Nicholas Maw: The Master: A day of Nicholas Maw’s music.

Pre concert chamber music: Academy Manson Ensemble, Sara Lian Owen (soprano), Bruce Nockles (conductor), Andrew Burn (presenter) Queen Elizabeth Hall, London 30.10.2011 4pm.

Maw: La Vita Nuova (1979), Ghost dances (1988)

Robert Peate: Images Part One (2011)

Ivor Bonnici: Four Movements for Quintet (2011)

Pre concert talk: Andrew Burn, Anthony Payne 6pm

Concert: City of London Sinfonia, Holst Singers, Tasmin Little (violin), Christopher Austin (conductor), Stephen Layton (conductor), Andrew Burn (presenter) Queen Elizabeth Hall, London 30.10.2011 7pm (CG)

Maw: Violin Concerto (1993), Concert Suite from Sophie's Choice (2003), One Foot in Eden Still, I Stand (1990), Hymnus (1995-6)

 Those of us who were privileged to know Nicholas Maw were fairly astonished when a significant event was announced featuring a veritable feast of his music. He isn't performed with anything remotely like the frequency he deserved – a fact that remains as perplexing as ever after this wonderful day. Of course there are others of his generation, Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, and Goehr, who have attracted more attention with their more overtly modernistic way of doing things, and still more who have suffered infrequent performances (Anthony Payne, or Hugh Wood, for example) but Maw's work has always been a particularly special case because he shunned a great many of the techniques that have been "all the rage," and pursued his own highly individual path through thick and thin. There are early works in which he dabbled with Shönberg's dodecaphony, but with Scenes and Arias, first heard at the Proms in 1962, Maw discovered and established a new way of working for him in which, at last, he could write the music he instinctively wished to. This was the first piece I’d heard of Maw’s, and it bowled me over.

 Maw was always anxious to digest any music on offer, and had no hesitation in using elements from all manner of sources to assist his own creativity. This isn't to imply that he wasn't original – in fact his music has a habit of sounding like nobody else's. At the same time, it is not difficult to discern some of his influences; in particular he wanted desperately to be part of the Western musical tradition which he loved, and especially that which can loosely be termed "romantic." Consequently one can hear echoes of Austrians and Germans, as well as British, from the late nineteenth centuries and early twentieth – Strauss, early Schonberg, Berg, and even Vaughan Williams come to mind. These influences place his oeuvre well outside the mainstream of late twentieth century music, and many of us feel that it is all the better for that, but there's nothing "old hat" about his music either. In fact his genius was to absorb everything from here, there, and everywhere, and make a language which became very much his own.

Above all, Maw craved melody. Of that his music is full to the brim, but his melodies are not eight bar trite affairs – they tend to span vast paragraphs. Next, was harmony. No, it's not conventional or ordinary, but a mixture of tonal and dissonant harmony which always has direction. "Tonal plus" was how he described it to me. And then there's counterpoint too – lines are all-important in Maw. And last, but certainly not least, there's orchestration – and Maw absolutely loved the orchestra with its endless colours and textures; Maw called it "my instrument." 

 In the afternoon, Sara Lian Owen sang La Vita Nuova with the Academy Manson Ensemble conducted by Bruce Nockles. This setting of five Medieval and Renaissance Italian love poems is one of Maw's finest works and was his second PROMS commission, the first having been Scenes and Arias. Maw's settings of the chosen texts are both varied and subtle, with rapturously beautiful vocal lines and some extraordinarily telling instrumental moments. Movements one, three and five are predominantly slow, and two and four are fast. It was easy to warm to Sara Lian Owen's appealing and accurate singing and to the sensitivity and brilliance of the young Academy Manson Ensemble; all the performers are current or recent students at the Royal Academy of Music, and the ensemble specialises in contemporary music. 

The other Maw piece performed in the afternoon was Ghost Dances, in which the instrumentation is identical to Schönberg's "Pierrot Lunaire;" flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, but no voice. Maw boosts this ensemble with some off-the-wall instruments which members of the group have to play in addition to their regular ones – the African thumb piano, the American strumstick, a one-stringed banjo, a flexatone, a kazoo, and Pakistani manjeeras (or small finger cymbals.) The "ghost" in the title refers to Maw's idea that the nine movements are all "memory related or dream distorted images of various forms of the dance." (Maw's own description.) It's a fascinating, colourful, and at times macabre work, the individual dances being full of character and the whole making something quite dark, quirky, mysterious, and even scary. The players acquitted themselves admirably.

Two non-Maw pieces occupied the rest of the afternoon concert, both by young composers from the Royal Academy. Being placed next door to the meaty works of Maw did them no favours, although each demonstrated real promise. Robert Peate impressed with his technical command and some weird but effective textures, as well as some genuinely lyrical music, particularly in the second of the piece's four short movements. Ivor Bonnici's contribution displayed more classical influences, with a particularly entertaining fast second movement somewhat reminiscent of Stravinsky. It will be fascinating to see how these composers develop. 

In between the two concerts was a conversation between Andrew Burn, who is a Nicholas Maw fan, and who provided helpful introductions to each piece during the concerts, and the composer Anthony Payne, a friend of Maw's for many years. Payne understands Maw's work thoroughly, and as a composer who himself has suffered "blocks" in the past, obviously felt close to Maw, who also experienced appalling struggles from time to time. Had there been more time, it would have been interesting to hear of some of the depressions that Maw suffered periodically. He could be a bon viveur alright, and loved his food, a fine bottle of wine, and conversation about anything and everything. Conversely he could also feel isolated and dreadfully gloomy; I remember having more than one conversation in which he revealed that he often thought he was completely wasting his time as a composer. Some of this was undoubtedly a result of feeling neglected musically, and some because his financial position caused intense worries. I believe that his last 24 years in Washington DC were far happier, where he lived with his devoted companion Maija Hay, a ceramic artist. Nevertheless, the fact that Maw was an intensely emotional person is central to his musical creativity; to put it simply, the highs and lows are all there, with all shades between. It is, above all, music with tremendous humanity.

The first work in the evening concert was the Violin Concerto, first performed in this country and the US in 1993 by Joshua Bell, who has recorded the work and whose playing had inspired Maw to write it. This is a grand work in four movements on the scale of Brahms and others: it shares with them much dramatic interplay between orchestra and soloist, soaring melodies, a virtuosic solo part, and it is imbued for much of the time with an expressive late romantic melancholy. If that is the overriding feeling of the first and third movements, there is nevertheless optimism in this concerto too, and the second (scherzo) movement is positively playful, with a rhythmic vitality reminiscent of Walton, while the last movement offers more relaxed and peaceful moods, recalling music from the previous three and including several powerful outbursts from the orchestra and pyrotechnics from the soloist. What fabulous music! Without doubt this is one of his most inspired creations, and in tonight's performance Tasmin Little's reading was spellbinding; it is difficult to imagine a more sympathetic performance and the balance between soloist and the classically-sized City of London Sinfonia worked particularly well. 

Maw's opera Sophie's Choice provided the material for the next work, an orchestral suite receiving its UK premiere. His experiences in the world of opera were certainly not without pain. His two previous operas, One Man Show and The Rising of the Moon, had been well received but had also involved him in hostilities in one form and another, and he had distanced himself from the world of opera for some thirty years. As he said "it seemed to me that the whole opera world was a collection of ferocious egos to whom you were expected to surrender control of your work and then disappear." Sophie's Choice was ten years in the making from start to finish, and critics were divided – some openly hostile. It probably would not have reached the stage at all had it not been for the efforts of Simon Rattle, who had, a few years previously, also insisted on recording Odyssey, Maw's gargantuan symphonic work. Once again this is Maw at his mature best – with long melodies and directly tonal music rubbing shoulders with tortured, dissonant stuff. Maw's use of plain major and minor chords, scored in much the same way as the Vaughan Williams of the Tallis Fantasia, is particularly telling. Much of the music in the Suite is taken from the orchestral interludes which link the dramatic scenes and provide an increasingly agonized commentary on them. Under Stephen Layton's clear and energetic direction the City of London Sinfonia gave a committed performance of this disturbing yet often beautiful music. 

The concert finished with two of Maw's choral pieces. The first, One Foot in Eden Still, I Stand, for unaccompanied choir, displayed Maw's ability to write in the contrapuntal tradition of Stanford and other Anglican composers and the Holst Singers performed admirably despite some rather odd solo voices. Then came Hymnus, a more substantial work for chorus and orchestra, which exhibits a more mellifluous style than one usually finds elsewhere. Maw's intense desire to communicate with audiences – to be of some practical use – is well to the fore here in this beautifully crafted music which passes through shades of Britten, Vaughan Williams, and – unexpectedly – chromatic jazz harmony. 

It wasn't always easy being Nicholas Maw. It is so sad that he was taken from us at the – nowadays – too early age of 73 after suffering with dementia, diabetes and heart failure. He left us a huge treasure-trove of music to perform and enjoy, and I strongly suspect that in years to come he will quite possibly be revealed to have been one of the very greatest composers of his day.

Christopher Gunning

Anu Komsi (soprano) BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo (conductor), Barbican Hall, London, 28.10.2011 (CG) 

Bax: Tintagel (1917-19)
Kaija Saariaho: Leino Songs (UK premiere) (2002-7: rev. 2010)
Sibelius: Luonnotar Op 70 (1910-13)
Sibelius: Symphony No. 3 in C major Op 52 (1904-7)

This was the first of a series of concerts by the BBC Symphony Orchestra featuring the complete symphonies of Sibelius, but the curtain raiser was Bax’s Tintagel, and I must say the warmth and opulence of Bax's orchestration was particularly welcome on this chilly October night. Although in London's Barbican, here we were at the seaside, reveling in Bax's most popular piece with salt in the air and wind in our hair, delighting in images of Tintagel's ruined castle and its associations with the Knights of the Round Table. What a fine piece Tintagel is; a quite wonderful tune, steadily unfolding drama, and a totally satisfying formal shape made of music which always develops in episodes, one leading quite naturally to the next. And if one had any doubts that a Finn would understand this peculiarly British piece, they were assuaged completely. It was a beautifully formed, idiomatic performance by Sakari Oramo, full of colour and with all the minute tempo variations demanded by the music. I enjoyed it immensely.

Then we headed north. Although now a resident of Paris, Kaija Saariaho quite definitely retains Finnish roots, and in her Leino Songs, receiving their UK premiere, paints bleak pictures redolent of her birthplace and its culture. Leino (1878-1926) is one of Finland's most important writers, and Saariaho has worked with his poetry before. For her, his language has an appealing combination of mystery, melancholy, intimacy and distance - and if there's also something rather French about this piece, it's in the quasi-impressionistic orchestral tone colours she employs and the extreme fastidiousness which is a hallmark of her music generally. And yet, I come back to the word bleak; but it's not a cold, barren bleakness, for this is very human music too, with a warm heart beating within. Indeed the second of the four songs is called The Heart, and becomes wild and passionate, contrasting with songs one, three and four (Looking at you, Peace, and Evening Prayer) which are generally quieter and more meditative. The vocal lines are expressive, beautifully set against the orchestra, and it's all tremendously imaginative. The soprano Anu Komsi, Nordically blond and bedecked in various shades of blue-green, is married to Sakari Oramo and the two have worked together a lot. It shows; their collaboration was supremely sensitive, and the contribution by the BBC SO no less so.

A brief trip outside during the interval confirmed that the night was growing colder, and so Sibelius's Luonnotar, for soprano and orchestra, seemed appropriate once safely inside once more. This music is as Sibelian as it gets - so many hallmarks are there! The tremolo strings at the start, fluttering woodwind, timpani rolls, and a massively stormy climax. "A warm heart in a cold scene" is how a friend epitomised Sibelius, and that's what you get here. The vocal part amounts to a recitative-like rendition of part of the Kalevala, which is Finland's national epic poem; it is extremely expressive, but always very much to the point. Sibelius rarely wasted notes, and in this piece there are no exceptions to that principle. Anu Komsi entered fully into the part, and Oramo was also clearly totally in his element. 

Incidentally, Sibelius originally described this as a tone poem in 1906, so it must have developed into its ultimate form over time. At any rate, it was first performed in Gloucester in 1913 at the Three Choirs Festival - which, bearing in mind the nature of the piece, struck me as quite extraordinary. 

Finally, more Sibelius in the shape of one of his least performed symphonies - no. 3. Coming after the first two, with their rich romanticism and hefty tunes, this one came as a shock; it is relatively bare and smaller in its scale and orchestration. What was Sibelius up to? It seems clear, now, that he was at a crossroads - he needed to develop the symphony as a form, and in doing so, needed to pare things down and investigate some earlier models. Thus, the first movement has even been compared to Beethoven's work, and some have called this Sibelius's Classical symphony. Of course, it's totally Sibelius even so. The first movement needs bags of energy in performance and a strict control over the tempi of the various ingredients. Oramo and the BBC SO got it right, and there were some thrilling moments. The second movement, a kind of nocturne with a sort of rondo structure, is even smaller in scale than the first - it has no trumpets or trombones, for instance - so it's Sibelius pared down even more closely to the bone. So far so good, but in the last movement things always go awry for me - there's something not quite right about the structure here, and for me Sibelius arrives in the home key of C major far too early and then proceeds to bang on in it for far too long. Oramo and the BBC SO did their very best with it, but it didn't work, not that anyone else in the audience might have been aware of it. Oramo received exceptionally warm applause, and the orchestra declined to take it, the musicians preferring to clap the conductor they had obviously absolutely loved working with.

Christopher Gunning

Steve Reich (percussion), Neil Percy (percussion), Synergy Vocals, London Symphony Orchestra, Kristjan Järvi (conductor), Barbican Hall, London, 15.10.2011 (CG)

Steve Reich: Clapping Music (1972), The Four Sections (1987), Three Movements (1986), The Desert Music (1984)

The Barbican Hall was packed. The age range of the audience was noticeably wide – teenagers to sexagenarians and a few beyond, and that alone demonstrates the huge appeal of Steve Reich’s music. It’s been like that since 1966, when Reich first formed his own ensemble and began performing the music that had grown from his extensive studies of Western music, Hebrew chanting, Jazz, African drumming, and Balinese Gamelan music.

He appeared at the beginning of the concert, complete with signature cap, gave a thumbs-up to the orchestra and then performed his Clapping Music together with Neil Percy. It is an engaging exercise in rhythm. The two performers clap a 12 beat pattern; one player then shifts the pattern by one quaver. When it has been shifted 12 times, the two players are again in unison and the piece ends. It was the perfect introduction to Reich’s musical thinking and appropriate preparation for the meatier items to follow.

Reich did not immediately take to the large forces of a symphony orchestra, preferring to work with small groups, and it’s not difficult to see why. Ultra-precise rhythms, tight ensemble work, and crystal clear textures are central to his thinking and more readily achieved with fewer musicians. When writing for orchestras, Reich needed to rethink the conventional Western orchestra – so in The Four Sections, which came next in tonight’s programme, the strings are divided into two antiphonal groups, separated by two pianists who also play some electronic devices. The four sections of the title refer to the four movements of the piece, each of which has its own tempo and features a particular section of the orchestra; strings, percussion, wind and brass, and lastly the full orchestra.

Similar devices are employed in Three Movements, with the strings once again arranged antiphonally. As they pass short fragments between one another in the opening movement, Reich’s notion that the music is like the changing light patterns created by clouds wafting across the sky is certainly evident. The three movements are differentiated by tempo and mood changes; the second has darker textures and the third is more jazzy.

These two works were well performed by Kristjan Järvi and the LSO, even if a hypercritical listener would have ideally preferred even greater computer-like precision. But if Reich rethought the composition and performance of music, it is also true that audiences have had to rethink how they listen. Repetition, albeit ever-changing in subtle ways, is a key, even the key ingredient in this music, and if you’re not absolutely tuned in, the lack of conventional drama and interest can lead to – well, frankly, boredom! As I glanced around the audience, I saw quite a few slumped heads, and it’s to be expected – this stuff has a hypnotic quality. Or is there a more serious problem? There is no doubting Reich’s genius in formulating and developing his ideas, and there’s no doubting the sheer attractiveness of the music either – but I did find myself asking more than once if the style of this music has run its course. That’s partly due to the fact that composers with lesser gifts have latched on to the superficial nature of it and duly churned out ream upon ream of computer generated riffs for TV and film scores to the point that we’re sick and tired of it all, but it’s not the whole story. Some of Reich’s smaller pieces, Different Trains especially, or the opera The Cave seem to have far greater meaning than The Four Sections or Three Movements, and it’s curious that they were both composed after The Desert Music, another crucially important work. That minimalism, the tag with which Reich along with John Adams and Philip Glass were quickly labelled, had to develop was fairly obvious, and Reich has come a long way since the early beginnings, but these two works don’t really seem to venture much beyond what was achieved in The Desert Music. Perhaps it’s not surprising that he has now returned to smaller groups in recent works.

Anyway things definitely bucked up in part two. At around fifty minutes, The Desert Music benefits enormously from having a faster rate of harmonic change and a formal shape (basically A-B-C-B-A) which really works. There’s far more tension and drama here, and considerable variety in the orchestral palette. All Reich’s techniques are on display – pulsating rhythms, short imitative figures, oscillating chords, jazz-derived harmony – the lot. More importantly, Reich uses various texts by William Carlos Williams to suggest a combination of messages concerning our contemporary society, questioning its morality and where it is going. But why the desert in Desert Music? Reich was deeply affected by both the Sinai and Alamagordo deserts, the first for its historical importance in Jewish history, and the second because it is where the US stores its nuclear weapons.

The performance was terrific. Kristjan Järvi conducted with a firm beat and the LSO responded with the right degree of energy and with ever-sensitive dynamics. The vocal writing came off superbly well, with the ten amplified voices of Vocal Synergy effectively balanced against the orchestra, their parts, often reminiscent of jazz-orientated groups such as Singers Unlimited or Swingle Two, perfectly in tune. And when the composer reappeared he received a standing ovation, apt recognition that Reich is one of a very few composers who has genuinely changed the course of music history.

Christopher Gunning

Philharmonia Orchestra, Lorin Maazel (conductor), Royal Festival Hall, London, 1.10.2011 (CG)

Gustav Mahler: Symphony no 9 (1909 -10)

When Mahler died in May 1911, he left two major completed but unperformed works; Das Lied von der Erde, and the Ninth Symphony. The Tenth Symphony remained incomplete apart from two movements and sketches for the others.
Mahler’s life is particularly well documented; it was not short of dramatic incidents and tragedy. One of his two children had died in 1907, his wife Alma Schindler had a long standing affair with the architect Walter Gropius, he fell out with Vienna Court Opera (of which he was director) and was regularly subjected to anti-Semitic abuse. He had been diagnosed with a heart condition in 1907, but although advised to avoid strenuous exercise, continued with extremely taxing concert tours conducting the New York Philharmonic and other orchestras. His own music had been introduced little by little to mixed reception, although with the massive Eighth Symphony he scored a particularly notable success in 1909.
Mahler’s indomitable spirit spurred him on against all manner of difficulties, but it was inevitable that his life dramas would find their way into his music, and never was this more the case than in his very last works. Much has been made of his apparent obsession with death, but while there are certainly passages in the Ninth Symphony where Mahler seems to be peering over the precipice, there is hope too – joy, even. It is crucial that all these elements be fully represented in performance, and in the end it is perhaps Mahler’s love of life which underpins everything; without that intense love, despair and frustration would mean nothing.
Maazel’s view of the composer has been gaining some mixed responses during this current cycle. When there have been criticisms, reviewers have found his tempi to be slow and ponderous; I, however, thought his performance of the Fifth Symphony in London superb. The fact is there are dozens of interpretations which will work, pleasing some and displeasing others. People become obsessive and even make careers comparing versions by conductor x and conductor y, and I read a reviewer’s detailed ‘take’ on no less than ten different recordings of the Ninth recently, finishing up in knots. So I go back to basics; I listen to the marvel of Mahler in this extraordinary symphony and ask some simple questions. Does this conductor understand what Mahler intended? Does he have a firm grip on the complex structure of the score? Does he guide the orchestra successfully through the emotional journey set out in the music? And do the players respond in a way of which Mahler might approve?
The conductor Kurt Sanderling has been much in my mind recently, not only because of his recent death, but because some sixteen years ago I attended a performance of this same symphony in this same hall with this same orchestra, and was duly reduced to mumbling wreck status. Sanderling was eighty-two and approaching the end of his long career, and I thought then, as I thought watching the eighty-one year old Maazel tonight, that there is almost bound to be something especially poignant about an old man’s view of this music. Sanderling gained universal respect as a conductor who spurned showmanship and strove valiantly to get to the very heart of the music. Would I remember Maazel’s performance in a similar way?
Things didn’t start too well. The tempo was leisurely, as marked by Mahler, but the gently rocking opening was thrown slightly off-kilter by a French Horn that was beautifully played but a little too loud. Things settled down thereafter, and the extraordinary form of the first movement, with its combination of themes and moods seemingly at odds with themselves, made its full effect, with the returning “sighing” motif always feeling threatened by the next altercation. And what of the recurrent rhythm that, according to Bernstein, was supposed to represent Mahler’s irregular heartbeat? Yes – it was there, but not given undue prominence and anyway it is now reckoned that the composer’s leaky heart valves would not necessarily cause an irregular beat. Most importantly, it was impossible not to feel that this was indeed the start of a long journey encompassing just about all that life has to offer; serenity mingled with frustration, torment, and – well, let’s not give away the end just yet. And, equally to the point, the orchestral playing was terrific, with some particularly fine and anguished work from the strings, not outdone by the fabulous woodwind department with all solos magnificently done.
The second movement is another of the composer’s unique creations, and Maazel took things at deliberate tempi, with the ländler sections feeling genuinely rustic and the ironic waltz sections full of wit. What was going through Mahler’s mind? He seems to be looking back with a mixture of affection and ridicule; and that’s how the music struck me in this performance, with some marvellous verve and wit emanating from all sections of the orchestra.
The third movement, more-or-less a classic rondo structure, displays, among other things, Mahler’s love of J S Bach; it is highly contrapuntal yet, as is so frequently the case in this symphony, there is a mocking undercurrent to the whole movement. What is required here is energy, and we had it, particularly in the closing bars where the orchestra positively erupted! Elsewhere there was amazing work again from the woodwind (superb clarinets!) and in the penultimate section, real angst from the strings, given just enough spaciousness for their gloriously expressive role.
The strings mostly dominate the textures of the final movement, and they set off with the most gloriously passionate tone I’ve ever heard from a British orchestra, or, for that matter, any orchestra anywhere. Here, Mahler is returning to the world of his 2nd and 3rd symphonies and also to his most recently completed work, Das Lied von der Erde. This is surely where Mahler contemplated his own death, and although certainly tinged with regret, it is not a death viewed with complete hopelessness. Instead it looks forward to the possibility of peace after death; Mahler was never devoutly religious, and yet it has been remarked that he was never closer to God than during this movement.
I found the account tonight persuasive in every way – it is really astonishing how the music reaches its two climaxes and then disintegrates little by little, as if reluctant to bid farewell. The last page, containing fewer notes, perhaps, than any other symphony, was not spoilt by a few unmuffled coughers in the audience who had been asked prior to the concert to stifle any unavoidable coughing. There followed a long silence, which is always a clear indication that this symphony, and its performance, had left its mark. And I would gratefully have listened to the whole thing over again.
If Maazel’s reading is not to everyone’s taste, so be it, but I do not think anyone could be in any doubt that his is a totally authoritative and committed interpretation, and that the Philharmonia continues to be on absolutely top form and the match of any orchestra in the world.

Christopher Gunning