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Fanfare

It really is great to see the name of Robert Saxton on a disc: his presence and music were keenly felt in the 1980s and 1990s on the London scene, his music always a compelling mix of deep thought and visceral impact. While performances of his music seem less prevalent in the British capital these days, this disc offers a reminder of his remarkable stature.

The string quartets are magnificent. The Third was completed in 2009 on a South Bank Centre commission, and was premiered at that venue’s Queen Elizabeth Hall that year by the Arditti Quartet. The first movement is Departure and Return—in technical terms, to and from the note “D.” In between is a vortex: counterpoint seems the wrong word; it is more as if the music rotates, finally settling (or more accurately, “arriving”) back on the note “D.” Winter Light is itself in three sections: “Winter Light,” “Hymn to the Winter Light,” and “The Fading of the Winter Light.” Glassy sounds pervade the piece, and performed with such control as here, the effect is unutterably beautiful. Ice as sound, one might say. The central Dance does absolutely what it says on the tin, the Kreutzer’s rhythms light, nay, elevated. Saxton’s achievement is to convey joy within an advanced harmonic language (one that is identifiably his). There is quite a whirligig at one point, Neil Heyde’s cello digging in as Peter Sheppard Skaerved goes nuts above. Sea Ground balances Winter Light in stasis, but now warmer of heart (and temperature, presumably), a Lydian A♭ passacaglia. And how, at an arrival point when the players light upon and maintain a sonority, the music seems lit from within. The finale is mobile, almost a perpetuum mobile, and we find material from the first movement recuring. A return there might have been, but the cycle begins again. Saxton’s ability to create arrival points with non-tonal means is mightily impressive on a technical level; but my, how his music cuts to the heart. With a performance of such technical perfection and a superb recording engineered by Adaq Khan, everything, but everything, is in place.

The String Quartet No. 4 is a Sheppard Skaerved commission for the Kreutzer Quartet (funded by the Britten-Pears Foundation). Cast in seven movements, it is intended to form a “Creation/Life” cycle. Each movement’s initial pitch is a fifth higher than the predecessor, a symbol of ascent. Wavebreak is a composed imitation of the unstoppable power of maritime Nature; Time Spiral, another passacaglia, is incredibly emotive. Some gestures seem like echoes from afar (admittedly a great distance) of Britten, another composer who was definitely not passacaglia-averse. Saxton’s evocations of Nature’s interior aspect are extraordinary: we had Winter Light earlier, now Nightscape, which out-Bartóks Bartók. The harmonies really “speak” here, at times imitations perhaps of a viol consort reframed into contemporary parlance. The Kreutzer’s collective control at the close is stunning; out of the silence emerges “… the dancing will never be done …,” its title a reference to Siegfried Sassoon’s poem “Everyone Sang.” This is the heart of the work, its central point, a knot of energy spinning, unstoppable. The quote “… at the still turning point of the world” is from the famous Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot; the note “A” forms an axis around which harmonics emerge and disappear. A complement (or perhaps antidote) to the ribaldry of the dance, perhaps. A modernist Hymn follows, a chorale underpinned by pizzicato cello, with unison arrival points powerful, solos as po-faced as many a church hymn. The lead-in to the finale is a compositional masterstroke, so smooth: Daybreak itself (said finale) is both assimilation and summary of ideas already set out, an assemblage leading to a mood of, in the composer’s words, “cautious affirmation and hope.”

The Sonata for Solo Violin (2002/3) is subtitled “Reflections on Time.” One of the major inspirations is the artwork of Peter Sheppard Skaerved; another, the river Thames (both violinist and composer are based in London); yet another, the death of writer Martin Amis and his book Time’s Arrow (1991), a rare book written in reverse time (personally, I found it hard to read, but that’s just me). The music ebbs and flows like the tide; there is also a sense of waves around a phasal structure. Palindromes inform the music, including at the macro level (the five movements from a fast-slow-fast-slow-fast entity). While the UK premiere was at Goldsmith’s College (the world premiere took place at Pharos Contemporary Music Festival, Cyprus), the performance the next day, in front of the composer, at Robinson College, Cambridge, also included the violinist’s paintings that inspired the piece. None of the movements have titles, but they form an unbroken thread of soliloquy: I would go as far as to say this one of the finest solo violin sonatas in existence. Long it might be, but not a note is wasted. The ideas are compelling, and compellingly presented and executed: this is violin playing of the highest level. Sheppard Skaerved has dedicated his life to the violin music of our time, inspiring, I imagine, a whole new repertoire, and this is one of the finest fruits of his activity. The booklet note on this work is extensive, detailing its genesis, conversations between composer and violinist, and myriad insights into the music itself. Sheppard Skaerved’s virtuosity is pretty much a given, but he outdoes himself in the extended final movement (some 7:28 long). How he maintains tuning at that speed is beyond me.

The booklet is a goldmine of information from first-hand accounts (composer and performer). A valuable, and astonishing, release; documentation of contemporary music as important as this is vital. Get thee in my Want List.