Showing posts with label Sir Harrison Birtwistle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sir Harrison Birtwistle. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 03, 2014

Women triumph at last at the British Composer Awards

A lot of good news from the British Composer Awards, which held a glittering do last night. Nine first-time winners, and five awards to composers who happen to be female, two of them going to Kerry Andrew. And there's a prize for... Sir Harrison Birtwistle - indeed, few BCAs would be complete without that.

Kerry Andrew scoops the double
Photo: Mark Allen


Kerry Andrew's Woodwose: A Community Chamber Opera scooped Community/Education Project. Her Dart's Love won the Stage Works category.

Rebecca Saunders' Solitude for solo cello won Instrumental Solo/Duo

Kaija Saariaho won the International Award for Circle Map.

Cecilia McDowell's Night Flight triumphed in Choral.

First-time winners included Django Bates, Steve Forman, Ed HughesMartin Iddon, Cecilia McDowall, Kaija Saariaho, Rebecca Saunders, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Tom White. 

Birtwistle's sixth BCA prize was in the Vocal category, for Songs from the same Earth

The winner of the student competition was Bertram Wee, currently a student at the Royal College of Music, for his Sonicalia for tenor trombone and tuba. A name to remember.

The full list of winners and further information on the awards is available at the BACSA site, here. Meanwhile, we are glad if last year's message has perhaps been heard. Bravi tutti!

Now, remember, the key to the BCAs is NOMINATIONS. Anybody can nominate a piece, but the jury can only consider works that have been nominated. So if you're a performer who's loved playing a new work, a listener who's loved listening to one, or the proud commissioner who's made it all possible, get the nomination in for next time.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Seeing 'The Minotaur'

A revival at Covent Garden of Birtwistle's most recent opera, The Minotaur? Time to take the bull by the horns and see it.

I'm still reeling.

The Minotaur seems to spring from a very deep, dark place and takes us back there with it. The power it packs perhaps concerns the primal nature of the myth and the archetypal imagery that it dramatises, but there is more to it than that. Whatever it says to us, whatever it does to us - from the moment the first notes growl and surge from the pit, with the film of endless swelling sea to match - it hits us at such a profound gut level that it is flummoxing to attempt quantifying it. Most astonishing of all, perhaps, is that this is an evening of gore, ferocity and claustrophobia, yet at its core is an almost superhuman compassion and empathy.

There have been some complaints in other quarters about David Harsent's libretto, but that seems a bizarre response. It's not only sterling-quality poetry, full of images that would flare at high voltage even without the music, but it also has indubitable advantages of strong structure, absolute clarity, concentration and concision that many libretti lack, and that the genre absolutely needs. Every word carries the weight of a hundred, and that's as it should be. It is light years away from the verbose pretentiousness of The Death of Klinghoffer, the extended tracts of book that weighed down Sophie's Choice, the mundane cosy prose of Miss Fortune.


It's loud. Very loud. The percussion spills over on both sides of the stalls circle. The orchestration is remarkable - despite the volume and depth of the music, its is so well written that there is never any problem of balance between singers and instrumentalists. Birtwistle's sonic imagination was what stayed with me most strongly after seeing The Second Mrs Kong about 20 years ago and in this quality The Minotaur doesn't disappoint, however different it is. One of the most inspired touches is the use of the cimbalom, its hard-edged fury jangling the nerves and cutting into the monolithic textures.

This performance was one of those rare occasions when music, text, design and performance fuse into one: it's hard to imagine it staged any differently, or sung any better. John Tomlinson, Christine Rice and Johann Reiter are the original trio of Asterios, Ariadne and Theseus, each a masterful interpretation with a timbre that encapsulates his/her character and offsets the others. Elizabeth Meister is a terrifying coloratura Ker, the steely-winged vulture. Conductor Ryan Wigglesworth, taking over a very tall order from Tony Pappano, who's off with tendonitis, did a magnificent job with it. Grand plaudits to the whole team - director Stephen Langridge, designer Alison Chitty, video company 59 Productions, movement director Philippe Giraudeau, lighting designer Paul Pyant.

I've spent much time in the past few days writing about The Rite of Spring (watch this space). Seeing The Minotaur with The Rite in my ears and mind was intriguing in itself. It seems to me that they share a certain wellspring, dragging us through something subconscious, something mesmerising concerning ritual, mortality, cruelty and that crucial compassion.

It's tempting to wonder what makes someone create an opera like this. Why would anyone attempt to write the last scene of the first half, death after sacrificial death in the bullring, the Keres descending to devour the flesh? I can just imagine asking Sir Harry about it, though, and receiving a response not unlike that of Jerome Kern when someone asked him what made him write 'Ol' Man River', which was originally in Showboat. He's supposed to have said: "I needed something to end Act 1 Scene 3."

Twelve hours after curtain-down I need serious coffee and I need it now.



Thursday, December 15, 2011

Farewell, Russell Hoban (1925-2011)

Very sad today to hear of the death of one of my favourite novelists. Russell Hoban may have been best-known for his children's books, but his adult fiction retained their sense of playfulness and fantasy - something most of us lose with the passing years. His Turtle Diary was the first that I read - about two lonely Londoners who set out to rescue the turtles from the zoo, but don't quite release themselves while they're about it. The Medusa Frequency is a virtuoso take on the Orpheus myth - again featuring a compassionate portrait of contemporary London, but with twists of fantasy that are by turns chilling and glorious in their audacity. Here is a full obituary from The Guardian.

But musicians might know Hoban best for his libretto for Sir Harrison Birtwistle's astonishing opera The Second Mrs Kong, written for Glyndebourne and premiered in 1994. Details of the plot and structure are here along with some excerpts; and the libretto was published by Universal Edition. Hoban plays with concepts, reality and imagery the way a circus performer might perform on the high wire. The only safety net is the term 'magical realism', except that there isn't much realism in there - it's slanted entirely to the magic. In the opera, The Idea of Kong falls in love with Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring, aka Pearl. I still remember well the wild, high, shimmering voice of the singing mirror; and the deep-bronze, luminous tone of Philip Langridge, who sang The Idea of Kong in a gorilla suit...

I once went to Oxford to see the Glyndebourne Touring Opera's Kong with a writer friend who was also a big Hoban fan. That day there was a problem in the theatre and they couldn't get the set of the previous night's opera off the stage, so the cast delivered a semi-staged version in costume in front of the curtain. It was still fabulous. And we spotted Hoban in the bar so went up to him (my pal was braver than I was) to express our enthusiasm. We found him a charming, generous man, with the same twinkle in his eye that you can find in his glittery writing.
MIRROR: It is not love that moves the world from night to morning, it is not love that makes the new day dawn. 
PEARL: Not love?
MIRROR: No. It is the longing for what cannot be...
PEARL: The longing for what cannot be?
MIRROR: The longing for what cannot be. The world needs the power of your yearning, the world needs the power of your love that cannot be fulfilled.