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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
November 15, 2006
"Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them."
Wherever Brian Ferneyhough's "commitment to rethinking" has led him, it is clear from his works performed during Wednesday night's Aventa concert that pandering to his audience is still not on Ferneyhough's agenda. (And, parenthetically, one might like draw his attention to Len Deighton's observation: "if the US is a mental asylum, then California is the violent ward.")
Ferneyhough's music is challenging - as much, if not more, for the performers as the audience. It tends to divide even those sympathetic to the avant-garde - and this division is hardly narrowed by Ferneyhough's own, frequently gnomic utterances:- "If one examines major developments in art over the last 150 years or so, one would certainly be hard put to avoid extremely articulate and ornate plaints and riffs on the idea of eschatological burnout in the relation of means and ends".
Well, quite.
Ferneyhough's Carceri d'Invenzione IIb (only in the 20th century...) is for solo flute and was given an absolutely mesmerising reading by Mark McGregor.
To call the music virtuosic would be an understatement - in addition to regular technique, the player uses a wide variety of extended techniques, resulting in perhaps the most aggressive music I've ever heard for the instrument.
Ferneyhough's great strength is the coherence he brings even to such a lengthy, discursive and at times physically painful work. Mark McGregor's playing verged on the superhuman; I cannot imagine a finer performance - nor a more convincing one.
Flurries is the piece which gave the evening its title, a work for violin,cello, piano, flute, clarinet and horn.
Once again the music is of stupefying difficulty - one brief look at the score afterwards was nearly enough to send me gibbering out into the night - and once again the performers made it look almost easy.
I felt the work to be most effective in the three duos which comprise its first half. When the full ensemble was playing its point was harder to determine. (Perhaps I need to hear it again). The final cello solo though, superbly played by Alasdair Money, brought the music to a most satisfying conclusion.
The penny-in-the-slot review of Wednesday would say that the concert was neatly divided by the interval into the Easy Listening and Not So Easy Listening halves. Interestingly, the first half consisted of the more recent music.
Rodney Sharman's Moments is a sequence of five short pieces, scored for violin, cello, clarinet, flute, percussion and piano.
Of the five, I particularly enjoyed the second, Fluid and Expressive, in which McGregor's flute appeared to be providing its own echo; and the third, Tango? which, while hardly likely to be confused with Astor Piazzolla, did feature a nice line in sleaze, courtesy of AK Coope's bass clarinet.
Peter Hatch's Three Shades of Blue is scored for two pianos and two percussionists - but anyone expecting Bartók Mk.II would be disappointed: where Bartók often exploits the percussive possibilities of the pianos, Hatch is more interested in the melodic potential of the tuned percussion.
The opening movement, Shadow opens slowly and is quite lovely. Gradually both the complexity and the sonority broaden into an all-engulfing experience. Rivetting.
Homage (to Satie) is the second movement and the influence of "the velvet gentleman" was apparent from the opening lumpy, Gymnopedie-like piano figurations.
Perhaps the final Cubanacana was a touch overlong for its material, which alternated between slow, atmospheric passages and a rapid samba (or was it a rumba?). It did, though, possess plenty of life.
But I would not make too much of this; the finale may have (very) slightly outstayed its welcome. The first two movements were, like baby bear's porridge, just right.
Michael Oesterle's Urban Canticles, performed between the two Ferneyhough pieces, was, to my ears, the least satisfying music of the evening.
The work, according to its composer, depicts "the musical reverberations of my Montréal surroundings."
While there were certainly moments which sounded like the kind of thing one might hear while perambulating through a musical neighbourhood, the whole work somehow lacked coherence.
All in all, though, it was another spectacular and rewarding evening from Aventa.
Aventa Ensemble: Müge Büyükçelen, violin; Alasdair Money, cello; Mark McGregor, flute; AK Coope, clarinet; Darnell Linwood, horn; Miranda Wong, piano; Erika Crino, piano; David Humphrey, percussion; Masako Hockey, percussion.
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