HCMF 2013: London Sinfonietta

by 5:4

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LJE

Interesting to read a review of this piece by someone who approached the work cold. I recently saw a webcasted performance with Rattle conducting the Berlin Phil doing this work (complete with blackouts on the webcast), and I felt I was able to appreciate the work on quite another level. However, I had already known the piece for a while (and was already a fan of Haas’s music). I think this is some of the most immediate and striking (without selling out) contemporary music today. I’d love to see a performance of this live someday.

kea

Hmm… I come from the opposite perspective, I’m familiar with some of Haas’s music and find what I’ve heard to be safe, comfortable rehashes of things that were done much better by Grisey and Ligeti and others in the 1960s and 70s; mainstream, middleground music for people who don’t really like contemporary music but want to say they do, et cetera. This review has me wondering if I’m missing something important by not hearing it live, though.

(The darkness thing is also interesting, though I’m not sure how much it would do for this piece in particular vs say multi-channel electronic music, which is often similarly “diffused” in darkness and with speakers surrounding the audience. I don’t know if In Vain has a spatial component; assuming not.)

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