Chamber charm
Robin Holloway
Further thoughts on the ever renewed quest for the perfect acoustic for performance and audition of music. Over the past five months I’ve heard one of my string quartets given five of its six première performances in exceedingly diverse and discrepant venues, so much so as (sometimes) to make almost a different piece of it.
The official première was in the equivalent of London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, in the newish concert-complex in Madrid. András Schiff, playing simultaneously in the large hall, was a dangerous rival; nevertheless the smaller was substantially filled for the chamber event, one in a twoyear-long series celebrating next year’s bicentenary of Haydn’s death with his entire mature quartet corpus, variegated with 20th-century masterpieces and a good sprinkling of new commissions. Competition was cruel, placing my new work with all three of the master’s op. 54! In fact the sheer contrast — between the spare wit and frugality of the classical writing, its neat forms and compact lengths; and my voluminous spans and quasi-orchestral textures — deprived the comparison of its odium.
Sometimes mine evoked chorus-andorgan rather than orchestra: its five movements depict (Enigma-wise ‘pictured within’) five American friends; the memory of deep, dark Spirituals lies latent throughout, occasionally surfacing to the forefront in explicit hommage. The young Sacconi Quartet rose wonderfully to such demands (not idiomatic, though never breaking the medium asunder) with sustained chording of great power and sweetness, whose every nuance filled the sizeable space to its edges, creating the illusion of intimate closeness that certainly doesn’t strike the eye here, bruised by angular lines, harsh shapes and colours, unmitigated by an enormous kitsch neo-deco chandelier.
The venue for the British end of this co-commission a week later couldn’t be more different: the grand all-stone centre of Houghton Hall in Norfolk, ostentatious showplace commanded by Robert Walpole to awe friends and foes alike. Notwithstanding a frieze of chubby sportive cherubs, its general effect is grim and cold. Bare stone prevails; sole relief are the glorious vistas to north, south, east, west of English parkland, landscaped to perfection, tenanted only by deer, glowing in evening light — as though Sir Robert were conveying without words, ‘Look on my domaines, ye mighty, and eat your hearts out.’ The acoustic here was so alive that the slightest chair-scrape caused palpitations and a cough was a cataclysm. We all feared the music, however spare (just one of the Haydn op. 54s this time), would be utterly engorged by this super-bathroom; yet everything sounded often fabulously well — the deep river choral chording of my thing perhaps had the maximum advantage, but the Haydn, then the Ravel (quite different from either) came over with unforgettable intensity.
Oddly, Houghton was more ‘churchy’ than the actual church in Yorkshire where I next encountered the players a few weeks later in the identical programme. But the most recent venue was different again. The John Innes Research Centre in Norwich, home of soil and plant culture, also deals in human culture by doubling up its lecture theatre as a concert hall. Being tuned for speech, its acoustic is acutely ‘living’. Last Saturday’s audience, out in force despite nasty all-day drizzle, didn’t stint on their coughs, seeming indeed to reserve the most explosive for the music’s tenderest moments, or, more destructive still, its lovingly placed silences. (Why don’t people cough — if they must — during strenuous build-ups and mighty climaxes?) The sound when not thus interrupted was astonishingly full and vibrant in this merciless space that, paradoxically, yielded richness as well as clarity, showing off the Sacconi’s unanimity and tuning to moving effect.
There are several further unfamiliar acoustics for my new piece in the next months that I won’t be able to attend; and early in 2009 it will come to London’s latest venue, King’s Place, of which the earliest reports are little short of ecstatic. Yet the sound I’ve treasured best has been in my very own rooms in Cambridge, halfway through a move, bare of furniture let alone the books, carpets, curtains that will eventually soften, maybe muffle, the acoustic generosity of the high ceilings, bare walls, wooden floors. The players, having rehearsed here all day in preparation for the imminent Madrid première, handsomely invited me to round up a few friends and colleagues for a private hearing — its first complete run — a help to them, a treat and privilege for us. Chamber music is still at its most perfect in an actual chamber. ❑
Previous page
