The post-minimalist craze for repetitive rhythms and relentless arpeggios isn’t over. This concert celebrating the recent 60th birthday of Max Richter sold out early, and extra tickets were issued to those prepared to sit in the choir stalls above the stage of Glasgow City Halls.
Max Richter, John Adams and Philip Glass were once the future. This was an opportunity to reflect on their influence. After all, they have provided much of the music that has accompanied the lives of those now attending their concerts: film scores and the background to many TV series have been deeply influenced, or even directly scored, by these composers. It has been embraced as music to accompany just about anything. Endlessly adaptable, this is Music to Do Anything By.
The sense of looking backwards was very strong in the first piece, Max Richter’s Opus 2020. Slow strings led us to a theme by Beethoven, in whose honour the piece was composed. Michael Bawtree’s piano captured the stillness in the hall. Rapt attention. Simple beauty.
Next came the evening’s only purist minimalism: Philip Glass’s Company. This is music with neither beginning, middle nor end. It just starts and it just stops. It showcased techniques that were later adapted and expanded by post-minimalism. Of all the pieces played, this felt most like a period piece, stuck in its own groove.
The first half closed with John Adams’s exuberant The Chairman Dances, a companion piece to Adams’s Nixon in China. Here conductor David Brophy found the foxtrot and conjured clear images of Chairman and Madame Mao dancing during the visit of Richard and Pat Nixon. Particularly revealing was the ravishingly silky playing of the first violins, conveying the shimmering outfit of Madame Mao.
The second half needed a complete reset of the stage. A smaller ensemble gathered around a harpsichord, surrounded by many microphones and vertical light bars. Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons requires a sound engineer not only to mix the audio from the individual instruments live in the hall but also to mix in various pieces of electronica, rubbing up against Vivaldi’s familiar themes.
Chris Ekers, that sound engineer, has collaborated with Max Richter for over 20 years and was the perfect person for this work, which was directed by Norwegian violinist Mari Samuelsen.
Her playing throughout was dazzling. Every inch the rock diva, in a tulle dress and gold lamé trainers, she leaned in and out through the forest of microphones to engage the ensemble’s players, attacking the piece with thrilling energy and enticing the others to share her excitement. This was virtuoso playing that held the whole hall. The seasons passed. The birds chirped aggressively. Ice cracked sharply. And all the while, the light bars changed colour to mark the passing seasons.
The live mixing proved interesting too. The ability to highlight one instrument over another at will showed that this was more than simply running a standard sound desk. Highlighting the harpsichord (Michael Bawtree again) was particularly effective.
Alas, all was not well in the electronic world.
At a pre-concert talk, Samuelsen had spoken in wonder of the audience’s attention at the previous night’s performance of the same concert at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. “The silences,” she said, “the silences between the movements were so intense.”
Unfortunately, in Glasgow the vast arrays of speakers and wires picked up an FM radio signal. Rather than intense silence, we heard, very quietly but distinctly, a football commentary. And it kept happening, in all 12 gaps between the 13 movements. More than one member of the audience wondered whether this was part of the piece. After all, John Adams composed a glorious work that pairs string playing against found audio (Christian Zeal and Activity). Nothing so clever was going on here, however. It was BBC Radio 5 Live.
While this was going on, something exciting seemed to be happening with the lights. All the other light bars glowed the green of springtime, but one diva light bar suddenly shone red and then fizzled out. After a while it recovered and lit up again in the same colour as the others. But not for long. It had enjoyed its red supernova moment so much that it performed it randomly several more times through the piece.
This was a brilliant concert, hampered by failing technology, a great irony given the love affair between post-minimalist composers and electronic devices and media.
Despite the failure of the electronics, this concert was electric.
The SCO kindly provided 2 tickets to enable this review.