Once highly ornamented, Ian Wilson’s music has, over the last decade or so, admitted more light and more air. His fifth string quartet, …wander, darkling, of 2000, marks the start of this turn, and is characterised by its sustained chords on the border between tone and noise, and the precision with which it lays them out. A number of his works since then have been structured in sequences of contrasting, predominantly static, panels. The 70-minute Stations for solo piano very much follows this path. It is based on the Catholic devotion of the Stations of the Cross – fourteen scenes from Christ’s condemnation by Pilate to his burial in the tomb. Pictorial or sculptural representations of the Stations themselves appear in most Roman Catholic churches – they may be more or less elaborate, and the largest churches may even have a small chapel for each Station. Wilson’s setting retains the devotional, tableau-like sequence, but prioritises clarity over decoration. The fourteen movements are arranged into four books, numbers 1–3, 4–7, 8–11 and 12–14, and each book can be performed separately. They were composed between 2006 and 2007 for the British pianist Matthew Schellhorn, a champion of Wilson’s piano music who gave their first performance as a complete set in 2009. Stations may be based on the Stations of the Cross, but it is not programmatically related to them; that is, it doesn’t set out to narrate their story directly. Certain pieces contain clear allusions to their particular scene – an obvious example is the apparent hammer blows of the Eleventh Station, (“Jesus is nailed to the Cross” is the corresponding section of the devotion) – but others are more obscure. Even where there are clear structural connections that could be replicated, such as in the three falls of Jesus in Stations 3, 7 and 9, Wilson resists the temptation to mirror his source too closely. There is little to tell the ear that those three movements might be connected. Indeed, the composer has made clear that the piece should be ‘unhindered by dogma or imagery’. Rather, it should create its own sense of musical drama, drawing the emotional content of the Biblical story across a more universal framework. Although the relationship between scene and music can seem straightforward, there is often more going on than at first appears: the hammer blows of the Eleventh Station are arranged in repeating groups that get progressively longer, quieter and higher. This suggests perhaps a literal movement up the crucified body, securing feet before hands; but it also suggests a metaphysical movement, from brutal reality to spiritual transcendence. Moreover, it is a musical climax that has been carefully prepared. The work’s expressive trajectory is subtle. Wilson draws his musical materials from a relatively small pool of basic figurations: quick, widely-spaced leaps, or short melodic figures that alternate between two notes, for example. Often they are extremely simple. Among those most frequently used are repeating single notes, and slowly descending scales. Because they are built from such restricted materials, many of the stations share a lot of surface similarity. The employment of these materials within individual stations is also relatively formal. These are those static panels; figures are generally repeated or placed in contrasting juxtapositions, rather than developed or elaborated. The effect is stone-like, or contemplative, rather than organic and enquiring. Yet because of its simplicity, Wilson’s material is also very flexible. One material type can easily, almost incidentally, shade into another. Repeated notes can become repeated chords. Leaps can become arpeggios; occasionally, as at the end of the Sixth Station, arpeggios can become melodies. There are always connections, echoes and foreshadows, a remarkably sustained consistency of tone that nevertheless captures the highly stylised drama of its inspiration. Sometimes material is reused precisely, as between the Sixth Station (“Veronica offers Jesus her veil to wipe his brow”) and the Fourteenth (“Jesus is buried in the tomb”), and the listener must draw their own conclusions. Among the most striking movements is the Tenth Station (“Jesus is stripped of his clothes”). Until this point the music, while remaining within its own austere framework, has increasingly thickened and amplified in texture and dynamic. Now, suddenly, all is reduced to a single line of music, bearing the hallmarks of much that has gone before but now reduced to its barest expression. The hammering crashes that follow in the Eleventh Station can now be heard as pure musical drama, whose origin can be traced back to the sharply descending leaps of the work’s very first bars. This is a climax both traumatic and transcendent, whose arrival has been genetically coded from the start (the same figure appears in the following station, but now drained of life and shape.) The details may have their source in particular texts, but the story has a universal, almost mythological resonance. © 2013 Tim Rutherford-Johnson Stations (2006–7) by Ian Wilson Performed by Matthew Schellhorn Recording made in the Curtis Auditorium, CIT Cork School of Music from 1st – 3rd June 2011 Recording facilities kindly made available by the CIT Cork School of Music (Director, Dr Geoffrey Spratt) Executive producer, Nick Roth for Diatribe Producers, Ian Wilson and Matthew Schellhorn Sound engineer and editor, Stephen McCourt Piano technician, Chris Terroni Cover photo © Ties Mellema www.tiesmellemaphoto.nl Graphic design, David Donohoe for Diatribe With grateful thanks to Dr Geoffrey Spratt, Chris Terroni and the CIT School of Music, Cork Stations is published by Ricordi (London) Ltd Stations was written with the support of an Arts Council of Ireland Artist Bursary and the help of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust A short film made during the recording can be seen here: www.diatribe.ie/artists/ian-wilson