RTÉ's new series, The Symphony Sessions, promises to bring classical music, and composer Donnacha Dennehy in particular, to a popular audience, writes Shane Hegarty
A television studio in Montrose seems to be an odd place to premiere a piece of classical music. There is no audience, so no applause. There is the rustle of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra settling down after playing, and the conversations between producers, cameramen, composer, conductor and soloist. But then, there hasn't been too much like this before.
RTÉ's new programme The Symphony Sessions has commissioned an original work by Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy, to be broadcast as the fourth and final programme in a series that will also feature performances of works by Bernstein, Beethoven, Mozart and Ravel. The highlight, largely due to its originality, will be Dennehy's Elastic Harmonic, a 12-minute work for violin and symphony orchestra that will have the rare honour of having its world premiere in living rooms across Ireland. Most composers have an audience of a few hundred, and a piece that is played once, perhaps not to be heard again. Dennehy will have tens of thousands of viewers, and should be guaranteed at least one repeat performance and preservation in the RTÉ library and, hopefully, on a few home video recorders.
In the large studio, bedecked with fabric, the sound is dampened. But upstairs in the control room, where the performance can be watched from several camera angles, the richness of this rhythmic piece is far more apparent. Did Dennehy write it with television in mind? "Not really," he says. "In a way I just wrote the piece, because its dangerous if you set up hoops for yourself to jump through. I haven't taken the audience survey approach, because if you think you have to write for this person, and then have something for another person then you're in danger of falling between two stools. In a way you just have to say what you want to say, and if it's cogent then it might have elements that speak to other people." A founder of the Crash Ensemble, and someone who has dipped into electronics and multimedia, Dennehy has always been one to broaden the scope of his music, but he didn't try and soften things up for a home audience. Elastic Harmonic features prepared violins (with paperclips attached to them) and sandpaper blocks, as well as the more traditional orchestral elements. He was more interested in "staying true to my sound vision rather than to either provoke or to play it safe".
Stepping from concert hall to television studio was an unusual process, he admits. "It does make it unusual. Usually a piece is played in a concert hall in front of an audience and you have instant feedback. This was more amorphous. You had an orchestra, who will never have a united opinion on anything, and that includes music. I've just finished this piece for the BBC and the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast in the middle of this month and that's going to be performed to an audience. So you'll get that instant sense of occasion from it, while with TV it's done and then it suddenly appears out. So it's delayed thing. It's like writing radio plays or something like that." He did, he admits, have to think about how to communicate through "this little box in a room", but he was not put under constraints by RTÉ. "They left it open, which is good." Having only this year given up watching Big Brother, not wanting to contribute to the ratings that drive what he calls "this crap" on television, he's delighted to be involved in such an unusual television project. Nevertheless, he's aware of the difficulties of putting classical music on television. A group of people sitting down for a quarter of an hour or longer has the potential to be deathly dull. And even the more animated elements of orchestral music can struggle.
"Opera can be tough to watch on TV, even though it can be quite compelling to see it live. Sitting and watching a circus on the television is not that exciting either. It's strange that something so compelling live can be so dull on television." So he hopes that the nature of the programme - it includes interviews, the story of the piece and the background to the orchestration - will appeal. "It works. Or at least I thought, I'd watch that," he laughs, but he is being genuine.
DAVID MCKENNA, EXECUTIVE producer on The Symphony Sessions, says that the intention is to approach the playing of classical music in a visual way. "In this format," says McKenna, "we're able to give the audience a look at the process of putting this together, an introduction into some of the orchestration and an insight into what Donnacha was up to when writing. So by the time the viewers come to listen to the piece they have been led into the world of it. And whatever they think of it in the end, we hope they'll at least listen to it." RTÉ began the commissioning process about a year ago. "It was very logical in many ways," says McKenna, "because this music is listened to. With Beethoven and Bach, their music is still alive. And because of that, Donnacha and other composers write out of that. At first listen they may often sound very different, but they write with that tradition, that history behind them. It just seemed to be the logical, appropriate step, and an enjoyable one for both us and the viewer." He paraphrases John Huston, though, when he says it was ultimately down to three things "casting, casting, casting". "Most important was the choice of who to approach and we were going to someone who was well respected and with a record of other work which suggested he would take on board and relish writing for a large TV audience." McKenna doesn't want to get bogged down in the apparent worthiness of the venture. "I would hate if it was thought that it is led by worthy commitment to anything other than the pleasure of music and something that the TV audience would find enjoyable." Nevertheless, it is a welcome step by RTÉ. The series and the Dennehy commission combines the NSO and RTÉ television in an ambitious way. The orchestra may be name-checked regularly when RTÉ is defending its licence fee, and it also commissions perhaps half a dozen new works a year, but it would have a limited audience. Yet, here it is being brought together with the most popular branch of RTÉ, and manages to stimulate new art in the process.
Bernard Clarke, presenter of Lyric FM's Horizons show and the behind-the-scenes interviewer in the series, is certainly impressed by an idea he calls "hats-off stuff". He describes Dennehy's piece as "really interesting, it shows a really different side to him. He's normally more abrasive, but this is Donnacha Dennehy with a heart." As for the series as a whole, "it's fantastic," he enthuses. "Personally, what I like is that they haven't dumbed down, but they haven't dumbed up either. They are not pretending it's something that it isn't, they aren't patronising the audience. But what they are doing is demystifying it, taking away the nonsense surrounding some classical music. The idea that you must clap here, mustn't clap here, that you have to be musically educated, have a posh accent. It shows that the musicians are just ordinary Joe and Marys, except that they're doing extraordinary jobs. Yet, they haven't stripped the mystery from the music. The focus is still on the music, and they let it speak for itself." As it is, there is plenty of orchestral music on television, it's just that almost all of it is matched with visuals either with movie soundtracks, documentaries or advertising. The Symphony Sessions will match music with the music-makers. Not that Clarke expects millions of people to suddenly turn on to classical music, new or otherwise. "It won't be for everyone. It never will be. But it will help to drop the nonsense surrounding it." Dennehy, though, doesn't see himself as an ambassador for new music, or for Irish composers, bringing new music to the masses. "Constitutionally, I have to compose. Also, there's a lot of stuff I've done abroad anyway, so you do feel enough of a sense of purpose in your life that there are groups that want to do it. But I know what you mean, though, because it can seem like it's a small world." Sometimes, when out for a drink, people will say to him "oh you're a composer. A bit like James Last?" Dennehy will then try and find a popular reference point. Do they know Steve Reich? No. Philip Glass? No.
"And I'll just go, 'that's all right. What will you have to drink?' I've given up being a missionary. I just do what I do."
The Symphony Sessions begins on RTÉ1 on Monday at 10.15pm. The first programme features Bernstein's On the Town: Three Dance Episodes and Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major
