Player Piano

Anyone who had a heart

One of Stephen Cox's sarcophagi (Interior Space: for Cheops)
at Houghton

I have returned to Houghton Hall of an evening.  It is delicious summer - panamas and linen, chambray and crepe - the style doesn't matter, it's how you carry yourself, darling.  So, though initially I feel that perhaps my faded jeans may be inexcusable, I begin to think I could, just, maybe, fit in.....

Anyway, I am not here for the craic.  Nor to flaunt.  Nor to engage.  I am here, seriously, for Illia Ovcharenko to test my hearing aids with his digital dexterity (and pedal power.....)

Reflections on a country seat

Illia Ovcharenko is a Ukrainian pianist, currently living in Hanover, who recently won the Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, which seeks to identify the Complete Artist....

Under the auspices of King's Lynn Festival (Artistic Director, Ambrose Miller) and with the cooperation of Lord Cholmondeley for the use of Houghton Hall, it is a magical evening.   

A quickly executed oil painting of Illia and his audience (photography was not permitted)

On another occasion I might have said that the interval, with chardonnay libations, was the high spot of the evening, given the chance to roam at will amongst Stephen Cox's stones and the enchanting environs of one of England's grandest country houses (constructed in the 1720s for Britain's first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole)......  But (There is a but?  Ed) Yes, but, this is a concert to rival any (Oasis?  Glasto?  Ed). Yes, Ed, this is a concert to rival any.  

For a start, I was misled.  I mistook the piano for a Player Piano, and thought that perhaps we were to be subjected to rolls of punched paper honky tonk.  But, yes it was an innocent mistake - it was a Pleyel Piano, as grand as anything by Bechstein or Steinway.....

Manufactured using the skills built up over 210 years of existence and experience, Pleyel grand pianos are synonymous with French excellence in instrument making. Characterised by a romantic sonority which is the Pleyel hallmark, these instruments offer pianists unparalleled musical expressiveness.

Secondly, the setting was non pareil.  No Glastonbury Yurt could match the elegance of this room - from the decorations on the walls and mantelpieces to the views from the windows.  A perfect room for withdrawing, a perfect space for performance....

And the programme was out of the top drawer, too.  We started with Beethoven's Sonata  in B flat (Les Adieux), and then heard Liszt's transcription of the second movement of Beethoven's 7th symphony.  And then tripped toward the interval with Etudes by Schumann which took their theme from that same symphony by Beethoven.  I was spell bound as the notes spilled from the instrument, miraculously spun by the several hands and multiple fingers (or so it seemed) of the artist.

Outside the sun had begun to lapse into Lincolnshire and the evening reigned calm.  I saw the landscape as a continuation of the sculpture, or vice versa, and fell to wondering about the genius of creativity that gives us music.  

And I returned to photograph the shapes thrown by the artistry of Stephen Cox, my ears still full of Beethoven's astonishing deafness.  And I noticed how these converging slices of stone create a representation of an aorta, reminding me of the essence of life that is the circulatory system.  Dismiss this as spurious mental meandering, but as I have just got back from a serious consultation about my own sensitivities with a renowned cardiologist, I think I am entitled to some poetic licence.....

The aorta of life  (in stone)

We return to our seats, and Illia plays three pieces by his Ukrainian hero, Sergei Bortkiewicz, a composer to think of along with Chopin, and then, demonstrating his mastery of the piano, Illia finishes with Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor, and I am struck by how this concert seems to fill all four dimensions.  The sound reverberates around the room, touching the lights, fluttering in the breeze that breathes through the open windows.  It is all around us, coming at us from different directions, totally different from the playing of music from a disc, in stereo or Hi Fi, this is in front of you, above, below, behind and beside you.  And then there is the fourth dimension.  Illia could be Beethoven, or Liszt, or Bortkiewicz....  The composers are revived and they play their music through Illia.  Time becomes meaningless as we experience an infinitely expanded present....

Illia Ovcharenko exits, stage left

You may well think this is over the top (You said it, Ed) but believe me I was overcome.  And, after the encore (a Chopin Polonaise) and after the applause had sputtered out like an exhausted candle, I made my obeisance to the piano.  But the piano was silent.  It was just a piano.  A Pleyel.  Not a Player. 

There are times when human ingenuity confounds.

And then, driving home, a lipstick sunset stains the sky behind the spire of St Mary's, and I fade to nothingness, my heart (which seems to be functioning adequately) filled with gratitude that there is love in the world.

Life would be flat without music. It is the background to all I do. It speaks to the heart in its own special way like nothing else. 

Ludwig van Beethoven

Note (Me neither, Ed):

Hermann Minkowski exploited the idea of four dimensions to discuss cosmology including the finite velocity of light. In appending a time dimension to three-dimensional space, he specified an alternative perpendicularity, hyperbolic orthogonality. This notion provides his four-dimensional space with a modified simultaneity appropriate to electromagnetic relations in his cosmos. Minkowski's world overcame problems associated with the traditional absolute space and time cosmology previously used in a universe of three space dimensions and one time dimension.

Wikipedia

Somewhat stoned

Losing my Marbles

Preface:

Recondite

 

You know how, when under pressure, sometimes things go a bit blank?  Or, if asked a question out of the blue, you may say the first thing that comes into your head?  I would be useless on one of those TV quiz programmes.  I am pretty useless in pub quizzes.  [Come to think of it, you’re verging on the useless anyway.... Ed]

 

Anyway, when asked the other day what the word recondite meant, the first thing that came to mind was that it is a term to describe reconditioned dolomite, which is a sedimentary carbonate rock found particularly in the Dolomite Mountains of NE Italy.  The reconditioning occurs when waste rock from land slips is engineered for garden paving etc.  This may, or may not, be likened to the recent biotic synthetic experiment which claimed to have precipitated ordered dolomite when anoxygenic photosynthesis proceeded in the presence of manganese, or perhaps a still perplexing example of an organogenic origin [was] that of the reported formation of dolomite in the urinary bladder of a Dalmatian dog, possibly as the result of an illness or infection(Wikipedia).....  No?  [WTF?  Ed]

 

Well, as might perhaps already be apparent, this is not what recondite means...... as its origin lies in the past participle of the Latin verb recondere, which means to put away, or hide, hence the 1652 usage for deep, profound or abstruse (though in 1817 it was used to refer to obscure or little-known writers.... [Like you?  Ed])

 

Interface

So there we have it, which by a stumbling sidestep takes me to Palladian Houghton Hall, not far from my own palatial home in Norfolk, where (Houghton - not my home) the recondite British sculptor Stephen Cox is presenting -  across the park, gardens and interiors of the Hall - the largest and most comprehensive group of works the artist has ever shown. Spanning over 40 years, it includes work conceived and produced all over the world from India to Egypt, Italy and the UK.  [Does he work in reconditioned Dolomite?  Ed]

 

The exhibition, entitled Myth, consists of around 20 sculptures in marble and stone that have been placed in the landscape, while smaller works are installed in the State Rooms on the first floor of the house, where William Kent’s exuberant decorative scheme has hardly changed since it was created in the early 18th century.....

 

As the Houghton Hall website (https://www.houghtonhall.com/whats-on/stephen-cox-exhibition) has it, Stephen Cox is one of the most acclaimed British artists of his generation, best known for his monumental works in stone. His work is known worldwide with celebrated exhibitions include MOMA, New York and the National Gallery and Tate Britain, London. Using traditional techniques, he has carved marble, alabaster and porphyry, and was the first artist for many centuries to gain access to the Imperial Porphyry Quarries in the Eastern Mountains of Egypt. His works are in many private and public collections around the world, with government and corporate commissions in India and Egypt as well as in Britain. He was elected a Royal Academician in 2006.  

It is to my chagrin (or perhaps just due to my ignorance?) that I regret never having heard of him heretofore.....

 

The grounds of Houghton Hall are in themselves something of a work of art – a whole village was relocated to improve the views – with ancient trees and designed avenues populated by white fallow deer (originally bred by the 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley in the late 19th century, these deer, once considered a Victorian indulgence, now contribute significantly to the park's ecosystem). 

Last year, the misty mornings were the setting for one hundred life-size three-dimensional rusty selfies of Anthony Gormley.  

Now the tone is more recondite [Don’t you mean erudite?  Ed] with, among other pieces, sculptures of eleven female figures (Yoginis – 2000-2010), human forms with animal heads, derived from a tantric cult, carved out of black Indian stone and set in an inward-facing circle. 

 

Yoginis 2000-2010
Charnockite (basalt) 
each sculpture is approximately 200 cm x 55 cm x 40 cm

 

Lord Cholmondeley, owner of Houghton Hall, explains why these sculptures work so well in this setting. The title of Stephen Cox’s exhibition at Houghton seems particularly fitting as so much of his work as an artist references the mythology and religions of ancient civilisations – especially Egypt and the Indian subcontinent – with their allegorical fables and anthropomorphic deities.

 

An alchemy of enrichment seems to have occurred between Cox’s sculptures and William Kent’s sumptuous interiors, with their variegated marble tables and entablature, a subtle connection across the centuries that both Kent and his patron, Sir Robert Walpole, would surely have approved of.

 

A visit to Houghton Hall at any time is a treat. The park stretches out, a curated expanse of Norfolk at its best, with the intricate walled garden to one side and a wooded area to the other, which is home to some of the permanent exhibits of the Houghton art collection – Scottish artist Anya Gallaccio’s wonderful Sybil Hedge which is based on the signature of the Marquis Cholmondeley’s grandmother, Sybil Sassoon.  This is a three-metre-tall copper-beech hedge planted in lines mirroring Sybil's signature.  And then across the way is (82-year-old American artist) James Turrell’s Skyspace: Seldom Seen, 

one of many constructions he has created across the world designed as places of contemplative thought:  You are looking at you looking. What is important to me [Turrell] is to create an experience of wordless thought....

I like that:  wordless thought - so much better than thoughtless words....

 

And then some way from the house in the main avenue is 80 year old Bristolian Turner Prize winning Sir Richard Long’s Full Moon Circle. 

There’s enough art here to make you fall headlong into the Ha Ha.....

 

Anyway we are here for Stephen Cox and his sculptures, and we are not disappointed.  Beginning in the appropriately named Stone Hall there are two large pieces sculpted from Imperial Porphyry, the hardest stone in the world.  One of these, Dreadnought: Problems of History, Search for the Hidden Stone, 

Dreadnought:
Problems of History, the Search for the Hidden Stone,
2003 - ongoing

has rough carving carried out by Roman workers.  The other piece, Chrysalis, a monolith amongst monoliths, was fashioned by Cox at his studio in Egypt, employing carvers from Luxor and Aswan.

Chrysalis, 1989–91

Porphyry 92 cm x 285 cm x 100 cm

Brecciated Imperial porphyry, 1 m x 2.7 m x 0.85 m

Neatly tucked away amongst the opulence of the state rooms of Houghton there are other pieces by Cox, including a small model of St Lawrence’s gridiron in the Library, and alabaster and other stone figures and objects perching on the tables and desks around the rooms.

Cycladic Gemini with Altar, 2018

Hand-carved alabaster with gold leaf details 

set on an alabaster base

53cm x 50cm x 25.5cm

Lancia Figures

Egyptian Alabaster 2009

 

In the park there are great sarcophagi, or interior spaces, their walls and roofs sawn from massive boulders and then polished to reflecting surfaces.  These impressive boxes stand empty, their presence the result of some of the most ingenious flat-packing of recent times.....

Yatra represents simple outrigger fishing boats tossed on a granite sea, as Cox witnessed at Mahabalipuram on the south-east coast of India.  I visited Mahabalipuram many years ago, and although I did not notice granite columns sticking out of the sandy beach, I can vouch for the verisimilitude of the crafts atop the waves.....

Granite Catamarans on a Granite Wave, 1993-4

Black and white Indian granite ( dolerite/basalt and diorite )

350 x 1400 x 700 cm

and there are various sculpted pieces of rock - some single pieces, but many designed as twins hewn from the same piece of stone, exquisitely polished on one face, but rough and untouched on the other:

Gemini III , 2012 - 2016

Carved Egyptian breccia

then we find eleven intriguing feminine figures facing each other in a glade in the woods.  These are the Yoginis, as seen above, fashioned to represent the mythical merging of human and animal characteristics, each one a different creature, but harmonious in the circle.

 

Postscript

At the end of the day, we are left wondering.  The overall impression (which is confirmed by looking through Cox’s catalogue) is of an enormous amount of work, tons of stone, colossal imagination, recondite (?) research and a feeling for time and space that drives lesser concerns away.  We don’t ask what does this mean?  We admire.  We wonder.  Then we wander off, somehow changed by the experience.  Somehow richer for the stimuli.....  

Am I mything something?  I don’t believe so.

 

But, from a forest of stones, the geology of art confuses me.  Is alabaster stone? Has recondite been reconditioned? Do you make stone anchors from anchorite? Is dynamite a stone that explodes? Is cordite what you make stone trousers from? Is hermaphrodite a rare self-fertilising stone? Can you sculpt quickly with expedite? Is endite the last stone you will ever see?

 

Am I losing my marbles?

[Of course all this is based on the premise that the suffix -ite indicates some lapidary feature (though rhyolite, bauxite and trachite are examples of rocks ending in -ite, so am I on dodgy ground?) whereas perhaps -ith might be more convincing..... 

In which case does Mith (or rather Myth) stand for one thousand stones?] 

Arrest my case…..  [Time to call it a day.  Ed]

 

Thank you, Stephen Cox.  Thank you, David Cholmondeley.  Thank you my friend for taking me.

 

I now need to lie on the beach and watch the green flash as the liquid sun melds into the night.

 

Epilogue

....the work of the artist in all its aspects is, of its nature, individual and free, undisciplined, unregimented, uncontrolled. The artist walks where the breath of the spirit blows him. He cannot be told his direction; he does not know it himself. But he leads the rest of us into fresh pastures and teaches us to love and to enjoy what we often begin by rejecting, enlarging our sensibility and purifying our instincts.

John Maynard Keynes

First Chairman of The Committee for Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) (Which became the Arts Council)

The Listener - 1945

Stephen Cox: Myth
Houghton Hall, King’s Lynn, Norfolk PE31 6UE
Until Sunday 28 September 2025