Retrouvailles

So, off I went. To my surprise, I’ve managed to get the bulk of the piece learnt in about three weeks, spending between half an hour and an hour a day on it, although going back to the piano regularly to reinforce what I’d been doing.

As I got Retrouvailles under my fingers, I learned a few things that wasn’t expecting to learn from this piece.

Firstly, Carter is extremely expressive and lyrical. This is something that didn’t jump off the page at me to start with, especially when working slowly on the mildly intimidating flurries of notes.

The only experience I can relate this to is the moment I realised what a wonderful expansive melody the theme of the last movement of Webern’s Variations op. 27 has. As I said in my previous post, converts will be aware of this already, but Carter writes great tunes.

Secondly, it’s strangely memorable music; I’m lucky in that I don’t find memorisation too difficult, but in any case Retrouvailles worked its way into my head without my having to give it any real assistance.

As I played it from memory, I came to my final discovery. I realised that I had effectively stopped counting. In essence – rhythmically at least – I found myself playing Retrouvailles by ear. It was at this point that the spacing of Carter’s phrases started to feel completely natural.

And I wonder, especially with the more rhythmically-complex works, whether that isn’t the approach I need to take: learn how the rhythms sound, then stop counting. That would certainly tally with Joe’s comments, on my last post on the subject of Carter, about the first of the Diversions.

I’m now doing battle with the much harder 90+, and will be interested to see whether this approach works.

Needless to say, I found Caténaires extraordinarily trying from the off. Yes, slow practise is the way to get round a piece like that – but the other problem was getting it to stick, even at a slow speed. It’s a little like playing Feldman at the speed of light, as there are patterns in there, but even when they repeat, they’re modified. In essence, what you have is a sequence of thousands of notes with very few triggers for memory. It really isn’t possible – for me, at least – to read a piece like that at the speed it needs to be played.

After several months of trudging through the first few pages, I bailed out. This wasn’t simple cowardice or frustration, I hasten to add, although I’d done my fair share of shaking my fist in a rage, furious with this pesky 100-year-old man whose brain was still evidently more musically agile than mine will ever be.

I decided, in a moment of rare clarity, that what was going wrong must be more than just a localised issue with Caténaires. I simply didn’t have a feel for whatever it was Carter was getting at. I resolved to do two things: listen to a representative sample of his work, and try to play an easier piece.

Ploughing through the string quartets, assorted piano works, and the Nonesuch box set, what I discovered was something that must already be blindingly obvious to anyone who is a devotee of the great man: there’s something unquantifiably and wonderfully right about Carter’s music. It might be fiendish, but it fizzes with energy and fun.

Inspired, I got hold of scores of the Two Diversions, 90+, and Retrouvailles, and selected the last of those as my first target, reasoning that it was short and looked as though its demands upon fingers and brain wouldn’t be too severe.

Thus began the start of a beautiful relationship…

I attended the recent performances of the Berlioz Requiem given by Gergiev, the CBSO and the Mariinsky Theatre orchestra at Symphony Hall. The Berlioz makes use of several brass groups – four, in fact – stationed around the auditorium. The effect of loud raspy instruments bouncing around the hall was really rather magnificent, and it dawned on me that I hadn’t heard any antiphonal early brass music for a very long time indeed. In fact, it had been so long that it took me a while to call the name of Giovanni Gabrieli to mind.

Now, hold the art of early Baroque antiphony in the back of your mind for a moment. We shall come back to it with a horrible inevitability shortly.

The other thing that impressed me about the Berlioz was the sheer number of bassoons on the stage. The passage of time may have blurred my memory but I think I counted eight, including two contrabassoons. I’ve long been a fan of the mighty bassoon; it’s one of the instruments, along with the viola, that I’d love to be able to play if I had enough lifetimes. As a tuba-player myself, the contrabassoon is obviously particularly attractive. It’s very low, and, like the tuba, can be heard over just about anything else. And, much like the tuba, it looks pretty daft.

You can probably see where I’m going with this by now. Something happened in my brain that screamed at me “ANTIPHONAL CONTRABASSOONS!”

I’m well aware that one can take tablets to avoid such things happening, but for now, in quiet moments, my mind keeps straying back to this idea. I don’t think 20 contrabassoons would be over-indulgent. Obviously a large performance space would be desirable, with a wet acoustic to allow a satisfyingly muddy wash of harmonics.

But what would they play? An arrangement of Gabrieli might work well – relatively speaking. Or a contrabass rendition of Tallis’s Spem In Alium. Or there’s always the option of a comic song like I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General from HMS Pinafore. But that, I fear, would be pandering to stereotypes. The bassoon, again, very much like the tuba, suffers from the fact that people think it sounds silly as a solo instrument. Believe me, having heard a fearsome performance of Berio’s bassoon Sequenza live in the summer, I wouldn’t want to promote any view of the bassoon or contra as comedy instruments.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter what they’d play. And I shan’t be bothering to write anything: the chances of my gathering 20 contrabassoonists together are anything from very, very slim to absolutely nil. I shall just file the rather delicious idea away along with the marching Heckelphone ensemble and concerto for Contrabassophone and orchestra as being something that I would love to hear. But only the once.

In the month since I last posted, I’ve discovered that I can just about make sense of Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum (as a listener rather than a player!) and both the new Bunnymen and Raveonettes albums have turned up. Both are rather good, if you can get past the extremely poppy production of the former and the rather crass “Boys Who Rape” on the latter.

So, anyway, today’s listening:

• Bach – Partitas 1, 5, 6 (Murray Perahia)
• Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Exhibition arranged for accordion duo
• Mozart – early symphony chosen at random (don’t recall which)
• Echo & The Bunnymen – The Fountain
• Haydn – Cello Concertos 1 & 2 (Rostropovich)
• Eels – Hombre Lobo

If anything else gets played, it’ll probably be a randomly-selected disc from the Altarus Opus Clavicembalisticum set. I’m assimilating that piece gradually.

Excuse the lack of commentary for this list. It was a long day at the chocolate teapot factory. Needless to say, the Bunnymen single continues to be magnificent.

At home, I found that the new BBC Music magazine had arrived, and so I cooked the dinner while not really paying attention to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (in fact I was so busy reading the reviews section that I didn’t really pay attention to what was bubbling away on the hob either, with the result that my pasta boiled over). I can’t offer anything by way of intelligent comment on the BBC disc. I’ll listen to it properly tomorrow.

This evening it’s been a “jazz curiosities” session:

• Christof Lauer – Fragile Network
• Michel Godard – Castel del Monte II

And, finally, the new Echo & The Bunnymen single, Think I Need It Too. I wasn’t going to buy it, as both tracks are on the album. But that meant depriving myself of hearing them for a fortnight, and that simply wouldn’t do. Needless to say, it’s perfect – classic Bunnymen, with a Krautrocky motoric rhythm, two chords and the sort of chorus that none of today’s mummy’s boys can manage. And Mac is in particularly fine voice.

• Soler – Fandango (Aapo Hakkinen)
• Neil Young – Zuma (several times, again)
• Haydn – assorted piano sonatas (Marc-André Hamelin, thanks to a recommendation by James Rhodes)
• Honegger – Symphony no. 2

That be it.

• Zuma (almost four times)
• Tonight’s The Night
• Mirrorball

I’ve now got a little pre-bedtime post-rock on, in the form of the magnificent self-titled album by This Will Destroy You. They make me very nostalgic for the time when it was still possible to anticipate a new release by Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

• Haydn etc. – Trumpet Concertos – Alison Balsom
• Republica – Republica
• The Jesus & Mary Chain – Automatic
• Jim Reid – Dead End Kids single
• The Libertines – The Libertines
• The Manhattan Love Suicides – Burnt Out Landscapes
• Soft Cell – Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret
• Haydn etc. – Trumpet Concertos again
• J.C. Bach – Symphonies op. 9

In my defense, I only listened to “Ready To Go” and “Drop Dead Gorgeous” off Republica. They were one of those tail-end-of-Britpop groups that only had a couple of songs. And, like Garbage just before them, their main appeal was a trappy and attractive frontwoman concealing the largely charisma-free backing group of older men who could have been session players for all anyone cared.

“Sex Dwarf”, from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret is still one of the most gloriously filthy songs ever committed to vinyl.

I do, however, feel it necessary to state that I listened to something by Muse last night. It was rotten. In contrast, what I did listen to today was, on the whole, marvellous:

• Haydn – Symphonies no. 93, 97 (Colin Davis)
• The Raveonettes – Lust Lust Lust
• Haydn, Hummel etc. – Trumpet concertos (Alison Balsom)
• J.C. Bach – Symphonies, op. 9

I’ve discovered Alison Balsom’s playing rather later than everyone else; I must admit that when a fuss was being made about this album I was put off by the rather vampy photography. Surely, thought I, if EMI are marketing Ms. Balsom on her looks then her playing must be deficient (cf Katherine Jenkins). But no. She is, of course, supremely talented – a woman possessed by music if ever there was one.

That’s yer lot. I promised that I only had one Doctor & The Medics story, and I wasn’t lying.