Tavener - Ypakoë/Pratirupa

I have just returned from a short trip to India. It was my first visit to the country. Whilst travelling I rarely venture into demanding repertoire. Usually there's hardly time too as the working days are long and listening in transit - in a noisy plane environment, usually - is hardly uplifting. So I basically listened and re-listened to just two piano pieces by John Tavener that seemed to mesh with the rather exotic circumstances in which I found myself. It took me a while to warm to Tavener's music as I tended to catalogue him with the smooth, spiritual new age crowd - including Pärt and Gorecki - that a number of years ago started to blot out the merits of a more serious musical avant garde in the minds of the average classical music enthusiast. And probably that is also where he belongs. But just as Gorecki's oeuvre offers plenty of compelling stuff beyond the Symphony of Sorrows (his Lerchenmusik, his First Quartet) so Tavener merits an exploration that goes a little further than his Protecting Veil. The Naxos recording of his piano music by Ralph van Raat is a rewarding disc. I find the two longer, later pieces, Ypakoë (1997) and Pratirupa (2003) the most interesting.

Ypakoë allegedly means "to be obedient", "to hear", "to respond" in Greek. An interesting cluster of significances that seems to capture the experience of active listening quite well. Ypakoë is also a traditional hymn chanted in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy. The piece comes across as a keyboard suite consisting of different sections (not cued on the Naxos disc). It opens with a festive preludium, majestic bells pealing, not uncommon in Tavener's music. An understated, attractive 2-part invention follows, emulating a baroque idiom. This mood is extrapolated in the next section, a very simple and sombre chorale melody. No counterpoint involved at all. A short, celebratory peroration soon makes way for the chorale again.  We're halfway and the music moves in familiar Tavener territory with another subdued, hymnic theme, accompanied by rapid, ceremonial figurations in the right hand. Maybe this is the sound of the Greek kanokaki where Van Raat refers in his liner notes? The chorale returns again, but only briefly, almost as a motto theme. Textures continue to thin out in a mysterious grave, pppp. A beautiful, nocturnal meditation that gives way to a rousing finale that connects back to the pealing bells of the beginning.

An Amazon reviewer chastised Van Raat for playing Ypakoë much too fast. It is indeed the case that the dedicatee of the piece, the Venezuelan pianist Elena Riu recorded a much slower version, taking over 20 minutes, on a Linn Records disc (only available for download). Van Raat takes just over 13 minutes. However, comparing the two recordings I must say I side with the interpretation of the Dutch pianist. Tavener may wish the music to attune us to the divine will, but in her desire for spiritual communion Riu tries to spin rather too much yarn from little wool. As a result, the music sounds sentimental and contrived. In Van Raat's hands the piece continues to breath and its relative briskness lends it a beguiling freshness.

The other piece, Pratirupa, takes almost a full half hour. I suppose one has to be in the right frame of mind to stay focused on what ultimately seems to be relatively modest musical material. It's an extended meditation that revolves around three basic components: a gentle, nocturnal fantasy that forms the backbone of the piece, a lullaby that returns as a motto theme and, finally, a set of periodic eruptions of a Messiaen-like density and ferocity.

All in all I found this an apposite musical foil for a short journey in an unknown and exotic territory.