Alan Cooper reviews: Fiddles, Harps and Electronics (double bill)
ŞIRIN PANCAROǦLU: Harps
ERDEM HELVACIOǦLU: Electronics
BRITT PERNILLE FROHOLM: Hardanger fiddle
SARAH JANE SUMMERS: Fiddle
WOODEND BARN, BANCHORY
Friday, 31 October 2014
Friday’s Double Bill concert offered performances by experts on two relatively exotic instruments. The çeng (pronounced cheng?) or Ottoman harp is these days an exotic instrument even in its home country of Turkey although enthusiasts are currently working on its revival there. It is suggested that it arrived in Turkey via Persia (Iran). It is thought to be a very ancient instrument. Descriptions of something very similar can be found in Assyrian tablets and pictures in ancient Egyptian tombs could be something like the same instrument.
The hardanger fiddle or hardingfele is nowhere near as ancient as that but as we (seated at the front) could see it is a stunningly beautiful instrument. It differs from the fiddle or violin in that it is a transposing instrument (like the trumpet in B flat) and it has extra “sympathetic” strings.
Some of those in Friday’s audience said they would have liked to hear at least one “ordinary” item on each of the instruments in order to get an idea of their special sound qualities however since this was the Sound Festival and one of its special themes this year is “new ways of approaching traditional music” it was the Electronics that were of paramount importance in Friday’s performances. The two instruments (and others) were largely the sound sources for much more avant garde sound worlds.
Turkish harpist Şirin Pancaroğlu worked in close co-operation with renowned contemporary composer and electronics wizard Erdem Helvacioğlu in many aspects of the creation of his eight movement work Resonating Universes. I have seldom read a more enlightening programme note than the one supplied for this concert by Erdem Helvacioğlu. It made me feel that I had actually been present to witness all the steps in the creation of this piece and therefore the music made much more sense. There were several stages required in producing this music. The sounds of three different harps were sampled and stored for use in the piece. There was an orchestral concert harp, an electric harp and the Turkish çeng. All sorts of means were employed to get the required basic sounds – bows, ropes and even knives. A whole range of microphones were used as well. These sounds were then shaped and extended electronically. But this was by no means all. While a few of the eight movements were supplied wholly by the original electronics, the live harpist Şirin Pancaroğlu played each of the three harps in turn so we could hear the actual sounds she produced on the instruments but these were also captured and shaped by Erdem Helvacioğlu. The result was that this was not really a solo performance by the harpist shaped by the electronics it was a real duet performance with if anything the electronics giving every bit as much a live performance as the instrumentalist.
As Erdem Helvacioğlu told us in his programme note (and here I quote directly) “The piece combines a wide variety of aesthetics and genres like Turkish art music, contemporary classical, ambient, drone, noise, electroacoustic, post rock and electronica”. Well, you won’t get a better description of what we heard than that. It was all in there. The visual aspect of the performance was tremendous as well. The stage and auditorium were very dimly lit and it was only when Şirin Pancaroğlu moved to play the different harps that the spotlight fell brightly on her. It was on the electronic harp that I thought I heard most of the influence of Turkish art music. This was an amazing looking instrument too. I could have come off the Star Wars film set. Although many of the sounds in the piece were, as one audience member commented to me, “somewhat disquieting” I found the whole experience totally compelling but also strangely hypnotic and afterwards I felt strangely refreshed by the experience. There can certainly be few other pieces whose genesis and performance involves such amazing levels of complexity.
After a short interval Norwegian hardanger fiddle player Britt Pernille Froholm entered the spotlight just beneath the stage to provide the fiddle sounds for the World Première of Spiral Paths by Monty Adkins – although we got only two movements numbers one and three. The use of the sound source and the combinations thus produced had something reminiscent of the previous work and the two movements we heard were certainly rich and full of character.
We went on to hear two works by Rose Dodd who studied with Christopher Fox whose percussion piece The True Standard Advanced we heard on Thursday in the Cowdray Hall. Her piece mobius ii also used the hardanger fiddle and the electronic background suggested to a certain extent the idea of an accompanying orchestra. The World Première of Waternish Ballad was played on the fiddle by Sarah Jane Summers. Here the focus was rather more on the instrument than on the electronics which supplied a drone background reminding me of last week’s concert by Rohan de Saram in the Art Gallery.
The final piece in the concert Nicolas Bernier’s Phantom had visuals created by the composer in addition to the music derived once again from the sounds of the hardanger fiddle. The electronics sometimes suggested a glockenspiel and then perhaps Morse code although I don’t know not being literate in that language. After all the wild stimulation of the senses produced by the other pieces I found it hard to understand but then perhaps that is the whole idea of a Phantom. Anyway Friday night being Halloween it was a very apposite piece to include in what was overall an astonishing and mind-blowing performance.
