With works by just two composers, there was an elegant symmetry to Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s latest programme, which was conducted by Finnegan Downie Dear. Pieces by Edmund Hunt involving a countertenor (William Purefoy) and live electronics straddled the interval, while around them were works for ensemble by Richard Baker, who is very familiar to BCMG audiences as both composer and conductor.
Both of Hunt’s works used texts in Old Norse. The longer, more ambitious of the two was The Waking of Angantyr, using verses from the story of a warrior woman who travels to the island where her dead father has been buried. It involves three protagonists, all of them sung by the countertenor in Hunt’s setting; the live electronics certainly conjured an evocative background of whispering voices, mysterious rustlings and knockings, but the vocal writing and its ensemble commentary hardly hinted at any drama, despite Purefoy’s best efforts with the text.
