6th June concert review by Colin Blundell
Colchester New Music Day 6th June In the concert with contributions by composers from Colchester New Music on 6th June played by members of the Ixion Ensemble conducted by Michael Finnissy, the types of ‘New Music’ ranged from Tim Torry’s Song and Dance for Solo Violin with its mesmerising Bartockian ‘tune’ with haunting variations and lively dance in an old but still gripping tradition, to the starkly lean, spaced out, chords of Alan Parsons’ Still Music III in which there are large intrusions for piano which seem to positively require the other instruments to join in—they resist the temptation—and Julia Usher’s magical and ghostly, beautifully crafted Shadow Games and Dances for Ensemble, evanescent, momentary, the absent tunes occurring in between the skittering notes, like lost children in the mist—there’s a memorable high clarinet sequence with piano. In between these extremes, quite by accident illustrating the full gamut of ‘New Music’ in the latter half of the 20th Century, was first of all Alan Bullard’s Large White Rock: large piano gestures—clusters of close-packed chords suggesting huge spaces—and emergent clarinet & cello tunes against repeating chords, beautifully crafted; there are dreamy sequences for cello & clarinet. An air of mystery... Then Paul Buckley’s tightly controlled Por Tres for violin, cello & clarinet, the latter often leading the dance with upward syncopated surges; alternate romps and leisurely strolls. Both these pieces do recognisably normal things within the mainstream of 20th Century ‘contemporary’ music but they do it in a way that compels attention. As does, I hope, my own piece with its developmental thrust, shape & order. From Brighton to Timbuktoo is in the Rawsthorne/Bliss mode; it was conceived as a dialectic between the instruments, the first movement being predicated on the idea that every time cello, clarinet and violin lit upon a ‘tune’ of their own the piano would rudely interrupt. The second movement is a set of variations on a Beethoven sketch and the last movement a 6/8 romp. Stuart Russell’s East Coast Hailstorm has a similar intensity, gradually building from its long slow introduction underpinned by the darkness of the cello to relentless sequences which include a long tune for violin which seems to just emerge against repeated piano phrases to be taken over by the cello. ...Colin Blundell
