Fantasia – Matteis; O Mirium – Ruta Vitkauskaite; Elsewhere – Finnis; Sarabande in D Minor – Bach; Tinge – Michael Gordon; Outshifts (3 Movements) – Emily Hall; Curved Form – Alex Groves; LAD – Julia Wolfe: Rakhi Singh- Solo Violin Recital
This was a somewhat different concert to the type I’d normally attend, but also quite odd in terms of audience composition. Rakhi Singh is not a name I’ve come across before but she is music director for Manchester Collective, which I’ve heard of and which did a very good concert at the Proms earlier this year.
She performed wired up to a big loudspeaker/audio system that, in addition to amplifying her sound, and picking up the harmonies and resonances from it, could also, for some numbers, provide a backing electronic track, and with two technicians in tow.
There were two ‘conventional’ Baroque works, the Matteis piece and the Bach. The Matteis was interesting – he was the earliest notable Italian Baroque violinist in London and a composer of significant popularity in his time, though he had been utterly forgotten until the later 20th century. His work showed the same sort of desire to experiment with the sorts of sounds a violin can make as some of the contemporary works in the programme. The Bach piece was soulful, contemplative and well-played, though I wish Ms Singh had switched off the amplifier and just played both these pieces acoustically.
Other than these, the two best pieces were, I thought, by Ruta Vitkauskaite and Emily Hall. The name and background of the first of these pieces was not explained but its violin work and backing electronic track was very attractive and absorbing to listen to – I had heard another of her pieces a few weeks earlier at a MITR concert. The background to Hall’s piece was explained – something to do with the space between countryside and cities. I had no idea how the music related to this idea, but again I liked its ruminative and thoughtful movement. There were two pieces that were more like musical/electronic doodling – the Finnis and the Groves, both making use of the ability to mix/amplify sounds and of the violin’s ability to make odd sounds when played in unusual ways. I found these a bit of a waste of time, after a first few absorbed minutes. The other two pieces were noisy, more folk/rock based and both great fun – the Gordon and the Wolfe, particularly the latter, where the violin was attempting to emulate the sound of 9 bagpipes…..
The audience was odd – maybe 100 or so, but nearly all foreign students from the University. I wonder if someone had told them to go……they weren’t music students, they said (when Ms Singh asked) – engineering, digital media, all sorts. …….They seemed to be a bit bemused, and indeed we had to be instructed by Ms Singh to clap a bit more at the end of the performance than we had at the end of the first half, otherwise ‘I’ll feel a bit of a lemon’, she said. We did rouse ourselves sufficiently to be quite enthused by the bagpipes’ piece, though not enough for a return to the stage by Ms Singh.
I’m glad I went to this – always good to go to something out of the ordinary……..
John's musical journey 