9, 12 and 13 February Andriessen Concerts at the Barbican

I had booked these three concerts in order to find out more about Louis Andriessen, the Dutch Composer born in 1939.

Ther first concert on Tuesday, paired Andriessen's work La Passione with a piece by one of his students, Steve Martland and another by one of his contemporaries, Steve Reich. The Martland piece - Tiger Dancing was quite jazzy and referred to William Blake's poems. Next came Reich's Desert Music which I was very familiar with but it was interesting to hear it live and I was struck by the subtle differences to the recording to which I was used. The singing of the words by the Britten Sinfonia Orchestra came across powerfully. The words by William Carlos Williams were not always easy to pick out, yet are central to the piece - one almost has to choose between listening to them as music and reading them (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/steve-reich-william-carlos-williams-finding-form). There are five movements with the first and fifth (fast) matched as are the second and fourth (moderate). The middle piece is in three parts - slow/moderate/slow - and contains references to the testing of the atomic bomb. Finally we had the Andriessen La Passione which also introduced words sung by the somewhat eccentric or theatrical mezzo-soprano Cristina Zavalloni, for whom the piece was written. The words were derived from the orphic poems of the Italian visionary poet, Dino Campana who spent the last 14 years of his life in a madhouse. She was matched by a violinist (representing the Devil) and, as with the entire concert, the conductor Clark Rundell kept order. 

Friday's concert was given over entirely to La Commedia. This work written in 2004-08 was a staged opera, referring to the 14th century work by Dante Alighieri. It moved through five parts, again featuring Cristina Zavalloni - this time singing the part of Dante who goes on a journey to explore the afterlife. Andrerw Sauvageau also stood out as Lucifer and the piece ended merrily with children from Finchley Music Group. Louis took a bow at the end of an evening that served to reinforce my impression of how cerebral his music is.

Finally, on Saturday evening there were three pieces by Andriessen, spanning his career. The first De Stijl was almost a homage to Piet Mondrian and was very jazzy. Next came Roasa's Horses which was an arrangement by Clark Rundell of part of a rarely performed opera by Andriessen. Finally Mysterian was a much more contemporary (2013) piece that felt serious and reflective. At one point it featured a detuned harp and Andriessen explained beforehand that his (twenty years dead) father had come into his room and told him to write it. It served to reinforce the importance of appreciating the conceptual in Andriessen's work.