Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte
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Just for those Forumistas who were unable to get tickets for this Sold-Out event - this was a terrible performance, you're really lucky not to have been able to attend.
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Right, now they've gone - this was one of the most uplifting, moving, and optimism-boosting concerts I've ever attended. After my often rather lacklustre reactions to events in the first half of the Festival, it was a tremendous relief to be privileged to experience this performance. Completed 23 years ago, after five years in the making, this was the first public performance of Denyer's 57-minute work (the recent recording by the same performers, available on another timbre label was put together from four different sessions) - and, despite the severe "limitations" arising from the non-"standard" instrumentation (including several created/adapted by the composer himself) and from the various different tuning systems involved, the overwhelmingly positive response from the packed audience in Huddersfield Town Hall (extra seats had to be put out on the day to accommodate the demand) should - if there's any justice at all in this world - ensure that word-of-mouth reports lead to the many future performances the work deserves. To put it bluntly, it was, I felt, a major contribution to our cultural life.
Scored for around 40 performers arranged in various groupings around the hall, The Fish is a continuous sequence of Musical events/sections ranging widely in mood and scope. Music of great delicacy is answered/interrupted by moments of fury; humour by despair; terror by optimism - all cohering in a total, single Work, throughout characterised by that fusion of lyricism and ... I don't know how to describe it ... "timbral violence" (???!!! - they'll be getting me to write the Programme Booklet next year if I carry on like this!) ... that is familiar to everyone who knows any of Denyer's other work.
To pick just one of the "highlights" - about 10/15 minutes from the end, the Music is interrupted by a pair of children, singing a nursery song. They are interrupted by growling brass chords, threatening and ominous. The kids continue regardless, and gradually the aggressive material is "soothed" - but that material has "corrupted" the kids, and by the time the brass has settled down, the kids' singing had become taunting, sinister, threatening. The Turn of the Screw in 5 minutes - and making the James work seem like something by Enid Blyton!
Wow! Phew! Astonishing - and, I believe, recorded for future broadcast on R3 ('tho' not as part of the current run of New Music Show features from the Festival).
Interviewed by Robert Worby before the concert, Denyer came across as a lovely, funny, humane, insightful, and honest individual - 'though of NO use whatsoever in explaining the title of his great work! Nonetheless, for me nothing less than a milestone in my life.
Okay? Very good - nothing else for you to see here: move onto another Post.
Right, now they've gone - this was one of the most uplifting, moving, and optimism-boosting concerts I've ever attended. After my often rather lacklustre reactions to events in the first half of the Festival, it was a tremendous relief to be privileged to experience this performance. Completed 23 years ago, after five years in the making, this was the first public performance of Denyer's 57-minute work (the recent recording by the same performers, available on another timbre label was put together from four different sessions) - and, despite the severe "limitations" arising from the non-"standard" instrumentation (including several created/adapted by the composer himself) and from the various different tuning systems involved, the overwhelmingly positive response from the packed audience in Huddersfield Town Hall (extra seats had to be put out on the day to accommodate the demand) should - if there's any justice at all in this world - ensure that word-of-mouth reports lead to the many future performances the work deserves. To put it bluntly, it was, I felt, a major contribution to our cultural life.
Scored for around 40 performers arranged in various groupings around the hall, The Fish is a continuous sequence of Musical events/sections ranging widely in mood and scope. Music of great delicacy is answered/interrupted by moments of fury; humour by despair; terror by optimism - all cohering in a total, single Work, throughout characterised by that fusion of lyricism and ... I don't know how to describe it ... "timbral violence" (???!!! - they'll be getting me to write the Programme Booklet next year if I carry on like this!) ... that is familiar to everyone who knows any of Denyer's other work.
To pick just one of the "highlights" - about 10/15 minutes from the end, the Music is interrupted by a pair of children, singing a nursery song. They are interrupted by growling brass chords, threatening and ominous. The kids continue regardless, and gradually the aggressive material is "soothed" - but that material has "corrupted" the kids, and by the time the brass has settled down, the kids' singing had become taunting, sinister, threatening. The Turn of the Screw in 5 minutes - and making the James work seem like something by Enid Blyton!
Wow! Phew! Astonishing - and, I believe, recorded for future broadcast on R3 ('tho' not as part of the current run of New Music Show features from the Festival).
Interviewed by Robert Worby before the concert, Denyer came across as a lovely, funny, humane, insightful, and honest individual - 'though of NO use whatsoever in explaining the title of his great work! Nonetheless, for me nothing less than a milestone in my life.
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