Harrison Birtwistle 80

[Richard Barrett]

I don't know - I suspect it's a lack of confidence and experience in the medium

But everyone had to start somewhere - and for my taste he did have a highly original angle on the medium which I would like to have seen more fully explored. I guess that isn't going to happen now!

[Richard Barrett]

Performance of new music. How often do performers get new music right? (Also, how often do composers re-write new music in the wake of performance?) How often do recordings of new music get the balance right and so correctly represent the piece? (...) The Colin Davis recording of Tippett's triple concerto

The Colin Davis recording of that Tippett concerto was, like many if not most recordings of new pieces, made not very long after the first performance and there are numerous things in it which haven't yet come into focus, not necessarily because the performers "get it wrong" but because these things take time and experience, and very often the pioneering work by one set of performers at a particular time is absolutely necessary to the process by which entirely different performers will come along and set a new standard. But, given that second performances often have to wait a while, second recordings of new pieces are very few and far between

Some composers never rewrite things in the wake of performance and some almost always do, sometimes radically. (I would imagine that Birtwistle is more of the former persuasion.) Personally I find that there are always a few little corrections and adjustments to be made during rehearsals and/or after hearing a performance, so I don't publish anything until after its premiere.

Recording quality can play a huge role in influencing whether we hear something as lacking in energy or brimming with it. I think this is very much the case in the LS recording of Birtwistle's pieces for large chamber orchestra. But the LS is also not particularly known for having much fire in its performances either. On the other hand the Howarth CD was recorded at a time when Birtwistle was something of a house composer to the LS, so I guess he thought they sounded OK.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But everyone had to start somewhere - and for my taste he did have a highly original angle on the medium which I would like to have seen more fully explored. I guess that isn't going to happen now!

No, sadly not. It occurs to me that, given HB's friendship with Boulez (dating back to the '70s) it's not impossible that the facilities of IRCAM might have been offered to him at some point (especially after the electronic sounds in Orpheus were realized there. Perhaps he just isn't interested? (He's not explored multiphonics and extended instrumental techniques very much, either - nor aleatoric or improvisatory passages for that matter - since the mid seventies. "Just" a (very very good) traditional composer, as you suggested earlier.

[Serial_Apologist]

No, sadly not. It occurs to me that, given HB's friendship with Boulez (dating back to the '70s) it's not impossible that the facilities of IRCAM might have been offered to him at some point (especially after the electronic sounds in Orpheus were realized there. Perhaps he just isn't interested? (He's not explored multiphonics and extended instrumental techniques very much, either - nor aleatoric or improvisatory passages for that matter - since the mid seventies. "Just" a (very very good) traditional composer, as you suggested earlier.

There's maybe a thread to be had on the subject of composers' late-period works: how many have avoided increasing indebtedness to conventions with age that they might at one time have rejected?

[Richard Barrett]

There's maybe a thread to be had on the subject of composers' late-period works: how many have avoided increasing indebtedness to conventions with age that they might at one time have rejected?

Actually very many, I would hav thought: Xenakis, Feldman, Cage, Stockhausen, Nono, to name a few around Birtwistle's generation (leaving aside Haydn, Beethoven, Monteverdi etc.!).

[kea]

There's maybe a thread to be had on the subject of composers' late-period works: how many have avoided increasing indebtedness to conventions with age that they might at one time have rejected?

For the inverse of that, Roberto Gerhard's music got progressively more unconventional and exploratory as he grew older, as did Tippett's (to an extent), Krenek's and Petrassi's.

[jayne lee wilson]

Fascinated by the comments above, I played Carmen Arcadiae & Silbury Air from the original Etcetera CD (now NMC)... don't you think you were just a bit unfair to it? Like fhg, I often heard and taped these works off-air back in the day, but this album still sounds like a classic to me: the sharp dynamic and colouristic contrasts, the carefully graded intensities of expression, the sheer grip and definition in those repeated rhythms at the end of Carmen arcadiae ...
The Sinfonietta had been playing these works for a few years before this 1988 recording, so you'd be surprised if they felt a need to be over-cautious in the interests of accuracy.
The recording still sounds great too, very powerful, 3-D and precise. No wonder it won awards!

So next I tracked down the Sydney Alpha Ensemble's Silbury Air to Naxos Library and compared it to the Elgar Howarth/Sinfonietta account, at the same lossy streaming quality (it seems impossible to find the Sydney one in CD or lossless)...
I'm sorry, but even bit-reduced, the greater technical assurance and musical subtlety of the Howarth performance was still obvious; and the recording itself still perceptibly finer in dynamic and spatial subtlety, etc. But put on the Sinfonietta CD, and you can only marvel at its superior timbral range, subtlety and power, musically and sonically; perhaps feel a bit dismayed at what some lossy streams lose, even while acknowledging them as a means to explore the new or unfamiliar...

I guess not a popular view, but it can be a problem that the subtler features of a recording are levelled down by the various losses incurred by mp3 or aac reductions, and a more overtly exciting recording (or simply one with a higher recorded level) may be unfairly favoured. If it be objected that financial imperatives lead many to use the lossy streams, all I can offer is that I buy relatively few CDs, mainly new or recent releases in singles or small groups, and then concentrate on them: so I don't spend a vast amount, and I find this approach musically rewarding and technically truer to the recording.

Of course I've often lamented the lack of alternative recordings of contemporary or unusual repertoire - that much we can all agree on; all the sadder that Radio 3 no longer fills that gap as it once did...

[jayne lee wilson]

For anyone looking for alternative Birtwistle recordings, there's another Secret Theatre on the CPO label with Musikfabrik/Kalitzke via WDR, c/w the Nenia and Ritual Fragment. Sampling it online at 320 kbps/mp3 as I roamed about last night, it sounded more than promising - sweeter and more spacious than either the razorcut precision of Howarth or the rather grey Boulez, with noticably expressive wind solos in the first few minutes and an invitingly threedimensional soundstage. Lovely balance too. I ordered it straightaway and it reviewed very well in the Gramophone (MEO, 5/96). (Ignore Ivan Hewitt). Recommended!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

For anyone looking for alternative Birtwistle recordings, there's another Secret Theatre on the CPO label with Musikfabrik/Kalitzke via WDR, c/w the Nenia and Ritual Fragment.
Recommended!

... and at budget/mid-price IIRC. (But I wouldn't call Boulez "grey" - he's the razorsharp one: white hot as ice!)

I'm going to reply to your previous after I've listened to the Howarth CD again - it deserves greater consideration.

[jayne lee wilson]

... and at budget/mid-price IIRC. (But I wouldn't call Boulez "grey" - he's the razorsharp one: white hot as ice!)

I'm going to reply to your previous after I've listened to the Howarth CD again - it deserves greater consideration.

Is that the original DG issue of Boulez, effigy? I've always had my doubts about the sound of the Decca British Music double...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Is that the original DG issue of Boulez, effigy?

[Blotto]

The Colin Davis recording of that Tippett concerto was, like many if not most recordings of new pieces, made not very long after the first performance and there are numerous things in it which haven't yet come into focus, not necessarily because the performers "get it wrong" but because these things take time and experience, and very often the pioneering work by one set of performers at a particular time is absolutely necessary to the process by which entirely different performers will come along and set a new standard. But, given that second performances often have to wait a while, second recordings of new pieces are very few and far between

Some composers never rewrite things in the wake of performance and some almost always do, sometimes radically. (I would imagine that Birtwistle is more of the former persuasion.) Personally I find that there are always a few little corrections and adjustments to be made during rehearsals and/or after hearing a performance, so I don't publish anything until after its premiere.

Recording quality can play a huge role in influencing whether we hear something as lacking in energy or brimming with it. I think this is very much the case in the LS recording of Birtwistle's pieces for large chamber orchestra. But the LS is also not particularly known for having much fire in its performances either. On the other hand the Howarth CD was recorded at a time when Birtwistle was something of a house composer to the LS, so I guess he thought they sounded OK.

I wouldn't have said it out loud without your suggestion but the Sinfonietta have always seemed musically very cool to me. I attended some of their new music concerts but stopped a couple of years ago because the performances seemed always precise but dispassionate. I came to feel the repetoire was the problem for me but now I'm less sure. I don't take your point or make my own as finding fault with the band but an acknowledgement of a difficulty of new performance.

Your observations on the Tippett concerto and early performances of new music make sense. As you say, multiple recordings of new music are a rarity but what struck me unexpectedly in playing different recordings of the Birtwistle was that I reacted quite strongly to one where the other - the Howarth/Sinfonietta - had the quality of inaudibility that music has which one doesn't care about. And although, of course, I'd been aware of preferences in recordings of music which I liked (the Tippett and the Britten interludes), this was the first time that new music which I had been indifferent to had suddenly declared itself to me in an alternate performance.

As ferney pointed out further up, performance can be skillful yet lack expression. I abruptly found myself 'moved' and drawn in by the music and inevitably wonder how often indifferent responses to new music are attributed to the piece when there may be other inhibiting factors. Much of any audience for new music - at least in general concerts - might need to be made more aware of that; that early performances may only sketch the piece and that its colouring will come later.

No, sadly not. It occurs to me that ... after the electronic sounds in Orpheus ... Perhaps he just isn't interested? (He's not explored multiphonics and extended instrumental techniques very much, either - nor aleatoric or improvisatory passages for that matter - since the mid seventies. "Just" a (very very good) traditional composer, as you suggested earlier.

Again, I wouldn't have the confidence to make such a judgement but I see your points about his being a trad composer. Can this be or has this been regarded as a limitation?

[Richard Barrett]

I see your points about his being a trad composer. Can this be or has this been regarded as a limitation?

It's a matter of taste really. As far as contemporary music is concerned, personally I'm most interested in music which seeks new ways to engage and expand the perception and ths imagination of listeners (and with older music I'm most interested in trying to put myself in the position of a listener for whom it would have done those things, which is the main reason for my interest in historically-informed performance practice), and which therefore treats tradition (if at all) as a point of reference rather than a surrounding environment, so to speak, or an object of faith. And this would be the reason why the Birtwistle pieces that I feel closest to are things like Mask of Orpheus, Punch and Judy and Earth Dances. I can try, sometimes successfully, to put myself in the mindset which views tradition in a different way from my own (ie. as a creative musician), but what I notice is that when there's something I don't like about a Birtwistle piece it's usually an "old" aspect of it rather than a "new" one.

[jayne lee wilson]

I'm sorry that Blotto keeps hammering on about the supposed deficiencies of the London Sinfonietta in their Birtwistle**. Anyone who compares those two recordings (Sydney Alpha/London S.) of Silbury Air (using the same codec/bitrate for both, of course) could only conclude that the Howarth performance is technically better-played, with greater dynamic and expressive contrasts, and better recorded sound.
(Which need not deny Blott's subjective response to them).

Last night I set the Howarth & Boulez recordings of Secret Theatre running about 30 seconds apart, through the same highly-resolving, very analytical DAC (the transports vary slightly in sound, but I know them very well & can allow for that).
The fluidity of rhythm & texture can make comparison of such a piece something of a listening challenge, but differences soon became apparent: the Boulez is set back in the acoustic, with a greater sense of a blended ensemble, and a more neutrally expressive address to solos.
Howarth and the Sinfonietta are more separated & soloistic, primary-coloured and immediate, with perceptibly greater dynamic and coloristic contrasts; they take you deeper into that stillness around 17' or 18' in, dwell more deeply upon it, then propel the return of the faster music with greater urgency. "Caution" is never a word that would occur to me hearing this.

Neither performance gives anything away to the other in sheer quality; both are excellent in isolation. But there's no missing the sense of excitement, and the sharply-defined textures, colours and contrasts of the Howarth disc.
It's always received the highest praise in reviews and commentaries since it appeared, and deserves every word of it.

(**The Sinfonietta's NMC disc of Meridian/Melencolia 1/Ritual Fragment could scarcely be described as suffering from commitment-phobia either...)

[Richard Barrett]

(**The Sinfonietta's NMC disc of Meridian/Melencolia 1/Ritual Fragment could scarcely be described as suffering from commitment-phobia either...)

That is certainly true, although Melancholia I is the only piece I really like on that disc. I should have mentioned it among my favourite Birtwistle pieces; it goes to places not much music dares to go. My comments about the LS often being a bit lacklustre weren't really directed at their Birtwistle performances, but at their often insipid performances of some (very different!) things like Takemitsu and Xenakis. I'll have to have another listen to the Howarth CD, on which Silbury Air was the one piece that really interested me - Secret Theatre struck me as somewhat meandering, and not really living up to its dramatic promise.