Artist, writer and arts consultant Neva Elliott speaks to pianist Eliza McCarthy and composer Donnacha Dennehy about Limina, the visceral new concerto for piano written by Dennehy for McCarthy.
Limina will premiere with Crash Ensemble on 20th April at New Music Dublin.
Neva: When I first met you, Eliza, my reaction to you was that you were very Crash Ensemble in terms of your playing, but also your attitude and who you are. Donnacha being the person who originated Crash Ensemble and, with it, that notion of what Crash is, how does it feel like working with a beast of your creation and a soloist that typifies it, essentially?
Donnacha: Well, I don't think it that way, but I do believe that Eliza is very Crash, for sure. I set up the group, but it grew organically into one that loves playing contemporary music and hanging out. There's always been the feeling of a band about Crash Ensemble, and Eliza instantly fit into that; she was part of that fun-loving but super-serious thing of Crash Ensemble. I see her entirely as someone who could have been there at the very founding of Crash; except for her youthfulness, she's a bit younger. But she's also entirely herself; her playing always blew me away.
Neva: What did writing for Eliza as a player and having Eliza in your head when you were writing mean specifically to you?
Donnacha: I was excited that Eliza wanted me to write a piece for her, and I wanted to go the whole hog and do a concerto. Even if you're not writing to each other daily, it's always in your head how they play the instrument, which influences how the piece goes. There is a ferocity in the way she plays, and also a commitment that I love. I was thinking of the kind of energy that she brings - it's both energetic and full of personality and in the rhythm of the thing, even in slow music, a relentless quality. It's what attracts me to music, a kind of relentlessness, sometimes a breathlessness, even in the slow stuff. I don't know why that is, but I have to have that, and I know that Eliza can deliver that. Then there is her personality; everyone who knows Eliza knows that she's not only a great player but also has great wit. So there was her personality and incredible technical facility in my head. Eliza's personality manifests in the piece in certain grooves of the first movement, which is incredibly rhythmic. Where the ensemble is really with her, and then they're doing all these rhythmic unisons with her pitch. She leads this propulsive unit, then starts to fall out of the register in this really dramatic tumbling sort of way. I just thought that's so Eliza. So that was in my head - this is an Eliza way of dealing with an opening movement. And then again, at the end of the third movement, the way it breaks free into these rumbling motors that create spectral switches through the ensemble, I thought I could see Eliza playing it.
Neva: One of the things you’ve previously said about the piece is that there is a kind of friction between the quixotic individual and the deterministically evolving mass. I thought that's Eliza you're talking about, the quixotic individual.
Donnacha: That phrase I wrote before I even wrote the piece. But there is that, yes, I was thinking a lot about the concerto dynamic, and I wanted to both go with the tradition and confront it and subvert it. In both the first and second movements, there is a playing with unison within the ensemble, almost as if the soloist is an ensemble player, emerges or leads, then breaks apart as a soloist. In the first movement, nearly all the pitches at the start are unisons and then become canons; some pitches that have been unisons remain while the other pitches change. And so, you build up this kind of harmony that is not unison based; that's how I deal with the solo - it emerges entirely from that. The second movement, based on a 16th-century piece of melody, is where she starts to depart from everything. She's ornamenting out of that rhythm. I'm playing with her evolving from the ensemble, from being part of it, and then evolving to a more, let's say, dialectic thing. I was thinking of new ways of playing with that relationship between solo and mass. There's a lot of play with unison versus non-unison in this piece. Even the final movement, where I took a spectrum of a piano, rhythmicized it and then detuned it, everything begins as part of the prototype and then shifts away from it.
Neva: Eliza, when you started talking about wanting to work with Donnacha on this piece, you spoke of a shared perception of rhythm and sound and how Donnacha's piano writing felt natural for your abilities. You were very driven to have him write for you; what were your reasons?
Eliza: I first heard your music, Donnacha, on (U.S. radio show) Meet the Composer. That was a few months before I joined Crash. I didn't even know I would be playing with Crash then, but I listened to it, and I thought, oh my, I need to play Stainless Staining, and I want to work with this composer. And then, out of the blue, I was asked to join Crash, totally coincidentally. It was really when we did The Second Violinist that I discovered that there was something about your writing that really suited my playing. I think it was then that we ended up over many Guinness talking about working with each other, and several years later, here we are. It was so interesting when I got the first movement of Limina. I was like, yes, this is me. It felt so natural, not necessarily physically, because it is hugely challenging, but it's a sound world that fits me, my body rhythmically, and in my head, I can hear it. I know what you want, which is great. That's what I love about working with composers in this way, being able to chat every week in a way that feels organic, and I can hear your process and my playing in this piece. It's such an honour and a tremendous pressure to prove that I can do it because it's pushing me; it's how I need to be pushed a certain way. And the tradition of a piano concerto is already quite an enormous pressure, isn't it? This idea of a big grand presentation with the cadenzas and everything and the whole history of concerto writing... But this piece feels like we’re doing it our way, which feels fresh, and I can do it with a bit of a glint in my eye because it's our concerto.
Donnacha: We do play with some of those traditions. There are cadenzas in slightly different places, which I don't want to give away because they're essential to how you hear the piece. It is sort of a glint but also deadly serious because these have structural ramifications, not only to the form but also to the genre to some extent. The middle movement is both slow and not slow, and it taps into this other side that I've seen in Eliza, this deeply introspective side. All these countermelodies are buried in it; it's a significant solo but also an introspective challenge.
Neva: That's interesting, Eliza, that you said you felt it bodily because I also get that from Donnacha’s music. I've felt it in my guts. Maybe you both have similar energies in that you have that introspection, but you also have a ferocity and that visceral aspect.
Eliza: As well as the fact that the titles of the movements are Head, Chest, and Nervous System. And the feeling of each movement fits perfectly within those titles. Donnacha, what drew you to those titles?
Donnacha: Well, at first, it was a basic splitting up of how the three movements might work and talk to each other. I was determined to do three movements like the classic concerto, but I wanted to have them talk to each other somehow. At first, I thought of it almost entirely in terms of register – head/thinking/voice as the highest register, then the chest, gut or diaphragm, lower down, the nervous system connecting everything and spreading out in these different ways. Head starts at the top of the register, and it basically descends. But also, Head is the headiest of the movements because it's so structural, all these unisons, unison displacements, these palindromes that expand and contract, all these little structural games. Also, it comes as though in a headlong rush. So, there are all these manifestations of the head in it.
Eliza: The first movement is a clever f**ker, isn't it?
Donnacha: Yes, it is. It hurt my head even writing it because I wanted to be so strict in sticking right to these structural ideas that I had for it. Sometimes I thought, why am I being so strict? No one's even going to notice. But I decided I was happy when I stuck to what I wanted to do. In Chest, I thought of the chest voice and its connection with the soul. I didn't want to use the word soul because I thought oh, I can't use that word, but I could use chest. It comes more out of the middle register too. The final movement is called Nervous System. It’s also got references to both other movements, so it's like the tissue connecting them in this very kind of nervous, very energetic sort of way. Originally I had thought of just dividing up the registers, but then my thinking became more evolved.
Neva: It's interesting hearing you talking about it in a technical musical way; when I hear Head, Chest, Nervous System, I think of it in the bodily way of how we are affected by things happening, for example, how we are affected by trauma - that feeling in your chest, be it a heavy feeling or how your breathing is affected and your nervous system is activated. Those are the places I would pick if I were talking about how I'm affected by trauma.
Donnacha: You're absolutely right; that was in my head, too, ultimately, for why I called them those names - I was also thinking of the emotional way that something hits you or how you process stuff, not necessarily trauma, also excitement, also how you feel on a spring day, just the way you process life. I was thinking about how you process life and how you feel emotions.
Eliza: I practice and teach mindfulness, and what is discovered in meditation is how all of these processes can be separated, almost like a constellation, so when you experience something, you can differentiate how you process it, how your reactivity can take over; whether it's in the head, as in thought, or a feeling in the chest or a reaction in the nervous system. So much of my practice, when I'm meditating, is being able to see all these different mechanisms and observe them, to witness how they all play out, rather than getting embroiled in them, just seeing them. So part of my coming to this piece and practising it is paying attention to all of that; the thought processes, physicality, emotion, and how it intertwines.
Neva: The title, Limina, seems very calm.
Donnacha: Well, I was just about to say about the title, Limina, is that it refers to thresholds. Each movement sets up a threshold musically, and then it goes beyond it, so that's the idea of limina. The piece, ultimately, is where something turns, like the way, for instance, that water turns into vapour—that liminal space where that's about to happen.
Neva: Tell me about the process of writing it. How did you work together, or did you work together?
Donnacha: We had been sending stuff back and forth, we talked about it, and then I just went away and wrote it. I would then hold it for as long as possible because I was strict with some of the material and eventually gave it to her. Then we'd have feedback about it. Recently, Eliza has recorded sections on her phone and WhatsApp-ed them to me, and I’d write back with slight tweaks. Ultimately, I think the piece turned out to be more ambitious than I initially thought. There's still more ahead - we will have several performances of this - in Dublin with Crash Ensemble, and New York with Contemporaneous Ensemble, and maybe in London, the piece also grows through those initial performances. I would say that both for Eliza and in terms of the scope of the work.
Neva: Do you think those sessions of sending things back and forth pushed each other, or was there another reason it became more ambitious?
Donnacha: I think the piece just kept on looking for it; pieces develop their own momentum. It's difficult to know. Sometimes you think it's going one way, and it turns out another... I had a lot of fun writing it, which then generates stuff.
Neva: So you were writing a piece about limina for Eliza and her playing, and you were playing with the form of the concerto - confronting and subverting the tradition. You were doing many things in one piece.
Donnacha: Yeah, I'm interested in concerto as a genre that really fires me up as a composer at the moment. It's because I often think of the group as a sonic engine that a soloist enlivens in some way; they humanise the sonic engine through interaction or friction between the engine and the human.
Neva: Eliza, to have a concerto written for you is a career-defining moment, and to have it by a composer you have long admired and wanted to write for you. How does this feel to have this piece of work?
Eliza: It's incredible. When I was younger, trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to play something other than the traditional repertoire or go down the route that other conservatoire students were going, so I sat down and thought, what do I want? I must have been around 17, and I thought: I want people to write me music. And it's happening, so I'm achieving that. I love performing and working in this way; It's like a living thing that's changing; it feels like I have a say because it's for me and written for my strengths and weaknesses.
Neva: So, it's just being fully utilised in a way that you're seen and heard and as an entity - going back to that bodily thing again.
Eliza: There's flexibility; I can say, ‘Well, actually, this feels more comfortable if I do it this way’. It also becomes a different beast in performance, and things will speak differently. There's a movability there as well, flexibility and shifting that happens.
Donnacha: Composers are brought up to think, oh, no, you have to be strict with what we've written because you have to believe in the structural integrity of your material. But actually, being flexible will make it better. I learned this from working in the rehearsal room with Enda Walsh on the operas we did together because he has a clear and exact vision of what he wants on stage and yet is completely open to suggestions in the rehearsal room. That was inspiring for me to see. If you're going to work, and it's a real honour for me to work with a great musician like Eliza, who's also so invested in it, as invested in it as you are, the flexibility helps, as you’re both thinking about what's the best for the thing, you know?
Neva: That feels like a good place to end.
Eliza: Yeah, I've got to go practice.
World premieres, an exhibition and new music.
— CRASH ENSEMBLE (@crashensemble) April 6, 2023
April 20-23 @NewMusicDublin from The National Concert Hall.
Find out more and get your tickets here: 👇https://t.co/w29VWZfrFx#NMD2023 pic.twitter.com/Lu1Fe4idUW
Limina premieres on Thursday, 20th April, at The Studio, National Concert Hall, as part of this year's New Music Dublin festival - find out more here.
