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E P O C H / D U T T O N F O R E M A N I S L E W : P H O T O G R A P H Y MUSICIAN’S DIARY Guy Johnston The cellist on musical discoveries, finding the perfect work-life balance and riding a tandem bike across Holland… When the phone rang on three separate occasions early in 2012, with people asking whether I would record works by David Matthews (Dark Pastoral), Ernest Moeran (Cello Concerto) and Frédéric d’Erlanger, it marked the beginning of a busy and exciting year for me. I wasn’t familiar with any of the works, but, within the space of a few months, I had recorded all of these extraordinary offerings! Frédéric who? Have you ever heard any music by this relatively unknown Anglo-French composer? A wealthy businessman, d’Erlanger (1868-1943) was described as a ‘genuine Renaissance man’. As well as being an enthusiastic patron of the arts in London, d’Erlanger also invested in developing countries, financing department store chains in South America and railways in South Africa. I’m amazed at the thought of this extraordinary man finding the time to compose seemingly effortlessly while helping to run a successful bank and develop infrastructure abroad. The two works I recorded, Andante symphonique and Ballade, are delightful – full of singing melodies and rich textures that remind me of Strauss and Wagner operas. I hope there’ll be a chance to perform these gems in concert one day, particularly now that people can hear them on CD. Matthews’s Dark Pastoral is a beautiful realisation of an unfinished work by Vaughan Williams intended for Casals. Matthews jokingly refers to the work as ‘The Lark Descending’ because it contains similar – yet different – elements that can be heard in The Lark Ascending. I’ll leave that to your imagination as you listen to it! The Cello Concerto by Moeran (1894-1950) was also a total surprise for me. I hadn’t come across it before I was asked to record it and, again, it’s work that I hope will be performed more often. I love the Elgar but I do wish promoters would dare to programme relatively unknown works that deserve to be aired more frequently. ‘Life is quite hectic. It is no wonder that I once turned up to play a Haydn concerto and found I had prepared the wrong one!’ Recording can be a real challenge. I had to consider everything carefully and decide whether I could take on all this new repertoire in such a short space of time. Thankfully, when I received the music for all four compositions, my immediate enthusiasm was sparked by what I saw and heard. In all three cases, the repertoire represented a new venture for myself, as well as for the conductors and the orchestras, which included the BBC Concert Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra. In every respect it was a refreshing experience, despite the limited time. I can barely contain my excitement about all the various projects I’ve been involved in over the past year. These include launching Recording d’Erlanger with the BBC Concert Orchestra under Johannes Wildner Taking a break from riding a tandem across Holland with my brother Magnus With Sir Roger Norrington – meeting him was a highlight of my career to date The Navarra Quartet and soprano Ruby Hughes rehearsing for a Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival fundraiser a chamber music festival at Hatfield House, guest-leading the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, securing ownership of my Tecchler Cello, performing at Wigmore Hall, teaching at the Royal Academy and travelling a great deal. Meeting and working with Sir Roger Norrington was one of my recent highlights and I’ve also enjoyed all the charity work I’ve been involved in, including helping to raise funds for the Kampala Music School in Uganda. Life is very full and, at times, quite hectic. It is no wonder that on one occasion I turned up to play a Haydn concerto and, to my utter dismay, found that I had prepared the wrong one! Thank goodness for IMSLP and the orchestra’s willingness to print out a set of parts for the C major Concerto just in time for the concert. I try to strike a balance between hard work and other interests in my life. I moved into my flat in London a year ago and decided I would start reading a box full of books that have been given to me over the years. I’m gradually getting through them! More recently I cycled across Holland with my brother, Magnus, for his wedding. It was a memorable trip on a tandem bike and we hope to do many more. To read Gramophone’s review of the d’Erlanger disc, turn to page 45 14 GRAMOPHONE AUGUST 2013 gramophone.co.uk
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CONTEMPORARY COMPOSERS PRELUDES S T E V E P Y K E :P H O T O G R A P H Y Philip Glass Pwyll ap Siôn on a minimalist whose huge inf luence extends from the concert hall to the movie theatre and opera house During a recent interview about his latest opera, The Perfect American, Glass said: ‘The whole idea of high and low art – nobody cares about that any more.’ Throughout a prolific career spanning five decades and more than 200 works, Glass has never really cared about such distinctions either. While some composers gained success by drawing on existing popular styles, Glass has created a musical style completely from scratch: a music that is entirely sui generis. This unique outlook stems from Glass’s unusual childhood and upbringing. Born in Baltimore in 1937, Glass’s father owned a record store, and his young son would often spend time there. Glass junior soon noted that when a Beethoven 78 was exchanged for cash, even ‘high art’ had its value in the musical marketplace. Neglected records that gathered dust in his father’s shop were duly brought back home and Glass was fed on a diet of less commercial and more ‘difficult’ music – the late chamber works of Beethoven and Schubert or the music of modern composers such as Bartók and Hindemith. Such early experiences coloured Glass’s musical outlook. His music has rarely been ‘easy listening’ but can be appreciated on both commercial and artistic grounds. After studies at the Juilliard School of music from 1957 to 1961, Glass moved to Paris, where he studied for two years with the revered (and feared) pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. As Glass later recalled, ‘It was a nightmare! But I loved it.’ In between lessons with Boulanger, ‘His music has rarely been “easy listening” but can be appreciated on both commercial and artistic grounds’ Glass took on some extracurricular work by transcribing music by Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar for the psychedelic film Chappaqua (1966), directed by Conrad Rooks. Glass’s exposure to non-Western music ‘changed all the rules’ for him and he soon struck upon the idea of basing a musical style on cyclical patterns and small rhythmic cells, combined and transformed in different ways to generate much larger musical structures. Glass put theory into practice upon his return to New York in 1967, establishing a highly amplified ensemble comprising electric organs, synthesisers, saxophones and flutes to perform a body of work that became inextricably linked with the emerging minimalist movement: pieces such as Music in Similar Motion, Music in Contrary Motion and Music in Fifths (all 1969), and Music with Changing Parts (1970). This extraordinarily fecund period – the golden age of the Philip Glass Ensemble – culminated in his magnum opus, Music in Twelve Parts (1971-74), which added voices to the instrumental set-up to create a mesmerising, through-composed, large-scale work lasting for easily more than four hours. During 1975-76 Glass teamed up with director Robert Wilson to produce Einstein on the Beach, one of the most radical and groundbreaking operas of the 20th century. The story goes that during one of the first performances of Einstein at New York’s Metropolitan Philip Glass: forged his own musical style from scratch Opera House, one of the venue’s senior administrators stood next to Glass backstage, looking out at the audience, and asked him: ‘Who are these people? I’ve never seen them before.’ Glass replied: ‘You’d better find out who they are, because if this place expects to be running in 25 years’ time, that’s your audience out there.’ Glass’s music is often at its most inspiring when responding to new challenges. His superimposition of a newly composed operatic ‘soundtrack’ for Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film La Belle et la Bête (1994) or his song-cycle settings of Leonard Cohen’s poems from Book of Longing (2007) are notable highlights. Glass’s excursions into film music illustrate this point. Invited by director Godfrey Reggio in 1982 to compose music for Koyaanisqatsi, a film entirely without dialogue or voiceover that deals in different ways with man’s ambivalent relationship with technology, nature and the environment, Glass responded with a powerful, visceral soundtrack. His music for Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line (1988) prompted the director to describe Glass as the master of ‘existential dread’, and the composer’s use of semitonal shifts, minor-third ostinatos and unsettling chord patterns that continuously turn in on themselves has resulted in a number of highly effective scores, not least Stephen Daldry’s The Hours (2002). Glass’s latest opera, The Perfect American, manages to encapsulate the creative dichotomy that lies at the heart of much of his work. Glass elevates the commercial ‘art’ world of Walt Disney to high-art status through the operatic medium, yet this is effected through Glass’s own inimitable style, which lies at the intersection between high and low. Not so much full of irreconcilable paradoxes, Glass’s musical language is immediately identifiable, self-contained and complete. Is he possibly the ‘Perfect American’ composer? the essential recording ‘Glass Box – A Nonesuch Retrospective’ Nonesuch B j 7559 79946-9 gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE AUGUST 2013 15

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E P O C H

/ D U T T O N

F O R E M A N

I S

L E W

:

P H O T O G R A P H Y

MUSICIAN’S DIARY

Guy Johnston The cellist on musical discoveries, finding the perfect work-life balance and riding a tandem bike across Holland…

When the phone rang on three separate occasions early in 2012, with people asking whether I would record works by David Matthews (Dark Pastoral), Ernest Moeran (Cello Concerto) and Frédéric d’Erlanger, it marked the beginning of a busy and exciting year for me. I wasn’t familiar with any of the works, but, within the space of a few months, I had recorded all of these extraordinary offerings! Frédéric who? Have you ever heard any music by this relatively unknown Anglo-French composer?

A wealthy businessman, d’Erlanger (1868-1943) was described as a ‘genuine Renaissance man’. As well as being an enthusiastic patron of the arts in London, d’Erlanger also invested in developing countries, financing department store chains in South America and railways in South Africa. I’m amazed at the thought of this extraordinary man finding the time to compose seemingly effortlessly while helping to run a successful bank and develop infrastructure abroad. The two works I recorded, Andante symphonique and Ballade, are delightful – full of singing melodies and rich textures that remind me of Strauss and Wagner operas. I hope there’ll be a chance to perform these gems in concert one day, particularly now that people can hear them on CD.

Matthews’s Dark Pastoral is a beautiful realisation of an unfinished work by Vaughan Williams intended for Casals. Matthews jokingly refers to the work as ‘The Lark Descending’ because it contains similar – yet different – elements that can be heard in The Lark Ascending. I’ll leave that to your imagination as you listen to it!

The Cello Concerto by Moeran (1894-1950) was also a total surprise for me. I hadn’t come across it before I was asked to record it and, again, it’s work that I hope will be performed more often. I love the Elgar but I do wish promoters would dare to programme relatively unknown works that deserve to be aired more frequently.

‘Life is quite hectic. It is no wonder that I once turned up to play a Haydn concerto and found I had prepared the wrong one!’

Recording can be a real challenge. I had to consider everything carefully and decide whether I could take on all this new repertoire in such a short space of time. Thankfully, when I received the music for all four compositions, my immediate enthusiasm was sparked by what I saw and heard. In all three cases, the repertoire represented a new venture for myself, as well as for the conductors and the orchestras, which included the BBC Concert Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra. In every respect it was a refreshing experience, despite the limited time.

I can barely contain my excitement about all the various projects I’ve been involved in over the past year. These include launching

Recording d’Erlanger with the BBC Concert Orchestra under Johannes Wildner

Taking a break from riding a tandem across Holland with my brother Magnus With Sir Roger Norrington – meeting him was a highlight of my career to date

The Navarra Quartet and soprano Ruby Hughes rehearsing for a Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival fundraiser a chamber music festival at Hatfield House, guest-leading the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, securing ownership of my Tecchler Cello, performing at Wigmore Hall, teaching at the Royal Academy and travelling a great deal. Meeting and working with Sir Roger Norrington was one of my recent highlights and I’ve also enjoyed all the charity work I’ve been involved in, including helping to raise funds for the Kampala Music School in Uganda.

Life is very full and, at times, quite hectic. It is no wonder that on one occasion I turned up to play a Haydn concerto and, to my utter dismay, found that I had prepared the wrong one! Thank goodness for IMSLP and the orchestra’s willingness to print out a set of parts for the C major Concerto just in time for the concert.

I try to strike a balance between hard work and other interests in my life. I moved into my flat in London a year ago and decided I would start reading a box full of books that have been given to me over the years. I’m gradually getting through them! More recently I cycled across Holland with my brother, Magnus, for his wedding. It was a memorable trip on a tandem bike and we hope to do many more.

To read Gramophone’s review of the d’Erlanger disc, turn to page 45

14 GRAMOPHONE AUGUST 2013

gramophone.co.uk

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