Smaller music festivals showcase the best of the UK’s classical music scene
York Hall, the home of British boxing in Bethnal Green, has welcomed the likes of David Haye, Lennox Lewis, and Ricky Hatton. The latest to add their name to this illustrious list? Shiva Feshareki, composer and turntablist extraordinare, whose GABA-analogue opened Ringside Symphony at Spitalfields Music Festival last week.
Described by conductor André de Ridder as ‘Gruppen for the 21st century’, Feshareki’s piece deconstructed Trinity Laban Symphony Orchestra into an octophonic cube around York Hall, set on ground floor and gallery level, whilst de Ridder conducted from the centre. Snarling tubas and contrabassoons from the deepest depths of the hall came together like a pack of wolves circling prey, and as forces expanded, drum kits added driving urgency, and woodwind and strings screeched and sirened from all corners.
After about 20 minutes or so, composer Shiva Feshareki and organist Kit Downes sidled into the centre, taking up positions behind turntables and hammond organ respectively. What followed was nothing short of sonic sparring. Feshareki blared industrial crashes, whilst Downes splurging undulating colour high and low, looking quite manic at the keyboard. The transition from orchestra to electronics seemed a little disjointed, but I soon forgot; it was completely gripping.
What was wonderful to see, at the introduction of Feshareki and Downes, was how the audience was drawn, almost magnetically, towards them. Many descended from the balcony to get a closer look, desperate to see this display of manual dexterity close up; the sounds alone were not enough. A traditional concert hall with the audience nearly lined up in the stalls would simply not have allowed this very physical urge to be realised.
After a lengthy interval to allow for a complete refiguration of the hall, Barchan by Anna Meredith followed, written in 2007. The sound of soloist Jörgen van Rijen (Principal trombone at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam) sat pristine atop the rumblings of the orchestra. The trombone line grew increasingly complex and persistent, before finally succumbing, culminated in an emphatic climax with the teeming texture below. De Ridder then led a spirited, if occasionally scrappy, performance of The Firebird Suite by Stravinsky, which grew in confidence and ended with a real burst of power.
This set things up nicely for the next part of the evening 250 metres down the road at St John’s Bethnal Green, where Shiva Feshareki remixed The Firebird Suite live. As in York Hall she once again wandered out, hands in pockets, cutting an unassuming figure. But as soon as the needle touched the vinyl, her passion seeped through, slowly bobbing her head to the rhythm. Taking short phrases from a vinyl recording of the work, she created circulating themes that turned skittish phrases into pounding, anthemic motifs, metamorphosing from one to the next. As my friend remarked to me, why don’t all orchestral concerts have a DJ remix the works afterwards?
This year marks the second of Andre de Ridder’s tenure as Artistic Curator of Spitalfields Music Festival, and East London is richer for it. He has worked programming wonders, and the festival shows itself to be eminently resourceful, without compromising artistically in any way. Who will be curating next year, we don’t know yet, but there are big shoes to fill.
On Saturday evening, the Manchester Collective made a rare visit to London, ‘exploring the space between live strings and electronics’, with a healthy dose of the sonic supernatural. Having sprung up within the last two years, the Collective focuses on performing in areas not usually blessed with such imaginative and unapologetic programming, including Newcastle, Salford, Manchester, Leeds, Hull, and Liverpool. This was only their second appearance in the Big Smoke.
Beginning with works for solo violin and solo cello by Xennakis and Harvey, the audience was coaxed into the type of careful listening that this group demands, and focused lighting in an otherwise black space helped the eye and ear to hone in. To close the first half, electronic artist Vessel performed The Birth of the Queen, specially-devised for Manchester Collective, and gloriously disparate in its range of samples that shouldn’t work but absolutely do. Rakhi Singh performed Reich’s Violin Phase flawlessly, and Joe Zeitlin tore into Gordon’s Industry for distorted cello.
To close proceedings, the namesake of the programme and specially-commissioned work: Daniel Elm’s 100 Demons. The live string quartet played on stage, with a pre-recorded ‘ghost’ quartet haunting us from speakers around the room, making it unclear what sound was coming from where. The music was unsettled, with chuntering patterns in irregular meters driving on blindly. Whispered chanting from the live players on stage added a creepy, percussive effect delivered with a gleeful menace.
The performance from start to finish was thrilling, intimate, cool. I felt challenged, but I also felt like I could be friends with the performers on stage. In fact, Manchester Collective makes we want to up sticks now and move North.
Increasingly, it’s the smaller festivals and organisations like Spitalfields and Manchester Collective (see also Scottish Ensemble, London Contemporary Music Festival), that are creating the most exciting work, on small budgets, and sharing it with previously unreachable audiences. Not tied to great big concert halls (and thus free from the temptation to programme crowd-pleasing classics in order to fill them), they take demanding music into comfortable, adaptable, less intimidating settings. They create more with less, and their audiences love it.