Cathedral at Noon

Intuitive Music Aberdeen

Saturday 10 August 2024 • 12 noon
St Andrew's Cathedral • 28 King Street • ABERDEEN • AB24 5AX

Review by Alan Cooper

Programme

Haworth Hodgkinson
Arnage Friday (2017, rev. 2024)

Haworth Hodgkinson
After the Storms (2024)

Intuitive Music Aberdeen is an ensemble of three musicians specialising in music created by the performers in response to text, graphic scores or unconventional notations. Actually today's pieces were composed by Haworth Hodgkinson in response to time and place in the case of Arnage Friday and in the case of After the Storms time and climatic event.

Arnage is a small Aberdeenshire village about four miles north of Ellon. There is an Arnage Castle, and to my astonishment there is also an Arnage in the Loire region of France (nothing at all to do with today's music). It was in Arnage School that Haworth Hodgkinson created a modal keyboard melody, an improvisation that can be accessed on the album The Arnage Sessions (High Moss, 2017). For today's performance, the original piece has been reimagined for the three performers of Intuitive Music Aberdeen.

This was one particular piece for which I felt it was important to be present to view as well as to hear, because two of the performers, Haworth Hodgkinson on recorders and Colin Edwards on guitar, started playing invisibly offstage before appearing and gradually moving to the front of the performance area. Mandy Macdonald was seated at the piano playing the modal theme which is the core of the piece. This theme, which had an almost oriental feel to it, reminded me just a little of the music Hollywood composers such as Miklós Rósza would choose for their Biblical epic film music. I am sure that Haworth Hodgkinson was not intending to refer to that, but the theme did have an antique feeling to it, with a sense of mystery that was intensified by the initially invisible responses to the piano, first by Colin Edwards on guitar and then by Hodgkinson on recorder. As the performers appeared and came forward, the intertwining of the melodic lines became stronger and Hodgkinson moved from descant recorder to a much larger instrument. The piano melody moved downwards and the lowest notes were kept reverberating for several beats, which was an important part of the overall musical colouring of the piece. A sense of distance and possibly myth or even faith and certainly imagination was delivered by this intriguing composition.

After the Storms was inspired by the series of wind storms that hit Aberdeen at the end of last year's winter in December and January. Haworth told us that Storm Gerrit on 27th December was a particular inspiration. Underlying the entire piece was a deep pedal note. Leading the music to begin with was Haworth Hodgkinson on an old-fashioned harmonium blown manually by the performer. Mandy Macdonald to begin with played a low note on the melodica and Colin Edwards played a series of long bowed notes on the psaltery, a strange quite small triangular instrument. Once again I would say that seeing these strange instruments was as important as just hearing them. There was a distinct difference between the timbres of the three instruments and yet, at the same time, there was a sense of sound correlation melding them nicely within the series of harmonies at the start of the work. As these harmonies moved forward, it made me think of the changing images when you look at the designs on a kaleidoscope. However there was much more to the piece than that. As it progressed, Mandy brought in higher notes on the melodica and Colin moved faster and faster to different notes on the psaltery. Haworth also rang the changes on the harmonium. The result was that out of the harmonic background, melody blossomed forth, initially on the individual instruments, but also where they came together. The piece might have seemed static if you did not listen closely, but listening intently, you discovered that there was music of considerable complexity developing constantly beneath the surface. I was amazed and delighted to discover the sense of development within the piece working towards a most satisfying conclusion. I suppose that is what happens in a wind storm too.

The original version of After the Storms on synthesizers can be accessed on the album Storm Gerrit on High Moss, 2023.

Links

St Andrew's Cathedral Aberdeen
Haworth Hodgkinson
High Moss