Lullabies and Nightmares - a concert of contemporary percussion scores written, for the most part, by friends of the performers Richard Benjafield and Chris Brannick - managed to pull off that rare thing: a new music event that didn't have the atmosphere of a clique or ghetto. Bursting at the seems with pieces in a multiplicity of genres this programme was nothing if not varied - I'll pick some highlights
The concert opened with a row in the form of Brouhaha by Peter Weigold - a former Durham lecturer - where frantic semi-improvised material was spiced-up with the word "brouhaha", fractured into phonemes and heard as yelps howls and shouts. Exuberant and comical, the piece was delivered with considerable aplomb and set the standard for the rest of the evening.
Whilst on a Durham bent, I ought to mention two other pieces - both of them from Northern Arts Fellows old and new. Stroke by Phillip Cashian was a muddle of a piece - a highly indeterminate score divided into three clearly audible sections of increasing complexity - and perhaps could best be described as a chaotic version of Brouhaha.
Martyn
Harry - our present Northern Arts Fellow in composition - opened the second
half of the concert with a piece called Keep the Plates Spinning representing
one of his recent nightmares. As with a number of Harry's pieces this work was
strongly theatrical - the two percussionists fighting over a glockenspiel, carrying
out sound checks, running around the concert hall crashing cymbals, two assistants
indicating when the audience should applaud through the piece and so on - and
amounted to a remarkably lucid and disturbing piece. Imagine Kagel's theatre
of the absurd transplanted into a minimalist aesthetic and you're nearly there
Haiku Requiem (Buddy Holly Lives) by Peter McGarr, was another piece
of strange attraction: perhaps less theatrically defined than Keep the Plates
Spinning, but nonetheless moving. Here a hushed haze of tape sounds and carefully
selected timbres (including a mouth organ) blurred into a work of
well
something.
It was good, but I can't really say why.
Joanna MacGregor is best known as a pianist, but also composes. Lullaby for M was dedicated to her child who died tragically. The piece was filled with Feldman-like sounds of fragility and extreme beauty. The sound of a music box playing a Shostakovich waltz and a pianissimo wind machine cut off at the end were both exceptional in their simplicity and impact.
The second half drew to
a close triumphantly, as had the first with Steve Reich's Clapping Music,
with a performance of Xenakis' Rebounds. This is a work abounding in
arcane rhythms suffused with myth and ritual evincing the composer's early training
as an architect in terms of its solidity of form and robust exuberance. What
was remarkable about Benjafield and Brannick's performance was that it was done
in unison on "found" or "garage" instruments and also on
Xenakis' preferred choice
amazing!
Douglas Bertram