On the final day of Bristol’s New Music festival, reasserting itself after the inevitable pandemic hiatus, two groups put on concerts with a considerable variety of composers.
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group paid tribute to the late Harrison Birtwistle, with two Elliott Carter works, of which the reflective ending of 1990s Con Leggerezza Pensosa felt particularly appropriate. And, in recognition of what would have been Oliver Knussen’s 70th birthday next month and of his long and fruitful association with BCMG, there were two pieces by him. Gems of instrumental solos, Secret Psalm for violin and Eccentric Melody for cello, were played by Collette Overdijk and Ulrich Heinen respectively. Eloquent and expressive, it was notable that it was Knussen’s music that commanded the most hushed, rapt attention. Artistic director Stephan Meier conducted when the full quintet of players were involved, but he also marshalled the audience for the clapping and ssshh-ing in Birtwistle’s Roddy’s Reel. Mark O’Brien was the brilliant bass clarinettist in this good-humoured finale where the smiles that Birtwistle clearly intended were everywhere.
While BCMG were dealing with pure, unadulterated sounds in the pleasing setting of the Arnolfini gallery, Wales’s contemporary music ensemble Uproar – strings, wind, harp, piano and percussion – were in the dryer acoustic of the gallery’s theatre, but all hooked up and into electronics. Three substantial works by composers connected with Paris and IRCAM offered the main thrust of their programme, taking Fausto Romitelli’s Professor Bad Trip with its intentionally psychedelic aura as the concert’s title. Kaija Saariaho’s Lichtbogen, from 1986 and inspired by the Northern Lights, and Tristan Murail’s Winter Fragments (2000) each had icy, crystalline elemental qualities, even if these composers would not necessarily have been referencing the environmental crisis at their time of writing.
In we watch it burn, the first of the three interleaving premieres commissioned from Welsh composers, Sarah Lianne Lewis invoked the words of climate activist Greta Thunberg. The sonic explosions were akin to the sparks that start bush and forest fires, and while there were no obvious conflagrations in the music, only rising panic, the dying splutter of strings proved most telling. Devil’s Elbow by Bethan Morgan-Williams mixed anguish with playfulness and, again in the spirit of IRCAM, used live electronics to intrigue the ear.
Andrew Lewis’s Canzon in Double Echo, with its interplay of instruments with electronically manipulated material, is a score that succeeds in being always aurally engaging. It had a wholly organic rather than fragmentary feel, and of the new pieces, was the one that stood up to any comparison with the Parisian electronic world. Michael Rafferty conducted with his usual unflappable authority.
