28 Jan 2012 05:18:38
When Alex Ross started writing The Rest is Noise in 2000 he never expected that a book about 20th-century classical music would go on to sell 250,000 copies and win literary prizes around the world – including the Guardian First Book Award. Now the book's extraordinary success has scaled new heights with the announcement of a year-long festival at London's Southbank Centre which aims to bring it to life.
The Rest is Noise festival will take in almost 100 concerts, films and debates, starting on 19 January 2013 with a performance by the London Philharmonic. Conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, the orchestra will play a Richard Strauss programme including the final scene of Salome – the opera whose premiere in 1906 is the "year zero" moment of Ross's book.
Ross, classical music critic for the New Yorker, said: "I can only describe myself as blissfully bewildered that Southbank Centre have taken inspiration from my book and built this sprawling, teeming festival."
The festival will be divided into 12 chronological themes, from The Big Bang: A New Century, a New World in January to New World Order: No More Rules in December; other themes include Berlin in the 20s and 60s Weekend: the West Does Revolution. It will be accompanied by a TV series on BBC4.
Speaking at the launch of the Southbank Centre's 2012/13 classical music season, director Jude Kelly said the festival was initially conceived four years ago, when she read a proof copy of Ross's book, which was published in 2007. Kelly said the festival would take in several art forms and aim to involve audiences "hostile to 20th-century music" while giving those already highly committed to it "another route in".
"We'll have these weekends which will take you through the 20th century and focus on moments when the art movements were emerging – how music was immersed with visual arts and dance, where that fitted in with literature, and actually commenting on those major moments in history will be poets, dancers, choreographers, musicians, so I'm using it as a way of getting contemporary artists to come together and talk," said Kelly. "I think that classical music is a little bit on the outer edge at the moment in terms of that sense of being part of the contemporary world of art-making and I want to shift that."
"Last year I collaborated with the Australian Chamber Orchestra on a pair of concerts based on my two books," said Ross. "No one has proposed anything on the scale of what Southbank have come up with. I believe that the London audience is well primed for it; 20th-century music is better integrated into mainstream programmes than it is in New York, where hundred-year-old pieces by Schoenberg still cause rumblings of unease."
Ross said he is planning three lectures at the festival "that will give an overview of 20th-century styles and ideas, with the aid of dozens of recorded excerpts and images".
Apart from The Rest is Noise, next year will see the debut of a new work by the composer Steve Reich based on two songs by Radiohead, Everything in its Right Place and Jigsaw Falling into Place. Radio Rewrite, which will be performed by 13 musicians from the London Sinfonietta on 5 March 2013, came about after the band met Reich in Poland in September.
"It was the first time he'd met them as musicians and spoken to them at length," said Andrew Burke, chief executive of the London Sinfonietta. "Jonny Greenwood played [Reich composition] Electric Counterpoint – Steve saw this guy was seriously interested in his music and Steve became seriously interested in theirs."
Reich's pulsing, minimalist music has inspired musicians across the musical spectrum from jazz to techno. Everything in its Right Place opened Radiohead's experimental 2000 album Kid A, while Jigsaw Falling into Place comes from 2007's In Rainbows. "I don't think Steve will be quoting these songs directly – I don't think that's his style," said Burke. "How he uses the songs as a starting point for what he does is going to be part of the excitement. But ultimately I'm most excited by the fact that we've got a new work by Steve Reich."
The Southbank's Centre's 2012/13 season will also feature a joint concert between the Russian National and London Philharmonic orchestras, a centenary celebration of the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski, and a four-day festival of Welsh culture organised by baritone Bryn Terfel. The Faenol Festival was originally held in Bangor, but cancelled due to poor ticket sales, while the decision to award it £250,000 of funding was criticised by some local MPs.
