Principal Player Focus: Mark van de Wiel

London Sinfonietta Principal clarinettist, Mark van de Wiel

Over the coming months we’ll be profiling a selection of the London Sinfonietta Principal players, giving you the chance to learn a little more about the people you watch on stage at our concerts.  This month, Principal clarinettist Mark van de Wiel tells us about his favourite London Sinfonietta experience, what piece of music makes him smile, and what inspires him…

What was the first recording you bought?

I can’t remember that, but I can remember the first recordings I listened to as a child on LP’s belonging to my father, of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, and Mahler’s First Symphony.

What has been your favourite London Sinfonietta experience?

Our week in Sydney during January 2003 when we started out with lunch for the whole group at Doyle’s fish restaurant on Watsons Bay and played a wide range of repertoire in the Sydney Opera House over three concerts, was very special.  However, playing Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time in the Italian Chapel on Orkney a few years ago was probably the most special of all. We played this very emotional piece twice, at 10 pm and then 11.15 pm, I think, emerging after midnight- and it was still daylight.  An amazing experience!

What’s the most unusual thing you’ve been asked to do in a musical work?

To sing down the clarinet while its bell rested on top of a timpani, adjusting the angle of the bell and making fast pedal changes to the drum with my right foot, all at the same time, in Vinko Globokar’s Dedoublement.

What piece of music brings a smile to your face when you see it on your music stand?

Ligeti’s Piano Concerto. It’s very difficult, but great fun and exhilarating to play- and I know that my trying to negotiate the ocarina solo (which the clarinettist is required to play) will always amuse my colleagues….

Who or what inspires you?

My colleagues and my students.

What piece of new music changed you?

Ablauf, by Magnus Lindberg, for clarinet and two bass drums. It was the first piece I performed with extensive use of such techniques as multiphonics, quarter tones, and simultaneous singing and playing, and encouraged me to make this type of music a major part of my career.

Who would play you in a film of your life?

It would have to be myself. Nobody else would accept the part.

And finally, which London Sinfonietta concert are you most looking forward to in 2012?

In Portrait: Harrison Birtwistle, on 24 May, which contains so much great music, including Cortege, which was written for us, and the marvellous Five Distances for Five instruments, for wind quintet.

Mark van de Wiel’s next performance with the London Sinfonietta will be in Wolfgang Rihm at 60, on Tuesday 24 January.

Matthew Bourne

Matthew Bourne – improviser, innovator and all-round inspired pianist/composer -  is currently collaborating with the London Sinfonietta players to create new material for the ensemble’s Written/Unwritten festival.

With the world premiere on the horizon (3 June), Matthew tells us how things got started at his first workshop session with the players, including Karen Jones (flute), Gareth Hulse (London Sinfonietta Principal oboe), Timothy Lines (clarinet), Ollie Coates (cello)  and David Hockings (London Sinfonietta Principal percussion) …

Matthew Bourne (r) starts his collaboration with the LS players. Images © Briony Campbell

I was incredibly nervous before and on the day of the initial workshop sessions in April. Even though this is a collaborative project it is always a daunting prospect presenting one’s ideas to an ensemble of new musicians for the first time. After arriving for the first session my nerves were put immediately at ease by Gareth’s arrival on a BMW GS1200 motorcycle (having become a recent convert to the many facets of motorcycling – with some spanner rash and plenty of dirty fingernails to prove it), with whom I talked to (or bored him to death…) until the other members of the ensemble arrived.

We started by working at some improvisation ideas and then tried some scored sketches/structures that I’d brought along. At one point, Karen, after trying to work around the sample phrases that I’d written for her in Idea I, took the music and turned it over so she couldn’t see the notes at all – preferring to find her own way of doing the same thing without being a ‘slave to the stave’, so to speak. This was a great moment – as this is the kind of collective approach I hoped we would achieve: losing the written music once the principles behind it are uncovered, leaving the musicians to trust their intuition, creating often better ideas than what was written in the first place!!

Over the course of the sessions, the improvised pieces became stronger and more varied and the structured elements began to change with various suggestions from the ensemble. I hadn’t written a great deal for David (sorry, David – I’ll make it up to you in the next sessions!) but I learned a lot from his input and we had some good conversations about sound(s) and the role of the percussion in the pieces and about notation – with reference to Elaine Gould’s incredible (and surprisingly addictive) book Behind Bars. 

Snapshot of one of Matthew's scores in progress ..

My main aim for this part of the collaboration was to try and learn as much as I could from the London Sinfonietta musicians and it was humbling to be working alongside players with such high standards of musicianship. After reflecting on the rehearsal recordings, work has started on a further set of notated ideas, so I’ll be bringing a few more things along that will challenge and stretch us all a little – and hopefully bring our collaborative efforts to fruition on 3 June.

Matthew Bourne

Hear the world premiere of Matthew’s collaboration with the London Sinfonietta at Written/Unwritten on Friday 3 June,  click here to read Matthew’s answers to our 12 quickfire questions, and click here to read Principal percussionist David Hockings’ blog about how the collaboration got started.

We will also be streaming short clips from the audio recordings taken at this first workshop session, so keep checking the Written/Unwritten page for the latest news and music.

www.matthewbourne.com

Writing the Future: First Pieces (part 2)

Shiva Feshareki is another of the six composers selected to take part in the London Sinfonietta’s new Writing the Future scheme, and has been working with the ensemble’s Principal clarinet Mark van de Wiel since the scheme’s launch in February.

The result of this collaboration is a Sinfonietta Short, titled departing in peace, arriving with love which will be premiered at an exclusive London Sinfonietta’s Pioneers’ event on Wednesday 13 April 2011.

Keep your eyes on the London Sinfoniettta website for news about the first public performance.

Composer Shiva Feshareki (r) at the launch of Writing the Future, February 2011. Photo © Briony Campbell

Shiva tells us more about her piece…

Mark and I already knew each other, when we met on stage of the Royal Festival Hall in a Q&A session last year. Not exactly the most common place to meet, but a lot started even then. In regards to this collaboration, I think he had already understood my way of thinking. I like picking up things that come my way very spontaneously, which then register in my head as being significant, or having had an impact on me. So during the time we have spent with each other so far, we have been focussing on emotions and meanings, and what’s significant for both of us, both in music and in our everyday lives. Now, this will remain between just the two of us, however, for example, I asked him about what makes him happy, what makes him smile, why he likes certain passages of music (which he played a lot of for me: such a luxury), why certain things are scary for him or tedious etc (rather than what sound does it produce if you shove a pen knife in the clarinet or what extended technique can we bastardise this time(!)). In other words, for Mark and me, it’s about the personal, not the technical (or techniques). And I really did find some really beautiful moments emerged between us, so far, in the collaboration. This doesn’t mean that the piece I am writing for him will be so tailored for him that other clarinettists can’t play it; it just means that we have found a soul for the piece, and it’s something that I am now translating into the music (it never had any verbal identity anyway).

The next time we meet, Mark will receive the complete piece. He already knew that that’s what I do: something just clicks in my head after much internal thought, and then I write ’the whole’, with no disruption.

Mark is a fantastic person. Not only does he produce one of the best sounds I have ever heard, but his attitude and commitment to music have no comparison. We both trust each other wholeheartedly, and that is the definition of a collaboration.’

Shiva will not be using electronics in this piece.

Book your tickets to hear more of the Writing the Future pieces at our Pavilions pre-concert performance on Sunday 29 May 2011.

Click here to find out more about how the London Sinfonietta is creating new music with some of the finest emerging composers on Writing the Future.