SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD UK CONCERT REVIEW
 

63^rd Aldeburgh Festival – Opening Weekend: John-Pierre Joyce reports on the first three concerts (J-PJ)

 

Friday 11 June

Berio, Benjamin: Soloists, London Sinfonietta/Frank Ollu, Snape Maltings
Berio: Recital 1

Benjamin: Into the Little Hill

Mezzo soprano – Susan Bickley

Soprano – Clare Booth

The 2010 Aldeburgh Festival kicked off with operatic dazzle. Benjamin’s ‘lyric tale’ Into the Little Hill deserves more frequent performances, especially given the modest forces it requires. With two singers taking on the roles of narrators, chorus and protagonists, the opera is a reworking of the Pied Piper tale. Director John Fulljames opted for a minimalist staging, with Susan Bickley (the minister and his wife) and Clare Booth (their daughter and the stranger) moving in and out of bare stone rings, and members of the London Sinfonietta visibly seated at the rear of the stage. With more than a passing reference to the evils of persecution (the rats are literally ‘cleansed’ from the town), it is a disturbing work, and Bickley and Booth brought a dark intensity to their respective roles.

Into the Little Hill was preceded by Berio’s 1972 stage drama Recital 1. A bizarre but engaging work, it traces the mental breakdown of a solo recitalist (Bickley) as she at first bemoans the failure of her piano accompanist to turn up, then traces her failed relationships through snatches of sung repertoire, ranging from Monteverdi through to Wagner to Turnage. Bickley ably and seamlessly moved from one fragment to the next, tracing the singer’s gradual demise and weaving Berio’s vocal lines between the sometimes chaotic interjections from the excellent London Sinfonietta.

Saturday 12 June

Skryabin, Messiaen: Håkon Austbø (piano), Britten Studio
Skryabin: Piano Sonata No. 7, Op. 64 ‘White Mass’, Piano Sonata No. 10, Op. 70

Messiaen: La Bouscarle from Catalogue d’ Oiseaux, No.s XIII (Noël), XVIII (Regard du silence), X (Regard de l’ esprit de joie) from Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus

This year’s festival touches on the relationship between science and music, and Håkon Austbø’s recital was preceded by a discussion on the nature of synaesthesia. The condition – which associates colours with letters, sounds, touches and even taste – affected Messiaen and, to a much lesser degree, Skryabin. Yet the composers’ colour associations hardly make an impact on most listeners. More interesting is the music itself. The two Skryabin sonatas reflect a gentling of the exotic lushness with which Skryabin had become associated. The seventh sonata in particular shows traces of Liszt and even Chopin, while the climaxes and trilling trilling in the tenth tested but never broke the Austbø’s nerve. Austbø was equally well-equipped to tackle Messiaen’s bird music in the ‘La Bouscarle’ (Cetti’s warbler) excerpt from the composer’s birdsong catalogue. Watching how he at first struggled with, and then mastered the keyboard in this work and then the three movements from Vingt Regards was fascinating. Only the 17^th contemplation on silence offered a respite of tranquillity, before the rhythmic bounce of the ‘Spirit of Joy’ (Regard X) once more brought him to the edge and back.

Saturday 12 June

JS Bach, Benjamin, Berio, Boulez: Soloist, Britten Sinfonia/ Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Snape Maltings
JS Bach: Keyboard Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052, Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D, BWV 1050
JS Bach, trans. Benjamin: Canon and Fugue from The Art of the Fugue
JS Bach, trans. Berio: Contrapunctus XIX from The Art of the Fugue
Boulez: Dérive
Benjamin: At First Light

Nowadays, there is something odd about playing Bach on modern instruments. The appearance of a modern metal flute in the fifth Brandenburg Concerto was disorientating, and Aimard’s playing of a concert grand in that work and in the D minor keyboard concerto took some getting used to. Aimard himself seemed unsure where he was going at the start of the concerto, with a ponderous opening allegro that failed to get off the ground. The darkly intense Adagio was much more up his street, with delicate string support from the Britten Sinfonia. By the time he reached the spritely third movement, Aimard seemed to have relaxed into the swing of things. The Brandenburg Concerto also had its ups and downs. Violin soloist Jacqueline Shave sounded unusually timid, and Aimard’s virtuoso passage towards the end of the first movement felt lumpy. At least all three soloists plus orchestra blended well for the good humoured final allegro.

Of the two orchestral transcriptions of excerpts from Bach’s Art of the Fugue, Benjamin’s was the least arresting. A pretty straight rendition of the Canon all’ ottava and Contrapunctus VII, it included some fine but hardly outstanding writing for horn and pizzicato strings. Berio’s efforts for the Contrapunctus XIX were much more interesting, particularly in his final homage-like sustained cluster of notes.

Boulez’s Dérive is exactly that – a chamber work derived of material left over from his 1981 work Repons. Worth an occasional airing, it was most interesting for the musical ideas that bounced from each instrument, and for the inclusion of the vibraphone. More exciting was Benjamin’s At First Light. Inspired by the textural fluidity and light transformations in a Turner painting, it oozed orchestral brilliance and rhythmic vitality.

 

John-Pierre Joyce