Fred & Ginger

But first, a new commission by Gary Carpenter presented a more light-hearted approach, a 5-minute musical postcard entitled Fred & Ginger after the dancing stars. This hinted at the harmonies of popular songs of composers like Irving Berlin, which as the composer notes, share some overlap with classical composers such as Schoenberg who were working at the same time. Yet for all its rhythmic playfulness, this was a work that owed more to twentieth-century avant garde composers than to the dance hall tunes of the 1920s.

A little over five minutes in duration, the work draws its inspiration from the characters of the title, Astaire and Rogers—or, more specifically, the ambivalent nature of their relationship in front of (elegant; suave) and away from (argumentative; turbulent) the camera. It doesn’t start terribly promisingly; the opening gestures suggest the generic, empty kind of material that litters many contemporary scores (particularly those affiliated with Faber). But it quickly becomes evident that there’s more going on here than mere posturing: rhythmic convulsions that already hint at something dance-like; sustained tones that may or may not aspire to melody; spasmodic eruptions— initiated by the timpani—that are clearly going to be problematic as things continue. Despite seeming to be present merely to disrupt things, the percussion actually provide the impetus for a greater sense of both stability and direction, laying down the gauntlet, so to speak, by preparing a clear, consistent pulse. Before things really swing, however, the sharp angular shapes cast by the orchestra gradually assume a more lyrical demeanour—first on the strings, later on a trombone—and the work finally attains the epithets conductor Daniel Harding asserted beforehand, “wit and charm and elegance”. All the while, the underscore (most clearly in the clarinets) has been building, and at the last, all merry hell breaks loose in a swirling, climactic cavalcade of spins and twirls that are irresistibly thrilling; it becomes clear that the previous four minutes of wildness were simply pent-up anticipation of this moment.

As part of the LSO's long-standing commitment to contemporary composers there was Gary Carpenter’s Fred & Ginger, inspired by a story from the film-musical “Top Hat” (1935), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Even though there is suave on-screen chemistry, behind the scenes the two are quarrelling, and Rogers’s dress was causing no end of uncomfortable encounters for Astaire in the number ‘Cheek to Cheek’. These contrasts provide the successful basis of the work: smooth textures interrupted by flashes of jagged themes, but really needing more than the five minutes’ duration.