Allan Gravgaard Madsen
27
Every Ending Is Also a New Beginning
Aarhus Symfoniorkester, Allan Gravgaard Madsen and Morten Riis: »Away«
© Alexis Rodríguez Cancino
Allan Gravgaard Madsen’s and Morten Riis’s Away is a »mixed media« orchestral work. The physical orchestra is supplemented by sound and video recordings from the basement of Aarhus Theatre (woodwind quintet), Aarhus Cathedral (brass quintet), and Marselisborghallen (string orchestra). All of these locations have, at various points over the past 90 years, housed the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra.
Away opens with the final two chords of the overture to Rossini’s William Tell (1829), which are explored throughout the orchestra. Gradually, musicians leave the ensemble, only to reappear later in smaller constellations in recordings from the aforementioned locations. Through technology, the orchestra plays across time and space in a highly successful manner.
The work explores stasis and movement, with air as a central device: the wind players often blow into their instruments without producing tones, while the string players imitate the sound of wind using plastic bags. For me, Away has three highlights. Trumpets and percussion play phrases that turn out to anticipate a video of a flutist walking through the city. The trumpets mimic the sound of a truck – »beep-bop-beep-bop« – and the percussion becomes the flutist’s stilettos. Musique concrète turned on its head! At one point, half of the string players are seen sitting in a circle, playing intensely dissonant chords, only to kill them again – the physical shock activated my ears. The third highlight comes when the entire orchestra plays together again while all three projections are running simultaneously. Here, the work can truly begin, and one clearly senses the energy rising in the room. But – unfortunately – as soon as this climax is reached, the intensity drops again.
At just under 45 minutes, Away is, unfortunately, slightly too long and static for my taste. The effect of the aforementioned ruptures might not have been as strong in a shorter format, but I would have wished for just a bit more of the intensity the work so clearly was capable of delivering. I was left with a somewhat flat feeling. The piece also ended so quietly that several people were unsure whether it had actually finished and whether we could applaud.
Only at the End Did the Music Break Free
The Baroque Society: »Remembering«
© Malin Annie Jansson
The British composer Nick Martin, who is based in Copenhagen, attempts to give remembrance a sonic form in his brand-new work Remembering, written specifically for The Baroque Society. On Thursday evening at Grundtvig’s Church, he succeeded beautifully in parts of the fifteen-minute work for four singers and a small, intensely focused group of Baroque instruments.
Dense vocal textures lingered over harmonies that unfolded slowly, while allowing the soloists to emerge one by one. The static accompaniment provided a foundation for remembrance, over which the floating voices evoked the lost and departed. The harmonies gradually shifted in colour like clouds in the sky, constantly changing shape – seemingly at random, yet following what felt like a fixed, organic pattern. But the work became too long and passive. Only in its final minutes did the harmonies break apart, making room for welcome rhythmic variation and tantalising silences. Had this shift in form come earlier, Martin might have created a more compelling work. It nevertheless ended with a gem of an open, searching chord which not only demonstrated his gifts as a vocal composer but perhaps also invited us to think of remembrance as something positive and transformative rather than tragic.
Remembering was framed by two works by J.S. Bach (BWV 118 and 106). The latter cantata was later given the title Actus Tragicus, but it was not entirely tragic: for Bach, death primarily offered access to something better. That sense of consolation was harder to find in this performance, where the small orchestra of The Baroque Society lacked energy and momentum. Yngvild Haaland Ruud, seated behind the small organ in the middle of the ensemble, provided insufficient musical direction to bring the players together. The tempo was far too ponderous, and the music lingered too much on the feeling or memory of the sounds just heard. Still, it was refreshing to encounter a new work by Nick Martin – an invitation to remember at All Saints’ Day.
The concert will be repeated in Copenhagen, Helsingør and Gentofte over the coming days
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek
© PR
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© PR
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