At Lunch March

At Lunch toured Paris, London, Norwich and Cambridge with a new work by Simon Holt.

The Times
Eastern Daily Press
The Tab

The Times, Geoff Brown
Britten Sinfonia Wigmore Hall, ****

Who needs lunch when a handful of players from Britten Sinfonia are available to nourish the ears, heart and mind? They came and went in this lunchtime concert within fifty minutes, but left an experience livelier than any sandwich.

The first eight minutes was a meal in itself. Simon Holt is never one to waste a note, and the pocket forces of piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass (lined up for Schubert’s Trout Quintet) vigorously attacked his latest piece, everything turns away, which had been premiered in Paris the previous day.

The title derives from Auden’s poem Musée des Beaux Arts, a meditation on indifference to misfortune. Auden’s inspiration was Breughal’s painting of country folk by the water’s edge, oblivious to Icarus, of Greek mythology, tumbling into the sea.

The double bass starts with a downward glissando. Other stings respond with a pizzicato splash, then lock into taut rhythmic phrases and a polyphonic passage vaguely suggesting Messiaen’s birds. Life continues for 66 bars until Icarus’s stand-in, the ensemble’s pianist, walks on, opens the lid and generates panic stricken flourishes, to which the others pay no attention. Icarus walks off and the string players continue uminterrupted, tossing around motives until the final chord. “A flimsy trifle,” I hear you think. But not with Holt’s flair for intricately worked nodules, striking textures and dramatic gestures that resonate long after the music has moved on. Compact, faintly disturbing, this was a most stimulating concert curtain-raiser.

You couldn’t sit back supine, either, during the Sinfonia’s Trout, mostly because the pianist Huw Watkins played like someone receiving electric shocks to his backside. Dynamic subtleties weren’t on offer; he did loud and soft, nothing in between. Yet his robust approach certainly enlivened this old chamber music chestnut.

Lyrical suavity survived elsewhere, although not in Roger Linley’s double bass, which growled and pottered like a lone grizzly bear in the woods. No wonder the conventional string quartet avoids the double bass. This wasn’t an interpretation I’d like to live with, but at lunchtime on a cold, grey day you couldn’t beat Britten Sinfonia for vitamin C.

Eastern Daily Press, by Michael Drake
Total musicianship was on offer
Britten Sinfonia at Lunch, Assembly House, Norwich

I hazard a guess that Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A major will be high on listeners’ menus and it was ‘Die Forelle’ (The Trout) which was the main work in Friday’s offering.

And what a joyous performance it was – lively, resonant and fluent. After the opening Allegro, itself full of vigour, the quieter a Andante was a delightful foil. The powerful Scherzo also had some subtleties in linking passages – as if to emphasise the
players’ total musicianship – before the variations of Schubert’s Lied were presented with an exciting panache with all the qualities mentioned integrated in an exuberant finale.

Earlier, and on its world premiere tour with B.S. English composer Simon Holt’s ‘everything turns away’ inspired by Icarus’ failed tilt at the sun, started with a long pizzicato period with vibratoless bass interjections. Enter the pianist to join in the musical description of catastrophe. No one instrument seemed interested in the others and one would like to say order eventually prevailed, although I am not too sure.

The Tab, by Joe Bates, 
14 March 2011

The Britten Sinfonia plays Simon Holt and Schubert
8th March, 1.00 pm, West Road Concert Hall
*****

Why have so few people heard of Simon Holt? Even for a contemporary composer of classical music, he is obscure. And that is saying something.

Yet he consistently composes striking, original work that fits uncomfortably into crude categories that you might care to impose upon it. The novelty of his approach sometimes flirts with gimmick, yet never quite puts out. In his new work for the Britten Sinfonia, everything turns away, Holt is inspired by Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts, and the humans’ remarkable ability to ignore the catastrophes that surround them.

Throughout the piece, players proceeded about their businesses unaffected by their surroundings. The remarkable, heterophonic pizzicato texture that opens the piece was ignored by the serenely melodic playing of double bassist Roger Linley. His narrow melodic range and plodding tempo subtly evoked Breugel’s ploughman throughout, whilst the virtuosic melding of high strings depicted Icarus’s fall.

This textual conceit was deftly handled yet at times the periodicity of the music seemed a little contrived. The episodic changes in tessitura and technique initially seemed a touch clumsy. Yet as the piece’s central contrivance was revealed, their purpose became clear.

About two thirds of the way through piece, a man in black stood up in the audience and slowly made his way onto stage. He sat down at the piano and, as the strings fell silent, began to violently parody their frenetic tremolandos and trills. Huw Watkins’s control of this difficult music was impeccable: his assured technique bought crisp clarity to the most convoluted of textures. Yet as this cadenza drew to a close, the strings recommenced their periodic mayhem completely oblivious to the frenzy that had taken place. The pianist departed and the music drew to a contained, unison close.

Holt had achieved a remarkable conjuring trick. Throughout, the audience vigilantly drew on the programme notes as we slavishly equated the high strings to Icarus and the double bass to his heedless countrymen. Yet the pianist’s entry calls our bluff – he is Icarus. This shift asserts the ensemble’s mutual disregard as not symbolic merely of Icarus’s fall, but of society in general. The periodicity of the music forced this indifference onto a structural level that complemented the textural metaphor. Whilst, I grant, this symbolic hearing of music can seem contrived, Holt invites us, through his words, to look one way and, through his music, to look the other.

In Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A ‘The Trout’, the Britten Sinfonia faced another challenge. For this is Schubert at his straightforward, direct best. Crowded with memorable tunes and stunning figuration, the piece presents a technical tour de force that must sound as relaxed as an evening on the Cam.

From their ebullient opening to the ecstatic closing arpeggios, the Britten Sinfonia excelled in Schubert’s merriment. It was, technically, faultless to my ears. The ensemble’s playing was subtle and considered. Charming alterations of articulation enhanced the Theme and Variations, whilst only that movement’s disarmingly abrupt trills shook Jacqueline Shave’s muscularly confident leading.

Yet the ensemble’s most remarkable achievement lay in its superb balancing of parts. No player ever asserted themselves beyond what was strictly necessary – solos never burst out, they shone out. These luminescent melodies were supported both by the dynamic sensitivity of their accompaniment but also by its beautifully light articulation. The pianist was so sensitive that he even felt compelled to lower the lid of the piano a touch at the end of the first movement.

This superbly charming performance was capped by a encore; the leader’s arrangement of Bach’s Air in D. This romantic yet understated rendering of the classic favourite bought the concert to a warm, fuzzy close. The Britten Ensemble had matched the beauty of the weather, and for the first tim

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