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 Review
With “Mythodea” Vangelis clearly moves into a more classically oriented
direction and, after having done so much already and maybe not having much if
anything left to prove anymore, tries his hand at a piece of music of larger
proportions and different instrumentation. Elements like the symphonic, vocal
and philosophical could always be found in his work, but invariably in the
context of his own self-produced and relatively short pieces of music. Never
before did Vangelis leave the performance of one of his pieces so much to others
as he does with this work – the parts he played during the 2001 concert and on
the recorded album are quite minimal and pretty basic. Happily enough this means
that the orchestra and choir are genuinely used, the pop-cliché of sugar-sweet
violins and background-choirs has been avoided. In a sense an orchestra can be
compared to a synthesizer – both can be employed to their full potential, or
only conventionally. More or less the first is the case with the orchestra in
Mythodea (thanks to orchestrator and conductor Blake Neely) and the mixed choir,
whose parts were copied from the 1993 premier performance, is also used in
various interesting ways.
The soprano parts are reasonably difficult, fortunately the two sopranos, during
the concert, had the volume to be audible in the acoustically inconvenient open
space. Vangelis’ current preference for using very long notes made the divas
having to use their full lung-capacity in order to be able to sing their parts.
The tonality of the material appears a bit uncertain at times, causing some
hairy moments, but there are plenty of fine vocal moments too. Overall the piece
only really gets going after the big mid-point crescendo, with a series of
strong arias, duets and choir pieces.
In the concert programme Mythodea was presented as a “choral symphony”, this
however is a bit of a misleading term. Besides the choir and orchestra two
sopranos were involved and the term “symphony” generally suggests a certain
thematic development and multiple parts nevertheless making up one whole. This
is hardly the case here – the oldest trick in the book (using the same music
to start and finish a piece) cannot sustain the illusion of something symphonic
for long. “Choral symphony” is also a sub-genre in classical music (for
example Berlioz’s “Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale”) and if you really
want to make that comparison, the classical music genre that more closely
resembles Mythodea is that of the oratorio. Unlike opera, where the music of the
composer, the libretto of the writer and the staging by a director in the
theatre all contribute to the end-result, an oratorio is more like a
concert-recital of an existing text, without any real staging. Mythodea matches
all these aspects of the oratorio, apart from the text, which consists of
specific but meaningless words.
Continuing with the classical theme, how will the classical music world receive
a work like Mythodea ? Well, this is always difficult to tell and at the time of
writing the answer appears to be: not at all, despite the contribution of “big
guns” Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle. Fortunately Sony Classical seem to
have refrained from using the dangerous “cross-over” label (i.e. classical
artists doing popular music), even though they are market-leaders in that area.
Certainly the absence of a genuine text is a major weak point, using a
meaningful text would have upped the classical creds considerably. But something
like a general reception is unlikely anyway in the splintered worlds of
classical and other music. However, now that the somewhat dogmatic times of the
20th century avant-garde adherents appear to be in the past, a new
direction in orchestral music is developing which is more tonal, slightly
spiritual and almost Romantic again. Names like Vasks, Maw and Kancheli come up
in connection with this and it could be argued that maybe the arch-Romantic
Vangelis belongs to this direction as well, at least when discussing serious,
indeed spiritual works such as Mythodea and El Greco. But that wouldn’t be
quite correct, because he is too much a law upon himself, with a method of
creation exclusively based on his own playing. One hint on the lack of attention
for works like this is the complete absence of any trace of post-modernism in
Vangelis’ work and his views on it. For example claiming that powerful melodic
Romantic pieces like Mythodea are somehow expressions of his inner or
“cosmic” self (however true that may be in itself), without admitting to any
influence whatsoever, past or present, tends not to be taken very seriously
nowadays, rightly or wrongly.
Like all music written for orchestras and/or choirs, the fate of Mythodea would
be helped by a “performance tradition”, in which conductors and their
orchestras and choirs work on the piece in successive generations and get
everything they can out of it in terms of sound, tempos and nuance. Should
Mythodea only appear as a Vangelis album, one can forget about this. For that it
needs to be published or rented out by a music publishing company. In that case
it’d be possible in principle that enthusiastic conductors pick it up to work
on in the regular concert and recording-business, so that from the classical
point of view it becomes more than a twice-performed curiosity. In fact,
Vangelis claims in various interviews that one of the reasons for choosing an
orchestra was to allow the possibility of it being performed without his
involvement.
Among the large group of Vangelis fans who are not also classical music fans,
this album seems certain to cause division. Most of them will probably have
bought the album after so many years of inactivity by Vangelis in terms of
releasing music and a decent number of those will undoubtedly be able to find
something in it that appeals to them. Some people will have difficulty getting
used to the long passages with opera-voices and choir and the mostly sacred
atmosphere won’t be to everyone’s liking either. But it’s probably a fair
guess that most people’s top-5 of Vangelis albums will remain unaffected by
the Mythodea release. The electronic music that Vangelis used to make, for
example on albums like Spiral or later Direct (the favorite of many fans), is
far removed from Mythodea. It does sometimes momentarily resemble the music on
the Mask album, especially in its livelier moments. The connection with the Mars
Space Odyssey project is completely artificial (because nowhere in the picture
when Vangelis sat down for an hour in 1993 to play and record the initial
keyboard version of Mythodea) and can’t be taken very seriously from a
creative point of view.
It will be interesting to see what Vangelis will be doing next, if anything at
all, apart from the incidental “bread and butter” stuff like sport-anthems.
Does the letting go of this “old” work open up space for major new
compositions, or was it a swansong-like final statement. In the round of
interviews Vangelis gave in connection with the Mythodea concert, he leaves open
all options and still talks about “composing every day” but across the
decade leading up to Mythodea 2001 this has usually remained mere talk without
being translated into actual releases. There’s also mention of releasing more
old works and one can only hope that Vangelis will give for example Antigone, a
similar oratorio-like work also dating from the early nineties, the same
treatment as was given to Mythodea.
Review by Ivar de Vries
Movements |
