FOCUSING THE LENS

For the LGT Young Soloists, recording a newly commissioned string symphony by Philip Glass provided ample opportunity for detailed and thoughtful music making – as the group’s artistic director, Alexander Gilman, tells Toby Deller

The famous wall at the front of Abbey Road Studios is looking particularly bright when the LGT Young Soloists come to record their album of Philip Glass. Not only is the fresh coat of whitewash barely marked by the otherwise perpetually blossoming Beatles graffiti, but also these are beautifully sunny summer days, a rarity for London in 2021.

Any mixed feelings the players may have about missing out on the sunshine, however, are not in evidence inside Studio One as they set to work on the brand-new symphony (no.14 for strings, titled Liechtenstein) that Glass has written for the group. For despite the symphony’s blissful, easy-sounding opening with which the second day’s recording begins, it is a piece of contrasting technical features that need to be executed with focus and attention to detail – and just as much in the more tranquil moments as in the fast passages of the finale. Concentration levels in the room are such that although I am only listening and am nowhere near an instrument, I still worry about ruining a take by merely thinking of playing an arpeggio slightly out of tune.

The group’s artistic director and concertmaster, Alexander Gilman, is clear that this is not music to be underestimated. He dismisses with a firm ‘No!’ the ‘mean voices’ who might claim, as he puts it, ‘“It’s Glass; you just go into the studio, you get the score and you sightread it.”’ In any case, his aspirations for the interpretation go beyond accuracy.

PHOTOS MARTIN KENDRICK/KNIGHT CLASSICAL

‘THERE’S ALWAYS A DIRECT LINE FROM THE AUDIENCE TO US, AND THERE’S NOWHERE TO HIDE’ – ALEXANDER GILMAN

‘Minimalistic music is composed in a minimalist way, but I want to get the maximum out of this. I don’t just want to play plain, straight piano, I want to figure out where we can build a big phrase, where we can make different sounds, bring out the bass, bring out the viola. This is the biggest challenge.’

This approach, in his view, calls for meticulous preparation. ‘If you want to find this atmosphere – this beyond-theworld sense that you’re looking down to Earth – you need to think not only about which fingerings to use, but which bow speed, which bow division, which bow pressure, how you develop the bow speed – all those little things. Do you vibrate? Don’t you vibrate? And then you need your fellow musicians to do absolutely the same. That’s a real focus in rehearsals – mainly we focus on having the same bow division and so on. That’s why it’s good that the players don’t get distracted by a conductor and all eyes are ideally on me as the leader, or the soloist.’

Gilman’s preparation for the project included listening to Glass’s other symphonies – his first dates from 1992 and no.15 is scheduled for its premiere in March 2022. ‘I think this piece is not typical late Glass. It has a kind of transparency, some youthfulness and joy. But when I was speaking to him, I told him, if possible, he should try to mould it to us. He told me that he looked through our videos and said: “I’ve always worked with young people and this is exactly what I see in the videos – this joy, this energy.” I like how he put that into the piece. It’s still a signature piece, still typical Glass writing. But it’s quite different from his late works, especially the ending.’

The pretext for this latest symphony was the centenary of the private bank LGT, the group’s sponsor ‘LGT helped me create this orchestra in 2013,’ explains Gilman of the international all-string group whose members are aged between 14 and 23. ‘It’s the largest family-owned private bank in the world, fully owned by the princely family of Liechtenstein. We have all seen this orchestral project expand very successfully over the past few years, so we decided that for the bank’s 100th anniversary, in 2021, we should do something very special. We approached Philip Glass and asked him if we could commission a piece for the LGT Young Soloists with the title Liechtenstein.’

The LGT Young Soloists record Philip Glass’s Tirol Concerto at London’s Abbey Road Studios with pianist Martin James Bartlett

In common with many other works for string orchestra, Glass’s threemovement symphony is written with embedded solo parts, concerto grossostyle, although in the second movement, which heavily features a solo quintet, chamber music is the more obvious precedent. In this respect, the piece is a microcosm of the LGT Young Soloists project more generally, with its aim of providing its players with a range of musical experiences.

‘The orchestra itself is not an orchestra,’ explains Gilman. ‘It’s really a group of individual string players who are all pursuing a career as professional musicians. Each is already very successful at the stage they are at, and we try to help them by offering the possibility to perform with the orchestra regularly as a soloist, to perform in the orchestra and also to do a lot of chamber music.’

The size of the ensemble is deliberately kept small – for this recording, there are four first violins, four seconds, three violas, two cellos and a single double bass – precisely to ensure the players are always on show. ‘In the recording we have two rows of players, but in concert we are always in one half-circle, with everyone standing, so everybody’s in the first row. There’s always a direct line from the audience to us, and there’s nowhere to hide or be insecure.’

The release pairs the new symphony with Glass’s first piano concerto. Entitled the Tirol Concerto (2000) because it was directly inspired by that region’s folk songs and landscape, it is, says Gilman, an ideal partner for a piece dedicated to another Alpine locality. British pianist Martin James Bartlett is the soloist. ‘Martin is so clear, so articulate. Normally we work without a conductor because we want the musicians to learn how to communicate, how to read the soloists and how to adjust. And that worked with Martin brilliantly.’

He is full of praise for another aspect of Bartlett’s playing, too – one that holds particular resonance for a group of string players. ‘I always quote David Oistrakh to my students, and he said:

“The most difficult thing about playing the violin is achieving a true legato.” This is what I love about Martin, and you’ll hear it in the recording: he has one of the most incredible legatos I’ve ever heard on the piano. It’s exactly what you need in Glass – to keep the sense of those big lines, and to keep the tension.’

Gilman also highlights the contribution of the studio itself towards the recorded sound quality: ‘What I heard with Martin in the control room yesterday was just incredible.’ This is not the group’s first visit there, as they collaborated with the Abbey Road Institute music production school earlier in the year, but it is the first of their commercial releases to have been recorded at the studios. ‘You can rehearse in the nicest venues, but it’s either too dry or there’s too much resonance. You come to Abbey Road and suddenly everything that you were discussing, everything that was disappointing at the rehearsal, kind of works.’

WORKS Glass Symphony no.14 for strings (Liechtenstein); Tirol Concerto for piano and orchestra ARTISTS Martin James Bartlett (pf) LGT Young Soloists RECORDING VENUE Abbey Road Studios, London, UK RECORDING DATES 16–17 July 2021