A remarkable double story of near death and recovery lies behind the opening work of this year's Petworth Festival.
The series begins with a new work by Sir John Tavener, Towards Silence, a work composed for four string quartets – and a Tibetan bowl.
Highly appropriately as it turns out, it explores the nature of consciousness and the process of dying.
Appro
priate because shortly after it was written both Sir John and Prof Paul Robertson, leader of the Medici Quartet for whom the music was composed, came very close to death themselves.
Sir John, who has Marfan Syndrome, an inherited condition that attacks the body's connective tissue, suffered a series of major heart attacks while Paul suffered a near fatal aortic dissection.
Fortunately Paul, who lives at Rudgwick, has now recovered
sufficiently to perform the work. Sir John is still recuperating
at home.
Paul looks back on a nightmare; many times his family were told not to expect him to survive; but confounding the odds, perhaps because he was comparatively young at 54, survive he has.
"Everything becomes more much vivid as a result… and much more ephemeral," he says. "I wouldn't say it is an unattractive combination, but just occasionally it is also a very frightening combination."
As for the piece itself, events have conspired to make it both stranger and more meaningful.
The story began 18 months ago when Paul met Sir John at a conference on creativity and consciousness – and they got on famously. Talk turned to near-death experience, and Sir John disclosed there was a piece of music – he described it vividly – he had been wanting to write on the subject for years – and that he wanted Paul to play it.
Paul pointed out that he had effectively retired from the Medici; Sir John's response was to say he had a feeling Paul could do it if he really wanted to. The next day Paul received an email, inviting him to speak at a conference in New York. When Paul mentioned to the
director his conversation with Sir John, the piece was more or less commissioned on the spot.
"There are occasions in life where it would be wrong and futile to stop the flow of events," Paul believes.
And so Sir John wrote the piece. But soon after, he collapsed with a heart attack, seriously ill. The piece was discovered by his wife, and it was debated whether it was in fact finished.
"And then I collapsed with a not-dissimilar pathology," Paul says. "I was really desperately ill and not expected to survive. I said farewell to my family and I had an operation for about ten-and-a-half hours and was left in a coma for about six weeks, just over a year ago.
"I finally came round, very very ill and paralysed because I had had strokes during the unconsciousness. I was in a very, very bad way and stayed in hospital for months. It was grim.
"I don't want to pretend it was anything other than total horror. I was told it was very unlikely that I would be able to play the violin again.
"But gradually I came back with a full memory of my time in a coma, a mixture of horrific dreams and delusions, but most particularly of hearing a female voice singing raags, Indian scales, to me. It turned out my daughter had been singing by my bedside. I had somehow heard it in my distant land and reinterpreted it as Indian raags."
Appropriate given that raags feature in Sir John's composition. The piece has now premiered in New York. Sadly Sir John and Paul were unable to make it. But Paul has every intention of playing at its UK première on Monday at Winchester Cathedral as part of the Art and Mind Festival – and then at the Petworth Festival on July 9 in St Mary's Church.
For the performances, the members of the Medici Quartet immediately agreed to reform and identified young professional string quartets with whom to perform and to act as musical mentors. They selected three outstanding British ensembles for the UK performances – the Court Lane, Finzi and Harpham Quartets.
Paul admits he is overwhelmed by the piece: "I believe Tavener has composed a masterpiece here. It's like a living ecstasy."
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