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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: Manchester

Resurrection

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Mahler, Manchester, Richard Howarth, Wrexham Symphony Orchestra

1 Bridgewater 2

No reviews this weekend – here’s what I was doing instead. I’ve been playing  on and off with the Wrexham Symphony Orchestra since 1997. I love them not just because they’re a friendly bunch but because they have such a thirst to explore the repertoire – to “have a go”. They play music that excites them, and there are no finance managers, critics or jaded pros there to tell them that amateur orchestras can’t play Mahler 3, Nielsen 1, Prokofiev 7 or Bruckner 5; or Paul Creston, Bernard Herrmann, Lars Erik Larsson, Alun Hoddinott or Jean Francaix. So they just play it, and I’ve had some of the best musical experiences of my adult life at the William Aston Hall. I’m always frustrated when work or travel (it’s a bit of a trek from Lichfield to Wrexham) causes me to miss a show.

1 wrexham

But there was one concert that I was determined not to miss – the Resurrection Symphony, the highlight so far of the Orchestra’s 10-year Mahler cycle. For the occasion, the orchestra had hired the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester – the biggest and most high-profile venue it’s ever played in – and teamed up with no fewer than four Cheshire and North Wales choral societies. Richard Howarth – formerly of the Manchester Camerata – conducted.

1 Bridgewater

So there I was, at the back of the cello section, as astonished as anyone in the orchestra by the transformation that the Bridgewater Hall acoustic wrought on our sound and quietly relieved that after a week of rehearsal, my creaky fingers were finally starting to produce something resembling Mahler’s cello part. It was a welcome reminder, too, of the unique perspective that you get on a piece of music once you’re on the inside, as it were – actually playing it.

It’s incredible how clearly the form of the piece simply lays itself out in front of you as you play – and the details you notice. I was shocked at just how lazy my listening had become. When, in listening to the first movement, had I ever genuinely noticed the passage where Mahler semi-quotes (or at any rate, evokes in unmistakable terms) first Die Walkure, and then Tristan? And later, a huge subito piano tutti clearly cribbed from the end of Gotterdammerung? There they all were, jumping off the page at me as, with one eye on the baton, another on the semiquavers on the next line, I struggled not to run out of bow.

As for the performance itself – it’s hardly my place to say. But I can say that the two soloists, Rebecca Afonwy-Jones and April Fredrick both sent little tingles running down my back, that I’ve never heard an amateur choral society with so many, and so sonorous, male voices…and that backstage, post-show, we were already talking about “when” we do Mahler 8…

Throwback Thursday: Philip Glass at Futuresonic

14 Friday Nov 2014

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Film Scores, Manchester, Metro, Minimalism, Philip Glass

“Throwback Thursday”? Is that a thing now? I’m informed so. In which case (and despite it being Friday), since simply everyone seems to be interviewing Philip Glass at the moment, here’s an interview I did with him for Metro back in 2009 prior to Manchester’s Futuresonic Festival. Whatever your views on his music (and mine seem to swing from one extreme to another with almost every new piece of his that I hear), there’s no denying that he’s an engaging, generous and endlessly intriguing interviewee.


No-one’s likely to mistake Futuresonic for a festival of contemporary classical music.  But if you’re going to throw a token classical gig into your genre-bending celebration of dubstep, deep house and italo disco, you might as well think big.  And in Philip Glass, Futuresonic’s bagged pretty much the most famous classical composer on the planet.

It’s hard to overstate Glass’s influence.  His haunting, pulsing film scores – from cult documentaries to blockbusters like The Truman Show and Candyman – are instantly recognisable and widely imitated.  Brian Eno, David Bowie, Sonic Youth, Pet Shop Boys and Aphex Twin have all listened to, and learned from, Philip Glass.  He’s on the soundtrack of Watchmen…and Grand Theft Auto IV.  He’s been mocked on South Park.  Unsurprisingly, then, he’s not unduly troubled by his status as Futuresonic’s solitary “classical” presence:

“I’ve been called a lot of things over the years and they don’t mean very much to me.  As long as I’m not being described as ‘atonal’ or ‘minimal’.  Whether it’s called popular or classical music, the interesting thing today is that the barriers are coming down.  After 20 or 30 years of battering away at these labels, younger composers are feeling able to work in whatever way they like, and I’m very glad to be part of that.”

So Glass finds nothing strange in being part of a line-up that includes DJ Kode 9, Anti-Pop Consortium and a team of Last.FM DJs.

“That they’re interested in popular music, digital music – I’m very glad to be included in that.  The Ensemble that I made my name with in the 1970s is still working – the synthesizer sounds have improved a lot – but we’ve kept up to date with digital technology.  My company has always tried to do that.  We were amongst the first to put concerts online.”

All the more surprising then, that Glass isn’t appearing with his legendary, synth-led Ensemble, but instead performing an evening of solo piano music without a mike or mixing desk in sight.  A good, old-fashioned solo piano recital in a digital festival: it’s a vintage Glass paradox.  But for a composer who’s increasingly turned to classical concertos and symphonies (he’s about to begin his Ninth) while the rest of the world has been catching up with his early electronica, the problem is nonexistent.

“In my solo piano concerts I don’t have an intermission; and there’s no Chopin, no Schubert – it’s all me!  I play music from over 30 years, going back to 1979.  But because of the fact that it’s someone playing a piano, it’s automatically viewed as a classical ‘recital’.  Yet when I perform my amplified music, it’s viewed differently.  I do play in concert halls, but I write dance music and film music also.  The range of things that interests me is much wider.  But the other day, someone told me one of my Etudes for solo piano reminded them of a Schubert Impromptu, and I thought, ‘what a compliment’!”

And Glass’s readiness to take that compliment is surely the most important message he brings to Futuresonic.  “Here’s a question: are we at a point in the history of music when we can look back and not feel embarrassed?  Art isn’t like science.  I’ll be playing on a concert grand piano that was built no more than 20 years ago in New York or Hamburg; the result of 300 years of continual improvement.  Technology does that.  But art doesn’t.  Music doesn’t always go forward – it goes sideways, and sometimes backwards.”  Five decades in, Glass’s extraordinary career continues to prove a universal point: it’s not the technology that matters, it’s the music.

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