Reviews

Michael Nyman and band at The Colston Hall in Bristol

Posted on: 2014-04-29

If you go to a Michael Nyman concert you know exactly what you're going to get ? edgy, pounding, fierce, animatedly relentless ostinatos and rhythms that will leave you thrilled and musically intoxicated.

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"I've got to move, it's hurting my ears!" So declared one rather perturbed and disoriented-looking concert-goer during the interval before he and his equally discombobulated wife scuttled hastily from Row D to the very back of the Colston Hall.

If you come to a Michael Nyman concert, however, that's what you're going to get. Loud. Very loud. And even louder. Even his quieter pieces are generally racked up to a healthy fortissimo.

This concert was rescheduled from last November to coincide this year with Nyman's 70th birthday and his band's 40th anniversary – and as far as birthday celebrations go it was a barnstorming party.

The band's line-up of full amplified string quartet, three saxophones, horn, bas trombone, bass guitar and piano (played by Nyman) kicked off with Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds and An Eye For Optical Theory. You might not know the titles but you'd recognise the music from its myriad incarnations and uses in a plethora of films and adverts.

Along with Philip Glass and Steve Reich, British-born Nyman put minimalist music on the map, etching out harsh rhythms, repetitive structures, sometimes achingly beautiful melodies in a solid, raw, unmistakably distinctive style.

He's blurred the lines of art and commercial music almost to the point where there's no actual distinction between them, his most famous composition being the soundtrack to Jane Campion's The Piano which went on to become a multi-platinum chart topper. 

Titled Nyman and the Baroque, it may as well have been called Nyman and the Baroque 'n Roll, so declamatory, foot-stomping, vibrant and funky were the pieces. The band hammered through them with gusto and energy in a set that at times felt like a massive jamming session as the players riffed and weaved their way through the polymath's musical masterclass.  

Refreshing too was that the band launched into the next piece straight after the last, precluding the usual, nauseating necessity for the obligatory chorus of coughs, twitching and 'phone checking.  

We're talking about long, repetitive, thundering compositions here, ones that require great personal dynamism and stamina (for both performer and listener), particularly during the lengthy The Musicologist Scores, a specially commissioned piece which has all the flourishes, trademark ostinatos, strident violins, wailing saxophones and pounding bass lines typical of much of Nyman's oeuvre. 

The post-interval selection realised one of his most famous pieces, Memorial, originally used in Peter Greenaway's film, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, but which will form the epicentre of Nyman's Hillsborough Memorial Symphony at Liverpool Cathedral this July.

It finished with the astonishing Splashing, Gliding and Synchronising from Water Dances, funky, jazzy, muscular, throbbing, angular, and a finale tour de force that leaves you exhilarated and breathless.  

It's not to everyone's taste, but then again if you go to a Michael Nyman concert you know exactly what you're going to get – edgy, pounding, fierce, animatedly relentless ostinatos and rhythms that might not leave you humming a hit tune on your way out but will leave you thrilled and musically intoxicated.

As a celebration concert it was dynamic, electrifying and brilliant. And loud. Very, very loud.

5/5

Reviewed by Jamie Caddick for 365Bristol

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