Chris Swithinbank

Ear­lier this month I headed to Berlin to check out S.​LOW Pro­jekt, an in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary art pro­ject span­ning the sum­mer months or­gan­ised by my mas­ters su­per­vi­sor Ri­cardo Cli­ment. While I was there I got to see the lat­est in­car­na­tion of Sam Salem and Patrick Sanan’s Pond Life se­ries, ex­hib­ited at Pro­jek­traum Schwarz in the gallery-stud­ded area Neukölln. This is an au­dio­vi­sual work fea­tur­ing a tank of water as a pro­jec­tion sur­face and two hy­drophones that pro­vide the gen­er­a­tive soft­ware be­hind the work with a rough es­ti­mate of where any ag­i­ta­tion in the water is. This means peo­ple can splash about and af­fect the small neon crea­tures that ap­pear to be in­hab­it­ing the tank. Here is an in­ad­e­quate pho­to­graph from the in­stal­la­tion, but check out Sam & Patrick’s web­sites for videos and more in­for­ma­tion:

The great thing for artists in Berlin ap­pears to be the wealth of cheap space to work in, much of it in old in­dus­trial build­ings. One strand of the S.​LOW pro­gramme took place at N.K., a sound-art com­mu­nity on two floors of a dis­used fac­tory that has half a dozen stu­dios and an empty floor for larger events that looks won­der­fully broody when de­serted:

Prob­a­bly the most in­cred­i­ble thing I saw in Berlin was Innen Stadt Außen, an ex­hi­bi­tion of works by Dan­ish-Ice­landic artist Ola­fur Elias­son at the Mar­tin-Gropius-Bau. If you have heard of Elias­son, it is prob­a­bly be­cause it was he who put the enor­mous sun in the Tur­bine Hall at Tate Mod­ern. I re­mem­ber think­ing at the time that I couldn’t un­der­stand what the fuss was about (not being able to visit it my­self) — it was just a big sun, wasn’t it? That’s the kind of re­ac­tion I’ve had when try­ing to ex­plain the works at Innen Stadt Außen to peo­ple, breath­lessly, ur­gently, be­cause it was awe­some. And I use that word in full un­der­stand­ing of its ori­gins. No cam­eras were al­lowed in and the ex­hi­bi­tion web­site is woe­fully in­ad­e­quate, but pic­tures prob­a­bly wouldn’t con­vey the ex­pe­ri­ence any­way. Try this de­scrip­tion: there was an in­cred­i­ble 10-minute piece of video-art which fea­tured a white van with an enor­mous mir­ror strapped to its side dri­ving round Berlin. Doesn’t re­ally spark the imag­i­na­tion, does it? In short the prob­lem with words here is that all the ideas were of ex­treme sim­plic­ity, de­scrip­tion be­lies their im­pact, but their ex­e­cu­tion was con­sis­tently breath­tak­ing. Trust me, if ever this man does any­thing near you. Go.

Per­haps it’s worth not­ing that — de­spite the clearly touristy, vis­it­ing ‘events’ as­pect of this post — Berlin is a truly great place to hang out. Hav­ing rushed head­long into sight­see­ing, felt my legs grow tired and lose all sense of time and lo­ca­tion in the Jew­ish Mu­seum (which is, by the way, an ex­cel­lent build­ing), I dis­cov­ered that the bars and cafés of Kreuzberg and Neukölln were quite spec­tac­u­larly laid back and that my sand­wich came with a salad with kumquats and cran­ber­ries!!!

A good ex­hi­bi­tion I could take pho­tos of was Fis­chGräten­Melk­Stand cu­rated by Ger­man artist John Bock at the Tem­poräre Kun­sthalle Berlin, which con­tained a col­lage-like amal­ga­ma­tion of art­works built into a large scaf­fold­ing maze. Here are some half-built houses, which were tan­gled in the web of art­works:

There are a few more pho­tos from this ex­hi­bi­tion and N.K. on my (brand-new) Flickr page, but one last thing to share here is some­thing that is infinitely geeky, but ex­cit­ing for me. As some may know, I’m a bit of a Hel­mut Lachen­mann ob­ses­sive and here, in this maze of con­tem­po­rary art and ex­tremely stale piz­zas, in a small glass case, were two pages, on loan from the Paul Sacher Stiftung, of man­u­script sketches from the great man him­self. Per­haps it was just their in­con­gru­ence in the tan­gle of art, but it seemed slightly thrilling. Though vi­su­ally un­spec­tac­u­lar here they are:

I’m going to Berlin for a few days, in­clud­ing a visit to S.​LOW Pro­jekt’s fourth week, which fea­tures the lat­est in Sam Salem and Patrick Sanan’s Pond Life se­ries of au­dio­vi­sual in­stal­la­tions as well as talks by a bunch of mu­si­cians, artists and tech­ni­cians. Should be fun…

As a brief in­tro­duc­tion: Ken Nielsen of the Aus­tralian group Pinchgut Opera wrote a ‘man­i­festo for the fu­ture of clas­si­cal music’ as Greg Sandow — who posted it to his blog — de­scribes it, Tim Ruther­ford-John­son has added his two cents here and below are mine. Per­haps my Eu­ro­pean per­spec­tive on Nielsen’s An­tipodean angle has caused some mis­un­der­stand­ings, in which case apolo­gies.

Nielsen sug­gests that given that ‘the clas­si­cal music in­dus­try is in de­cline with an age­ing au­di­ence base and a low rate of new au­di­ence entry,’ a se­ries of mea­sures are needed to make con­certs ‘more at­trac­tive and ac­ces­si­ble.’ Some of his points touch on new music’s role in re­new­ing the art­form, which he fol­lows with:

Be­cause el­e­ments of the cur­rent au­di­ence are so con­ser­v­a­tive, a greater va­ri­ety of con­certs and for­mats, aimed at dif­fer­ent au­di­ences, is prob­a­bly nec­es­sary. Stick with the cur­rent stuff for the olds, offer in­no­va­tion to those ex­cited by it.

Now to me that does not sound like any kind of so­lu­tion to any­thing. It boils down to ‘keep doing what we’re doing and do some new music con­certs as well’. As Tim Ruther­ford-John­son points out, the new music sec­tor doesn’t have a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem with ei­ther an age­ing au­di­ence base or new au­di­ence entry rates and they al­ready offer music in a large va­ri­ety of for­mats dri­ven by an alloy of in­no­va­tion and ne­ces­sity. So if as an ex­ist­ing clas­si­cal music in­sti­tu­tion you are of­fer­ing ‘in­no­va­tion to those ex­cited by it’ and are doing so along­side ex­ist­ing and per­haps bet­ter equipped or­gan­i­sa­tions, you must match the qual­ity, in­tegrity and com­mit­ment that many of those or­gan­i­sa­tions dis­play if you are to gain the trust of your au­di­ences. If you are going to ‘stick with the cur­rent stuff for the olds,’ then you are as­sum­ing, given your age­ing au­di­ence base and low new au­di­ence entry rates, that you will let this ‘old peo­ple’s pack­age’ drift off into the sun­set as the au­di­ence dies off.

It is pos­si­ble that after two hun­dred years of au­di­ences rever­ing Beethoven’s music, no-one will be in­ter­ested any more, but it seems un­likely to me. I can, how­ever, imag­ine shrink­ing au­di­ences dri­ving this music ‘un­der­ground’. One of Nielsen’s pro­pos­als is that ‘a con­cert should be more like com­mu­ni­ca­tion than a one-sided speech.’ With­out get­ting bogged down in con­cepts of in­ter­ac­tiv­ity and au­di­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion, I be­lieve this is ad­dressed by the idea of in­tel­lec­tual en­gage­ment. The rea­son new music sur­vives is that it de­mands thought­ful en­gage­ment of the lis­tener, an en­gage­ment that the au­di­ence is di­rectly seek­ing when they come to a per­for­mance. This is not some­thing nec­es­sar­ily re­quired in your av­er­age clas­si­cal con­cert or de­sired by its au­di­ence. While there are au­di­ence mem­bers who do en­gage in this way with older music (per­haps a sub­stan­tial num­ber) I would sug­gest that the au­di­ences have long in­cluded a large pro­por­tion who were seek­ing light en­ter­tain­ment that was not too tax­ing, or at the very least some­thing fa­mil­iar and re­li­able. How­ever, this au­di­ence is now (and has been for some decades) shared with other out­lets of music both live and recorded, and the sec­tion most likely not to have con­verted to lis­ten­ing at home or going to other venues is the old­est sec­tion, hence the skewed de­mo­graphic. [I can’t sub­stan­ti­ate any of this, but would love to see data that might prove or dis­prove any of this the­o­ris­ing. Though how one would test for the au­di­ence’s in­tel­lec­tual en­gage­ment, I’m not sure.]

Given this the­sis, I would sug­gest that more tra­di­tional clas­si­cal music in­sti­tu­tions might need to learn from new music groups not what to pro­gramme but how to or­gan­ise. They should pre­pare for a dif­fer­ent au­di­ence, per­haps smaller it is hard to be sure, but com­mit­ted and in­ter­ested, not just carry on with ‘the cur­rent stuff for the olds.’ New venues be­come im­por­tant not, as in new music, be­cause of de­mands made by the music, but be­cause of de­mands made by the chang­ing au­di­ence. Re­al­is­ing that artis­tic in­tegrity and re­spect for your au­di­ence’s huge ca­pac­ity for thought­ful­ness is es­sen­tial. An or­ches­tra should be pro­gram­ming Beethoven be­cause it is good, not be­cause it is Beethoven. If a cel­list doesn’t like Beethoven, they don’t bother too much with his sonatas and play other music in­stead. The or­ches­tral mu­si­cian doesn’t have that pre­rog­a­tive, but the pro­gram­mer should think along sim­i­lar lines — ‘I am pro­gram­ming this music rather than any­thing else, be­cause I be­lieve it is an ex­cel­lent com­bi­na­tion of ex­cel­lent music.’ Their judge­ment may some­times seem ec­cen­tric but if it is suc­cess­ful, they will gain the au­di­ence’s trust and cre­ate stim­u­lat­ing ex­pe­ri­ences that are sur­pris­ingly unique. This is per­haps sug­gested by Nielsen — ‘change comes about not from strat­egy meet­ings but from in­no­va­tion — new things being tried, some fail­ing, some suc­ceed­ing’ — but it re­quires more than just in­no­va­tion for in­no­va­tion’s sake. Orig­i­nal­ity is a po­ten­tial by-prod­uct of a com­mit­ment to a deeply-felt, per­sonal quest for beauty.

On the role of new music in tra­di­tional con­texts, Tim Ruther­ford-John­son writes that he is ‘scep­ti­cal that in­tro­duc­ing new music to his­tor­i­cal con­certs (which has been going on to lit­tle re­turn for decades) is the an­swer.’ I agree that it isn’t the an­swer, but this state­ment ab­solutely re­quires the caveat he pro­vides it: ‘un­less done with the ut­most se­ri­ous­ness and in­tegrity.’ Com­bin­ing new and old can be ef­fec­tive, a fact prob­a­bly most often proved in cham­ber music and solo recitals where the per­form­ers choose their own reper­toire. They know in­stinc­tively when works lie well along­side one an­other.

What is fre­quently mu­si­cally un­sat­is­fy­ing is when things are forced into such a con­stel­la­tion by some ex­ter­nal ide­ol­ogy. Pro­gram­ming com­mit­tees at larger or­gan­i­sa­tions find it very dif­fi­cult to pro­gramme by ear as it were, to pro­pose ap­po­site com­bi­na­tions that they can feel work­ing. Mau­r­izio Pollini’s pro­gramme of Bach (arr. We­bern), Lachen­mann and Brahms with Peter Eötvös and the LSO last month was an ex­cel­lent ex­am­ple of some­one know­ing that these three works would fit to­gether mu­si­cally de­spite their his­tor­i­cal dis­par­ity. More often, peo­ple pro­gramme by theme or by scheme, throw­ing things in as gim­micks like gra­tu­itous side sal­ads (and they most def­i­nitely mar­ket them as such). They may be­lieve new music to be a pos­i­tive ad­di­tion to their sched­ules but lack the ed­u­ca­tion they have in Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Dvořák to be able to pro­gramme it ef­fec­tively.

For me, clas­si­cal music, or any art­form for that mat­ter, doesn’t need a man­i­festo for to­mor­row; it needs every per­son in­volved in every facet of the in­dus­try/com­mu­nity to strive to be in­spired, to think hard, never do any­thing ‘be­cause that’s what we do’ and de­liver qual­ity today. The fu­ture will take care of it­self.

One caveat: I hold the view that how­ever hi­er­ar­chies and in­sti­tu­tions col­lapse and trans­form, hu­man­ity will pre­vail in pro­duc­ing art. Ad­mit­tedly ex­ist­ing struc­tures can be in­cred­i­bly im­por­tant in sup­port­ing and pro­mot­ing cre­ativ­ity, but one must al­ways be wary not to allow those struc­tures to be­come con­straints. Rub­ble can be an ex­cel­lent play­ground, so per­haps I’m not the man to be giv­ing ad­vice.

In the last week I made a cou­ple of trips from Lux­em­bourg to Metz to hear some of the con­certs at this year’s Cen­tre Acan­thes and check out the newly opened Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou-Metz. Metz is clearly in a pe­riod of flux, re­ju­ve­nat­ing it­self with art, cul­ture and ar­chi­tec­ture, which in all hon­esty out­shine any of the rival major cities in the ‘Grande Région’ (a.k.a. Saar­Lor­Lux). None of Lux­em­bourg City, Trier, Saarbrücken or Nancy quite has the qual­ity or the cre­ativ­ity to match. (Though per­haps Metz comes across as par­tic­u­larly vi­brant when full of young com­posers and free con­certs of con­tem­po­rary music.)

“In­spired by a Chi­nese hat found in Paris…”

When I vis­ited last year, the Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou-Metz was still a build­ing site — al­beit a promis­ing one — that looked some­thing like this:

But it is now com­plete and its Chi­nese-hat in­spired roof curves el­e­gantly over a sur­pris­ingly large amount of ex­hi­bi­tion space.

A satel­lite gallery of the Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou, though quite in­sis­tent on its own iden­tity, it ben­e­fits enor­mously from its Parisian big brother’s vast col­lec­tion of con­tem­po­rary art. The in­au­gural ex­hi­bi­tion, Chefs-d’œuvre?, ranges through Pi­casso, Ma­tisse, Mon­drian, Man Ray, Cartier-Bres­son and count­less other big names, but in­tel­li­gently in­ter­min­gles these with re­lated but lesser-known works and lit­tle nuggets of local art his­tory. It car­ried on into more con­tem­po­rary works in the three upper gal­leries, but un­for­tu­nately I un­der­es­ti­mated how big the gallery is and, run­ning out of time, could only af­ford a cur­sory glance around the first upper gallery. See­ing the un­fin­ished spaces last year they seemed mod­est, but once skil­fully par­ti­tioned, cu­rated and con­verted into some­thing of a maze, much more art fits in than I ex­pected.

Lux­em­bourg’s Musée d’Art Mod­erne Grand-Duc Jean (MUDAM for short) opened in 2006, the re­sult of a lengthy, ram­bling and con­stantly meta­mor­phos­ing pro­ject. The ar­chi­tec­ture is spec­tac­u­lar in a sense. I. M. Pei’s de­sign re­flects the cen­turies of sand­stone build­ings in Lux­em­bourg’s old town and even man­ages to give the heavy walls a weight­less qual­ity as they are slit by streams of day­light, but it is a build­ing best en­joyed empty — a nice space to be in, but one in which the art often seems out of place. Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou-Metz on the other hand ex­cels in its chameleon-like abil­ity to trans­form to suit the ex­hi­bi­tion. It seems that while dis­tinc­tive on the out­side, its fab­ric is anony­mous enough to re­cede be­hind the art, rather than loom over it.

Also worth vis­it­ing, is the Fonds régional d’art con­tem­po­rain de Lor­raine, which has had in­trigu­ing ex­hi­bi­tions in its small gallery spaces both times I’ve vis­ited. In­clud­ing this time this ring of in­di­rect nat­ural light which brought a slice of the burn­ing Eu­ro­pean sun into this black room. It is the work of Amer­i­can artist Corey Mc­Corkle and is ti­tled Heili­gen­schein.

Con­tem­po­rary Celli

Both my trips took in con­certs of cello music. First a recital by the vis­it­ing tutor Anssi Kart­tunen on Fri­day, 9 July, and sec­ond the half a con­cert given by his five stu­dents on Thurs­day, 15 July. Kart­tunen is per­haps best known for his long-stand­ing part­ner­ship with fel­low Finn Kaija Saari­aho, the ma­jor­ity of whose cello works were writ­ten for him. How­ever, his Acan­thes recital stuck en­tirely to Ital­ian com­posers, in­ter­weav­ing music from ei­ther end of the reper­toire’s his­tory, from the in­stru­ment’s ori­gins in 17th-Cen­tury North­ern Italy to music of the 20th Cen­tury.

Quite pos­si­bly not to all tastes, but un­de­ni­ably in­ven­tive, Kart­tunen’s play­ing has to be amongst the most colour­ful around. Every piece is coloured in imag­i­na­tively dif­fer­ent ways quite un­like any other cel­list I have heard, es­chew­ing the con­sis­tent full­ness of tone of the Ro­man­tic soloist for a wider palette of sound that truly ex­ploits the in­stru­ment’s po­ten­tial. This is per­haps some­thing one might ex­pect of a con­tem­po­rary spe­cial­ist (es­pe­cially one fa­mil­iar with Saari­aho), but it is more sur­pris­ing when heard in older music. It can work well though and in Giuseppe Colombi’s Chi­ac­cona — def­i­nitely the pick of the Baroque pieces — the light­ness of his colours al­lowed the piece to blos­som quite mirac­u­lously from its ground bass into weight­less, in­tri­cate, higher fig­u­ra­tion. All the older works were played with a sim­i­lar sen­si­tiv­ity, feel­ing the po­ten­tial for flex­i­bil­ity with an im­pro­visatory style of play­ing, let­ting tem­pos sway quite vi­o­lently at times, but to great mu­si­cal ef­fect. Some­body de­scribed these works as ‘like sor­bets’ re­fresh­ing the palette be­tween ‘dif­fi­cult’ con­tem­po­rary pieces, but that seems to un­fairly triv­i­alise their role. They demon­strated how re­mark­ably far the tech­nique of the cello had ad­vanced in those early years. In­deed, there is much tech­nique in these works that is ex­ploited in not dis­sim­i­lar ways in the newer works. Ob­vi­ously, the more ex­tended tech­niques, found es­pe­cially in Franco Do­na­toni’s Lame, which is filled with dis­tant har­mon­ics, are ab­sent, but the dra­matic po­ten­tial of rapid fig­u­ra­tion and broad spans of range are to be found across the cen­turies. Live record­ings of two of the 20th-Cen­tury works, Do­na­toni’s Lame and Luigi Dal­lapic­cola’s Ciac­cona, In­ter­mezzo e Ada­gio, can be found on Kart­tunen’s web­site here.

His stu­dents were in at­ten­dance to learn from Kart­tunen’s knowl­edge of con­tem­po­rary music and pre­sented a pro­gramme of Au­gusta Read Thomas, Carlo For­livesi, Kaija Saari­aho, Rolf Wallin, Tris­tan Mu­rail and Beat Fur­rer (the last two both pre­sent as com­po­si­tion tu­tors). Saari­aho’s Et­incelles is amongst her less well-known cello works (when one thinks of Près, Petals, Amers or the more re­cent Notes on Light), but it could eas­ily be played more often. Short and to the point, it makes a de­light­fully im­me­di­ate and pow­er­ful im­pact with a low, vi­o­lent tu­mult be­fore rapidly spi­ralling up and away to fin­ish. The other high­light was Beat Fur­rer’s Epi­log, for three cel­los. Quiet, trem­bling waves timidly broke and skated in and out of the room with a lovely del­i­cacy that some­how man­aged to re­main un­ob­vi­ous de­spite the rep­e­ti­tious na­ture of the ma­te­r­ial.

New String Quar­tets

The sec­ond half of the stu­dent con­cert on Thurs­day saw the Quatuor Di­o­tima (not quite as lu­di­crously at­tired as on their web­site) pre­sent three of the eleven stu­dent quar­tets that they had been work­shop­ping in the course of the fort­night with a team of tech­ni­cians from Ircam pro­vid­ing the elec­tronic ac­com­pa­ni­ment to two of the three quar­tets.

The sec­ond move­ment of 32-year-old Swiss com­poser Michael Pelzel’s Vers le vent… pro­vided a vig­or­ously en­er­getic acoustic opener. A lit­tle like Dusapin in its tautly chro­matic and dis­so­nant har­mony, but with more dra­matic tex­tural vari­a­tion, an open­ing of quiet, rapid trilling was per­fo­rated with in­creas­ing fre­quency by strong ac­cents. As often hap­pens with such ‘un­ex­pected’ ac­cents that are nev­er­the­less me­tered, the ef­fect be­comes un­in­ten­tion­ally square and weak­ens as it goes on. Nev­er­the­less, two ex­cel­lently han­dled mo­ments of with­drawal from the oth­er­wise con­tin­u­ously fre­netic tex­tures re­vealed an as­sured struc­tural mind at work and it would be un­fair place a final judge­ment on a work with­out hear­ing its first move­ment.

Lisa Stre­ich’s ASKAR, which means ‘boxes’ in her na­tive Swedish, pre­sented a se­ries of more or less busy sec­tions made up of tex­tures of high har­mon­ics punc­tu­ated by sharp im­pacts — scratches and snap pizzi­cati. Close mi­cro­phones forced more of the bow noise to the sur­face, re­in­forc­ing scratch­ier el­e­ments as well as lend­ing the oth­er­wise frag­ile har­mon­ics power. The prox­im­ity ef­fect of the mi­cro­phones also lent a strong bass sound to the snap pizz, which blended well with a tape part trig­gered by the sec­ond vi­o­lin­ist Yun-Peng Zhao’s foot pedal. The elec­tronic sound seemed a lit­tle muddy with the deep clangs and scrapes of the tex­ture sub­ject to a heavy re­verb, al­most evok­ing the qual­ity of some early musique concrète. Over the course of the work the elec­tron­ics ebbed away be­com­ing less and less pre­sent and let­ting the am­pli­fied in­stru­ments re­assert their pri­macy.

The best was saved for last with Brazil­ian Aurélio Edler-Copês’s mas­ter­ful Quatuor n° 2: Punto rosso. The elec­tron­ics, this time en­tirely in real time, draped each in­stru­ment’s sound in a halo of won­der­ful colours pro­duc­ing deeply rich tex­tures si­mul­ta­ne­ously and mirac­u­lously at one with the quar­tet’s own colour. One might think of the elec­tronic en­hance­ment of the quar­tet sound in a work like Kaija Saari­aho’s Nymphéa, but it doesn’t de­scribe the es­sen­tial qual­ity that Edler-Copês’s pro­cess­ing brings to the work. So often in works of great tech­ni­cal skill — and this was vir­tu­osic in those terms — one hears the mis­for­tune of the com­poser’s dis­trac­tion by tech­no­log­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties and a con­se­quent los­ing sight of the mu­si­cal­ity of the work, but here was a fan­tas­ti­cally ab­stract work, which re­lied lit­tle on clear mark­ers or for­mal mile­stones and yet wound its way with an un­ob­tru­sive but ir­re­sistible logic. Only the final cli­max seemed un­for­tu­nately over em­phatic or pos­si­bly under pre­pared, but even that re­sulted in a gor­geously de­tailed quiet coda. A re­lated work for small mixed en­sem­ble, Punto rosso sull’oceano, can be heard on the com­poser’s My­Space page, but it is no re­place­ment.