Bryce Dessner has described switching off a mobile phone before a concert as a political act, arguing that the experience of listening to live music offers a rare chance to step away from distraction and be fully present.
The guitarist and songwriter with US indie band The National was speaking ahead of the first Australian performances of his cello concerto Trembling Earth with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
“The experience of coming into the concert hall – to get off your phone, and just be in the room with music, and to feel those things – in a way is a kind of activism,” Dessner said.
The concerto, commissioned in part by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, was written for Russian-born cellist Anastasia Kobekina, who lives in Germany. It has already been performed in Dublin, Berlin and Prague.
At a rehearsal at the Sydney Opera House, Dessner worked through the score as Kobekina played passages that shift between tightly controlled rhythms and more lyrical sections. The piece takes its name from a painting of an oak forest by Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch.
Dessner said the work was intended to evoke the natural world while reflecting on human destruction and mismanagement. “It’s not a political piece but it’s an awareness of the tremendous instability and conflict in the world – that nature bears witness to human calamity and catastrophe and mismanagement and bad politics,” he said.
Although The National has supported Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Dessner said his classical work was generally less overtly partisan. He described Skrik Trio, written after Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016, as an exception.
Kobekina said Trembling Earth explored both the cello’s vocal quality and what she called its “earthy, primal energy”.
“I like how in this concerto you can experience constantly these contrasts – hot and cold, rhythmic and lyrical … I really feel that this world of sound that Bryce created will embrace everyone in the room,” she said.
She predicted the concerto would remain part of the cello repertoire, saying: “I do believe that this piece will be played in 30 years – it’s just so well written for the instrument, and just expands the repertoire that already exists for cello.”
Dessner will appear in two programmes with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The first, conducted by Umberto Clerici, pairs Trembling Earth with St Carolyn by the Sea, a double concerto for electric guitars featuring Dessner and Australian guitarist Zane Banks.
A second programme at Sydney’s City Recital Hall, also repeated at Melbourne Recital Centre, will include excerpts from his score for Train Dreams, alongside Aheym, Impermanence and Garcia Counterpoint, his solo-guitar tribute to Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia.
For Dessner, the political significance lies not only in the themes of the music but in the act of attending and listening. “The experience of coming to the concert hall to hear live music, to hear musicians like Anastasia – who has spent her life perfecting what she does, and to hear the Sydney Symphony Orchestra – it’s a very human form,” he said.
