Sciarrino, Berio, Nono...

A recital of solo violin music by three 20th century Italian composers performed by Oberlin faculty David Bowlin (violin) and Joshua Rubin (electronics), both Oberlin graduates and members of the ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble).

Few concert programmes are such that a piece by Luciano Berio comes across as a "breather" between the highlights of the concert, but this was the case here...

Salvatore Sciarrino is a new name to me, but one I will definitely be looking into. The concert opened with the first two of his Six Capricci per violino (1976)... virtuosic works inspired by Paganini's caprices. They apparently look very similar on paper, yet the sounding world could not be more different. Both pieces are almost exclusively constructed from quiet harmonics, played at improbable speeds, creating an incredibly delicate, subtle, evanescent atmosphere. The audience became absolutely silent as we watched a violinist go through the motions of playing the violin, motions easily associated with the music of Paganini, yet only hearing the highest partials of the vibrating strings, the full tones one might have expected from such a physical performance reduced to a thousand shades of string noise.

This sounding world drew you right into the depths of music... every nuance of every sound carried its own linear implications. Quick tremelos on high partials, arpeggiations of a variety of natural harmonics, and the occassional sul ponticello open (perhaps?) string all provided their own melodic structures that carried through both movements. By far the most compelling pieces for solo violin proper I have ever heard.

The intensity of these opening pieces was dispelled by Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIII (1976), however. Along with the sense of Italian lyricism that all of Berio's music is infused with came the schmaltzy body language and, perhaps the biggest shock, the normal dynamic levels associated with the violin. This was my first experience with this particular Sequenza, however, after such refined, delicate music as the Sciarrino Caprices, I found I had little patience for Berio, and ended up letting the sound wash over me, allowing my listening ears a chance to relax before the final piece.

The final piece was the reason I had been so excited about this particular recital. A much-anticipated live rendition of Luigi Nono's La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura, Madrigale per più “caminantes” con Gidon Kremer for violin and 8-track tape. Luigi Nono is undoubtedly one of my absolute favourite composers and I had spent the week before hand preparing for this event, listening to various recordings of the piece as I obtained them. First the Irvine Arditti recording (which I'd had for a while), then the Clarence Merkel recording on the Wandelweiser label (courtesy of a promptly shipped package from erstdist), then the Kremer and Mellinger recordings from the library. I wish I had given myself longer before hand to come to terms with each of these recordings, but alas, I didn't, and my work load is such that it was impossible to listen well to all of these recordings in a single week, but they gave me a good sense for the variety of interpretations possible, and the many ways the violin and tape parts can manifest themselves in relation to each other.

While I am hesitant to say I enjoyed the live recital or the recordings more than the other, they certainly are very different ways of listening to this piece. The live situation really emphasises the theatrical element of the work... the wandering between the music stands (in this case only 6, all on stage, rather than spread throughout the audience as well), the sense of spatial disorientation and uncertainty as to the source of some sounds, and most profoundly, the sense of history and perspective that this weighty composition packs. At one point, towards the end of the piece (I think before the very last "Leggio" was played), David Bowlin took a seat on a piano stool left on stage, while the electronics (operated by Joshua Rubin) picked up in density and volume (they had been quite restrained throughout most of the performance), and filled the auditorium with the sounds of Gidon Kremer, and occasionally Nono himself, moving around the studio, their voices distant behind the sound of trains and multi-tracked violin. A review of this composition I had read recently mentioned the idea that, in including the tape part, and in writing the violin part as he had done (with the wandering, and the often overshadowing of the violin by the electronics), Nono had removed every aspect of the performer's ego from this piece... only leaving his own, as the composer’s, in tact. This was felt very strongly in this tape-dominated passage, as the violinist, seated before the audience, listens back to the voices of Kremer and Nono... but it goes beyond this. Embodied in Nono's warm, encapsulating persona are his overarching love for humanity and his strong, Marxist beliefs that stretch the historical perspective of this piece back further, covering much of the development of mankind, especially through the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Musically speaking, the wrath of electronics that picked up when Bowlin took a seat was structurally powerful too, as if the live violinist had been keeping the forces of history at bay. Most of the piece was fairly quiet. It was shorter than most of the recordings I have heard (closest to Kremer’s recording at around 35 minutes), yet sparser than most as well. The performers, on occasion, lapsed into silence, letting the sounds of the auditorium, as well as (once or twice) the sound of David Bowlin walking across the stage, work their way into the sounding world of the piece. It was a brilliant and riveting performance that has given me a radically different perspective on the work than any number of recordings could have done. It would be nice to take the time soon to listen properly to each of the recordings again and see how I listen to it differently, having now seen the piece live, but unless I get that done this week I doubt I'll have the time before winter break.