Uploaded August 2010 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
Plenum (Philosophy): the nature of chaos or non-being as fullness.
This is part of an enjoyable recital which Richard Deering gave at the Purcell Room in celebration of Elisabeth Lutyens's 70th birthday. Deering was a convinced and convincing advocate, the recording is lifelike, and everything is new to the catalogue except the Bagatelles, which survive in the performance by Katharina Wolpe [which we have posted on YouTube previously], their dedicatee..
Even if Miss Lutyens was a late developer and the Intermezzi of 1942 are relatively early, they already form a fairly characteristic sequence, cogent and concentrated. The most recent Lutyens piece is Plenum, dating from 1973, a slow-moving, contemplative yet highly organized essay which also is beautiful and entirely personal in thought and feeling. Juxtaposed with the Intermezzi, it gives an idea of the growth of the composer's expressive and technical resources over three decades. In between conic the Bagatelles of 1962, which form a terse, incantatory group, and the slightly earlier Piano e forte of 1958, which receives a particularly clear and ringing performance from Deering.
Daughter of the famous architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, Elisabeth Lutyens used her own method of serial (12-tone) composition to create individual, psychologically powerful music.
Determined to be a composer from the age of 9, Elisabeth Lutyens went to Paris in 1922 to study at the Ècole Normale de Musique in Paris. On her return to London, she studied composition and the viola at the Royal College of Music from 1926-30.
Critical of the "overblown" music of Mahler, Bruckner and Elgar, she collaborated with fellow RCM students Iris Lemare and Anne MacNaughton to mount a series of modern music concerts which featured first performances by new composers such as Benjamin Britten, Alan Rawsthorne and Elizabeth Maconchy. Some of Lutyens' own works were also performed, but she withdrew these later because they were "too conservative".
In 1933, Lutyens married the singer Ian Glennie, by whom she had 3 children, but in 1938 she left Glennie for the conductor, Edward Clark. For much of this period, Lutyens had been working in near isolation, since her music had little affinity with prevailing trends in Britain. For example, her Concerto for Nine Instruments (1939) employed a 14-note series which she had worked out for herself. These and other pieces have been described as "extraordinary achievements, demonstrating a completely personal serial style and very original structures".
However, at that time her work was not looked on favourably by the musical authorities at the BBC, although she was praised by the pioneering British serial composer Humphrey Searle, a former pupil of the Austrian serialist Anton Webern. In 1947, she scored a success among the avant garde with a setting of Rimbaud's poem O Saisons, O Chateaux, which had been turned down as "unsingable" by the BBC. Lutyens' bohemian lifestyle was equally unconventional, and there were many parties at Clark's flat in Fitzroy Street, where the alcoholic poet Dylan Thomas was briefly a lodger.
As the music of Webern and Alban Berg became better known in this country, recognition gradually came Lutyens' way with such works as the Wittgenstein Motet (1952) and Music for Orchestra 1 (1955). She nevertheless had to earn her bread and butter by writing film scores, which she did with characteristic energy and professionalism. Her film music career began in 1944 with an item in a 1944 RAF newsreel, and included feature films such as Don't Bother to Knock (1960). She also had a close association with Hammer films, which found her 12-tone system to their taste in numerous movies, including Dr Terror's House of Horrors, The Skull (1965) and The Terrornauts (1967) -- and of course, that deathless classic, "The Earth Dies Screaming."
Lutyens was known and respected as a creative artist for whom compromise was impossible. She was also a provocative and inspiring teacher who gave herself unstintingly to her pupils. Her output was large and varied, and the importance of her contribution to the country's musical life was recognised in 1969, when she was made a Commander of the British Empire.
"When I finally heard a piece by Webern I said, 'What marvelous music from the composer of Der Freischutz.'" (Elisabeth Lutyens)
Plenum (Philosophy): the nature of chaos or non-being as fullness.
This is part of an enjoyable recital which Richard Deering gave at the Purcell Room in celebration of Elisabeth Lutyens's 70th birthday. Deering was a convinced and convincing advocate, the recording is lifelike, and everything is new to the catalogue except the Bagatelles, which survive in the performance by Katharina Wolpe [which we have posted on YouTube previously], their dedicatee..
Even if Miss Lutyens was a late developer and the Intermezzi of 1942 are relatively early, they already form a fairly characteristic sequence, cogent and concentrated. The most recent Lutyens piece is Plenum, dating from 1973, a slow-moving, contemplative yet highly organized essay which also is beautiful and entirely personal in thought and feeling. Juxtaposed with the Intermezzi, it gives an idea of the growth of the composer's expressive and technical resources over three decades. In between conic the Bagatelles of 1962, which form a terse, incantatory group, and the slightly earlier Piano e forte of 1958, which receives a particularly clear and ringing performance from Deering.
Daughter of the famous architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, Elisabeth Lutyens used her own method of serial (12-tone) composition to create individual, psychologically powerful music.
Determined to be a composer from the age of 9, Elisabeth Lutyens went to Paris in 1922 to study at the Ècole Normale de Musique in Paris. On her return to London, she studied composition and the viola at the Royal College of Music from 1926-30.
Critical of the "overblown" music of Mahler, Bruckner and Elgar, she collaborated with fellow RCM students Iris Lemare and Anne MacNaughton to mount a series of modern music concerts which featured first performances by new composers such as Benjamin Britten, Alan Rawsthorne and Elizabeth Maconchy. Some of Lutyens' own works were also performed, but she withdrew these later because they were "too conservative".
In 1933, Lutyens married the singer Ian Glennie, by whom she had 3 children, but in 1938 she left Glennie for the conductor, Edward Clark. For much of this period, Lutyens had been working in near isolation, since her music had little affinity with prevailing trends in Britain. For example, her Concerto for Nine Instruments (1939) employed a 14-note series which she had worked out for herself. These and other pieces have been described as "extraordinary achievements, demonstrating a completely personal serial style and very original structures".
However, at that time her work was not looked on favourably by the musical authorities at the BBC, although she was praised by the pioneering British serial composer Humphrey Searle, a former pupil of the Austrian serialist Anton Webern. In 1947, she scored a success among the avant garde with a setting of Rimbaud's poem O Saisons, O Chateaux, which had been turned down as "unsingable" by the BBC. Lutyens' bohemian lifestyle was equally unconventional, and there were many parties at Clark's flat in Fitzroy Street, where the alcoholic poet Dylan Thomas was briefly a lodger.
As the music of Webern and Alban Berg became better known in this country, recognition gradually came Lutyens' way with such works as the Wittgenstein Motet (1952) and Music for Orchestra 1 (1955). She nevertheless had to earn her bread and butter by writing film scores, which she did with characteristic energy and professionalism. Her film music career began in 1944 with an item in a 1944 RAF newsreel, and included feature films such as Don't Bother to Knock (1960). She also had a close association with Hammer films, which found her 12-tone system to their taste in numerous movies, including Dr Terror's House of Horrors, The Skull (1965) and The Terrornauts (1967) -- and of course, that deathless classic, "The Earth Dies Screaming."
Lutyens was known and respected as a creative artist for whom compromise was impossible. She was also a provocative and inspiring teacher who gave herself unstintingly to her pupils. Her output was large and varied, and the importance of her contribution to the country's musical life was recognised in 1969, when she was made a Commander of the British Empire.
"When I finally heard a piece by Webern I said, 'What marvelous music from the composer of Der Freischutz.'" (Elisabeth Lutyens)
![Renè Koering, Sonate - Michaël Levinas, piano [part 2 of 2]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JMz1q6nEoFg/mqdefault.jpg "Renè Koering, Sonate - Michaël Levinas, piano [part 2 of 2]
Ecrite en 1974, elle fut créé au Festival de Royan et donnée quelques jour plus tard à Boston per Herbert Henck. Maurice Fleuret, que y voyait la grande sonate romantique après Berg na sy trompait guère, puisque je voulais écrite une sonate dont les racines étaient chez Berg et qui de là rencontrait le languate qui était naturellement le mien : celui de la grande 2e Sonate de Boulez.
Les différents « moments » de le œuvre simposaient tout naturellement comme par exemple le fugato au début de lœuvre dont multiples voix allaient se résorber dans les « étoiles » du scherzo de la fin. Un autre élément que je ne voulais par éviter, st celui de la virtuosité pianistique, qui appliquée avec un certain sadisme, fait évoluer souvent la phrase dans un sens non prévisible.
Nombreux sont les passages qui, rédigés ou distribuées autrement aux deux mains du pianiste, lauraient amenée vers dautres possibilités sonores ce choix né du tumulte me fait parfois penser à ce que lon appelait autre-fois « un programme ». Sans me lavouer, ce programme préexistait mais quel peut-il être ?
A la musique de répondre.
René Koering
Né à Andiau (Alsace) en 1940, René Koering étudia la musique à Darmstadt dans les années Soixante. En 1961, création de sa première œuvre, commande des « Musiktage » de Donaueschingen. En 1967, il se voit attribuer le Prix de la « Fondation de la Vocation » et le Premier Prix de la Fondation Maeght. Ses œuvres (musique symphonique, concertos, œuvres électroaccostiques, musique de chambre et opéras) furent données dans divers festivals. Depuis 1971, il enseigne à lEcole des Beaux-Arts. Vice-Président de la Société Internaitonal de Musique Contemporaine, il occupe pas ailleurs dimportantes fonctions au sein de Radio France.
Michaël Levinas
Son père est le philosophe Emmanuel Levinas. Après des études au Conservatoire de Paris (Yvonne Loriod, Olivier Messiaen) où il obtient de nombreux premiers prix, Michaël Levinas effectue des stages au GRM, suit des cours à Darmstadt (Xenakis, Stockhausen, Ligeti) et, en 1974, devient co-fondateur puis responsable de lensemble lItinéraire. Pianiste concertiste international, il enseigne lanalyse au Conservatoire de Paris depuis 1992.
Dès les premières œuvres, en marge du sérialisme, Michaël Levinas développe un style singulier dune extraordinaire puissance expressive.")
