The world premiere performed by pianists Sarah Watkins, Liam Wooding, Jian Liu, Stephen De Pledge, Michael Houstoun, and Somi Kim. A concert presented by Auckland Arts Festival.
Photo: screenshot ex Sounz video
John Psathas was commissioned to write Voices at the End some years ago by the British group Piano Circus and although they workshopped the piece extensively with him in 2018 and performed parts of it, circumstances meant that there was no complete public performance at that time.
As well as the six pianos there’s a pre-recorded backing soundscape of sound effects, recitations, singing and other instrumental performances created by Psathas in collaboration with David Downes.
John Psathas writes about the work:
"The need has never been greater for the human race to think of ourselves as one inter-connected species, and to think of our one-and-only planet as a single home for all. The extraordinary film Planetary made this point so powerfully, it inspired Voices at the End.
John Psathas Photo: Robert Cross
The relentless advance of technology has propelled music into an arena where any sounds – no matter how disparate their origins – can be brought together to produce potent new sensations and meanings. The fusing of intense live performance with the recorded sounds (beautiful and terrifying) of human civilisation and the natural world, gives rise to a new kind of musical narrative.
In Voices at the End, stories from one of our most profound creation myths (the Mahabharata) appear alongside the famous message-from-humanity-to-the-cosmos on Voyager 1’s Golden Record (now travelling in interstellar space and still going strong). A heartrending Armenian song of unrequited love precedes the sounds of two beating hearts: that of a mother-to-be and the child within. Hundreds of hysterically angry individuals have been blended into a ‘choir of rage’, heard in counterpoint with the most dangerous predators from the animal kingdom. These and more are the fabric into which the story of Voices at the End is woven.
In the film Planetary, author and environmental activist Joanna Macy suggested there are three stories that we have to choose from, to make sense of our lives now, to make sense of our world. The first story that we could see and accept as reality is Business as Usual. All we need to do is keep growing our economy. We could call that the industrial growth society.
But there’s a second story which is seen and accepted as the reality by the scientists and the activists. These are the people who lift back the carpet and look under the rug of Business as Usual and see what it’s costing us. And it’s costing us the world. We call that story The Great Unravelling. Unravelling is what biological and ecological and organic systems do as diversity is lost. They shred.
That’s not the end of the story though, because there’s a third narrative, another lens through which we can choose to see. And that is that a revolution is taking place. A transition. From the industrial growth society to a life sustaining society. And it’s taking many forms – this third story, The Great Turning. It’s our story of survival and it’s got huge evolutionary pressures behind it. After all, the story of evolution is everybody’s autobiography."
Voices at the End has five sections
The three middle sections relate to the three stories John refers to: ‘Business as Usual’, ‘The Great Unravelling’, and ‘The Great Turning’.
'The Great Unravelling' contains the Armenian song ‘Yarko Parag’, sung in the recording by Briar Prastiti. And 'The Great Turning' contains that recording of a message of greeting from Kurt Waldheim being carried into deep space.
The work starts with a Prologue that he’s called ‘Honey’ and in it we hear the text from the Mahabharata about a man facing multiple life-threatening dangers yet still tempted by the offer of honey. The text has been rendered by Jean-Claude Carriere and is spoken by Malian actor Sotigui Kouyaté.
At other points we hear contributions from guitarist Joe Callwood and shakuhachi player Renkei Hashimoto.
The fifth section is an Epilogue called ‘Chrysalis’. A hopeful image to end with – is the human species about to emerge transformed?
Recorded by RNZ Concert, Auckland Town Hall, 18 March 2021
Sound engineer: Adrian Hollay
Producer: Tim Dodd
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