Sometimes, just sometimes, a concert programme can produce something so original, so unexpected that it can eclipse the main event. Reich/Richter – a spectacular collaboration between the American composer Steve Reich and the German artist Gerhard Richter – was certainly top of the London Sinfonietta’s bill at the Festival Hall, but the piece that stuck in the mind afterwards was entirely different, and a mere six minutes long.
Anna Clyne’s striking Fractured Time was given its world premiere modestly tucked in among four lesser contemporary pieces that made up the first half of the programme. It’s a frantic whirlwind of creativity that the composer says “explores the experience of time in states of fever, lucidity and anxiety”.
