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Winter Fragments Chamber Music by MICHAEL BERKELEY Fleur Barron Berkeley Ensemble Dominic Grier mezzo-soprano conductor Winter Fragments Chamber Music by Michael Berkeley (b. 1948) 5–12 Catch Me If You Can (1994) Fleur Barron mezzo-soprano 1. Vivo [5:46] 5–11 & 13 Dominic Grier conductor 2. Mesto [4:02] 3. Presto [4:12] Berkeley Ensemble Sophie Mather violin 4 4. Clarinet Quintet (1983) [14:03] Francesca Barri violin 4–11 & 13 4–11 & 13 Winter Fragments (1996) Dan Shilladay viola 4–13 5. Winter fragments the earth [1:49] Gemma Wareham cello 6. Death lies on her [1:10] John Slack clarinet & bass clarinet 1–11 & 13 7. The reeling clouds stagger [3:40] Andrew Watson bassoon 1–3 1–3 8. Frozen sll [1:31] Paul Co horn 9. A widow bird sate mourning [1:34] 10. Silent and so [2:04] With 11. Time that knows more [3:15] 1–3, 5–11 & 13 Luke Russell flute, alto flute & piccolo 12. Sonnet for Orpheus 1–3, 5–11 & 13 Emily Cockbill oboe & cor anglais from Three Rilke Sonnets (2010) [7:26] Sarah Hatch percussion 13 5–11 & 13 Helen Sharp harp 13. Seven (2007) [8:23] Total playing me [59:03] About the Berkeley Ensemble: ‘[...] the high quality of the performances by the Berkeley Ensemble, a malleable group which [...] can adapt itself to different formats and plays as if it were truly inside the music’ The Daily Telegraph Michael Berkeley in Conversaon and densely argued, with the almost late-Mahlerian world of Seven. It’s Dan Shilladay: The pieces collected exhilarang to hear all these strands together on the disc span more than of your work together. thirty years of work. How has your approach changed over this period? MB: As another example, in the Clarinet Quintet there is a medieval-like melody at Michael Berkeley: I came out of quite a the beginning, something I’ve always loved tonal tradion with Lennox [Berkeley, from my days as a chorister at Westminster Michael’s father] (1903–1989) and Cathedral singing Gregorian plainchant. [Benjamin] Brien (1913–1976), but then Plainchant is very important in my music; I got very interested in a more avant-garde the repeat of notes, the modal melodies. approach to music: I worked with But in the quintet, almost immediately [Harrison] Birtwistle (b. 1934) and talked there is very jazzy music. I don’t think to [Witold] Lutosławski (1913–1994). I the audience needs to sit and think ‘there’s would say as a result my music moved a medieval bit, now there is jazz’ – it just from being fairly tonally based to being needs to work for them, but each piece much more expressionisc. I oen seem needs an organic structure in the mind to be slightly at odds with fashion; as I of the composer. was becoming more expressionisc, music was going back to the tonal world DS: Could you elaborate on your aims of John Adams (b. 1947) and others. regarding your listeners? You’ve described But what is important in music is being your own music as having ‘a strong yourself. That’s something I discovered emoonal content, which audiences react to’. from being Lennox’s son – that if you feel you’ve got something to say, that’s MB: My mother had Lithuanian Jewish the most important thing, regardless of blood; I think there’s a part of me that what else is going on. I’ve always done responds to that in my wring, and to what I felt like doing at that moment. which audiences in turn respond in my music. I think for me, the catharsis of DS: That comes across very strongly – being moved in a piece of music is very on this disc one might compare Catch important. You menoned [Gustav] Me If You Can, which is very frenec Mahler (1860–1911)... DS: In relaon to Seven, yes, which reminded movement, not unlike a viola piece I wrote, me of the opening of the Ninth Symphony, Odd Man Out, about the child that is where Mahler’s simple two-note queson excluded. Amongst all this swirling acvity, finds some kind of interim ‘soluon’ at its you focus for contrast on the solitary close. Your harp figure similarly seems to individual. But the other aim of that pose a queson – ostensibly a simple one, movement – as in Winter Fragments – is a maer of the note-to-note tensions that less is more. The frenec acvity within that phrase – but in its repeons, stops and you have a very small, but it acquires something more. hopefully beaufully craed, touching, lyrical moment. MB: Exactly. The emoon can be very dislled, in a way. It’s also a bit like DS: For me, the most touching and lyrical [Erik] Sae (1866–1925) – a very simple moment of the disc is your Sonnet for thing has a kind of cumulave effect. Orpheus [from Three Rilke Sonnets]. Similarly, one of the songs of Winter Fragments has a simple, folk-like MB: I think that’s one of the best pieces feel to it. I’ve wrien, because it’s stripped down; there’s no extraneous material. I adored DS: For the musicians, too, that movement the [Rainer Maria] Rilke (1875–1926) is a relaxaon, a contrast from the more poem, the idea of the almost-girl who heightened music around it. in a sense doesn’t exist. I’m really glad you recorded it, as that piece gets to the MB: This idea oen appears in my music, essence of what I can somemes do. There because I think it gives a moment of respite are pieces like that – oen fragments in in the middle of what is oen a very larger canvasses – where you feel that you turbulent landscape. Catch Me If You Can touch the beang heart of the music. is another example. It was wrien for the Haffner Wind Ensemble to take DS: That’s the subject of Rilke’s sonnet: the into schools, which immediately made nature of percepon, if I’ve understood it me think of Leoš Janáček’s (1854–1928) correctly. Mládi (‘Youth’), but also the rather cruel games that children play. So even that MB: That’s why I wanted to retain the piece has a very simple tune in the slow original German: partly because no translaon did it jusce, but also because it lends the DS: – as in the Clarinet Quintet – and recreate it in their own image. If it’s process? Does it affect the composion or piece the ethereal nature of the poem, perfect in its own way, what can you add reflect it? Is it an aid to listening? its untouchable quality. MB: Yes – you could ask whether that, as to it? You need to walk around the back a technique, is interesng, but I think it is. of it, or start taking it to pieces – perhaps MB: By way of an example, I wrote a string DS: It’s clear that how your music is perceived Think of how one might talk of an arst pulling the head off and pung it on a quintet with two cellos for the Chilingirian or its affecve power is central to your work. and the way they use their palee, or different way. That is a compliment to the Quartet, which I called Abstract Mirror. I how an architect creates or echoes lines poet: to try and get into their mind, or thought that was a completely valid use MB: And of course, a recording such as this in a building. We should give audiences as to rewrite poetry in terms of music. of a tle, because the extra cello could one represents an opportunity for listeners much as we can for them to hold on to join the upper or lower strings. The two to get a bit more under the skin of a without baffling them. DS: And this has led you to write your groups offered mirror images of each composer. Familiarity in contemporary own texts; there are some in Winter other in the composion so I felt that music breeds the opposite of contempt. DS: But with regard to the actual technical Fragments and also Touch Light, another parcular tle worked. With Winter workings of your music: do you consider piece the ensemble has played and Fragments I just loved the play on the DS: As a broadcaster, and parcularly as these as legible, expressive and necessary, recorded. words: these are fragments of winter, director of the Cheltenham Fesval, as well as interesng? (In contrast to, say, but winter also fragments. I suppose as you’ve done much to make the world of Birtwistle, whose techniques are oen MB: There have been some short pieces a broadcaster and avid reader I like to contemporary music more familiar. hidden or encoded.) where I just couldn’t find anything that play on words. Similarly, your programme notes for your encapsulated what I wanted to say. As own pieces oen allude to poec or MB: I do, of course, have processes and in the case of Touch Light, which was DS: So, to press a point: why is your clarinet emoonal content, but also to some of thoughts that are not revealed. That is why inspired by the great baroque operac quintet just the Clarinet Quintet? their technical workings, too. Do you the magic of music lies in its abstracon. masters – Monteverdi and others – consider these details to be important whose arias set just a few repeated MB: To be honest, nothing sprang to mind.