BBC Proms 2022: Marius Neset / London Sinfonietta - Geyser (3 Sept 2022)

The last post from this year's Proms is another world premiere, in this work composed by Norwegian saxophonist Marius Neset.  Playing with the London Sinfonietta, Neset took his geologically-inspired suite from its calm beginnings to frenetic interlocking patterns with great solos and on to much more besides.  Don't take the track splits I've added in as necessarily accurate - this was mostly guesswork as only the first couple of sections are applauded, all the rest segues, and I had nothing else to refer to.  But do enjoy all the twists and turns of this incredible work, with Neset's core quintet blending wonderfully with the ensemble.

link

pw: sgtg

BBC Proms 2022: Public Service Broadcasting - This New Noise (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, 30 Aug 2022)

A special commission to mark the centenary of the BBC, This New Noise was composed by "retro-futurist" band Public Service Broadcasting.  Since 2009, they've been creating historical narrative albums like this, and have given a Proms performance before - after which they were approached as the ideal artists to create something for the upcoming 100th anniversary of the BBC in 2022.

So here it is, premiered live with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jules Buckley.  The 50-minute suite of eight pieces traces the first decade and a half of BBC radio, with spoken word narratives representing those who brought it into existence.  I'm assuming most of these were recreated by voice actors, as the recordings seldom sound 90-100 years old, but the voices mesh well with the orchestra and core trio of the band.  Musically, I'm hearing surface similarities to Max Richter, maybe A Winged Victory For The Sullen, but with more rhythmic drive than either: PSB's motorik-krautrock influences frequently come to the fore.  Folk singer-songwriter Seth Lakeman provides the only sung vocal in a lovely brief cameo.

The visual elements of this performance were also key to the narrative really hitting the mark historically and emotionally - you can hear the radio announcer mention them at the beginning and end of the broadcast.  This made me track down the BBC4 TV broadcast to watch it all, and as this really did add another dimension to a great concert, I've included it (in what I believe is an SGTG first!) as an additional download option.

 

radio broadcast link

TV broadcast link (mp4, 2.3GB)

pw for both: sgtg

BBC Proms 2022: Amjad Ali Khan (21 August 2022)

Sunday morning ragas in the Albert Hall, courtesy of sarod master Amjad Ali Khan, his sons Amaan and Ayaan, and two percussionists.  Amaan and Ayaan perform the opening raga before introducing their father to play (and also briefly sing) a solo spotlight, before all five musicians close the concert together.  The mostly uninteruppted drone, even under spoken annoucements and moments of retuning, gives the full programme a wonderful immersive flow, so download and enjoy an hour and a half of sublime meditation.

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pw: sgtg

BBC Proms 2022 - NYOGB plays Elfman, Gershwin & Ravel (6 Aug 2022)

A stunning Proms concert full of colour, texture, rhythm and everything else from Britain's premier teenage ensemble, the National Youth Orchestra Of Great Britain.  First up was a new work written specially for them by film & TV heavyweight Danny Elfman.  The 23 minutes of Wunderkammer are by turns boisterous and fun, then eerie and dramatic, picking up the pace again to finish off the piece in dramatic style.

After some stage re-arranging (over 100 players in that opening), the programme stays in the US but winds back a century.  Well, not quite a century, as this is Ferde Grofé's orchestration from the 40s, but any kind of Rhapsody In Blue is good with me, and this one has Simone Dinnerstein as guest pianist.  The first half closes with a little bit more Gershwin, an arrangement of My Man's Gone Now, then the second half is given over to Ravel's complete ballet Daphnis & Chloé.  All of it sounds magnificent, beautifully rendered by the hugely talented young players.

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BBC Proms 2022: BBC Philharmonic plays Aho, Saariaho & Shostakovich (4 Aug 2022)

Another Proms highlight, this time pairing a couple of Finnish composers with Shostakovich's final symphony.  For the opening work, the BBC Philharmonic were joined on theremin by Carolina Eyck, for whom the theremin concerto Eight Seasons was originally written.  Kalevi Aho (b. 1949 in Forssa) was inspired by some of the shamanistic aspects of Sami culture, tying this in to the 'conjuring music from thin air' aspect of the theremin.  The instrument blends in beautifully with the orchestra, making full use of its dynamic and tonal range; as an 'encore' of sorts, Eyck gives the audience a demonstration of the theremin's capabilities.

Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952, Helsinki) has featured on SGTG a few times before (see below), so I always love hearing more from her.  The two-part Vista was inspired by a drive along the Californian coast, and saw Saariaho consciously varying her usual techniques with great sweeping atmospherics in the first section and driving energy in the second.  To close the programme, the orchestra give a cracking rendition of Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15, its sombre melancholy balanced by frequent flashes of wit.

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Kalevi Aho at SGTG:

Solo XV

Kaija Saariaho at SGTG:

Du Cristal...À la Fumée, Nymphéa

Lonh, Près, NoaNoa, Six Japanese Gardens

Graal Théâtre, Solar, Lichtbogen

Überzeugung, Nuits Adieux

BBC Proms 2022: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - From 8-Bit To Infinity (31 July 2022)

The first of its kind for the BBC Proms - a concert given over to video game music, from the 80s (the opening piece) to the present day.  The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra brought this music off the monitor screen and on to the stage in fine style, in a roughly chronological journey showing the maturation of gaming soundtracks through the 90s to the early 21st century.  Having not really been a gamer since the early 90s, pretty much all of this music was new to me, and really brought home the wide scope and ingenuity of these (mostly Japanese) composers.  

 

A couple of composers featured here were familiar to me: soundscaper CHAINES has been previously featured on SGTG, and here pays tribute to Pokémon, Ecco The Dolphin, and Secret Of Mana in a premiere setting.  Hildur Guðnadóttir I also knew from her Chernobyl soundtrack, and her Battlefield 2042 music is one of the definite highlights of this thoroughly engrossing programme.

 

link

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BBC Proms 2022 - Hebrides Ensemble Play Xenakis, Messiaen & Ravel (Proms in Belfast, 18 July 2022)

This year's first post from the Proms actually comes from the Waterfront Hall Studio in Belfast, and is an hour-long chamber concert marking Iannis Xenakis' centenary.  To offer up something special for the occasion, the programme starts with an unpublished early piece by Xenakis: a piano fragment from 1949.  Lasting under a minute, it's nice to hear something so rare by Xenakis.  Straight afterwards, the Hebrides Ensemble dive in to the composer's late period with Akea (1986) for piano and string quartet, with the dramatic sonorities making his signature unmistakeble.  Ittidra, one of Xenakis' final works from a decade later, features ghostly, queasy strings, and the Ravel homage À R. (1987) for piano highlights his formative influences, as do the Ravel and Messiaen pieces that fill out a well-chosen programme.

link

pw: sgtg

BBC Concert Orchestra / James McVinnie - Rautavaara, Glass, Pärt, Jóhannsson etc (BBC Proms 2021)

Another great Proms concert, recorded a week ago and this time pairing the BBC Concert Orchestra with organist James McVinnie.  A well-selected programme of atmospheric modern orchestral music is punctuated by a couple of fantastic solo organ pieces, then both come together in the finale.

 

Einojuhani Rautavaara's chilly soundscape Cantus Arcticus is up first, the music woven around taped birdsong captured by Rautavaara in northern Finland in the early 70s.  A brief piece by Judith Weir is next: she describes Still, Glowing as "an attempt at ambient music".  The first feature for James McVinnie is Philip Glass' Mad Rush, in its original organ version - recording by Glass here, or on piano here.  The orchestra return with Arvo Pärt's Festina Lente.

No interval in this performance, so the orchestra continue on with two pieces from the late Jóhann Jóhannsson's Orphée album, reproducing their lovely melancholy in fine style.  In between them is another solo organ spotlight, this time one of Messiaen's Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité.  American composer Missy Mazzoli's Holy Roller is next, taking fragments of Tallis to create "a monument to a non-existent religion", then McVinnie joins the orchestra for Canadian Samy Moussa's incredible A Globe Itself Infolding to give a memorable conclusion to the programme.

link

pw: sgtg

Arvo Pärt at SGTG: Spiegel Im Spiegel, etc

Jóhann Jóhannsson at SGTG: Fordlandia / Orphée

and lots of Philip Glass.

Manchester Collective / Mahan Esfahani - Górecki, Eastman, Tabakova etc (BBC Proms 2021)

String-based brilliance from a live concert broadcast last Tuesday.  The Manchester Collective ensemble were founded five years ago, and have since been making waves in the contemporary classical world with works by groundbreaking composers like those featured here.  For their Proms debut, the Collective led by Rakhi Singh appeared with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani.

 

Esfahani is the star turn on the programme's opener and closer, starting with Górecki's uncharacteristically rollicking Harpsichord Concerto, a suitably energetic curtain-raiser.  The ensemble then dial down the tempo for Edmund Finnis' atmospheric The Centre Is Everywhere, which lent its title to the Collective's debut album.  The first half of the concert concludes with Julius Eastman's Holy Presence Of Joan D'Arc, its churning ten cello arrangement reconfigured for full string ensemble.  Shame we don't get the full sung prelude (it's condensed into a brief spoken passage), but the ensemble's version of the main piece is fantastic.

 

After the interval comes another work that's featured on these pages before (all links below) in Dobrinka Tabakova's Suite In Old Style, its Rameau-influenced writing as entrancing as ever.  Mahan Esfahani returns for the fun swing and mellow blues of Joseph Horovitz's Jazz Concerto in its version for harpsichord, making for a memorable finale.  That's not all though, as the Collective return for a great encore performance of the frenetic Orawa by Wojciech Kilar.  Highly recommended, top-notch playing all round in a superb programme.

 

link

pw: sgtg

Henryk Górecki at SGTG:
Early works
Symphony No. 3
Beatus Vir
O Domina Nostra
Miserere
Kleines Requiem / Lerchenmusik

Totus Tuus

Julius Eastman:

Unjust Malaise (incl. Holy Presence & full Prelude)

Femenine (live 1974)

Femenine (live 2016)

Edmund Finnis:

In Situ (Proms 2020)  

Dobrinka Tabakova:

String Paths (incl. Suite In Old Style)

Centuries Of Meditations (live 2019)

Anoushka Shankar - Live at BBC Proms, with Manu Delago, Gold Panda, Britten Sinfonia (2020)

Another broadcast from this year's Proms, recorded on Friday 4 September.  In the centenary of Ravi Shankar's birth, this concert showcased how one of his daughters, Anoushka, has brought Indian music and the sound of the sitar into the 21st century.

First up is a half-hour-long collaboration between Anouskha Shankar and a friend of hers, the electronic musician Derwin Shlecker (who performs as Gold Panda).  Based on raga structure, the suite they perform together builds and flows beautifully.  The main part of the concert then introduces percussionist Manu Delago, a regular collaborator of Anoushka's, and also the strings of the Britten Sinfonia.  It was another inspired combination that expanded on Anoushka's compositions in fine style, with a good mix of material both propulsive and reflective (Flight made me think of the title track from Song For Everyone).  Recommended.

link
pw: sgtg

Reich, Glass, Nancarrow et al performed by London Sinfonietta (BBC Proms 2020)

A programme of "pulsing cityscapes" from the London Sinfonietta, recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall sans audience on Tuesday 1 September.  Some wonderful, ear-bending sounds came out of this - as soon as the stately chords of Glass' Facades fade away, what comes next is a miniature for toy piano and toy boombox.  This piece is East Broadway by Julia Wolfe, one of the Bang On A Can founders - after her grand epic Flower Power earlier this year, it was nice to hear the contrast of something so brief and bizarre.

Orchestral arrangements of two of Conlon Nancarrow's Studies For Player Piano follow, with the expanded instrumentation really highlighting the fiendish complexity of Nancarrow's writing.  A spotlight for three more contemporary composers is next, with Tansy Davies' funk-influenced Neon, Edmund Finnis' renaissance/baroque-cut-and-paste In Situ and Anna Meredith's distorted bassoon piece Axeman.  The finale is Steve Reich's City Life, which more than ably demonstrates its title in the trademark pulse and orchestration, and in the sampled sounds from the streets of NYC.  These include voices used both in the style of Different Trains, where the cadence of the speech informs the melody, and in phased overlays like his early work Come Out.

link
pw: sgtg

Suzanne Ciani, London Contemporary Orchestra et al - Pioneers Of Sound (BBC Proms 2018)

A fantastic feast for the ears from the BBC Proms two years ago, with music by some true sonic pioneers - and all pieces recorded in surround sound for maximum effect on headphones.  The concert starts subtly with an atmospheric piece of tape music by Delia Derbyshire, before bursting into life, and coming bang up to date, with Knockturning by Manchester-based sound artist Cee Haines (stylized as CHAINES).

Laurie Spiegel's music is featured next, but with no electronics as might be expected - Only Night Falls is a rare orchestral work by Spiegel.  The next part of the concert, and the highlight for me, returns to electronic music in stunning style, as Suzanne Ciani sits down at the Buchla synth for her Improvisation On Four Sequences.  It's a heady immersion in expertly-tweaked electronics, and for any connoisseurs out there of "radio presenters who can't pronounce Moog properly", you're in for an extra treat at the end of it.

The stage is then reconfigured for the two orchestras (one amplified with echo effects), electronics and turntables required for the epic finale.  Daphne Oram's Still Point was written in 1949 when she was just 23, and more than lives up to the Pioneers Of Sound concept.  The score was thought lost until some drafts emerged and led to a Proms premiere in 2016, then a full score was found shortly afterwards which at last allowed for the full performance captured here.  Next week - music from this year's Proms.

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pw: sgtg

A Winged Victory For The Sullen & Nils Frahm - Live At The Albert Hall, BBC Proms 2015

Some nice juicy repeats of older concerts in this year's BBC Proms broadcast programme - for obvious reasons, the live schedule had to be significantly downsized.  Here's a stunning event that I missed when it first happened, with another one to be posted next Monday.

As both main artists allude to, this Proms concert was in large part thanks to BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, who'd been promoting their music on her show and ended up introducing them live here at the Royal Albert Hall.  A Winged Victory For The Sullen appear first, performing two mini-suites from their Atomos album (see links list below), the languid, melancholy sound given some extra heft by the London Brass.  There was also a visual dimension with the dancers of Studio Wayne McGregor.

After a seamless transition that features a short collaborative improvisation, AWVFTS leave the stage in the hands of Nils Frahm and his pianos, synths & toilet brushes (see image above).  Frahm performs an equally spellbinding set of his Spaces-era (in links list below) material, moving from the sequencer-based Says to a couple of piano pieces, then finishing up with his epic Toilet Brushes/More medley.

link
pw: sgtg

AWVFTS at SGTG:
s/t debut
Atomos
Nils Frahm at SGTG:
The Bells
7Fingers
Felt
Spaces
Collaborative Works

BBC Proms in Japan: The Experimental Session (3rd November 2019)

This concert took place at the fringes of the first BBC Proms in Japan, a six-day festival last November headed up by the Scottish Symphony Orchestra.  At the EdgeOf venue in Shibuya, Tokyo, artists and composers from the Japanese avant-garde journeyed into sound for an engrossing hour and a half, and the concert was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Boxing Day.

The first performer is Sugai Ken, who creates 'vernacular electronic music' that he describes as "neo-japonica".  It's a fascinating 20 minutes of drone & glitch electro-acoustic sound, vocal samples and more.  The middle set spotlights two instrumentalists, on saxophone and piano.  Firstly, Masanori Oishi performs two solo sax pieces, followed by Emiko Mirua on two pieces for piano, including a lovely Takemitsu miniature.

Oishi and Miura then perform together, on a short improvisation and a lengthy piece by Jacob Ter Veldhuis (aka JacobTV) entitled Sho-Myo, which translates as 'voice and wisdom'.  Set in three movements and sampling Japanese Buddhist chants in the first two, it's a gorgeous sound-world that I'd say is the highlight here.  To close, American composer Carl Stone (who has been resident in Japan since the 90s) performs a stunning 25-minute improv with voice artist Akaihirume.

link
pw: sgtg

Olivier Messiaen - Des Canyons Aux Étoiles (live at BBC Proms, 28 July 2019)

Along with the Turangalîla Symphony, Des canyons aux étoiles... (From the canyons to the stars...) is one of Olivier Messiaen's most epic orchestral works.  The creative spark was a visit to the US that Messiaen undertook in 1972, in response to a commission for music celebrating the upcoming Bicentennial.  Finding himself in Bryce Canyon, Utah, the composer was awestruck by the landscape and started work on something that would capture it in music, along with his usual religious fervour and interest in birdsong.

Des canyons aux étoiles... was the result, and the 90-minute work premiered in 1974.  This recording from just over a week ago saw the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo, tackle its complexity in grand style.  Pianist Nicholas Hodges is in charge of the Messiaenic aviary, with birdsong transcribed not just from American species, but from all over the world, and lengthy passages of this punctuate the powerful sweep of the orchestra.  Des Canyons also has in its score a massive percussion section, including a wind machine, thunder sheet and a geophone; the latter being a large drum of Messiaen's invention, filled with lead pellets.  Listen and be blown away. (P.S. be sure to listen on headphones to get the benefit of the binaural mix.)

link
pw: sgtg

Per Nørgård - Symphony No. 3 (BBC Proms 2018)

Had a great introduction to another fascinating composer over the past week whilst keeping my usual eye on the BBC Proms programme, so here's the performance in question.  The 86-year old Danish composer Per Nørgård was in the audience for this, the UK premiere a week ago of his 3rd Symphony completed in 1975.

This symphony is generally held to be the point where Nørgård fully integrated his composing style, of serial music generated by fractal-like integers in an "infinity series".  After listening to this being discussed in the radio preamble I was expecting something like Xenakis, but Nørgård isn't quite that explosive, at least not in this work.  Instead, it reminded me occasionally of Ligeti, sometimes of the French spectralists, but those were just really fleeting coincidences rather than similarities (there is definitely some microtonality in the strings though, from what I've read).

Overall, I really enjoyed listening to something unique-sounding in its construction and in the way the instrumental groups interact, and definitely want to hear more Nørgård.  The atmospheric moments of the first movement were right up my street, and the longer second movement, once it gets going, is all over the place (in the best possible way) with its epic choral stylings.  Definitely recommended.

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Metropole Orkest - Beneath The Underdog: Charles Mingus Revisited (BBC Proms 2017)

This tribute concert to the legendary composer-bassist-pianist took place on 24th August as part of the Proms, and as I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the broadcast of it, here it is.  The Dutch Metropole Orkest were conducted by Jules Buckley, with great soloists (L-R at front of picture above are Leo Pellegrino, Bart van Lier and Christian Scott) making a more-than-decent fist of 15 Mingus classics in just under two hours.  Boogie Stop Shuffle, IX Love, Gunslinging Bird, Fables Of Faubus, Moanin' to name just a few all sparkle with the invention, wit and irresistible swing that they require, and that's even before mentioning the four vocal pieces.

 

27 year old Kandace Springs was IMO the star of the show - she released her own debut album last year, which I'm now keen to check out.  Her renditions here of Weird Nightmare, Duke Ellington's Sound Of Love and a pair of songs from Joni Mitchell's Mingus collaboration,The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines and God Must Be A Boogie Man are all superb.  The audience were even asked to join in on the chorus of the latter - slightly corny, but it works in the overall celebratory atmosphere.  As the inevitable and Albert Hall-roof-raising finale suggests, you'd Better Git It In Your Soul.

(I lost these files in a Mega blowout in Nov 2018, but got them back thanks to the awesomeness of two commenters - in case anyone wonders what the comments below were about.)

July 2020 update: I've now completely re-done the files for this one, in the style I eventually settled on for these radio broadcasts (track divisions + leaving in radio announcers between songs, etc).
new link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Oh Yeah