As a fellow-audience member remarked, the thing about Opera North’s programme at the Howard Assembly Room is that you get to hear stuff you don’t know anything about. So first off you need to be told that this review is written out of ignorance. Having said this, Huur-Huun-Tu’s take on Tuvan Khonei (folk music) was superb and greeted with a standing ovation.
Huur-Huun-To wisely decided that the audience needed an introduction to Tuva and Tuvan throat singing, so the evening began with a short film. Tuva is mostly part of the Russian Federation, mostly because boundary-drawing placed part in Mongolia with the result that family members need passports to visit.
The Tuvans are nomadic herdsmen who live in yurts – the film showed one yurt being dismantled before the family moved on – and their sport of choice is wrestling, that ancient form that depends totally on throwing your opponent. Their song reflects pastoral sounds, the sounds of nature, and is made up of undertones and overtones so that a singer seems to be singing two parts simultaneously. Needless to say, this wandering people, living as one with their horses, and the Russian Federation have little in common.
So it proved when Huur-Huun-To turned up with three members; the fourth had been detained by visa problems in Russia. Despite this it was immediately obvious that these were superb musicians who had, over some 30 years of existence, found the way to appeal to a Western audience without losing the authentic feel of folksong. Numbers were cleverly planned and organised so that song was passed from mouth to mouth, climaxes built up to, then relaxed, ending very often in the most delicate of sounds.
It is slightly misleading to refer to the music as “Tuvan throat singing” because the sounds of the instruments were equally important. In the opening number, a prayer to nature, all three sang together at first, then the flute, stringed instrument and drum took over, then eventually voices and instruments merged. So it was for much of the 90-minute performance, with a subtlety that is difficult to convey.
It was surprising to find one or two numbers that hinted at American country music, especially when one of them took up what appeared to be a cigar box guitar: maybe mountain people tend to be the same! Generally the three instrumentalists wielded a Tuvan flute and a mysterious-looking stringed instrument; a two-string instrument with a horse’s head on the handle and a Jew’s harp which we learned in the film the Russians tried to ban; and a range of percussion and a similar two-string instrument. Rhythms were syncopated and, in a number about the horse, the percussion took flight, with a bag and two shells.
But above all there was the throat singing. Two numbers by different members emphasised the scope and remarkable quality of the singing, but for the most part the huge range of the singers, the instant switching from throat voice to head voice, the conjuring up of bird song, just sat in there with the inescapable rhythms and repeated phrases of the instrumental ensemble.
Reviewed on April 1st 2022
