Continuing with Scandinavian new releases, a new disc from Bis featuring four works by Anders Hillborg is a real treat. It’s a generalisation, of course, but the focus of Hillborg’s music tends to be on the surface, and this understandably polarises listeners. Usually, the successes of this approach come out on top, and it’s therefore a genuine surprise to hear the main work on the disc, Sirens, not just falling short, but entirely failing. Using a text drawn from Homer, Hillborg’s setting utilises two soprano soloists, mixed choir and orchestra, and you’d be forgiven through the opening minutes for thinking that the most remarkable mise-en-scène was being established. It is unquestionably striking, but once the choir has entered, and a few minutes later the soloists, it soon becomes clear that nothing is being set up, we’re there already—were there, in fact, at the very start. In a way that directly parallels John Tavener, Hillborg is seeking a 33-minute orgasmic wave, but despite moments of utter beauty, the piece is simply so caught up in the attempt to relay its never-ending ecstatic allure that it becomes overwhelmingly cloying and dumbfounded. The harmonic proximity to the (dis-)likes of Eric Whitacre don’t exactly help. But it’s the odd one out on a disc that is otherwise nothing but a delight. Read more
Last night’s concert given by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted on this occasion by Oliver Knussen, was a typically tightly-packed affair, featuring seven works (plus an encore) that, despite their respective brevity, added up to a concert that was surprisingly lengthy and filling. Calling it an embarrassment of riches wouldn’t be exactly right, although both of those epithets made their presence felt. Of the former, there was the usual helping of forgettable Faberian froth, represented this time by Julian Anderson‘s The Comedy of Change and, to a lesser extent, Polly Roe by BCMG’s new Composer-in-Residence Patrick Brennan. Anderson’s overlong, seven-movement work—the title of which bore no relation to what one actually heard—was another iteration of his endless recycling of the same small pool of ideas, spiky staccatos firing away upon distorted unison melodic blather, not so much animated as made to twitch like electrified frog’s legs with large doses of velocity and rhythmic rigour. 
Two months may have passed, but memories of the all-too-brief weekend i spent at HCMF 2012 are alive and well; so let’s pick up where i left off.
So, where were we? Ah yes, The Proms; my catchup starts with the concert that took place on Friday 6 August, given by the splendid Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.Follow
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