Thursday 14 September 2017 Helen Grime in Profile B 1981
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Thursday 14 September 2017 Helen Grime Fanfare 2017 / note by Paul Griffiths Helen Grime in Profile b 1981 LSO SEASON CONCERT + SCULPTURE COURT LIVE RELAY his five-minute splash of fore, to herald, several times over, more NEW MUSIC BRITAIN INTRODUCTION from Paul Griffiths colours and dash of energies racing to and fro from the upper woodwind, was commissioned by the eventually incorporating the dance. Helen Grime Fanfare * (world premiere) This rather extraordinary programme could be Barbican Centre for tonight’s concert. Thomas Adès Asyla understood as a bunch of new works followed Clearly something celebratory was needed – Suddenly the marking turns to ‘Submerged, Harrison Birtwistle Violin Concerto by a classic. However, one of the ‘new’ lot, celebrating a beginning, and therefore distant’, and the focus shifts to cellos and Interval – 25 minutes Oliver Knussen’s piece, is almost four decades celebrating the future more than the past. basses with harp, celeste and bells. The cor Oliver Knussen Symphony No 3 old, and both that work and Thomas Adès’ Helen Grime, by enlarging the notion of anglais steps forward, joined in its second NEW Elgar Variations on an Original Theme, ‘Enigma’ Asyla have gained classic status. In the fanfare as acclamation and summons, phrase by a bassoon, and out of memories 20 years since he conducted the first has created a festive overture that the earlier music gradually reassembles Sir Simon Rattle conductor performance of Asyla, Sir Simon Rattle has brilliantly fits the bill while having also itself, to achieve full splendour under the Christian Tetzlaff violin taken it to the Los Angeles Philharmonic a seriousness of intent that is just as heading ‘Bright, exuberant’. This is not, and Berlin Philharmonic, and played it with appropriate to the occasion. however, quite where we end. • * Commissioned for Sir Simon Rattle and the the latter in New York and the Far East. London Symphony Orchestra by the Barbican Tonight’s performance will be his 26th Under the marking ‘Bright, dance-like’, This fanfare is part of a longer commission, MUSIC (and the work’s something like 150th). the first fanfares are sounded by high which will be premiered on 19 & 26 April orn in York in 1981, Grime was Claremont Trio of New York (Three Whistler Broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 The Knussen symphony is another work woodwinds, rushing up (and later down) brought up in Aberdeenshire, Miniatures, 2011). Evocative titles, and he has promoted, touring it across Europe, in scales, joined by clangs from tuned where her mother and (highly appropriate) references to visual the US and Japan with his Birmingham percussion – glockenspiel, xylophone and HELEN GRIME CURATES … grandparents were music teachers. art, by no means ended there. Among her orchestra in the 1980s and 1990s. marimba – and supported by chords in the She studied at the Royal College of Music, more recent works are responses to Joseph and to mainland Europe, Canada, and Asia on Mezzo Birtwistle’s Violin Concerto tells the same bass. This streaming music alternates with Wednesday 20 September 7.30pm with Julian Anderson and Edwin Roxburgh, Cornell’s assemblages (Aviary Sketches story its own way, for here is a living composer more evidently dance-like episodes featuring Milton Court Concert Hall and in 2008 at Tanglewood. By that time for string trio, 2014) and Joan Eardley’s inviting us to consider his work as we would violins, harp and celeste. The quick, volatile she was already making a reputation. paintings (Two Eardley Pictures, written BRITAIN Welcome drink generously provided by Beethoven’s, or Tchaikovsky’s, or Elgar’s. duple metre of these episodes soon takes works by Purcell, George Benjamin, Virga (2007), an LSO commission, proved for last year’s BBC Proms). Other times LSO Drinks Partner Chapel Down command of everything as the two kinds Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews, her gift for lustrous textures, of lines the stimulus seems to come more from the But, spearheading the concert, never heard of material coalesce, but that command is Britten, Thomas Adès, engaging with each other in lively interplay instrumental line-up, as in her Oboe Quartet before, Helen Grime’s piece turns us just as soon joyously lost as jubilation and Stravinksy and Helen Grime and often worked from pregnant motifs (2011) or the Double Concerto for clarinet perhaps towards the future, to a time intensity increase with the arrival of a duet that run through a composition. and trumpet that, in 2015, concluded Sculpture Court Relay presented by Barbican when we do not have classics and new for E-flat and B-flat clarinets in octaves. Jacqueline Shave director / violin Commissions followed for the Birmingham an association with the Hallé. She is works but just great music. • Britten Sinfonia Contemporary Music Group (A Cold Spring, currently working on a larger orchestral With a slight slackening of speed, though See page 14 for details 2009), the BBC Scottish Symphony work for Simon Rattle and the LSO, Concert ends approx 10.15pm hardly of thrust, the brass come to the Orchestra (Everyone Sang, 2010) and the to be performed in April next year. • 46 Programme Notes & Composer Profile 47 Thomas Adès Asyla 1997 / note and profile by Paul Griffiths Thomas Adès in Profile b 1971 LSO0798 I and clubs), of yet unsounded potentials Next comes a slow movement, whose THE CLUB SCENE II in a large orchestra, and of his own creative descents upon descents are begun by III Ecstasio strengths. Those strengths included a keyed instruments and soon spread through Talking about how he composed IV mastery of harmony and sound, and a gift the orchestra, led at first by bass oboe. the club scene to The Independent, ‘Authoritative for the pregnant idea, all allowing him to There may be the sense of lament, Thomas Adès recalled: performances syla are places of safety. create symphonic music that appears to or chant, echoing in some vast space – We are all of us asylum-seekers. grow of itself, react to itself. though a central section is more agitated ‘So I bought some techno music and and sumptuous Asyla are also places of confinement. and dynamic. There follows the club scenes •: listened to it, just quietly, to get the We may all of us, too, at times, feel ourselves The first movement conjures a new world, a shock, though not total, since there were structure rather than blast my head off. textures.’ to be living in a madhouse. Asyla are places of stairways of sound from piano intimations of its pounding rhythm almost I realised that, in techno, you have to The Guardian of (last) resort – concert halls, as it may be. and percussion (principally cowbells), from the start. Dance floors, too, can be repeat things 32 or 64 times. So I tried to LSOLive_Ades_Cover_161216_FINAL.indd 1 19/12/2016 12:02 Asyla are forms, notably the symphony, through which a horn melody blows, asyla. As for the slow finale, we seem at first orchestrate it one night in my living room, where we feel at home, or where we once provoking very Adèsian gleaming to be listening to a tuba deep under water, repeating all these figures over and over, on Thomas Adès felt at home. harmonic planes. It is not long before but soon flotsam from throughout the work this massive score paper, 30 staves to a page. Asyla | Tevot | Polaris is bobbing on the dolorous waves. • At 3am, I went to bed and, as I sat there, London Symphony Orchestra — realised my heart had stopped beating. orn in London in 1971, the son of enabling him to create music that An extraordinary soundscape of fantasy and urgent reality, I thought, ‘Christ, I’m having a heart attack’. an art historian and a translator- fascinated and compelled. In 1997, Discover the visionary world of Thomas Adès. THOMAS ADÈS CURATES … I rang the hospital and then they sent an poet, Adès made an early start. he produced his first big symphonic delicacy and excitement, bitter disillusionment and glowing hope. ambulance. My heart gradually started An appearance in London, when he was piece, Asyla, for Simon Rattle and the Presented together for the first time, Asyla, Tevot and — Monday 18 September 7.30pm again, but very shallowly. The ambulance 21 and fresh from studies at Cambridge City of Birmingham Symphony, extending Polaris trace his journey from wunderkind to one of the Milton Court Concert Hall took me to the Royal Free, where I waited with Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway, his stylistic and expressive resources. most imposing figures in contemporary music. First performed by the City of Birmingham the heavy beat of a quite different sort for two hours among other Saturday night brought him commissions from the London His second opera, The Tempest, was Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon of music is being heard – and there will works by Per Nørgård, Nicholas Maw, casualties. And finally a doctor saw me Sinfonietta (Living Toys) and the Endellion introduced at Covent Garden in 2004. Experience Dolby Atmos on Pure Audio Blu-ray and Rattle in October 1997, Adès’ Asyla quickly be more such incursions. Meanwhile, Judith Weir, Harrison Birtwistle, and said, ‘You hyperventilated’. I thought, Quartet (Arcadiana). He was still only Then came further orchestral works, delve into three-dimensional sound that brings you established itself as the first big orchestral the music unfolds at more than one speed Niccolò Castiglioni, György Kurtág, ‘Thank God. It’s not my heart, it’s just my brain.’ 24 when his first opera was produced, including a second symphonic score, closer to the live experience than ever before. work of a remarkable composer, and as an simultaneously, the detail often darting, Osvaldo Golijov, John Woolrich the louche-exact, documentary-fantastical Tevot (2007), also for Rattle, this time extraordinary soundscape of fantasy and the larger movement going in swells, and Thomas Adès Powder Her Face.