Cultural Dessert

Erich Wolfgang Korngold is now remembered principally as a film composer from the golden age of Hollywood – one of those Jewish artists exiled from Europe by the rise of fascism. A few years ago I first discovered his wonderful later works for the concert hall – particularly the lovely ‘Violin Concerto’ which the Northampton Symphony Orchestra performed with Thomas Gould (reviewed here in April 2008). But I had not appreciated that Korngold was also a remarkable child prodigy. The ‘Schauspiel Overture’, which opened the BBC Philharmonic concert we attended at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester last Friday, was Korngold’s first published orchestral work, composed at the age of 14. (By this age he had already completed two piano sonatas, a two-act ballet and a piano trio!) The overture was performed across Europe by nearly every great conductor of the day and Henry Wood introduced it at The Proms in London in 1912 – making Korngold, to this day, the youngest composer ever performed at The Proms. The ‘Schauspiel Overture’ (‘overture to a drama’ – though with no specific play in mind) is a sumptuous piece, already demonstrating what would become the Korngold sound. The BBC Philharmonic followed the overture with the world premiere of ‘Beautiful Passing’ – a violin concerto by the American composer Steven Mackey. Violinist Leila Josefowicz gave a very physical performance of this challenging work which reflects on the finals days of Mackey’s dying mother. There were some beautifully moving quiet passages and lots of fascinating sound effects from the percussion department – including bowed cymbals and tennis balls being dropped onto the skin of the timpani. The concert concluded with Dvorak’s ‘Symphony No 9 – From the New World’ with the BBC Phil in fine form under the young Slovakian conductor Juraj Valcuha.

Kings Place is London’s newest concert venue – a gleaming glass and steel block round the back of Kings Cross station, overlooking Regent’s Canal. It houses two concert halls, two galleries and the new offices of The Guardian. The building opened last weekend with a festival of a hundred short concerts over five days. We dropped in on Sunday afternoon and saw two performances. ‘Sound Walk’ was a collaboration between sound artists Tony Whitehead and Matthew Sansom, presented by the Society for the Promotion of New Music. Tony Whitehead had spent a day in and around Kings Cross, keeping a sound diary in which he wrote descriptions of the noises he heard, then honing these descriptions into a poem. Whitehead’s words were projected, verse by verse, onto a screen while we listened to Matthew Sansom’s composition – a soundscape constructed from recordings he had made of the ambient sounds of Kings Cross. This was serious, contemplative work which benefited from being presented in a concert hall: had I encountered it in a gallery or on a CD my attention span might not have been long enough to appreciate it, but sitting in a darkened room, concentrating on the patterns of sounds and words, it was fascinating how things were gradually revealed. We then moved to the main concert hall to hear the Brodsky Quartet, and clarinettist Mark van de Wiel, perform Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ ‘Hymn to Artemis Locheia’, introduced by the composer. Max explained that the work had been commissioned by the head of the London Fertility Clinic, to commemorate his father, and dealt with the idea of creation, the creative process and the cycle of life. A fairly long piece (around thirty minutes) it was often difficult and challenging listening but I found the quieter, slower passages very beautiful. It was a very impressive performance with virtuosic playing, particularly by Mark van de Wiel. There was a compelling moment, a few minutes from the end of the piece, when one of the violinists broke a string, as a result of a particularly violent pizzicato, but kept going seamlessly – the only clue that anything was wrong being the additional furrowing of his brow as he concentrated on working out how to play the remaining notes on his three remaining strings. Kings Place is an impressive venue – a monument to the new.