Bainbridge, Bartók, Skryabin:  Barry Douglas (piano), David Robertson (conductor), BBC Symphony Orchestra, Barbican Hall, London, 9.02.2007 (AO)

Venice has long been an icon for modern composers from Britten to Nono to Sciarrino.  It’s a city built on water, where land, sea and sky blend in seamless horizons.  On sunny days, the water sparkles with light, and reflections of the houses flicker on its surface, ever distorted in the moving current.  It’s an ideal metaphor for modern music, which has long left “dry land”, or conventional form.  The ideas that Venice symbolises inspired Simon Bainbridge’s two orchestral pieces, Diptych 1 and 2.

Part 1 is deceptively smooth.  A series of chords dart out from a background so understated as to be barely audible.  They oscillate like ripples in water.  Each is individually coloured, by mandolin, or harp, piano, and notably, oboe.  It’s like a meditation on the fluidity of sound.  Often the flow between chord and silence was held by the reverberation of cymbals.  Even when no actual note was played, sound continued to expand into space. 

Bainbridge prefers the two parts to be performed separately.  This will cause all kinds of problems.  How do you choose something to act as a bridge between the two parts? The memory of the first needs to linger in the imagination, so that the second part can be appreciated in context.  An easy solution might be to use a longish Luftpause, or even programme the parts before and after an interval.  Here, a more challenging solution was chosen, to extend the mood with a different piece of music altogether.  It was daring, for this meant listening to Bartók’s Piano Concerto no 3 while at the same time digesting the memory of Diptych 1 and anticipating Diptych 2.  It’s a challenge, but it’s perhaps what we do unconsciously anyway, as whatever we listen to is inevitably coloured by what we’ve learned before, and the context of the particular situation. Whoever plans BBC programmes has the knowledge and taste to choose material that stimulates us to think from different angles.  It’s that Venetian “ripple effect” again, where things morph and reshape themselves.

This most restrained of Bartók’s piano concertos extended the gentle mood of Diptych 1.  Given the circumstances in which it was written, in this programme, it might evoke images like Aschenbach, or perhaps the decaying palaces of Venice.  More trenchantly, though, it, too, inhabits an amorphous state, reinforcing the strange world Bainbridge evokes. Indeed, it extends the perspective, because the concerto references music from different points in time, from Bach to Hungarian folk dance, Beethoven and even possibly Grieg, whose Piano Concerto Bartók was studying while writing the piece. Even the references to bird song imply temporal interpretation, as bird songs, like reflections in water, are both transient and timeless.  It ended with the jaunty allegro vivace which Barry Douglas played with a joyfully light touch.

Diptych 2, the second part of Bainbridge’s pair, is more inventive than the first.  Exploratory chords still dominate but are more varied and multi-layered.  Some figures have circular form, others shoot off in different directions.  There’s a gently pulsing sense of movement, as if the sounds were feeling their way around, like water filling hollow spaces, overflowing or being pulled back by some unknown tide.  This isn’t big statement bravura music, but rather a closely observed exploration of the rhythms of nature.  The interest lies in the detail with which small figures assemble, develop and change, sometimes with the subtlest tonal adjustment.  For example, certain motifs are underlined by the piano at its lowest register, giving a sense of deep sonority.  Similarly, the harp shoots out an unexpectedly loud and adventurous flourish, to which a solo trombone responds.   There are beautiful figures for brass, trombones in particular.   Playing the trombone quietly isn’t easy, and it must be ever more difficult to sustain this level of nuance and modulation over long passages.  Anyone can do flashy.  More impressive is the restraint Robertson gets from this orchestra, who have grown to understand him well in the short time he’s been conducting them.  

Bainbridge himself describes the process as an “aural jigsaw”. It describes the way he forms sub-groups within the orchestra, with frequent use of solo parts.  In his own words, he’s created “three reinvented chamber orchestras, each of which has one of three interrelated tempos”, to each of which are assigned three two-minute pieces involving different ensembles.  These were “initially composed as complete, organic miniatures”.  Many years ago, Bainbridge assisted Serebrier in conducting Ives difficult Fourth Symphony. Ives’s ideas were ahead of their time. 

If Diptych 1 and 2 need to be listened to in contemplative detail, Skyrabin’s The  Poem of Ecstasy demands awe, not analysis.  This highly perfumed Technicolor explosion celebrates extremist excess.  Ecstasy, by definition, isn’t rational, but intoxicating. Providing you take the composer on his own terms, this is huge fun.  At last Robertson and the orchestra could let out the stops and indulge in the extravaganza.  Nonetheless, the BBC’s intelligent programming was still evident, for the piece connects in a subtle way to the rest of the programme.  The orchestra may be huge, but the music grows from miniature motifs and deft little ornamentations.  Skyrabin uses chords for dramatic effect and chromatic richness, augmenting them with complicated solo decoration.  It was a gaudily over-the–top finale, after which nothing else would have sounded right.

Anne Ozorio