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| Wayne McGregor & Ben Cullen Williams: A Body For Harnasie - London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: Mark Allan) |
Tania León: Raíces, Ravel: La Valse, Wayne McGregor & Ben Cullen Williams: A Body for Harnasie (based on Szymanowksi's Harnasie); London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner, Robert Murray, Vlaams Radiokoor
Reviewed 6 March 2024
Szymanowski's rarely performed late ballet-pantomime in a terrific performance that vividly brought out the work's colour and symphonic depth, with a visual installation that did not always match this
Karol Szymanowski's Harnasie is one of his late, folk-imbued works inspired by the music of the Polish Tatra mountains. Harnasie, the ballet-pantomime which Szymanowski worked on from 1923 to 1931, not only uses the music but sets its story in the Tatra mountains too. It remains, however, an unjustly neglected work. On 6 March 2024 at the Royal Festival Hall, Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra gave us a rare chance to hear Szymanowski's Harnasie as part of a concert that included the world premiere of Tania León's Raíces (Origins) and Ravel's La valse. Szymanowski's music was presented as part of A Body for Harnasie, a work by choreographer Wayne McGregor and designer Ben Cullen Williams that was part installation, part dance and part film, with Gardner and the LPO being joined by tenor Robert Murray and the Vlaams Radiokoor.
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| Wayne McGregor & Ben Cullen Williams: A Body For Harnasie - London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: Mark Allan) |
Ben Cullen Williams' installation was suspended over the orchestra, part screen, part sculpture, it descended low enough that part of the stage was taken up, thus leading the orchestra to be awkwardly laid out for the whole concert.
We began with Tania León's Raíces (Origins). Leon is the LPO's current composer in residence, and the new work has as its title the Spanish word Raíces which means origins or roots, those in question being partly Leon's own as she is Cuban with a mix of Spanish, Cuban, Chinese and French in her heritage.
It is a large-scale work for a big orchestra that began with strings playing high and with harmonics, presenting us with tantalising fragments of material. Short rhythmic phrases developed into a rather Copland-esque feel, and there was a sense of the material never quite settling down. There were up-tempo sections where the music was imbued with a sense of dance and moments of stasis, but despite changes of timbre and texture, the atmosphere of the piece remained one of restless expectation. Though the longed for climax, the synthesis of all those tantalising fragments of melody, never quite came.
Following this we had Ravel's choreographic poem, La valse which dates from just before Szymanowski started work on Harnasie. Gardner's approach to La valse was more definite and rather less 'haunted ballroom' than some. It began at quite a speedy tempo, the bass heartbeat leading to something rather sinister. There was a sense of clarity and definition to this performance, everything was vivid and nothing was nebulous. When the strings first came in, it was more Vienna on acid than the waltz-king, developing into a nervy and unnerving performance, where the impetus to keep going was immense. The climax was intense and stylised leading to virtuoso, quasi-orgasm at the end.
Szymanowski's Harnasie has a scenario, about a woman about to get married but falling in love with a robber, Harnas, who ultimately abducts her. But the composer was evidently not that bothered about strictness in the story-telling, and the approach at this performance was completely abstract. Ben Cullen Williams' installation functioned partly as screen, for the projection of film, and partly as sculpture. The projections continued whilst the sculpture was in motion, thus rendering the visual image fragmented and fractured. The visual images began with AI generated dance, intercut with images from the Tatra mountains but gradually as the piece developed the visual component became more abstract, with dance dropping away. The AI generated dance images seemed an unnecessary complication, visually they looked too anime-like and despite the use of AI there seemed little coordination between music and movement. The whole was intriguing and disturbing, not necessarily a complement to Szymanowski's music.
Thankfully the performance from Gardner and the LPO was vivid enough to stand on its own. Harnasie is a complex, symphonic work rather than a naïve, descriptive pantomime, and whatever original story there was has been subsumed in Szymanowski's musical inspirations. Just as we would rarely nowadays choreograph Bartok's ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, so Harnasie seems to function without dance. The folk influence on the music was clear, but overlaid with complex rhythms and textures; Bartok dosed with Stravinsky, but creating something all of its own. It was a terrific sound world of colours and textures, the music balancing between lush romanticism and more pointed elements, which perhaps is a metaphor for Szymanowski's late period.
The contributions from tenor Robert Murray (placed at the back of the choir stalls) were wonderfully vivid indeed, and complemented by the terrific contributions from the choir. Only towards the end did you feel that there was a dramatic narrative in the music, much of the time it felt like a symphonic exploration of this material. The ending, with an intense choral climax and all hell breaking loose, followed by fragmentary orchestra contributions and a long tenor solo, was intriguing and striking.
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| Wayne McGregor & Ben Cullen Williams: A Body For Harnasie - London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: Mark Allan) |
Gardner and the LPO gave a terrific performance of the work, bringing real intensity to Szymanowski's sometime edgy style and depth to the sound-world. They hardly needed the visuals, but the audience seemed noticeably different to the regular one, so if the event tempted more people into experiencing Harnasie then all the better.
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