Bainbridge, Berio and Meredith: Nicole Tibbles (soprano), Sarah Eyden (soprano), Heather Cairncross (mezzo-soprano), Omar Ebrahim (narrator), Sounds Intermedia, Voicelab Pulse, conducted by Mary King, Diego Masson (conductor) Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor of flak), London Sinfonietta, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 30.04.2007 (AO)

 

Simon Bainbridge : Music Space Reflection – Manchester

Luciano Berio : Laborintus II

Anna Meredith : flak


What an unusual evening this was, built around music that changes the ways in which we hear, as well as what we hear.  In nature, sound comes from all around, and our ears adjust: the idea of sound “having” to come from one direction is quite artificial. Our brains are designed to process multi-directional sound.  Music like this stretches the boundaries of what, and how, we hear.

Architecture and music are natural partners in the way they deal with form and movement.  Great architecture is an art form.  Magnus Lindberg said “music is making notes vibrate in space”.  There’s also the often-quoted phrase describing architecture as “frozen music”. Hence, Simon Bainbridge’s Music Space Reflection addresses itself to Daniel Liebeskind’s innovative building for the Imperial War Museum North.  The music was created to be heard in that building, the audience encouraged to look up and around them, even to move around to appreciate how movement adapted what they heard. The idea, I think, is that the listener can process sound in relation to space, and respond to surroundings in a musical way. Translated to the flat, conventional stage at the Queen Elizabeth Hall almost certainly limits the experience. There were wide screen projections of images like glass and metal – nothing more explicit – but these were distracting rather than helpful.  Imagination is far more exciting when music is as intrinsically stimulating as this.

The orchestra played in four equally balanced blocks across the platform, amplified sensitively by microphones and speakers in unusual formations, such as above and behind the audience.  The resonances were quite bizarre, genuinely imparting a sense that sound was coming from four dimensions, and adding a low, rumble giving a depth of sound not otherwise possible from conventional instruments. It felt as though we were hearing the very pulse of the earth.  Sounds Intermedia, led by David Shephard, were playing electronics as an instrument, integral to the growth of the music.  They expanded and deepened what the orchestra played.  This was far more interesting than devices like adding pre-recorded sound.

The music unfolds against this deep reverberation, moving swiftly in different directions, sometimes creating angular dissonances, sometimes rotating in whimsical flurries.  Sometimes the sounds turn on a sudden pivot, changing direction as if they were rounding corners.  You don’t need visual clues, but you can “feel” glass and metal in the clear, sharp textures, solid forms against transparent. This is very expressive music, though not at all “programmatic”: it’s far too imaginative and quirky. Just as architecture is a means of giving shape to “empty” space, even silence is part of Bainbridge’s concept.  At the end, Masson conducts bars where sounds gradually dissipate, but even then, there’s a structure to the way they fade into the computer-enhanced hum, so understated that only sensitive ears can pick it up. In nature, too, there are many sounds almost imperceptible to human ears, but they are there, nonetheless, and affect us subliminally.

Luciano Berio’s Laborintus II is also a work to be adapted to whatever performance place is used, so hearing it live is special.  The 3 soloists and small 8 person chorus are lined against the back of the stage, with extra male and female voices at the end of the line, which subtly changed the balance.  The instruments are also arranged in separate groups.  Again, greater depth was given to the flat performing space by having parts of the narrator’s speech beamed over the stage through an enormous overhead speaker.  It adds a magnificent extra dimension, not easily captured on the recording.  This was intended as music theatre, so the singers are supposed to move, clap and gesture at critical points.  The text is a combination of quotes from Dante the Bible, T S Eliot and Elias Sanguinetti, Berio’s close friend and collaborator, but deliberately disjointed and non-linear.  Voices come from all directions, sometimes distinct, sometimes coming en masse, as if overheard by accident. Indeed, given the protest in the text, and Berio’s political values, it’s quite appropriate that this sometimes feels as if there’s a street demo in progress.  At times, there are elements of scat singing, shouting and wildly jazz influenced playing.  The apparent cacophony, however, is densely structured.  Diego Masson judges it carefully, giving the strident trumpets and trombones full throttle, balancing them with softer, warmer details such as the figures for clarinet and the two harps.

The vocal parts are quite complex, and require a separate vocal conductor : Mary King, facing sideways, took her cue from Diego Masson and kept the voices on track.  At times the choir sounded vaguely tribal, an element Berio would have appreciated.  There are elements of scat singing and jazz.  Outstanding was Nicole Tibbels around whose voice so much of this piece revolves.  Omar Ebrahim is easily the best performer of this kind of music in this country, and he was magisterial, especially when he intones the solemn text “ La musica é tutti relativa……..sí é l’anima intera, quando l’ode, e la virtú di tutti quasi corre allo spirito sensible, che receve lo suono” (Music is all relation….thus is the soul in its entirety and the virtue of all things  flows forward that sensitive sprit that receives the sound).  This performance received the most thunderous applause I’ve encountered in ages.

Bainbridge and Berio together provided an intriguing contrast in the way they used space – Berio using it for theatrical impact, Bainbridge as the unifying force behind his explorations.  Unfortunately, the concert did not stop at this point, to allow the audience to absorb the music more fully.  As soon as we entered the lobby, for a second interval, we were faced with more music.  It’s good that student installations should get an airing, but it’s also not fair on them that they should be heard by an audience with Berio in their ears.  At least, for students, it’s a learning experience.

Anna Meredith’s flak is titled in lower case, which is worrying. Plenty of spatial effects here, too, but unfortunately they didn’t relate to the music.  Without the smoke bombs, fairy lights and excruciating volume, there wasn’t much here.  There’s a huge projection on screen of a light bulb which gradually gets so huge all you see is the filament.  Perhaps this is intentional, for if this piece was used in interrogation, it would be effective without technically breaching the Geneva Convention.  “An Abu Ghraib experience”, someone commented.  Certainly this was a spectacular, but neither Springsteen nor Meatloaf appeared.  A large proportion of the audience was school-age, which is unusual, but, judging by their enthusiasm for Berio and Bainbridge, they are more sophisticated than programmers appreciate.  Masson, incidentally, didn’t conduct, but Ryan Wigglesworth.

This performance of Berio’s Laborintus II will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 5^th May, and available online for a week.  Bainbridge’s Music Space Reflection will be broadcast on 12^th May.

 

Anne Ozorio