2004/5, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

Harrison Birtwistle

Am 15. Juli wurde Harrison Birtwistle siebzig Jahre alt. Sein Ruf als "grand old man" der zeitgenössischen Musik Großbritanniens, als Galionsfigur einer kompromisslosen Moderne hat ihm, besonders in seinem Heimatland, ebenso viel Bewunderung wie Anfeindung eingetragen. Dabei klingt seine Musik weder besonders "britisch" noch im eigentlichen Sinne modern - und Letzteres, obwohl der Komponist zu keinerlei Konzessionen bereit ist, weder an den Hörer noch an den Interpreten. Die klangliche Physiognomie von Orchesterwerken wie Earth Dances wirkt wie aus Stein gehauen; obgleich hochkomplex und kompositorisch auf der Höhe der Zeit, scheint diese Musik aus den Tiefen des Unbewussten zu kommen, als habe es diese Klänge schon vor Urzeiten gegeben.
Earth Dances, vollendet 1986, ist eine der erfolgreichsten Kompositionen Birtwistles; bei der vorliegenden Neuaufnahme unter Pierre Boulez handelt es sich bereits um die dritte kommerzielle Einspielung des Werks. Es ziehen sich sechs unabhängige Schichten durch die Partitur, die kontrastieren, sich überschneiden und ergänzen. Nach mehrmaligem Hören weicht der Eindruck brachialer Urgewalt dem einer dynamischen Landschaft, die sich Stück für Stück, aber nie auf einmal erschließt. Die unbändige Kraft der Musik war es wohl, die dafür gesorgt hat, dass Earth Dances immer wieder mit Strawinskys "Sacre" in einem Atemzug genannt wurde - obwohl Birtwistles Musik jede programmatische Dimension völlig abgeht. Wie man es von Pierre Boulez, dem Widmungsträger des Werks, wohl erwarten konnte, besticht seine Interpretation vor allem durch äußerste strukturelle Klarheit; das Klangbild fasziniert durch geradezu dreidimensionale Schärfe. [...]
Erst im vergangenen Jahr aus der Taufe gehoben wurde Theseus Game; die vorliegende CD präsentiert den Mitschnitt der Uraufführung. In Theseus Game findet ein Prinzip seine Fortsetzung, das Birtwistle in Werken wie Secret Theatre und Ritual Fragment bereits erprobt hat: die Gegenüberstellung von durchgehenden Soli und begleitenden, akkordischen Ebenen des restlichen Ensembles. Wie in den beiden früheren Werken treten auch in Theseus Game die einzelnen Spieler nacheinander vor das Ensemble, um in fortlaufender Reihenfolge jene "unendliche Melodie" aneinander weiterzugeben, die nach den Worten des Komponisten den "Ariadnefaden" durch das orchestrale Labyrinth repräsentiert. Das Ensemble ist seinerseits in zwei Schichten gegliedert und wird von zwei Dingenten geleitet. Das Resultat ist eine klanglich und dramaturgisch extrem vielschichtige Partitur, die mehrmaliges konzentriertes Hören ebenso einfordert wie belohnt.

Thomas Schulz

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2004/5, Crescendo

Birtwistle: Theseus Game, Earth Dances

Unruhig und wirr bewegt, aber trotzdem mit melodiösen Elementen und stark rhythmisch: dieser Eindruck von (Sir) Harrison Birtwistles Theseus Game klärt und bestätigt sich, wenn man gewahr wird, dass das gewohnt hervorragend agierende ensemble modern im Mitschnitt der Uraufführung bei der RuhrTriennale 2003 von gleich zwei Dirigenten, Martyn Brabbins und Pierre-Andre Valade, geleitet wird. Die große Spannung entsteht durch zwei sich in der Besetzung stetig ändernde Gruppen, die jeweils ihr eigenes Tempo spielen und sich so hoch produktiv aneinander reiben können. Eine Art "unendliche Melodie" ist der Rote Faden, der das Ohr eines hilflosen Hörers nicht im Stich lässt. Die archaische Seite des Werks wird durch die Beigabe der Earth Dances von 1985/86 (Dirigent: Pierre Boulez) hergeleitet. Klanglich und musikalisch bleiben keine Wünsche offen.

DK

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8 July 2004, Die Zeit

Ein Faden aus Melodien

Das Labyrinth hat man sich seitdem starr gedacht: dunkle, dräuende Mauern, eine wie die andere, die eckig zurückspringen und den Blick wieder nur auf eine weitere Mauer freigeben. Das Labyrinth von Harrison Birtwistles Ensemblestück Theseus Game aus dem Jahr 2002 ist anderer Art. Es ist flexibel, schnellt vor und zurück, windet und verformt sich, wie nur Mauern aus Klang es vermögen. Mit der Spannkraft von Muskeln leisten die massiv-zuckenden Klangbänder dem hörenden Eindringen federnden Widerstand. Durch dieses Labyrinth leitet das Garn: »In meinem Stück gibt es eine Entsprechung, die Melodien der Soloinstrumente, die sich bruchlos aneinander reihen - sie symbolisieren den Ariadnefaden.« Birtwistle legt Melodien aus, um die Mauern zu befragen. Er betreibt die Suche als Spiel. Die Musiker des Ensemble Modern Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon 477 0702, die CD enthält noch das Orchesterstück Earth Dances, von Pierre Boulez dirigiert) treten einer nach dem anderen nach vorn, tragen ihren Beitrag vor und spinnen gemeinsam an den instrumentalen Linien, die in großer Vielfalt und Vitalität durch das Labyrinth mäandern. Geleitet werden sie dabei gleich von zwei Dirigenten, Martyn Brabbins und Pierre-André Valade, die zwei verschiedene Tempoebenen angeben. Die Musiker müssen mal dem einen, mal dem anderen folgen, das gehört zum Spiel. Sie werden zwischen den Zeiten hin- und hergeworfen und durch das je andere Tempo gestoppt. Doch kehren sie aus den Sackgassen zurück, treffen sich an Kreuzungspunkten und stieben wieder in verschiedene Richtungen davon. So beleben sie das atmende Labyrinth, in dem es weht und wuselt.

Frank Hilberg

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19 July 2004, musikwoche.de

Redaktions-Tipps

Die Deutsche Grammophon ehrt in ihrer Reihe 20/21 für zeitgenossische Klassik den englischen Komponisten Harrison Birtwistle anlässlich seines 70. Geburtstags mit zwei Live-Mitschnitten: Das "Theseus Game" wurde 2003 in der Duisburger Gebläsehalle aufgezeichnet, die "Earth Dances" stammen aus der Alten Oper Frankfurt von 2001. Nicht zuletzt ist es das Verdienst des Ensembles Modern, dass die Spannungsbogen dieser überaus interessanten und überraschenden Kompositionen nichts von ihrer Expressivität verlieren. Das "Theseus Game" halt sich an die antike Sagenvorlage. Gleich Theseus, der mit Hilfe des Ariadnefadens aus dem Labyrinth des Minotaurus findet, leitet Birtwistle die Musiker durch eine schier unendliche Melodie, die schließlich im Nichts verklingt.

Birgit Kraus

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23 July 2004, The Guardian

Ensemble Modern/ Brabbins/ Valade/ Ensemble Modern Orchestra/ Boulez

Earth Dances, first performed in 1986, is already an established contemporary masterpiece, which confronts even the finest orchestras and conductors with a massive musical and technical challenge. This version, taken from a concert performance in Frankfurt by the Ensemble Modern Orchestra under Pierre Boulez in 2001, is the third (after those conducted by Peter Eötvös and Christoph von Dohnanyi) to appear commercially. Theseus Game, the result of a commission shared between the Ensemble Modern and the London Sinfonietta, received its premiere a year ago; this recording was made from the first performances, at the RuhrTriennale in Duisberg, Germany, last September.
Though they were composed 17 years apart, the two scores, each lasting 33 minutes in these performances, share a genetic link, for both develop formal ideas that Birtwistle had explored for the first time in a piece written for the London Sinfonietta in 1984. In that work, Secret Theatre, the instrumentalists act out a musical ritual according to a set of rules that is never revealed.
Soloists emerge from the ensemble and move to the front of the stage to play their solos, like actors delivering soliloquies, and then return to their positions. The whole musical argument is conceived in two layers, which Birtwistle calls the cantus (the overlapping sequence of solo melodies) and the continuum (the instruments providing the harmonic and rhythmic framework over which the ritual is developed).
Though in Earth Dances there is none of the overt role-playing of the Sinfonietta piece, it takes much further the idea of separate instrumental strata, with different musical functions. The two layers of Secret Theatre become six in the orchestral work, each defined by its instrumental register and rhythmic and harmonic qualities. All six are not heard continuously, though; they move in and out of the musical foreground, sometimes merging, with instruments commuting between them. As they collide or tear themselves apart, these tectonic plates of material produce huge musical eruptions and convulsions.
It's easy to understand why Earth Dances has been called the Rite of Spring of the 1980s, but it is a misleading description; unlike Stravinsky's ballet, there is no underlying programme to Birtwistle's score nor any suggestion of a musical narrative. Instead, the ear is taken on a mystery ride through a landscape of tangled textures and sudden, overwhelming climaxes, with signposts provided by recurring pitches that function a bit like tonal centres, and musical ideas that recur in the course of the piece, altered each time as if being seen from different perspectives.
But Earth Dances is also great drama - its bold gestures and sense of theatricality led directly to the musical world of the opera Gawain, which was his next large-scale project. That sense is vividly communicated in Pierre Boulez's performance. Though Boulez has long championed Birtwistle's music and this score is dedicated to him, he had never conducted it until these performances with the Ensemble Modern Orchestra. The technical challenges and problems of balance, it goes without saying, Boulez takes in his stride, and that allows him to concentrate on projecting larger-scale architecture and the powerful inevitability of the music's argument. It's a compelling performance.
So too is the account of Theseus Game, which returns to the role-playing aspects of Secret Theatre. This time the instrumental writing is even more rhythmically complex, requiring two conductors, who control different groups within the instrumental ensemble. The contents of those groups change constantly, as players are required to turn their attention from one conductor's beat to the other's, so that this web of instrumental lines becomes hugely complex.
What binds it all together, though, is a melodic line, an extension of the cantus idea in Secret Theatre. It is nearly continuous throughout the piece, and is played as a series of instrumental solos, many of which are independent of either conductor. The violin begins the process, followed by the flute, and each player passes it on to the next like a baton, until it returns to the violin once again, and the work can comes to an end. All the time the rest of the ensemble spins its shimmering web around the melody and at climactic moments, the brass call to each other from opposite sides of the stage.
Those processes provide the work's title: Birtwistle likens the melodic line to the thread Ariadne spun for Theseus to help him to find his way out of the labyrinth. There is something labyrinthine about these tangled musical progressions, too, which constantly bring the listener back to the same vantage point - from a totally unexpected direction, but the line is always there.
Theseus Game may not be as immediately approachable as Earth Dances, but it is a majestic, richly allusive piece, astonishingly well played by Ensemble Modern on the recording, with Pierre-André Valade and Martyn Brabbins mastering its complexities better than any composer has a right to hope for at a first performance.

Andrew Clements

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2004, classicalsource.com

Harrison Birtwistle

Harrison Birtwistle writes music that seems to tap into the core of the earth. A music of seismic power, whose staggeringly eruptive surface energy is a result of the clashing and grinding of geological strata and tectonic plates deep below. Nowhere is this more evident than in Earth Dances, a work to which the term "a Rite of Spring for the 1980s" has stuck. Listening to a performance of Earth Dances is like being subjected to an elemental force of nature. Now, some 15 years after it was written, its dedicatee Pierre Boulez has taken up the work and this recording of Earth Dances (its third) was made at a live performance in October 2001. The coupling is Theseus Game, a composite of the first two performances in September 2003. Both performances are quite electrifying.
Even by Birtwistle's standards, Theseus Game is a remarkably complex work. It sets into motion three discrete elements - two groups under separate conductors and a solo line articulated by different instruments in succession. The two groups operate in their own tempos and the instrumentation of these groups is constantly changing as players swap allegiances between the two. The physical movement of the musicians according to the undisclosed rules of the composer's game-plan brings a theatrical dimension to the piece, as it does in many other Birtwistle works such as Verses for Ensembles, Secret Theatre and Ritual Fragment. The solo line is always taken from a position at the front of the ensemble and evidently represents Ariadne's thread that led Theseus out of the Minotaur's labyrinth (the myth is the subject of Birtwistle's next opera, in which the story will be told twice).
The necessarily unpredictable temporal co-ordination of the three strands is indicative of Birtwistle's lack of concern for localised control over the harmonic implications of his writing, just as is his use of randomly generated numbers to determine pitches. What interests Birtwistle is not so much the musical material itself but how it can be shaped to create a drama. This explains his radical approach to form - the works generate their own forms out of the interplay of their materials, as opposed to the traditional approach of pouring the material into a pre-formed mould as practised by, shall we say, the latter-day Peter Maxwell Davies for instance.
The soundworld of Theseus Game is instantly recognisable as Birtwistle - not a single bar sounds like any other composer. It is astonishingly rebarbative without let-up throughout its entire duration. Even the slow and quiet passages register as fast and loud music heard from a distance rather than as points of relaxation. In fact they come across as the shifts in perspective experienced in wandering round a maze and returning to the same points by a different route. Only at the very end, when the solo line is passed to the cor anglais and the music winds down onto unison Es, do we get a sense of release, of having exited the labyrinth.
Undoubtedly one of Birtwistle's most challenging and demanding works, Theseus Game receives a performance of stunning collective virtuosity by Ensemble Modern, steered with great precision and control by the ubiquitous Martyn Brabbins and Boulez protégé Pierre-André Valade. No composer could expect a more committed and dynamic first performance than Ensemble Modern delivers here.
The formidable power of Earth Dances is generated by the meshing of no less than six layers of material, arranged according to a "hierarchy of intervals". But just as with Theseus Game (at least when listening to a recording), what we hear is the collective result of their superimposition rather than the individual elements themselves. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this modern masterwork is the long-term planning that enables the composer to maintain over 30 minutes of music at fever pitch whilst still holding something in reserve for the explosive stretch near the end, where the interval of a minor third hammers out ever more emphatically until finally it caps the work's molten energy.
The first recording of Earth Dances appeared on the now defunct Collins Classics label in a performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Peter Eötvös taped at the 1991 Proms. Eötvös focussed on the elemental might of the work in a powerful but sprawling interpretation. The subsequent recording by the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi (Argo/Decca) had the opposite merits, in applying a disciplined 'Central European' approach somewhat at the expense of the untameable wildness of Birtwistle's idiom.
As could have been expected from his interpretation of the 1913 Rite, Boulez's version of the 1986 Rite fuses both of these approaches. The performance is suffused with a primal force but a tight rein holds everything together and maintains forward momentum, such that the work comes across as a single utterance without the sectional feel of the Eötvös version. Boulez is also fully alive to the moments of glinting beauty where small chinks of light peep through the primordial blackness, above all in the dying moments of the work. The Ensemble Modern Orchestra comprises the core players of Ensemble Modern augmented by new-music specialists from all over the world - and does it show! This is undoubtedly the finest recorded version of Earth Dances by some way. With stunningly clear sound (particularly in Theseus Game) bringing out every last detail of these scores, DG has produced one of the most indispensable contemporary music recordings of recent years.

Steve Lomas