Daniel Pioro and Erland Coope
Slowly, very slowly, the sense of something musical emerged, as if the performers were teasingly grappling for out of reach harmony. Only then did Cooper join the party, with delicate, gossamer light touches on the piano. Subsequently, he would play music of sublime beauty, as Daniel Pioro prowled around the performance area, accompanying and complementing faultlessly.
NNF
I first came across Erland Cooper at last year's Timber Festival, where he played a selection from his Orkney repertoire with the help of three cellist chums. It felt like a magical performance at the time, but then everything about Timber felt magical. The smallest of events, it was allowed to legitimately pass through the net of Covid regulations and was a fantastic success amidst a sea of cancellations elsewhere. I was keen to see Cooper again, not least to find out whether the spell he weaved was more to do with circumstance than music. I'm pleased to say that, if anything, his collaboration with Daniel Pioro surpassed my earlier experience, no doubt helped along by a full complement of musicians drawn from Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
With light pouring in from the unobscured windows at St Andrews Hall, it was never going to be clear when the performance proper had started and in hindsight that was a great pity, as I think we the audience would have better appreciated there was bird song being played, and we were supposed to be listening, not talking. Fortunately, by the time the duo emerged accompanied by a half dozen or so string players, the penny had dropped, but before we get into that, I think it fair to mention the staging.
The decision to play the concert in the round was understandable from a performer’s view – the idea of a collegiate group of musicians surrounded by their audience is an attractive one. But someone really should have stepped up when faced with the shape of St Andrew’s Hall. What we got was a singular circle of chairs for those happy few that turned up early enough, blocking the view of those behind them, while greater majority sat up on the banked seating as usual. I can’t imagine anyone got to see the performance well, as the musicians were turned away from us and towards themselves. Granted, music is an aural experience, but it’s always a pleasure to see, not just hear, a live show. Fortunately, what followed eclipsed such trifles, but a better experience would have been had by all if the limitations of the performance space had been embraced rather than ignored.
What did follow is probably best described as challenging. While Cooper sat at an, as yet untouched, piano, his fellow traveller's pawed and scratched and scraped away at their instruments, producing a frequently discordant cacophony of sound. Slowly, very slowly, the sense of something musical emerged, as if the performers were teasingly grappling for out of reach harmony. Only then did Cooper join the party, with delicate, gossamer light touches on the piano. Subsequently, he would play music of sublime beauty, as Daniel Pioro prowled around the performance area, accompanying and complementing faultlessly. Pitched somewhere between Michael Nyman and Ludovico Einaudi, we were treated to some sublime stuff, before being plunged back into frenetic discord.
No program notes were available to rationalise and explain this most complex and involving tone poem, but my take on it was an aural description of life on a windswept Orkney, where the weather – indeed nature itself - can be brutal one moment and glorious the next. It made for an intoxicating, almost hallucinatory, effect, akin to the mind altering experience of Max Richter’s Sleep. I lost all sense of time during the performance, and when it came to an end – with the simple pleasures of bird song – I felt the need to check my watch - it simply didn’t seem possible an hour had passed.
This was a superlative collaborative performance – I find it hard to believe this was the first time they played together live – but I think it fair to say the evening could have been undermined by the choice of venue. The problems with St Andrews Hall are well known to the people of Norwich, but having undergone a rebranding exercise as “The Halls” with a nice new livery, one might that hoped some money had also been spent on decent chairs. My god, they were uncomfortable. I don’t know why there is such a heavy reliance on St Andrews this year, but Norwich is a rich and vibrant cultural city all year round, and if the festival doesn’t inhabit better venues, it’s worth bearing in mind that something else will be, and the festival will be competing with it. With English Touring Opera at the Royal and Twelve Night at the Playhouse there is simply too much going on elsewhere for the festival to assume folk will put up with what is, frankly, a second division, venue. But for the excellence of the performers, this would have seriously mitigated my enjoyment of the performance.
