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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
February 24, 2007
"We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds...We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise great sounds, extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds."
Although the above might almost serve as a manifesto for modernist compositional techniques, it was - as the slightly archaic vocabulary might suggest - actually written by Francis Bacon, in The New Atlantis, in 1627.
Certainly Saturday's concert by the Aventa Ensemble, consisting of works they are taking on their first tour, was full of "quarter sounds and lesser slides...divers tremblings and warblings" and much else besides.
Klaus Ib Jørgensen's Moon-pain is a work-in-progress; Aventa have already performed one of the cycle, but on that occasion I felt that a single hearing was insufficient to reveal the work's true depth.
Saturday's concert included the North American premieres of two more pieces from the cycle; whether I am more attuned to Jørgensen's idiom, whether the music itself is more immediately comprehensible or whether it was soprano Janice Jackson's quite remarkable vocalisations I cannot say. What I can say is that this time I was completely convinced and noticed what for many was probably obvious from the first: how firmly this music sits in the tradition of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire: the expressionist accompaniment, the vocal line extending traditional technique and providing a fragmentary, nightmarish quality to the music.
Jackson's performance was extraordinary - there were a couple of occasions when I would have sworn there were two people singing - and totally mesmerising.
The concert opened with Giorgio Magnanensi's il suono blu, premiered by Aventa just over a year ago.
I am pleased to report that the music - despite the composer's own declaration that it is "fragmentary" and a "collage" - stands up to repetition, even if the necessary substitution of a pre-recorded electronic part for the live electronics of the original, did take a little of the edge off.
For the rest, Magnanensi's marvellous sonic imagination and unerring sense of when to finish confirmed him as one of the most interesting composers I have encountered in recent years.
Poul Ruders's Abysm is in three shortish movements; the outer movements, for full ensemble, both suggested tremendous depths (appropriately enough) - whether it was the dramatic horn and trombone chords which opened the first, or the spectral strings and winds in the last.
The marvellous rapidfire central movement - for piano and wood blocks - was scintillatingly played by Miranda Wong and David Humphrey.
The light relief of the afternoon was provided by Moritz Eggert's Pong - inspired by the first video game, it bounced notes between the players, was full of life and yet still conveyed a certain sense of the innocence of that first video game.
The concert took its title from its final piece, Bent Sørensen's The Weeping White Room.
As with Sørensen's other music (he seems to be something of an Aventa favourite) this piece is meticulously scored; its gently decaying lyricisim - melodies and accompanying harmonies like a Dali watch - and delicately melancholy ending proved very attractive.
I may begin to sound like a broken record (whatever that may be) but once again, Bill Linwood and Aventa gave a series of meticulous performances, superbly played and almost making it look easy.
I did wonder, though - thinking back to Bacon's "quarter sounds and lesser slides" - what modern composers would do with their stringed instruments if the glissando were to be banned. Just a thought.
Aventa Ensemble: Müge Büyükçelen, Sharon Stanis, violins; Mieka Kohut, viola; Alasdair Money, cello; Darren Buhr, double bass; Mark McGregor, flute; Russell Bajer, oboe; AK Coope, clarinet; Darnell Linwood, horn; Marcus Goddard, trumpet; François Levesque, trombone; David Humphrey, percussion; Miranda Wong, piano.
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