There are few more engaged or engaging composers than James MacMillan. He is the best-known composer Scotland has produced. He's prolific. At the age of 45 he has written around 120 works, many on the largest scale.
He's provocative. His Roman Catholic faith is a major inspiration in his music, and his willingness to take up political cudgels legendary. He has recently been in the wars about the Philistinism of the Scottish Executive and its poor treatment of the arts. And he has never made a secret of the trials he has experienced as a Catholic in what he's called "a non-Catholic country, and actually in many ways an anti-Catholic country".
He's uncomfortable with what he has called the "self-referring nature of music", and so the typical MacMillan piece reaches well outside the musical norm, not just in terms of the religious references which abound, but also in its other explicit subject matter, which ranges from the "disappeared" of South America to the victims of the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster, the fate of a 17th-century "witch" to the celebration of parenthood, "or, more specifically, fatherhood".
MacMillan has no time for the new music ghetto. He's interested in a much wider public. As a composer he's not an original, he's a consolidator, a borrower and re-worker of ideas and techniques that others have already tried and tested. He's not in musical terms a sensitive soul, or, if he is, he hides it very successfully behind not so much a mask as a huge hoarding of sensationalism. If you were to look for a comparison outside the world of music, you could think of the emotionalism of a Steven Spielberg allied to the rapid crisis-cum-climax cycle of a soap opera.
In moderation, MacMillan's eclectic, rapid-fire effects enliven a concert programme. The sound whips up a storm, the colours swirl and mix, the adrenaline flows, the heart races. His mastery of instrumentation and his choice of gesture are sure. He sees, he aims, and he strikes with enviable ease.
But the concentrated exposure afforded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra's weekend at The Barbican in London at the weekend revealed a kind of short-circuiting bluntness in the musical approach. The concern with immediacy of effect threatened to tilt into hysteria, the intensity of emotionalism was so consistent it ended up seeming generalised rather than specific.
It was surprising how, with such variety of technical resource at his disposal, so much of MacMillan's writing, from solo and chamber to choral and orchestral, seemed to plough such a narrow furrow of communicative urgency.
In the welter of driven, hyper intensity that the weekend offered, the work that stood out was the Cantos Sagrados of 1989, primitive, brutal, extreme, stark music, with concerns of political repression and religious affirmation juxtaposed to extraordinary effect by the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra under Andrew Davis. I suspect that, in a different and more varied context, many of the other works might have wrought a similarly searing effect. - Michael Dervan
Chris McNulty
The Pendulum@JJ Smyth's
In an enjoyable concert at the Pendulum on Sunday, vocalist Chris McNulty gave an engrossing demonstration of the art of jazz singing. Australian-born but based in New York since the 1980s, she's a much more impressive performer than the more celebrated Diana Krall and Jane Monheit, and considerably more the real thing, where jazz is concerned, than Norah Jones. How she isn't better known is a mystery.
Beautifully backed by Michael Buckley (tenor), Tommy Halferty (guitar), Dave Redmond (bass) and Seán Carpio (drums), she concentrated on the Great American Song Book. Even such timeworn songs as What Is This Thing Called Love and East Of The Sun emerged fresh and rewarding from her and the group's treatment of them - and some were outstanding experiences.
Stylistically, the influence of Sarah Vaughan on her singing is evident - a risky model, given the Divine Sarah's tendency to sacrifice the lyrics to vocal acrobatics and descend into mannerism. McNulty avoided such traps; even when she took frequent liberties with the lines of each song they had musical purpose, and she never lost her sense of engagement with the words.
It was fascinating to hear how Buckley and Halferty, in particular, responded to the subtleties of her phrasing and line. Although both are well grounded in standards, they don't often play in that mainstream style, yet they knew exactly what the idiom required and, like both Redmond and the accomplished Carpio, delivered.
Unsurprisingly, given the thrown-together circumstances of singer and group, there were uneven moments, notably on Waltz For Debby and All Of You, but they settled quickly. Buckley, especially, was in remarkable form, turning out solo after solo full of surprise and invention; his work, like that of Halferty, whose accompaniments were superb, was always keyed within the emotional climate of the vocal.
By the time the second set began, they had gelled to such an extent that it seemed something memorable might happen. It did, repeatedly. They produced a brilliant, languorous The Meaning Of The Blues, an easy, loping Easy To Love and Star Eyes, a beautifully phrased It Might As Well Be Spring and My Romance, and a gorgeous, slow It Never Entered My Mind that came close to equalling The Meaning Of The Blues as the best of the night.
Pleasures not only included the work of Buckley and Halferty, but also McNulty's willingness to open songs a cappella, or with the minimal support of guitar. And, time and again, the drawn-out codas offered compelling examples of group interaction. Hopefully, this is not the last time she and this group will be heard together here. - Ray Comiskey
Moser, Davis, Concorde/O'Leary
National Gallery, Dublin
Jarmo Sermilä - Contours Yuji Takahashi - Like a Water Buffalo Sofia Gubaidulina - Silenzio Tomi Räisänen - Duo Concertante
Finnish composer Tomi Räisänen was one of three important guests of contemporary music ensemble Concorde at Sunday afternoon's concert in the National Gallery.
The other two were the soloists - accordion-player Elsbeth Moser and bass clarinetist Gareth Davis - for whom Räisänen composed the work that was receiving its première on this occasion, his Duo Concertante. The 20-minute piece showcases the dedicatees by alternating ensemble sections with cadenzas, one for each soloist and one for both together.
In his cadenza, Davis enacted what was like a conversation between a deep, bull-froggy voice in the bass clarinet's lower register with a sweeter voice above. Moser's accordion cadenza was more flowing and lyrical, while the joint episode produced some quite intriguing matching of sonorities between the two instruments.
A similar blending of matching sound characterises the arrival of the accordion in the first movement of Sofia Gubaidulina's Silenzio, written in gratitude to Moser, who helped the composer move out of Moscow during the civil strife there in 1991. Having joined - almost unnoticed - the dialogue of chilly long notes between the violin and cello, the accordion then dramatically plunges the trio into darkness with deep, chromatic clusters within a church-organ sonority. Her performance, with violinist Elaine Clark and cellist Annette Cleary, was a study in quiet tension and alarm.
Moser also played Yuji Takahashi's 1985 Like a Water-Buffalo, an animal that symbolises poverty and oppression. It was hard to connect this idea with the music which began and ended with a bird-like, hopping figure and a central section featuring a lonely pentatonic melody in a cloudy, canonic treatment.
The helter-skelter opening of Jarmo Sermilä's 1997 Contours for flute, clarinet, violin and cello soon gives way to a long and unexpectedly engaging passage in which all four instruments dwell on the same note. Not an unprecedented gesture; but in Concorde's spirited performance it grabbed your attention and held it. - Michael Dungan
Ulster Orchestra - Thierry Fischer
Ulster Hall, Belfast
Brahms - Hungarian Dances 1, 3 & 10
Double Concerto for Violin and Cello. Symphony No 2
After Schubert and Beethoven, Brahms. Once again, Thierry Fischer is tackling one of the major symphony cycles, with the four symphonies and two of the concertos being fitted into a week-long 'Brahmsfest'.
The opening Hungarian Dances gave us an idea of what to expect; swift but flexible tempi, light, well-balanced textures, a general feeling of engaging spontaneity. The old stuffy, Brahms was well and truly abolished, but one couldn't help feeling at times that a little more rhythmic firmness would have been welcome. The opening oboe theme of the third dance might have had more charm if Fischer had been less anxious about hurrying the music along.
In the concerto, violinist Paul Barritt and cellist Emma-Jane Murphy dovetailed nicely with both each other and the orchestra, and produced some sensitive moments. I enjoyed the sweet tone of the violin and the warmth of the cello, but would have liked more volume and, in places, more assertive playing. The orchestra accompanied discreetly, but their playing in the tuttis was so much more colourful than the soloists'.
There was plenty to enjoy in Brahms's most frankly enjoyable symphony. Once again, tempi were flowing but flexible, phrasing was sympathetic, and details fell into place. The first movement horn solo was a highlight. I only wished Fischer hadn't been so keen to hurry through the more reflective moments of the finale. As it was, there was less contrast and less emotional range than there might have been. - Dermot Gault
