SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Michael Nyman: Marie Angel (soprano), Michael Nyman (piano), Michael Nyman Band. Barbican Hall, London 6.12.2007 (BBr)

For over 25 years, the Michael Nyman Band has been playing Nyman’s special blend of rock-funk-minimal-classical fusions and  shows no signs of aging or getting tired. Tonight’s concert at the Barbican – shamefully poorly attended, from where I was sitting the circle and balcony seemed almost empty – shows that not only is Michael Nyman still entertaining and provoking us but, if anything, is getting better.

Starting with a selection of ”greatest hits”, the Band kicked off with Nyman’s In Re Don Giovanni (1977) – a reconstruction of the first 16 bars of the Catalogue Aria from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. It’s a fast and hectic romp with fiddles and piano giving the pulse and with saxes stamping out the striding bass as a euphonium teases us with the tune. The Michael Nyman Band was cooking, make no mistake. In Re... invariably brings the house down and tonight was no exception – the audience was in a good mood and very attentive, waiting to be entertained. Overall, we were not disappointed.

Next came four pieces from Nyman’s score for Peter Greenaway’s Drowning By Numbers (1989) – Sheep ’n’ Tides, Wheelbarrow Walk, Fish Beach and Knowing the Ropes. Wonderfully chunky stuff, with a gorgeous viola solo from Catherine Musker in the second, more reflective, piece. A return to Mozart with I am an Unusual Thing, from Letters, Riddles and Writs (1991), a BBC2 documentary which shows Wolfgang on his deathbed. Marie Angel was the soloist, making the most of the solo line even though  hampered by the one thing which spoiled the show for me – the amplification. Nyman’s Band is an acoustic ensemble, heavily amplified. I have no problem with that but it seemed to me that the balance hadn’t been thought out well enough. Everything was heard at fortissimo, as one homogenised lump of sound, and Angel's voice was quite often simply absorbed into the texture and  lost. Perhaps in rehearsal, in an empty Barbican Hall, everything was fine, but once the audience was added the balance changed. Whatever happened,  it spoiled a fine performance.

The first part ended with the London première of 50,000 Pairs of Feet Can't Be Wrong (2007), a new work with visuals, which set out to explore the impact of long-distance running on the human body. It was commissioned by the Great North Run Cultural Programme. The piece ran (no pun intended) to several movements of -  I am sorry to say - not very interesting music. And not particularly interesting visuals either – projected on a screen behind and above the players. For me, this was Nyman simply going through the motions; some humour, some motor rhythms, some catchy gestures. But the parts didn’t add up to a particularly convincing whole and by this time the amplification was really beginning to bother me.

With all this in mind, I approached the second part with some trepidation, especially as I had read the texts that Nyman sets in his new work I Sonetti Lussuriosi (2007) – “erotic” poems by Pietro Aretino (1492 – 1556). Well, some will view these sonnets as erotic, but others will see them as smut: each of the eight poems concerned one person doing sexual things to another in the most graphic terms. The Barbican claimed that the performance was “…part of the Barbican's autumn exhibition Seduced, which explores a different aspect of the human body - sex and art from ancient times to the present day”.  I’m not much of a prude but I did find the sonnets rather boring: there’s a limit to how many different ways you can write about what I’d like to do to you sexually and keep it interesting.

All of this was in my head as Angel and Nyman came onto the stage but  hen the music started and I knew immediately that Nyman had created one of his very best works.  I would even go so far as to call I Sonetti Lussuriosi a work of genius. This was a new side to Nyman :  the music was subtle and tender, the motoric rhythms were kept to a minimum, used mainly as colouristic devices, and the well-known chunkiness was used in chordal music rather than as a pulse. I am sure that I also heard a tinge of urban jazz in the trumpet part at a couple of points. To be sure, there were faster moments, but they were very restrained.

Angel sang in the original Italian – I assume she did as I couldn’t understand the words – and with the house lights down it was impossible to try and follow the printed texts, but that didn’t matter. The music was sexy and sassy, perhaps going against the very hard language employed, which made the piece all the better. There were two absolutely beautiful violin solos from Gabrielle Lester, although we have to consider the amplification again.

Certainly there was slightly more dynamic range in this work, but the loud music was loud and hard and as Marie Angel sang at the top of her voice throughout when she hit the highest notes the sound was shrill, the fault of the amplification again.   When she sang near the break in her voice she brayed however,  this wasn’t an amplification problem. Then, about two thirds of the way through, Angel’s acoustic changed and she gained some reverberation and sounded to be in a different room to the Band. I did wonder if I was hearing things but since she quickly lost the reverb I presumed that the engineer had had something to do with this. That said, what we heard here was a superb piece of work, and that is ultimately what matters:  I say again, we heard one of the very best works Michael Nyman has presented to his public so far - and I can hardly wait to hear it again perhaps in a studio recording where all the balance problems should be ironed out and the work can be heard fairly and clearly. Nyman set eight of Aretino’s sixteen sonnets – I hope he sets the other eight soon.

All in all a most worthwhile evening and I Sonetti Lussuriosi was one of the most exciting, interesting and satisfying premières I have attended in some time.

Bob Briggs