As a prelude to their
forthcoming season of orchestral concerts, the ADDA orchestra of Alicante under
their inspired and clearly inspiring conductor and artistic director, Josep
Vicent, offered a programme of contemporary music free of charge to its
subscribers. Perhaps this might have been a chance for the players to loosen
their fingers, lips and hands before embarking on their new season. If that
were the case, one wonders how many other orchestras in this world would rise
to such a curtain raiser if it involved learning a full programme of complex pieces
unfamiliar to them, some of which they might never play again!
And so we were
presented with four works, three of which were composed recently, and a fourth
that was premiered in the 1950s. Here we had four composers, all of whom
presented their own, very personal and mutually contrasting musical languages.
Just like the label “classical music” is useless as an indicator of style,
given that it apparently spans close on a thousand years of art from Leonin to
Lim, one must also insist that “contemporary music” is about as much use, being
nil. There are clearly almost as many styles of contemporary music as there are
composers of it. And the idea was illustrated beautifully in this programme,
which seemed to take its audience on a journey from a strange place back to
their musical and physical home. The term “brilliantly conceived” certainly
applies to the choice of programme.
We began with
Metastasis by Yannis Xenakis. In theory, this is a representation of the
mathematics of architecture as music. It is a piece where dynamic, texture and
line are conceived to illustrate an emotional response to the parabolas of Le
Corbusier’s Phillips Pavilion, a building that has no straight lines, no right
angles and thus an inner space that surely disorientated. Al least until you
got used to it… which is a useful phrase for anyone who might feel “frightened”
or “dismissive” of contemporary music.
Xenakis used sketches
of the building’s form to create a musical score, drawings whose shape
determined the notes to be played. Like the building, the musical
representation might take some a while to appreciate, its glissandi and sustained
space-creating string murmurings punctuated by flashes of percussion and
eyerolls of woodwind. But familiarity with the piece, at least for this
listener, mimics what I feel looking up towards the ceiling of any great
building. How far does it go? Is what I see mere illusion, or is it stone,
concrete or glass? Xenakis, by the way, was the civil engineer on Le
Corbusier’s project. In the 1950s. he was the bloke with the slide rule.
Second on the bill was Mosaicos de Arena
Errante by José Javier Peña Aguayo, a graduate of both the Julliard in New
York and Valencia University. In form, this world premiere was the evening’s ground
breaker. It was an orchestral piece featuring, concerto-like, a brass quintet,
a Puerto Rican bomba group and a dancer. The brass quintet was Spanish Brass,
no less, the bomba group comprised Marina Molina, Daniela Torres, Ambar Rosado
and the dancer-choreographer was Isadora López Pagán. I mention these names in
recognition of the massive contribution they all made in the realisation of
this piece and, indeed, making it a convincing musical and theatrical
experience.
I will ignore the
programme notes and try to describe what I took from the piece. For me it was a
narrative which told of the realisation of identity. Oppressed by history,
slavery and colonialism, the people who formed the central idea of the piece
fund themselves disorientated in a new place. They could not make sense of
their role, their lack of status or their surroundings. Memories of their African
origin regularly surfaced, but these were broken by the oppression of
circumstance and strangeness of surroundings. This was depicted by broken
lines, irregular harmony and techniques such as the brass players blowing
through the instruments rather than making notes. The dancer, meanwhile,
presented angular contortions that mirrored distortions of sound and,
presumably, pain of suffering.
Gradually, however,
memories of past grew stronger, perhaps more relevant, and identity is
rediscovered. The rhythms of an African past begin to dominate. The rhythms take
over and impose their needs on the sound, prompting the dancer to become both more
expressive and more animated, but also celebratory. The culmination was a
glorious, complex, but utterly accessible rejoicing in rhythm. A people had
found themselves again.
David Moliner’s Figuratio
I - Mein logos came next. This was a percussion concerto performed by its
composer. The soloist also contributed vocally to emphasise particular aspects
of the music. Essentially, this came across as a fast, slow, fast structure,
where the percussion was virtuoso in style throughout. There were some
wonderful moments in the quieter sections when thin mallets made sounds of
distant bells, thus creating landscape. The orchestral percussion players were
heavily involved as well, at one point to the extent that string players
holding a tremolo could not be heard above three percussion players combined.
But this is a minor criticism of a work that banged with vitality.
The evening’s second
world premiere was the symphonic poem, Alà y Cántara by Oscar Navarro. At
times, stylistically, this music could have been written in the late nineteenth
century, at least in its harmonies. But there were Middle Eastern shapes here
too, just the right side of cliché to avoid evoking images from Hollywood’s
technicolour Panavision era of spectaculars.
The piece followed a
narrative provided by the story of Ali and Cántara, ancient lovers who,
according to the legend, combined to name the city of Alicante. The piece’s
sections described episodes of the story impressionistically, but also vividly.
And what developed was something remarkably familiar to the audience and yet
expressed in a new language. Festivals in this part of the world often involve
the re-enactment of legendary battles and rulers. Moors and Christians are what
they are called and the musical language of Alà y Cántara increasingly evoked
the sounds of street festivals, but in a more subtly nuanced form provided by
the orchestral textures. But by the end, the musical statement was noticeably
located in the wind instruments and percussion, and, for a while, this
orchestra sounded like a symphonic band. It was musically the most conventional
work of the evening, and also provided the most direct, accessible narrative.
And it worked beautifully.
Rapturous applause
prompted Josep Vicent to offer two encores. John Williams’s Theme from
Schindler’s List was followed by a local favourite, Danzon No2 by Arturo
Marquez. Out of six composers represented, five are still alive, Xenakis have
died in 1997. His music, as with everything else in this wonderful evening, is
very much alive.