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Piers Hellawell
CD REVIEW: Inside Story on Metronone MET CD 1059
Committed, heartfelt performances of music by an individual passionate voice...
“For 15 years now, Piers Hellawell has been building a steady reputation as a musical non-conformist. The
present disc features two concerto-type works from either end of the last decade, and a string quartet work
that demonstrates his imaginative approach to instrumental textures to the full.
Quadruple Elegy (1990) takes as its starting point the political upheavals of 1989, and marks the outset of
the blues-inflected harmonic idiom that the composer evolved over the next decade. The incisive violin figuration and melodic slides of ‘Baku’, the irregular dance measures of ‘Tiblisi’ and the rhapsodic motion of
‘Timisoara’ are concluded by the irridescent calm of a homage to Jan Palac – fallen hero of the 1968 Prague
Spring – which ensures a musical focus to balance the conceptual framework. The Still Dancers (1992)
draws on examples of natural phenomena in a novel approach to string quartet composition. Onomatopoeic
invocations preface each of the three movements: respectively animated (with a hint of 1980s Reich), impulsive and graceful (with attractive Cage-ian percussives). The work has more recently been performed in
the context of prints by Jean Duncan, which would have been good to have as a CD-ROM component on the
disc. Inside Story (1999) is as much a non- as a double- concerto. Violin and viola are on equal terms with
the orchestra throughout, appearing in the vivacious opening movement as linear continuities in often dense
and elaborate textures. Although no extra-musical associations are at work here, the progress of the second
movement from soaring recitative, through a series of increasingly diverse variations, to the excitable close
suggests a programme played out in sound.
Committed performances by all concerned, a natural sound balance and detailed notes round out a wellplanned overview of an engaging and still-emerging compositional talent.”
Richard Whitehouse, The Gramophone, 2002
Piers Hellawell’s musical response to nature’s rhythms makes for seductive listening
“Well, this doesn’t happen very often – at least not in the middle of a busy reviewing time-table. No sooner
had I got to the end of Piers Hellawell’s Quadruple Elegy than I was reaching for the repeat button. As
expected, this intensely lyrical, subtly original music revealed even more the second time around. The final
movement of this violin concerto in all but name is particularly fine. Quiet harmonies progress like a sloweddown chorale, while the solo violin cuts across them with wide-spanning figures that echo one another but
which never seem quite the same twice. You may sense Stravinsky in the background in all three pieces – in
the complex dance-rhythms, in the dislocated melodies, in the enriched tonal harmonies – but the effect is
quite different. Hellawell has none of Stravinsky’s sadistic humour or straitjacketed ‘objectivity’; instead
there’s refined pathos, exhilarating song and something close to a sense of awe.
It’s no surprise to discover that Hellawell finds nature so absorbing: the booklet contains some of his haunting photographs of rock, sand and water formation. A similar delight in sensuous natural geometry can be
felt in The Still Dancers, and still more in the final movement of Inside Story. It’s hard to imagine this music
better played, notably by the fine string soloists Clio Gould and Philip Dukes. The recordings of the orchestral works allow us to hear plenty of detail without sacrificing atmosphere; sound in The Still Dancers is a
little drier, but admirably clear.”
Stephen Johnson, BBC Music Magazine 2002
“Piers Hellawell (b.1956) has an immediately recognizable personal language and vividly fluent inventiveness. The language, he tells us, is rooted in a personal adaptation of blues harmony, but I would have said
that a couple of works by Stravinsky – the Symphonies of Wind Instruments and the Three Pieces for string
quartet - had a fruitful influence as well. The three works here chart the development of that language, the
Quadruple Elegy dating from around the time that it matured, The Still Dancers from shortly thereafter,
while Inside Story is recent. The language is toughly lyrical, perhaps owing something to a knowledge of
folk music, something else to the stacked singing textures of late Tippett (think of the Triple Concerto) but
more vociferous, often more energetic. In the earlier pieces, though it is hard not to be grateful for Hellawell’s apparently limitless fluency, one cannot resist the feeling that it is easier for him to invent a new
and striking idea than to discuss or develop those he has invented already. But Piers Hellawell’s industrious
inventiveness is a whole lot more entertaining than many other composers’ rigorous motivic economy. The
Still Dancers, in particular, contains enough arresting string quartet textures and ideas to furnish another
composer with material for several quartets.
In Inside Story, however, there is much more development, much more of a sense of evolving form, although
the two movements are only tenuously connected. In the first, the two soloists often seem to draw other instruments or orchestral groups into their sinewy athletic lyricism and to become ‘co-soloists’. In the second
– a sort of recitative and variations – a flugelhorn upstages the string soloists for a while. It is an invigorating, likeable pieces that demands immediate rehearing. Quadruple Elegy only begins and ends elegiacally;
it is a series of commemorations – at times tense or protesting but always positive and vigorous – of the
victims of human cruelty. It ends, appropriately as Hellawell’s source, with a richly and densely harmonized
blues.
The performances are brilliant and eloquent, the recordings exemplary. Hellawell’s is an alert, engaging,
absorbingly intelligent musical mind, and it is good to have such a satisfying cross-section of his music on
disc.”
Michael Oliver, International Record Review 2002
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