Emily White & Steve Bingham
Gartly Tin Hut Sat Oct 25^th 2014

Review by Alan Rogers

I should declare an interest; I’m part of the team organising these Music Centeral events, and I’m immensely proud of this one. Emily & Steve have performed in Huntly before, and I was at their concert at Woodend Barn some years ago when they gave the premiere of David Ward’s “e-mails from Palestine”, which concluded the programme.

Both halves began similarly with somewhat processional pieces by Hildegard of Bingen & Guillaume de Machaut arranged for violin & sackbut, which functioned as overtures to what followed. Steve gave a flawless rendition of Michael Nyman’s “Time Lapse” from Greenaway’s “Zed & Two Noughts”, using electric violin loops to play all the parts himself. Live looping is what Steve does best, or so I thought, but his rendering of the Bach violin partita in D minor concluded the first half & was quite simply stunning. I’ve heard & seen this played by some pretty exalted fiddlers over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited by a performance. It felt dangerous, & drew a universal standing ovation from the select audience, who clearly recognised a good thing.

Music Centeral usually tries to include performances of works by local school pupils, only two this time, a charming folksy violin duet from Esther Smith, & the very quirky “Jock of Angus” by Iona Fyfe, which included some adventurous harmonies & interesting melodic twists. A pity neither young composer could attend, they would surely have felt very proud to be slotted in between Machaut’s “Douce dame Jolie” & David Ward’s “e-mails…”

Given the subject matter “e-mails…” must be considered a work of protest, setting Jane Frere’s e-mail texts to some pretty complex expressive music. It’s angry music, now recorded for the first time (release date to be announced), but so theatrical when Emily & Steve perform it that I doubt a sound-only recording could really do it justice. A version for five players exists, but we heard it from only two; their virtuosity was astounding! Instantaneous changes from violin to trombone & back again while singing from Emily, juggling two electric violins, computer, drum, high-hat & electronic foot pedals from Steve (I’m sure he used three feet at one point). This was music theatre of a high order, & really deserves a wider audience.

A lighter encore piece then to send us home a little happier, another Bartok violin duet to add to the pair played in the first half. Wonderful, & huge thanks to everyone who helped make it happen.

Atalanta Piano Quartet
Cecilia Bernardini: Violin | Tom Hankey: Viola | Nathaniel Boyd: Cello | Simon Lane: Piano

COWDRAY HALL, ABERDEEN
Monday, 10 November 2014

Since Monday’s performance by The Atalanta Piano Quartet was another of the now regular annual collaborations between Aberdeen Chamber Music Concerts and sound, I will begin this review with the one contemporary piece in the programme. This was Sequenza Notturna by Martin Butler (b.1960) premiered by the Schubert Ensemble at the City of London Festival on July 7^th 2003.

It opened with brittle glassy piano figurations followed soon by the subtle entry of muted strings. Viola and cello remained muted in the background to begin with but the violin, now unmuted, rose up to front the texture with a melodic line that made me think of the soaring vocalisations of a Hebrew Cantor, though pianist Simon Lane suggested a more generalised Middle-Eastern flavouring to the music. The repeated notes with the subtlest of decorative turns played by the viola intensified this ambience which was then taken up and developed more expansively by the other instruments. The energy underlying the music right from the beginning rose to the surface as the playing increased in tempo. As the title suggested there was a definite nocturnal feeling to the piece which had a finely tinged hypnotic appeal.

The other three pieces in the concert were in total contrast to Martin Butler’s thoughtful and rather introverted music – all of them bursting with extrovert showmanship and thus presenting challenges to which the Atalanta Piano Quartet rose with real technical and artistic pizzazz.

Simon Lane’s piano playing had a marvellous liquid fluency which became apparent from the very start of Beethoven’s Piano Quartet in E flat Major Op. 16. It is an arrangement by Beethoven himself of a work originally composed for a wind quartet of oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn with piano. It came across superbly well on Monday for the combination of string trio and piano. As Dr Lydia Thomson writes in her excellent programme note “the setting of the piano against the strings is typical of the work as a whole” and some commentators (Stephen Strugnell) have suggested that the outer movements are like a chamber concerto for piano. The piano introduces all three movements and in the first it often led with the melody or else provided a decorative background to the strings or else provided the propulsive force that drove the music onward.

In the second movement however Beethoven gives all the instruments the chance to sing out and take the lead – yes and the viola too. The Rondo finale had a jolly sunny tune in which all four players rejoiced and of course Beethoven gives the piano its own cadenza in this movement.

Schumann’s Piano Quartet Op. 47 is also in the key of E flat Major but here the balance between strings and piano is more even handed. The strings in the opening movement had a far more prominent role. In the Scherzo, both strings and piano were hard driven but with a nice wind-blown feel too. The Atalanta Piano Quartet gave us their most marvellous ensemble playing in the third movement, Andante cantabile. There was a lovely duo for viola carrying the tune with violin in harmony above supported by pizzicato cello and piano and then a thoroughly delicious cello solo leading to a surprising and imaginative coda whose three note motif was taken up by the exciting finale. Here was the most amazing fast paced contrapuntal music like Bach on an adrenalin rush. The players of the Atalanta Quartet, especially the cellist, seemed to be throwing their whole bodies into the playing and they took us all the way with them.

The final piece in the concert following on from Martin Butler’s contemporary piece was Fauré’s Piano Quartet No.1 in c minor Op.15. The opening movement achieved great refinement of texture with the strings to the forefront in superb contrapuntal playing. The Scherzo with its pizzicato episodes for strings alternating with wonderfully light-textured bowing and racing piano and with muted strings for the trio which was well integrated with the rest of the Scherzo was indeed, as the programme note stated – a real tour de force both for Fauré and for the members of the Atalanta Quartet.

The Adagio enjoyed even more strikingly beautiful ensemble playing from the Quartet before, with their most fervent and ebullient musicianship apparently easily to hand, they tore into the finale marked Allegro molto. It was exactly that; I could not take my eyes off the cellist’s fingers as they leapt hither and thither over the fingerboard seemingly wild and totally out of control but actually, like all the other members of the Quartet, a paragon of precision playing.

© Alan Cooper, 2014

Richard Bailey: Piano

Cults Parish Church
Sunday, 09 November 2014

Richard Bailey’s piano recital for sound on Sunday evening drew a large crowd to Cults Parish Church as part of their ongoing Music in the Sanctuary series. His programme featured one large scale contemporary work: Frederic Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. This piece was having its second outing at this year’s sound Festival having been played at a Lunchbreak Concert on Thursday 30^th October by Christina McMaster. By the way, the Festival programme spells the title of this piece in two different ways in the programme, neither of which quite matches the spelling in the score or of the South Carolina town it refers to. But that is neither here nor there.

Richard Bailey also played a piano piece by Anton Webern – actually this composer’s only piece for solo piano. It nevertheless stands as a landmark work in “modern” music. I have put the word modern in inverted commas because the piece was composed between 1935 and 1936. This makes it 78 years old, so not quite contemporary. Nevertheless it lies closer to Rzewski’s piece than to either Mozart’s or Beethoven’s music and even the two Chopin Nocturnes which concluded the programme were composed a hundred years before the Webern Variations.

Richard opened his recital with Mozart’s Fantasie in d minor (1782) K397. The introductory Andante had more than a hint of Bach to it but the rest was pure Mozart. Richard played it with outstanding expressiveness. Variety of dynamics, attack and tempo suggested the full colours of Mozart the composer of opera in Richard’s performance.

The second piece in the recital was Frederic Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. Refreshments are always served after the Cults concert and round the tables in the Hall everyone was enthusing about Richard’s performance of this piece. It begins with a minimalist rumbling pattern on the lowest part of the piano then with forearm and elbow employed to get the note clusters it rises up through the keys. Something I noticed in this performance but missed before was the marriage of mechanical rhythm with the idea of boogie-woogie bass. Later on, the blues song sang out clearly but the marriage between the sounds of the mill and black American inspired music were clearly expressed in Richard’s performance and that is what I think the audience really loved.

In huge contrast with Rzewski’s sound painting, Richard continued with Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 27 No.2 “Quasi una fantasia” but instantly recognisable as The Moonlight Sonata. The opening movement was properly atmospheric and was followed by a bright jaunty Allegretto. The finale can be played with considerable ferocity but this would not have worked on the relatively small Cults piano. Richard chose, I think wisely to add a fine seasoning of delicacy to his interpretation and it was marvellous to watch his hands spidering at high speed across the keys.

Webern’s three movement Variations are not unlike romantic music from which every trace of sugar has been removed. The wide leaps in the melodic line were accomplished with superb precision and all three movements were nicely paced regarding the composer’s requirements: Very moderate – Very fast – then Calm and flowing. In this music short moments of silence are used just as expressively as the notes themselves.

Following on from the Webern were two Nocturnes by Chopin: Op. 9 Nos 1 and 2. These were played with superb fluency, the second being particularly well known and therefore much appreciated by Sunday’s audience yet it will please sound to hear that it was Rzewski’s music that made the biggest impression.

© Alan Cooper, 2014

Smith Quartet

Aberdeen Art Gallery
Saturday, 08 November 2014

The Smith Quartet opened Saturday’s Lunchbreak performance with a Quartet by South African-born composer Kevin Volans – just as they had at their concert in Woodend Barn the previous evening. The Quartet No.2 “Hunting: Gathering” however was radically different from the Quartet No. 10 which we heard last night. The title refers to the multiple and very disparate sources of fragments of music which have gone into the construction of the work. It is without doubt very interesting to be told that at bar 65, “there’s a fleeting reference to a variant of the Shona mbira tune Nyamaropa (Zimbabwe)”. Does this mean much to the average listener however? I think not. In order to fully comprehend such details it would be necessary to study the score along with the relevant African Source materials. Possibly nowadays the Internet would be helpful in that such things can be called up without having to journey all the way to Zimbabwe. It is quite amazing what you can dig up on there! However to fully comprehend all such inter-musical references it would probably mean weeks if not years of painstaking research. What is important to the average listener is surely the music itself and the impression it makes on the ears and in the mind. Well, here goes!

The work is in three quite distinctive movements. It opened with a kind of tick-tock pizzicato which kept recurring in larger or smaller sections throughout the movement. Actually an impression was gained that this minimalist motif was continuing unceasingly throughout the movement – though sometimes it went underground. Viola player Nic Pendlebury is very much in the limelight in this movement with soaring melodic lines that do have a minimalist element to them though that is not really the impact they have on the listener. Perhaps that is why Volans is listed as being a post-minimalist composer.

The rhythmic writing in the second movement is complex indeed with the cello played by Deirdre Cooper providing a kind of anchor with her pizzicato playing. Yet really the whole thing, filled with treacherous cross rhythms, must be unbelievably difficult to keep on track and only world experts like the Smith Quartet would be up to it – so it was a privilege indeed to hear this fantastic live performance. The tick-tock motif from the opening movement recurred a couple of times thus binding this movement to its predecessor. In the final movement that tick-tock was exchanged for something more like a heartbeat and with chords played by muted instruments. Only the cello remained unmuted. Light touches of harmonics were passed across the instruments with the cellist having to join in with these too while maintaining her constant pizzicato heartbeat – a real tour de force of playing. All in all, this was a wonderfully colourful work that lived up to its title “Hunting: Gathering”. Even if we could not really understand fully from whence Volans was getting all his ingredients he (and the Smith Quartet) certainly served up some absolutely delicious listening.

Tunde Jegede was born in England but has researched African musical sources. His piece Dancing in the Spirit was specifically arranged for the Smith Quartet. Jegede is exceptionally eclectic in his musical understanding with knowledge of everything from Western classical music to pop. Dancing in the Spirit was originally done in collaboration with Random Dance Company and choreographer Wayne McGregor thus taking us back to one of the themes of sound‘s opening weekend, namely dance. If the viola was highlighted in the opening movement of the first work it was the cello who was gifted a similar treatment in Tunde Jegede’s piece. Above a cello pedal note we heard baroque sounding harmonies and counterpoint with just a touch of minimalist seasoning. Then the idea of dance became clearer with I thought more than just a suggestion of Irish music.

Michael Nyman’s String Quartet No. 5 had a touch of humour in its subtitle: “Let’s not make a song and dance out of this” because each of the six movements is either a song or a dance. This piece went down particularly well with Saturday’s full house audience. While there was at least one movement in which the four instruments were playing harmonies in perfect parallel what was truly amazing especially from a minimalist composer was that in some of the movements each instrument had its own highly contrasting component to make up the musical whole – pizzicato against slow bowing, slow bowing against fast bowing and guitar-like strums for the cello. The players all looked to be doing something very different yet everything slotted together perfectly. In the opening section of the final movement the second violin sang out the melody with the first violin shadowing him on harmonics. The echoing of the first two movements in the finale was particularly satisfying – something that many earlier composers have used to great effect e.g. Dvořák.

© Alan Cooper

Smith Quartet with Joby Burgess, Percussion
Ian Humphries and Rick Koster: Violins | Nic Pendlebury: Viola | Dierdre Cooper: Cello

Woodend Barn, Banchory
Friday, 07 November 2014

Professor Pete Stollery who introduced last night’s performance was delighted to welcome back the Smith Quartet to the sound Festival. We remember their generous contribution in 2010 to the Festival’s “minimalist inspired weekend”. This time they brought with them another Festival regular, ace percussionist Joby Burgess. I remember in particular his performance in the Lemon Tree. The Woodend Barn programme was part of a forthcoming tour supported by the Arts Council, England. It featured one piece each for the Quartet alone and one for Joby Burgess on his own as well as two works that were a special collaboration fusing String Quartet and Percussion together in strikingly brilliant amalgamation.

The opening work, String Quartet No. 10 (Revised version 2013) by Kevin Volans was the piece for the Quartet alone. Volans was born in South Africa but has spent a large part of his career outside of that country though he is still thought of as South Africa’s most prominent composer. He studied in Cologne with Karlheinz Stockhausen and is thought of as a leading post minimalist composer. He is also said to be associated with the New Simplicity School. Some aspects of each of these varied influences could be heard in String Quartet No. 10. The opening movement featured high energy minimalist scurrying strings although moving beyond mere repetition, the subtlest changes in entry or pace by the various instruments produced all kinds of fascinating rhythmic cross patterns – a bit like a kaleidoscope in sound. The high energy playing was punctuated from time to time by moments of stasis. A second movement followed in which for a considerable time the cello held a high pitched pedal note while the violin produced little brushstrokes of sound like yelps. The viola played little turns of bowed notes which were soon replaced by the same notes strummed as if on a guitar. Later the violins and viola held high harmonics while it was the cello which added the little dabs of sound colour. The influence of minimalism in the music was strong as was the importance of timbre derived perhaps from Stockhausen and although this music sounded not at all like Arvo Pärt there was something of his interest in music as pure sound in there too. This was paradoxically both the simplest and most complex of the pieces in Friday’s programme. An untutored listener could assume that this music with its held notes or repetitions would be very easy to play. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We were hearing the most astonishing virtuoso playing from the Smith Quartet. I could not even begin to count the beats as precisely as they did. One slip, one miscount and everything would fall apart.

Graham Fitkin is a British composer, pianist and conductor. His piece Distill was commissioned specially by the Smith Quartet and Joby Burgess. It began with the second violin and viola playing detached pizzicato notes for all the world as though it was starting to rain with just a few big drops landing on your head. The first violin and cello entered in turn and finally the percussion. It was interesting that in a sense the string players were treated as the percussion section while the tuned percussion, vibes, crotales and even gong were delivering the melodic content. This was a hugely entertaining and often very beautiful piece thanks especially to delicately played precision percussion.

Iannis Xenakis has a lot of hyphens in his CV. He is described as Greek-French, composer-theorist, architect-engineer, post-war, avant-garde. Though born in 1922 in Romania, he was brought up in Greece but fled to France in 1947 where he became a naturalised French citizen. His piece Psappha was for Joby Burgess alone. If Fitkin’s Distill had much delicacy in it Psappha had virtually none. That is not a negative criticism because it was eye-poppingly, ear-poppingly exciting. Drums including foot pumping bass drum, cymbals of several sorts, metal bars that sounded a bit like a cross between a marimba and a steel factory in full production were all assaulted with glorious crazy energy by Joby Burgess. It was a fantastic piece to watch as much as to listen to and it ended in a kind of explosion of percussive joy.

The final piece in the concert, Starry Night, was Steve Martland’s last composition; he died in May last year. There is an obvious reference in the title to the famous painting by Van Gogh but Martland wrote, “Rather, personal memories of Africa are recalled and, in particular, the sound of music and dancing both near and in the distance, all taking place under the vivid starry night sky”.

The Smith Quartet once again in splendid minimalist mode at the outset and Joby Burgess in full swing on marimba proved once again that String Quartet and percussion can be a magical combination. The spirit of dance ran all through this performance and it certainly lifted my spirits too. This was a great performance and there is more to come because the Smith Quartet will be in Aberdeen Art Gallery at 1pm on Saturday.

© Alan Cooper, 2014

Jillian Bain Christie: Soprano and composer
Catherine Herriott: Piano

King’s College Chapel, Aberdeen
Thursday, 06 November 2014

Thursday evening’s vocal recital by Jillian Bain Christie followed on from a radically different performance by Philip Mead the celebrated master of contemporary piano repertoire. Jillian took us on an enlightening journey through some real gems of the Scandinavian vocal repertoire. There was however just one really contemporary piece in the programme. The composer? It was none other than Jillian Bain Christie herself. Strandarkirkja (The Church on the Coast) was an extraordinarily atmospheric piece based on a legend surrounding a real church built on a lava flow in an extremely isolated spot on the south coast of Iceland. The church stands quite alone in a desolate uninhabited landscape. The legend has it that a group of Icelandic sailors found themselves in terrible danger at sea near this hazardous part of the coast. On the edge of disaster an angel appeared and came towards the boat guiding all the sailors to safety. The church was built on the very spot where the men reached land.

Strandarkirkja uses pre-recorded vocals sung by Jillian Bain Christie herself. Although she has extended many of her vocal samples in duration and colour, no change was made to any of the original vocal pitches across Jillian’s amazingly wide vocal range. The recorded sounds created an ethereal wash of sound that suggested all sorts of ideas – the voices of some long disappeared monastic choir, some strange heavenly orchestra or else an amorphous cloud of far-off angelic voices that came from everywhere and nowhere around us at the same time. Jillian also sang live over the backing track using ancient Icelandic or Latin texts giving thanks for the miracle that brought about the building of the church and ending in a series of Hallelujahs that seemed to recede back into the past from whence the story came.

Jillian Bain Christie’s singing voice is the purest distillate of luminous soprano quality. It contributed in large measure to the genuine sounding Scandinavian aura that surrounded this and all the other performances in the programme.

Pianist Catherine Herriott was also a fabulous accompanist and as one member of the audience commented – there has surely never been such a well matched team of singer and accompanist as we heard on Thursday night.

Actually the first song item in the recital was not Scandinavian at all. It was from a familiar American composer with whom Jillian has worked before. A Winter Come is a six piece song cycle by Morten Lauridsen – no stranger to King’s College Chapel. However the poems, by Howard Moss (1922-1987) Poetry Editor of the New Yorker Magazine from 1948 until his death, with their graphic images of winter landscapes were not at all out of sympathy with Thursday’s Scandinavian theme. Lauridsen’s crisp piano writing and bracing vocal lines were given a beautifully accomplished performance by the perfect team of Catherine Herriott and Jillian Bain Christie. The purity of Jillian’s singing and her perfectly clean clear diction made these songs really spring to life. I loved the fifth poem setting, Who Reads by Starlight, in which Morten Lauridsen’s musical depictions of fire and flame had delicious echoes of his Six Fire Songs.

Demanten på Marssnön (The Diamond on the March Snow) and Illalle (To Evening) settings of first a Swedish and then a Finnish poem by Sibelius were very attractive romantic imaginings with lovely smooth soaring vocal parts complemented by beautifully delicate piano scoring.

Purjein kuutamolla (Sailing in the moonlight) by the Finnish composer Tovio Kuula (1883 -1918) and Fylgia (Spirit) by the Swedish pianist and composer Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871 – 1927) were delightfully lyrical settings that deserve to be better known.

Another Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén (1872 – 1960) did achieve considerable fame in Great Britain in the 1950’s for his Swedish Rhapsody No.1 Op.19 – it was always on the radio. Jillian and Catherine proved that more of his music is worth hearing with their fine performance of Skogen Sover (The Forest Sleeps).

The duo concluded their recital with two songs by Edvard Grieg, Ein Traum and The Swan.

This was a fascinating recital for Aberdeen University music and sound and even if the Scandinavian songs were not principally part of the most advanced contemporary repertoire they were nevertheless new to me and to most of Thursday’s audience and therefore as in that sense they were indeed “new music” they deserved their place in a sound concert programme.

© Alan Cooper, 2014

Music in the University in association with sound
King’s College Chapel, Aberdeen
Thursday, 6^th November 2014

Philip Mead, an acknowledged master of advanced contemporary piano repertoire is also Founder and Director of the British Contemporary Piano Competition. He is one of the most prolific commissioners of new and exciting piano repertoire. In Thursday’s programme we heard him introduce and play three new world premières of works by composers all three of whom have close connections with Aberdeen University Music working for or having received PhD degrees in composition.

In between some of the new pieces, he performed works by Bartók and Debussy, either because they had features that mirrored aspects of the new works, or because they stood in direct contrast to them.

The first world première was of a work which has been over ten years in gestation. Composer Simon Willson writes that even now he is not entirely sure about his own piece “…now it’s done it makes me feel uneasy. I’m not sure why”. I hope I can put the composer’s feelings at rest when I say that this was one of the best pieces in the recital. Philip Mead explained that this piece follows some of Schoenberg’s ideas on atonal composition before he embraced full serialism. It is a work in which there is absolutely no repetition, he said. Taken literally that is no doubt absolutely true but in another sense it is not true at all. The piece is made up of what the composer refers to as episodes and interludes and even within that boldly recognisable musical patterning there was melodic shaping that had definite structural implications. Chords, trills, contrapuntal writing, repeated notes – all of these contributed to the overall shaping of the music and at the end, the opening melodic sequences were mirrored in chord sequences. This confirmed the composer’s suggestion of arch or sonata form. I felt that structurally it was a particularly satisfying work.

One could say that Willson’s piano writing was quite brittle in its sound textures and so in a totally different way is Bartók’s Suite Op. 14. I was fortunate to be seated where I could get a clear view of Philip Mead’s hands and it was tremendously exciting to watch his extreme virtuosity in action as well as hearing the results in these two pieces. Bartók’s Suite has distinct folk resonances but the rhythms which started out as a reflection of folk dance also suggested the aggressive sounds of 20^th century industrial life – a fascinating piece brilliantly played.

Timothy Raymond’s In the orbit of Venus had an intriguing title. Philip Mead explained that many of its repeated note sections were in fact Morse code signals. As Timothy Raymond’s programme note states there is a vast complexity of reference that gave birth to this piece including the hermetic concept of Fibonacci numbers. I was reminded of a local science expert whose wife was very keen on choral singing. He absolutely hated being dragged along to her concerts and complained endlessly about it. I remember him turning up alone at a sound concert. “I thought you hated music”, I said to him. “Oh no!” he replied. “It’s just her music I hate. This music I absolutely love. It speaks to me in a language I can totally understand”. Sadly the person in question and his wife are no longer alive but I am certain he would have loved Tim Raymond’s piece. It was full of exploratory colour and glorious imaginative visions brought thrillingly to life once again by Philip Mead’s compelling virtuosity.

Debussy’s music often has pictorial references and his Pagodes from Estampes is just one such piece. There was an exhibition in Paris that included Gamelan players which both Debussy and Ravel are said to have attended. Of course, as Philip Mead explained Pagodas and Gamelans are from totally different parts of the world but it is still a great piece and it mirrored the imaginative power of Tim Raymond’s piece.

Ribbons by Paul Tierney made fascinating contrasts between slow playing at the lower end of the piano register and busy music at the upper end of the instrument’s range. I mentioned to the composer after the concert that his music made me think of some of the pieces in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Paul Tierney said that this had never crossed his mind but perhaps there was some underlying influence? Anyway I like Mussorgsky and I enjoyed Tierney’s piece too.

Philip Mead closed his recital with an absolutely astonishing not to say terrifyingly virtuoso performance of Stephen Montague’s Paramell Va (1981). In 1985 Philip Mead formed a duo with Montague called Montague/Mead Piano Plus that tours internationally. This was a minimalist piano piece driven to the utmost extremity and it was included in the programme as being the extreme opposite of Simon Willson’s piece which opened the recital – from a piece with no repeats to one which is all repeats but both phenomenally difficult to play.

With this concert followed immediately by Jillian Bain Christie’s magical tour of Scandinavian vocal music I left the Chapel with my ears and musical sensibilities absolutely “spaced out” – but that at its best is what sound aims to do. It flings the windows of musical experience wide open and is quite different from those concerts that give you no more than what you had been expecting.

© Alan Cooper, 2014

JOHN McLEOD: A COMPOSER PORTRAIT
TO CELEBRATE HIS 80^TH BIRTHDAY

Young Artists play McLEOD

IAN WATT: Guitar
PHILIP SHARP: Piano

COWDRAY HALL
Thursday, 06 November 2014

It is hard to believe that Aberdeen born composer John McLeod has reached his 80^th birthday this year. He was present in the Cowdray Hall to hear two inspired young musicians play a selection of his music dating from 1978 to 2012. Dr Roger Williams introduced a vigorous McLeod who looked at least twenty years younger than his listed age. With Dr Williams he took part in a short pre-concert question and answer session that revealed something of the composer’s early musical inspirations from when he was a pupil at Aberdeen Grammar School as well as some fascinating details regarding the composition of some of the pieces we were about to hear – in particular the composer’s initiation into the art of writing specifically for the guitar – more about that later.

Aberdeen concert audiences are well aware of the matchless instrumental mastery of our Aberdeenshire born guitar virtuoso Ian Watt. Philip Sharp was new to me but his pianistic virtuosity certainly lived up to Ian’s guitar playing so we hope he will be invited back to play in the Lunchbreak Series or at the University again soon.

It was Philip Sharp whose performance opened the recital with McLeod’s Three Protest Pieces (1992 revised in 1999) for piano. These, the composer explained, were his “green” pieces written as an alternative to going on marches or signing petitions. They are certainly more memorable and will be much longer lasting than these other two alternatives. The titles are as follows: (a). The fox, in agony, surrenders his blood to the night. (b). A mountain stream, poisoned and choked with effluents, struggles to reach the sea, and (c). The Stag, its heart pierced by an arrow, disappears into the mist. The titles alone conjure up some very clear images that make very obvious the composer’s concerns. The spiky incisive modernism of the music clearly conveys the composer’s sense of outrage and commitment. These are dramatic pieces of music with angry chords and trenchant lines that match the graphic images delivered by the titles but in all three pieces there were also significant passages of delicate, sensitive and transparent piano writing that were beautifully conveyed to the audience by Philip Sharp’s sensitive and perceptive playing.

Ian Watt’s first contribution to the programme was Fantasy on themes from Britten’s “Gloriana” (2012) for guitar. McLeod has managed to capture Britten’s modern recasting of early music such as the Morris Dance and Pavane in this piece. As Ian Watt himself writes in the accompanying programme note: “The work showcases the instrument as a miniature orchestra”. Ian mentions fanfares, flute and even a brass ensemble. What wonderfully colourful piece of writing for guitar this was! It encapsulated the ideas of operatic drama and pageantry to perfection including the use of the guitar body to produce percussive effects.

Ian, on brilliant form, continued the performance with Three Mythical Pieces (2012) for guitar. All three pieces featured graphically colourful guitar writing – the harp-like chordings in Amphion’s Lyre, the scurrying, scampering lines of Salamander suggesting the lizard’s feet rushing hither and thither through fire and finally and most magical of all, the quietly pensive sense of labyrinthine searching in Ariadne. Above all, these pieces, the Britten Fantasy every bit as much as the Mythical Pieces were marvellously well scored for guitar – the sort of pieces that any really talented guitarist would love to be able to play. Perhaps though, they would have to be as brilliant as Ian Watt in order to give the wonderfully detailed and multicoloured performance that he did.

Philip Sharp was back at the piano for the final piece in the programme. This was McLeod’s Piano Sonata No.1 – a brilliant modern recasting of the idea of Sonata form. There were echos of the technical virtuosity of composer-pianists like Liszt and even Rachmaninov in this music. Exciting rhythmic chording contrasted with expansive melody with all the following musical development leading inexorably, or so it seemed, as we were led there by McLeod, to an exhilarating fun-ride of a fugato and a terrifyingly virtuosic ending. Philip Sharp’s amazing performance confirmed just what a wonderful piece this is – the work of a composer who knows his piano literature inside out and is able to stamp his own personality on a new way of looking at it. This was a true generation spanning musical performance. It gave us a youthful sounding McLeod delivered by two young performers with amazing technical and musical maturity.

© Alan Cooper

TEXTURES AND RESONANCES
Roger B. Williams, Organ

A recital including new music for organ and electronics
King’s College Chapel, Aberdeen
Tuesday, 04 November 2014

Tuesday’s recital of new along with some old music for organ was the ninth such event for Aberdeen University Music with sound givenby Roger Williams M.B.E. As usual, Roger had chosen older works from the repertoire designed to complement the new works. These included two world premières as well as three first ever Scottish performances.

The rich dramatic chord that opened Johann Jakob Froberger’s Toccata no.1 (Libro Quarto 1656) could easily have been the start of some dramatic new piece and in its day, this work would have been exactly that. Froberger is remembered as a keyboard virtuoso, something that emerged clearly in the dizzying swirls of notes that rose above the sturdy held chords. The central section of the work was fugal in texture and Roger Williams proved himself to be in particularly fine fettle with his performance of this propulsive opening piece.

Glimmer by Richard Warp, born in Somerset but since 2006 working in the San Francisco Bay area in California certainly met all the requirements of the title of Tuesday’s recital: “Textures and Resonances”. Upper and lower registers of the Aubertin were conspicuously contrasted suggesting as the programme note said, “an exploration of light and dark”. In both registers, the harmonic clashes within held chords produced pulsing wave patterns that certainly suggested the idea contained within the title “Glimmer”.

The Sonatina in d minor by Christian Ritter featured rich chordal sequences, a fugal section and chiming runs that blossomed into a full carillon of notes brilliantly played by Roger Williams. Its title made it the perfect introduction to the first world première of the recital. Sonatina (2014) was the title of the new work by Peter Relph. Like Ritter’s piece, Peter Relph’s Sonatina also had rich chording, tonal yet not without moments of daring in its harmonic language. Melody also featured in this work and contributed powerfully to its overall shaping – a really well thought out and meaningfully constructed composition that was particularly well suited to the organ – not surprising since Peter Relph is himself an organist.

Epitaph (2014) by Philip Cooke was composed in memory of Sir John Tavener who died in November last year. Cooke’s music is not really like Tavener’s, he has developed what is very much his own musical language and yet was there not something of Tavener in the opening chord sequences and especially in the almost rumbling conclusion of the work? If Richard Warp’s piece was an essay in light and dark this was also true of Philip Cooke’s piece. The sombre opening chords were contrasted with the light of an upper flute melody and later bird-like utterances. What is a special feature of Cooke’s fresh approach to tonality is the way in which he makes strident chords melt beautifully into consonance so that the music has strength tempered with a sweetness that is always thoroughly tasteful.

Wonderfully sturdy pedal work was at the heart of Pachelbel’s Toccata in d minor as well as its running rising and falling sequences accomplished with magnificent aplomb by Roger Williams. The idea of Textures and Resonances is at the heart of most French organ music and it was there though in very different ways in the next two pieces: Tierce en Taille from the Messe pour les Paroisses by François Couperin and Jésus accepte la Souffrance by Olivier Messiaen. Flutes, tremulant and delicious ornaments marked the Couperin and in the Messiaen, pairs of chords dissonant then consonant marked the character of the music. Low and high registers and more than in any of the other pieces contrasting dynamics delivered the impact of Messiaen’s heartfelt music.

If the Couperin and Messiaen were both deeply religious music, the next piece quite deliberately eschewed that sound world. This was the first of the evening’s works to use electronics along with the live organ performance. Actually in the Chapel the electronic element was quite powerful and it was difficult to separate out the organ contribution from the bustling rhythmical backing track. That, of course, was possibly exactly what was intended and was a measure of the success of the performance. For a different sort of balance however you can go on Google. Type in Eduardo Costa Roldán: Argon – and you will hear a performance from Union Chapel, London where the organ is rather more prominent. The performer is none other than Roger B. Williams. If you are an organ enthusiast this is possibly the better version but if you want to follow Roldán’s intention of taking the organ “out of the church and into a club” Tuesday’s version with its throbbing Latin percussion is the one for you. I found both totally captivating and worth listening to.

The final piece was Wrangham by Claire Singer. It is a piece for Remembrance and is named after a tiny place not far from Insch. It began with a high pitched electronic note then developed chordal and melodic content soon blended subtly and deliciously with the organ. Here was another contemporary work that embraced tonality in a new way. It was a rather lovely piece with a powerful emotional charge to it – a moving conclusion to the recital.

This was by no means all however. There was a question and answer session after the performance which was very helpful – and ooh yes; there was some very nice cake too. Why was there cake? Well, there were two birthdays to celebrate. Both sound and the Aubertin organ are celebrating their tenth anniversaries this year – so very many happy returns to both!

© Alan Cooper, 2014

MARISCHAL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

CHRISTOPHER GRAY: Conductor

LUCY HOLE: Soprano
JOSH BAXTER: Tenor
MATTHEW OLIVER: Baritone
MORVEN LIND: Mezzo

MATTHEW RICHARDSON: Director

JOHNSTON HALL, ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY
Sunday, 02 November 2014

Joe Stollery & James Leonard: Nature’s House
Mark McNamee & Ruth Potts: Solace

Any opera project requires a huge input of talent, effort and of course money so I should begin by mentioning The Leverhulme Trust without whose generous help today’s fantastic performances could not have happened. Some years ago Scottish Opera staged performances of five short operas where in each case they invited pairs of artists, a librettist and a composer, to create a short work which was then performed by Scottish Opera orchestra and singers. The artists involved were all well established adults. Today’s event is probably more important in that the artists were all young students who may well be inspired to create further works in the genre. For the adults it was possibly more of a one off experience.

Encouraging New Opera is a collaborative project created by Scottish Opera and the University of Aberdeen Music Department. The three year project began in May 2013. Two teams of undergraduate students took part in workshops under the expert guidance of Gareth Williams (Scottish Opera Composer in Residence) and Matthew Richardson (Director) and today’s Operas were the first fruits of the collaboration.

Designer Tricia Kenny was responsible for the staging and costumes of the two operas. The antique desk, globe of the world drinks cabinet and ancient wheelchair created a splendid atmosphere even before the work started – a great example of how just a few well-chosen items can create the impression on stage of a whole world. The librettist for the first opera, Nature’s House was by James Leonard and the music score was the work of Joe Stollery. In this first opera I was particularly impressed by Joe Stollery’s orchestral scoring. Its colours instantly created a powerful atmosphere and changes of mood and characterisation were multiple and instantly recognisable matching James Leonard’s libretto splendidly. Stollery’s writing for strings, woodwind and his refined use of percussion including piano and celeste really brought the performance to life. I was always anxious to know what was going to happen next and the music was an important part of that. The scoring was tonal and I am pleased to hear young composers, and some less young ones too finding new ways of deploying this musical language. The vocal parts always had fresh and unexpected turns to them. There was great singing too from the principals. Joshua Baxter an Aberdeen graduate now studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London was always good but his voice has matured both in strength and beauty. It was interesting that in both operas the tenor was “the baddie”. Soprano Lucy Hole was splendid both in her singing and acting and there was a great character performance from baritone Matthew Oliver. The story of the opera was right up to date with its theme of conservation versus industry and Charles (the baddie) lost out in spite of his alpha male attempts to dominate the action.

The second work had Ruth Potts as librettist and Mark McNamee as composer. There were some nice touches of comedy at the beginning of the piece in which the music matched the dialogue very nicely. The piece soon turned to the dark side though and we should have guessed that from the appearance of Matthew Oliver as the Hotel Manager – straight out of Hammer Horror he was! Josh Baxter again a baddie – at least at the beginning of the work had a less highlighted part in this opera. The core of the work centred round the vocal duos between Lucy Hole as Ailsa, the bride to be and Morven Lind as the ghost of Helen Lund who had committed suicide from the window of the bridal suite in the hotel. There was gorgeous vocal writing backed by strings from composer Mark McNamee and fabulous text from Ruth Potts. As well as being a writer, Ruth is a multitalented musician – is she Aberdeen University’s Stephen Sondheim? I liked the rather spooky spoken choruses from members of the orchestra too. At the end, after Ailsa had been enticed to her death in the sea by the ghost of Helen Gunn and a bereft Duncan played by Josh Baxter had been led away by the Hotel Manager a new couple played by Peter Relph and Isobel Epstein were led into the bridal suite by the Hotel Manager – another nice Hammer Horror touch.

The creation of the librettists and composers were top notch as were the performances of the singers and the marvellous orchestra. If the students from my time, the mid nineteen sixties, had been whisked forward in time to witness these performances we simply would not have believed it possible – so three cheers for Aberdeen University Music and Scottish Opera!

© Alan Cooper