Brett Dean
“Beggars and Angels” Brett Dean “Beggars and Angels”

Brett Dean’s works often draw inspiration from the visual arts. That is, of course, true of many composers. With Dean, however, this dialogue really does unfold as a partnership of equals. He has been married for many years to the Australian painter Heather Betts, and the couple live a genuine synthesis of the arts.

In 1994, the exhibition Beggars and Angels at the  Kutschstall in Potsdam showed works by Heather Betts and the German sculptor Trak Wendisch – massive sculptures by Wendisch, luminous figures in Betts’s oil paintings. Wendisch’s beggars and Betts’s angels, one review noted at the time, showed a striking resemblance despite the differences in material and aesthetics.

This observation inspired Dean to write his first major orchestral work, which he titled Beggars and Angels and dedicated to Heather Betts. He received the commission in 1997 from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. At the time, he was still a member of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and it is hardly surprising that the score displays a precise knowledge of the orchestra’s palette of colours, as well as of the fine gradations of a large ensemble – and not least, a sure instinct for “rewarding” instrumental solos.

In this imagined encounter of beings, Dean’s piece follows no story or message. The contrast between aggressive outbursts and gentle passages is not confined to fixed character assignments. The angel motif runs through the entire work: a nimble figure to be played “flautando” (flute-like), sounding at times airy and delicate, at others angular and sharp, in different instruments. Typical of Dean are nervous, restless textures that whip the action forwards. The brutality of the big city bursts in with massive percussion, which even employs metal dustbin lids and alarming tubular bells. Yet there are also recurring moments of chorale-like exaltation or lyrical introspection, strongly charged with emotion. Thus the “wild” and the “mild” are set against one another – to hearken back to Schumann.

Sound effects such as drawing the bow hair across the body of the instrument, or flutter-tonguing in the winds, are used with precise atmospheric intent. Roughly halfway through the piece, a solo for tuba stands out: an epitaph for a young Australian tuba player who died prematurely. As so often in Dean’s music, the human being behind the instrument comes into focus. Parts of the compositional material of Beggars and Angels – including the quiet, hesitant call of a third at the very beginning – go back to a deeply personal work: Intimate Decisions for solo viola, written in 1996 for Walter Küssner, Dean’s viola colleague in the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Despite the large orchestral forces of Beggars and Angels, there is room for many intimate moments. The extended, ethereal coda leaves open whether we are witnessing a consoling dissolution into another sphere. Earlier, Dean had immersed himself in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies for his piano quintet Voices of Angels. There we read, in Edward Snow’s translation: “For beauty is nothing / but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure, / and while we stand in wonder it coolly disdains / to destroy us. Every Angel is terrifying..”