SoundState, the Southbank Centre’s five-day celebration of contemporary composers, is the nearest thing London now has to a new-music festival. Stylistically, its programme is a broad church, and that was reflected in the opening concert, which was given by the London Philharmonic, conducted by Edward Gardner. All four works were being heard for the first time in Britain, though only one of them could really be described as new.
That was Rebecca Saunders’ To An Utterance, the piano concerto she composed in 2020 for Nicolas Hodges, who played it here too. Saunders gives the soloist only a few bars rest in the entire 28-minute score, as they are taken on a compelling musical journey. She describes the piano part as an “incessant, compulsive soliloquy”; it’s a barrage of glissandos and clusters played with palms and forearms but one that, despite its insistence, is condemned to end in failure, as the orchestra (which includes an accordion, a second piano and an array of exotic percussion) only adds commentary rather than support.
