Cyprus Today, October-December 2015 - page 60

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well-known figure, with performances of his
dynamic and rhythmically inventive works
taking place all over the world. Television
viewers will recognise his music from his
award-winning collaboration with movie
director Peter Greenaway for the BBC2 series
Not Mozart.
Written and co-directed by Martland, A
Temporary Arrangement with the Sea is a highly
personal reflection, not only on Andriessen’s
artistic personality but also on the world in
which he lives and works.
Co-director Peter West describes the film as “a
montage of fragments and visual comments,
which reflect the composer’s own labyrinthine
musical mind. Just as his music comments on
itself and other artistic worlds, so this film draws
on painting, theatre, literature and historical
archive to create a documentary which holds a
mirror up to itself.”
The screening of the documentary was an
introduction to Andriessen, whose subversive
Workers Union was given its Cyprus premiere
by Het Collectief forty years after it was
composed.
Leaving Home: Dancing on a Volcano and
After the Wake
The evolution of contemporary music
5 October 2015
Directors: Peter Wes, Barrie Gavin, Deborah May
Duration: 100’ (1996)
Written and presented by Sir Simon Rattle,
the foremost British conductor of our day, the
BAFTA-winning art documentary Leaving
Home is a series of independent programmes
forming a fascinating introduction into, and
overview of, the music of the 20th century. The
story of 20th century music is one of leave-
takings in many ways. As a wealth of talented
composers searched for new creative responses
to the world around them, many departured
from the solid ‘home’ foundations of the music
of the 18th and 19 th centuries and had to literally
leave home, displaced by political upheavals.
As a result, a remarkable diversity of expression
developed. The programmes feature Rattle
conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony
Orchestra, leading viewers on an exhilarating
journey through the music of our time,
explaining the chief musical developments
from Mahler to the present. Pharos screened
two of these programmes – the first in the
Series, Dancing on a Volcano, as well as the
sixth episode, After the Wake .
Dancing on a Volcano describes a great musical
culture in decline, in turn of 19th century Vienna.
From that decline erupted a musical revolution,
whose reverberations have continued to this
day. The names of Schoenberg, Webern and
Berg still strike terror into the hearts of many
concert-goers, but with Simon Rattle we hear,
in this music’s brooding power, not only the
collapse of the oldAustro-German order and the
rise of fascism, but also the portents of the music
to come in the second half of the 20th century.
The episode includes excerpts from Wagner’s
Tristan und Isolde, Mahler’s Symphony No.7,
R. Strauss’ Electra , Schoenberg’s Verklärte
Nacht and Five Orchestral Pieces Op.16,
Berg’s Violin Concerto and Webern’s Five
Pieces for Orchestra Op.10.
After the Wake looks both backwards and
forwards. It considers the musical legacy of the
two men who had dominated the first part of
the 20th century – Schoenberg and R. Strauss –
and looks at the post-war generation of young
Europeans, such as Boulez and Stockhausen, who
were determined to erase the recent past and build
a completely new music for the new Europe.
The episode includes excerpts from R. Strauss’
Four Last Songs, Schoenberg’s A Survivor
from Warsaw, Britten’s Serenate for tenor, horn
and strings, Stravinsky’s Agon, Stockhausen’s
Gruppen and Boulez’ Marteau sans maître.