Cockerham, Manchester Camerata, Sheen, Martin Harris Centre, Manchester review - re-enacting the dawn of modernism

Manchester Camerata have had a ten-year association with composer-conductor Jack Sheen. For this short programme, one of the free Walter Carroll Lunchtime Concert series at the Martin Harris Centre in the University of Manchester, he and they created a partial re-enactment of the January 1914 inaugural concert of the Société Musicale Indépendante in Paris.To works by Stravinsky, Delage and Ravel were added two UK premieres, by Sheen himself and by Isabella Gellis. 

The plan back in 1914 had been to set new compositions alongside the recently created Pierrot Lunaire by Schoenberg, which explains why the instrumentation of each of the three 111-year-old pieces has much in common with the others. They’re for solo soprano and various combinations of string quartet plus flute(s), oboe, clarinet(s), harp, piano and percussion. For this concert the soloist was Eleonore Cockerham, a former full-time member of VOCES8 who still works with them frequently and also with Manchester’s Kantos Chamber Choir and other groups.

That concert was the dawn of modernism, says the Camerata blurb (The Rite of Spring had just been heard), and what the three “miniature masterpieces” from it have in common is also that they’re very concise. Stravinsky’s Three Japanese Lyrics on this occasion formed a foil to the first of the new works. The first, Akahito, (dedicated to Delarge) was the occasion for Eleonore Cockerham  (pictured right) to impose herself resolutely on the vocal line – the score doesn’t specify what dynamic level is required – as she accomplished the leaping melodic style it requires, and the second, Mazatsumi, which is marked forte for the singer, was similarly positive alongside the rapid and delicate instrumental lines that both precede and then mainly underpin it. The third, Tsaraiuki, dedicated to Ravel, is marked tranquillo and its slow pace and long, lyrical lines for the voice created their own sense of stillness.

Isabella Gellis’s I wish I could speak to you, a setting of part of “Mouths Dry with Hatred” by the Romanian poet Dan Sociu, is not unlike it in mood, its striking instrumental colours growing in intensity as they thicken (there’s more than a touch of musical impressionism there) and ending with a brief moment of harmonic warmth from the strings.

Delarge’s Quatres poèmes hindous was the result of a trip to India (then British India) and shows an independent mind at work, away from the influence of his contemporaries at the time of writing. They’re mélodies, each with an Indian place name as its title, the first dedicated to Ravel and the last to Stravinsky. The first has rich chromatic chording and spare, open textures, the second (although the words are actually from Heine) gets its Indian flavour from some almost sitar-like cello effects (“pizzicato-glissando”), which were expertly rendered by Camerata principal Hannah Roberts, and solos from leader Caroline Pether and principal oboe Rachel Clegg, before the long melismatic vocal line, with its gradations of tone and articulation, was superbly sung by Eleonore Cockerham. There’s a traditionally “Eastern” feel to the third and fourth songs, too – attractively unashamed exoticism.

The fourth item on the programme was Jack Sheen’s own premiere: Hollow propranolol séance (II). I’m not at all clear what the title’s about, but the piece itself is a substantial one, in which there are novel instrumental effects (a small cymbal gently played with soft sticks sounding like an electric kettle coming to the boil, a low rumble from the big drum like the distant train noise you hear in the stalls at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool, and piano and string quartet whispers among the more striking), and the voice is used as an element in the texture rather than as soloist. It makes for an ethereal and haunting experience, which may be the point – the Camerata say it’s an attempt to conjure some kind of presence out of the fragile whirring we hear in our empty rooms … depends on the age of the central heating, I guess. It certainly had a quality of peacefulness.

The final work was Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, three songs written for that 1914 concert, the first dedicated to Stravinsky and the last to Satie. It’s not unlike Ravel in “fairy” style that we know from other works, at the beginning of Soupir, but in miniaturist mode, and Placet futile is unmistakably his voice, with strings and wind creating a cushion of sound for the voice to rest in and growing to more elaborate and intense textures (double octaves for the strings): Surgi de la croupe et du bond is the most unorthodox and challenging.

But it made a superb vehicle for Eleonore Cockerham to demonstrate her precision of intonation and her range of tone colours. Modernism may have been dawning, but Impressionism still had much to say.

• · Further performance at Wigmore Hall, London on 18 October
  
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