London Sinfonietta/Sound Intermedia - Reich/Richter (Royal Festival Hall, London, 6 April 2023)

Concert from earlier in the month, broadcast last week.  The mouthwatering programme is themed around New York composers, or those with connections to the area, its second half given over to 40 minutes of Steve Reich.

First, we get the transformed Insect sounds of Mira Calix's Nunu; the world premiere of Anna Clyne's Fractured Time, and the joyous cacophony of Julia Wolfe's Tell Me Everything, inspired by a tape of Mexican brass music.  Bookending these in the concert's first half are two arrangements of an uncharacteristically brief Julius Eastman piece, Joy Boy from 1974.  Opening the programme in a wind-centred iteration, then leading into the interval in a strings-based version, it's a great pocket-sized example of the subtle constant transformation in Eastman's music.  

Reich/Richter, composed in 2019 and given album release last year, was composed by Steve Reich to accompany an abstract film by Gerhard Richter.  The patterned, textured film was shown to the audience for this performance, but with this obviously unavailable to broadcast listeners the music has to stand by itself.  And it most certainly does, in instantly recognisable Reich form across its four sections, but still managing to sound fresh in this late period of the New York legend's career.

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pw: sgtg

BBC Proms 2022: Marius Neset / London Sinfonietta - Geyser (3 Sept 2022)

The last post from this year's Proms is another world premiere, in this work composed by Norwegian saxophonist Marius Neset.  Playing with the London Sinfonietta, Neset took his geologically-inspired suite from its calm beginnings to frenetic interlocking patterns with great solos and on to much more besides.  Don't take the track splits I've added in as necessarily accurate - this was mostly guesswork as only the first couple of sections are applauded, all the rest segues, and I had nothing else to refer to.  But do enjoy all the twists and turns of this incredible work, with Neset's core quintet blending wonderfully with the ensemble.

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pw: sgtg

Reich, Glass, Nancarrow et al performed by London Sinfonietta (BBC Proms 2020)

A programme of "pulsing cityscapes" from the London Sinfonietta, recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall sans audience on Tuesday 1 September.  Some wonderful, ear-bending sounds came out of this - as soon as the stately chords of Glass' Facades fade away, what comes next is a miniature for toy piano and toy boombox.  This piece is East Broadway by Julia Wolfe, one of the Bang On A Can founders - after her grand epic Flower Power earlier this year, it was nice to hear the contrast of something so brief and bizarre.

Orchestral arrangements of two of Conlon Nancarrow's Studies For Player Piano follow, with the expanded instrumentation really highlighting the fiendish complexity of Nancarrow's writing.  A spotlight for three more contemporary composers is next, with Tansy Davies' funk-influenced Neon, Edmund Finnis' renaissance/baroque-cut-and-paste In Situ and Anna Meredith's distorted bassoon piece Axeman.  The finale is Steve Reich's City Life, which more than ably demonstrates its title in the trademark pulse and orchestration, and in the sampled sounds from the streets of NYC.  These include voices used both in the style of Different Trains, where the cadence of the speech informs the melody, and in phased overlays like his early work Come Out.

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pw: sgtg

Rzewski, Eastman, Furrer, Haas - London & Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festivals 2016

Still digging through some radio broadcasts that I never got around to using, so here's a pair of back-to-back episodes from BBC Radio 3's Hear And Now programme that aired in early 2017.

Covered first is the opening night of the London Contemporary Music Festival 2016, which was titled "In Search Of Julius Eastman".  The new music ensemble Apartment House turn in a great performance of Eastman's hour-plus, gradually unfolding Femenine - see below for the vintage recording that they used to help piece together the basic score.  It's paired in this concert with Frederic Rzewski's propulsive (then reflective) memorial to the Attica uprising, Coming Together.

At the Huddersfield festival, Klangforum Wien perform Beat Furrer's Intorno Al Bianco, a stunning, at times ear-splitting work for clarinet and string quartet.  Trombone Unit Hannover are also featured in Georg Freidrich Haas' subtle blending of multiple trombones, aus frier Lust... verbunden.  In between, the programme returns to London for a special setup to allow the London Sinfonietta to perform Furrer's epic FAMA.  Taking inspiration from Ovid's Metamorphoses, where the title refers to "a place where every sound in the world is heard", Furrer's sound-world simply has to be heard to be believed.

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pw: sgtg

Julius Eastman at SGTG:
Unjust Malaise
Femenine (live 1974) 
Georg Friedrich Haas at SGTG:
In Vain

Steve Reich - Sextet/Six Marimbas (1986)

This is probably my favourite album from Steve Reich's time on Nonesuch (which continues to this day), with the much more sombre and poignant Different Trains a close second.  The five-movement Sextet, completed in 1985, saw Reich return to the smaller, percussion-based ensemble playing of his work from the previous decade. 

Reich gives this sound a fresh perspective by introducing longer, sustained tones via synth and electric organ, and also bowed vibraphone.  The writing is more chromatic than before, giving it a jazzier hue which is especially effective in the upbeat first movement.  Following Sextet, the album features a rescoring of 1973's Six Pianos for marimba.  A very enjoyable update, Six Marimbas is ten minutes shorter than its progenitor, and creates a much more meditative mood.

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pw: sgtg

Bonus Reich: London Sinfonietta concert

This performance was given last Wednesday at Birmingham Symphony Hall.  Its first half featured the early Reich piece Clapping Music and a much more recent ballet work, Runner.  The second half was given over to a fine rendition of Music For 18 Musicians.  Broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.  One mp3 file, no pw, here.