Continuing my series of program notes:
James MacMillan (born 1959)
Viola Concerto
I
II
III
Ever since the BBC Proms premiere in 1990 of
The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, a
symphonic ‘requiem’ for a Scottish woman thought to have been executed as a
witch in 1662, Scotland’s James MacMillan has been one of the most sought-after
of contemporary composers. He followed up ‘Isobel Gowdie’ with the percussion
concerto Veni, veni Emmanuel for
Evelyn Glennie and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, which received nearly 300
performances within ten years of its 1992 premiere.
Tonight’s work, first performed in January
2014 by Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra with its
dedicatee, Lawrence Power, as soloist, is the 18th of MacMillan’s
concertos. A second percussion concerto is on the way. Such is MacMillan’s drawing
power that the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is one of four orchestras around the
world that co-commissioned the work.
The strengths of MacMillan’s music come from two
sources according to British critic Michael White. One is his ‘great gift for
melody’. The other is
that his music is driven by ‘an extraordinary
kind of fervour’ stemming from his religious and political beliefs. Other commentators may also
point out MacMillan’s absorption of influences ranging from the Polish
modernists Penderecki and Lutosławski (in his early years) to the local church
congregation in Glasgow for whom he has written (weekly) responsorial psalms
that can be taught before Mass.
While early works tended to be
programmatic, MacMillan has become more and more interested in - proud even -
of the abstract nature of music. As he told the Southbank Centre’s Gillian
Moore, prior to the premiere of tonight’s work: ‘At a fundamental level, music communicates
its beauties, its feelings through…organised sounds rather than words or images....music
gets into the crevices of the soul in a way that can be quite baffling to our
contemporary culture.’
MacMillan’s own comments on this work
(available on his publisher Boosey & Hawkes’ website) stick just to the
notes. He outlines a three movement structure in the traditional pattern:
fast-slow-fast, and sets out some markers that may be useful to first-time
listeners. Each of the movements contains elements of its opposite. The first
movement contains a brass ‘dance-like theme’ and ‘a terse little tune in
semiquavers’ for the soloist, but only after a slow introduction in which the
brass intone a cadence figure which becomes motivically important, that is: ‘the energy of the first
movement is offset right from the beginning by something much more cantabile
and singing’. Each of the sections of the song-like second
movement are headlined by a violent ‘outburst’. The last movement is obviously
‘joyful, humorous, and fast’, but there is a ‘tranquil’ middle section where
the soloist begins to declaim against a ‘cushion’ of two each of orchestral
violas and cellos (like a Renaissance viol consort). A solo flute nods towards
the influence of the Japanese shakuhachi.
It would be a shame, though, for the
listener to tick off the structural signposts rather than let the proportions
be naturally felt, or enjoy MacMillan’s 21st century mastery of the
orchestral palette. MacMillan has previously commented on the number of great
concertos (serving great soloists) in the modern repertoire and the question of
the extent to which a composer should ignore or embrace the traditional form
(‘near perfection’ in MacMillan’s mind). Perhaps the listener could consider
how successfully MacMillan has added to this genre, and how wonderfully this
concerto adds to the not overly-plentiful solo viola repertoire.
Gordon
Kalton Williams, © 2015
This note first appeared in the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Australian premiere of MacMillan’s Viola Concerto on 1 and 2 May 2015.
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