New Music Concerts

Imagine you are going to a couple concerts over the weekend. The program for one is Bartok and Ligeti, the other is an all Berio program. How do you picture the audience? Like this, right?
 

 

And full of people like this:

(For those of you who don't frequent new music concerts, they are typically sparsely attended unless they are at a music school with an energetic and active composition program. The typical audience is made up of composers and performers who specialize in contemporary music, many of whom probably haven't bathed in awhile, or at least shaved or gotten a haircut. :) Just kidding...but the typical new music crowd definitely isn't the same as those who frequent the local symphony.)

Okay, now imagine you have just entered a concert hall, but you don't know what the program is. The hall is packed - every last seat is taken and you have to climb over a bunch of people to get to yours. There are many families with young children, groups of tween girls, elderly couples, and everything in between. What kind of concert are you at? Maybe a pops concert at the symphony where a popular celebrity will be making an appearance (hence the tween girls)?

Well, last weekend I did go to two concerts, one that was Bartok and Ligeti, the other was all Berio, but the audiences for both concerts looked like the second group I just described! Both concerts were sold out, or close to it, and the audience was made up of lots of families with young kids, elderly couples, tween girls, and everything in between. I've been told this is normal for France and Europe in general. What are they doing right in Europe that people of all ages and backgrounds are excited to hear new music and how can we start doing this in the US?

And the concerts themselves were amazing.

The first, the Bartok/Ligeti concert, was done in collaboration with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's dance company Rosas as part of the company's tour of their production called "Bartok/Mikrokosmos." The YouTube video is an excerpt from a documentary (?) about the choreographer and four of her early works, including Bartok/Mikrokosmos. It's very interesting - you should watch it!

 

The first piece, from Bartok's Mikrokosmos for two pianos, featured two dancers who, over the course of the work, portrayed the entirety of the conflicts, cooperations, celebrations, and tensions inherent in a relationship between two people. All in a microcosm. I was especially impressed at how the dance mirrored the internal workings of the music. For instance, at the end of a work, Bartok often presents an incredibly brief "summary" of the entire structure and plan of work, usually in the space of one or two beats. The dance ended in a similar summary of everything that had happened between the two dancers over the course of the work. Brilliant.

Next up was Three Pieces for Two Pianos for by Ligeti. Very minimalist, like Steve Reich. The full title of the 2nd movement is actually "Self-portrait with Reich and Riley (and Chopin is also there)." Really, really cool piece - I was glad to be introduced to it! No dancers on this one. I posted the first movement here, but you can listen to the 2nd and 3rd movements here and here. Not only was I impressed with the performance, but also with the audience and their reception of the piece. I imagine it would be a challenge to listen to for people that aren't minimalist fans like myself and yet you could've heard a pin drop in the hall the whole time. In the US, people would've been coughing, rustling, opening candies and cough drops throughout the entire performance. At the end, the clapping befitted the phenomenal performance - it wasn't just the obligatory applause you hear for new pieces on American concerts. 

The last piece, and the reason I went, was Bartok's 4th Quartet, one of my all-time favorite pieces. I posted a recording of the final movement (my favorite) here, but you can listen to the whole thing on on YouTube if you want. Garth Knox, my teacher, was playing, and he had invited me (and gotten me a free ticket!). He was subbing in with the Duke Quartet, a quartet specializing in new music from the UK. Along with the quartet, which was seated at the back of the stage, there were four female dancers. I was incredibly impressed at their absolute coordination the entire time, even when they were moving very slowly with many pauses and no music was playing. They danced as one person, and yet each dancer had her own individual personality.

At the end of the concert, the audience erupted into applause and brought the performers back for so many bows I lost count. 10, maybe more? In Europe, audiences often show how much they liked something by clapping in unison (which is a little weird to experience, at least for me), which they definitely did at the end of this concert.

The all-Berio concert the next night was a similarly challenging program to listen to, and yet it was also sold out and the audience was just as appreciative as at the Bartok/Ligeti concert. This concert began with the Berio Sequenza for viola, which is the reason I went. I'm working on this now (see my previous post) and I've never seen it performed live. The violist was Christophe Desjardins, one of the best violists specializing in contemporary music in France right now. He was my coach at the Lucerne Festival Academy and I will be taking periodic lessons with him also this year. The performance was accompanied by an avant-garde film, but I paid absolutely no attention to it because I was so focused on Christophe the whole time!

He also played the last piece, Naturale, which is for viola, percussion, and the recorded voice of Sicilian folk singers. (The recording excerpt is with Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky.) He did both the Sequenza and Naturale entirely from memory, which was very impressive. In Naturale, there was also a single female dancer, another avant-garde film, and Christophe himself walked around while he played. It was fascinating!

That it was an outstanding weekend of concerts goes without saying. The performances were incredible and the combination of dance and film was an added bonus.

But, the biggest impression I was left with was of the audience. The Bartok/Ligeti concert was apparently sold out the next night, too, and the audiences at both concerts applauded and applauded when the concert was over. Why doesn't this happen in the US? Does it have to do with childhood music education? When I was a student at the Lucerne Festival Academy, I had a conversation with a woman on the bus after one of our concerts that included a premiere of a very cool, but thorny, work. She told me she was very interested in this composer's music and had enjoyed the concert very much and made some very insightful comments about the piece. I asked her if she was a musician and she laughed and said no. I told her that I was American and if that concert had happened in the US, hardly anyone would've been there and those that were would've all been musicians. She laughed again and said she couldn't believe it, that people wouldn't want to go hear a new piece performed.

If only...