Once a year, somewhere in the UK, the Association of British Orchestras holds a great meeting for movers and shakers in our national musical life. Half the delegates come wreathed in gloom, expecting there soon to be no music left if the same swingeing arts cuts continue. The alternative view is proffered by the other half – who put on a brave face and tell them it could be worse.
A kind of self-therapy, it’s largely absorbed with discussions about money. But it’s also an opportunity for whichever orchestra plays host – last week it was the CBSO in Birmingham – to strut its stuff in front of representatives from all the others and put on a concert so bizarre it can’t help but be memorable.
The CBSO did this with a vengeance in the Symphony Hall with their Serenade to Music, given over to strange pieces you don’t often hear because they call for such outlandish forces. Nearest to normal was Vaughan Williams’s eponymous Serenade to Music, which sets a scene from The Merchant of Venice for 16 solo voices and an orchestra.
Then there was more Shakespeare, with fragments of The Tempest set by Judith Weir for three flutes, three cellos, three percussionists, and several hundred singing children. Titled Storm, it followed an idea of how the play might unfold without any actors, only atmosphere. And concentrated into 20 minutes. This required imagination: more, alas, than Weir herself supplied. It proved a thin piece.
Far from thin, though, were two crazy scores by Percy Grainger for a sprawling army of performers. Grainger was an interesting oddball who composed bad music in bad taste; and both the works here – In a Nutshell and The Warriors – were masterpieces of vulgarity. But as his mother supposedly observed, “If it wasn’t vulgar it wouldn’t be Percy”; and in that respect – if no other – The Warriors is definitive. His largest score, it’s a robust, exuberant indulgence that throws everything but kitchen sinks into the texture – with three grand pianos and 13 percussionists.
Unsubtle, brazen but cathartic (you feel better when it’s over), the best I can say for its inclusion here is that it gave the chance to add into the programme something more worthwhile: the dazzling celebration of pure, abstract rhythm that is Ionisation by Varèse. Written in 1931 for an enormous battery of percussion, and enlivened by the wail of sirens that supply an urban edginess you don’t expect in music of this vintage, it’s a towering landmark of the 20th century avant-garde, but problematic to put on, except in special circumstances. So three cheers for those provided by the ABO. I’m not convinced that it achieved much in its conference, but the concert made a mark.
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