London Sinfonietta/Sound Intermedia - Reich/Richter (Royal Festival Hall, London, 6 April 2023)

Concert from earlier in the month, broadcast last week.  The mouthwatering programme is themed around New York composers, or those with connections to the area, its second half given over to 40 minutes of Steve Reich.

First, we get the transformed Insect sounds of Mira Calix's Nunu; the world premiere of Anna Clyne's Fractured Time, and the joyous cacophony of Julia Wolfe's Tell Me Everything, inspired by a tape of Mexican brass music.  Bookending these in the concert's first half are two arrangements of an uncharacteristically brief Julius Eastman piece, Joy Boy from 1974.  Opening the programme in a wind-centred iteration, then leading into the interval in a strings-based version, it's a great pocket-sized example of the subtle constant transformation in Eastman's music.  

Reich/Richter, composed in 2019 and given album release last year, was composed by Steve Reich to accompany an abstract film by Gerhard Richter.  The patterned, textured film was shown to the audience for this performance, but with this obviously unavailable to broadcast listeners the music has to stand by itself.  And it most certainly does, in instantly recognisable Reich form across its four sections, but still managing to sound fresh in this late period of the New York legend's career.

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pw: sgtg

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.

 

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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)

Rzewski, Eastman, Furrer, Haas - London & Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festivals 2016

Still digging through some radio broadcasts that I never got around to using, so here's a pair of back-to-back episodes from BBC Radio 3's Hear And Now programme that aired in early 2017.

Covered first is the opening night of the London Contemporary Music Festival 2016, which was titled "In Search Of Julius Eastman".  The new music ensemble Apartment House turn in a great performance of Eastman's hour-plus, gradually unfolding Femenine - see below for the vintage recording that they used to help piece together the basic score.  It's paired in this concert with Frederic Rzewski's propulsive (then reflective) memorial to the Attica uprising, Coming Together.

At the Huddersfield festival, Klangforum Wien perform Beat Furrer's Intorno Al Bianco, a stunning, at times ear-splitting work for clarinet and string quartet.  Trombone Unit Hannover are also featured in Georg Freidrich Haas' subtle blending of multiple trombones, aus frier Lust... verbunden.  In between, the programme returns to London for a special setup to allow the London Sinfonietta to perform Furrer's epic FAMA.  Taking inspiration from Ovid's Metamorphoses, where the title refers to "a place where every sound in the world is heard", Furrer's sound-world simply has to be heard to be believed.

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pw: sgtg

Julius Eastman at SGTG:
Unjust Malaise
Femenine (live 1974) 
Georg Friedrich Haas at SGTG:
In Vain

Julius Eastman - Unjust Malaise (2005 compi, rec. 1973 - circa 1981)

Some more of Julius Eastman's wonderful, singular music (previously posted: Femenine), in the first major excavation of recorded work from his lifetime.  Eastman can be heard at the end of this collection describing his style as "organic music", in which material is carried across from segment to segment before being gradually replaced by new material, in a distinctive, personalised take on the Downton NYC minimalist circle that he moved in.  Like Femenine, the six works in three hours contained here can sometimes require patience, but the payoffs are magical.

The compilation starts off in 1973 with Stay On It for voice, piano, violin, clarinet, saxes and percussion.  The central theme, sounding like an uplifting gospel/soul refrain, acts as a framing device for the increasingly abstract and improvisational sections, before the saxes start to play a more solemn reduction of the theme and piece ambles bluesily toward a quiet, reflective ending.  If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? (1977) for a larger, brass-dominated ensemble, isn't as immediately accessible - its focus on simple ascending chromatic scales can feel a bit spartan for a while, but it's well worth sticking with.

Next we get to hear Eastman's wonderful baritone voice in his unaccompanied prelude to The Holy Presence of Joan D'Arc, as the title figure is exhorted by various saints to "speak boldly".  The rest of the 1981 work is a formidable inquisition by ten cellos, and another highlight of the collection.  Lastly, a full concert from Northwestern University in 1980 (with its spoken intro tacked on the end, for whatever reason) presents three of Eastman's most iconoclastic pieces, played on four pianos.  Eastman explains that his use of the N-word in two of the titles (apparently part of a longer series) was as reappropriation; likewise, the rhythmically strident Gay Guerilla a call to activism.  All three are absolutely stunning to listen to, and occupy a sweet spot between the tightly formalised piano work of Reich and Glass and the abstract, textural drones of Charlemagne Palestine.

Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3

Julius Eastman - Femenine (rec. 1974, rel 2016)

We've already heard Julius Eastman (1940-1990) very briefly a couple of times on this blog, as part of Meredith Monk's 80s vocal ensemble.  But as well as a talented singer, Eastman was also a singular minimalist composer, whose music has only become widely available in the last fifteen years or so.  Marginalised in life, as a gay black man, Eastman had some acceptance in the New York avant-garde scene, but in the 80s wound up homeless and passed away largely unnoticed, most of his scores lost.  Thankfully, the steady trickle of recordings that have appeared recently are helping to address his importance, and share the absolute joy of his music on recordings like this hour-plus piece recorded on 6 November 1974 in Albany NY.

Femenine was recorded by the S.E.M. Ensemble, with Eastman on piano.  The first sound you hear is the proto-rhythm-track of mechanised sleigh bells as the ensemble tune up, before the piece starts in earnest at the 3:25 mark.  With the sleigh bells providing the rhythmic base, the backbone of the piece that is now introduced is a two-note vibraphone figure around which the piano, then the rest of the ensemble will gradually build up and reap stunning rewards.

It's a rough recording, sure, and there's occasional bum notes; but for me this just adds to the beauty of the work.  I actually heard a BBC Proms recording of Femenine about a year or two ago, and didn't even keep the file I'd downloaded - it was just too perfect compared to the ragged glory of this original performance.  As it comes into full flower in its second half, with Eastman's piano becoming more and more impassioned, and the ensemble parts reach their logical conclusion, the heart-tugging gorgeousness of Femenine just can't be denied.  Highly recommended.

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