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Saturday 29 February 2020

BANG ON!

Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre, London, Fri 28th Feb



The prolific composer Julia Wolfe of Bang On a Can, long-term Lucid Frenzy favourite, has come up with another new work. And if this is the UK debut of ‘Flower Power’, the world premiere was only last month

Sixties nostalgia is normally pretty trite stuff, of course. And inn truth that title doesn’t bode well. But Wolfe, interviewed in the programme, was insistent she wasn’t reminiscing about tie-dye clothing but recalling the sense that the times were a-changeable. (“There was a sense that a better world was possible… a time of new ideas and hope.”)

Back then rock music was still young enough to be unburdened by its own history, doing something new just seemed its natural state. Literally and metaphorically, it was where the energy was. And Wolfe’s aim seems to reawaken that sense of musical invention in the hope it also reawakens the political invention.

It’s also true that psychedelic fondness for distorting sound came to overlap with contemporary music’s dissonance. Perhaps best symbolised in the famous (if actually very brief) meeting between Paul McCartney and Luciano Berio. And here the Bang Ona Can All-Stars share the stage with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

True, when the bands tried to literally cohabit with the orchestras things didn’t always turn out well, and they effectively danced over each other’s feet. (Have you listened to Deep Purple’s ‘Concerto For Group and Orchestra’, lately? Thought not.) But Wolfe, and Bang On a Can in general, have an almost magic ability to pass between genres.

It opens with a long series of overlapping held tones, against which the swings start to swell. It was enticingly suggestive, like the rough rock from which forms would later be carved. But, just as I was thinking it did sound like a very long intro to a psychedelic track, the beat kicked in with a vengeance. And even as this was full of forward momentum, the strings gave it a lift, advancing and rising at the same time.

The work didn’t resolve neatly into movements but perpetually morphed and shifted. The defining point might be the guitar playing alongside the string section, working in unison rather than one as backing track to the other. Only towards the end did the work start to become elegiac, confetti twisting from the ceiling like Autumn leaves. But the much Sixties music was itself eligiac!

Though the ensemble and the orchestra didn’t share the stage again, two of the other pieces were well chosen. One genre I simply can’t take to is opera, so as much as I love John Adams as soon as the singing starts I’m off. But I was soon to discover ‘The Chairman Dances’ has no voices, and is affect a non-album single from ‘Nixon In China’

The conceit seems to be that Mao’s missus (represented by the music) not only persuades the great leader to dance but entices a painting of him come to life. It’s the tropes confined of the statue summoned to life and the dictator re-finding his carefree youth, the painting presumably standing for the fixidity of ideology. As you’d expect from this description, it’s exuberant and boisterous, elegance combined with abandon like a big band number of old - essentially an invitation to dance.

I’d seen the All-Stars perform Martland’s ‘Horses of Instruction’ only a year ago, so might have wished for something fresher. But it’s not a work you’d easily get tired off, and there was no doubting it’s place here. As I said last time: “It somehow found the perfect balance of contemporary composition with the rambunctious involving feeling of beat music, Blake’s smart horses and blazing tigers combined into one creature.”

The final work seemed like the wild card of the programme - Philip Glass’s Third Symphony. Minimalism may live in the interchange between rock and contemporary music, but it belongs to neither camp. If rock music is (jn Wolfe’s phrase) “electric energy”, Minimalism sounds more elegant, less a roaring jet-plane and more a solar-powered glider. Not as outwardly powerful but with an effortless perpetualness about it.

Interviewed for Radio Three, conductor Bramwell Tovey was asked whether he considered this a “proper symphony” - and said no. His reasoning seemed to be the four sections weren’t distinct enough, didn’t contain enough of their own themes, to be characterised as movements. But I don’t think he intended that as a criticism, not should it be.

Glass, after all, starts by restricting his sound palette to the sixteen string players of the orchestra. While written in ’95, some way after the era of High Minimalism, his earlier allegiences aren’t abandoned. He still intends to do more with less, the same themes being reworked in different forms and combinations as the piece turns. But its melodic lines are rich and, at least by Minimalist standards, extended.

You can hear the whole thing on Radio Three until the end of March…

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