7.30pm, Sunday 23 March 2025
★★★★
Lou Harrison (1917-2003) & John Cage (1912-1992): Double Music
Yoko Ono (b.1933): Pieces for Orchestra
Reich: Runner
(Director: Corinna Belz (b.1955))
I’ve been following most of Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra’s 100th season, enjoying their ever more adventurous and interesting programming, and their latest offering, a concert centring on the music of Steve Reich (b.1936) saw them reach new heights of excellence. With conductor and percussionist Colin Currie at the helm, chamber-sized BPO forces tackled some highly challenging repertoire, and the percussion section in particular, who have already shown themselves to be a key part of the BPO’s development over the last few years, rose to the occasion.
So to begin with, Currie joined the four percussionists for Reich’s popular and mesmerising Music for Pieces of Wood, and this 9 minute piece, consisting of five players with tuned claves (pairs of wooden sticks), knocking out constantly crossing and phasing rhythms. There’s a pattern that began with just two players (Donna-Maria Landowksi & Meadow Brooks) setting the base rhythms – and they need particular commendation for the stamina of maintaining this throughout the whole piece. They were joined by Currie, then Cameron Gorman, and finally Chris Brannick, building up the complex, hypnotic rhythms. The pattern is repeated three times, so going back to two players, and building up again, before the whole thing comes to an abrupt stop. The almost full Dome audience was completely drawn into their tight and intense performance, making for a great start to the evening.
From centre stage, attention then shifted to the far right, and an array of bells, brake drums, sistra, gongs, tam-tams and even a thunder sheet, to which the four BPO percussionists moved to perform Double Music by Lou Harrison (1917-2003) and John Cage (1912-1992). With the brake drums laid out in an array on the floor, and other instruments circling them, the four players crouched down and drew us into the gamelan-inspired soundworld, beginning with a ringing from a Tibetan bowl, and building to a resonant mix of sounds, the metallic tuned brake drums against the rattling sistra and rumbling tam-tams and gongs. One couldn’t always tell exactly what was producing which sounds – there was some use of the sides of the gongs or tam-tams to produce yet more different timbres. Harrison & Cage composed two of the four sections each independently, but the result creates a unified soundworld, ending with the instruments’ long final resonance hanging in the air.
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| Colin Currie |
Next it was the turn of strings, and a quartet led by BPO leader, Ruth Rogers, with Nikki Gleed, Caroline Harrison & Peter Adams. They were conducted here by Joanna MacGregor – once the piece was underway, it was clear that this was a necessity. Terry Riley’s Half Wolf Dances Mad in Moonlight from his Salome Dances for Peace is a frenetic mash-up of rhythmic energy, with the players often at odds with each other. There are moments of more congruent movement, but they are brief, and MacGregor’s ongoing beat was essential for keeping the players on track. They performed with commitment and confidence, and whilst there were moments that felt on the very edge of control, they stayed together and united for the more stable conclusion, with drones underpinning eastern-infused melodic lines and confident use of harmonics, slides and glassy tones as they died away to nothing.
The percussionists returned for Yoko Ono’s (b.1933) Pieces for Orchestra, joined by MacGregor on the piano. Her playing involved lots of plucking and scraping inside the piano, with some watery work on the keyboard later on. The percussionists began unwinding rolls of tape, then moved from instruments to tapping and beating the floor, the speakers, seemingly anything on the stage. There was bowing and scraping on the sides of glockenspiels or vibraphones and elsewhere, and the players moved around their area of the stage slowly. The overall soundscape was surprisingly effective, although once the percussionists had then slowly exited, with Joanna MacGregor left shuffling a deck of cards, it wasn’t entirely clear what it amounted to in the end.
There was a little stage resetting before the final piece of the first half – Steve Reich’s Runner. The musical forces were set out symmetrically, with a string quartet, a wind trio, a piano and a vibraphone all doubled, all joined by a single double bass. Currie was back to conduct, and from the start, rich, rhythmic textures quickly built up, with rocking pianos joined by strings then woodwind and the percussion, the antiphonal effect of the two ‘choirs’ being used to great effect. The rhythmic energy swirled as the rhythms phased, coming together and pulling apart in waves. Currie kept a tight rein on proceedings, and ensemble was tight for the sudden big tutti accented chords. Only once did it feel the rhythms were in danger of falling out of line, but more big chords reestablished the sense of control, and Currie kept the energy at a high level throughout, bringing the evening’s first half to a strong conclusion.
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Colin Currie and members of the
Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra
© Nick Boston |
And then to the most substantial work of the evening, Reich’s collaboration with artist Gerhard Richter and director Corinna Belz, Moving Picture (936-3). Reich’s music accompanies Richter’s abstract film, which starts with rippling parallel coloured lines filling the screen. Gradually, bands emerge and then open and expand, creating increasingly complex images in a kaleidoscope fashion, and by the central section, the effect is rather like a Rorschach test, as one can start to see faces, dancers, pagodas, dragons, angels, etc – perhaps best not to overanalyse here in case I reveal too much about myself… The process is then reversed, ultimately returning to the single rippling lines which opened proceedings. Reich’s music takes a similar trajectory, starting out by doubling the rhythmic patterns as the lines on the screen increase in complexity. Over the work’s forty minutes, however, the structure of the music is somewhat overshadowed by the hypnotic nature of the visuals, relegating the music to more of an accompaniment role, perhaps, but Currie shaped the progress of the score, with variation in dynamics and emphasis of strident clashes and suspensions as the piece reached its climax. Whilst musically not as exciting as Runner, the overall effect of the music and film was nonetheless highly effective, and the whole performance brought the evening to a suitably impressive end.
Once again, Joanna MacGregor and all involved deserve to be congratulated for pushing expectations of what Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra has to offer to a new level. With just Messaien’s mighty Turangilîla Symphony to go to conclude their 100th season (details here), it will be exciting to see where MacGregor takes them into their next century.
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