 |
The London Sinfonietta and Jonny Greenwood Last year's Ether concerts—a collaboration between the London Sinfonietta and Warp Records at the Royal Festival Hall in London—was such a mindblowing experience that I was sure I'd be in the stalls for this year's concert, which featured the Sinfonietta with Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, who would be premiering several compositions.
The theme of last year's event seemed, in retrospect, to be about process, whether that was the prepared piano treatments of Aphex Twin, bold remixes by Squarepusher, the syncopations of Steve Reich's Violin Phase or Jamie Lidell's inspired loops, which bordered on the insanely great. This year, the theme appeared to be polyphony and atonality, typified by the composers György Ligeti and Henri Dutilleux.
It was Ligeti's Ramifications that opened the proceedings, which he wrote for two string ensembles that had been tuned a quarter tone apart, creating disarming harmonies that build from nothing, peak and slowly disappear.
This was followed by Olivier Messiaen's La Fête des belles eaux performed by Ondes Martenot Ensemble, who play an electronic instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot which utilises a keyboard and a free-sliding wire to produce organic sounding slides, similar to a theramin. Olivier Messiaen was just one of many composers who created works for the Ondes-Martenot (Edgard Varése, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger were others), and the results from the French ensemble in the Royal Festival Hall were both stunning and otherworldly.
A string quartet condensed from the Sinfonietta then played the first of four short pieces by Henri Dutilleux that punctuated the evening in memorable bursts; Ainsi la Nuit "Miroir d'Espace", the initial piece, preceded Jonny Greenwood's Piano for Children. Ether is not Jonny's first experience with an orchestra: during a previous Radiohead break he wrote the music to a movie, Body Song, which led to a commission to write Smear for The London Sinfonietta's pianist John Constable and a tenure with the BBC's concert orchestra.
Piano for Children clearly has its roots in the twentieth century experiments of Debussy, Schoenberg and the pioneers of dissonance like Charles Ives. Starting suitably simply with basic piano chords, strings added a counterpoint, eventually almost battling the piano for supremacy. It was impressive, and Jonny reluctantly emerged to take a bow and thank John Constable.
The first half finished with the addition of the Nazareth Orchestra, who specialise in Arabic music, to the ranks of the Sinfonietta to perform Enta Omri (You Are My Life), composed by Mohammed Abdel-Wahab with lyrics by Ahmad Shafiq Kamel. The swirling strings and kasbah percussion readied the audience for the entrance of Lubna Salame, the Nazareth Orchestra's flame-haired resident singer, who injected the song with some passionate, powerful vocals.
After a break featuring Radiohead videos, another short piece by Dutilleux introduced the London premiere of Greenwood's Smear, an equally enjoyable slice of modernist orchestration. A short piece by Farid El-Atrash, Tuta, allowed the Nazareth Orchestra a solo spot, working the audience into a state of near-excitement with some energetic rhythms. Capriccio by one of Greenwood's favourite composers, Krystof Penderecki, followed. A brief visit to the Ainsi La Nuit series by Dutilleux was the mortar separating the classical music from what many in the audience had come to see: Thom Yorke singing reworkings of Radiohead songs Arpeggi (which I was unfamiliar with and could be a new track) and Where Bluebirds Fly (which was a b-side to the There There single).
Thom Yorke wandered on stage to rapturous applause, looking slightly ill at ease. When he started singing, his voice was initially weak and thin, and perhaps slightly uncertain, but as the Ondes-Martenot arpeggios and orchestration grew stronger, so did Thom's voice. He closed his eyes and mimed playing a keyboard: a classicist's air guitar, if you will.
For the powerful, polyphonic Where Bluebirds Fly, which threatened to unravel at any moment, he was joined on stage by Lubna Salame. There were no lyrics, just Thom's distinctive voice, confident but buried beneath a swamp of sound and Salame's warblings. It was interesting, but unconvincing, appearing somehow thrown together at the last moment.
And so the event came to a close, and comparisons with the previous Ether Festival inevitably emerged. Last year I literally staggered out of the auditorium, stunned by the musical audacity and invention I had witnessed. This year I left with a ho-hum sense of the Ether festival playing it safe. It was undoubtedly a great concert and I enjoyed every moment of it, but the energy and vibrancy that Warp brought to Ether was missing. My admiration for Jonny Greenwood has grown, especially for his interesting orchestrations and arrangements, but I hope that next year Ether collaborates with an artist or group of artists who can kick some life and puissance back into the mix.
|
