'Do we really need everything to be easy?' Ilan Volkov on the BBC SSO's 'hardcore' concert

At a time of year when orchestras traditionally perform familiar favourites, the BBC SSO will be tackling ‘difficult’ music by Xenakis, Ligeti, Debussy and Bartók. Conductor Ilan Volkov tells David Kettle why

“Perhaps some audience members don’t want to celebrate Christmas for two months, with all the the Christmas lights and Christmas shopping. So we’re offering them something different.” That’s conductor Ilan Volkov, talking about the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s concert on 15 December. And while other Scottish music groups might be turning their attention to carols, snowmen and other seasonal favourites, the BBC SSO is going hardcore with Xenakis, Ligeti, Debussy and Bartók.

“Okay, on paper it might look like quite an unusual concert compared to what else is being done around this time,” Volkov admits. “But there’s nothing new here – all the pieces are decades old.” Nonetheless, it’s undeniably a concert full of challenges (some thornier than others), from the elusive gracefulness of Debussy’s tennis-themed ballet score Jeux to the percussive brilliance of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, by way of the mysterious clouds of sound in Ligeti’s Ramifications and Xenakis’s angular, uncompromising Atrées. “I’d actually conducted all these pieces apart from Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta,” Volkov continues. “I really wanted to do that, so we used it as our starting point, and built the rest of the programme around it.”

It’s Xenakis’s Atrées, however, that might prove the concert’s toughest challenge. It’s an austere, ritualistic piece for just ten instruments, often pitting them against each other in declamatory solos or duos as if in some arcane ceremony, and seeming to question what we might even define as music in the process. “The thing people always remember about Xenakis is that he was an architect,” notes Volkov – and indeed, there’s an undeniable architectural or mathematical sense of form and structure to a great deal of his music, not least Atrées. “But he’s a very original figure: you can listen to his music now, and it still sounds completely new and original. Like Ligeti, he was working when there were very utopian ideas for completely changing what music could be, and also asking all kinds of crazy and unusual things from players – as well as from listeners. The players have to make themselves believe that even if something looks impossible, they can make it work. But that’s what happens when you believe in utopia.”

Ilan Volkov Conducts the BBC SSO PIC: Alex Woodward

The elephant in the room, of course, is that this kind of music – certainly Xenakis and Ligeti, Bartók and Debussy to a lesser extent – can be deeply unpopular with some listeners, and therefore troublesome to programme for orchestras fearful of simply not selling tickets (thankfully the BBC SSO’s model allows for wider, more exploratory repertoire). How does Volkov suggest we approach this perhaps forbidding repertoire? “For me, an audience doesn’t need to know a lot about a piece before they listen,” he explains. “But you have to have a certain openness: the idea isn’t about liking something or not, but whether the music can transform you, or open up something in the world for you. I think most people have that sense of openness, and it’s something that can be encouraged when an orchestra shows its own commitment and energy. You have to have a lot of trust in yourself, in the performers and in the music being played to you. But then, it can be quite an overwhelming experience – something you didn’t expect, even something you didn’t think was possible.”

Isn’t it frustrating that music written more than five decades ago is still considered difficult? “I wouldn’t say frustrating,” says Volkov. “I think it’s great, actually, that there are still some things that we still don’t completely understand. Do we really need everything to be easy?”

Maybe expecting to enjoy everything we hear is simply the wrong mindset – and one that risks seriously limiting the richness of our experiences. Perhaps expecting to be engaged, challenged, even provoked is a far more enriching aim – and the festive season might just be the ideal time to allow consumption, contemplation and digestion of something entirely new.

Ilan Volkov conducts the BBC SSO in Xenakis, Debussy, Ligeti and Bartók at City Halls, Glasgow, on 15 December www.bbc.co.uk/events/egz84f