Principal Player Focus: John Constable

John Constable, the London Sinfonietta’s Principal pianist and YouTube clip enthusiast is March’s featured Principal player.

When did you realise you wanted a career in music?

John Constable, London Sinfonietta Principal pianist

At school.  All I ever wanted to do was to play the piano and listen to music.

 What was the first recording you bought?

I don’t remember the first recording I bought myself but I well remember two that I was given by my parents; Artur Schnabel playing Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto and Victoria de los Angeles singing The Maiden and the Nightingale by Granados.

 What piece of new music changed you?

The Whale by John Tavener, the first piece I played with the London Sinfonietta which started me on this fantastic journey with my marvellous colleagues.

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

Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.

 What has been your favourite London Sinfonietta experience?

There have been so many marvellous experiences that it is impossible to pick just one! I suppose it has to be a tie between our first ever tour of Europe with Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio and David Atherton and our performances of the Quartet for the End of Time in the Italian Chapel on Orkney in a building built by Italian prisoners of war and so close to Scapa Flow.

 What is perfection?

Something which every performer aspires to but knows they well never reach.  There is always something more one could have done with the music.

 What is your most valued posession?

Something which is not a posession at all. My family.

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

It has to be In Portrait: Harrison Birtwistle on 24 May.  Harrison Birtwistle has been such a central part of our concert giving from very early days and the concert will be conducted by David Atherton, our founder!

John’s next performance with the London Sinfonietta will be on Friday 23 March in Glasgow where we’ll be perfoming a double-bill as part of the Minimal Extreme Festival.  Click here for more details.

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London Sinfonietta on Tour: Reflections by John Constable

During November we visited both the Wien Modern Festival in Vienna, and the Melos-Ethos Festioval in Bratislava.   London Sinfonietta Principal pianist John Constable kept a diary, and shared some of his reflections with us…

Sunday 30 October, Vienna

The Mozart Saal, Konzerthaus, Vienna

I had been looking forward to revisiting Vienna and going to Bratislava for a long time.  It is always a very special occasion to play in Vienna, partly because you are treading the same streets trodden by the world’s greatest composers and also because of the many marvellous experiences I have had there.  I first went to Vienna in 1969 at three hours notice to assist Sir Georg Solti in a Decca recording of The Magic Flute.  In the cast were two of my singer friends from Covent Garden, Yvonne Minton and Stuart Burrows who I later accompanied in the Brahms Saal of the Musikverein many times. The Musikverein has one of the most important collections of original scores in the world and on several occasions I was allowed to see manuscripts of Mozart piano concertos, the Eroica Symphony, Schubert’s Ninth Symphony, Brahms’ Four Serious Songs and on one occasion a Beethoven song that I had performed the night before.

But enough of the past!  We arrived at our hotel, which was near the Belvedere Garden which Mahler walked round at lunchtime,  in good time to have dinner at an atmospheric beer house set in the Belvedere itself.  After dinner my colleagues went back to the hotel but I had plenty of energy left to walk round the floodlit centre, past the opera to the Hofburg and round the Musikverein.

Monday 1 November, Vienna

It was a ten minute walk to the Konzerthaus in warm sun for our 11 o’clock rehearsal.  I remembered as I walked in that it was here that the London Sinfonietta gave it’s first concert outside the UK with Luciano Berio, followed by concerts around Europe with Pierre Boulez and David Atherton. (Click here to view the programme for this first concert).  This time we were not in the main hall where we gave a Steve Reich concert a few years ago but were in the very lovely Mozart Saal. Vienna has what, apart from the Wigmore Hall, I believe we don’t have in London, halls which not only have a rich and warm acoustic but also are beautiful and have an atmosphere that positively demands music.  All this without lighting effects or an auditorium so dark that you can’t read the programme!

After lunch overlooking the Burggarten there was time to see the Gustav Klimt exhibition in the Belvedere and an afternoon sleep before the concert.   We played an all British programme including works by Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Simon Holt, George Benjamin and Thomas Adès which we had (or most of us had ) played many times before, and the programme was very warmly received. At a reception after the concert Cathy Graham, our previous Cheif Executive, said it was a programme of “London Sinfonietta Greatest Hits”.  She also said how lovely the magical chords near the end of Adès  Living Toys sounded. We were all very excited that Christian Barraclough, our young trumpeter deputising for London Sinfonietta Principal Alistair Mackie, had played so superlatively well in both the Benjamin and the Adès.  After the concert we all went to the beer house near the hotel taking up two large tables, hoping to play at the Wien Modern festival again soon.

Friday 11 and Saturday 12 November, Bratislava

We didn’t arrive at our hotel until after midnight so I went to bed straight away, however, we did have the next morning free so I explored the old town which most of us had not seen before.  It was brilliantly sunny but much colder than Vienna had been, there were no cars in the old town and very few people either. I happened to find an exhibition of Picasso drawings and etchings in a baroque palace after visiting the cathedral and wandering along deserted cobbled streets.  In the afternoon we presented a workshop of works by Slovakian composers plus Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Silbury Air to a public audience.  It certainly enhances a visit when we can do something involving local composers as well as playing a concert.

In the evening we had to rehearse for our concert partly because we had a different first violin to the concert in Vienna, but also because we were playing a new work for wind quintet and piano which involved quite a lot of unusual techniques, by Slovakian composer Iris Szeghy.

Sunday 13 November, Bratislava

John Constable, London Sinfonietta Principal pianist

The coach took us over the Danube to the theatre where we were going to perform. It was immediately obvious that it was a typically dry theatre acoustic unlike the Konzerthaus.  After the rehearsal we all walked back over the bridge, and, after listening to the Police Band play outside the National Theatre and watching a busker who appeared to be sitting suspended in mid-air, a group of us had a good Italian lunch before a sleep and then the coach back to the theatre.  After the concert, there was a lovely reception with food, excellent Slovakian red wine and speeches as it was the end of the festival. Iris was delighted with the way her piece had been played, we all felt that it was the sort of music which has a lot of atmosphere and really comes off in performance. We met many interesting people, all of whom were very enthusiastic about the concert and we certainly hope we will be invited back very soon.

Monday 14 November, Bratislava

We drove to Vienna airport along country roads in, at times, quite thick fog, however, luckily we were not delayed very much and our last trip abroad in a very active 2011 was over.

London Sinfonietta Academy 2011: a participant’s view

The last week of July saw the return of our London Sinfonietta Academy course, an intensive five-day course of rehearsals, workshops and masterclasses which provides key experience and training in core contemporary repertoire, with coaching from London Sinfonietta Principal Players.  Academy student and pianist Alex Wilson shares his thoughts on his Academy experience.

The time: approximately 9:47AM.  Monday 25^th July.  I have battled through the rush hour traffic and arrived to negotiate with a surprisingly complicated coffee dispenser (or was that just me?), and meet the participants of the 2011 London Sinfonietta Academy.  After many weeks of slaving away in a sweltering windowless room at an increasingly out-of-tune piano it is time to discover if the endless metronome practice has paid off.  I feel closer to György Ligeti and Thomas Adès than ever, yet the possibility of disaster is weighing on my mind: will Maestro Valade throw out the carefully notated tempo markings in favour of a much faster speed selection?  Will the piano be facing in the right direction?  And don’t even get me started on the unique challenge of learning to play a harpsichord and harmonium from scratch in the space of five days.

London Sinfonietta Academy 2011 in rehearsal

As it turned out I needn’t have worried.  Pierre-Andre was a joy to work with, possessing a seemingly-endless knowledge of our repertoire and showing extreme patience and tolerance in the face of even the most basic of mistakes.  Contemporary music can’t be described as easy to decipher at times (a bar consisting of two triplet crotchet beats?  Cheers Mr. Adès…), yet Maestro Valade’s clear and concise conducting made it feel almost effortless to follow.

Playing such potentially difficult repertoire can be daunting no matter how many hours of headache-inducing practice has been carried out, but receiving advice from John Constable, London Sinfonietta piano extraordinaire, makes you feel as if you are performing with a huge safety net ready to catch you and solve any problem you may encounter.  Possibly the nicest musician I have ever met, what John doesn’t know about performing contemporary piano repertoire simply isn’t worth knowing, and he appeared keen to share all his years of experience with us all.  I have received tips that I will use for the rest of my life and feel I am a greatly improved musician as a result.  Thanks John!

The challenge of the orchestral pianist is a unique one; I am used to the solitary life of practicing and performing by myself, and watching someone waving their arms around to dictate how fast to play is clearly an alien concept to any pianist.  The concept of jumping between instruments is also a fairly new experience, and reasonably exclusive to contemporary music; the joy of playing a beautifully resonant piano chord before sprinting to the celeste in 3 beats for a delicate melody, then off to the harpsichord in 1.5 beats is a task many composers like to set, probably simply to test the fitness levels of the pianist…  I have learnt to overcome many obstacles during my time in the Academy, have made new contacts, become better acquainted with stalwarts of the contemporary repertoire, and will never forget how to play the harmonium pianissimo with a consistent sound whilst ensuring all notes sound simultaneously-  possibly the greatest challenge a pianist will ever face!

Alex Wilson will be performing, along with other members of the London Sinfonietta Academy 2011, in a BBC Proms Plus Portrait event on Wedneday 31 August.  In this event, Academy musicians will perform a selection of works by Graham Fitkin, and the composer, in conversation with Tom Service, will discuss his new Cello Concerto which will be premiered in the evening Prom concert.

The London Sinfonietta Academy 2011 is generously supported by the Esmée Fairburn Foundation, the Fenton Arts Trust, the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, Leo & Regina Hepner, and the Musicians Benevolent Fund.

Norwegian folk music, polytonality, and lowering the divorce rate: part 2

In the second part of this two-part blog, cellist Zoe Martlew tells us what happens when Norwegian folk fiddler Nils Økland meets the London Sinfonietta in preparation for the first event at Written/Unwritten …

Nils learns all his melodies by ear, and found it strange that we preferred to learn by seeing the written notes first. Composer Charlie Piper was present to help bridge the gap, but it made me aware of the tremendous aural memory required of the folk musician. At least two of our group has perfect pitch – Sam Walton, percussionist and Joan Atherton, violinist, and were able to copy melodies straight off. However, as Joan explained, having perfect pitch can sometimes cause problems when it comes to retuning the instrument, customary left hand finger positions producing different sounding pitches with each scordatura and potentially causing confusion. In the end it wasn’t necessary to retune the strings and we all managed to memorise quite a collection of Nils’ pieces in a short space of time: a “Lazy” tune, with polytonal structures and a lilting rhythm amplified by foot beats; a religious melody so lost in antiquity that heated arguments abound in the Norwegian folk music community about the correct way to play it; a lively running theme with foot stomping dance rhythms; a “grey” melody to be played at 4 in the morning at weddings and a piece of Nils’ own called Blond Bleu after a painting by Lars Hertervig. Now considered one of Norway’s greatest artists, Hertervig was so poor in his lifetime he was unable to afford paper and paint, so made his own from crushed tobacco paper and natural pigments.  For me this painting perfectly evokes the beautiful and mysterious melancholy of so much of the Hardanger music we have heard.

Blond Bleu by Lars Hertervig, which inspired Nils’ original composition.

The modes Nils used were not all familiar to me. One appeared to be a Dorian scale with the first five notes of an E major scale stuck on top, for example, another a mix of two completely different modes. However, I did find myself playing a drone D and A fifth for a fair amount of our improvised sessions and wondered yet again at how often this happens in so many folk traditions: middle eastern, central European, Celtic and by extension in modern film scores where a D bass drone seems de rigour (I speak from hard won film session experience). Perhaps the ancient idea of modes being associated with “the humours” is not so far off. D associated with tragedy, and so on. Nils said that several of his melodies had been influenced by Middle Eastern traditions (would be fascinating to know where, how and when) that can be heard in certain microtonal ornamental inflections.

In order to avoid the danger of us becoming a mere backing band for the distinctive Norwegian colour world, and me going crazy with Dorian mode pedal notes, Sam Walton our percussionist suggested we experiment further with harmonic modulation within the improvisations. John Constable began to add more jagged thematic gestures on the piano, and in the strings we started to use more of the extended techniques discussed earlier and move away from a purely modal tonality. Nils himself is no stranger to other ways of playing, improvising regularly with jazz musicians, free improvisers and once in a punk band, as have I (a band called “Liebeskind” which was unbelievably loud, bad, entirely made up on the spot and unsurprisingly lasted for only 3 gigs. Our first album cover was to have featured our Belgian lead singer carrying the placenta of her newly born daughter. Mercifully, the idea and the band sunk without trace). At one point Sam and I did a high octane piano cello improv moving far away from folk genre, and in much more familiar musical territory for us. Interestingly, Nils said that he finds free improv much harder to do than folk or jazz. Such differences are what makes the collaboration compelling, and spark off new possibilities in making music for us all.

After coffee and cake from the nearby fabulous Konditor and Cook, we discussed the outline of our concert in June and how to balance improvised and written music. We came up with a programme including Stravinsky’s wonderful Three Pieces for String Quartet; two Aphex Twin pieces for piano; the ever popular Fratres by Arvo Pärt, and some music by young Norwegian composers plus the new works created from our group ensemble improvisations at the two day workshop.

We round off our two days of collaboration with a foot stomping wedding tune. The Hardanger folk fiddler traditionally sits down to play. In the past Norwegian weddings would have lasted for at least a week, many people travelling for days on foot over the mountains to reach the party. Once ecsonced, the musician would be playing for hours, hence the need to sit down and presence of “four o’clock in the morning ‘grey’ tunes” previously mentioned. There is a belief that the divorce rate is now much higher in Norway because weddings are now far shorter and don’t allow people the chance to get to know each other as well. It’s nice to think that such hauntingly beautiful music not only can keep trolls at bay but also maintain marital stability. Couples are welcome to put the theory to the test at Kings Place in June.

Don’t miss the results of this unique collaboration at Written/Unwritten on 2 June 2011.

Click here to find out more about London Sinfonietta’s Written/Unwritten festival at Kings Place, and to view for more photos from this first collaborative workshop.

Norwegian folk music, polytonality, and lowering the divorce rate – part 1

Cellist Zoe Martlew tells us what happens when Norwegian Hardanger folk fiddler Nils Økland meets the London Sinfonietta in preparation for the first event at Written/Unwritten …

(anticlockwise from left) Zoe Martlew, Sam Walton, Eniko Magyar, Nils Økland, Jonathan Morten and John Constable meet for the first time to collaborate for Written/Unwritten. Image © Briony Campbell

The words “Norwegian folk fiddler” for me immediately conjure up images of craggy old men with flowing white beards leading solitary lives in lonely log cabins by fjords, casting spells on mountain trolls and mist-bound elves with melodies of impossible sadness and antiquity. Cheerfully smashing this picture to smithereens, the youthful Hardanger fiddler Nils Økland burst into our rehearsal space at The Warehouse, full of twinkly humour, an immediately engaging and lively presence, delighted to share the art of his music with us assembled London Sinfonietta players.

He was carrying two Hardanger fiddles with him, custom made modern instruments with exquisitely wrought inlaid mother of pearl fingerboards, embellished wood carving on the body of the fiddle, 4 main strings with 4 sympathetic resonating strings underneath and enlarged f holes (compared to modern violins). He explained that each of the strings is made differently to produce a different timbre: one is wound gut, for example, another straight gut, and so on.  The reason for this became apparent as soon as he started playing.

Nils and the Hardanger fiddle. Image © Briony Campbell

 

Each melody is played on the higher of two strings, the lower played simultaneously as a drone, with the sympathetic strings creating a haunting halo of resonance. The multi modal melodies are freely embellished and mostly un-tempered. By shifting to a new melody and drone on another two strings, the tonality and mood changes with the new string timbre. The result of these shifting melodies is a lilting polytonality accompanied by a regular left-right foot stomp “heart beat” that often seems to go against the melody. The polyrhythms and harmonic colour reminded me strongly of Stravinsky’s music, L’Histoire du Soldat in particular.

The fiddle has a specific tuning for each melody and Nils explained that there are many different scordatura (retunings) used – as many as 50 in some traditions. It’s relatively easy to retune the Hardanger fiddle as the tension on the strings is considerably less than that of the modern violin. Still it was impressive how often and how quickly he was able to retune for each piece, never once needing to refer to a central pitch or tuning fork, revealing the extraordinary aural skills that the Hardanger art demands.

Nils told us that the folk fiddle tradition had almost died out in Norway but is currently enjoying a revival. He has travelled around the country gathering old tunes from the old men in log cabins that do turn out to exist after all. So pure is this aural tradition, says Nils, that he came across one father and son duo arguing about 17^th century ornamental performance practice as passed down by their great, great grandfathers. Eat your heart out Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Some of the tunes Nils plays he has learnt the modern way, over the phone, to avoid the more traditional method of travelling for miles on foot across the mountains to gather music. From all this material, Nils has also composed his own melodies, which have the same seductively mournful quality.

Our task is to collaborate with Nils to come up with an evening’s music both of our written repertoire, his improvised music, and something completely new combining both traditions. We string players immediately face the issue of whether to imitate the delicate sound of the Hardanger fiddle or stick with our own more sharply defined articulation and tone. We all try out his bows and marvel at their lightness and springiness. The one I tried felt as though it barely weighed a gram and certainly made imitating Nils’ style much easier. We have all had some experience playing baroque music, especially violinist Jonathan Morton who owns his own baroque bows and was rapidly able to improvise with the light bow strokes of the Hardanger style. After considerable discussion on the best approach to the overall string sound we decided that a blend of modern and ancient string technique would be more interesting, allowing room for variation between the two. Fuelling further discussion, Nils played us a delicate piece of his called Moths which was full of what we would call “extended techniques”: bow flutterings on the fingerboard, whispered sul pont murmurs, left hand glissandi, tremolos, and so on.  Suddenly we were more in Helmut Lachenmann than baroque performance territory. Our violist, Eniko Magyar, suggested she perform a movement of Ligeti’s solo viola sonata in the concert that uses many of the same sounds and nicely integrates our collective stylistic possibilities.

Another collaborative question to be tackled was that of equal temperament. Interestingly, many of the young Norwegian folk musicians have stopped using the microtones that to my ears make their music uniquely coloured. I remember being struck by the haunting beauty and virtuosity of un-tempered modal Norwegian singing in a bar in Bergen some years back. Even though our ensemble includes the tempered piano, the microtonal embellishments Nils uses in some melodies still seemed to work well alongside John Constable’s carefully chosen chord sequences on the piano. These issues are all part of our process of finding where contemporary music performance practice and folk music can happily meet and inform the other.

Keep an eye on the London Sinfonietta blog over the next few days, when we’ll post the second part of this two-part blog.

Click here to find out more about London Sinfonietta’s Written/Unwritten festival at Kings Place, and to view for more photos from this first collaborative workshop.

Guest Blogger: RAM Student Chris Petrie attends a rehearsal of Beat Furrer’s Nuun

Beat Furrer – composer, conductor and co-founder of Klangforum Wien – is hugely influential in Europe, yet his work has hardly been heard in the UK. Prior to tonight’s London Sinfonietta’s performance of three of his seminal works, including two UK premieres, we invited some  students from the Royal Academy of Music to attend a rehearsal and tell us what they thought. Here is Chris’s blog …

London Sinfonietta Rehearsal 17/01/11 – Beat Furrer: Nuun

Before last week I was not at all familiar with the music of Beat Furrer, which was also the case for most of my peers. Over this last week I have attended a variety of Furrer events and have come to admire his music and approach to composition on a number of levels. Furrer’s temperament, both on and off the podium, is quiet and thoughtful. These characteristics are apparent in his compositions where he has obviously taken much time to contemplate every detail, of which there are many.

I attended the rehearsal of Nuun which is one of his seminal larger-scaled works. I had previously heard a recording of this work (Klangforum Wien, conducted by Peter Eötvös) and had particularly enjoyed Furrer’s approach to colour and sound through complex textures. These textures are often teeming with extended techniques that are a common feature of his compositions, and are somewhat interrelated with his love of visual art. These dense textures that often cut back and forth between sparser scoring create large soundscapes that ebb and flow between background to foreground music over the course of entire compositions. These textures are then often punctuated by simple, yet effective, compositional ideas such as trumpet calls, clusters and scalic figurations in a composition such as Nuun.

Nuun is dominated by two pianos, one on either side of the stage that create a very effective ‘stereo’ sound. The pianos instigate the general textures and moods of the other two-dozen or so musicians who are placed in between the pianos.

The opening of Nuun starts with a previously mentioned densely complex ensemble before the trumpet calls provide the first feature that the ear can wholly embrace. These darkly urgent trumpet calls echo around the winds before dissipating into scalic gestures that in turn, melt into clusters. These compositional ideas are transformed over time towards a ‘climax’, after which two ‘silent’ pauses are heard. This signals the beginning of the end and from here the piece devolves towards the increasingly sparse ending.

The London Sinfonietta, with students from the Royal Academy of Music, expertly realise Furrer’s intentions in an intensely energetic fashion. Through working with the composer himself, the London Sinfonietta have provided me with a memorable first experience of this work which I will look forward to enjoying in concert with other compositions by Furrer and Naomi Pinnock.

Chris Petrie

Click here to find out more about the In Portrait: Beat Furrer concert at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall tonight.