Reykjavík, Aldeburgh, Snape: sunsets, sunrise

It's been the most discombobulating and wonderful four days, with obscenely early rises made more than bearable by stimulation of mind and heart. I managed only one full day and three concerts at brilliant young pianist-animateur Vikingur Ólafsson's Reykjavík Midsummer Music - feature due on The Arts Desk this coming weekend - because I knew I couldn't miss an Aldeburgh event equal to the ambition of Peter Grimes on the beach, Pierre-Laurent Aimard's journey through Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux from sunrise to midnight. And I'm overjoyed with what I savoured of both.

First night in Iceland did not deliver a midnight sun since the sky remained overcast. But by early evening of the next day, the clouds had cleared. Above and below are Reykjavík scenes at around midnight - the fabulous Harpa where two of the three concerts took place, the central lake (Tjörnin)

and the spire of the ever-impressive Hallgrimskirkja, by which time I think the illuminated clock face was reading 12.40am, from near my hotel past the domestic airfield (full of bird interest, as a future picture-blog will show).

And yes, I and the delightful Samantha Holderness did get out of town for a trip I've been wanting to do for ages - to the old parliament site where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are pulling apart in a spectacular rift valley, Þingvellir. More on that and the birdlife in all three places anon.

So, a 5am rising to get the plane back to Heathrow, a couple of hours' kip at home and then up to Aldeburgh on the eve of birdday. Arrived about 9pm, found the famous fish and chip shop closed and wandered the beach with a nearly full moon in the offing, just about visible in the below picture

though not looking northwards to Thorpe Ness

and plants still providing colour including these yellow horned (sea) poppies.

In bed by 10.30pm, up at 3am to be driven by Rebecca Driver, for whom nothing seems too much trouble, to the Snape marshes to catch the dawn chorus.

It wasn't quite as bird-loud as I'd expected, but my recordings - maybe I can download them as sound files some time - reveal more than I heard. It was good to learn retrospectively, since Messiaen features it in a high clattery trill, that the stridulation I heard was that of the Grasshopper Warbler.

The Alde glinted in the pre-sunrise glow

looking somewhat different to how I'd seen it in post-storm late afternoon light on a flying visit the previous Wednesday (review of the very impressive ENOA opera I saw here).

By the time Aimard's 4.30am recital was over, the sun had risen spectacularly, visible through one of the Oyster Bar windows, and moved upward through cloud to leave only a different sort of glow.

Other Tagesszeiten less well documented, not least my afternoon bathe in a far from freezing North Sea, but vivacious Lucy Cheung sent me this shot of my ascent from the Minsmere bird hide to Aimard's al fresco dusk concert on Whin Hill.

Dark clouds gathered for that, but the rain had the decency to hold off; three hours later, near midnight back at Snape, it was pelting down and continued to do so on the journey back to London early the next morning.

A little light ondes music

Never heard of a composer called Pierre Vellones (pictured above with Maurice Martenot in 1936)? Neither had I until Tuesday evening, when Cynthia Millar, friend and doyenne of that singular Messiaenic bird the ondes Martenot, paid my BBC Symphony Orchestra class at the City Lit a visit. I hope it doesn’t put into the shadow the magnificent light she shed on her long-standing acquaintance with the role her instrument plays in its most monumental incarnation, the Turangalila Symphony, nor all the splendid work she’s done as composer for films and TV, to say that the real revelation was a piece of light music – by Vellones.

A bit of an epoch-maker, as it turned out, since the delightfully dotty Vitamines - a precursor of a light-music piece I think is a real gem, John Malcolm’s Non Stop, better known as the old ITN news theme – was one of two pieces Vellones wrote for his friend, fellow cellist and of course inventor Maurice Martenot as early as 1935. Along with the 'Valse tzigane' Split, it featured both saxophones and the ondes as I’ve never quite heard it before, staccato rather than swoopily legato (though we did also hear a piece of music for TV Cynthia had written which emulated that approach). So here’s the Columbia a-side



pursued in more leisurely style by Split, with the ondes in more familiar mode.



These are two that, we agreed on Tuesday, the fabulous John Wilson could resuscitate with pleasure. And were we to flick back a few years, courtesy of the miracles of YouTube, we could also listen to a more serious Fantaisie Vellones wrote for ondes and piano.

It seems to me there’s almost as much mileage to be got out of the singular histories of these two grands amis as from the story of Lev Termen, the creator of the theremin.


Which is of course operated quite differently from the later ondes – by adjusting finger and arm movements in a force field. The ondes Martenot comprises a keyboard (monodic), the ribbon (ruban) in front of it threaded through a metal ring controlling portamenti and glissandi


and of course the three speakers, of which the most attractive to behold below is the palme, with its lyre-like arrangement of 24 tuned strings.


Nevertheless the artistry, especially in matter of manipulating dynamics and vibrato, makes the ondes irreplaceable by the plain old synthesizer or computer. And the same goes for the theremin. I take the liberty of reproducing another gem since one of my most treasured CDs, The Art of the Theremin, has gone walkabout. It features the great Clara Rockmore, Vilnius-born violinist pupil of Leopold Auer turned theremenist, accompanied by Nadia Reisenberg. What Rockmore achieves in Rachmaninov’s Vocalise is, of course, long-breathed beyond the wildest dreams of any singer, though several friends guessed it was Callas when I played it to them source unknown.



Ultimately, though, it’s back to Messiaen. You can hear Cynthia in a double whammy at the Barbican – Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bucher conducted by Marin Alsop on 4 November, followed by the BBCSO performance of Messiaen’s Turangalila on the 5th. She’s also doing interesting experimental work at Snape Maltings with her nephew, a dubstep guru turned ambient specialist (I was really impressed with what she played us of that). But we have to end with Turangalila, and the loony tune of the ‘Joy of the Blood of the Stars’ movement, which despite its complexity and resources isn’t so very far removed from Vitamines… There are only two movements on YouTube of the amazing Prom in which Cynthia joined Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Andrew Davis and a typically gigantic National Youth Orchestra, but this will do.