Two World Premieres

Aventa Ensemble

Heather Pawsey, soprano

Louis Ranger, trumpet

Bill Linwood, conductor

Phillip T Young Recital Hall
February 3, 2008

By Deryk Barker

"Modern music is as dangerous as cocaine."

If we are to accept Pietro Mascagni's assessment, then we must conclude that Bill Linwood and Aventa are Victoria's pushers par excellence and that an increasing number of us are, frankly, hopeless addicts.

Sunday evening's concert offered us two world premieres, music from 2004 and - I almost expected audience members to demand their money back - a work from some 30 years ago. By Aventa's standards this is Early Music.

Peter Hatch's Dulcian Patterns (one of the two premieres) is definitely not, the composer tells us, a bassoon concerto; nonetheless, there is a prominent, virtuosic part for the instrument which was superbly played by Catherine Carignan.

The three movements contained some quite delectable sonorities, considerably enhanced by four offstage players (violin, clarinet, flute and oboe) ranged in the four corners of the hall. When they were playing the music literally filled the room and sounded tremendously loud, even though it was nowhere near dangerous levels and the audience's hearing was never in peril.

For me, the second movement proved the most interesting (albeit by a very narrow margin). The martial opening piccolo put me in mind of Prokofiev (Lt. Kije), while the bassoon soon entered in "Rite of Spring" tessitura. There was also a hint of Mahlerian satire, the bleakness of Shostakovich and the emotional compression of Webern (as in his Op.6).

But the music never sounded like any of these composers; Hatch may have influences, but he is his own man, musically speaking.

A most enjoyable work, confirming my opinion that Hatch is definitely a composer to watch (well, listen to).

For Christopher Mayo's A Breakfast for Barbarians, Bill Linwood assembled what I shall always think of as the Aventa Big Band.

Of the evening's four works, this was the noisiest and, for me, the hardest to come to grips with.

Soprano Heather Pawsey coped superbly with a difficult solo part, a part full of treacherous intervals, with no tonal assistance from the accompaniment, which frequently pitted the soloist against the full ensemble seemingly doing their collective best to overwhelm her - an attempt doomed to failure by Pawsey's powerful voice.

The narration, ably performed by Christopher Butterfield, is treated far more kindly by the composer, the narrator never having to shout to make himself understood; as I have observed before, Butterfield has the knack of investing innocuous words with an implied significance beyond their actual meaning.

Despite the loud and frequently dense accompaniment, Mayo has control enough that the musical interest never flagged. I strongly suspect that another hearing really would have revealed more of the music.

What I have heard before of the music of Michael Oesterle has been impressive, but not, I must perforce admit, terribly engaging.

Territio Verbalis, in sharp contradistinction, is an enormously impressive, powerful and - yes - engaging work.

A trumpet concerto in all but name, Territio was the other work receiving its premiere performance and I imagine the composer would have to go a long way to find a group and soloist more capable and more persuasive than Louis Ranger and Aventa.

The solo part is ferocious and spectacular - as was Ranger's playing, whether in the rapidfire passages of the opening movements, the muted shadows of the second, or the lyrical opening of the final movement - which he imbued with a true nobility.

The music itself was full of imaginative effects: the third movement, for example, featured the soloist in a trio with the horn and trombone against a string accompaniment of almost (Arvo) Pärtian modal simplicity. Throughout the work Oesterle's control of his material was masterly; for me, Territio Verbalis is on altogether higher plane of achievement than his earlier work.

Although one frequently expresses the need for a second hearing of a new work, this is one of those rare examples when the need is secondary to the desire.

The evening ended in the 20th century, with the Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen's Winternacht, four meticulously-constructed miniatures portraying the cold darkness of a winter night.

While some of the music was what one might expect - slow and icy - not all of it was, as witness the third movement, dedicated to Stravinsky and full of bouncy syncopation.

Abrahamsen has a vivid aural imagination and, even at its most strident, the music was, to my ears, quite beautiful.

Bill Linwood directed strong and persuasive accounts of all four works, his total control of even the most complex passages never in doubt.

Another intensely satisfying evening from Aventa; now we addicts must endure withdrawal symptoms until their next concert, in mid-April.