Michael Nyman

In a Palermo already breathing an all-too-summery air, Michael Nyman wraps up the tour that, in late May, saw him take center stage at southern Italy's musical institutions. After stops in Naples, Bari, Crotone and Catania, the London-based composer landed in the Sicilian capital for the fourth time in just a few years. This time, however, welcoming Nyman and his loyal band was not an opera house but the modern Metropolitan cinema-theatre, away from the city's historic centre. Most of Nyman's music, at least his best-known pieces, thus returned to the very setting for which it was originally conceived: the darkness of a modern cinema hall.

I arrived early, while the hall was still empty, to catch the ensemble's sound-check. Michael Nyman, sixty-four years old, had arrived just minutes before and was already seated at the piano: he tests his instrument and gives a few instructions to the musicians, acting as primus inter pares. The preparation of the "band" is not comparable to that of a classical orchestra, and in some ways it resembles that of a rock band, with which it shares a heavy reliance on amplification. Behind the musicians, I notice a screen and wonder what it will be used for: perhaps images from the soundtracked films will be projected, and with this question in mind I wander around the theatre while waiting for the concert to begin.

The orchestra returns to the stage in a hall that is not sold out, probably due to the rather steep ticket price. Even so, from the very first notes the acoustics prove excellent, and I discover that the screen is being used to project sequences of sports-themed images accompanying the recent composition titled "50.000 Pairs of Feet Can't Be Wrong". The Palermo audience, often a little too generous with its applause, interrupts the piece's ten movements, which last about forty minutes altogether. Proving that Nyman's music holds a power that goes well beyond its pairing with film images, here we witness an inversion of the usual relationship between music and film projection: this time the music takes centre stage, and seems itself to generate sequences of images that could just as easily be these as any others.

After an intense closing movement with Vivaldi-like cadences, the musicians leave the stage, leaving the Maestro alone with the piano. There was of course no way to skip the moment dedicated to the "Lezioni di piano" repertoire, the one that fifteen years ago brought Nyman international fame. Yet when he begins playing the famous notes of "My Big Secret", I'm left with two vague impressions: the first is that Nyman the performer is not always on the same level as Nyman the composer. The second is that he seems less engaged than when he plays together with his own ensemble: the solo repertoire allows for few variations, and he probably plays it mainly so as not to disappoint the audience.

It is again the piano that introduces the following piece, but the orchestra has already returned to its place, and the notes of "Franklin" soon give way to those of "Eileen": these are two pieces from "Wonderland", followed by a forceful excerpt from "Jack" and the one listed as "Unnamed". "Wonderland" communicates with the simplicity and emotional immediacy of a "pop" song, and it is one of the most extraordinary soundtracks I have ever heard. The live performance is impeccable, precise without ever feeling flat, with a few pleasant variations from the studio recording: notably, the piano has a greater presence, in dialogue with the orchestra.

The evening's third and final part, perhaps the most memorable, is devoted to the soundtracks composed for director Peter Greenaway. Then comes the turn of a Michael Nyman Band classic, poised between auteur minimalism and Baroque echoes: "Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepherds", from "The Draughtsman's Contract". Three excerpts from "Prospero's Books" follow, in which the music celebrates its own visionary power, embodying the magical art of the Shakespearean Prospero. Finally, with the three vibrant movements of "Drowning By Numbers", the evening reaches its peak: the small "band" truly displays a force and grandeur worthy of a Romantic orchestra. The audience's applause is long, heartfelt and well deserved.

By popular demand, the Maestro returns alone to the stage to offer the final notes of the evening: the sweet, enchanting ones of "Franklin".

In conclusion, one might ask: how should we define Michael Nyman's music today? It is clear that, however much it may partly emulate its language, it is not "classical" music, the glory of a bygone era. Yet it is not "avant-garde" music either, the burden of the modern age. It is, in part, both things, and at the same time neither: Michael Nyman has managed to reconcile art music with cinema, experimentation with "pop" culture, and Mozart with minimalism. However one chooses to define his music, in the end, matters little: the involvement and enthusiasm of the listeners (a notably diverse audience, too) show that it remains a living, current presence in our time. By managing to heal that rift between art and audience which characterised the twentieth century, it introduces a significant departure from the aesthetic conception previously put forward by the avant-gardes. Today, Nyman's output no longer carries the connotations of "experimental music", nor does it aspire to: in the early years of a new century, he already seems to be an interpreter of what lies "beyond" (*).

For those who missed the Michael Nyman Band, there's soon a chance to catch up: the musician will return to Italy, this time in the North, during the first week of July.

(*) “Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond” is the title of an essay written by a then-newcomer Michael Nyman in 1974. 

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