Last night I watched the first night of the Proms on the television, Mahler 8, always the most stunning of Proms openers. It has a special value for me as it reminds me of when I first came down to London as a music student. I joined the BBC Choral Society and the first First Night I did with them was Mahler 8, in 1971, when I was 19. Now the BBC has a Proms archive website (www.bbc.co.uk/proms/archive) so I was able to look it up. It had an all British line up, unlike last night, with an all un-British line up of soloists, and one of the choirs from Sydney. The Proms is no longer seen just as a showcase of British talent, – whether that’s good or bad I can’t decide.



That 1971 Prom, with my first experience of singing in front of a huge audience, has become one of those reference points that all musicians have – the first time I heard … the most wonderful performance of… the moment I realised that…we can all recall them. Afterwards, I had one of those teenage feelings of wanting to commit suicide in order to prolong and enshrine the total ecstasy that the world-embracing ending induces – in me at any rate! Now, I have often heard people affect a kind of distaste for Mahler 8, saying it is the weakest of the symphonies, or that it is a sea of kitsch. It’s often the case that once a choir is involved, people who think of themselves as intellectual start to curl a bit at the edges, and that is a view often heard in orchestras, – players who don’t like ‘working with amateurs.’ The fact that it is actually a hard sing, especially in the wilder harmonic moments of the first movement is not generally appreciated except by the people who sing it.

On Facebook the other day there was a brief interchange about Ligeti, and somebody said that he was ‘too musical’ as compared to say, Xenakis. I didn’t want to add to this discussion: I often worked with Ligeti when I was in the BBC Singers, and he was the most human of composers – often really charming, sometimes volatile and bad tempered. We always liked working with him though, and his music has a wonderful range that encompasses stuff that can be done by amateur choirs as well as the hardest of pro singer stuff. I have very good memories of him and of performing his music. I have to say that it did strike me as the height of pretentiousness to say that Ligeti was ‘too musical.’ What on earth does that mean? Can a composer be too musical, or not musical enough? Is that a matter of taste? Or snobbery? Or analysis? The ending of Mahler 8, with a pantechnichon of trumpets playing that staggering Eflat, Bflat, top C motif is certainly ‘very musical,’ in the sense that it goes utterly beyond words in its effect. It has gone into a place of extreme self sacrifice, where the intellect no longer has much sway over its cosmic spirituality. It is no longer pointing itself at the music world and its tendency to bitchy analysis, but towards the mass of people who can bathe in it, immerse themselves in it and emerge like born again humanity. At the end of my 1971 performance, the roar of the applause at the end seemed to shockingly complete a circle, in a way that was beyond analysis but forever seared into the musical memory.

Went to the Brian Ferneyhough Total Immersion day at the Barbican yesterday, though it was more of a toe dipping than the full baptismal effect as I only went to the string quartet concert and the talk in the afternoon. This is part of my (cunning) plan to try and listen more to things I think I don’t like – last year I was really taken with a Morton Feldman piece at the Proms, an epiphanic moment, largely courtesy of Howard Skempton who had put me in an empathetic frame of mind beforehand.

It is so often the case that going to an arts event of any kind with a friend who likes something that you don’t can be a very enlightening experience – I always remember going to an exhibition of Léger (under duress) with a friend who filled me full of excitement for a painter I thought I didn’t like. It is particularly true for performers who get to love something they started off hating through having to perform it. When I was in the BBC Singers, it happened over and over again – start of the week ‘what is this bollocks?’ – end of the week ‘y’know, this piece has got something about it…’ But it was also true that music which was wonderful to perform sometimes was mystifyingly unsatisfying to listen to, and that was experience I’m afraid I always had of Birtwistle. And that was definitely my experience of the Ferneyhough Missa Brevis, thrilling and ultra challenging to perform and then sadly dry and uncommunicating to listen to.

So I thought I’d try again yesterday, with the benefit of two talks with Ferneyhough, one with Julian Anderson before the string quartets, and the other with Tom Service (sporting one white glove, slightly sinister!). I went to the event with Elizabeth Winters, who some of you will know is a gifted composer, and writes music very unlike my own. We were both struck forcibly by the Barbican audience, which I would say was 90% men – in the second talk, the packed audience had 8 women in it, I counted them. I found this very distracting. After all, if you went to a Sofia Gubaidulina or Unsuk Chin Total Immersion Day, you would be staggered and unsettled to see an audience that was 90% women. It was hard not to feel that we were intruding, that we had stumbled into the Barbican Chapter meeting of train spotters, or a reunion of 1970’s bikers. I am joking, it was a bit smarter than, but you get the point.

It was also really striking how dense and impenetrable the language of the talks was: if some curious music loving couple had wandered in, attracted by the trail on the Today programme (not!!), thinking they’d give it a go, I don’t believe that they would have understood a word of the first talk, and very little of the second. There was an air of uncompromising intellectualism that was giving no quarter. A question like ‘what was your childhood in Coventry like?’ was definitely off limits!! The only hint of anything personal came when Ferneyhough talked briefly about being in a brass band, an intriguing piece of info, but Tom Service’s lip visibly curled, and we soon got back to super-heated fragments again.

Maybe Ferneyhough’s long hair had something to do with it, but I felt very much that the whole thing was like being at a Victorian meeting of a scientific society, where nothing emotional (God forbid!) was going to be mentioned, nothing personal. It was all strangely antiquated, dusty and arid. The thing you needed to know about Ferneyhough before listening to his music was that he had read Adorno in the original German. And, you know, it was a shame, because Ferneyhough himself was not pretentious in the least. I had an unpleasant memory of what it was like to be a woman composer in the 70s, like you were the indulged eccentric in the family being allowed to sit and listen with the grown-ups, as long as you didn’t try and say anything. Obviously and thankfully, things have changed, but not on Planet Ferneyhough it would seem, where a world of music that is written by men and a culture that only expresses  the male libido, is taking its last stand.

Have been listening to a lot of Prokofiev lately, especially the piano sonatas and realised that I knew very little about his life. So I’m enjoying the Life and Times book on him by Thomas Schipperges. He gives you a paragraph’s description of Social Realism, which at its initial launch in 1934 at the Soviet Writer’s Conference, laid down its crass ideas that pessimism was anti-social (goodbye Eastenders!) and that music should be hummable and in major keys.

The book adds that a similar dictum was laid down by Irving Thalberg (1899-1936), the Hollywood producer, who in the 1930s sent the following memo to resident composers: ‘from the above date forward, no music in an MGM film is to contain a minor chord.’ This memo was still bolted to the wall 25 years later, when composers such as André Previn were there.

Thalberg died very young, having suffered from heart disease all his life, and that sharp sense of his own mortality may have affected his ability to cope with sad music! (I’m being kind, because personally I always think that people who don’t write music should leave the decisions up to those who do). Now I want to see Thalberg’s movies to see how many minor chords the composers managed to get past him! I am reminded of writing a piece for a male voice choir: I knew they were very limited in their abilities, so I decided to write a piece with no discords in it. I tried to make it sound strange and keep some tension going without introducing any dissonances. I found this so challenging and engrossing that I put No Discord Series No. 1 on the front page, thinking I would do more. The score was sent off and after a long pause came back: the choir was unable to perform the piece as there were ‘too many discords!’ Obviously, no-one had looked too closely at the title page, but it was more that (I felt)  the newness of the music had brought its own discord into their lives. I wonder how many minor chords MGM’s composers could get into their scores just by presenting them in a certain way. I’ve always found it moving that Mozart often writes his most painful music in major keys, as if the reminiscence of sweetness is unbearable. I wonder whether Irving would have heard that music as if in a minor key? Film music of that time sometimes does something similar – a particularly poignant scene is often accompanied by a saccharine tune like ‘Home Sweet Home’ which is somehow more tear-jerking than a sad melody.

Composers are often forced to reinvent their music to suit dictators and governments: they could leave as Stravinsky or Rachmaninoff did, and Prokofiev did leave for a while. But he came back to Russia, for subtle and complex reasons no-one has ever quite been able to fathom. Other composers manage to stay afloat and stay unique despite the politics – Thomas Tallis springs to mind. I wonder what I would do in such threatening circumstances?

Back in the 70’s, I was told that my music needed to be ‘forced into a modern idiom,’ even though I was writing far more difficult and dissonant music than I write now. I felt very threatened by the atmosphere of that music world, and totally outside it, but my life was not threatened and so I had an easy choice to keep doing my own thing, rather than toeing the party line. Now it is as if the coin as been flipped right over, for now we often read in what music commentary there is these days, that new music should try harder to be accessible, that composers have a duty to write music that people like. In other words, that is hummable and without any anti-social pessimism! This has been going on for some time, and back in the previous century I went to a debate – I remember Roger Scruton was speaking – about how new music should be nicer. He didn’t say that of course, but he wanted keys and melodies, and I presume that he is a much happier man now. It has been a peculiarly English revolution, bloodless in more ways than one. We love foreigners, so we have swopped Boulez for Eric Whitacre. Conformity is the name of the game, whether it is the enforced atonality of my student days, or the holy wallpaper or quasi pop of today, it is in its own way a kind of oppression – oppression that has to be resisted. My personal motto has always been that all anyone can ask of me is that I tell the truth as I see it.

As is well known, Stalin died one hour after Prokofiev, they even died of the same thing. Prokofiev’s death was barely mentioned in the newspapers and there were no flowers at his funeral, due to the total hysteria over Stalin’s death. However, ten years later, Prokofiev’s anniversary was front page news, while Stalin’s was only celebrated in Georgia.

The Fidelio Trio has become one of the leading piano trios in the UK over the last few years. Robert Fokkens asks them about their commitment to contemporary music and how this informs their performances of older music.

Robert Fokkens: All three of you are very busy and experienced performers, with a particular reputation for contemporary music. What drew you to contemporary music initially, and what do you enjoy most about working on new pieces?

Fidelio Trio: The trio began life playing (like most ensembles) classical chamber music repertoire – however for our Purcell Room debut in 1996 we were introduced to Toru Takemitsu's Between Tides which we gave the UK premiere of. We quickly realised we had a particular affinity with the music of today and much enjoyed the collaborative process with living composers. We also realised that there is a huge variety of diverse new music that needed to be programmed.

RF: Working with composers is often a mixed blessing for a performer. Has working regularly with composers changed the way you approach music in general? What do you enjoy most and least about the relationship between composers and performers?

FT: One of the most rewarding aspects of playing new music is the collaborative process between composer and performer. There is nothing more exciting than seeing a new work for the first time that has been conceived for the given performers and then taking it on the next step of the journey ie. into the concert hall. The shared creative experience forms an indelible bond between performer and composer which has a lasting effect on the interpretation. It can also be just as exciting to work with a composer and a piece that wasn't written for you but through the rehearsal process both parties start to hear new angles and possibilities in the work.
Of course the performers do need space sometimes, it's never wise to have the composer at a first rehearsal- they will have been living with that piece for months where as the performers are barely on first name terms with it and need time to feel their way in to the language!

RF: Despite the trio's reputation for performances of contemporary music, I know that you are all very comfortable with a broad range of repertoire. How do you feel about programming new or twentieth-century work alongside pre-twentieth century repertoire?

FT: We often play more traditional repertoire (which for us can be Ravel or Schoenberg) alongside newer music which can compliment the contemporary angle to the programmes well. The old idea of 'sandwiching' a piece of new music between classical or romantic repertoire certainly doesn't always work as the new piece (if performed well enough with total conviction by the performers) should stand alone beside older repertoire. We recently performed a series of concerts in Dublin that featured each of Schumann's impeccable piano trios alongside new pieces for us by Irish composers. This process seemed to work well and the feedback from the audiences was extremely positive in how they listened to both the new pieces and the Schumann.  This has lead us to seriously think about what classical repertoire we should play alongside new music.  However, it is also important to introduce audiences to solely new music concerts and never feel the need to be apolgetic about this.  We programme new works from very different aesthetic view points as the new music world is already a tiny place and alienating audiences should never be the case with performers of this repertoire!

RF: You are performing for the ACF's Soundings 2010 this Wednesday at the Forge in Camden, London. How long have you been involved with this series, and how did you first come to work with the ACF?

FT: We first worked with the Austrian Cultural Forum in 2005 when Soundings was still a relatively young series and Joe Cutler and Johannes Maria Staud were particularly involved in the choosing of repertoire and inviting the other composers to participate.  We have been involved increasingly over the years and since 2008 Mary has been curator, working closely with Andrea Rauter in seeking out and balancing the composers for the UK and Austria and the works to be performed.  As a trio, we are very much now associated with the ACF and are Soundings Ensemble in Residence.  This has resulted in a number of new works being written for us and our Wigmore Hall debut in December 2009 (in a programme of Ed Bennett, Luke Bedford, Thomas Larcher, Johannes Maria Staud and the fantastic arrangement of Verklarte Nacht by Eduard Steuermann).  Every year Mary and Andrea work to refresh and bring new ideas and formats to the week of workshops and concerts and it now is a firmly established series in the London music calendar.

RF: Soundings brings composers from Austria and the UK together for workshops and concerts each year. Have you noticed any particular national differences between the composers, their music and their approach to composition, or is it very much down to the individual composer?

FT: What is clear to us is that yes indeed, composers are all individual.  However, one point that seems to recur every year in discussions and conversations is that, in Austria in general, composers are afforded more time with the musicians they are working with – and in relation to this, composers in the UK are accustomed to working with musicians who are excellent sight-readers and fast learners and so become very time efficient in their rehearsals.  There also seems to be more of what you might call an 'extremely quiet school' present in Austrian music circles, more than in the UK.  But the workshops and concerts every year result in a great variety of new and exciting works.

RF: What other big projects are you currently working on?

FT: We are really excited to be making our USA debut next February (2011) with two concerts at Symphony Space New York City working closely with two very different American composers – Charles Wuorinen and Evan Ziporyn. Later next year we will tour  Southern Africa. On the CD front our next release in February 2011 will be Michael Nyman's Complete Piano Trios for MN Records and also we begin recording our first album for Naxos of music by Schoenberg, Korngold & Zemlinsky. Forthcoming commissions include new pieces from Stephen Gardener, Alasdair Nicholson and Gavin Higgins.

The Fidelio Trio (Darragh Morgan, violin; Robin Michael, cello; Mary Dullea, piano) perform with Lore Lixenberg (mezzo soprano), Patricia Rozario (soprano), Rowland Sutherland (flute) and Gerald Davidson (speaker) for Soundings IX.

At The Forge (3-7 Delancey Street, London, NW1 7NL on Wednesday 24 November. Presented by the Austrian Cultural Forum.

www.fideliotrio.com

www.soundings.co.uk

www.forgevenue.org