|
Jan
JÄRVLEPP
(b.1953) Imants
KALNINS (b.1941) |
Roger Bergström, Anders Holdar, Leif Karlsson, Anders Loguin, Johan Silvmark
Jackie Short vocalist (Kalnins)
Singapore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lan Shui
Includes vocal texts.
BIS-CD-1052
[72:33] full-price
by William Beh
What
do you get when a tropical city orchestra, a Chinese-born American conductor,
a Swedish percussion quintet, a Canadian post-modernistic iconoclast and
a Latvian rock musician-turned-composer come together?
Something
out of a Dr Suess storybook, you'd probably say, and I wouldn't blame
you. Following the release of the complete Tcherepnin symphonies last
year, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra,
under the impetus of musical director Lan Shui, has continued its exploration
of classical exotica with yet another offering of obscure works by composers
Jan Järvlepp and Imants Kalnins.
The result
is the Garbage Concerto, subtitled "A Concerto for Recycled Garbage
and Orchestra". Doing the honours (to use a popular SSO cliché) are the
Swedish percussion ensemble Kroumata; the initial public concerts of this
work preceding the recording sessions were dedicated to the Tenth Anniversary
of the orchestra's fund-raising Ladies League.
The work
is in the typical fast-slow-fast concerto form, with each movement given
an imaginative (to say the least) programmatic subtitle, although the
sleeve notes do not explain how they relate to the music. Dance of
the Wind is a thrusting, hard-driven dialogue alternating between
orchestra and soloists.
Following
this is The Rideau Canal 3 a.m., with the soloists blowing across
glass bottles filled with varying levels of water against a minimalist
symphonic landscape. Here, Lan sustains the level of early suspense very
well, but musically there is little development and at the last, the electronic-sounding
bottle-tones outstay their novelty.
But ultimately,
this work leaves me somewhat ambivalent. It is a formidable piece of postmodern
writing which might not be everyone's taste, although it does showcase
excellently the playing ability (to say nothing of their courage in exploring
and recording this repertoire) of the young orchestra and its conductor.
There is also something about the piece which suggests a crucial visual
element of performance - showmanship is, after all, an integral component
of the solo percussionist's craft - that is, obviously, missing on disc.
If memory
serves, Imants Kalnins' "Rock" Symphony was soundly panned by the
local newspaper critic when it was performed by the orchestra as part
of its 1999 subscription season. Apparently he did not agree with the
pseudo-fusion of rock and classical, even if the drama and accessibility
of this music is irrefutable. Thankfully, that did not stop the orchestra
from going on to record this for posterity, and I for one have been eagerly
waiting for it.
(The performance
of the "Rock" Symphony is reviewed
here by the Inkpot).
At some points
it sounds like a track from a bad pornographic movie or some schlocky
crossover à la "The Royal Philharmonic plays The Who", to
be sure, but there is an intense, forward-thrusting ostinato in
the perpetuum mobile-like first movement that head-bangingly sweeps
the listener along. The second movement opens with a melodic figure which
is hauntingly lyrical, characteristic of the Eastern European school of
composition, with hints of sub-surface turbulence in the occasional orchestral
interjections. The orchestra sound here is as lush and sonorous as they
have ever been on record.
The disquiet
brewing in the second movement finally surfaces in the Grave molto
of the third movement; yet this is not a disruptive clash of tonalities,
but rather a colourful exposition of folk-like melodies and rhythms that
clearly has inherited from Dvorák, Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky.
The Singapore Symphony Orchestra is missing just that last bit of Slavonic
character in pulling this one off, but that's not to take anything away
from their already impressive playing.
Both works on this new album, in fact, draw on the influences of the heady
days of seventies rock music. Jan
Järvlepp (left - photo from composer's
website) has gathered a motley assortment of recycled garbage objects
like metal cans, glass jars, plastic bottles, hubcaps and a paper bag
(listen out for it near the end of the first movement), and written a
pluralistic five-part concertante around them. By his own admission, the
music also "[draws] upon my experience as a teenage rock guitarist" while
at the same time, ventures into a contemporary post-avant garde
style.
With an abrupt change of mood, the last movement, Rain Dance, resumes
with loud, fast and upbeat rhythms, although the percussive element sounds
gratuituosly banal in the opening bars. This is soon reversed, however:
the orchestra takes a distant back seat to soli percussion, riddled
with conflicting time signatures (11/16 at one point !) and unusual percussive
effects. Kroumata hammer out the music (in more ways than one, literally)
with some élan and credit must also be given to the orchestra for
assuming their thankless supporting role so ably.
The eponymous "rock" of the title refers not to any particular geological
feature, but rather to the movement of angry protest music that swept
the world in the post-Vietnam years. This symphony itself finds its roots
as a form of protest - Latvian composer Kalnins (left) was part of a rock
group that was banned in Latvia behind the Iron Curtain in 1970 and this
work was his response to that forbidden desire for decadent capitalist
rock music.
We Fill The GapsWhen you left, I cried fiercelyThen I died. Will you suffer my sorrow, let me forgive you. I will when the owl lights on the oak Sweep with my brush your loose hair back, And love you in bed. And wrap this sweet sheet round you until you are dead. The wet west wind wrapped us up; As I was a child you pamper me with roses. The colours of wind are cold. He's absurd... Against the blue air, In this pink dawn, my heart flares up and dies down. I held my tongue when you went away. What of soul was left I wonder, Kelly Cherry, "Lyric Cycle" |
Idiomatically, the final movement transforms from a neo-Nationalistic mien into an eclectic, quasi-rock song-cycle, with Kalnins setting a soprano voice (electronically amplified on microphone) to the prose poems of Beat poet Kelly Cherry. The result, as bizarre as it sounds, is a self-contained amphibolic mix of Hindemith (When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd) meets rock opera (Evita) meets The Best of ABBA. If you listen carefully, you can even hear the occasional snippet of syncopated narration, which uncannily foreshadows what people today call rap.
In this role, Canadian-born coloratura Jackalyn ("Jackie") Short renders a delectable performance, her vibrant, provocative mannerisms injecting raw energy into the schizophrenic music and characterful words of Cherry. It caps an equally tour de force performance by the orchestra, suitably extrovert under Lan's masterful reading.
This is music, and I'm not saying this lightly, that evokes the psychedelia of curtained beads, lava lamps and the Age of Aquarius on a grand scale, and furthermore, it grows on you. By the time you get to the last stanza of the song-cycle and the soprano invokes the magical lines "The sun like a silent song will burn up the far side of night - I will remember you !", it just makes all the little hairs on the back of your neck start jumping up and down.
Among the faults to be picked, the foremost is the serious crime of omission by BIS not to include the text of Cherry's song-cycle in the programme booklet, nor has space been found for a biographical paragraph for soprano Jackie Short. The individual verses of the song-cycle could have been separately cued, or at the very least sub-indexed.
As an aside, BIS have used the old logo of Singapore Symphony Orchestra which was phased out in early 2000, which suggests that either this album was unusually long in the production, or somebody isn't taking the logo branding of the orchestra too seriously.
The engineers have captured the distinctive acoustics of the Victoria Concert Hall well, although the empty hall is rather reverberant. There is too much bloom for my taste, resulting in some loss of detail and clarity in the louder passages, especially in the middle-range instruments (violas, cellos and low winds.) The percussion in the Garbage Concerto are very amply captured in stereophonic detail and Jackie Short is placed very well in relation to the instruments, so no complaints with respect to the soloists.
If you have never heard Kalnins's "Rock" Symphony, it is definitely well worth a listen, especially if you are old enough to remember the heyday of the hard rockin' seventies. Järvlepp isn't a bad complement alongside this repertoire, either. This is the sort of music which one will either intensely like or hate, but ignore it at your own peril. Or, in the words of another famous rock anthem,
"There will be an answer, let it be..."
You can buy or order
this CD in Singapore from HMV or Borders (Wheelock Place).
William
Beh has discovered the hidden track with sublimal messages on the
album, which perhaps explains his sudden craving for the SSO's upcoming
recording of the complete tone poems of Gütrune Olégünnarsdöttir and her
son Rud
i.
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