JOANNA MacGREGOR
SATURDAY 3rd MARCH 2012 at 8:00 pm
Programme (for programme notes, see below)
MacGregor - Lost Highway - Gospel and Blues from the Deep South
Piazzolla arr MacGregor - Six Tangos
Bach - Goldberg Variations BWV988
Programme Notes
Lost Highway: Gospel and Blues from the Deep South
Trad Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child
MacGregor Lowside Blues
Trad Deep River
Professor Longhair (1918-80) Big Chief
Trad Ain't no grave gonna hold my body down
Lost Highway started life as a loose set of piano pieces I made for myself, drawing on childhood experiences of playing gospel and blues, as well as recent trips to the Mississippi Delta. I've arranged gospel hymns Mahalia Jackson's rich, velvety voice made famous, and included the New Orleans funk genius Professor Longhair, represented by Big Chief; as Dr John says, 'Professor Longhair put 'funk' into music; he's the father of the stuff.' I wrote Lowside Blues on a short trip down Highway 61, and to my amazement it's now known to many young players, as it was selected for an Associated Board exam! (The stamps are a tribute to great blues players like Skip James, who would tap a wooden board under the piano for percussive effects.)
Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) Six Tangos arr MacGregor
Tanguedia
Buenos Aires Hora Cero
Milonga del Angel
Michelangelo 70
Soledad
Libertango
Astor Piazzolla was a master of the bandoneon - the Argentine accordion - and single-handedly re-invented Argentina's greatest musical form, the tango, with a great deal of controversy. Spending his childhood in a poor part of New York (where his parents worked for the Mafia), he headed back to his hometown Buenos Aires at 16, and formed his own orchestra. It took him 20 years to conquer the hearts of the aficionados – and his melting pot of modern jazz, classical and folkloric Latin music so incensed tango purists that he regularly received death threats, adding to his already tumultuous private life and financial failures. Really big hits, like Milonga del Angel and Libertango, ensured Piazzolla was finally recognized as a genius, whose dark music is steeped in Hispanic, Italian and Jewish ideas.
Interval
Johann Sebastian Bach 1685-1750 Goldberg Variations BWV 988
(Aria mit 30 Veränderungen; Clavier-Übung Teil IV)
I had the score of the Goldberg Variations on my piano for twenty years before I dared open it. I'd always played a lot of Bach, ever since I was a little girl; but somehow the reputation of this piece intimidated me, so I got on with playing his other works – partitas, preludes and fugues, French suites and concertos, even the Art of Fugue (which is very daunting).
Finally I opened the first page, to the Aria. G major is very kind, benevolent key, and the opening is intimate and confiding; the early variations are sunny, warm, humorous. Rather a like a cliffhanging plot, each variation somehow contains the seeds of the next one, until you're drawn into the deepest part of a labyrinth; the music grows complex, and turns dark, weary, tragic. But holding tightly onto the thread, we're out again, back with domestic life, singing the Aria once more. The music is the same, but we have changed.
So the surprise is, then, that the Goldbergs manage to be both dreamlike and reflective – a nod to the fable they were written to cure a case of aristocratic insomnia – as well as earthy, discursive and playful. Boogie-woogie players talk about having 'a left hand like God', and surely Bach's descending bass lines – the springboard for every variation, as well as contributing a witty commentary – deserve a whole study of their own. It also strikes me as an extraordinarily contemporary piece, by which I mean Bach imitates all his contemporaries (Scarlatti, Rameau, Corelli and Handel) but does them competitively better; and all to a self-imposed scheme, a set of rising canons every three variations. There's an unstoppable life force in the music, which encompasses despair and solitude, as well as joy.
The Goldberg Variations demand a disciplined technique, but one that needs to be mercurial and flexible; players are forced to acquire a quick brain to dodge between different dance styles, with their filigree, cunning counterpoint. It was first published in the four-volume set Clavier-Übung – Keyboard Practice – in 1741, and I like Bach's comment that the music is prepared 'for the soul's delight of music-lovers'. It's music to instruct and stretch the technique, music to invite reflection and application to everyday life. We tend to assume that pieces are written with a public performance in mind, but even the Goldberg Variations, glitteringly bravura as they are, can be intensely private.
I'm not sure if Bach single-handedly invented this idea, but the Goldberg Variations is the godfather to the massive keyboard cycle, where a single player sets out on a long, transformative journey. (Without it, hard to imagine Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus, even Cage's Sonatas and Interludes.) The dramatic pacing is masterly. The first ten are short, dance-like; Bach is carefully revealing his hand. The next ten begin to open up, no.13 an expressive turning point. Canons start employing inversions, and the minor tonality is introduced. Variations start to be longer, and feel darker, more nuanced. No.22, a still meditation on the bass line, guides us onto another level, in preparation for the abyss of no.25. From then on the variations go like the wind. And you know the ending.
Aria
Variation 1 Witty two-part invention
Variation 2 Two flamingos curling round each other, right hand; left hand occasionally joins in
Variation 3 First rung of the ladder: canon in unison (canons always happen in the upper two voices, bass line
supports and comments)
Variation 4 Muscular three-note figure x 35
Variation 5 Dangerous hand-diving over semiquavers. First of many toccatas where hapless performer plays
with arms crossed
Variation 6 Mellow canon at the second
Variation 7 Delicious siciliano
Variation 8 Treacherous study. Rhythm in L.H. will be back in no. 20
Variation 9 Tender canon at the third
Variation 10 Four-part fughetta; earthy and humorous like final Quodlibet
Variation 11 (I was renting an apartment in Sydney, trying to learn the Goldbergs. Every morning on my way
to the studio I would pass a shop selling Betty Boop T-shirts. This became the 'Betty Boop' variation)
Variation 12 Canon at the 4th, but the second voice is inverted
Variation 13 Unusually, a lot of slurs and staccato markings from Bach. A movement of real depth and beauty
Variation 14 Rameau let loose
Variation 15 Canon at the 5th; first movement (of three) in G minor. Inverted second voice again (the end
reminds me of a Ligeti étude which creeps off the top of the keyboard)
Variation 16 French overture – much ornamentation – and courtly dance
Variation 17 Laughing gas
Variation 18 Canon at the 6th. Shadow-play
Variation 19 Dreamy in 3/8
Variation 20 Machine-gun fire
Variation 21 Canon at the 7th. Chromatic, weary G minor
Variation 22 A Tallis motet; gateway to another world (Art of Fugue?)
Variation 23 Scarlatti, with outbursts of 3rds and 6ths
Variation 24 Canon at the octave. Corelli Christmas Concerto
Variation 25 The great Pietà in G minor. Without this, there could be no Chopin, no Beethoven's Diabelli
variation no.31, no Pamina's aria
Variation 26 A mighty ruach
Variation 27 Canon at the 9th
Variation 28 This would make the harpsichord rattle and hum (and hear the end of Beethoven's Op 109,
111..?)
Variation 29 Shaking chords and free-styling
Variation 30 Quodlibet. Two folksongs, favourites in the Bach household: 'I've not been with you for so
long Come closer, closer, closer' and 'Cabbage and Beets drove me away Had my mother cooked some
meat then I'd have stayed much longer'
Aria Alpha Omega
Notes by Joanna MacGregor
Joanna MacGregor is thought of as one of the world's most innovative musicians, committed to expressing musical connections across increasingly diverse and original programming. Appointed Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music in September 2011, she is also the Artistic Director of Bath International Music Festival. She was the guest curator of the multi-arts Deloitte Ignite Festival at the Royal Opera House in 2010, bringing together visual artists, contemporary dance, film and theatre installations, as well as music collaborations. She has performed in over eighty countries, often appearing as a solo artist with many of the world's leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio and Oslo Philharmonic Orchestras and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She has worked with many eminent conductors - Pierre Boulez, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Simon Rattle and Michael Tilson Thomas amongst them - and has premiered many landmark compositions ranging from Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Django Bates to John Adams and James MacMillan. In May 2010 she gave two acclaimed performances of Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev.
Joanna MacGregor made her conducting debut in 2002 and regularly directs her own orchestral projects. She enjoys a close artistic partnership as conductor and performer with Britten Sinfonia, in programmes ranging from classical music to new collaborations with jazz and world musicians. This fifteen-year relationship continued last season with tours in Spain, Mexico and South America, and a performance at the City of London Festival. She has toured South Africa with jazz artist Moses Molelekwa, recorded with pop artist and tabla player Talvin Singh, collaborated with Brian Eno, and in 2003 toured China with Crossborder; created with Jin Xing's Contemporary Dance Theatre of Shanghai, combining Chinese traditional music with computer technology and film.
As a recording artist Joanna MacGregor is a veteran of over 30 solo recordings, ranging from Bach, Scarlatti, Ravel and Debussy, to jazz and contemporary music. Her own record label SoundCircus was founded in 1998 and has released many highly successful recordings including the Mercury prize-nominated Play; current releases include Sidewalk Dances – music by the New York street musician Moondog - and Deep River, music inspired by the Deep South, with saxophonist Andy Sheppard. Last year Live in Buenos Aires and Bach's Goldberg Variations, recorded at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, was released by Warner Classical and Jazz.
Joanna MacGregor holds Professorships at Liverpool Hope University and the Royal College of Art, and has received honorary Fellowships from the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity College of Music and New Hall, Cambridge, as well as numerous Honorary Doctorates. From 1997-2000 she was Professor of Music at Gresham College, London where she gave a series of public lectures. She was the subject of a South Bank show in 2002; and her lively interest in education is reflected in her ongoing series of music books for young children, PianoWorld, hailed as 'a new series for the Millenium'.