The experience of Christina Kubisch‘s electromagnetic walk around Oslo’s library had a counterpart in her new vocal work, Strømsanger (“electrical singers”), premièred by Trondheim Voices. The piece originated in the electromagnetic sounds made by Trondheim’s tram system; these became the basis for transcriptions that Kubisch developed further. Lasting around 40 minutes, Strømsanger emerged as a continually fluctuating, floating web of pitch, not so much diatonic as harmonically ‘sympathetic’, the vocal texture seamlessly coloured by electronic tones. A revelatory feature of Kubisch’s electromagnetic walks is the way sounds abruptly change with the barest movement of the head, and Strømsanger underwent just such a change after this mellifluous introduction. Lurching into buzzing, dirty tones, somehow the music never lost sight of lyricism, and the impression was of a vast avant-song, not so much without words as one that had passed beyond words and language.
The voices became an integral part of the sonic dirt, which felt more edgy than it might due to – as only slowly became apparent – the almost total lack of low frequencies. It was impossible to tell whether the cumulative effect was energising or restful; it was probably both, finding its way back to a softer palette but with the harmonic sympathies now broken up and convoluted. It was a mesmerising performance by Trondheim Voices, in which time seemed to stand still yet also rush past impossibly quickly.
Another electroacoustic performance, on the final day of the festival, featured double bassist Håkon Thelin and live electronics from Gisle Nataas, given in the impressive atrium of Oslo’s Gyldendaalhuset, a building designed by architect Sverre Fehn. Part of Natass’ “Architecture as instrument / The sound of architecture” project, their performance had its roots in processed sounds derived from other buildings designed by Fehn. As with so much music of this ilk, the specifics were, sonically speaking, irrelevant; what emerged was a mixture of sounds one could discern had connections to a physical reality alongside others sufficiently processed that they may as well (and could) have been synthetic.
The first of their two performances was the more engaging, due to the way Thelin’s bass was integrated into an already bottom-heavy texture, developing a rhythmic element but in a loose, non-metric way. The sound world subsequently became polarised, within which a timbrally hard-to-define tiny melodic strand floated somewhere high. By contrast, while the second piece began well – two elements caught in an equilbrium: Thelin a quietly supra-lyrical presence amid Nataas’ scrunchy electronics – over time the fact that neither of them wanted to disrupt the balance resulted in rather timid and tedious noodling.
The final large-scale event at Ultima 2023 was given by KORK, aka Kringkastingsorkestret (Norwegian Radio Orchestra), in a concert ostensibly throwing focus onto aspects of the climate and waste, titled ‘Singing plastic’. As more time goes on, and governments continually drag their feet, while populations desparingly shrug, at the calamity we’ve caused playing out all around us, i have to admit to have become similarly jaded, even a touch cynical, by works of new music that purport to ‘address’ the problem. Composers often go to great pains to point out that there’s nothing they or their music can do to change anything, in which case the compositions are, at best, an expression of one individual’s concern, and, at worst, a pointless exercise in ‘oh dearism‘.
i’m not sure it would be fair to characterise Gregor Mayrhofer‘s Recycling Concerto, premièred at the concert with the composer conducting, as either of those two possibilities, simply because, from pretty much start to finish, you’d be hard pressed to detect any musical connection to, or even awareness of, anything approaching a global problem. Featuring percussionist Vivi Vassileva as soloist, the only acknowledgement the work made to its title was by incorporating a host of found objects as additional instruments, primarily bottles and different forms of plastic. One wondered whether there was some intended irony beneath the surface of the opening movement, and whether its full-on, jazzy light music vibe, in which Vassileva periodically threw small bits of plastic all over her instruments to create clatters of notes, might be a literal demonstration of the problem, with everyone content to fiddle while Rome steadfastly burned.
Sadly, the reality was nothing so telling, and the Recycling Concerto instead seemed to personify the problem, its continually playful energy, reinforced by Vassileva’s never-ending broad smiles, dancing without the remotest care in the world. There was, it’s only fair to say, some contrast in the second movement, where Mayrhofer allowed some darkness and turbulence to fester, leading to a tone that could be interpreted as borderline mournful. But that only brings us back to the level of ‘oh dear’, and while the solo cadenza was rather mind-boggling in the deft way Vassileva elicited glissando pitches from plastic bottles, taken as a whole it was impossible not to regard the Recycling Concerto as a privileged indulgence, its morass of gestural flotsam and jetsam entirely trivialising the problem and leaving a decidedly unpleasant taste in the mouth.
At least Kristine Tjøgersen’s Bioluminescence, which preceded it in the concert, didn’t make any comparable claims to awareness – though, by implication, it did. i first experienced this piece a few years ago at Only Connect 2019, and while KORK’s performance was nowhere near as compelling as that previous encounter, there was genuine beauty in the way they clarified the work’s development from an abstract texture to softly glowing music. Here was a composer demonstrating love and affection for the wonders of the natural world, which of itself implied something far more immediate and pressing in terms of the keen sense of urgency it provoked, that such wonders should be protected.
The most stunningly virtuosic music i witnessed at Ultima 2023 came, unexpectedly, from the most humble combination of just two hands and a single drum. The closing night of the festival ended with a late evening performance by Iranian drummer Mohammad Reza Mortazavi. The profundity of what was happening took time to become apparent. The first piece was incredible enough, over the course of its relatively short duration defying belief that the apparent chorus of drummers we were hearing, all in perfect sync, was actually just emanating from Mortazavi. It was absolutely thrilling, constant timbral shifts from the slightest adjustment of a hand, borne along by a very fast, unstoppable pulse that only wavered to allow for slight alterations of tempo that shaped the continuity, which in turn only made it more exhilarating. The longer second piece demonstrated less timbral variation but had a more fascinating rhythmic language: never four-square, not even regular, yet with a consistency that made it seem so. It was like a continual stream of syncopations that confused perception of the downbeat so much that notions of ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ were rendered entirely moot. As such, this redefining of rhythmic fundamentals brought Autechre to mind, a thought reinforced by the sight of a portion of the audience who were navigating through strange kinds of shuffling dancesteps, moving to beats that were simultaneously real and illusory.
On the one hand, these two opening gambits had made it clear what Mortazavi was about, what he could do. Yet his third and final piece eclipsed both of them utterly. Now, its fast-flowing momentum brought to mind the more rapid, rhythmically-charged sequences in Tangerine Dream’s early 1970s proto-ambient works. Where one had been able to hold onto a loose impression of structure in the previous two pieces, now the incredible pace, rapidity and duration became overwhelming, to the point that rhythm itself – the only thing we were actually hearing – had vanished entirely, transcended into something beyond mere impacts and subvidivisions of time. It’s hard to articulate the effect and feeling of this extremely – almost infeasibly – long piece. Motivic gear changes along the way threw up new possibilities and actualities of downbeat, though they slipped out of reach and consciousness as soon as we grasped them. Physically, my mind and my body felt unable to parse the impulse to move, feeling instead transfixed in place, captured and held by the unceasing stream of impulses colliding against and seemingly passing through me. Mortazavi’s performance seemed superhuman; the experience was nothing less than ecstatic.
