The 2005 Ether Festival closed with two concerts (Sunday and Monday) by the London Sinfonietta working with Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Radiohead's news site commented:
Right at the core of Ether are the collaborations between the London Sinfonietta, the UK's prime contemporary chamber orchestra, and electronic musicians from the underbelly of pop. … this year's collaboration has had to anticipate demand by occupying two nights. It will feature works by Messiaen, Ligeti and Penderecki, extending a line of thought right back to the heart of the last century. The Messiaen work will be a performance of a movement from his Quartet for the End Of Time, in an arrangement for six ondes Martenots. … Middle Eastern music has had an enormous impact on Jonny, as is clear from the twisting harmonic structures of Radiohead; intriguingly he has also invited the Nazareth Orchestra, which is formed from Arab and Israeli musicians, to participate in the event. They will perform compositions associated with the singer Oum Kolthoum, who was known as the almost mythical voice of the Arab world of the 1930s and '40s.
Running order: Ligeti, Ramifications; Messiaen, La Fête des belles eaux; Dutilleux, Ainsi la Nuit 'Miroir d'Espace'; Greenwood, Piano for Children (world premiere); Dutilleux, Ainsi la Nuit 'Litanies'; Abdel-Wahab/Shafiq Kamel, Enta Omri; Dutilleux, Ainsi la Nuit 'Nocturne 2'; Greenwood, smear (London premiere); El-Atrash, Tuta; Penderecki, Capriccio; Dutilleux, Ainsi la Nuit 'Litanies 2'; Radiohead, Arpeggi and Where Bluebirds Fly.
It was a striking evening, reviewed (rather luke-warmly) in the Telegraph. Radiohead Television was screened (video, animations and music from Hail To The Thief amongst other pieces) and throughout there were live, sonic-generated visuals. My (very inadequate) photos are here. Lubna Salame sang Enta Omri with great passion, and passion was the key to the evening that seems to have eluded the Telegraph reviewer. As the entertaining (and to me, unknown) man who introduced the concert said, this was an evening united by, stemming from Jonny Greenwood's passions. Listening to these diverse pieces, we were surely also "listening" to various Radiohead pieces, hearing influences and echoes. The final piece, where Salame and Yorke sang together and Jonny Greenwood played one of the six ondes Martenot, brought everything together — revealing the evening as something quintessentially bound up with what makes Radiohead the innovative band it is.
Footnotes and follow-ups:
- Earlier in the week, Jonny Greenwood was interviewed by the Telegraph and his love of classical music explored.
- Ondes Martenot: what a world is here! Much information on the web, so for starters only: obsolete.com (the Keyboard Museum); Wikipedia; Claude-Samuel Levine's ondes Martenot site; Christine Ott (contemporary ondes Martenot artist); Sound on Sound (interesting article about the instrument, the Cornish company, Analogue Systems, and their 'French Connection' "version" of the ondes Martenot, as commissioned by Jonny Greenwood).
My musically far more knowledgeable friend, Dickon (he that really should have a blog of his own), points out that the sound of the ondes Martenot is not unlike the Glass Harmonica, for which Mozart (for example) wrote (Dickon's had me listening to Adagio in C for glass harmonica, KV 356/617a). Pictures of glass harmonicas, and more about their origin and design, can be found here.
Technorati tags: Jonny Greenwood, ondes Martenots, Thom Yorke, Radiohead
