The Avant Garde Transcript Date: Tuesday, 15 April 2008 - 12:00AM THE AVANT GARDE Chamber Domaine David Horne (DH) Many of you will have been at Chamber Domaine's last lecture recital here, where they focused very much on some really great English music from the first part of the 20th Century. In contrast, what you are going to hear, in the next ninety minutes, is hopefully going to be some really great music from the latter part of the 20th Century and the start of the 21st. In fact, as you can see on your programme, one of the pieces we are going to hear tonight is going to be a world premiere, so that is a great thing to add to the concert. In this short period of time I really cannot do justice to the state of modern British music. I think that it has become increasingly and wonderfully diverse, and I hope that our small selection of pieces for tonight's concert is going to help reflect that. Most of the pieces are going to be solo pieces and in particular we are going to focus quite a lot on pieces for the solo voice, which brings us to our star guest for the evening, who is Jane Manning. Jane Manning, for a composer such as myself and for many other British composers, in many respects epitomises the ideal modern singer. This is a singer who has a breadth of knowledge, who is just as comfortable singing Bach or Mozart as she is Ferneyhough. She has had a lifelong commitment to the commissioning of music, and not just famous composers but actually commissioning composers at the beginning of their careers. In fact, some of the music you will hear Jane sing tonight, she commissioned from composers when they were still in their twenties. So I would love for you to give a warm welcome to Jane Manning OBE. Jane Manning (JM) Hello. Thank you very much for you kind introduction. DH What I would like to ask you about first is what was it about new music that first took your attention? Why did you want to sing it? JM I think I fell into it quite by chance really because I wasn't very curious at that time. I came from Norfolk, and I had a very traditional background in oratorio and Gilbert & Sullivan. I went through the Royal Academy of Music for four years and came out the other end, without really knowing anything about Webern or Schoenberg or anyone. I'd heard the name Schoenberg and had been told he was this completely mad person who had invented this terrible system which was going to destroy music, etc. But I didn't know anything about it - I was hopeless. I had taken part in a Brittan piece when I was a schoolgirl, and I'd sung some Walton songs while at the Academy, but that was it really. But then I went to Dartington for my holidays after my first year, when I'd finished at the Academy and I met some people who put some Webern songs in front of me. I didn't know about such music but I was most intrigued. I had not met atonal music or anything like that, so I was utterly intrigued and exhilarated. After that these people pushed me in this direction and they wouldn't let go of me. They made me audition for the Park Lane Group, and it just led on from there. Then I got to meet composers, which was another thing, because you feel so involved with the composer when you sing their work. It is a responsibility. DH And young composers as well, of course. JM Yes, young and old. Although the first composer whose work I did was Elisabeth Lutyens, which was in her 60th birthday year. That was a very important time for me because that particular piece was very successful, the Valley of Hatsu-Se, and it led to lots more performances for the BBC. The person in charge of Dartington at that time was of course Sir William Block, who was at the BBC, so that was a priceless connection and I also made many connections through it to people at the forefront of the new music world, which I knew nothing about, but they just pitchforked me into really. Then I did the Park Lane Group audition, which was successful, and Susan Bradshaw, who was my earliest mentor, was the pianist then. She encouraged me tremendously, and she chose for me the other works I did, which were works that I still sing. DH You have a very wide repertoire in that you will sing Bach and Mozart, but also far more avant garde and contemporary pieces. What is very interesting about your contemporary repertoire is how wide-ranging that is. In other words, you are not a singer who wants to specialise only in a particular branch of new music. JM No. It makes me very sad that there are these little rival camps in contemporary music now. There is a lot of polarisation I think, with a lot of people sort of stabbing each other in the back and forming their little factions. I won't go along with that. I think that, as a performer, you want to range much more widely and be more sympathetic to everybody, and I also think that this is healthy in this country. On this I think it is perhaps worth saying that that sort of thing is not too bad in this country, or in America, where I think it doesn't matter even if composers write in a conservative style if it's very good music. It doesn't matter what year things were written: when everyone's dead and gone, it only matters whether it's good music or not. DH I think you are absolutely correct on that point: in this country we are in a very good position, because British music is so wide in its range. It would seem a pity to me if you wanted just to choose one particular avenue. JM Yes. I think we have composers who sort of people at Darmstadt would laugh about; well, you know, who has the last laugh really. I think we're much more wide with our range of sympathies in this country, and I still think that there is a lot of wonderful music being written in tonal ways, although, of course, I'm very sympathetic to much more avant garde and experimental things. Although, having said that, nothing's very new really; it comes round full circle. I've had such a long career that the pieces I now do are not a million miles away from the pieces I began doing in the 1960s. DH That is another unique thing that you have. One of the first times I heard you live, I was a teenager, and you had come up to Edinburgh to perform Brian Ferneyhough's Etude Transcendental, which is a phenomenally hard piece, and I just remember being blown away. I really got the impression that here was a singer who could do anything. I think that is an important thing, because I think you have always had a reputation as a singer who really was willing to try anything. Has that had an effect on the kinds of compositions that composers have created specially for you? JM I don't know. I think the problem about personal vehicles can be that it is a sort of personal ego trip where someone writes so incredibly difficult and virtuosic no one else can do it. They give you a nice sort of frisson doing that. The three pieces I'm doing tonight were all written for me by composers who remain dear friends and whom I knew when they were very young, and I'm happy to say that they have all gone into other people's repertoire as well, especially the Weir piece, which is really a classic of its kind. It has been done by everybody, everyone's enjoying it, and I think that is the main point. With the Ferneyhough, I haven't done it a great deal. That was musically very complex. I have to say that it wasn't vocally, but of course often the two coincide because if you're struggling with musical difficulties, then you're not perhaps using your voice very well, so you have to be very careful about the technical aspect. But I have to say that it was incredibly well-written vocally, although no one would ever believe it from looking at it because the musical idiom was so complex. DH It might seem like a silly question, but obviously you do have perfect pitch - do you feel that this is something that helps you in singing strange new music? JM I suppose it gets you to the stage of polishing things quicker. I think that's what happens and you're not going to make too many mistakes while learning it. You get the pitches right and then you can concentrate on polishing other things and have more time for that, but I certainly don't go around sight reading. It wouldn't be the thing at all. I can sight read, but sight reading is not a performance, as we all know - there is something much more. But I suppose it has been an advantage in that at least you know where you're aiming for.