With tradition as ballast composers break new musical ground.
Arvo Pärt grew up in Estonia while it was still behind the Iron Curtain. His early works make use of a surprisingly broad palette of styles: in addition to approved models such as Shostakovich, Bartók and Prokofiev he also drew on western impulses, in particular Schönberg. The authoritarian regime found this unacceptable, and banned several of Pärt’s early works. From 1968 to 1976 he imposed an extended inner exile on himself, seeking the roots of western art music – the advanced polyphony of the late middle ages and renaissance. In common with the impressive cathedrals of that era the music was a fascinating combination of solid structures and ambitious architecture, creating large spaces to experience contemplation and reflection.
It is a whole new Arvo Pärt that returns to the public view. His new style is no historical reconstruction; neither is his ‘tonal leaning’ sentimental nostalgia. His sights are set on a meditatively timeless space, at the same time beautiful and disturbing. This new style must have given him a personal freedom from both political pressure and aesthetic trends.
Für Lennart – In Memoriam was commissioned by Lennart Meri, the film director and Estonian president 1992–2001, for his own funeral in 2006. The stark, despondent music is based on Slavic vocal church music, transcribed for a choir of strings, and further developed through Arvo Pärt’s characteristic tintinnabuli technique, reminiscent of ringing bells.
From Chaos to History
Beethoven’s last String Quartets sum up his long career, while breaking the boundaries of contemporary conventions and forging the way towards the late Romantic era and the music of the twentieth century. His radical quartets were at the time considered by some both chaotic and demented, but in modern times they are seen as milestones in the classical heritage. The C minor Quartet was written in 1826, the penultimate year of Beethoven’s life. Its extreme duration tells us that this is more than merely chamber music. The music has symphonic proportions, and its rich weave of parts has symphonic ambitions. The version for chamber orchestra gives the musical material the space it demands, just as Beethoven’s late piano works benefit from being played on modern concert grand pianos.
Like the other composers in this evening’s programme, Beethoven was greatly inspired by the advanced polyphony of the Baroque composers, not least Bach and Handel, but he skilfully adapted it to his own requirements. The rules are bent and stretched, and new musical options arise. Convention is broken when expedient: instead of the usual four movements, the quartet is divided into seven, played without pause. And what is a movement, anyway? A couple of the seven are episodes lasting barely a minute, while others last almost a quarter of an hour. Beethoven ekes maximum variation and duration out of limited ideas, but the music nevertheless surprises us with breaks, jerks and jumps. Even so the work is highly cohesive within its own rules, from the first tentative phrase through to the final chord.
The Message Behind the Music
Shostakovich wrote his Sonata for Violin and Piano for the sixtieth birthday of the violinist David Oistrach in 1968, a sequel to their collaboration on the second Violin Concerto the year before. Shostakovich was inspired by the intensity of Oistrach’s performance, and the dramatic force of the sonata hints so strongly at orchestral dimensions that a version for chamber orchestra seems quite natural. The rigid demands of the Stalin regime for artistic conformity made survival as an artist literally a matter of life and death. Having experienced the party whip, Shostakovich was haunted by anxiety for many years. For this reason he moderated his playful, montage-like, ironic neoclassical style over the years. Or at least ostensibly. For artists in the Soviet Union it became a fine art to hide their message in subtext – between the lines – ‘said but unsaid’.
Shostakovich’s latest works witness in many ways a review of his life and at the same time a withdrawal from it. He had never recovered completely from polio, and after a heart attack in 1966 he was unable to perform himself. Shostakovich has left some clues to this enigmatic landscape in his music. Here are some examples: a diffident, restless twelve-tone melody introduces the first movement, in which the composer is present in his musical signature motif (D-E flat-C-B, a musical cryptogram for his name). Bare harmonies throughout, full of fourths and fifths, represent eternity and death. The mechanical, sardonic scherzo movement is borne by its sheer relentlessness, its initial motif evolving but never resolving. Eventually the monumental final movement in variation form reaches a subdued conclusion. The final movement makes clear reference to Bach, not least in the great Passacaglia for violin solo. The passacaglia is technique typical of the Baroque style. Translated it means to walk down the street, which may suggest an approach the listener can take to the variations over the repeated ostinato figure.
Text: Morten Eide Pedersen
English version: Roger Martin