Prom 58 (1.09.20) Live Minimalist Classics

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Leading contemporary chamber ensemble the London Sinfonietta returns to the Royal Albert Hall for a showcase of Minimalist classics, including music by two giants of the 20th and 21st centuries, Steve Reich and Philip Glass.


Philip Glass: Facades
Julia Wolfe: East Broadway
Nancarrow arr. Yvar Mikhashoff Player Piano Study No. 6
Nancarrow arr. Yvar Mikhashoff Player Piano Study No. 9
Tansy Davies: Neon
Edmund Finnis in situ
Meredith: Axeman
Steve Reich: City Life

London Sinfonietta
Geoffrey Paterson conductor

[edashtav]

Philip Glass: Facades
Julia Wolfe: East Broadway

I found Glass's Façades, the 5th movement of his Glassworks, to be a trifle ponderous but that may be conditioning from another performance. The ensemble played the work with clarity and precision.

Julia Wolfe's East Broadway was fun!

Nancarrow arr. Yvar Mikhashoff Player Piano Study No. 6
Nancarrow arr. Yvar Mikhashoff Player Piano Study No. 9
These two metrical tangles brought playing of great virtuosity and character. I loved them.

Tansy Davies: Neon
I warm to Tansy's music and play her CD 'Spine' often. Unsurprisingly, Neon was another brightly lit work despite evoking night time in a busy City. It generated a good sense of drive and forward momentum from a funk-influenced complex beat. The piece is an early one dating from 2004 and uses a mixed septet.

Edmund Finnis in situ
5 distorting mirror reflections on early music. Edmund's music has a beguiling, often gentle, texture. His Garden of Fand has a magic that entices the listener with a subtle, magnetic appeal. I liked the strong structural framework derived from the original pieces. Aristocratic and charming and played by the London Sinfonietta with love.

Meredith: Axeman
A work for Electric Bassoon that is wired to electronics to fracture its sound into something akin to a Bass Guitar. Axeman is, literally, a Heavy Metal Hero. A short jeu d'esprit played with licentious panache by Jonathan Davies.

Steve Reich: City Life
A minimalist work written for the Sinfonietta that's informed and enlivened by the sampled sounds and cries of City life. Unlike the rigidity of a fixed tape track, as in the composer's The Cave of which I heard the London Premiere in the RFH, the samples are actuated through players on instruments such as prepared pianos. All five movements are suffused with Reich's City Slicker Professionalism. He knows how to take 'moments' and from them build, sometimes at almost exhausting length, complexity, energy and direction. Is it more than a can of spaghetti hoops and loops? Time will tell. I enjoyed its 25 minutes as the score was new to me, but will I be contacting the conductor, to demand: "Play it again, Geoffrey!"
The Sinfonietta played the work with practised ease.
Encore:
Sadly, there was none despite the concert ending rather early at 20.52.

London Sinfonietta
Geoffrey Paterson conductor

[teamsaint]

Thanks for your comments, Ed.

I haven’t listened, but I did check out an earlier recording of the Tansy Davies piece on the strength of your comments.
Apart from a strong aversion to almost all pieces of music that are 10 minutes long , I did enjoy it. But I’m conflicted by it too. Not too hard to pick up some influences, and to hear why somebody might programme it with Reich, and it is an interesting and quite groovy thing. But it sort of falls between two stools on first listen, the cerebral and the physical. Sort of puts me in mind of Talking Heads when they are under achieving. But, I might easily have missed the point, and it could well grow on me. First impressions are often untrustworthy.

Oh yes, and the Davies piece led me to a very interesting looking CD, Discs Ovals and Sheres by The US based Quintessence, which leads off with some Hindemith.

[edashtav]

Thanks for your comments, Ed.

I haven’t listened, but I did check out an earlier recording of the Tansy Davies piece on the strength of your comments.
Apart from a strong aversion to almost all pieces of music that are 10 minutes long , I did enjoy it. But I’m conflicted by it too. […] But it sort of falls between two stools on first listen, the cerebral and the physical. Sort of puts me in mind of Talking Heads when they are under achieving. But, I might easily have missed the point, and it could well grow on me. First impressions are often untrustworthy.

Oh yes, and the Davies piece led me to a very interesting looking CD, Discs Ovals and Sheres by The US based Quintessence, which leads off with some Hindemith.

Well, I share 'Hants solidarity' with several of your well made points, ts:
Aversion to short measure. Too many short pieces in a programme can be tiring and leave one longing for a main course.
Tansy Davies: falling between two stools. I think she does do that and I think she needs to up the cerebral, the central nervous system' to avoid the accusation that she's writing pop-music for pseuds.

As for the Disks, ovals and spheres album: I've not encountered it but I have heard ' on the grapevine' that some of the Quintessence wind players are astonishingly talented. I've just bought some new headphones; perhaps I'll buy the album to show that I'm no longer 'a square'. ( Oh dear that sentence contains a non sequitur.)

[Constantbee]

Too many short pieces in a programme can be tiring and leave one longing for a main course.

A sort of tasting menu, perhaps? Menu dégustation? Glad they could make room in the Proms live schedule for new music

I thought the Glass started poorly, a bit rough at the edges until it got going. The test for me with a new piece is always 'Is this worth re-hearing?'. I'd say most of the pieces on this programme are, although those with the most immediate impact, like the Davies, much as I admire her, sometimes don't repay the effort. Looking forward to watching it on iPlayer. The visual backdrop provided by the RAH lighting probably adds to the enjoyment.

[bluestateprommer]

A sort of tasting menu, perhaps?

That puts it very well here, for this London Sinfonietta program. The 10-minute duration of many of the pieces actually worked out just fine for me. It actually made the Steve Reich finale seem rather drawn-out by comparison, with the standard Steve Reich tropes. But full marks to the London Sinfonietta and Geoffrey Paterson for pulling off this program so well. (I may have met GP in the Arena queue 4 years ago, when he was chatting with Robin Holloway.)

[Bryn]

Mikhashoff's inventive orchestration notwithstanding, I still prefer my Nancarrow straight:

but "minimlist"? I think not.