Prometeo - the reviews
Mixed responses to the UK première of Nono’s Prometeo, given twice at the Festival Hall over the weekend.
Press
While some words are distinct, the greater part of Massimo Cacciari’s text is separated out into its component vowels and consonants.
They become just another source of sound, mixed in with the instrumentals and electronics in a score that can range from quiet miasmas and gurglings to full brass blasts, from vocal purity redolent of the Renaissance to a tangled web of augmented fourths and major sevenths, from aggressive discord to the sort of soft ambient music commercially available on CDs fostering relaxation.
Just occasionally, the teetering, trembling sounds break out into massive climaxes, a reminder that Nono, for all his uncompromising modernism, was a Venetian, an heir to the spatial experiments of Monteverdi and the Gabrielis.
I disagree with much of the sentiment of Norris’s review - “innocuous aural massage” my arse! - but Clements’s really perplexes me. His reference to “a slow unvaried unfolding” doesn’t tally with my experience at all. Sure, there are points of continuity, even reuse of the same materials, but the variety between each of the 11 sections is very distinct and, I would suggest, gives the piece a much greater linear shape than it is otherwise credited with. His line above also surprises me, as it seems to suggest that the Venetian connection (found in a certain spatial aspect) is something of an afterthought, rather than the poetic core of the entire piece!
The Festival Hall, of all Prometeo’s venues, must be the most abstract, providing no evocative atmosphere except, perhaps, that of a recording studio. So Prometeo had to stand alone; and at times it seemed more like a work of modernist reference than an overwhelming emotional experience. But, on coming out into a London Saturday night, it was palpably clear that any work that can resensitise and refocus the human spirit, presenting listening as understanding rather than as distraction, can’t be all bad.
Andrew Clark - Financial Times:
[T]he Southbank Centre was right to stage this overdue UK premiere, if only to show how unrealistic modernism had become by the time Nono completed his “theatre of sounds” in 1984-85. He was an idealist. Even if Prometeo is musically too thin to sustain the weight of theory and ideas motivating it, you have to admire the purity of Nono’s artistic/aesthetic quest, something today’s composers, dogged by the demands of consumer accessibility, are not allowed even to contemplate.
Blogs and online
The combination of such instrumental composition, voices, and the all-important spatial dimension - not just the placing of instrumentalists and voices, but also that of the twenty-seven speakers, to be understood not as agents of amplification but as points at which music could take place - inevitably brought to mind the great Venetian polychoral works of the past. St Mark’s, in a sense, was brought to the South Bank and transformed. But equally so was Venice itself, or at least the Venice of Nono’s understanding … . The twists and turns, the lapping of the waves, the transfer between East and West were voiced; indeed, the interchanges, and landscapes of Venetian, European, and world history were present throughout this retelling of the Prometheus myth. Moreover, the words, a fascinating assemblage from Massimo Cacciari, are far more readily audible than many commentators - have they actually been listening? - would have one believe.
Deprived of the option to look at the performers or to understand how the sound was being produced, obliged to sit still for over 2 hours and hemmed in on all sides by sound, I found it hard also to understand how the work exemplified democracy or freedom. Perhaps it’s simply a case of unreasonably raised expectations, but it all seemed like just another pleasant Friday night out.
We are told that hearing Prometeo is a deeply personal experience. Describing it can therefore only be subjective and any one response is as valid as another. Those transported to another plane are just experiencing it in a different way from the people, and there were a number, who found they had to leave the auditorium before the performance was over. Nono certainly pushes the observer to the limit. Two hours and 20 minutes, without interval, is a long time when the promised plateau of serenity doesn’t appear.
