Chasing Boundaries
Peter O'Hagan
A rich selection of contemporary British piano pieces showcasing renowned pianist Peter O'Hagan.
Cat. Number: |
020011021 |
Year of issue: |
2011 |
Duration: |
74:33 |
No. of tracks: |
17 |
Recording date: |
8th and 10th February 2010 |
Recorded at: |
The Weston Auditorium, Hatfield |
Overview
Peter O'Hagan is one of the most prolific British contemporary pianists active currently in the UK and abroad. This disc features a rich and stylistically broad offering of British piano music from the last forty years, from well established composers Sir Michael Tippett and Brian Ferneyhough, and acclaimed new talent Kenneth Hesketh and Alastair Greig.
O'Hagan states that the choice of works were “... influenced by a fascination with the interpretive process itself, and in particular with the relationship between performer and the musical text
The programme includes an updated edition of Tippett's Piano Sonata No. 3, and a new commission, Allusions and distillations by Greig, which was written for O'Hagan.
The repertoire for this CD is drawn from a programme of contemporary British music presented at London’s South Bank Centre in February 2009, and the sessions for the studio recording took place during the following week. Given the stylistic plurality of the contemporary musical scene, any attempt at a comprehensive survey would have been futile in the context of a single recital. Hence the design of the programme was the outcome of an attempt to identify some important features of British music of the last forty years, and to achieve a satisfactory balance between works in a variety of styles.
In addition, my choice of works was influenced by a fascination with the interpretive process itself, and in particular with the relationship between performer and the musical text. It is a curious fact that whilst a reliable edition of the score and an awareness of the stylistic context are considered a sine qua non for interpreting the core repertoire of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such concerns are often overlooked in approaching more recent music. Perhaps it is the sheer notational complexity of some contemporary music which can lead the performer into a mindset where literal realisation of a score’s detail becomes synonymous with interpretation.
Having performed Brian Ferneyhough’s Lemma-Icon-Epigram on a number of occasions some years ago, on renewing acquaintance with it I was struck anew by the tension between on the one hand, the composer’s fanatical pursuit of rhythmic precision, and on the other the apparent perversity of the numerous invitations to flexibility and interpretive freedom. It is almost as though the notation is designed as a series of obstacles which one must surmount in order to enter into the expressive world which lies at the heart of the piece. Ferneyhough himself has explained it in the following terms in an interview with Richard Toop: “…there is always a danger that a performance will fail almost completely, no matter how many notes are achieved, if it lacks that awareness of the almost erotic relationship between manual movement, density of notation, and constant awareness of the possibility of not achieving something…”
In the case of Tippett’s Third Sonata, the score presented problems of a different nature, since I had been aware for some time of unresolved textual issues in the printed edition. The opportunity to study the source material at the British Library enabled me to correct some inconsistencies in the published material and to establish a text as far as possible in accordance with the composer’s original intentions. Such direct contact with the composer’s calligraphy can yield more general interpretive insights, as in the case of the second variation of the slow movement, where the composer’s original layout in open score emphasised the fundamentally linear concept of the writing in a way that is to some extent lost in the published score.
The opportunity to work with a composer on his music is a great joy for any performer, and I am most grateful to Kenneth Hesketh and Alastair Greig for being so patient in answering my queries and so generous with their time. One was constantly reminded that a musical text, however detailed and scrupulous in its notation, is by its nature provisional, and forms only a starting point for entering the imaginative world of the composer. In the case of Notte Oscura, guided by Kenneth Hesketh, my perspective on the piece was much influenced by the sonorities and timbres of the orchestral version, completed shortly after the solo piano version on this recording. With regard to Allusions and Distillations I was able to work closely with Alastair Greig from an early stage in the compositional process, and was privileged to witness its gradual evolution from two brief etudes (which eventually formed the first two pieces of the cycle) into an extended cycle of interrelated pieces with a wealth of literary and musical references.
My thanks to the team at UHR who were of tremendous support throughout, and made the process of recording this CD such a positive and memorable experience.
Peter O'Hagan has given numerous concerts of contemporary music in London and throughout the UK. Abroad, he has given recitals at festivals in Germany, Portugal, and the USA. In January 2008, at the invitation of the Park Lane Group, he gave a critically acclaimed recital of French music as part of the Wigmore Hall’s Tribute to Paul Sacher, including the unpublished three movement version of Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata, with the composer’s permission. He subsequently performed recent piano music by Boulez in the composer’s presence, as part of the Boulez in Birmingham series. In early 2010, he gave a solo recital of contemporary British piano music at London’s South Bank Centre, and forthcoming concerts include appearances in Croatia and at the 2010 Bath Bach Festival. Of his NMC recording of Edwin Roxburgh’s Sonata for Piano, the reviewer in Gramophone magazine wrote: “Peter O’Hagan’s account of the Sonata is a tour de force of intelligent virtuosity”.
He is also a writer on music and his edited volume British Music of the 1990s was nominated as one of Classical Music magazine’s books of the year, 2004. His articles on the music of Boulez are featured in leading journals in the UK and in Europe, and he is currently working on a study of Boulez’s piano music, with the assistance of a Fellowship of the Leverhulme Trust.
Notte Oscura (2006) Kenneth Hesketh (b. 1968)
Composer's Note: “Notte Oscura is essentially the first interlude from my opera The Overcoat, with some additional material from the first scene of act one. Gogol’s text is the most eloquent description of what one could call this miniature ‘tone poem’:
“There exists in Petersburg a powerful foe of all who receive four hundred roubles salary a year, or thereabouts. This foe is no other than our Northern cold, although it is said to be very wholesome. At the hour when the foreheads of even those who occupy exalted positions ache with the cold, and tears start to their eyes, the poor titular councillors are sometimes unprotected. Their only salvation lies in traversing as quickly as possible, in their thin little overcoats, five or six streets, and then warming their feet well in the porter’s room, and so thawing all their talents and qualifications for official service, which had become frozen on the way”.
Notte Oscura was written in response to a commission from Andrew Bennett with contributions from his friends to celebrate his 40th birthday.”
Kenneth Hesketh began composing whilst a chorister at Liverpool Cathedral, later studying at the Royal College of Music. He attended Tanglewood in 1995 where he studied with Henri Dutilleux and was subsequently awarded a scholarship from the Toepfer Foundation at the behest of Sir Simon Rattle. He is now a professor at the Royal College of Music and honorary professor at Liverpool University. He was New Music Fellow at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge from 2003-2005.
He has received many commissions from major performing organisations in Europe, Canada and the US. Susanna Malkki chose his work for her opening concert as Music Director of Ensemble intercontemporain and his music has been performed by leading performers, ensembles and orchestras including Sudwest Rundfunk (Baden-Baden), the RLPO, hr-Sinfonieorchester, the BBC Philharmonic, the London Sinfonietta, Psappha, Ensemble intercontemporain, the ASKO ensemble, and conductors Sir Simon Rattle, Oliver Knussen, Susanna Malkki and Vasily Petrenko.
Hesketh’s transcription of Aphex Twin’s Polygon Window was part of the hugely successful London Sinfonietta and WARP records collaboration which toured Europe and was released on CD. In 2007 Hesketh was made Composer in the House (Royal Philharmonic Society/ PRS Foundation scheme) with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Hesketh's tenure with the RLPO saw the creation of twelve new works for instrumental groups within the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society, from orchestral and chamber ensemble (for Ensemble 10/10) to youth ensembles and choirs.
Hesketh’s work Detail from the Record was released in 2009 on the London Sinfonietta Jerwood CD Series, whilst an RLPO/ Ensemble 10/10 CD will be released in 2010. Current projects include a work for the percussionist Joby Burgess and preparation for a new opera after a short story by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
http://www.kennethhesketh.co.uk
Piano Sonata No. 3 (1975) Michael Tippett (b. 1905, d. 1998)
Allegro
Lento
Allegro energico
The conclusion of the pen manuscript of the Third Sonata is dated 1st March 1973, and the first performance was given less than three months later by Paul Crossley at the Bath Festival on 26th May. It is dedicated to Anna Kallin, a longstanding associate of the composer. Their collaboration extends at least as far back as 1951, when she was the producer for a series of three BBC radio talks given by Tippett following the death of Schoenberg.
As the three-movement structure of the work would suggest, the Third Sonata is rooted in Classical procedures, with Beethoven’s Appassionata being the formal precedent for the opening sonata-allegro and the extended set of variations which precede a tumultuous finale. Despite its stark contrasts of mood and material, the germ of the work as a whole can be traced to the opening bar of the slow movement. This arpeggiated chord, consisting of a series of six descending fourths may well be an allusion to Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony. Be that as it may, the chord is the starting point not only for the variations which follow, but it forms the basis from which the principal thematic contours of the outer movements are derived (hence the climactic force of the chordal repetitions in the Finale, consisting as they do of seven intervals of a perfect fourth arranged symmetrically between with the hands at the extremes of the keyboard).
If the fanfare motives and abrupt contrasts of texture in the opening movement suggest a stylistic link with King Priam and the succeeding works of the 1960s, elsewhere the almost extravagant fecundity of the central variation movement recaptures much of the glorious lyricism of the 1950s – a richness steeped in Tippett’s absorption of early English music. In particular, the second variation which was originally written out on four staves in the pencil manuscript, recalls the Elizabethan viol fancy in its sweeping imitative lines and numerous false relations. It is this synthesis of a range of stylistic elements which makes the Third Sonata one of Tippett’s most intriguing and at the same time most satisfying works.
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett was born in London and spent his childhood in Suffolk. After leaving the Royal College of Music in 1928, Tippett lived in Oxted, Surrey. He later went for further lessons with R. O. Morris, which proved formative: he developed special skills in counterpoint which propelled him towards the first works of his creative maturity, his String Quartet No. 1 (1935; revised 1944) and Piano Sonata No. 1 (1936-7).
Both during his student days and after, Tippett responded deeply to world events such as the First World War, the Depression and mass unemployment (he was even sentenced to three months’ imprisonment in 1943 for refusing, as a pacifist, to comply with conditions of exemption from active war service). He became involved in political radicalism, organised the South London Orchestra of Unemployed Musicians and directed two choirs sponsored by the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society. At the same time his aesthetic ideas had crystallised in the course of several informal encounters with T. S. Eliot. The outcome of all this was the oratorio A Child of Our Time (1939-41), an impassioned protest against persecution and tyranny and now his most widely performed composition. He remained committed to the pacifist cause for the rest of his life.
Tippett became musical director of Morley College in 1940 and remained there until 1951. The college became the focal point of the revival of Purcell’s music; it also featured a lot of new music and upcoming artists like Alfred Deller, Peter Pears and the Amadeus Quartet, who were later to achieve worldwide fame. After leaving Morley College, Tippett devoted himself almost entirely to composition.
Tippett’s international reputation blossomed from his sixties onwards, partly through a proliferation of recordings of his music. He is especially esteemed in America, and some of his most significant works (such as his Fourth Symphony and The Mask of Time) have been US commissions. Throughout his eighties, Tippett remained exceptionally active, composing, conducting and travelling worldwide. Celebrations of Tippett’s ninetieth birthday in 1995 opened with the BBC Music Magazine issuing a CD of Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4, played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. A month-long Tippett festival at the Barbican reached a climax with the world première of his last major composition, The Rose Lake, given by the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis.
In 1995, following upon his autobiography, 'Those Twentieth Century Blues' (1991), there appeared his definitive collection of essays, Tippett on Music. In November 1997 the Stockholm Concert Hall presented a 12-day Tippett Festival which included all his music except the stage works. Tippett travelled to Stockholm but was taken ill with pneumonia. Although he was able eventually to return to the UK, he never fully recovered and died peacefully at his home in South London.
Tippett has received many honours and awards; he was made a CBE in 1959, was knighted in 1966, elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1973, became a Companion of Honour in 1979 and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1983; he is also one of the recipients of the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society.
The Michael Tippett Musical Foundation was set up in 1979.
Source http://www.schott-music.com
Lemma–Icon–Epigram (1981) Brian Ferneyhough (b. 1943)
The composer writes: “The title of this work refers to a poetic form, the Emblema, developed most notably by the Italian poet Alciati during the first half of the sixteenth century. In general usage, the term is taken to mean an epigram which describes something so that it signifies something else. Later developments distinguish three components:
1. Lemma A superscription (or adage)
2. Icon An image
3. Epigram A concluding epigram in which the preceding elements are commented on or explained.”
The opening section of the piece is essentially linear in texture, with a gradually increasing density and rhythmic complexity. It is succeeded by an extended passage in which florid, almost improvisatory figures are layered above a background of chordal blocks, which recall the sound world of such landmarks in the contemporary repertoire as Boulez’s Third Sonata and Stockhausen’s Klavierstuck X. At the outset of the final section, the material is broken into fragments, sempre più confuse e senza direzione, before gradually cohering into a coda in which elements of the material are juxtaposed in a resolution of the work’s conflicts.
At least as remarkable as the uncompromising musical style and complexity of notation is the kaleidoscopic range of its constantly shifting moods and contrasts of musical character. Indeed, it is these features above all which place the piece within an essentially romantic/expressionistic pianistic tradition. Lemma-Icon-Epigram was given its first performance during the La Rochelle Festival on 28th June 1981 by Massimiliano Damerini. The work was commissioned by the Venice Biennale.
Brian John Peter Ferneyhough (born 16 January, 1943 in Coventry) is an English composer. He received formal musical training at the Birmingham School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, London. Ferneyhough was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1968 and moved to mainland Europe to study with Ton de Leeuw in Amsterdam, and later with Klaus Huber in Basel. As of 1999, he is William H. Bonsall Professor in Music at Stanford University. For the 2007-08 academic year, he was appointed Visiting Professor at the Harvard University Department of Music. Ferneyhough became closely associated with the so-called New Complexity school of composition, characterized by its extension of the modernist tendency towards formalization (particularly as in integral serialism). Ferneyhough's actual compositional approach, however, rejects serialism and other "generative" methods of composing; he prefers instead to use systems only to create material and formal constraints, while their realisation appears to be more spontaneous. Unlike many more formally-inclined composers, Ferneyhough often speaks of his music as being about creating energy and excitement rather than embodying an abstract schema. His scores make huge technical demands on performers; sometimes, as in the case of Unity Capsule for solo flute, creating parts that are so detailed they are likely impossible to realize completely. As he acknowledges, numerous performers have refused to take his works into their repertoire because of the great commitment required to learn them and a perception that similar effects can be achieved through improvisation. The compositions have, however, attracted a number of advocates, among them the Arditti Quartet, Nicolas Hodges, the members of the Nieuw Ensemble, and EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble. In 2007, Ferneyhough received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for lifetime achievement.
Source – www.brianferneyhough.com
Allusions and distillations Alastair Greig (b. 1964)
12 Pieces for piano
Composers Notes:
The pieces allude to various influences which play on the compositional mind during the process of composition. The distillation occurs with the editing part of composition, only what is necessary remains and the superfluous musical extras evaporate and are discarded. My aim was to concentrate my musical thought into brief musical utterances that expressed what was needed and then ceased.
i.Prelude-an opening declamation: of musical material that will occur in various guises throughout the set and of intent, concentrated and brief.
ii.Curve Dance- a seemingly straightforward melody and accompaniment which is interrupted by contrasting episodes and punctuated by sustained tones, the tones represent points on the curve.
iii.…fibrous air… – a reference to The Waves, by Virginia Woolf, melodic fragments submerged within florid textures. I first read this extraordinary novel twenty five years or so ago and the first few pages have haunted my imagination since then because they are some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read. This short piece merely alludes to that haunting work, nothing more. A later piece in this set refers to the work again.
Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire.
Virginia Woolf,
The Waves
iv.Vier- a distillation of musical thought pared down to extremes; a moment’s reflection governed by the number 4.
This music perhaps demands a little more explanation. In Flanders, just outside Ypres, there is a German Cemetery, Langemarck. Unlike the Allied cemeteries, it has black crosses and black tombstones. As one enters the graveyard through the arch one sees 4 black statues of soldiers guarding their fallen comrades. The atmosphere is completely different from all the other cemeteries in Northern France and Flanders.
The music uses a German Folk tune, perhaps popular at the time, it does not really matter, but the melodic notes are used to form the vertical sounds, the chords, always 4 notes sounding together, just as the statues are forever entwined. This piece is not meant to express anything regarding the horror that was faced, music or any art cannot do that of course. I just wished to pause and reflect, nothing more.
If you are interested here’s a web link:
http://www.greatwar.co.uk/westfront/yps ... gemark.htm
v.Interlude- the material from the prelude returns, lively, brisk and percussive.
vi.Lullaby obscured-hidden within the texture is a previously composed simple lullaby which is occasionally heard but often obscured from view.
vii.Stele- a commemorative plaque; the materials used as a starting point were the last few bars of Kontrapunkte by Stockhausen.
viii.… unaccountable intervals…- the allusion here is to Nostromo by Joseph Conrad.
ix.…soft blue…- an exploration of pianism and a further allusion to “The Waves”.
Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woollen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue.
Virginia Woolf,
The Waves
x.Pulse period- an allusion to a cosmological phenomenon; the piece is virtuosic, violent and full of contrast.
Pulsars are rotating neutron stars. Their rotation causes them to pulse; the interval between this is called the pulse period.. P
The origin of this piece was an extremely formalised working out of this phenomenon, but this proved to be unplayable and musical necessities and practicalities intervened!ulsars are rotating neutron stars. Their rotation causes them to pulse.
xi.… of stillness…- linked to the eighth piece in terms of material and reference, Conrad again. The phrase in Nostromo: “unaccountable intervals of stillness” refers to a point immediately before an extremely violent act. There is no violence here, or in piece number viii, the words give rise to the music, that’s all.
xii.Postlude- the material from the opening returns; transformed and completes the cycle in abrupt fashion.
Alastair Greig studied composition with Oliver Knussen prior to entering the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied composition and piano. Further compositional study followed at Sussex University with Michael Finnissy and at the University of Birmingham with Vic Hoyland, gaining a doctorate in 1999. During this last period of study his work began to attract attention and was featured at The Spitalfields and Cheltenham Festivals in the UK. His work achieved international recognition with an award at the 1996 Kazimierz International Composition Competition in Warsaw, for A Social Contract, a work for solo violin and orchestra. This in turn led to a commission from the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. The resultant work, Play, was conducted by Sakari Oramo and was critically acclaimed by, amongst others, The Times:
Here is a composer with a strong lyrical instinct … The real interest of the piece, which is skilfully and attractively written for a large ensemble, is in observing the varying degrees of freedom allowed to the linear impulse before it expires in a quiet but dramatically conceived ending.
Following this he was commissioned by Bromsgrove Mixing Music for a large scale suite for solo piano, Looking Through Mirrors, which Rolf Hind premiered and has been subsequently performed by Peter O’Hagan in London.
In 1999 his orchestral work, Here Comes Everybody, received the first prize at the Gino Contilli International Composition Competition; the judges included Toshio Hosokawa, Beat Furrer and Giocomo Manzoni. The first performance was in Messina, by the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, and further performances followed in Palermo. The work was published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni of Milan and a number of other works are published by the same publishing house.
Further awards and commendations followed including the Henri Dutilleux Composition Prize, France, the Eurorchestries International Composition Prize, France (for an orchestral work, Quaternion, also published by Suvini Zerboni, and shortlisted for the Venice Biennale) and first prize in the Francesc Civil International Composition Competition, Girona, Spain, for a work for solo flute and string orchestra, Echo’s Refrain. His work has also featured in competitions and prizes in Italy, the U.K. and the USA.
One such work, steering for dream, for chamber ensemble was awarded a prize at the Sesto Concorso Internazionale di Musica Contemporanea Citta di Udine and subsequently featured on a recording by Taukay Edizioni Musicali and published by the same publishing house.
Other commissions have come from a variety of groups and ensembles including the early music group Virelai, who recorded Songe 17 on their Sad Steps collection for riverrun records; the English Symphony Orchestra, The Lyric Quartet and most recently Allusions and distillations for Peter O’ Hagan.
Alongside his compositional work, Alastair Greig occasionally writes for The Guardian where one can access a series of articles describing the composition of the set of piano pieces on this recording:http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/alastairgreig
Track Listing:
Track Title Duration Composer
1
Notte Oscura
7:17
Kenneth Hesketh
2
Piano Sonata No. 3: Allegro
7:18
Michael Tippett
3
Piano Sonata No. 3: Lento
12:43
Michael Tippett
4
Piano Sonata No. 3: Allegro energico
6:58
Michael Tippett
5
Lemma-Icon-Epigram
14:12
Brain Ferneyhough
6
Allusions and distillations: i. prelude
1:11
Alastair Greig
7
Allusions and distillations: ii. curve dance
2:43
Alastair Greig
8
Allusions and distillations: iii. ... fibrous air...
3:21
Alastair Greig
9
Allusions and distillations: iv. vier
2:37
Alastair Greig
10
Allusions and distillations: v. interlude
1.11
Alastair Greig
11
Allusions and distillations: vi. lullaby obscured
3:04
Alastair Greig
12
Allusions and distillations: vii. stele
2:33
Alastair Greig
13
Allusions and distillations: viii. unaccountable intervals...
1:59
Alastair Greig
14
Allusions and distillations: ix. ... soft blue...
2:51
Alastair Greig
15
Allusions and distillations: x. pulse period
2:57
Alastair Greig
16
Allusions and distillations: xi. of stillness
4:02
Alastair Greig
17
Allusions and distillations: xii. postlude
0:57
Alastair Greig