The return to live music after a long period of pandemic recovery has been marked by a myriad of new beginnings and collaborations. But for composer and pianist Vijay Iyer, his return to London on Sep. 23 marked an ending, finishing out his 2019-20 composer-in-residence position at Wigmore Hall after the last concert was abruptly canceled.
The program celebrated a swath of solo and chamber music works spanning Iyer’s career and featured performances by Iyer on piano with members of Manchester Collective, one of the UK’s dominant forces in contemporary classical music. Revered by the New York Times as a ‘social conscience’ and ‘multicultural gateway,’ Iyer is known for wearing many hats – both in his career as a composer, pianist, bandleader, producer, and writer, and within his music, which often showcases a variety of styles in quick succession while emphasizing collaboration and social connection.
The first half of the concert moved through an air of mourning, grief, and legacy. Song for Flint was a delicate opener that took a few moments to settle into. The solo viola work begins with wispy harmonics that grow into full-bodied tones and melodies. Violist Ruth Gibson exuded complete control over her instrument, unfazed by the vulnerability of starting at a nearly imperceptible volume. Iyer wrote the work as an offering to the children of Flint Michigan, and Gibson carried this message through her sound and body, moving expressively as the piece grew into a loud, boisterous song. Her rich tone carried through the fiery ambiance and technical demand of the work before crawling back into the harmonic wonderland of the opening, her bow barely brushing against the strings.
Vijay Iyer — Courtesy of Wigmore Hall
Next, Iyer offered a patient and deliberate performance of “Kite (Refaat),” a new solo piano arrangement from his violin and piano duo, What isn’t hard to see. Written in memory of the poet Refaat Alareer, the work is a remnant of a ballad, with expressive and soft chords decorating the whole piano and heavily invoking Iyer’s jazz background. He was then joined by members of the Manchester Collective for The Law of Returns, a piano quartet written for two of his mentors: Muhal Richard Abrams and Geri Allen. Iyer uses the term ‘musical flashes’ to describe the way the piece functions, showing glimpses of the creative worlds of these two composer-pianists while moving through the familiar color of airy strings, folksy barn dance grooves, and Reich-like pulses all within the blink of an eye.
The second half of the program experimented with musical motifs from the past, manipulating these phrases to convey a range of tonal moods. After intermission, cellist James Morley barely gave the audience enough time to sit down before launching into Run. Conceived as an overture to Bach’s Cello Suite No 3, the piece starts with a series of frenetic, joyous tremolos, which Morley brought to life with vigor. The audience moved as he did, drawn to the monumental palette of sounds he elicited from his cello as he transformed the intensity of hypnotic waves within the phrasing into a percussive pizzicato melody that danced along the strings.
Iyer had jokingly assured us that there would only by 75 second of Mozart on the evening’s program, and the brief fragment from the composer’s String Quartet in E Minor (K. 417d) came sandwiched between two of Iyer’s string quartet pieces: “Air” from Mutations and Mozart Effects. The use of harmonics and ethereal sounds in Iyer’s string writing creates evocative colors that are almost woodwind-like. In Air, the upper strings sunk themselves into a twangy, persistent groove. But at the same time, the work was reminiscent of the tour de force string quartets in the classical canon: moving into longer waves of chords, with each player bouncing bow strokes off one another.
Duncan Ward and Manchester Collective — Courtesy of Wigmore Hall
I felt skeptical about the brief transition to the Mozart quartet, wondering how a contemporary composer could respond to something old and heavily unfinished. The excerpt featured patchy and bare solos, but Iyer’s Mozart Effect that emerged through the other side was a fusion hit that tested the boundaries of string quartet playing, while keeping Mozart in the sightline.
The UK premiere of Crisis Modes was a feat in itself to watch, with string orchestra, three percussionists, and a conductor all fitting onto the venue’s snug stage. The piece is a near redesign of the original – Iyer mentioned that after the premiere, he decided to rewrite nearly half of the material. Broken up into three movements, the piece follows a symphony-like structure. The sparse texture of the first movement is built from col legno strings, light strikes of percussion instruments, and string harmonics before solo strings enter one-by-one with the theme. Watching the individual players join the melody and gradually overwhelming the balance of the ensemble was a spectacle for both the eyes and ears. The second movement offered an atonal touch on the typical slow, romantic ballad, and the last movement emerged from nothing before dancing between brief stints of clave rhythms, swinging string melodies, and jazzy embraces.
The momentum throughout Crisis Modes grew through each individual movement, but quickly vanished in the silences between movements before needing to restart again. And this feeling of starting and stopping was present in many of the large ensemble works. Iyer’s restless compositions rarely sit still, admirably covering a vast range of musical material and genres. But I personally found myself wanting to sink more into the fleeting gestures that always seemed to shift within moments of being introduced. The more patient solo works stood out as highlights of the evening, though perhaps the frenetic nature of the larger compositions is ultimately what leaves us wanting more.
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