Not to be missed - a look at autumn's Café Concerts

By Julia Hudson 

This week on the blog, I am delighted to announce the first events of our 25^th anniversary season – the Café Concerts. We have programmed a varied and fascinating selection of events, and I wanted to take the opportunity of having a little more space than in the various brochures to talk you through them!

As usual, all the Café Concerts take place in the auditorium of the Corn Exchange, Newbury on a Friday lunchtime at 1pm. First, on 26^th September, the winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year 2014, Martin James Bartlett, joins us for an hour of piano music. Currently just 17 years old, the Royal College of Music calls him “one of the greatest up and coming young piano talents in the music world”, as he moves to take up his place there in September. On winning the competition, Martin said "It's such an amazing feeling. It's not just the highlight of my musical career, it's the highlight of my life." He was a worthy winner; reviews of his playing in the final mentioned “crisp articulation and playing of superb strength...a particularly individual performance of great character” (Bruce Reader, The Classical Reviewer) and we are very much looking forward to welcoming him to our series.

The second concert, on 17^th October, is the explosive and dynamic Villiers Quartet and their programme ‘Celebrating England’. The Quartet has established itself as one of the most charismatic and adventurous quartets of the British chamber music scene, and as such are bringing a this theme to their Corn Exchange recital. Their programme ranges from the evocative work of Delius, Britten and Bridge to a multimedia performance of Chris Roe’s ‘Jetez!’, and also features Britten contemporary and lesser-known composer Robert Still, who lived for 22 years and died in local Bucklebury, near Newbury. Hailed as "one of the best young quartets around today" (Jerry Horner), their concert, complete with projector and animation, promises to be a revolutionary approach to traditional string quartet performance.

Finally, on 21^st November, we welcome our second ‘Secrets of the Orchestra’ concert. Having had a wonderful hour with the winds, it is now the turn of the brass section, in ‘Brass Unwrapped’. Some of Southern Sinfonia’s most well-loved and prestigious brass players, curated by trumpeter Howard Rowntree, give an insight into the dynamics of playing trumpet, horn, trombone and tuba in the orchestra. An educational session in part, this concert will inform and entertain children from 10 upwards, while still being fascinating and beautiful for adults like you and I: the beauty being that, however knowledgeable we are about music, we have not spent years as professional brass players! The group will perform stunning music, written or arranged for brass quintet, and give an insightful and often amusing account of orchestral performance. A concert not to be missed.

As Southern Sinfonia’s season finishes, we say goodbye to our Administrator, Anita Forsyth-Forrest, as she retires this week. We will all miss her and we thank her for eleven years with the orchestra. In September, we welcome our new Intern, Richard Brewer, as he joins us upon his graduation from the University of Sheffield. He will be a regular contributor to this blog and we look forward to hearing his erudite thoughts and opinions!

As we continue to prepare for next season and take a well-earned summer holiday, our blog posts will become fortnightly. We promise, though, that we will be Promming and Glyndebourne-ing to the very best of our ability – and we hope you have a wonderful summer.

To find out more about Southern Sinfonia; click here to visit our website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Music and Motion Picture – A Natural Fit

By Chris Billingham 

Live music is most effective when every note and every instrument can be heard. Whether it’s a solo performance or full orchestra, concert attendees want the music to captivate and make its presence known. Indeed, the balance of sound and acoustic accuracy is why audiences spend more on seats in certain areas. However when music, especially classical music, appears on screen it is arguably most effective when it is barely noticeable.

Even those that are unfamiliar with classical music will have pieces that are hidden in their subconscious, thanks to their use in motion pictures. Whether that is childhood memories of Willy Wonka playing the overture of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro or realising that it is Bach’s Goldberg Variations perfectly juxtaposing a particularly violent scene in The Silence of the Lambs. The juxtaposition in that particular scene is a perfect example of classical music subtly adding a further dimension to a scene. It is used to compliment the visuals and bring the two art forms together in a way that enhances the film. As Director Martin Scorsese states "Music and cinema fit together naturally, because there's a kind of intrinsic musicality to the way moving images work when they're put together. It's been said that cinema and music are very close as art forms, and I think that's true.” This is especially true in the opening sequence to Scorsese’s 1980 film Raging Bull. Set to the intermezzo from Mascagni’s opera Cavalleria Rusticana, the mesmerising opening features Robert De Niro darting back and forth and throwing punches in slow motion. Without Mascagni the sequence wouldn’t be atmospheric; set to the piece it becomes the perfect beginning to the film. 

In a different genre, Brief Encounter provides arguably one of the most famous uses of classical music in film, with Rachmaninov’s second Piano Concerto having a presence throughout the story. It is said that Rachmaninov wrote the concerto to about his recovery from clinical depression; the piece is dedicated to a physician who worked on his self-confidence. However in the context of this 1945 film from Director David Lean, the piece perfectly summaries a love affair destined to end. The idea of the meaning of a piece of music coming from each individual listener has been discussed before in this blog, partly because it is one of the most fascinating elements to this particular art form. What’s interesting about music and cinema is that the meaning can be changed in a more controlled way. Everyone involved in creating a film, from the director to the actors, has the ability to shape a scene and use visuals to give a piece of music new meaning. 

David Lean and the production team behind Brief Encounter are not the only filmmakers to have achieved this; there are many examples throughout cinematic and musical history. A personal favourite is another example featuring Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, this time introduced not by an eccentric chocolate maker but an inmate of Shawshank State Prison. Whilst Mozart’s work is based on a stage comedy about a love triangle, when used in Frank Darabon’s 1994 classic The Shawshank Redemption it is about hope, freedom and the release classical music can bring. The scene in question features prisoner Andy Dufresne playing the letter duet ‘Che soave zeffiretto’ from The Marriage of Figaro to the whole prison over the public address system. The combination of the image of a normally rowdy group of inmates standing listening in silence, and the script providing the character of Red with rich dialogue, combine with the music to create one of the film’s highlights. As Red says 'For the briefest of moments every last man at Shawshank felt free' and therefore, in that moment, that is what the piece is about. 

Whether it changes the meaning of the music or subtly adds another layer of artistic merit, there can be no denying that music and film complement and enhance each other. As Scorsese said, they are a natural fit. 

What is your favourite use of classical music in film? Comment below or join the discussion on our Facebook or Twitter pages. 

You can also find out more about Southern Sinfonia by visiting our website or Instagram page. 

Glastonbury, but crowdfunded - London Sinfonietta plays for free

Jonny Greenwood Copyright: @Ldn_Sinfonietta 

By Julia Hudson 

It’s been a while since I enthralled readers of this blog with my weekend activities, but thankfully it’s back on the cards, albeit rather tenuously. It was my twenty-seventh birthday on Saturday (I know, so old) and I had a lovely day celebrating with my family and boyfriend in the rain. It has rained just three times in my lifetime on 28^th June, and as everyone took delight in telling me, this year it was because my birthday clashed with a certain Somerset festival.

While Glastonbury in general isn’t usually what we’d choose to discuss on our classical music blog, this year there was something which caught our collective eye. London Sinfonietta (including one of our most loyal percussionists, Owen Gunnell) was booked to perform Steve Reich’s iconic Music for 18 Musicians, a spellbinding blend of voices and instruments, with Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, who performed Electric Counterpoint. However, unlike Dolly Parton, Metallica, Johnny himself and the other world-famous artists who performed at Glastonbury, London Sinfonietta was asked to fund their appearance themselves, rather than being paid. Its website says:

“Our set of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians and Electric Counterpoint will bring contemporary classical music to this world famous stage and a huge new audience – over 170,000 people.

But it's no mean feat taking all 18 players, their instruments and our production crew, more used to a concert hall, to a muddy field! The costs of doing so are substantial and we need to cover the large majority of these ourselves, but this is too good an opportunity to miss. This performance also enables us to extend our season with a repeat performance at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall – increasing our audience even further.

So we really need your help: if you love new music as much as we do please join our crowd-funding campaign and break this new – hopefully not too muddy! - ground with us. In return we'll say thank you with a whole host of goodies, including access to a rehearsal, signed photos and limited edition t-shirts.”

Percussionist Owen Gunnell plays with Southern Sinfonia in 2013

The classical music world has responded with outcry. Composer Philip Lawton has asked London Sinfonietta for the reasoning behind Glastonbury’s decision, saying that “Glastonbury, it seems, are creating a sort of two-tier system: The people they actually want, who they pay, and the people who they think “Oh, wouldn’t that be fun/newsworthy/diverse of us?” who have to pay their own way.” He also makes the point that Steve Reich, the composer chosen, is one of the most popular and often-programmed contemporary composers today. The orchestra responded honestly: “When the chance came up, and we agreed to play there, we knew there would be a funding gap we needed to fill, but we decided to take the opportunity on the basis of the huge value there is in the exposure for us, and contemporary classical music more widely. We hope very much that [this performance] will bring new audiences to the rest of the work we do.” Admirable, for certain, and, as Philip says, it is Glastonbury rather than the orchestra where the real condemnation should be directed.

Quite apart from the huge scale of the festival and the dream ticket sales figures, Glastonbury is in the luxurious position of having multiple events and advance tickets. This is almost unheard of in the classical world, and means that there is an entirely captive audience to whom anything can be played. This means that the financial viability need not be considered, and truly new and innovative music can be programmed, rather than 40 year old music known to many already.

One of London Sinfonietta’s percussionists, Oliver Lowe, wrote a blog about the event. He includes an account of the sound check: “Our short sound-check was soon underway...making sure each of us could hear all the necessary parts of the texture so we could stay together. This mainly involved making sure Marimba 1′s on-beat pulses were fed round the stage, particularly to Marimba 3 who holds the repeating pattern for each section and keeps everyone else locked in. This combination of on-beat pulses and repeated ostinato groove forms the basic rhythmic track for the piece. Everything else that’s played locks into those things, including the off-beat pulses Owen Gunnell and I were playing. These basic components are re-orchestrated throughout the piece, most notably in Section V where the pianos take responsibility from the marimbas, requiring a shift in monitor mixes to focus on the new source of tempo....A wrong move could have left us scrambling around in the aural dark, slowly becoming unglued as we lost touch with each other.” I know I’m biased as a classical musician, so please don’t shout, but did Metallica require quite this much expertise and concentration?

The freelance musicians of the classical music world are left constantly frustrated by this assumption that they will play “for exposure”. In the wedding market, for example, caterers, florists and marquee companies would never be expected to give away their product “for exposure”, but string quartets, singers and jazz groups are asked repeatedly. To make a sweeping generalisation, let’s say the average LS player at Glastonbury was 40. If they have had music lessons once every week throughout their youth, and three times a week through music college, they’ve had an minimum of 1500 lessons. Not including the cost of their instruments, music college fees, travel or anything else, each musician had spent about £50 000 on instrumental tuition by the time they graduated. Ignoring too the running costs of the organisation, plus the cost of the performers’ time, Glastonbury seems to have placed a value of precisely nothing on their ability. No musical trust or foundation has picked up the tab, either, despite the orchestra’s plea that it will bring contemporary classical music to a wider audience. Although Oliver Lowe attests that the performance drew a large crowd, and I have no doubt that it did, I would love to know how many of them will be turning up to the Southbank Centre as a result of that exposure. On a side note, I would also love to know how many of those other Glastonbury acts would have been able to get back on the coach and perform that same day at the Royal Opera House – not many, I would suggest.

To find out more about Southern Sinfonia; click here to visit our website, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.