Pavilions - London Sinfonietta at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank - Sunday 29th May

[Guest]

Main concert at 7.30pm:

Christopher Fox: KK for alto saxophone & 5 cow bells
Laurence Crane: Movement for 10 musicians (London premiere)
Martin Suckling: Candlebird (World premiere)
Philip Cashian: Bone machine (World premiere)
Bryn Harrison: Six symmetries for large ensemble (UK premiere)
Colin Matthews: Night rides (World premiere)

London Sinfonietta
Nicholas Collon conductor
Leigh Melrose baritone

I'm really looking forward to this. The only one I've heard of is Colin Matthews.

Are the pieces by these 6 men "the finest new music from British composers"? Is this genuinely "a journey through new British music from the finest living composers." Is there really not a single woman's music fit to be included with that of this illustrious crew?

[hackneyvi]

PS and NB:

The 6.30pm Pre-Concert Performance showcases new Sinfonietta Shorts from musicians of Writing the Future, the scheme giving composers the chance to write new music in close collaboration with the London Sinfonietta’s players.

Isambard Khroustaliov: Obsolve (world premiere)
Tim Hodgkinson: The Glow and Zig-Zag (world premiere)
Edmund Finnis: Veneer

All seats are £12 for a total of 9 works!

[hackneyvi]

Note to self: any concert which considers itself to climax with a work by Colin Matthews is to be viewed with the utmost suspicion.

Christopher Fox's piece was bland and, I thought, inept.

Laurence Crane's was a desultory simper of dull chords with much space between them.

Martin Suckling's choice of poet and subject (some rather precious love rhymes) wasn't to my taste but the music and performances were more interesting and strong.

Philip Cashian delivered 90 seconds of brisk enough minimalism.

Bryn Harrison - The Harrison was in 6 movements and would have been a much more interesting piece if it had junked 3 of them. It was the only music that made an interesting sound tonight. The 1st movement was a canon of some kind in a downward arc; somewhat needlessly complex, I imagined, because there was alot of detail that wasn't really audible but it did at least move, distinctly move; forwards through a drooping arc and with a sense of some energy pushing on its motion; down, then up, along.

Colin Matthews' piece wasn't even irritating. It just began, happened and stopped. Matthews was sitting directly behind me, I eventually realised, and before Bryn Harrison's piece started, Matthews was complaining loudly enough for 2 or 3 rows around him to hear that the Harrison piece seemed twice as long as its scheduled 15 minutes. The woman he was with, his wife (I assumed), called out, "Bravo!", a number of times when Matthews went on stage to take his bow. Incidentally, Matthews had a friend who stood next to my aisle seat after the interval having a chat with 'Col' and his breath was so bad that it put me off my ice cream.

Not an actually grim concert but might have been called Six Cliches on the Theme of Contemporary Music.

[amateur51]

A very interesting & amusing summary, hackneyvi

I'm only sorry that the event wasn't as interesting.

Still, you managed to get an ice cream

You know where you are with ice cream

[hackneyvi]

Still, you managed to get an ice cream

You know where you are with ice cream

Thanks, amateur. The QEH, you may know, sells excellent ice cream. I had a slightly melted but delicious raspberry.

I'm sure that you, like me, can never have enough of someone going on about unremarkable music which you're never going to hear, so ...

Christopher Fox's piece was a saxophone squeezing out Philip Glass-like yelps at an unvarying volume for 10 minutes in competition with 5 cowbells. The cowbells were obviously knocking a counter rhythm out but they muffled one another to a blur of sound and the rhythm was only audible when the brushes or sticks were used. Fox used mainly mallets and whatever the intended music was from the bells, it was largelymostly lost. In that respect, I felt it was inept. The saxophone squirts on their own were only a line in a duet.

Laurence Crane's was stoner music. A plod that would have understimulated a playschool group. I think I was drawn to the raspberry icecream at the interval by the Crane piece. I'd seriously considered letting one out during the applause. It was a real patience tester.

Bryn Harrison 1st movement was a mid-tempo swirl driven down the register by its energy but then up again to a momentarily static plateau before swinging back groundward. It did this 20 or 30 times and really had something worth hearing, it and two of the slow movements amongst the other five. To my ears, if he edited it down to 3 movements (1 fast and 2 slow) he'd have a much stronger piece - but the other 2 quicker movements repeat the same 'trick' and so undermine it's interest. At six movement, it lacks variety.

Matthews' was anondyne music and his manners are poor.

[Serial_Apologist]

Judging by what you say, hackneyvi, I.m glad I didn't go. Not that I intended to - much of what passes as "contemporary music" seems determined to ditch the great legacy (or legaCIES) of richness and complexity built up in the 20th century. I am constantly reminded of the sacrifices made by modernist composers in the 1930s under fascism, and what Soviet composers were ordered to do in the 1930s. Under the definition of "socialist realism" they were required to ignore the fact that music had proved capable of expressing the increasing complexity of its times, i.e. be authentic, and rather than bring ordinary people up, cater to their inadequate education.

I seldom listen to "new music" programmes on 3 these days: just occasionally, to confirm I was right.

If someone else hasn't already, would like to patent the term "capitalist realism" to designate what is happening to what was once cutting-edge music in the name of "consumer choice".

I tend to go for contemporary jazz these days. Contemporary jazz is, I feel, still in the process of catching up with the best of what 20th century modern music had to offer. And free improvised music of the kinds that aren't gonig to bombard me with amplification into submission.

S-A

[hackneyvi]

This gig is the Hear and Now concert tonight, Saturday 10th September at ...

... well, it was due to start half an hour ago but something must have overrun, they're playing Liszt.

[hackneyvi]

Last edited by hackneyvi; Today at 23:26.

[Serial_Apologist]

This gig is the Hear and Now concert tonight, Saturday 10th September at ...

... well, it was due to start half an hour ago but something must have overrun, they're playing Liszt.

What?? You mean you're not at Last Night of the proms??!!

[pilamenon]

Laurence Crane's was stoner music. A plod that would have understimulated a playschool group. I think I was drawn to the raspberry icecream at the interval by the Crane piece. I'd seriously considered letting one out during the applause. It was a real patience tester.

I do get what you're saying, plus of course S-A's comment about the retreat from complexity, but listening tonight I found every carefully placed chord of this piece hypnotically beautiful and serene.

[Quarky]

Main concert at 7.30pm:



I'm really looking forward to this. The only one I've heard of is Colin Matthews.

Somewhat less acidic reviews:

http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_concert_review.php?id=9263

http://katysa.blogspot.com/

[hackneyvi]

Somewhat less acidic reviews:

http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_concert_review.php?id=9263

http://katysa.blogspot.com/

I must have another go at the Matthews since it seemed to please these guys so much more than me (glad to see the reviewer also found it irritating, though). I thought the Bryn Harrison was far the most interesting piece and it'll be good to hear it and Candlebird again.

The reorganisation of the gig for this programme does the music some service, I think. The contemplation offered and required by the Laurence Crane is easier to give and take when the piece is extracted from its surroundings. On the night, it followed the Christopher Fox which had an ineffective, familiar boisterousness that had me down-hearted long before it's end. When the Crane is preceded by the more concise and pert Philip Cashian, even if the Cashian piece itself seems negligible, it serves well enough as an opener; a few quick Tarbuck gags before the first act; the Fox, by comparison, is like a long night with Ken Dodd.

When the Cashian opened the second half in the hall, the third minimalistic (?) piece out of 4 and a sort of novelty number placed where it was, I was really hacked off and didn't recover my concentration for Candlebird. It was a chore of a gig but the Sinfonietta exec who programmed it was quite right in believing that it was not music that people would associate with this band; alas, for me, I'd gone expecting more challenge, rigour, more of a fight than the flimsy which the Sinfonietta shewed.

SA, Roehre, Chris - anyone else tackled this music yet?

[hackneyvi]

It begins about 1' 46" in, runs for 25 minutes. I'm listening to the Bryn Harrison in the back yard and the way it tumbles is analogous to the gusts that are pulling the trees around and their leaves about and along. That first movement surges, shivers and rolls out wonderful well.

The third though is a puzzle. It repeats some of the sounds (but then maybe the basis on Bridget Riley and her repetitiousness in shaping makes that logical). As it goes on though, in the thinner orchestration of the centre, it reminds of the more mumbled moments in Tippett's Corelli fantasia. Like the piping ring of fourth movement, though.

Then the fifth. A real sense of lengthened breathing, of stretch and reach, of long and of high. Risky to say but, positively, it's enunciated in a drawl but for me there's a sense of drag; a body pulled, even called, bewitched, resistant, will-less forward by intangent force. The sixth, last is a bitter haunt. Lovely piece.

[Quarky]

I'm sure your criticisms are justified, Phil.

My usual strategy is to bend over backwards to see the positive in a concert, but S-A's comments appear appropriate:"If someone else hasn't already, would like to patent the term "capitalist realism" to designate what is happening to what was once cutting-edge music in the name of "consumer choice"."

Personally, I'm quite comfortable with music that is simply constructed and easily digestible , but there was not much to enjoy in this concert.

What made me cross was the talk on Cowbells given by the composer of the Alto Sax + Cowbells piece. A brilliant and witty talk, but the music itself was - well, I think I could have composed better myself.

[hackneyvi]

What made me cross was the talk on Cowbells given by the composer of the Alto Sax + Cowbells piece. A brilliant and witty talk, but the music itself was - well, I think I could have composed better myself.

Very annoying music.