Some of the most memorable performances at this year’s Musica Nova festival were of vocal works. The concert given by the Vicentino Singers was powerful not simply because of the abilities of the singers, but due to their size. Being a sextet, the level of intimacy they established was considerable; in every piece, while they blended superbly, every voice could nonetheless be distinctly heard. All the same, they were also literally powerful, capable of a volume that far belied their number.
i confess i wasn’t at all convinced that their rendition of Helena Tulve‘s You and I (about which i’ve written previously) would work, both because of the reduction in singers as well as the dry acoustic of Helsinki’s Balder Hall. On the one hand, i still feel that the work speaks especially strongly with a large choir in a reverberant space, but the Vicentino Singers revealed it in a new aspect. For obvious reasons, their performance was much quicker, and this lent the piece an urgency that greatly added to the expression of love permeating the text (by Rumi). This, coupled with the increased intimacy, lent the piece a different kind of potency that i’ve not felt before. “Strength in numbers”, it seems, works both ways.
The concert was named after Flame and Shadow: Madrigals Fragments by Romanian Sebastian Dumitrescu, receiving its first performance. Dumitrescu’s interest in microtonality was vividly realised by the Vicentinos. In some respects, its harmonic language had a floating, directionless quality (that’s not a negative), though this was part of a balance between a sense of small-scale logic and large-scale play, leaning into mystery referenced in the text. It was perhaps most striking in its second part, where initially canonic music became more individualistic, the lines feeling irresistibly pulled downward. “Deep grow my roots” said the text, mirrored in the singers’ descent into sonic depths.
The most curious piece in their concert was also its highlight: the Intermezzi by Norwegian composer Tze Yeung Ho, also a première. The title seemed significant, suggesting as it does something fitting between other things, as the five texts were indicative of various scenarios, all of which it felt we were encountering in medias res. They thus spoke as small windows into larger, implied dramas, articulated by Ho in a manner that one might describe as “stylised prosaic”. Three of the five texts were lists (of witnesses, names, and words relating to perfection, respectively), the other two a surreal little scene and a philosophical contemplation. It was interesting the extent to which the texts were no mere vehicle for the music, but a clear equal, our attention was pulled between the two in a different way from usual. That suggests they didn’t entirely gel, but that’s not the case: if anything, the fluidity of the relationship made these pieces all the more cohesive. As a whole, one felt the work to be a strong reflection on aspects of both life and living, encompassing the prospect of death, with the work’s lyricality taking on a trudging, resigned finality at the end. A complex, compelling piece i’d be keen to hear again.
More vocal highlights came in a concert featuring the vocal group Key Ensemble, in Tapiola’s lavish Espoo Cultural Centre. Some of the music explored elemental ideas, among them Heinz-Juhani Hofmann‘s Miss me, miss me, a volatile mix of control and wildness, moving between group focus and individual intensity. Its ending was unforgettable, arriving at a soft, sustained chord while the women of the choir shouted desperately. Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf‘s Mehr Wasser was similarly archetypal in the way it juxtaposed and intermingled singing, speech, pitch and noise. The result was a fascinating texture, behaviourally fluid and unpredictable, yet always convincingly organic.
Most engrossing of all in the Key Ensemble’s concert was Behind the Apples, another work for six voices by Yiran Zhao. The title refers to the Adam’s apple, and Zhao’s piece was a veritable showcase of utmost tactile, physical sounds, with amplification giving us the impression we were practically inside the singers’ throats. One might almost call the sounds ‘raw’, except they were so carefully designed and executed. Furthermore, were it not for the sextet of singers in front of us one might assume its soundworld to be electronic. Deep growls, buzzes, guttural tones, assorted rates of pulse (some like heartbeats), gasps, rolled rs, breaths, whispers, rustles and other frictional noises, muffled and garbled speech, all emerging according to the work’s unique coherent logic. Its journey into an intimate chorus of vocality was truly mesmeric.
Surely the most ambitious new vocal work heard at Musica Nova was INNEN by Vito Žuraj. Having been held up for several years due to the pandemic, the world première was finally given by the Helsinki Chamber Choir and Ensemble Recherche, conducted by Nils Schweckendiek. It’s not really possible to do justice here to such a substantial, multifaceted composition as this. The piece explores the relationship between physical limitation and creative utterance, drawing inspiration from Žuraj’s own struggles overcoming a severe childhood stutter. In the first of INNEN‘s three movements this was palpable, both in the fractured, repetitive text – getting trapped on certain syllables – while attempting to articulate about nature, light and colour, made ominous by the mention of shadows and violence (“sticht mich”). This was echoed in the tense, fraught atmosphere in the ensemble, made poignant by the oboe, played without the mouthpiece to create a nasal, plangent tone.
The struggle could also be felt in the apparent pace of the music, lurching between laboured progress and suddenly tumbling along at speed. Likewise in the connection between choir and ensemble, and between the voices themselves, forming tight ensembles or breaking apart into disparate subgroups and individuals. Žuraj changed things in the central movement; the voices shifted behind the ensemble, huddling together, in a mix of song and rapid speech that resembled an incantation. This was accompanied by the lovely impression of a permanent acceleration (not so much Shepard tones and Shepard tempi). Yet the words grew much darker, invoking disease, distortion, pain and the sense of being overwhelmed. The conclusion moved beyond repetitions to the lingering tone of an e-bow on the piano, both a point of stability and a lingering soreness. The music here seemed to be channelled into a final expression of not so much success as acceptance, with moments of wistfulness being answered by questioning and a gentle note of possibly hopeful wonder at the very end.
INNEN is a lengthy work, with a lot to take in and digest, but while time and further listenings are essential to unpacking its layers of highly personal expression, the musical language was sufficiently immediate – all the more so in this superb première by the Helsinki Chamber Choir – that the essence of what Žuraj was saying seemed vividly clear. The only other work of real substance in this concert – which, in its mode of expression, bore some similarities to INNEN – was faces and moon splinters by Malin Bång. Soprano Iris Oja, accompanied by a quintet, gave a stunning performance in which energy was continually undermined by strain. At times she sounded desperate, not articulated dynamically – clearly due to that sense of strain – but in a manner that was heightened, emphatic, determined to push on at all costs. Its ending was equivocal, saying more about the need to express than its actual attainment.
The most impressive vocal performance came on the opening night of the festival, in a simply outstanding performance of Gérard Grisey‘s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil by the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra conducted by Peter Rundel, featuring soprano – and Musica Nova artistic director – Tuuli Lindeberg. For me, Grisey is one of that select (but substantial) group of composers whose work i deeply love while being resigned to the fact that hearing their work performed live is going to be a very rare experience. i got the chance to finally hear Grisey’s Vortex Temporum in 2023 in Tallinn, and now Quatre chants in Helsinki – so maybe things are improving, in the far northern regions of Europe, at least.
Avanti rendered the opening like a whoozy dream, a gorgeous soundscape of shimmer and microtonally falling phrases into which Lindeberg almost magically materialised. Though halting, her phrases had a declamatory quality, seemingly the impetus for the music’s ramping up, becoming overwhelming. She became more elusive in the ensuing ‘La mort de la civilisation’ – what was she: narrator? commentator? prophet? The dream had deepened but also darkened, and despite the way Avanti treated the interludes – akin to wiping the slate clean – the disquieting atmosphere intensified until it felt truly apocalyptic.
By now Lindeberg was breathless, brisk and insistent, provoking strong, pained responses from the ensemble. Perhaps the most unsettling thing of all was the conclusion, sweeping aside the intensity and sagging into the sombre daze of a drone. The ensuing Berceuse was gorgeous yet troubling, as if the music had experienced a mental break; Lindeberg was fabulously lovely here, surrounded by fragile delicacy, making the spine not so much tingle as shiver.
[…] the final day, given by the Vicentino Singers. Much of the programme was the same as i experienced at Musica Nova in Helsinki a couple of months ago, making for an interesting game of compare and contrast. (The game was made more challenging this […]