SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL CONCERT REVIEW

 

Mostly Mozart (5) – Purcell, Benjamin, Birtwistle, Bach/Berio, and Lachenmann: International Contemporary Ensemble, Pierre-Laurent Aimard (keyboards), Ludovic Morlot (conductor), Rose Theater, 16.8.2010 (BH)

Purcell (trans. Benjamin): Fantasia VII (1680/1995)

George Benjamin: Antara (1985-87)

Harrison Birtwistle: Selections from Bach Measures (1996)

Harrison Birtwistle: Slow Frieze (1996)

Bach (arr. Berio): Contrapunctus XIX, from The Art of Fugue (c. 1742/2001)

Helmut Lachenmann: Mouvement (—vor der Erstarrung) (1982-84)


Every so often during the season a concert comes along that sinks its hooks in your memory and refuses to let go. Such an intriguing evening happened at the Rose Theater during the finale of “Bach & Polyphonies,” the six concerts Pierre-Laurent Aimard curated for this year’s Mostly Mozart festival. And in conductor Ludovic Morlot and the International Contemporary Ensemble, Aimard couldn’t have asked for more ideal collaborators.

Aimard’s concept was simplicity itself: a spine of three major works from roughly the last three decades, pairing each with Purcell or Bach. George Benjamin’s fascinating Antara was introduced by his own transcription of Purcell’s Fantasia VII, transcribed for clarinet, violin, cello and celesta (with Aimard at the latter keyboard), for the 300th anniversary of the composer’s death. Benjamin has written passionately about his love for this piece, which this unlikely quartet transformed as if into a gently rotating Lucite sculpture. The work’s gentle pulse, passed around from instrument to instrument, was irresistible in its clarity.

In the early 1980s, Benjamin was studying at IRCAM in Paris, and outside the Pompidou Centre was a group of Andean folk musicians playing traditional panpipes. To replicate this sound, Benjamin’s astonishing idea was to use an electronic keyboard with panpipe samples, creating what Paul Schiavo describes as “a kind of virtual super-panpipes, with an unlimited range of pitches, capable of playing with tremendous velocity, and otherwise unconstrained by the limits of normal human performance.” With Eric Lamb and Claire Chase on flutes front and center, Aimard again took to the keyboard to replicate the sounds of the Andean players—all occasionally interrupted by the cauterizing flame of two trombones, and metallic anvil clanks from the percussion section. As Aimard himself said in his ever-erudite introduction, “How much fantasy and life Benjamin creates from such simple means!”

In Bach Measures, Harrison Birtwistle takes eight of the composer’s chorale preludes and gently reorchestrates them, nudging them into the late 20th century with subtle layers of chalk and grime. The lithe, beautiful performance by the ensemble made a fine lead-in to Birtwistle’s Slow Frieze, a score reflecting the composer’s interest in narrative and visual art. The result is a sort of slowly unfolding panorama, with an energetic detour in the middle—a seemingly oxymoronic combination of high activity and stasis. Jacob Greenberg handled the demanding piano part with typical grace and ease.

The final pairing was perhaps the most striking, starting with Luciano Berio’s hymn-like reworking of the finale of Bach’s The Art of Fugue, which Berio concludes with a startling tone cluster that is actually derived from the letters of Bach’s name. But neither that, nor anything else that preceded it in the queue, could have prepared listeners for the stunning reading of Helmut Lachenmann’s Mouvement (—vor der Erstarrung), whose parenthetical note means roughly, “before stillness.” Using an unbelievably wide palette of sounds, including harmonics, glissandos and col legno passages in the strings, bowed metallophones, and woodwinds aspirating without producing pitches, Lachenmann redefines what music can be. One striking effect, just at the edge of audibility, calls for clarinets without mouthpieces, and the players produce quiet popping sounds by tapping the apertures with the palms of their hands. To watch the production of such unconventional—yet bracingly beautiful—sounds was like witnessing a master class held by one of the late 20th century’s most pioneering composers, seen through the prism of his brilliant disciples.

Bruce Hodges

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