Edgard Varèse - BBC Total Immersion Day 6th May 2017

[Beef Oven!]

Barbican Centre

After the Maida Vale BBCSO concert yesterday afternoon they were handing out a booklet on the upcoming events and saw this. So I went over to the Barbican Centre and bought an all day pass for £45, which I think is excellent value. An all day pass starts from £25 and the price depends on where you sit at the evening concert. The individual concert tickets can be bought separately too.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?id=19148

11.00 and 18.45 Reconstruction of Varèse’s piece for tape Poéme électronique, Foyers

12.00 Talk: An introduction to the life and music of French-American composer Edgard Varese, Fountain Room

14.00 Concert:

Un Grand Sommeil Noir
Offrandes
Hyperprism
Octandre
Intégrales
Ionisation
Density 21.5
Dance for Burgess

Guildhall New Music Ensemble

16.30 Film: The One All Alone 2009 - In a series of interviews with the likes of Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Prof Chou Wen-Chung and Ricardo Chailly and with archive footage, documentary maker Scheffer unveils the mystery behind the man he admires so much; an alchemist in sound.

19.00 Concert:
Arcana
Nocturnal
Étude pour Espace - arr Prof Chou Wen-Chung
Déserts
Tuning Up - arr Prof Chour Wen-Chung
Amériques

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo conductor
Allison Bell soprano
BBC Singers

[Richard Barrett]

Excellent! That's almost everything - only Ecuatorial is missing as far as I can see. I wonder why they didn't just throw that in as well...

[Beef Oven!]

Excellent indeed!

I hadn’t picked up on the absence of Ecuatorial from the concerts, but they say this, in the blurb ....

"Total Immersion is truly total - embracing every note he ever composed, including screenings of specially recorded BBC Symphony Orchestra films of Etude pour Espace and Ecuatorial."

So I guess we’ll have to make do with a pre-recorded screening. Odd way of going about it.

[maestro267]

Maybe they can't get the Ondes Martenot in...

[Bryn]

Maybe they can't get the Ondes Martenot in...

Ondes Martenot? Theremin Cellos, surely, if they were going for authenticity.

[ahinton]

Yes, excellent for sure. What a pity that only Un grand sommeil noir appears to have survived from his days in France when Strauss and Busoni seem to have been among his admirers; there's a whole raft of Varèse that's likely forever to remain unknown to us all. It's an even greater shame that he destroyed the score of Bourgogne almost until his death, having retained it for some half a century (or so it is said); as it is known to have had at least one public performance, one wonders whatever happened to the parts...

[ahinton]

Ondes Martenot? Theremin Cellos, surely, if they were going for authenticity.

You unrepentant HIPPster, you! But quite right, of course.

[Dave2002]

Thanks Beef O. I might even get to this one.

Years ago I went to the George Crumb immersion day, which mostly I enjoyed.

I believe this is my Varese LP, which I bought around the same time as Crumb's "Ancient Voices of Childresn", also on Nonesuch - https://www.discogs.com/Edgard-Var%C...elease/3785795

I'll mark it in the calendar, and hope that it might work out.

[CGR]

Excellent. Must book up for this !!!

[Bryn]

I believe this is my Varese LP, which I bought around the same time as Crumb's "Ancient Voices of Childresn", also on Nonesuch - https://www.discogs.com/Edgard-Var%C...elease/3785795

I replaced my LP of that with its CD manifestation but a month or so ago.you

[Beef Oven!]

Dave2002 & CGR

Note that the all-day pass is limited numbers, so don’t delay more than you need to.

Also, you can only get the pass in person at the Barbican box-office or on the ‘phone, not on-line I was told. There’s a £4 charge for the ‘phone booking, in person no charge.

[Pulcinella]

The only Varèse in my collection is this CD, a coupling of Arcana, Integrales, and Ionisation with two works by William Kraft (Contextures and Concerto for percussion).
Must confess that I had forgotten about it, tucked away as it was between a couple of Turnage CDs and half a shelfload of RVW!

Any comments on the performances?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/CDs-Vinyl/Arcana-Integrales-Ionisation-Edgard-Varese/B0000042DU/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1481817840&sr=1-1&keywords=Varese+kraft+mehta

[Richard Barrett]

Any comments on the performances?

It's very many years since I heard that disc and I don't remember anything about the music by Kraft that's on it, but as I remember it wouldn't be my first choice, which would definitely be Martinon's Chicagp recording of Arcana and the ASKO Ensemble in the other pieces from the Chailly complete set.

This "every note he ever composed" is nonsense by the way, if only because almost every note he composed before moving to the USA was destroyed in a fire.

[Pulcinella]

It's very many years since I heard that disc and I don't remember anything about the music by Kraft that's on it, but as I remember it wouldn't be my first choice, which would definitely be Martinon's Chicagp recording of Arcana and the ASKO Ensemble in the other pieces from the Chailly complete set.

This "every note he ever composed" is nonsense by the way, if only because almost every note he composed before moving to the USA was destroyed in a fire.

Thanks for your comments, Richard.

[Dave2002]

Note that the all-day pass is limited numbers, so don’t delay more than you need to.

Also, you can only get the pass in person at the Barbican box-office or on the ‘phone, not on-line I was told. There’s a £4 charge for the ‘phone booking, in person no charge.

Thanks for this. I suppose we can't rely on it not being popular - the recent Feldman offer showed that odd things can happen. I dislike extra charges of that nature, and avoid them if I can. They seem like opportunistic attempts, perhaps not even by related organisations, to make money with hardly any effort.