Hcmf 2016
2): Sunday, 20/11/16 - Beat FURRER; FAMA
Isabelle MENKE (actress), Eva FURRER (Contrabass Flute), EXAUDI vocal ensemble, London Sinfonietta - conducted by the composer.
First performed in 2005, and given several performances across Europe in the eleven years since, this late-night concert was the second time it has been performed in the UK (the first was in London a week previously). It is an outstanding work of Musical Theatre, and given an outstanding performance in Huddersfield Town Hall - I haven't heard the Sinfonietta play as well as this in over a decade; the work and its composer's direction encouraging the players to give their best work to the piece. (If only they were permitted to perform this sort of repertoire at the Proms, their concerts might not be so deadly tedious: it used to be the finest New Music ensemble certainly in Britain, arguably in the world - give them work that challenges them and it is still a formidably impressive ensemble.)
The Music veers between incisive, energetic activity and static, uneasily tranquil repose containing sounds of sheer sensuous beauty - the ensemble voices spaced out around and above the audience, passing single notes between themselves, "and every voice reaches listening ears" (Fama is the personification of Rumour in Ovid's Metamorphoses, from which much of the text originates). Menke's "narration" (it isn't really that - the spoken text is given to the actress in the same way it would be given to a singer - distorted by repetitions and fragmentations; delivered often in rapid - and notated - rhythmic patterns) cut through the instrumental and sung material, twice accompanied only by melismatic and liquidly sensuous "gurglings" from the solo Contrabass Flute - played by the superb Eva Furrer, the composer's sister (and co-founder with him of Klangforum Wien, who gave the first performances).
Unlike the Clarinet Quintet heard earlier in the evening, I felt that the composer was working directly with - and responding directly to - sound (rather than, to express it clumsily, with systems that then were realized in sound); and sound that was often hypnotically, seductively beautiful. An unqualified success - it is incomprehensible why it has taken so long to receive performances in the UK. With any luck, we might get Begehren before too long.
Greatly appreciated by the audience, too - which included (a couple of rows in front of me) Rebecca Saunders, Juliet Fraser, and Sara Mohr-Pietsche. (SM-P and Robert Worby were both - as usual - very much in attendance throughout the Festival, not just at concerts that they were presenting for broadcast. And performers/composers also gave support to events other than those in which they were directly involved: HCMF has maintained its "social" aspect even in these financially straitened years - people are interested in what others are doing, curious to hear what's going on. It's a very special atmosphere.)
2): Sunday, 20/11/16 - Beat FURRER; FAMA
Isabelle MENKE (actress), Eva FURRER (Contrabass Flute), EXAUDI vocal ensemble, London Sinfonietta - conducted by the composer.
First performed in 2005, and given several performances across Europe in the eleven years since, this late-night concert was the second time it has been performed in the UK (the first was in London a week previously). It is an outstanding work of Musical Theatre, and given an outstanding performance in Huddersfield Town Hall - I haven't heard the Sinfonietta play as well as this in over a decade; the work and its composer's direction encouraging the players to give their best work to the piece. (If only they were permitted to perform this sort of repertoire at the Proms, their concerts might not be so deadly tedious: it used to be the finest New Music ensemble certainly in Britain, arguably in the world - give them work that challenges them and it is still a formidably impressive ensemble.)
The Music veers between incisive, energetic activity and static, uneasily tranquil repose containing sounds of sheer sensuous beauty - the ensemble voices spaced out around and above the audience, passing single notes between themselves, "and every voice reaches listening ears" (Fama is the personification of Rumour in Ovid's Metamorphoses, from which much of the text originates). Menke's "narration" (it isn't really that - the spoken text is given to the actress in the same way it would be given to a singer - distorted by repetitions and fragmentations; delivered often in rapid - and notated - rhythmic patterns) cut through the instrumental and sung material, twice accompanied only by melismatic and liquidly sensuous "gurglings" from the solo Contrabass Flute - played by the superb Eva Furrer, the composer's sister (and co-founder with him of Klangforum Wien, who gave the first performances).
Unlike the Clarinet Quintet heard earlier in the evening, I felt that the composer was working directly with - and responding directly to - sound (rather than, to express it clumsily, with systems that then were realized in sound); and sound that was often hypnotically, seductively beautiful. An unqualified success - it is incomprehensible why it has taken so long to receive performances in the UK. With any luck, we might get Begehren before too long.
Greatly appreciated by the audience, too - which included (a couple of rows in front of me) Rebecca Saunders, Juliet Fraser, and Sara Mohr-Pietsche. (SM-P and Robert Worby were both - as usual - very much in attendance throughout the Festival, not just at concerts that they were presenting for broadcast. And performers/composers also gave support to events other than those in which they were directly involved: HCMF has maintained its "social" aspect even in these financially straitened years - people are interested in what others are doing, curious to hear what's going on. It's a very special atmosphere.)
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