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Andrew Watts countertenor Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts tenor BBC Singers • London Sinfonietta David Atherton conductor 2 Harrison A sound from elsewhere by Paul Griffi ths Birtwistle The eternal and immense Will not be bent by us. (Rilke: ‘Der Schauende’) Photo: Hanya Chlala / Arenapal.com 1 Angel Fighter 31’09 In accepting a commission from the Stravinsky, was producing one sacred Leipzig Bach Festival for a work to story after another: Canticum sacrum Andrew Watts countertenor Angel Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts tenor Jacob be performed in the very church, the (1955), A Sermon, a Narrative and BBC Singers Thomaskirche, that had witnessed the a Prayer (1961), The Flood (1962), London Sinfonietta fi rst performances of the St Matthew Abraham and Isaac (1963). Now, David Atherton conductor Passion and so much else, Birtwistle having reached a similar age, he does Commissioned for Bachfest Leipzig 2010 was agreeing to wrestle with one of the the same: The Last Supper (1998- 2 In Broken Images 18’21 great angels of his destiny. There had 9), The Ring Dance of the Nazarene London Sinfonietta been circlings before, in arrangements (2003), Angel Fighter (2010). of keyboard pieces and arias, but never David Atherton conductor The predecessor’s presence may be Commissioned by MITO SettembreMusica / London Sinfonietta had he come so close. felt not only in the genre but also in However, the angel in the Biblical the bare textures and sparse fi gures 3 Virelai (Sus une fontayne) 3’55 narrative of Jacob’s wrestling declines of the opening, with its bassoon duo London Sinfonietta to give his name, and the spirit Birtwistle and sustained string chord, introducing David Atherton conductor takes hold of in Angel Fighter may not the work’s tight-drawn, luminous Live Recordings be so simply inferred from the work’s harmonic vocabulary and simultaneously circumstances. Go back half a century. introducing the fi rst two points at which Total timing 53’36 A young composer at that time can the chorus – as they often will again, in hardly fail to have been impressed by this piece partly about naming – call out how his pre-eminent living role model, the protagonist’s name. Soon, though, 2 3 the name that is on the score becomes output since Punch and Judy and Down the Angel’s fi rst words, which, given behind the audience in another dramatic unmistakable. A machinery is set in gear by the Greenwood Side. Once again a magical aura by women’s voices use of position, calling the Angel back to for harp, pizzicato strings and brass, with there are typical game elements of and string harmonics, are in Enochian, paradise. The end then quickly comes, woodwind fl ying overhead, so engaging repetition, formality, unexplained routine, the angelical language discovered or with the crowd departing on a chorale the full, percussionless chamber argument about the rules, and a win-or- contrived by the English Elizabethan and Jacob, the new Israel, left alone. orchestra. Meanwhile, the chorus go lose outcome. Once again the event is necromancer John Dee. With string God, who cannot be held down, has on singing ‘Jacob’, not only as part of formalized as enactment. glissandos lifting behind him, the Angel gone, but it was in the struggle with the their not very fl attering character portrait turns to English, then comes down to divine, as Rilke’s poem has it, that the Jacob is an ambivalent player. He enters but also to summon him, as to a court earth with his offer to fi ght, to prove he is mortal gained power and knowledge. the action on an upper E, a Birtwistle hearing, or a stage, or a game. real – a nice touch on the librettist’s part, signature, but his mind is misted with In Broken Images (2011), scored for and entirely in keeping with the conduct Angel Fighter is all three. Its central event what he has come from: the ‘brawling a similar orchestra but with percussion of a game. is a trial, a trial of strength, with the choir brats and wailing wives’, and the and no horns, was not the fi rst Birtwistle as commenting jury. It is theatre not just animals, such as will appear again in this In the wrestling match that follows, the piece to take its title from a poem by in its use of space, the Angel singing fi rst mechanical pastoral, to quote Birtwistle’s rotating tensions of Birtwistle’s music, Robert Graves. Here there is a kind of from the distance before approaching description of an earlier rural power its twists of pulse against pulse, its hare-and-tortoise antithesis, where the the others, but also in how it presents play of his, Yan Tan Tethera. Jacob’s wrenches of harmony, become almost one who is ‘slow, thinking in broken two people in arresting combat, urged predicament is human: he is made graphic, abetted by transfi gurations of a images’, arrives at ‘a new understanding on or observed by chorus and orchestra. restless by his own restlessness, in a referee’s whistle. The climax comes when of my confusion’. A composer who could Highly relevant here is the text, by spiral of assertion and confusion which the chorus shout out, and slap claves, in come up with these two big works Stephen Plaice, the dramatist with whom he expresses in his aria, with spiralling protest at the Angel’s foul play. However, in little more than a year is not a very Birtwistle had worked on his chamber woodwind. He is also unclear as to Jacob holds fi rm, and gains his blessing convincing sluggard; but slowness in the where and what he is. He wants to hear, opera The Io Passion, but relevant, too, from the Angel in the form of a renaming, sense of breadth, of processes working but he does not hear the chorus, and is is the composer’s vivid, even excited with high oboe solo and brass clamour. themselves out through the span of a interleaved with them only by the rules of response to that text. One way in which For the mysterious aria that ensues, the whole composition, is certainly a quality a game he does not yet understand. Plaice plays to his composer’s strengths obbligato instruments are cor anglais of Birtwistle’s music, even though that is in shaping life-and-death struggle as a What makes him hear is the voice of the and harp, as the Angel avoids giving his music will judder in its course, and even game, such as has featured in Birtwistle’s Angel, though he cannot understand own name. Two trumpets peal out from though its images are, indeed, broken. 4 5 They are so quite openly here. Where almost nothing about Johannes Ciconia 1 Angel Fighter Libretto by Stephen Plaice the orchestra of Angel Fighter bends except that, born in the Low Countries in to the dramatic narrative, that of In around 1370, he probably worked Jacob is dividing his livestock and Jacob Jacob Broken Images in Rome before 1400 and certainly tribe and ordering them on ahead I cannot hear (aria) exults in a more exposed, to confront his brother Esau, above the camel’s croak Did I push angels declamatory manner, and is divided in Padua thereafter, and which has whose inheritance he stole. the geese’s jabber, up the ladder to heaven? into four groups that Birtwistle, thinking been left with a small output in a Chorus I cannot hear Did I raise a pillar what the desert sighs! to my nightmare in Bethel? confusion of styles: forward-looking, Jacob of Gabrieli’s multi-choir canzonas, seducer, Chorus Wild dreams the head that pillows on stone. asks to be separated: percussion to backward-looking, nowhere-looking. shepherd of the black sheep, Jacob why should we shield the rear, brass in front, strings on the His virelai Sus une fontayne – ‘By a the coward, faker, The eagle knows its perch you back into Canaan? mistaker of angels on the hang of the cliff. left, woodwind on the right. These fountain, turning round, I hear such Jacob for the vain creatures The fox knows its hole formations may be further fractured, as sweet singing’ – belongs with the Enough! I cannot hear that fl oat in his mind. in the side of the hill. beyond the din, Only man is a stranger at the start, where the three trombones most rhythmically intricate music of Chorus of brawling brats Jacob seducer! one sunrise from home. are answered by the three trumpets in composers following Machaut, its three and wailing wives! Jacob The animals want no sense of their maker, an instant contrast of slow and fast, or parts often in confl icting metres. It is The Angel says Let me hear him! I must stay here the raven’s unbidden, they may join together. Diverse sorts of also music of broken images on another and listen. Chorus the goat browses on, Jacob deserter! music, distinguished by their tempos, level, including segments from songs by Chorus yet I wander in search of my God. their pulse rates, their more or less Filippotto da Caserta, who in turn worked Jacob Jacob deserter Let me see him! Yahweh, give me a sign! repeating fragments of tune, collide with quotations from Machaut himself. dividing your tribe – Chorus Make the roe-deer come with each other, combine, throw out Birtwistle’s precisely all-over-the-place letting half perish so that half may survive! Jacob appeaser! tame down to the water, orchestration, for string, woodwind and make the carp rise, occasional solo lines and fi ll in each Jacob Jacob speak out of its mouth – saying other’s interstices, all within a continuing brass soloists, plays through the fi rst half It’s not the coward Let me touch him! Yahweh, give me a sign! of the virelai twice and the second half who stays behind.

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