Music in the University 2015-2016 in association with Sound
Red Note Ensemble and Griffyn Ensemble
King's College Chapel
Thursday, 22 October 2015
The two radically different performances by the Griffyn and Red Note Ensembles for Sound were linked mainly by their titles: Southern Sky by the Estonian composer Urmas Sisask was receiving its UK Premiere while Northern Skies by the Scottish composer James Clapperton, a co-commission by sound and the Red Note Ensemble, was getting its World Premiere on Thursday.
There was a fascinating talk on astronomy before the concert. I learned quite a few things from it but unfortunately the lecturer spoke only about the skies above the Northern Hemisphere while Urmas Sisask’s piece was inspired by different constellations seen only in the skies above the Southern Hemisphere. Griffyn’s director Michael Sollis gave us the names of many of these constellations but I did not catch anything like all of them. I really only know The Southern Cross and I don’t think it was involved.
Although an Estonian and therefore living in the Northern Hemisphere, composer Urmas Sisask did spend some time in Australia. He visited the Mount Stromlo Observatory before it was burned down in the bush fires of 2003. Astronomy being as much an interest to him as music, many of his compositions are indeed concerned with the skies and its stars and he is therefore well acquainted with the constellations of the Southern Hemisphere, the subject of today’s piece.
Urmas Sisask’s music could be classified as post minimalist. It has many repetitive phrases and might not have been composed in the way it was without the influence of the works of Arvo Pärt. I also sensed the ghost of Debussy in some of the flute writing. I sensed this music was intended to conjure up pictures or perhaps to be a background to them, like film music perhaps. The Griffyn Ensemble are from Canberra in Australia where they are recognised as Australia’s premier chamber ensemble. For Sisask’s Southern Sky, they fielded six performers playing guitar and mandolin, harp, flutes including piccolo, alto flute and recorder, clarinets including bass clarinet and percussion - mainly vibraphone and glockenspiel. There was also a splendid soprano, Susan Ellis, whose voice was really another instrument, although at one point she did have Estonian words to sing.
Southern Sky is quite an extensive piece but interest was maintained by the unusual way in which many of the instruments were employed and this included the voice as well. There was a fantastic section where the guitar was used as a percussion instrument, not by knocking on the body but using the strings. Glockenspiel and vibraphone were used together very effectively and at one point the soprano Susan Ellis sang into the body of the harp so that the strings resonated with her voice. Susan Ellis also played the large tam tam or gong to splendid effect. There was a section of the music with bass clarinet that remembered the great bush fire, a description of Brownian motion with clarinet and alto flute (I remembered that from sixth year physics at school) later on an exploding supernova and finally the ever expanding universe dissolved away with carefully fading soprano and almost subliminally quiet vibraphone. This was an amazingly pictorial piece.
If Southern Sky was clearly pictorial music, James Clapperton’s Northern Skies was much more music for music’s sake. Its four movements were representative of places where Clapperton has lived and worked. The opening movement Aurora Borealis was a picture of the sky above Harstad in Norway. The second, Fornyrðislag represented memories of Iceland, Белое Безмолвие (Beloe Bezmolvie) or The White Silence refers to the endless Russian Arctic Tundra and the finale entitled An Independent Sky celebrates the sky of the composer’s birthplace in Banchory, also the home of James Scott Skinner whose music inspired this last movement.
James Clapperton’s music was performed by the Red Note Ensemble, on this occasion string trio of violin, viola and cello with flute and in addition clarinet played by Marie Lloyd and percussion played by Tom Hunter. These last two also played with the Griffyn Ensemble in Southern Sky.
The opening movement had something in common with the beginning of Sisask’s music but it soon developed a more edgy and closely constructed quality that became quite lively. The second section could really be called the slow movement giving a sense of structure to the whole piece. It displayed a rather delicious blending of strings and woodwind.
The Russian movement featured a snare drum which captured much of the interest in the movement. Could this perhaps be a scherzo or am I pushing that a bit too far?
The third movement segued smoothly into the finale with Clapperton’s very individual modern take on the strathspey. If the other movements were born above the Arctic Circle where nearly half the year is spent in darkness this final movement allowed the sun to come out. I always think of Banchory as being bathed in sunshine and this goes back to my own childhood years. The final bars of Clapperton’s piece were very attractive and I like to think, full of sunshine!
