Birtwistle: Tragoedia; Secret Theatre; Earth Dances; Panic etc

The music of Harrison Birtwistle is suprisingly hard to get on record in America. As one of the most important British composers of the 20th century after Britten it would seem that access to his music would be easy and yet it is incredibly difficult. I am not sure if this is a problem of American distribution/interest or if he is just a rarely recorded artist.
Either way this amazing recording makes amends. Six large, crucial works are represented here performed by world class artists producing what can only be considered definative performances. Especially nice about this collection is that works from the composer's entire (and long) career are presented, offering the listener a chanceto hear where the composer came fromand where he's going.
Names like Ligeti, Maxwell-Davies and Feldman come to mind. The music is huge in scope and emotional power and leaves the listener drained. "Birtwistle's music sounds like planets colliding, even if he's only using five instruments."
If you enjoy this CD listen to AGM which can be found on a wonderful collection of works conducted by Boulez.

When I first heard this 2-disc Birtwistle profile set, part of Decca's series called The British Music Collection, I was decidedly underwhelmed. It took me several years to realize that the problem was in the performance, not the compositions. The liner notes are minimal, so the listener must look elsewhere for information on the compositions.

The first disc contains four pieces recorded in 1993, with Pierre Boulez leading his Ensemble InterContemporain. (The original disc is still available from DG under the title "Secret Theatre.") The best of these is "Tragoedia" (1965 -- 20'33), which established Birtwistle's characteristic sound and reputation -- a tragic work in the form of a ritual, reflecting the influence of both Stravinsky and of drama. "Five Distances for Five Instruments" (1993 -- 13'52) features one of Birtwistle's most characteristic types of instrumentation -- woodwinds (clarinet, oboe, flute, horn and bass clarinet). Birtwistle began as a clarinettist. "Three Settings of Celan" (1989-1996 -- 13'32) continues the lugubrious tone with Christine Whittlesey singing soprano. By 1996 Birtwistle would complete nine settings, and they would be combined with string quartet pieces in Pulse Shadows, which was recorded by Claron McFadden with the Nash Ensemble and the Arditti Quartet.

Finally comes "Secret Theatre" (1984 -- 27'48) which is painfully dull. I first thought it was the composition, but I recently heard the 1987 recording by the London Sinfonietta, and it is absolutely splendid! This performance drains all the vitality out of the piece. It plods grimly along while the London Sinfonietta dances. This one takes place in an airless vault while the other is outdoors in a glade with the wind blowing through the ensemble. Boulez and the Ensemble InterContemporain utterly fail to capture the work's rhythmic dynamism and liveliness, while the London Sinfonietta, led by Birtwistle's old friend Elgar Howarth, reveals its immense appeal.

The second disc is much better. "Endless Parade" (19'25), featuring Hakan Hardenberger on trumpet, is lively enough, though not particularly distinctive. "Panic" (18'21) from the great god Pan, featuring John Harle on alto sax and Paul Clarvis on drums was a big scandal at the Last Night of Proms in 1995, though you'd think the scandal would be playing the same 19th century stuff over and over and over again! It is not at all typical of Birtwistle, but it is a powerful piece with an avant-jazz sound, and the listener can't help but think about the Proms crowd's hostile reaction. The highlight, though, is "Earth Dances" (1986 -- 36'26), performed by the Cleveland Orchestra with Christoph von Dohnanyi conducting. One of Birtwistle's masterpieces, it is powerful, dissonant and forbidding, with six jagged layers of orchestra forming the structure, like a rugged, geological "Gruppen." If this was the only recording available it would be impressive enough, but it has been altogether surpassed by the 2001 recording with Pierre Boulez leading the Ensemble Modern Orchestra in Frankfurt (see my review). This time Boulez took Birtwistle's measure!

This set was my introduction to Birtwistle back in 2002. I was under the false impression that he was a serialist, based, I suppose, on the Boulez connection -- a dull and largely boring one. But now I have heard many more of his compositions and have come to consider him one of THE 15 BEST COMPOSERS OF THE LATE 20TH CENTURY (see my list). Far from being dull or generic, Birtwistle has a powerfully distinctive voice unique in all of music!

This set is flawed, but still worth hearing. I would recommend either the London Sinfonietta or Ensemble Modern discs mentioned above as better introductions, or the excellent 1974 Lyrita disc that was recently reissued (see my review), with two superb vocal works bookending one of Birtwistle's masterpieces, "Verses for Ensembles."

(verified purchase from Amazon.co.uk)

Harrison Birtwistle, one of England's few overtly modernistic figures, is one of the most unlikely composers to appear on a Decca recording, but here he is thanks to the "British Music Collection" series.

The first disc contains four pieces performed by the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Pierre Boulez, a reissue of material which originally appeared on Deutsche Grammophon in 1996. The early "Tragoedia" (1965) is the most interesting of them. A reference to Greek ceremonies connected to Pan (being literally a goat, trag- song, -oedia), the eight movements of the work follow classical nomenclature, write strophes, anapests, and antistrophes. It moves from soundworld to soundworld along its twenty-minute span, from simple Romanticism to a minimalistic ostinato reminescent of some Reich, to the sort of smooth modernistic textures of later composers like Lindberg. Yet, it's still remarkably coherent.

I wish I such much positive about the other pieces on the disc. "Five Distances" for five instruments (1992), a wind quintet, has nothing especially upsetting, but lacks direction and resembles the generic modernism of Lieberson, or Eotvos as his worst. The "Three Settings of Celan" for ensemble and soprano, here Christine Whittlesey, are taken from a total set of nine such pieces composed between 1989 and 1996, manage to make a poet as intriguing and bizarre as Celan dull and forgettable. Finally, "Secret Theatre" (1984) promises to finally escape this "serialist assembly-line" as a fellow reviewer has called it, and seems to build at something with the low instruments, but never manages.

The second disc contains more entertaining material, beginning with two concertante works. "Endless Parade" for piano, vibraphone, and strings (1986-87) is performed here by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Elgar Howarth, with Hakan Hardenberger as soloist. Based on a visit Birtwistle made to Lucca during a time of festival, the piece could be seen to portray a man, here the trumpet, walking through a procession and examining the action from various angles. It's fairly entertaining, with a mood much like Peter Eotvos' similarly-inspired trumpet concerto "Jet Stream".

The following "Panic" for saxophone, drum-kit and orchestra (1995) is perhaps Birtwistle's most notorious piece. Performed at the last night of the 1995 Proms, a time usually reserved for populist and patriotic traditional English music, it provoked an uproar among the conservative audience. It's no surprise why when the piece veers between sounding like an explosition in a jazz club and orchestral attempts to get a word in edgewise. The same musicians who premiered it, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Davis with saxophonist John Harle, record it here.

"Earth Dances" for orchestra (1986) tames the savagery of the preceding piece somewhat, containing a clear line through, but portrays a world of orchestral forces never entirely reconciled to each other. The Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Christoph von Dohnanyi give a competent performance, and I found the music enjoyable, but rather forgettable after it ends.

All in all, I could only give this all three stars. Birtwistle's only real crime is the dullness that pervades much of his work--he's certainly less guilty than the truly bad composers I might venture to name--but I can't recommend too highly his work when others have engaged modernism to produce truly exciting music.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 3 reviews  3.7 out of 5 stars