Classical
Nicholas Maw at 70

4 stars Wigmore Hall, London

Tim Ashley
Wednesday November 9, 2005

Guardian

Composer Nicholas Maw turned 70 last Saturday, an event marked by the first of a series of concerts that should, perhaps, re-focus attention on his work. Maw's reputation was dented three years ago, when his overambitious opera Sophie's Choice received a critical drubbing at its Covent Garden premiere. The opportunity to revisit the non-theatrical music that forms the core of his output, will perhaps force a re-appraisal of his achievement.

The Wigmore programme consisted of chamber, vocal and instrumental pieces, which allowed insight into his strengths and weaknesses. To say that Maw's work is rooted in late romanticism, and sidesteps 20th century serialism has become something of a critical commonplace, though it also narrows our appreciation of his music. He thinks expansively, it is true, avoiding both neo-classical compression and modernist fragmentation. The best of his work, however, is underpinned by a kind of Brahmsian logic that offsets emotion with formal rigour.

Maw's Third String Quartet, performed with considerable ferocity by the Zivoni Quartet, is a single-movement arc of sound that passes through lyricism and terror before culminating in an austere passacaglia that pulls together its thematic and emotional threads.

When the sense of an over-arching structure slips, however, Maw's expansiveness turns discursive; the Emanuel Ensemble's performance of the Quartet for Flute, Violin, Viola and Cello, although beautifully articulated, couldn't disguise the music's tendency to ramble. Maw is also a fine song composer. Tenor Philip Langridge joined guitarist Stephen Marchionda for Six Interiors, a setting of Thomas Hardy for voice and guitar dating from 1966. A meditation on the nature of mortality, the cycle is uncompromising in its pessimism and bitterness.

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