Salon Music
Worlds collapse into one St Leonards House
VICTORIA KINGHAM
On a brief internet search, it was fascinating to discover that while the earliest known musical instrument, a Neanderthal flute carved from the bone of a bear, is about 50,000 years old, the oldest written-down music is aged a mere 3,500. This is the Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal, excavated in an ancient Syrian palace (if you want you can stream recordings of it on various platforms).
Cut to comparative modernity, say the last 150 years or so. The transformation and incorporation of folk melodies has become widespread, especially in tandem with the development of recording equipment, used by collectors. In Europe the work of Hungarian composer and ethnomusicologist, Bela Bartok, was a seminal influence; Stravinsky and Sibelius, too, adopted the cadences and tonalities of the folk music of their countries into their compositions.
Spanish traditional folk or dance music is universally well-known, either in its traditional form or in the many many tunes and rhythms of Latin South America, or in popular western work – say, the work of Ravel (Bolero), or Rodriguo (Concerto D’Aranjuez), and jazz musicians like Miles Davis (Sketches of Spain), or Chick Corea (My Spanish Heart). In this broad context the work of Manuel De Falla, probably Spain’s foremost composer, almost always sounds as if you’ve heard it before, even if you haven’t.
THE MUSIC
De Falla’s Suite Populaire (premiered 1915) was originally written for voice and piano. Since then there have been countless arrangements, one by French cellist Maréchal for cello and piano. It was this that I heard performed faultlessly by two excellent young musicians, on Sunday 4 October, and their love for it, and their enjoyment of playing it together, were clear from the outset. Folk songs from all over Spain, some playful, some tragic, some hauntingly beautiful – the lullaby Nana in particular. The compositions maintain the traditional flavour of the melodies but imbue them with modernist harmonies, it being the 1910s – a period of intense experimentation all across European and American culture.
Siyuan Xu (piano) and Bella Lorenzo-Giguere (cello) had begun with Song of the Black Swan, written around the same year, by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. That composer, too, had at that time spent many months searching out the indigenous music of his country, absorbing this along with Brazil’s hotchpotch mix of Portuguese, African, and American-Indian musical influences. It’s a decidedly impressionistic piece, and it’s easy to visualise the pianistic waves as water and the slow, sometimes brooding, melody as the gliding swan in afternoon sunlight.
After the interval came Rachmaninov’s G Minor cello sonata, written slightly earlier and, like most of Rachmaninov’s work, quintessentially romantic. The composer wrote it in recovery after a long period of loss, depression and writer’s block. Rather than simply an accompanied cello piece it’s known to be more of a conversation between the two instruments. It has the most astonishing depth and complexity: listeners were transfixed through its pauses, highs and lows, rapid changes of tempo and dynamics, call-and-response moments and lyrical passages where the instruments join and run on together in melodic progress.
THE SALON
This was a unique experience – all these musical influences collected together and distilled into one room in St Leonards made for something culturally unprecedented. St Benedicts, at 81 Pevensey Road, functions as a bed-and-breakfast and is next door to a Russian Orthodox, icon-filled chapel. The whole house is actually, decidedly un-orthodox. It’s a museum of 19th–century artefacts – every inch is adorned with Victoriana of all kinds, from taxidermic birds and ponderous artificial fruit to gold-tasselled heavy curtains, paintings in thickly-ornate gilt frames, religious relics, and elaborately-carved wall cabinets stuffed with carefully-arranged china. It’s a monument to the nineteenth century such as you never saw in your life. The musicians themselves are both elegant, young, beautiful, and very talented. Pianist Siyuan Xu, who is originally from China and now lives in London, gained her Masters in just 2024, and has already won a host of awards for her confident, warm style, accompaniments, and interpretation. Cellist Bella Lorenzo-Giguere is American (with grandparents from Quebec, Hong Kong, Spain, and Italy) and states that she ‘seeks collaboration across artistic discipline and musical genre.’ Unfortunately there was no chance to talk to her but I’m sure she would appreciate this extraordinary meld of cultures – religious, artistic, musical.
We certainly did.The ancient and the modern, the Western and the Eastern, the high art infused with the indigenous melodies – several members of the audience commented that they had been transported into quite another world, not to say dimension. These salon events are special – I’ve written before about the exceptional number of private houses in Hastings and St Leonards given over to all sorts and conditions of artistic endeavour. This is now included among them.
‘Chamber’ music is just that – written to perform in rooms. Whether the composers envisaged rooms quite like these, is another question.
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