Little Red Riding Hood

On July 6  2005 The Continuum Ensemble performed the U. K. premiere of Little Red Riding Hood by Georges Aperghis in an English adaptation by Stephen Jeffreys for the Almeida Opera season at the Almeida Theatre

A music theatre piece for audiences aged 7 and up

Annabel Arden Director
Philip Headlam Music Director
Giuseppe di Iorio Lighting Designer
Leah Hausman Movement

Neyire Ashworth clarinet / bass clarinet
Nell Catchpole violin
Philip Headlam piano
Ingrid Laubrock soprano saxophone
Ian Stuart clarinet / bass clarinet
Cassie Yukawa piano

James Crout Production Manager
Linsey Hall Stage Manager
Simon Auton Mask Maker

An Almeida Theatre Company production in association with The Continuum Ensemble

Patrick Dickie Producer, Almeida Opera
(two performances scheduled for July 7 were cancelled due to the London Underground attacks, a second performance was re scheduled for July 10).

Aperghis’ treatment of Little Red Riding Hood.

Charles Perrault, elected to the Académie Française in 1671, published eight folk tales in 1697 entitled Contes de ma mère l'Oye (Tales from Mother Goose.) Generally regarded as the first such collection,  these were literary adaptations of stories from the ‘folk’ population for the more educated classes. Immediately very successful,  the Contes were translated into English by Robert Samber in 1729 and reworked by the Grimm Brothers in Germany a century later,  which in turn were translated into English and made widely available.

Perrault's original Le Petit Chaperon Rouge is considerably darker in tone than the later and more familiar version known in English with regard to the characters and their actions.  Most notable is the absence of a 'happy ending' or redemptive conclusion.  An important element was the concluding 'moralite':  rhyming admonitions for instilling good behaviour in children readers.

The tale has been reworked countless times in many forms such as novels,  poems, stage works, short stories,  illustrated books,  songs, cartoons and films.  Angela Carter’s retelling in The Company of Wolves is well known in recent times along with the Tex Avery cartoon version and Stephen Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods.  It has been analysed extensively in our Freudian age as a key to various subconscious desires and patterns of behaviour.

Aperghis has set the tale for six instrumentalists who tell the story through speaking,  intoning and playing  The narrative is presented in repeating cycles, akin to Harrison Birtwistle and Tony Harrison’s 1977 folk tale reworking  Bow Down. The music draws on dance and comic cartoon music in strongly energetic motion and exuberance and contains virtuosic instrumental figuration.  Aperghis also employs extensive use of microtones (the notes ‘between’ the white and black keys of the piano, playable only on string and wind instruments) to create a landscape of psychological unease and fracture.

Nell Catchpole in Little Red Riding Hood

I first encountered Georges Aperghis’ musical dramatic works when I was working for the Contemporary Opera programme at the Banff Centre Canada;  Keith Turnbull was the visionary programme director at that time.  I prepared many of the Recitations and other small compositions,  culminating in conducting the world premiere of De la Nature de la Gravite (composed in 1979  but never performed by ATEM, Aperghis’ own company in Paris) and the North American premiere of De la Nature de l’Eau in 1996, both for a large company of singers,  instrumentalists and actors.

Immediately obvious were the exciting dramatic possibilities and playfulness in Georges’ work as was the quality of expression, vitality and invention.

By 1994,  I had formed The Continuum Ensemble in London and wanted to bring Aperghis’ work to the U. K.  with them.

Five years later, we presented Recitations and Conversations at the South Bank Centre over three days,  an entire evening was devoted to Aperghis’ smaller dramatic works.
We also performed many of his concert pieces,  most of which were U.K. premieres.

I was extremely lucky to have Annabel Arden direct Recitations and Conversations.
Grasping Georges’ meanings through his music and language (often mixtures of French, German, English,  Latin and Italian) to arrive at the gesture and movement is never easy. Additionally, one must understand the significance of strong,  simple design and of the theatrical and musical influences on his aesthetic. 
With her strong empathy for music training in Paris, work with Complicite and experience directing opera, Annabel unfailing understood Georges’ intent and rendered us all,  players, actors and singers, effective beyond expectation. 
Georges came to see the performances and subsequently he has admired and trusted the clarity and expressiveness Annabel’s direction brings to his work.

notes by Philip Headlam

A Celebration of music by Henri Dutilleux

In April and May 2005 The Continuum Ensemble celebrated the music and life of one of the finest composers in the world,  Henri Dutilleux,  with concerts in London and Cambridge that collected all of his important ensemble and chamber music together for the first time. 
Now just short of his 90^th birthday,  Henri Dutilleux travelled from his home in Paris to attend the concert in the Purcell Room,  South Bank Centre in London.
We were honoured that he also agreed to speak at a pre-concert talk in conversation with Kenneth Hesketh,  reflecting on his life and work.

We included two world premieres by British composers who studied with Dutilleux, Kenneth Hesketh and Andrew McBirnie. 
Also included was the rarely heard Trois Poemes de Mallarmé by Maurice Ravel whom Dutilleux saw in Paris when he was a young composition student in Paris in the 1930’s and one of his key compositional influences.

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A Celebration of music by Henri Dutilleux

Friday, April 29,  2005

Purcell Room, South Bank Centre

Henri Dutilleux
- Figures de résonances

Henri Dutilleux
-San Francisco Night +

Andrew McBirnie
- Prayer *

Henri Dutilleux
- Deux Sonnets de Jean Cassou

• i   Il n’y avait que des troncs dechires
• ii  J’ai rêvé que je vous portais entre mes bras

Henri Dutilleux
- Les Citations

• i   For Aldeburgh 85
• ii  From Janequin to Jehan Alain

---interval----

Henri Dutilleux
- Prelude I: D’ombre et de Silence

- Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher 

• i   un poco indeciso
• ii   andante sostenuto
• iii  vivace

- Prelude II: Sur un même accord

Kenneth Hesketh
- Les Grandes Plaines du Jour*

• i  'Le principe de la matière est d'être en action'
• ii  'Régions Eclairées'
  

Henri Dutilleux
- Prelude III: Le jeu des contraires

Maurice Ravel
- Trois Poèmes de Stephane Mallarmé

• i    Soupir
• ii   Place futile
• iii  Surgi de la croupe et du bond

* World Premiere performance  
+ London Premiere performance

Simon Blendis solo violin
Jerome Pernoo solo cello
Garry Magee baritone
Douglas Finch solo piano
Marie Vassiliou soprano
Julian West solo oboe

Philip Headlam conductor
The Continuum Ensemble

The Continuum Ensemble performed a concert of music on western instruments in which all of the pieces were influenced by gamelan music.

Each piece is a distillation of East and West rendered from the imaginations of the composers in which the different musical languages converge to give the full range of joyous and contemplative expression as well as distinctive sound of gamelan music.

As Claude Debussy once wrote in a letter ‘Do you not remember the Javanese music, able to express every shade of meaning, even unmentionable shades and which makes our tonic and dominant seem like ghosts?’

The composer José Evangelista led a pre concert talk entitled: Debussy, McPhee, Messaien, Britten and Vivier: Composing in the 20^th century with gamelan music materials.

May 1, 2003
Royal College of Music Concert Hall, London

East/West Gamelan Music in America and Europe

Balinese Ceremonial Music (1938)
Colin McPhee

Pulau Dewata (1977)
Claude Vivier (arr. John Rea, 1988)

Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra (1959)
Lou Harrison

Clos de Vie (1983)
José Evangelista

Marcus Barcham Stevens solo violin
The Continuum Ensemble
Philip Headlam conductor

On June 24, 2003 The Continuum Ensemble repeated the concert for the Spitalfields Festival at Shoreditch Church, London, with some programme modifications. 

The concert was recorded and broadcast on BBC Radio 3

Pulau Dewata
Claude Vivier (arr. John Rea, 1988)

Pagodes
Claude Debussy

Piano Etude no 7
Gyorgy Ligeti

Two Movements from Ceremonial Balinese Music
Colin McPhee
(arr. Philip Headlam, 2003)

Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra
Lou Harrison

Merapi
José Evangelista

Douglas Finch solo piano
Marcus Barcham Stevens solo violin
The Continuum Ensemble
Philip Headlam conductor