NEW WORKS FOR SOLO CELLO
ROBERT IRVINE
Recorded on 11-13 December 2015 in Loretto Chapel, Loretto School, Musselburgh
Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Cover painting: Emma Lindsay Design: Drew Padrutt
Booklet editor: John Fallas Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk Join the Delphian mailing list: www.delphianrecords.co.uk/join
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Every five minutes, a child dies as a result of violence. Every fifteen seconds, a child dies as a result of malnutrition. Every day, 17,000 children under five die because they don’t get the health care they need, while one child in ten now lives in a conflict-affected area – that’s an estimated 230 million children globally.
These harrowing Unicef statistics are the impetus behind Robert Irvine’s new collection of elegies and lullabies for solo cello. The question of how to make contemporary classical music ‘useful’ – and Irvine handles that term with due caution – is of foremost concern to the cellist.
‘I hope the theme of this album will at the very least make people pause and think about issues that contribute to children suffering around the world,’ he says. All profits from the sale of this CD will go to Unicef, and all of the composers featured have donated their work for no fee.
Irvine is a musician who knows the classical music industry from the heart of its establishment to a more questioning and radical perspective outwith. He was brought up in Glasgow, won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music at sixteen and has worked as a soloist, chamber musician and principal cellist with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Scottish Opera Orchestra. ‘When you’re sixteen and learning an instrument, you are mainly encouraged to aim for personal glory,’ he says.
‘I ask every one of my students why they’re
doing what they do, and almost always they reply that their ultimate goal is to play a concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic or a recital at the Wigmore Hall. I was the same at their age. All I wanted was to be brilliant at playing the cello and for people to pay me for it. I got to thirty without really considering whether my musicmaking might have a wider usefulness.’
In 2008, Irvine founded Scotland’s leading contemporary music ensemble Red Note with ‘an old-fashioned socialist belief in making high art accessible to the masses’ (that colour in the title is no accident!). Red Note tours rural village halls performing music from local composers to the Italian modernist Salvatore Sciarrino, and undertakes imaginative community and education projects. It also holds regular ‘Noisy Night’ series in pubs, involving scratch performances of amateur scores and on-the-spot composing challenges. These nights tend to be raucous and freewheeling, and they invariably attract a motley demographic of audiences and composers.
Part of Red Note’s mission has been to confront preconceptions that contemporary music is inaccessible, difficult or ‘squeaky gate’. So, too, with the lullabies and elegies contained on this disc. Irvine’s brief to his eighteen composers was to write a piece of three to five minutes’ length and to make it as beautiful as possible. The words ‘expressive’ and ‘simple’ were also
mentioned. He didn’t want any special effects or scrapy noises, he instructed, and the results suggest that the theme of children in need gave the composers permission to write in their most open and tender voices. It’s also worth noting that all of the composers are friends, colleagues or family members of Irvine, and it’s clear that they have written with his musical personality in mind.
The Elegiac Lullaby by Eddie McGuire – a composer steeped in Scottish folk music as well as the classical tradition – was tailor-made for Irvine’s playing: the warmth and generous lyricism, the broad, husky, rich-voiced breadth of the sound. This is a tenor song without words, full of intense and quiet mourning. ‘How does one cope with the death of a child,’ McGuire asks, ‘or with the death of many children? Perhaps music can console. That’s what Elegiac Lullaby attempts.’ A more urgent anger boils to the surface in Roland Roberts’ Elegy for the Children of War. This piece is dedicated to the victims ‘of the many wars plaguing the world in 2015’, Roberts writes. ‘Slow sections of lamentoso alternate with fast whirlwinds of anguish, ending with a rhythm that evokes the ceaseless march of the war machine.’ After the rage come defiant chords and frenetic, frightened semiquavers, and the piece finally fades into troubled irresolution.
searching and agitated soliloquy expresses the voice of Miranda, who was just three years old when forced into exile along with her father, Prospero. ‘They were cast out to sea in a small boat,’ Beamish writes, and only by good fortune were they washed up on the island which is the only home Miranda knows. Her memories of her former life are ‘rather like a dream’: half-remembered impressions of grandeur and comfort which starkly contrast with her present situation.
Duncan Strachan’s Zarabanda invokes the sultry flux and swing of the triple-time sarabande, a form with origins in Central America. When the dance was brought via Spain to Europe, it was perceived as indecently sensual, possibly satanic in nature. Yet it became a staple of Baroque dance music and the Sarabandes of J.S. Bach’s six solo cello suites are those works’ emotional core – ‘almost spiritual in their stillness while retaining the dance rhythm’, writes Strachan. He dedicates his piece ‘to the millions of children in Central America who are born into one of the most unequal societies on the planet, and to those who are forced to flee their homes in search of a safer life’.
Sally Beamish wrote Miranda Dreaming while working on a ballet setting of The Tempest. This
In Jane Stanley’s Winter Song, a high, chilly melody unfurls with intermittent flurries of pizzicato – snow-storms moving across a harsh tundra. The winter invoked by this music is not picturesque or cosy, but savage, lonely
and ominous. The unfurling eventually yields to a wan, exhausted deep freeze. By contrast, William Sweeney was inspired to write his shimmering, light-shifting piece Caolas while sitting on the beach at that place, at the north end of Tiree in the Inner Hebrides. Sweeney describes looking out across the sound towards the neighbouring island of Coll: ‘the colours of the sea, sky, sands and landscape that day were like some fantastic invention by a Scottish Colourist – more shades of blues, greens, whites and vivid rock-greys than could ever be counted’. Caolas incorporates a slow Gaelic song from South Uist called ‘A Mhòr Thromanach’:
“Buxom Mòr, neat Mòr, where did you get the dark, dark lad?”
“In the dell where there is brightness, in the wood while driving stirks.”
In 1992, the pianist and composer David Wilde read a newspaper report of a cellist in Sarajevo who, in the midst of a war zone, was playing daily street recitals to commemorate the victims of a mortar attack. Wilde responded with a solo cello piece called simply The Cellist of Sarajevo, in which he wrote a long-lined and passionate melody for the instrument. ‘But the cello can do much more than sing a melody,’ says Wilde, and his second work for the instrument, Invocation and Waltz for children in need, includes a spry Tempo di Valse section headed ‘The Children’s Dance’ between its pensive outer sections.
The compassion and solemnity of Safety by Tom Irvine – Robert’s son – is a direct response to today’s refugee crisis. Tom wanted the piece ‘to explore the plight of refugees fleeing persecution, violence and war in their homeland’. He describes the music as representing the calm between storms and imagines people ‘managing against the odds to find passage across the sea, escaping the dangers behind only to face a long and perilous voyage through potentially stormy waters with no guarantee of acceptance or security upon reaching new lands’. The notion of ‘safety’ is relative here, and the elegy depicts the sullen, reflective silence on an overcrowded boat waiting to set sail into the unknown.
‘Trying to remember someone lost to me, I can almost see them, almost hear them, but not quite, not enough.’ John De Simone’s Misremembrance grasps at centuries of solo cello history by nearly quoting the Prelude of Bach’s First Cello Suite – nearly, but not quite. The memory of the music warps and twists until it’s hardly recognisable, and what’s left is something much more frustrated, desolate and disturbing.
Mark-Anthony Turnage – a friend of Irvine’s since college days – wrote Amelie’s Tango when his daughter was born in 2011 but the little piece has never been performed until now. The lilt of the dance is fond and gentle, a little quixotic and
more than a little mysterious. Ride Through by Eleanor Alberga is based on a traditional Jamaican children’s song: ‘Ride through, ride through the rocky road,’ goes the chorus. ‘Any bwoy me no love me no chat to dem.’ The tune is jaunty and the spirit is bright, but the words tell of exile, too: a hurricane has destroyed the singer’s home and he is journeying in search of somewhere to sleep.
Untitled (for Robert Irvine) is by another old college friend, Gabriel Jackson, and like many of Jackson’s instrumental pieces has a title which evokes visual art while also, in this case, leaving plenty of room for the listener’s imagination. Maybe it’s a lullaby, maybe the child is already asleep and dreaming. The soft rocking is disturbed by a squall towards the end, but the piece closes by sinking back into the deep calm of the cello’s lowest string. Tili tili Bom by Jacqueline Shave, Irvine’s violinist colleague in Red Note Ensemble, is also night music, woven around a Russian lullaby. But this dream is unequivocally sinister – Tili Tili Bom is the Russian bogeyman. Shave adds to her score a few lines of evocative scene-setting:
Close your eyes now, someone is walking outside the house. He knocks on the door. The nightbirds are chirping. He is inside the house to visit those who cannot sleep. He walks … He is coming closer.
Baloue is the Scots word for lullaby, and Rory Boyle wanted to write a ‘very simple, gentle little lullaby which might suit the poignant and lyrical character of the cello and whose melody has a strong Scottish flavour’. The one-page score is filled with yearning grace notes and soft-edged dotted rhythms. Knock Knock by James MacMillan, on the other hand, uses slappedout rhythms and spiky pizzicatos to imitate the spontaneous play of a children’s game. It’s fun, no question, but there is trepidation in the music, too, and the tiny piece ends on a low, quiet and uncertain note.
Robert Irvine’s own piece for the collection is called Imagined Child and is, he says, ‘a sort of lullaby for a fictitious offspring of two lovers’. The cello lines roam widely, sometimes snagging on repeated intervals or melodic fragments and eventually settling on an uneasy acceptance.
A Frieze and a Litany by Piers Hellawell is made of thornier stuff. The two-part piece takes its title from Norman MacCaig’s great poem ‘A Man in Assynt’ – a love song to the craggy and marvellous geology of the northwest corner of Scotland. Perhaps the jagged shapes in ‘A Frieze’ suggest what MacCaig admired as the ‘bony scalp of Cùl Mòr’ and ‘the armour of Suilven’. The ethereal tremolos in ‘A Litany’ are produced by ricocheting a tuning fork off either side of a string.
Clan feuds of the Scottish Highlands left generations of widows and orphans. In 1570, Gregor MacGregor of Glen Strae was captured and killed by the Campbells over a territory dispute, and the tune ‘Griogal Crìdhe’ (also known as the Glenlyon Lament) is a bitter lament attributed to his widow. Thomas Butler’s piece, called simply Lament, is an ‘abstraction’ of the beautiful old Gaelic song, its melody flitting in and out of focus as if heard through heavy mists.
Brian Irvine wrote his contribution in memory of a friend and colleague, Peter Rosser, who died aged 44 in December 2014. ‘A thoughtful, incisive composer,’ Irvine writes in his
dedication. ‘His wit, sensitivity and humanity inspired myself and many, many others, and lives on in his intricate and profoundly poetic music.’ The final moments of Elegy (for Peter) nearly arrive at a place of calm, but the last word goes to whispered and agitated tremors. Some losses have no easy resolution.
© 2016 Kate Molleson
Based in Glasgow, Kate Molleson writes concert reviews for The Guardian, features for The Herald, and also contributes to a number of other publications including Gramophone and Opera magazine.
Biography
Robert Irvine was born in Glasgow, and at the age of sixteen was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, London, where he studied with Christopher Bunting and Amaryllis Fleming. While there he won most of the major prizes in chamber music and solo playing. After leaving the RCM, he studied with William Pleeth and Pierre Fournier, before joining the Philharmonia Orchestra as sub-principal cello. He also worked extensively at Aldeburgh, forming the Brindisi String Quartet and working closely with Sir Peter Pears as continuo cellist and as principal cellist of the Britten Pears Orchestra. At this time he toured much of Europe with the Brindisi Quartet, making numerous festival appearances and broadcasts.
He left the Philharmonia in 1988 to take up the position of principal cello with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, touring extensively. In 1990 he returned to Scotland to take up the post of principal cellist with Scottish Opera Orchestra, and founded the Chamber Group of Scotland with Sally Beamish and James MacMillan, performing and broadcasting a wide range of both solo and chamber music.
Robert is artistic director of Red Note Ensemble, which specialises in contemporary repertoire and has a busy schedule of projects throughout the UK and Europe. He has broadcast frequently as soloist and chamber musician on BBC
television and BBC Radio 3, including several live performances on the latter station’s In Tune programme. He is a founder member of the Da Vinci Piano Trio, who play and broadcast widely in the UK, and also performs regularly with guitarist Allan Neave.
Robert has performed concerts and recitals throughout the UK, including the Cheltenham, Aldeburgh, Gloucester, Norwich, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and St Magnus festivals, as well as at several European festivals and at the International Musicians Seminar (IMS) Prussia Cove. He has recorded several critically acclaimed CDs, including the complete cello works of Sally Beamish for the Swedish label BIS, and for Delphian, solo works by Dallapiccola (DCD34020), the cello music of Giles Swayne (DCD34073) and of William Sweeney (DCD34113), and the Rachmaninov and Shostakovich sonatas (DCD34034), as well as three further discs with Red Note Ensemble: portrait discs of the composers John McLeod (DCD34155), Eddie McGuire (DCD34157) and David Wilde (DCD34179, forthcoming in autumn 2016).
Robert Irvine is a senior professor of cello and chamber music and Head of Cello Studies at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He plays on a fine cello by Melvyn Goldsmith, a copy of a 1695 Rugeri, and uses a superb bow made in 2015 by Howard Green.
Also available on Delphian
Giles Swayne: Music for cello and piano
Robert Irvine cello, Fali Pavri piano
DCD34073
Giles Swayne’s works for cello exhibit an astonishing array of moods and colours.
The restless beauty of Four Lyrical Pieces and strident romanticism of the Sonata offer remarkable counterpoint to his Suite for solo cello. Canto seduces the listener with its symbiotic blend of African traditional and Western art music.
‘Superbly played … recorded with trademark spaciousness and clarity. [Canto] projects that positive tone and enquiring spirit which represent this composer at his considerable best’
— Gramophone, March 2008
‘This music is ablaze with colour and irrepressible energy. Irvine and Pavri make it truly sing’
— The Scotsman, March 2008
Rachmaninov / Shostakovich: Sonatas for Cello and Piano
Robert Irvine cello, Graeme McNaught piano
DCD34034
Along with his famous Piano Concerto No 2, Rachmaninov’s impassioned Cello Sonata of 1901 is one of the two crucial works that signalled the composer’s recovery from an intense depression. Acknowledging the precedent of Chopin’s sonata both in its G minor tonality and in the importance given to the piano part, it is joined here by Shostakovich’s Beethovenian sonata of 1934.
‘Rarely can [the Rachmaninov] have been recorded in a performance of such potent and poetic intensity, intelligence and clarity … Shostakovich’s Cello
Sonata is equally well done: poised, subtle and controlled where it needs to be, but appositely pugnacious, brittle and pointed in the scherzo’
— Sunday Times, July 2008
‘… performances of exhilarating musicality and intimate understanding. Proof couldn’t be stronger that it’s not always the most marketed names that produce the finest interpretations’
— Classic FM Magazine, September 2008
William Sweeney: Tree o’ Licht
Robert Irvine, Erkki Lahesmaa cellos, Fali Pavri piano
DCD34113
Both musically impassioned and socially engaged, William Sweeney’s music is at its most eloquent when voiced by that most human of instruments, the cello. The player navigates a stormy electronic landscape in the Borges-inspired The Poet Tells of his Fame, while Schumann lies behind the powerfully argued Sonata for Cello and Piano, recipient of a 2011 BASCA British Composer Award. The Sonata bears a joint dedication to Delphian artist Robert Irvine and to Erkki Lahesmaa – ‘keepers’, as Sweeney calls them, ‘of the cello’s inner voice’ – and Irvine is joined by his Finnish colleague here in the 2008 duo The Tree o’ Licht, in which Gaelic psalmody is transmuted into deepest instrumental expressivity.
‘luminous … an intriguing combination of exploration and introspection’ — The Independent, August 2013
Eddie McGuire: Entangled Fortunes
Red Note Ensemble
DCD34157
Eddie McGuire is one of Scotland’s greatest living composers. A renaissance man, his compositional voice is informed by a broad wealth of cultural experience and by an unlimited melodic creativity. In this intensely beautiful and unpretentious music, folk-like tunes appear naturally, taking their place in a world of invention large enough to contain minimalist gestures, intense romanticism, meditative silence and sudden drama. In the second of two discs programmed to initiate their new recording partnership with Delphian, Red Note Ensemble bring passion and care to this music – a token of the regard in which McGuire is held by Scottish musicians of all generations.
‘Red Note is the ideal ensemble to champion McGuire’s folk-rich music: the players shift between silvery laments, robust dances and angular squalls in a blink’
— The Guardian, July 2015