Tag Archives: knussen

with you and without you

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Every year Soundstreams has a competition to find a young artist to curate a main stage concert.  This year’s lucky winner is Brad Cherwin, who will need little introduction to readers of this blog, and the concert took place at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Saturday night.

It was, in many ways, a typical Cherwin programme.  Some works were played in their entirety while others had their individual movements spread through the programme.  The overall theme was “Love and Death” and the programme was divided into four cycles with somewhat enigmatic titles.  Twelve instrumentalists, plus soprano Danika Lorèn and conductor Gregory Oh were used in various combinations.

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Chimaera

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chimaeraLast night the Happenstancers presented another intriguing concert of chamber music titled Chimaera.  This time it was in the excellent hall at 918 Bathurst.  It was a clever conceit.  There were three “sets” with each consisting of two contrasting works that were combined in different ways.

The pieces in the first set were played straightforwardly consecutively but consisted of the least familiar music; Julia Wolfe’s Reeling and the premiere of Nahre Sol’s Chunhyang.  Wolfe is one of those young American composers who combine a conservatory training with a taste for minimalism and hard driving rock and, in the case of this piece, folk music.  It’s scored for nine instrumentalists including electric guitar and drum kit plus lots of electronics.  It’s really cool and reminds me of the most drunk ceilidhs I’ve ever been to.  And that may be why I remember almost nothing about the second piece except that the composer (keyboards) was playing it.

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Wild Thing

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1.wildthings So I thought the obvious antidote to Robert Carsen’s Dialogues des Carmélites would be the recording of Ollie Knussen’s Where The Wild Things Are and Higglety, Pigglety, Pop that was sitting in my ‘to watch’ pile.  It’s a 1985 Glyndebourne recording and the Associate Director is one Robert Carsen, assisting Frank Corsaro.  So it goes.  Actually it was rather fun, if a bit irritating in the way that children’s literature written for kids with ADD seems to be.  The music is terrific and not at all dumbed down.  The sets and designs, as well as the libretto, are by Maurice Sendak himself and there’s some pretty neat lighting by Robert Bryan.  The Wild Things are really cool and almost make up for the fact that Max (played here by Karen Beardsley) is an appalling little s$%t who needs a good kick in the backside.  HHP is a bit more restrained and simultaneously manages to be less fun but also less annoying.  It has a rather splendid lion and Cynthia Buchan does rather well as, to the best of my knowledge, the only Sealyham terrier in opera.  Knussen conducts the London Sinfonietta and they sound really good.  Continue reading →