New music flourishes as festivals finish

The end of the BBC Proms and the other high profile European music festivals doesn’t mean we say goodbye to compelling music making. In fact there is a strong case for saying that the real music making is actually happening away from the ‘auto-pilot’ performances that typify the ‘London today, Edinburgh tomorrow’ itineraries of the big name, big ticket, touring orchestras.

Two upcoming concerts really illustrate the exciting things that are happening away from the festival scene, and these performances are also enduring evidence of my recent theme of music beyond borders. American composer, and Harvard alumni, Vanessa Lann (left) has been quietly building a growing reputation from her base in the Netherlands. Refreshingly that reputation is being built by questioning, rather than reinforcing, performance stereotypes, and her high profile premiere with the Residentie Orchestre of the Hague on September 16 underlines this individual approach to composition.

In The Flames of Quietude Lann has not created completely new musical material, but instead places recognizable sounds and gestures (from everyday sources, as well as from well-known works by composers such as Bach and Beethoven) in new contexts and juxtapositions. She uses extensive repetition in all of her works, as well as structures based on mathematical ratios and patterns. These create a sense of expectation, ritual, theatre and even comedy, as part of the shared concert experience. This new work tackles the fundamental questions of how we listen, how we come to understand musical material, and when a performance itself actually "begins". And this is not some dry, academic excercise. Vanessa Lann will pragmatically blur the boundaries of "performance" by playing the orchestral piano part of The Flames of Quietude herself - not only with the orchestra during the orchestral concert, but also as an infinitely repeating solo work. This will be played in the foyer for an hour prior to the orchestral concert, and will form a background as the concert goers enter and are focused on other things. This Eastern-influenced questioning of the perception of ambient sound, and the repetition of continuous background events in music, as well as in daily life, is part of Lann's aesthetic.

The questioning theme continues with a new commission from Chamber Orchestra Anglia for another exciting young female composer, Joyce Koh. The commission is for the opening concert of the BA Festival of Science in Norwich on September 3, the concert uses live performances and discussion to explore the many links between music and mathematics. Singapore born Joyce Koh (above) studied under the husband and wife team of David Lumsdaine and Nicola Le Fanu, undertook postgraduate studies at IRCAM (Institute for Research and Co-ordination of Acoustics and Music) in Paris, and is currently composer-in-residence at the Ecole Nationale de Musique Montbéliard in France. As well as the Joyce Koh commission Chamber Orchestra Anglia’s innovative programme ranges from Bach to Bartok.

* Vanessa Lann’s The Flames of Quietude is being performed on September 16 at 3.00pm in the Dr Anton Philips Hall in the Hague, The Netherlands. The orchestra is the Residentie Orchestra of the Hague conducted by Etienne Siebens, and the rest of the programme is noteworthy; ‘Tango Waltz’ (2003) by Diderik Wagenaar, and ‘Dame Blanche’ (1995) for recorder, orchestra and electronics by Cornelis de Bondt.
* The Maths of Music is given by the Chamber Orchestra Anglia conducted by Sharon Choa at the John Innes Centre, Norwich at 7.00pm on September 3. The programme is Mozart Overture from Die Zauberflote, Bartok Game of Pairs, JS Bach Chaconne, Joyce Koh new commission, and Beethoven Symphony No 5.

Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to BBC Proms - I am a woman, I am a composer

Comments

Anonymous said…
Dear Pliable,

Thanks so much for mentioning these two exciting concerts - and discussing my music - on your fantastic blog! This week of "Music Beyond Borders" has
been particularly interesting and informative. Happy 2-Year Anniversary to "On An Overgrown Path", and much appreciation for the past two years and for
all the boundary-breaking blogging yet to come!

Vanessa Lann
6:06 pm
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol
Read more

Does it have integrity and relevance?

Image
Shortly after it was released I bought the young Finn  Klaus Mäkelä's new complete cycle of Sibelius symphonies recorded for Decca. Sibelius symphonies are very well represented in my large CD collection , in fact I have more Sibelius symphony cycles than for any other composer. Yet I have returned to Mäkelä's interpretations a surprising number of times. No, they will not replace the accounts of Sanderling , Colin Davis,  Barbirolli , and others. But they are not worse or better: because subjective dualist judgements of better or worse, like or dislike, good and bad, definitive or otherwise, etc etc no longer mean anything to me . There is no concrete reality in a music performance, only what we individually perceive as reality. A performance is an endless flow of constantly changing conditions. The score is not the performance, and the performance is not the score. Between score and performance lie an infinite number of overlapping variables - tempi, dynamics, performanc
Read more

Why new audiences are deaf to classical music

Image
One important reason why classical music is failing to attract a new young audience is being ignored - today's much sought-after digital natives are fast becoming tomorrow's hearing loss natives. As the Clínic de Barcelona explains , until recently, hearing loss had always been related to age: the older you are, the worse your hearing is. This situation, however, has changed in recent years, as increasingly younger people are suffering from hearing loss. There are many reasons for this widespread hearing loss. There are now high levels of ambient noise - for instance the average daytime ambient noise  without PA announcements inside a US airport terminal is 66 decibels which approaches that of a a washing machine. Then there is the noise from the headphones, earbuds, etc used for long periods with digital devices. In addition the overlooked widespread  use of ototoxic drugs , including macrolide drugs and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), contributes to hearin
Read more

Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

Image
On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of the harpsichordist's great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the Château d'Assas, Scott Ross gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos b
Read more

Why cats hate Mahler symphonies

Image
My recent post ' Your cat is a music therapist ' was well appreciated judging by site traffic. So here is a codicil which raises some interesting points about synaesthesia. Reportedly Alexander Scriabin, Jean Sibelius, Olivier Messiaen, György Ligeti and Franz Liszt were among the classical composers who experienced cross-over between sensory channels. The impact of narrowing sensory bandwidth as music moves from a live to a recorded environment, and then from analogue to lossy digital formats is little understood and little researched.But it may have important implications for classical music's attempts to reach a new audience, and, topically, it may be very relevant to the post-COVID experience of Zoom concerts and live music in socially distanced auditoriums . I will discuss how what we see influences what we hear in a forthcoming post. Meanwhile here is an extract from Akif Pirinçci and Rolf Degen ’s book Cat Sense which explains the synaesthetic impact of a Ma
Read more

Classical music has many Buddhist tendencies

Image
With 376 million followers Buddhism is the fourth largest belief system in the world. Its core teachings of compassion and non-violence are well-known; but the wider cultural impact of those in the creative community exhibiting what the composer Jonathan Harvey described as "Buddhist tendencies" is underappreciated. Sri Lanka's state religion is Theravada - doctrine of the elders - Buddhism , and it may not be a coincidence that in 1960 elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike , the world's first woman prime minister. The island has been a center of Buddhist scholarship and practice since the introduction of Buddhism in the third century, and the country played a leading role in the preservation of the Pāli Canon of Buddhist teachings. I took the accompanying photos on a recent pilgrimage to Buddhist shrines in Sri Lanka, and to illustrate the influence of Buddhism on classical music I have juxtaposed them with cameos of music with Buddhist tendencies that provided the iPod so
Read more

Elgar and the occult

Image
Aleister Crowley was a practicioner of the occult, ceremonial magician and recreational drug experimenter. Sir Edward Elgar was Master of the King's Music, practising Catholic and composer of Land of Hope and Glory . A connection between the two may seem highly improbable. But this post explores a little known path linking Elgar to Crowley's world of the occult. In 1915 the actress Lena Ashwell asked Elgar to write the incidental music for a play she was producing. The Starlight Express was based on the recently published novel A Prisoner in Fairyland and the adaption was by the books' author Algernon Blackwood and Violet Pearn. Elgar's original intention was to reuse music from his early composition The Wand of Youth, but as the project progressed he added a substantial amount of new music to the score. The Starlight Express opened in London on 29th December 1915 to mixed reviews. The critical consensus was that the play was too long and the staging inappropriat
Read more

I am not from east or west

Image
The ranking of the Muslim Rumi as America's best-selling poet is, like the embrace of vinyl by a hard-core digital culture, one of the paradoxes of recent times. Rumi's inclusive message of joy and love explains his universal but still surprising appeal , and in populist interpretations by Coleman Barks and others this message resounds in verses such as "I am neither Christian nor Jew, neither Zoroastrian nor Muslim, I am not from east or west" and "I am a drunkard from another kind of tavern. I dance to a silent tune. I am the symphony of stars". Rumi's life-affirming poetry has been set to music by notable figures including Philip Glass , John Tavener , Jonathan Harvey , R. Murray Schafer and Karol Szymanowski , while takes on Rumi by rock musicians have included the 1996 album Three Fish by the eponymous band led by Pearl Jam 's Jeff Ament. All of these settings of Sufi poetry use translations of varying accuracy of Rumi's original vers
Read more

The paradox of the Dalai Lama

Image
The Paradox of Our Age , a short but powerful essay credited to the present Dalai Lama, is widely available in Ladakh in northern India, a region known as 'Little Tibet'. The text ends with the observation that: 'These are times of fast foods but slow digestion/Tall men but short characters/Steep profits but shallow relationships/It’s a time when there is much in the window but nothing in the room'. Tibetan Buddhism is widely viewed as an appealing alternative to materialistic Western society, so, not surprisingly, The Paradox of Our Age is widely circulated on the internet and Twitter - see photo tweet below . I bought The Paradox of Our Age on an exquisitely printed little scroll in the Tibetan refugee market in the regional capital of Leh, where I had travelled overland from Delhi in July to observe the Kalachakra teachings given by the Dalai Lama. My accompanying photos capture that intensely moving spiritual event; but they also capture a great spiritual tra
Read more

In search of 'le point vierge'

Image
That icon of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus was photographed by me last week at the Coptic monastery of Dayr Mar Girgis in Upper Egypt. The Trappist monk, mystic and author Thomas Merton wrote of le point vierge - the virgin point - and described how there is "at the center of our being a a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God... which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will". Le point vierge is found in different forms in the great wisdom traditions, particularly in Sufism, and it is from this tradition that Thomas Merton developed his vision of a point of pure truth. This vision is also found in popular culture: for instance in John Lennon's Imagine, which - in an unashamed hymn to le point vierge - implores us to "imagine there is no heaven.. no religion... no countries.. no possessions". This search for a poi
Read more