Five
years ago, Matthew Greenall, the director
of the British Music Information Centre, devised
an annual new music series of around 15 concerts
devoted to a mixture of established works
and promising new composers interpreted by
some of the finest contemporary music specialists.
Ever since, ‘Cutting Edge’ events have been,
and are, taking place each Thursday between
the end of September and the middle of December
at the Warehouse in Theed Street, two minutes
walking distance south of Waterloo Station.
This
initiative has established itself as the most
important autumn event for new music in London.
Here, the famous Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo
gave its long overdue London debut with an
exciting program, headed "Duos ex Machina".
The Argentine pianist Helena Bugallo and the
American pianist Amy Williams met while studying
at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Since 1995, they have been committed to presenting
concerts of contemporary music at the highest
possible level. Their repertoire is
enormous encompassing substantial late twentieth-century
works by Cage, Reich, Kurtág, Stockhausen,
Tiensuu, Kagel and Sciarrino as well as endless
world premieres, many of which very written
especially for the Duo.
Helena
now resides in Basel, while Amy teaches composition
at the University of Chicago. But they come
together frequently, to rehearse new works
and to play all over the world. In 2004, they
will release their first CD (Wergo) featuring
the complete music for piano solo and piano
duet by Conlon Nancarrow. Later this year,
they will record for Bridge Records works
by Stefan Wolpe and Morton Feldman.
In
their program note they point out that the
evenings title "refers to both the rhythmic-mechanical
character of much of the music included as
well as to the aural and theatrical artifices
extracted from the combination of the two
instruments (as implied in the phrase deus
ex machina)."
Conlon
Nancarrow (1912-1997), next to Ives surely
the most inventive and significant American
composer, had long been disillusioned about
the fact that pianists were unable to play
his extremely difficult music. Therefore,
he decided early on in his life to compose
entirely for the mechanical Player Piano.
He left us more than 50 studies for this instrument,
of which some in recent years have been arranged
for piano duet to be played on one piano.
The
Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo opened its concert
with the London premiere of the studies Nos.
9, 3d and 19, followed in the second half
by the studies Nos. 18, 6 and 15, arranged
by Erik Ona (18 and 6), the late Ivar Mikhashoff
(15), Amy Williams (3d) and Helena Bugallo
(9 and 19). It turned out to be a magical
event to listen to these sometimes romantic
or jazzy, abrupt or wild, but always deeply
original pieces full of wit and surprises.
They show a genius, of which Ligeti wrote:
"This music is so utterly original, enjoyable,
perfectly constructed but at the same time
emotional?.." The two ladies understood
it perfectly, to bring the mechanical element
to light but with incredible charm and a furioso
technique, where one never knew if the intermingling
of the hands would not suddenly end in disaster.
Moments, such as turning the page at the right
place, had a flabbergasting sense of organization
about them.
For
the second piece in their program they turned
to the prolific German composer Manfred Stahnke
(1951), a student of Wolfgang Fortner and
Klaus Huber (and since 1974 of Ligeti), who
currently teaches in Hamburg. They gave
the British premiere of "Stereo Partota",
his own arrangement for two pianos for the
Bugallo-Williams Duo of an earlier piano work
in six movements – "Partota" (1982-86).
To every one’s astonishment, the two grands
were suddenly positioned as far apart as possible,
Bugallo playing in the front left corner with
her back to the audience and Williams in the
far right corner playing with her face towards
the audience. This had an enormous acoustic
effect as the harmonising or corresponding
sound of the pianos met in the middle, somehow
creating the power of an entire orchestra.
How those two pianists kept in contact, to
recreate this mainly tonal structure of Busoni
proportions (the impact not unlike Nancarrow),
is beyond understanding; it seemed that even
the slightest movement of a body or a head
had some inner meaning. It was interesting
that this work had no connection either to
Ligeti or to microtonal music, for which Stahnke
is well known. To quote Stahnke from an interview
in 1990, "Ligeti suggested: try to find
a melting pot in yourself somehow: He said,
let’s not just make a collage out of what
we hear, what we see. We have to be open and
we have to react, but we have to find a specific
way to put things together so that a third
way will emerge?" Here, his third
way was extremely impressive in its colours
and rhythmical structures, but also quite
Germanic.
The
Duo finished the first half with "Cicada"(1994)
by Kevin Volans, in his own words "my
first genuinely minimalist piece." Of
course, one can call it `proportional temporal
relationships in a sequential order´, but
what came over, at least for me, was extreme
boredom; many tiny dynamic and rhythmical
changes in this piece seemed overly repetitive
and became less and less audible. Minimalism
has played an important part in the past;
now one should open ones´ mind and be creative
in a satisfying way, especially at a time
when the compositional spectrum is as wide
as it has ever been. Music has to tell us
something, has to wake us up. But the
conversations during the interval made it
clear that a small part of the audience still
favour indulging in meditation.
The
second half opened with "Adnamurchan
Point" (1990) by Judith Weir, a charming
`continuous variation of a short fragment
of Hebridean melody heard at the outset of
the piece´. By now, the two grands were finally
united standing next to one other. Three further
Studies for Piano Player made one wish to
hear even more of Nancarrow´s breathtaking
textural polyphony, but it was left to one
of his most outspoken admirers, to finish
the evening in truly great style.
György
Ligeti wrote his remarkable "Three pieces
for Two Pianos" in 1976. They are called
Monument, Selbstportrait (mitReich und
Riley und Chopin ist auch dabei) und
Bewegung, a gigantic composition, which
reinvents many influences in a very personal
and convincing manner. Its technical demands
on the players are enormous. But Helena Bugallo
and Amy Williams showed no sign of being overstretched.
Next
to the variety of rarely heard pieces those
two incredible musicians were the highlight
of the whole evening. They understood how
to simultaneously create tension and ease;
they were constantly in harmony with the music
and with each other without ever falling in
the habits of pounding their instruments or
showing off. They are both deeply rooted in
the sadly more and more neglected tradition
of exclusively recreating a composers’ intentions
with taste and with an instinctive sensitivity
for the art of piano playing.
Hans-Theodor
Wohlfahrt
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