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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
April 13, 2008
"When I don't like a piece of music, I make a point of listening to it more closely."
Although French composer Florent Schmitt's are undoubtedly ones to live by, I have to admit that I have rarely felt their need at an Aventa concert.
Sunday's season finale was no exception; while I would not pretend to have enjoyed every piece equally, every one of them had its own special qualities.
Linda Catlin Smith's Knotted Silk opened the programme; with its slow-moving chords and insistent metallic percussion, the work somehow put me in mind of the final movement of Messiaen's Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, although there is little, if any, sonic resemblance. Its progress towards the shimmering close provided a fine hors d'oeuvre to the evening.
Giorgio Magnanensi, as I have remarked before, is a composer with a wonderful sonic imagination and a fine sense of proportion. ethuiá V, for solo horn and electronics, was receiving its first performance.
Darnell Linwood, to whom the work is dedicated, gave a superb performance, in which her tone ranged from a sarcastic, almost savage snarl to a warm noble solemnity, by way of a sort of hiccupping 'whoop' and the sounds that a horn mouthpiece make when connected backwards and blown through. All this was done in conjunction with a typical Magnanensi electronic accompaniment - and I cannot think of a composer working today who has a more persuasive way with electronic sounds.
A most enjoyable piece.
The evening's eponymous music, by Martin Arnold, was slow and gently sensuous, although I gather that I was not the only listener who though a little judicious trimming would have helped.
There is no doubting that there is much beauty in the work, and it will be some time before I forget the lovely duet between glockenspiel and marimba shortly before the end.
James Rolfe's raW opened the second half of the evening. According to the composer it was written by "filtering J.S. Bach's Second Brandenburg Concerto through Bob Marley's War (Bach's first movement), Burning Spear's The Invasion (second movement), and John Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever (third movement)."
The result is a lively, engaging and frequently hilarious work. Occasionally (very) a hint of Bach came through, but the abiding impression is of fiendishly difficult syncopated phrases of minimal length, synchronised with whiplash precision and boundless energy.
The programme concluded with Anders Nordentoft's Hymne. its first movement was mostly slow-moving chords, leading to an impressive climax. The other movement was more dramatic, from its opening gesture it became more and more agitated (and louder), although the last sound heard was the dying resonance of the piano.
Like the other works I have heard by Nordentoft, Hymne has moments of apparently conventionality interspersed with ore obviously "contemporary" music. But Nordentoft's vision welds these disparate elements into a satisfying whole, even if one cannot easily say exactly what the music is "about". He is a major figure.
It has become a truism to say that Bill Linwood and Aventa gave the music the kind of performances their composers must have wished for while writing.
Aventa go from strength to strength.
The ensemble: Müge Büyükçelen, violin; Mieka Kohut, viola; Alasdair Money, cello; Darren Buhr, doublebass; Richard Volet, flute, piccolo; AK Coope, clarinet, bass clarinet; Darnell Linwood, horn; Louis Ranger, trumpet; Miranda Wong, piano; Masako Hockey, Phillip Rempel, percussion.
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