Aldeburgh Festival (2): Sciarrino, Fauré, Bach, Liszt, Chopin, Nono, Debussy: Louis Lortie (piano), The Maltings, Snape, Aldeburgh, England. 18.6.2007 (AO)

 

This year’s Aldeburgh Festival is programmed around the theme of Italy and its place in western music.  The keynote was Britten’s Death in Venice.  Also prominently featured were Monteverdi, Respighi, Scarlatti, Gesualdo and their English baroque counterparts.  This being forward-thinking Aldeburgh, modern composers were also featured.  Works by Scelsi, Sciarrino, Dallipiccola, and above all, Luigi Nono, were included.  Indeed, this Venice, and Italian theme continues elsewhere in this country all year.  In February, Simon Bainbridge’s Diptych was premiered and in the autumn, there’ll be a long Italian festival at the South Bank.

This evening’s programme started with Salvatorre Sciarrino’s Perduto in una città d’aqua (lost in a city of water).  It is extremely atmospheric, quite minimalist in the way the composer uses single notes, struck forcefully, so the sound resonates over stillness, so the boundaries of “played” music blend with “heard”, just as in Venice, city blends with sea.  The music came while he sat with Luigi Nono as he lay, slowly dying, in his house on the edge of the lagoon. They communed in semi-silence. “The words in a sentence were often punctuated by strands of sleep, and the meaning wandered, towards dreams, towards that nucleus of warmth”.  Structurally, it is based on a series of two note chords, but it is the reverberations between the notes that is fascinating.  The sounds linger across the silence, the vibrations continuing after a note is struck.  One set of chords is deliberately flat and hollow, like the mechanical ticking of a metronome, the passing of time, water drops, a frail heartbeat.  I heard this in May 2006, played by Nicholas Hodges with rather more intensity, but Lortie’s understatement brought out other aspects.

For Nono, Venice was home physically, spiritually and artistically.  Earler, in Aldeburgh,  his widow Nuria Schoenberg, came and spoke of his life and work.  David Alberman and Irvine Arditti played his final work, Hay que caminar’ soñando.  There was also a screening of the film Vive a Venezia though not, surprisingly, of the film, Trail on the Water by Bettina Ehrhardt. (Review Link). It’s a pity because that film sums up why Venice, “ambiguous Venice”, is such a powerful metaphor for Nono, and for new music in general.  The film also includes a breathtakingly beautiful performance of   ….sofferte onde serene….. played by its dedicatee, Nono’s close friend Mauricio Pollini which for many would alone be a reason for wanting the DVD.

Any opportunity to hear ….sofferte onde serene…..live is to be cherished, because it’s written for piano augmented by recorded sounds of the same piano being played by the same player, but at a different time.  The effect is extremely subtle, so delicate that it can confuse the ear if you’re not expecting it. In live performance there’s the added bonus of hearing the sound from a different part of the concert hall, and from seeing the pianist’s hand rest, silently, as he listens to the recording and blends his own playing in with it.  This interaction was particularly vivid in this performance by Louis Lortie.  He really did seem to listen and observe, respecting the recorded sound almost as if he were playing with another soloist.  I was surprised by how much this enhanced the overall effect, as it created a palpable sense of aural and spatial depth.  It added an unsettling musical perspective too, enhancing the shifting figures being played, as if they had a ghostly companion.  The piano seemed to have been fine-tuned in the interval, because in the second part of the programme, which began with this Nono piece, the pitch seemed sharper and more acute, more accurately shadowing the recorded sound.  It was a tiny, but telling detail, which showed the care that went into this performance.  Lortie’s approach, too, was meticulous, each note deftly defined with confidence and attack.  In this impressionistic piece, every note counts, its position carefully gauged in relation to others, even in the broody, dark climaxes where notes rush together like rolling thunder.  Lortie shows how the piece evolves, moving from the rumbles in the beginning, swiftly changing texture in clearer, more delicate patches, even achieving a metallic sharpness at times which enlivens the flow.  There’s an interesting inner rhythm driving this piece, giving it direction, rather like a tide pulling the movement of waves.   ….sofferte onde serene… means waves restored to calm.  Nono also builds in subtle detail, such as tolling bells, affirming what Venice meant to him.  This is a wonderful mood piece, here well judged and paced by sensitive playing.

There were other “Venetian” touches in the programme, such as Barcarolles by Fauré and Chopin and Liszt’s three pieces about the city.   It was good to hear these together, despite the similar time signatures, because cumulatively they wove together well, enhancing the distinctiveness of each composer’s style.  The three Fauré Bacarolles (no.s 5, 6 and 7) were particularly lucid. Lortie didn’t exaggerate the flourishes in Chopin, and shaped the Liszt with restraint, capturing the measured pace in La lugubre gondola.  This dignity made his tribute to Wagner, who had just died in Venice, RW –Venezia, feel all the more sincere, turning the “rowing” figures into a slow march.  Even the choice of Bach’s Concerto no. 3 had “Venetian” connotations as this transcription was by Alessandro Marcello, an almost exact contemporary of Bach, demonstrating how the composer’s music influenced the cosmopolitan musicians of 18^th century Venice.

The Debussy pieces also complemented the concept of Venice.  Canope, from Préludes Book I, was followed by La cathedrale englouti.  This showed Lortie in his element.  He shaped the phrases elegantly, glorying in the “oriental” exoticism in the tonal colours.  You could almost imagine the cathedral, mysteriously glimpsed through the mist.  After an evening of somber contemplation, he concluded with L’isle joyeux, at once reminiscent of the Chopin Barcarolle he loved and of La Mer which Debussy was working on and would complete the following year. 

 

Anne Ozorio