Más Kantu for bassoon and piano - Kantu Kantukantu for solo double bass

At the request of a friend in Bolivia, I recently composed a piece for bassoon and piano. Its title is Más Kantu.

Its predecessor, Kantu Kantukantu (Vienna, 2021) is for solo double bass and was written at the behest of double-bassist James Rapport. This project posed the challenge, for me considerable, of dealing with a solo, mostly monophonic instrument. Not having the interaction between forces that gives chamber music and orchestral music their drive has always been an inhibiting factor for composers like me. I had always shrunk from the challenge of the solo monophonic piece and had admired my colleagues and students in Belfast and Newcastle when they embarked on such a project.

But James Rapport is persuasive, and he caught me in a situation of needing a creative challenge, so I took up the gauntlet. The result is Kantu Kantukantu. This is a piece that explores a playful side of the double bass. Partly because the dark sonorities of the contrabass range seemed to demand it, partly because I was feeling ready for something ludic in 2021, I opted for a divertimento that should be at the same time an affectionate tribute to the Quechua language.

The way it manifested itself in the milieu of my youth, Quechua was the language of warmth, affection and satire. I never mastered the language, but it was always enjoyable to borrow the odd word which would express certain nuances more effectively than any Spanish equivalent. Even more enjoyable to hear older people do it, with their better knowledge of Quechua.

How do you engage with a language in an instrumental piece? Simple: you cheat. Unless you find a better way, you do as I did: you require your instrumentalist to speak or to sing. I required both, demanding of my double-bass player skills he hadn't necessarily acquired in his training and earlier career. Whether by doing so I shirked the challenge of writing for a solo monophonic instrument is a question I will leave to the critics. What I know I succeeded in was making the writing process much more pleasurable than it would otherwise have been. And I am sure that Kantu Kantukantu is a livelier, more engaging piece than it would have been without the words. There is no denying that the onus on the player is heavier as a result, but I have faith that James Rapport will not be the only brave soul to relish the challenge.

Notwithstanding the words and the odd passage of harmony or dialogue between the voice and the instrument, Kantu Kantukantu remains, whatever the critics may say, a monophonic piece. This left two lingering questions that struck me as worth answering. One is fairly obvious: would the musical material stand on its own two feet without the words? The other question may be perhaps less obvious, but, for a monophobic such as I, it is no less intriguing: is the material thus generated inherently monophonic? Or is it susceptible of being treated as one part of a conversation, one layer in a richer texture? These were to be the "research questions" (to borrow from the university jargon I have left behind) for the next piece.

Más Kantu is for bassoon and piano. Reflecting the increased importance of its subject matter in my life, Más Kantu is based on the same material as the former piece, with the adaptations in range and instrumental technique necessitated to make the new piece function in its new guise. Only occasionally does the bassoon go off in its own new direction, and then it does so briefly and only to a slight extent. The fresh invention is in the piano part, and there invention had to be bridled to preserve the character of the parent composition.

I am looking forward to hearing Más Kantu for the first time. Until then, my provisional impression is that it is a drastic, but recognisable transformation of Kantu Kantukantu. The efforts to stay close to the spirit of the parent piece - and, where applicable, to the letter too - have given it a restraint that may well be its distinctive quality. A particular curiosity will be to ascertain to what extent the two pieces are yoked together or can exist independently.

City Hall

Walking the streets of Newcastle yesterday, I came to the old City Hall. To call it ‘old’ does not mean that it is particularly ancient; it opened in 1927, which, for the standards of central Newcastle, is mature, but not that aged. Nor does it mean that there is a new one to replace it - not formally, at least.  In musical terms, City Hall is an old venue because many of the events that used to take place there are now put on in the modern, scenic and altogether more glamorous Sage Gateshead. 

Since its opening in December 2004, Sage Gateshead has developed a high profile, attracting the artists and the punters that would formerly have come to City Hall - and more, many more artists and many more punters. The river views make going to Sage Gateshead an even more attractive, aesthetically meaningful experience.  

Not much hope left for City Hall, it would seem. And yet, it is still standing. It has survived threats of closure and it has outlived the City Baths nextdoor. It now calls itself 02 City Hall Newcastle and its descriptions of itself defiantly define it as a concert hall. 

Seeing it out of the blue yesterday, I was reminded of Mauricio Kagel's delight when he was my guest to attend the performance of a work of his at Ulster Hall in Belfast in 1993. He said words to the effect that these old halls were the heart of a city's music: good acoustics, central location, a sense of history. Why replace them?

In the late 1990s and early 2000s City Hall was a weekly stop for me. The concerts of Northern Sinfonia - yes, this was before it was awarded its royal appellation - took place there, I believe, almost always on a Friday evening. I remember some extraordinary ones, including one conducted by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky. 

For me the strongest memory is the Newcastle première in 2000 of my Approaching Melmoth for baritone, choir and orchestra. The commission had come from Northern Sinfonia's then executive director, John Summers, before he left to direct the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester. The management recruited an excellent team including none other than Sir Thomas Allen in the solo part and the conductor Nicholas Cleobury. The management also asked me what piece would go well with mine in the programme, and my suggestion of Bach’s Cantata No. 4 was accepted. I had time to reflect on that choice and to build in connections to it in my own piece. 

After a pre-première in Carlisle which took the edge off everybody’s nerves, the team gave a confident, hugely committed performance at City Hall. By comparison with other premières I’ve been blessed with, say, at Lincoln Center or in those fabulous new halls in Spain, this was perhaps not the most glamorous of settings, but the piece was one of my strongest, the team was hard to surpass and the audience responded with enthusiasm. 

One of the best musical memories. 

Munirando II: A belated but but very welcome première

 Darragh rehearsing Munirando II for violin and piano was written in 1998 for a virtuoso player based in New York; it may be kinder not to name them, even though I have great respect and fondness for them. In the late 1990s I had a happy association with New York's Juilliard School. Their orchestra performed my Fuego in 1995 and the New Juilliard Ensemble commissioned my Peregrine and gave its première in 1996. They even revived it later, once at the Museum of Modern Art and again in 2005, for which occasion I revised it extensively. 

 

Coming into contact with the vibrant community of advanced student performers at Juilliard was a galvanising experience. They were players for whom technique appeared to have ceased to be an obstacle. They relished challenge and were not only not daunted by difficulty or elaboration or novelty, but they relished it. It was invigorating. After attending several concerts of Joel Sachs’s excellent Focus Festival I felt something akin to intoxication. There was so much talent there, such a gold mine on which to work, if only there were the opportunity.

The opportunity offered itself to me when one of the postgraduate violinists asked me to write a piece for their masters recital. This felt exactly right: it was a logical next step after Fuego and Peregrine, and it would enable me to work more closely with one of these outstanding young virtuosi. I set out to write a piece that would deploy the virtuosity that clearly was on offer, and I also wanted to challenge and extend the young player’s musicality, stretching their capabilities and generating a tension that, on its release towards the end, would provide a rewarding experience for player and audience alike. And, of course, I wanted to explore a particular idea I had had in mind for some time. I took time to produce the result I aspired to, taking, I think, around a year to complete the work.

When the piece was ready and shipped to New York, the player informed me politely that they would not be able to do justice to it in the time given. Aside from the disappointment this caused me, it meant the consignment of Munirando II to a long period of languishment on my shelves. Over the years I offered it to various players, but always had the same reply: sorry, too difficult. In frustration, I revised it in 2002 to make it more accessible, while still preserving its character of challenging virtuosity. In this revised form, breaking a long-held principle, I submitted the piece to a composer’s competition, the UK and Eire Violin and Piano Competition. Although sceptical of competitions in such a personal field as the creation of music, I harboured the hope that a lucky outcome might finally secure a performance for Munirando II. The piece was shortlisted but not chosen for the prize. Intriguingly, I received a communication to the effect that the chairman of the jury, the late Yfrah Nieman, would be interested in performing the piece if I would find a pianist and a venue. Although vaguely flattering, this seemed a strange idea in the circumstances and I was unsure how to take it. After thinking about it for some time I wrote declining the offer.

It would be another six years before the brave person came up expressing a serious intention to perform Munirando II: the young virtuoso Darragh Morgan, whom I had known in the early 1990s when he was a schoolboy in Belfast and I was composer in residence at Queen’s University. Even in those early days Darragh was showing impressive flair and accomplished technique. He left Belfast for music college and since then I heard about him through third parties, with news of how well he was doing. I sent him the piece and a couple of years later he said he would do it, with his official pianist Mary Dullea. I am delighted, and full of anticipation to hear what Darragh and Mary will do with Munirando II on 5 February at 7.30 PM in the Schott Recital Room, London.

As the title suggests, the piece is part of a series, the first of which was Munirando for clarinet and piano, commissioned by the Park Lane Group in 1995. In both cases the intention is to explore ideas of virtuosity and continuous flow, that maddeningly enviable quality of Bach’s music, taking it into the area of relentlessness.