Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Thursday 23rd July 2015
I'd always shied away from the music of the American composer George Crumb, while being tempted by his titles:
Ancient Voices of Children,
Black Angels string quartet,
Vox Balenae, the voice of the whale. Too noisy, too uncomfortable as background while doing the housework, and so rarely performed live that true appreciation of his achievement was hard to assess. This concert,
Music for a Summer Evening, presented at Adelaide's Elder Hall in midwinter, featured one of his major works.
Entry into his soundworld requires, as I've just discovered, the chance to experience his music live in a performance of brilliance, but you should be lead up to it through a carefully constructed and dynamically impressive set of musical steps.
The Soundstream Ensemble, the contemporary music ensemble of the University of Adelaide placed their performance of
Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III) in the second half of a concert in the Elder Hall, in which the first half of the program was an effective prologue to the main event, with references to the music of Bach and Bartok linking three differing pieces progressing to the Crumb magnum opus.
Two pianists, two percussionists, a sound engineer, two grand pianos and seventy items of percussion, were placed at the service of the music. The pianists, Gabriella Smart, founder of the ensemble, and Tamara Anna Cislowska, began with a rarity, the
Ricercare from Musical Offering by
J. S. Bach in an arrangement for two pianos by the late
Tristram Cary, whose own works had often been heard on that stage. Crumb later quotes Bach directly in his Makrokosmos.
This was followed by
Long Shadows Cast, a work commissioned by the ensemble from
Samuel Smith. This world premiere performance brought onto the stage the two percussionists and, due to the complexity of the writing, Luke Dolman as conductor. One of the challenges of hearing the work, and listening to it, was the new experience of the additional three performers. I suspect that listening to the work again I'll have a better sense of its construction and intent, but the effect was quite powerful and convincing. I spoke to the composer in the foyer later and he confessed that he had wondered if he'd put too much into it, but I assured him that the general opinion of my companions was that it was just right. He is working with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra later this year so, evidently, is a considered a composer to listen out for.
Necrology, by
James Rushford, as befits a work involving death, was staged in the dimmest of lights. By now the ear had begun to accept the vast range of timbres available to the piano and percussion ensemble and the piece, often with sounds at the lowest edge of hearing, was elegiac and quite beautiful, employing the gentlest sounds, where the Smith had been energetic. The rhythmic complexities of the work were underscored by a technique that Tamara Anna Cislowska explained at the start of the second half. All the musicians wore headphones and performed to a click track.
Then, after an interval, we heard the Crumb piece, a work for two amplified pianos and seventy percussion instruments, with two players. Cymbals, gongs, rattles, timpani, an entire batterie de cuisine, minus the sink but with a slide whistle, were stationed around the pianos. The rehearsal period, and the three days of setting up in the Elder Hall, must have been nerve wracking.
Listening to a recording of the work actually gives you less than half of the experience of being there, and while it intrigues and amazes musicians who have performed it, and understand its complex nature, it can leave less adept ears bemused. Just take on trust that every note is exactly where Crumb means it to be, and that the four musicians, with their sound engineers, Simon Rose and
Chris Williams, never put a foot or finger wrong. There are five movements, inspired by the landscape round Crumb's home as it was in the early seventies, the two even numbered being for reduced forces, two pianos in one, and the percussion in the other.
Leaving aside the hints contained in the movement titles, it was easiest not to second guess what would happen or why. It was always the rapt concentration of the performers which gave point to the abstraction of the instrumental writing.
While Tamara Anna Cislowska estimated before the performance that it might last 35 minutes or so, the engagement of the musicians and the listeners was so total that it ran like water and was over almost before you knew it.
This was a festival class performance, no doubt of it, and I'd go and be part of it any time the chance was offered.
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