Music has a powerful hold on the human memory. We can hear a particular tune and be catapulted back in time to when and where we heard it first. We can even hear a particular interval and be reminded of a tune and be catapulted back in time to when… Music has the power not just to connect us with past experience, but to immerse us in it. What’s more, music can so get under our skin that we can think we’ve shared an experience that isn’t necessarily our own.
Saturday night’s opening concert of Kings Place’s latest themed season ‘Memory Unwrapped’ presented a programme of collective commemoration and personal nostalgia from the Dean family hearth. It’s a hearth of generous proportions, as Aurora Orchestra were also present to share a rich and eclectic playlist from the father–daughter collaboration of Brett Dean and Lotte Betts-Dean.
Appropriately introduced by Charles Ives’ Memories, this musical box of delights was a sensitively chosen selection that explored not only musical memories but exploited the resonances between the various pieces. Copland’s carefree Shaker anthem Simple Gifts segued into John Adams’ Shaker Loops – thrilling to hear in the austere wooden interior of Kings Place, all that rapid detaché at such close range. Then there was rapidfire of another kind, as Dean, holding the ensemble with relaxed precision, segued into Radiohead’s deeply moving song Harry Patch. The words, some from Patch’s own testimony, are gut-punch enough, but Lotte Betts-Dean’s extraordinary dramatic ability to inhabit every nuance within the music made this an unforgettable rendition.
The Aurora are nothing if not a perfectly balanced and versatile cooperative that is able to scramble itself into various ensembles to suit the mood. Ives’ The Unanswered Question, featuring the plaintive solo trumpet of Aaron Akugbo, and Couperin’s Les Barricades Mystérieuses – given Thomas Adès’ time-warping treatment – as well as a wind quintet Menuet from Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin gave individual sections of the orchestra the opportunity to remind us all that some of the best memories are those where we’re making music together.
Betts-Dean’s vocal command is impressive and her dramatic interpretation an absolute knock-out. As a package, she was most suited to the latter half of the programme, especially in her father’s demanding duet for voice and violin, Locket from Recollections. Songs by György Kurtàg allowed her to give welcome vent to her upper register. Supremely confident and infectiously daring, Betts-Dean sounded most at home in the high drama of German Sprechgesang and her rendition of Nanna’s Lied told the story vividly, even if a translation wasn’t available due to copyright reasons.
The techniques of amplification and augmentation are very much a part of how we now listen to – and write for – the voice, and the Kings Place sound team deserve a mention for their sensitive handling of this important textural element To say that Lotte Betts-Dean has a perfect voice for radio is not meant as a backhanded compliment, but to say that listening to her sing was not so much like sitting at a cabaret table, but rather the intimate experience of tuning in to a much-loved and missed radio station.
I could have happily gone on listening all night but, sadly subject to Southern Rail’s programme of repairs, I had to leave before what I’m sure were multiple encores from this most innovative and heartwarming collaboration.
