dinking out a version of the metronome piece that kicked things off. It was very droll though I admit you had to be there. Finally a dressed down version of Ligeti’s fourth etude.

Who knew classical music could be this much fun? OK maybe fun is stretching it but this whole performance emphasised the sharp humour which underpins Liget’s work as well as being a showcase for his rhythmic genius.

The next (free) concert was in the Purcell Room and involved students from the Royal College of Music. It mixed up some of the later solo Ligeti works with some from his early days in Romania and Hungary. As is always the case with RCM students the performance was at a very high level, better than many “professional” equivalents. Indeed this bunch already, largely, are on the circuit already. They all have jaw-droppingly impressive CV’s. I would single anyone out – they were all marvellous.

I heard the solo Cello sonata recently (Peter Wispelwey (cellist) at Kings Place review ****). It has been a nailed on cello classic since its premiere in 1979, though it was written in 1954. It was initially banned in Hungary by the “Composers Union”, a Stalinist censor. Two movements, a Dialogo, a conversation between a man and a woman, two ostinatos alternating between the upper and lower registers, and a Capriccio which has all sorts of thrilling extended techniques. (As an aside it would have been great to have recruited a cellist to the weekend cause to have a crack at the Cello Concerto with its bonkers high sustain at the end of the first movement).

The Ballad and Dance (1948) echoes Bartok with its loose transcriptions of Romanian folk songs. It is as easy to listen to as it sounds. Ligeti went on to explore Romanian folk songs in his Concert Romanesc (which sounds about as un-Modern and late C19 as it is possible to get).

Continuum was written for a two-manual harpsichord which can’t get up to much dynamically. The idea is that the notes are played so fast that the rhythm melts into a continuous blur. Almost to stasis. It looks and sounds like hard work to play but Tipwatooo Aramwittaya, (who appears to have medicine to fall back on if music and performance doesn’t pan out, which it will), was as cool as a cucumber. Like much of Ligeti the sounds are viscerally arresting but this is not mere novelty. Apparently it has been adapted for barrel organ to make it even simpler and even faster. The Passacaglia Ungherese, in contrast, is a repeated four bar descending ostinato intended to mimic the ground bass of the Baroque and was intended as a p*ss-take for his students, and those of us today, who love to keep moving to those Baroque grooves. It has some dancey counterpoints, obviously, and is marvellous. I need a recording.

The Musica Ricerta, like the Cello sonata, is a kind of experimental training work that Ligeti wrote in Hungary in the early 1950s away from the gaze of the censors. In each of the eleven pieces he places various restrictions on pitch, intervals and rhythms. they get sequentially more complicated as the number of pitch classes increases from the basic A in the first piece. Music for the brain for sure, but, as ever, Ligeti doesn’t skimp on the aesthetic. He loved sound you see.

This brings me neatly to the concert devoted to Ligeti’s 18 Etudes set across three books, started in 1985 and completed in 2001, his final work. All the influences on his “final late” period are there, central European folk music, Debussy, fractals, African cross-rhythms and Conlon Nancarrow. They are fiendishly difficult to play as Ligeti explores the entire range and possibility of the piano and piles layer upon layer of music. A fair few have a hectic, even aggressive quality, as they pile up into a rapid resolve but there are also poetic moments. There is a reason why M. Aimard is the pre-eminent performer of these pieces and the full house here was privileged to witness it. One of the best concerts I have ever attended.

The final concert expanded the player forces with the Aurora Orchestra under Nicholas Collon taking to the stage. The Chamber Concerto is a nailed on classic of the modern era, small-scale orchestra, 20 minutes in length, (no-one dares go further in new music, if only because it won’t get performed), and boundary-pushing. The opening movement has the instruments sliding around until they bash up against each other, then the winds sing out, before it all subsides. The second movements is a kind of mashed up Romantic fantasia which goes a bit awry, to be followed by a mechanical march, a clock factory under attack. The Presto finale is in a similar vein though ends perkily. If you ask me it is like a mini Rite of Spring, though as if some talented musicologist had discovered a partially burnt, muddled up copy of the score many years later. I am still trying to work it out.

The Piano Concerto is an even more uncompromising chap. Movements 1, 3 and 5, all quickest require the pianist to set the rhythms against which the orchestra adds snatches of melody. The second and fourth movements are more of a partnership. In the second the silly instruments, whistles and ocarinas, enter the chorale and in the fourth Ligeti sets up his head-spinning fractal structures. It is pretty quirky overall, sometimes confrontational, but immensely rich. I think it was the one piece over the weekend which really pushed the audience.

The Hamburgisches Konzert, Horn Concerto, was written for Marie-Luise Neunecker and in honour of Hamburg where he lived for 30 years. It is written, in part, for natural horn and exploits the strange harmonies which can emerge from the pure overtones of that beast. Finding out what sounds can do is part of the modern classical world but Ligeti, even here, never forgot to ensure this was set in a profoundly musical context. There are seven short movements. The soloist shifts between natural and valved horns, the four horn players in the orchestra, (all fine players, Pip Eastop, James Pillai, Ursula Monberg and Hugh Sisley), accompany on natural horns, the orchestra, except in the fourth movement takes a back seat. Now there is no doubt that the horn sound is a beautiful, extraordinary and eerie thing, (listen to Britten’s Serenade for a more comfortable alternative), but, to be fair, it can’t get up to much. But what it can do is showcased in this concerto and Ms Neunecker is probably the best person on the planet to show us how.

Having said that it was the Violin Concerto that brought the house down. Pat Kop is a magnetic stage personality, as she skips about, every inch the gypsy fiddler, in bare feet. The work is meat and drink for her, she even chucked in her own, entirely sympathetic cadenza, roping in the lead violin of Alexandra Wood. But the Aurora Orchestra also rose to the occasion. There are all sorts of non-standard tunings at work here, in the brass, in the woodwinds, even in one violin and viola. And, of course, the soloist, if they know what they are about, can bounce around to exploit the strange harmonics as GL intended. There are five movements, all of which exploit the coincidences, but the clarity of the interplay makes these sound more chamber-like than its two concerto peers. And dear reader there are passages, like the Aria at the beginning of the second movement, that are not at all scary. I promise. It’s a masterpiece I reckon.

So there you have. Possibly the best composer of the latter half of the C20 shown off to stunning effect by musicians who clearly love his work. You could feel the buzz in the room/s. The Barbican, courtesy of the BBCSO, has a “Total Immersion” day devoted to Ligeti on 2nd March next year, which repeats some of these works but offers up some choral and larger scale orchestra works. Do go.

Bryce Dessner and the London Contemporary Orchestra Soloists at Queen Elizabeth Hall review ***

London Contemporary Orchestra Soloists, Galya Bisengalieva (violin), Rakhi Singh (violin), Robert Ames (viola), Oliver Coates (cello) – Bryce Dessner (electric guitar)

Queen Elizabeth Hall. 10th April 2018

Bryce Dessner – Aheym for string quartet
Mica Levi – You belong to me for string quartet
Steve Reich – Electric Counterpoint for electric guitar and tape
Steve Reich – Different trains for string quartet and tape (with film from Bill Morrison)

I am pretty sure the last time I was in the Queen Elizabeth Hall was with a young BD and LD and the SO to see Slava’s Snow Show as a “Christmas Treat”. The SO booked the entertainment without, as is her wont, looking too closely at the details. Which is a shame as she has an aversion to clowns. Not a full blown psychic horror but enough to engender a vague sense of unease. Which is unfortunate as, for those that don’t know, Slava’s Snow Show involves clowns. A lot of clowns. On a journey. In Russian. Being the supportive family that we are we found the SO’s discomfort funnier that the show. We still do.

This was my first visit to the newly refurbished QEH and I can report an already handsome building is now even better looking. It looks like it will pursue a course of adventurous programming, which is marvellous, though I can’t pretend it is all to my taste.

This concert was though. Arse that I am I hadn’t recorded the details correctly in my foolproof diary system so I hadn’t realised Different Trains was on the menu and had no idea the evening would be graced by the presence of Mr Bryce Dessner. Now I am guessing this was in stark contrast to most of the audience, for whom, I assume, he was the main attraction. I do not know if the punters that can now be counted on to fill a hall showcasing minimalist classics have always been there, or whether they are new to the genre, but it doesn’t matter. The whole of arty. trendy, creative London turns up in droves now, (though not so much at venues without the social media presence of the Southbank)., which leaves me looking and feeling even more conscious of my shocking lack of style.

(Where did it all go wrong? I used to be a contender in the sartorial stakes and could oft be found propping up the bar at cutting edge London venues. Honestly. No longer. Now even the pensioner tribe at midweek theatrical matinees looks down on me. That it should come to this. Mind you, it’s all my fault. This too stolid flesh needs melting).

All this crossing of musical boundaries is immensely energising though, and, in some ways, it was minimalism that first brought together the the “high” art of classical music with the “popular” art of rock and pop. I would also contend that if it hadn’t been for “classical” composers in the 1950s and 1960s exploring what technology and music from other cultures had to offer, dance music would be much the poorer.

Anyway our man Mr Dessner stands astride the divide, as it were, with his well regarded minimal classical works and his day, or night, job as guitarist for The National. Now, as it happens, I like The National. No expert but I have a few of their albums and saw them support that dreadful old rocker Neil Young a few years ago in Hyde Park. Obviously I don’t mean Neil Young is dreadful. he is akin to a god in my eyes. What I can say though is that The National, along with the likes of Beach House, Death Grips, Eels, John Grant, The Knife, Metronomy and TV on the Radio, ensure that the non-classical section of my CD collection, (I know CDs, ho-ho-ho grandad), isn’t entirely made up of artists who are either older than me or dead. I also appreciate that this is hardly evidence of cutting edge musical taste, and is very white, but, I fear, so is your correspondent. And it also doesn’t mean that as far as I am concerned the best music made in the last few years has come from The Fall, (sadly no longer, why are we not still in a period of national mourning?) and Wire. Worse still, whilst writing this I am listening to Soft Machine. Could it be any worse?

Unsurprisingly Mr Dessner was terrific. I listened to Aheym for string quartet a couple of times before this and it is a worthy and apposite work to set alongside Steve Reich’s string quartet masterpiece. Written in 2009, early on in his catalogue, the title is Yiddish for “homeward” and is inspired by his granny’s stories about Eastern Europe and coming to America. There is a five beat jagged chordal rhythm that runs through the piece which is cut up and syncopated in various ways until a short solo cello line, with pizzicato breaks, takes us to a slower, murky fugal passage, above the cello rocking. This is repeated in a different way before the rhythm returns, with col legno bowing, some scratchy stuff, some very high harmonics and a bit of double stopping to round things off. It is not structurally complex but it is very arresting and every string effect on show was “enhanced” by the close microphones. I loved it though I don’t suppose it will pop up at the Wigmore any time soon.

Mica Levi’s work, written in 2016 for this very ensemble, takes the 1950s song of the title and zeroes in on scraps of music within it. There are three sections to be played in any order. Hannah, a kind of set of passacaglia variations with mad trilling, Jumping, sort of fugal with odd chords moving to tremolos over a cello grind, and Sun, with the higher strings sliding up over the cello drone. It is less interesting than it sounds. Again it was over-amplified for my liking.

Ahed of the interval and before the main event Mr Dessner took to the stage with electric guitar for a performance of Electric Counterpoint. No rock’n’roll razzamatazz here. He looked like one of the stage managers despite having taking a bow earlier after Aheym. EC has one live guitar part, obviously, alongside twelve recorded guitar parts, two on bass. There are three movements, without breaks, the first an 8 part canon with the live guitar over the top and harmonic pulse from the other recorded guitars, the slow movement is similar but with 9 parts and, er, a slower theme, and the final part, again a canon, but with more tonal variation and rhythmic change. It is pure Reich and here the QEH acoustic, the amplification and, obviously, our rock god, really delivered.

Different Trains, commissioned, like Aheym, by the Kronos Quartet, and premiered in this very venue in 1988, is way more interesting than it sounds. The live string quartet is backed by three recorded versions of themselves. This creates the opportunity for 16 part counterpoint and, in line with the concept of the piece, means we listen to a “past we did not witness”. The tape line also includes lines of speech, from Reich’s governess and a train porter, as well as Holocaust victims, as well as “train” noises. The idea is to contrast Reich’s train journeys across America as a child with the horrific journeys made by Jewish children in Europe during the war. The accompanying film from Bill Morrison reinforces the contrast and is, at times, disturbing. The first movement is upbeat, the snatches of conversation brief, and the rhythmic patterns clear and harmonics tonal. The second second is slower and darker with frequent sustains, more harmonic dissonance, and with the train ambience increasing. The final movement takes the voices from the first time and melds them into the music.

I wasn’t entirely persuaded by the performance with the recordings sometimes overwhelming the live performers though I was perched right at the back. Oliver Coates’s cello playing was very fine, as I know from previous performances, and Galya Bisengalieva’s first violin sang, but the second violin and viola parts were a bit muddied. On the other hand having the film footage definitely enhanced the powerful meaning behind Steve’s Reich’s music. (I am assuming the age of the footage is what delivered the “blotchy effects”). The performers were standing and split two by two on stage which made for an antiphonal effect, in mind if not ear.

Even with the sound this was still a fine rendition of a modern masterpiece near Reich’s best. More of this at the QEH please. I promise to smarten up next time.

Oh, and no clowns please.