LONDON CITY NIGHTS: classical

Monday, November 18, 2013

Lang Lang at the Royal Albert Hall, 17th November 2013

Monday, November 18, 2013 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

You can fit what I know about classical music on the back of a napkin. Don't get me wrong I enjoy it, but I know next to nothing about the intricacies of what I'm listening to. At its worst its wilfully obscurist; when asked to pin down what's so good about a particular performance, its more unpleasant fans retreat into latin and snooty platitudes. Even though they've paid exorbitant ticket prices (presumably priced to keep the scum out) it's rare to see someone having a good time at one of these recitals; I'm sure some people somewhere in the room must be actually enjoying themselves, but in general half the crowd (usually a uniform sea of elderly white people) are asleep, the other half staring bovinely off into the middle distance, eyes glassy, jaw hanging softly openly, daydreaming about the knob's restaurant they're going to eat at after the gig.

Even with all this in mind, I leapt at the chance to see Lang Lang. It's not every day you get to see someone commonly regarded as "the best pianist in the world". At two years old Lang watched an episode of Tom & Jerry featuring Liszt's Rhapsody No.2, a momentous encounter which launched his obsession with the piano. He won prizes all over China, then all over the world. He's climbed the highest heights of his profession, invited to play the White House, the Diamond Jubilee and at Nobel Peace Prize Awards. Trumping even these was his performance to a global audience of four billion people at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. And now he's settling down to play in front of me in the sumptuous surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall.

Before Lang began I was pretty sure that my musical palette was too unrefined to be able to tell the difference between a really great pianist and "the best in the world". I figured that at the very least he'd hit the right keys at the right time in the right order without any obvious mistakes, but beyond doing that who knows? If you just start calling someone the best around, past a certain skill level who's going to contradict them?

Happily, Lang did hit all the right keys at the right time in the right order, but to my surprise there actually was some indefinable quality that set him apart from 99.9% of musicians. Admittedly, I didn't twig this immediately. The first portion of the show was a series of Mozart recitals: Piano Sonata No. 5 in G major, KV 283, Piano Sonata No. 4 in E flat major, KV 282, Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor, KV 310. This is pleasant enough, but playing Mozart at this sort of gig is like hearing This Charming Man at an indie disco. Sure everyone loves it, but we've sung these words and done these dance moves a thousand times before - let's mix things up a bit.

One of the constant dangers at a classical music gig is dozing off. I was in a box in the second tier, so though the music was clear as a bell Lang and his piano were matchbox sized. With the lovely music washing over me, the pleasant warmness of the heated boxes and last night's hangover from the queer disco gently ebbing away I began to feel the cosy angora glove of snooziness resting heavily on my shoulder.

The second half was much more rousing, not least because the Royal Albert Hall finally managed to get their video screens working. This section of the gig was based around Chopin: Ballade No. 1 Op 23 in G minor, Ballade No. 2 Op 38 in F Major, Ballade No. 3 Op 47 in A flat and Ballade No. 4 Op 52 in F minor. Even with my limited knowledge of high-end music I recognised that this was balls hard to play. At about the same time I noticed something that should've been obvious; Lang was playing all of this from memory. Genius comes with a subtle aura that causes a vagal shiver up your spine, the combination of his hands in close-up, this realisation and the flood of perfect harmony emanating from the centre of the hall made my skin gently tingle with pleasure. Lang Lang plays this music with the same furious precision and skill with which Ayrton Senna drove cars, Michael Jordan sunk baskets and Bruce Lee kicked dudes in the face.

Now that the camera is zoomed in close him we can appreciate his facial expressions. As he shifts between musical gears his eyebrows bob up and down his face like excited little caterpillars, his nose twitches madly, a faint expression of pleasure dancing around the corners of his mouth as if he's hearing this music tumble from his fingers for the first time - a man amazed at what he's accomplishing.

Even though every bonk of the ivories is surefooted and confident there's an attractive humbleness to Lang. After Chopin he mops the sweat from this brow, picks up a microphone and begins to chat to us. After an hour of hushed silence this is a cue to let our hair down a bit, and he begins a varied, light-hearted musical journey, playing us a series of personal favourites from around the world. He plays a Mexican Intermezzi, a dance from Cuba, the Minute Waltz, Kinderszenen, bits of Schumann and a Chopin nocturne. All these pieces have virtuosity scattered liberally throughout, particles of humour and dollops of keenly felt emotion. My favourite was a Chinese composition called The Seaweed Dance. It was short and almost minimalist in construction, but delicate and beautiful from start to finish.

In between these performances Lang is strolling around the stage with a big grin on his face, shaking hands with everyone around him. The stuffiness of the classical crowd evaporates into the old Victorian rafters. Like animals they're drumming their feet against the floor and yelling for Lang's return, shouting for encores with the exact infectious passion you'd see at a One Direction gig. After eight encores he splits, though not before tossing a bouquet of flowers into the audience. They clock a woman full in the face but she emerges beaming from the greenery and kisses her partner full on the mouth. D'awww.

The act feels like some crazy kind of signature, and with that, Lang Lang vanishes into the bowels of the building, his face sweaty, his hands sore, his work here done. In an age of hologram performers, flamethrower guitars and huge, epic concert scenery I was a bit sceptical that one guy and a piano could hold my attention. But boy, what a piano and what a guy. Best piano player in the world? Probably. Best I'm ever likely to see anyway.

Thanks to Antoinette and Chris Wilcox for the ticket.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

‘A Late Quartet’ (2012) directed by Yaron Zilberman

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

To devote yourself to mastering a single craft takes an insane amount of discipline, dedication and perseverance. A Late Quartet shows us a tumultuous period in the life of the successful ‘Fugue String Quartet’, examining the physical and emotion toll of achieving musical perfection. The quartet consists of four outstanding actors: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener and Mark Ivanir. All have their quirks and issues, and all bounce off one another in increasingly destructive ways.

'Philip Glass at 75: Koyaanisqatsi' at the Barbican, 14th December 2012

Monday, December 17, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Taken during the show, Philip Glass is seated on keyboard near the bottom right.

I've been looking forward to this concert/screening for what seems like forever. 'Koyaanisqatsi' is my favourite film of all time, and ever since I first watched it in 2006 I've been desperate to see one of the rare orchestral performances of the score performed in sync with the film. So when I found out last February that Philip Glass himself would be performing it 5 minutes from my front door I snapped up a ticket right away. Since then the ticket has been gently yellowing from age, tucked safely up on a high shelf for 10 months, the concert always too far off in the future to let myself get truly excited for it. But on Friday the day finally arrived.

I hate the idea of having a singular 'favourite' film that sits above all others, but if I did have to pick one 'Koyaanisqatsi' would probably be it. It's a piece of 'pure cinema', minimalist in construction, composed entirely of beautiful images and music. There is no plot, no characters and no dialogue. The only problem with it is that the general response when you say it's your favourite film is for people to go "Koyana-what?" It's almost impossible to describe the film without coming across as a pretentious arsehole, especially if you begin using (perfectly accurate) phrases like 'visual tone poem' or, for that matter, 'pure cinema'.

Ironically, even though a description can make the film sound utterly inaccessible, 'Koyaanisqatsi' is a film that any human being can appreciate on some level. By eliminating language the director, Godfrey Reggio, created something that can be appreciated anywhere in the world. Similarly, culturally specific elements like plot and characters can be enormous barriers, invisible to audiences accustomed to Western story-telling, but potentially alienating to anyone outside of that sphere. I genuinely believe that every single human being on the planet, can get at least something out of this film. Sure, they might be bored or confused by it, but 'Koyaanisqatsi' is constructed in a way that highlights certain universal human experiences and emotions.

So, if the film is pared down so much, how does it communicate? The division is split 50/50, between the beautiful cinematography of Ron Fricke and the score composed by Philip Glass. The score is famous in its own right, being appropriated for video game trailers or superhero films but for my money it's so intrinsically connected with the images in this film that it doesn't properly work anywhere else.

Walking into the Barbican auditorium to a stage full of empty seats immediately impresses upon me how many people it takes to bring this music to life. We have the Britten Sinfonia, the Philip Glass Ensemble and the Trinity Laban Chamber Choir, all in all meaning there's about 60 or so people on stage at any one time. We also have Philip Glass in attendance on keyboards, although as far as I can see he doesn't do a huge amount himself, leaving the complex arpeggios to Mick Ross. Still, I think he's earned the right to sit back a bit and take the co-pilot's seat tonight.

I've seen this film many times, and I know pretty much every shot in it by heart, but I was anticipating what the live musical accompaniment would add to the experience. From the moment Jeremy Birchall stepped up and began singing the word 'Koyaanisqatsi' in an impossibly deep bass tone I knew we were in safe hands. Throughout this performance, the sheer abundance of incredibly talented musicians on stage breathed new life into the film.

'Koyaanisqatsi' begins very slowly, with majestic shots of deserts, lakes and mountains. The pacing here is deliberate and stately, underlining the permanence of this geography. Some of the shots of the desert seem deliberately framed to be reminiscent of shots of Mars; alien landscapes utterly indifferent to human life. This tactic of transforming the familiar into something abstract runs throughout the film. As we progress through the film we see the first signs of human life, miners carving their way through this pristine landscape. The final progression is an extended examination of a city, the processes that support it and the lives of the people living within it.

There are a number of clever and subtle contrasts in this film, and the impressing upon us of the timelessness of the natural world is inversely mirrored in the impermanence of our man-made world. The human equivalent of these majestic landscapes are our skyscrapers and urban environments. 'Koyaanisqatsi' shows up these as something transitory. We're shown the Pruitt Igoe housing project being demolished, row after row of huge blocks collapsing into dust. Skyscrapes bloom grey clouds from their bases as the TNT explodes, and then seem to be sucked into the earth. Again and again the film urges us to consider our environments and behaviour from different perspectives.

The film uses various artistic tools to shift our viewpoint, forcing us to view a familiar world with an outsider's eyes. Probably the most famous is the time shifted photography. In the most intense sequence, 'The Grid', we see the processes of a city hugely sped up. Traffic becomes abstract red lines, electronic dots chasing each other around a maze. People become frantic blurs, jittering their way through mechanised turnstiles and office doors. Here, the crowd becomes dehumanised, notions of individuality are squashed. There is a an inescapable futility here, thousands of people rushing around madly to no apparent end, running as fast as they can to stay in the same place.

During 'The Grid' we examine the life support systems that keep this crazy system running smoothly. We see food mass production, conveyor belts teeming with food sorted by robotic, emotionless workers, television after television being bolted together or computers being assembled. These shots echo the machines we've seen people travelling through. One shot of sausage production directly quotes footage of commuters pouring off escalators. You inescapably begin to feel like a piece of meat yourself, a tiny pointless cog in a bigger machine.

You're somewhere in that crowd!

As this sequence ends the music drops away and we cut to high above the city. The camera floats serenely, reminiscent of an out-of-body experience. This is a transition from the small-scale to the large and the silence allows us a moment of contemplation and decompression after all the thundering noise and energy. After maybe 40 seconds of this, there's a series of spectacular match cuts which show us the city from above as circuit board, manufactured and logical, humans mere electrons blustering around components.

Throughout 'The Grid' the music builds and builds to a frantic pace. The rhythmic chanting of the choir seems to match the arpeggios of the keyboards. As it gets faster and more frantic so do the visuals, as if they're racing each other and matching speeds. This onslaught of imagery and sound had a profound physical effect on me. I found myself pressed back into my seat, my muscles tense, my jaw locked in a grimace. I felt a bit like David Bowman in 2001 being passed through the star gate. Seeing the film projected large, with an orchestra thundering beneath it elicits an actual physical response, suddenly 'Koyaanisqatsi' is not a nearly 30 year old film, it is something happening here and now.

Though this is a film that gets a clearer view than most of the bigger picture, there are repeated smaller and personal moments that always affect me. One shot shows an faintly simian looking man sitting, smoking in the bowels of a power station. He looks competent and in control, emanating some kind of confidence in his role, as if he's shouldering the responsibility of keeping the city running. Another is an old homeless man who, as the choir starts singing, turns his head to look directly at the camera, staring dully and faintly accusingly at us, his sunken eyelids seamy and red.

By far the most affecting, for me is simply a shot of an elderly withered hand weakly searching for human contact in a hospital. Film is ultimately a manipulative medium, exploiting a basic human love of melodrama to make us feel emotions. But when a nurse walks over out of shot and takes that person's hand and comforts them, it feels genuine; a true glimpse of kindness. The contrast between seeing tightly regimented humanity moving marching robotically through the city, and dazed, wandering, injured people of this sequence couldn't be greater. We're seeing the people who've been spat out of the machine, broken gears that society has no further need for.

Watching this woman trying to light her cigarette showcases the misery of the mundane.

'Koyaanisqati' is a wonderful film, something that achieves what few films ever can: a positive change in the viewer. Rather than preach a message it trusts us to reach our own conclusions and to actually think about the images and sound before us. The film allows us to explore the perspective of the outsider, to see the world with new eyes. It's the kind of film that stays with you for the rest of your life. Heading onto the tube in London in rush hour you inescapably begin to consider yourself as a mere electron, just another insignificant face in the crowd. It's not a pleasant feeling, but it is, perhaps, the truth.

It was an absolutely wonderful concert, and I think maybe the best single screening of a film I've ever attended. 'Koyaanisqatsi' is an outstanding piece of cinema, and is only uplifted by hearing its score live and loud. An experience to treasure forever. If you ever get the chance to see this film with an orchestra behind it - jump at the chance!

Sunday, December 9, 2012

'FERAL' by Jordan McKenzie, 7th December 2012

Sunday, December 9, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

ah shit they saw me

I arrived in Bermondsey Square a little out of breath. It was a busy night, and I'd cycled at speed through the drizzle. I wanted to be sure to see 'FERAL' just to get my required dose of performance art for the month. Annoyingly I'm going to be missing LUPA next Friday and I had to get my fix of weird, confusing stuff somewhere.

I didn't really know what to expect from tonight's performance, I've seen McKenzie compereing at LUPA, but I've never seen him actually performing. First impressions were that this was a bit of an upmarket location for this kind of thing. Bermondsey Square is a smart little cluster of restaurants and bars surrounded by swank flats and a hotel. As the hour of the performance rolled around the audience gathered in the courtyard, facing a large white camper van with a horse painted on the side.

horsin' around

Eventually the van opened up, and very loud and occasionally distorted music began playing. Four people in black and white hoodies emerged from within clutching plush horse heads on sticks and marched around the square together to the Blue Danube Waltz. After this they stopped in the middle of the square and posed a bit, pointing the horse's heads in different directions. During this bit, McKenzie marched around, observing them but not interacting. At around this point the music switched up into a pretty cool dance number, and the horse head carriers began to run around, one after the other. They rode them around the place like hobby horses, as well as erotically rubbing them between their legs and collapsing on the floor.

While all this was going on, McKenzie stood motionless in the middle of the square clutching what appeared to be an invisible and tumescent phallus. After a bit of this, men in high visibility jackets began constructing a wooden box around Jordan, who was by now holding a hobby horse (but slightly different to the ones before). As they sealed him up inside the box, an unidentified liquid began to seep from the bottom corner. I had places to be, so I skipped out at this point, but I was told that he was due to emerge from the box at around midnight. Annoyingly, I also missed the film that accompanied the piece. Oh well.

horseplay

A piece of paper was distributed to the audience beforehand explaining the intentions for the performance, setting out what the piece was about and what it hoped to comment on. Ordinarily I don't really like being told what something's about, I'd rather come at it blind and work it out myself. If I get the wrong end of the stick, or completely miss the point then it doesn't really bother me. But I must admit, without this piece of paper I wouldn't have come close to working what McKenzie was getting at here.

The information sheet tells us that this is a look at the way the riots of 2011 changed the way society considers the young. As it explains:

"The performance comments on the demonization of youth in the current political and social climate of the 'credit crunch' and examines our attitudes towards gangs, outsiders and those who are seen as attempting to exist 'beyond the law'. Employing the iconic signifiers of the 'hoodie' and bandanna, four girls, sat astride home made white hobby-horses, writhe, canter and trot their way through the city, mixing street dance with ritual and performance art."

The white horse is an interesting symbol to use, and one that has multiple interpretations, both of which seem appropriate here. In Celtic mythology the white horse is a symbol of the fertility goddess Epona. There are hill figures of the white horse dotted up and down the country, the most famous being the Uffington horse, which is visited for fertility purposes. The performers here did pull some pretty sexual moves with their hobby horses, pole dancing and rolling on the floor in paroxysms of ecstasy with them. The other symbolism of the white horse is that of the carrier of Death, of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse fame. If we are supposed to be examining the way youth is viewed, them being the harbingers of apocalypse seems faintly appropriate, especially set to a bangin' dance music soundtrack.

horse d'oeuvres

As far as the rest of the symbolism goes I'm stumped though, although I guess the artist being sealed inside a chipboard box has further connotations with death. When McKenzie was actually inside the box I was weirdly reminded of Stanley Kubrick's '2001: a Space Odyssey'. People were approaching the box, taking photos and touching it tentatively as if it would bite if they spent too long around it. I suppose there could be something here about the conversion of the body of the artist into pure information, but then again the Blue Danube Waltz always makes me think of '2001' regardless of context.

I enjoyed watching this, in large part because of the location it was performed in. Being hemmed in by restaurants and bars means that aside from the people actually there to see this there's another captive and unaware audience enjoying an innocent Friday night out. I loved watching the confused faces peering out of the trendily lit 'Gregg's Bar & Grill'. When you're sitting down on a date and enjoying an over-priced hamburger you don't generally expect to be confronted with someone lasciviously frotting a hobby horse just outside the window.

The people inside the restaurant split into two factions. Some of them angled their chairs to watch what was going on outside, or popped out to watch. Some, hilariously, pretended that absolutely nothing untoward was going on at all, and steadfastly refused to even glance in the direction of the strange and scary people doing weird stuff outside. The idea of ignoring all this cracked me up, especially as the surprisingly loud sound system echoing off the walls probably meant you could hear it for streets around. Hotel curtains were twitching as confused and semi-naked people peeped around them, trying to work out whether they should be getting angry at their illicit liaisons being interrupted by mad horse riding artists dancing to Strauss and bangin' dance music.

getting nailed

Doing something like this in a public space rather than in a gallery gives the piece a confrontational nature: it makes demands everyone in the vicinity, almost forcing them to pay attention to what you're doing. You see people starting to walk across the square, then changing their minds and hanging back scared. Then darting across when they think no-one's looking. Like some of the LUPA events, it creates a little divide between the people who 'know' what's going on and the people that don't.

'FERAL' was surreal enough to be enjoyable just as a subversion of a public area, but make no mistake, it was wilfully hard to decipher, even with the handy information sheet. Fortunately there was just the right undercurrent of ridiculous to humour to the whole thing that stopped it venturing too far into the realm of the pretentious. I wish I'd stayed longer to see the film that accompanied this, but alas I was needed elsewhere and had to split.

Contents: 1x performance artist, 1x hobby horse

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Handel’s ‘Messiah’ at St Paul’s Cathedral, 6th December 2012

Saturday, December 8, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

I’m not sure if I really ‘get’ classical music. Sitting in a huge room full of serious looking people, wrapped in very serious concentration and engaging in serious appreciation of some music makes me feel a bit left out in the cold. Don’t get me wrong, I like classical music well enough, but I don’t really have the necessary critical framework or the ears to be able to really get to grips with what I'm listening to. It's like I'm a dog cocking its head in front of Picasso painting. It knows there's something fun there, but it's never going to be able to work out what it is.

So, with that in mind why did I book tickets to go and see a performance of Handel’s Messiah in St Paul’s Cathedral? There are two reasons, firstly because I know Messiah has that one famous bit where everyone sings ‘Hallelujah!’ really loudly, and secondly because going to a performance in St Paul’s Cathedral on a cold December pre-Christmas night feels like something intrinsically ‘London’.

There are many places that can claim to be the heart of London, but St Paul’s has a better claim than most. Londoners have been congregating here since at least 600AD, and there’s argument that the cathedral occupies the site of a Roman temple to the goddess Diana. The building more than lives up to this ancient continuity, walking through the doors you’re knocked flat by the grandiosity of the place. Importance, continuity and a slightly oppressive but all pervading security radiates from the walls. When the stern looking, suited men dotted around the building ask you to do something, you instantly jump to attention.

A pretty good venue. Terrible bathroom facilities though.

I’ve been inside St Paul’s a few times, but never when its completely full of people before. Cathedrals are dead when there’s only a few people scattered about the place, so there’s a transformation when the building is filled with the hubbub of people chatting to each other happily. I was ushered to my seat, sitting right next to the jutting big toe of Britannia who was perched mournfully on a grand memorial to Charles Cornwallis, a general renowned for, among other things, hanging 200 captured prisoners in Ireland. The joys of British imperialism, folks!

When you’re somewhere like St Paul’s, you begin to get a sense of the sheer weight of the British Establishment. This is a building intended not only to inspire religious devotion, but also to underline the insurmountable power of the state. There’s a contradiction both here and throughout Portland stone built, imperial London. The state erects statues to those who serve it most effectively, and more often than not this means killing a hell of a lot of people. If there is an intersection of state, church and military then either St Paul’s or Westminster Abbey is it. This is after all the place where men like “the Butcher of the Somme” Field Marshall Haig are given a funerals of enormous pomp and circumstance. It is also the place where Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven will soon be memorialised at vast state expense. All of this, and from an institution that putatively preaches charity and good will to all men.

It’s easy to let the mind wander while you’re watching a performance like this. You can follow along with the programme, but I find it nicer to sit back and let yourself zone out a bit. Looking around, I notice that a lot of smartly turned out people in the audience are doing the same, many of them actually being asleep. There’s a large contingent of weathered old women dozing in large coats with silly hats on, women that could have stepped out of time any time between 1950 and now. Going to see Messiah at Christmas in St Paul’s is something that Londoners have been doing for maybe 200 years, and it’s nice to participate in this historic continuity.

This was my view when I looked up. Hard to get bored looking at that.

The musicians and singers are without amplification, save that of the building around them. This adds a feeling of truth to proceedings; when a young boy chorister stands alone at the front singing, it’s undeniably moving. Even when the boy is singing about his corpse being eaten by worms it manages to remain pretty sweet. But it’s when the choir properly gets going that the full force of just what this building can do is utilised. The whole place becomes one big musical instrument, voices reverberating around the room and effortlessly filling the space.

The big moment of the night is the “Hallelujah” chorus - the part everyone knows. This isn’t the fastest moving production, so my anticipation builds and builds as I follow the torturous build-up to it. I’m excited because there’s a big tradition of the audience rising to its feet at this point. Apocryphally this is because King George II was so moved by the beauty of what he was hearing that he stood up without thinking, with the result that the entire theatre stood up too. An alternate theory is that he just had a cramp in his leg, and needed to stretch it out. Another one is that this is all a load of nonsense and someone made it up sometime in the Victorian era. I don’t think the reason matters, it’s a nice little quirky tradition that I’m more than happy to go along with. It gives the pinnacle of the piece just that little bit more grandeur.

At the end of all this I still feel like a fish out of water. I don’t have the right vocabulary to say why I enjoyed the music, or what this particular performance’s technical merits were, but enjoy it I did. For me, hearing classical music like this in environments like these let me get close to a meditative state. It’s calm, relaxing and free of distractions. I strolled out in the cold and wet December night feeling like my brain had had a nice massage. Feeling a bit more Christmassy now.

LONDON CITY NIGHTS