Proms at … Cadogan Hall 5 – 13.08.18

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

13:00
Cadogan Hall

Iannis Xenakis: Rebonds B
Simon Holt: Quadriga - world première
Suzanne Farrin: new work - BBC commission: world première
Iannis Xenakis: Tetras

Colin Currie percussion
JACK Quartet



Award-winning British percussionist Colin Currie joins forces with dynamic contemporary music specialists, the JACK Quartet, for a programme of 20th- and 21st-century works, including world premieres by Simon Holt and Suzanne Farrin.

These are joined by two virtuosic Xenakis chamber works - the impossibly demanding Rebonds B for solo percussion and the 1983 string quartet Tetras with its eerie, woodwind-like sound manipulation and unsettling rhythmic patterning.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Not to be missed - for some at least.

[bluestateprommer]

Very well performed "PCM" by Colin Currie and the JACK Quartet today, as heard on iPlayer. On Simon Holt's work, to be honest, he seems to be reaching into his percussion compositional bag of tricks once too often here, as Quadriga sounded all too reminiscent of A Table of Noises and other works of his that I've heard on R3. The new Suzanne Farrin commission, Hypersea, is nominally related to the idea of the eventual emergence of life and its roots in the sea. While I can't say that the music lived up to such a grandiose idea, on its own terms as music, it was nice to hear, and reasonably ear-tickling. It was good to know that both Holt and Farrin were present in the Cadogan Hall audience to take bows. I don't recall ever hearing the Xenakis works on record or anywhere else. In terms of musicianship, with CC and JACK, you're in excellent hands with this concert.