Harrison BIRTWISTLE (b. 1934)
Trio for violin, cello and piano (2011) [15:25]
Duet for Eight Strings (2018) [19:40]
Pulse Sampler for oboe and percussion (1981 rev. 2018) [9:57]
Oboe Quartet (2009-10) [18:24]
Nash Ensemble
rec. January 2021, Kings Place, London
BIS BIS-2561 SACD [64:44]
It is strange how, at least in retrospect, musical periods can be seen as dominated by pairs of contrasted composers. There were Bach and Handel, then Haydn and Mozart and later on Wagner and Brahms. In Britain, in the years after the Second World War, there were Britten and Tippett, who were followed by Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle. Max died in 2016, but his coeval Birtwistle is happily still with us. I would contrast them using the famous distinction between the fox and the hedgehog: the fox knows many things but the hedgehog just one big thing. Max was a fox, with the expressionist works of his youth differing greatly from the symphonies and quartets of his later years. Birtwistle, on the other hand, is a hedgehog, his one big thing being a preoccupation with ritual and myth, which dominates most of his works.
Birtwistle has written mostly for larger forces, but there are some chamber works, and here we have a gathering of four, three of them recent but one coming from very early in his career, though more recently revised. We begin with the Trio, scored for the traditional combination of violin, cello and piano. I say this, since Birtwistle has tended to prefer unusual and ad hoc combinations for each work. This Trio is in a single movement, in which the composer usually puts the piano in opposition to the two stringed instruments: they tend to have flowing, lyrical lines while the piano has more percussive and staccato writing. There is, however, a gradual rapprochement and then a lumbering tune on the piano threatens to carry all before it. We move into a kind of scherzo before a return to the idiom of the beginning. This is not like any piano trio you have heard before, but it is an impressive and attractive work, and one which it is easy to follow.
I cannot say the same for the Duet for Eight Strings which follows it. The eight strings are those of a viola and cello, a unique combination in my experience. This is an extended work which goes through many varieties of texture in its course. Bayan Northcott’s helpful sleevenote lists these as ‘dense double-stopped chordal litanies . . . aggressive ostinato outbursts, patches of more flowing counterpoint, frantic dances in additive rhythms, ghostly tremolo textures and so, ultimately climbing slowly to a stratospheric fadeout.’ I cannot better this account, but I have to add that, unlike the Trio, I found the piece impossible to follow: I could not find a unifying thread. Even Northcott admits that there is ‘something tantalizingly unknowable’ here.
Pulse Sampler is the early work, originally written for oboe and claves, but here played in a revised version which uses a greater variety of percussion. The original scoring reminds one of those early works by Steve Reich and Philip Glass which exploited minimalist repetitions and clashing rhythms. These works were, for me anyway, more exercises and sketches than finished compositions and I have to say the same of this piece by Birtwistle. It is divided into twentyeight sections, and the percussionist sets the tempo in each of them, with the oboe following on. It is quite entertaining, particularly when the percussionist hits the bass drum, but I suspect it is one of those pieces which it is more fun to play than to listen to.
The Oboe Quartet is another matter. This is a work which accumulated in stages, with the different movements being separately commissioned and first performed. However, I felt immediately that this was a masterwork. In the first movement the oboe with its long notes is contrasted with jagged and disruptive phrases in the strings. The second movement has more lyricism. The third movement, in a fragmentary Webernian kind of idiom, is so tiny that you could easily miss it. The finale is fast and uses many ostinato rhythms. Like the Trio, this is easy to listen to and enjoyable.
The Nash Ensemble are no strangers to Birtwistle’s music and have made several previous recordings of it. They premiered the later movements of the Oboe Quartet, and also the Duet, which is here played by its dedicatees. This is its first recording; there are other recordings of the other works but usually in mixed recitals. This is a SACD but I was listening in ordinary two-channel stereo, in which it sounded fine. The helpful sleevenote is provided in three languages. We have two indubitably fine works, the Trio and the Oboe Quartet, one curiosity, Pulse Sampler, and one work, the Duet, which I can make nothing of. A mixed bag, therefore.
Stephen Barber
