Alongside chamber and electroacoustic music, the 2025 World New Music Days included a diverse range of ensemble and orchestral works.
One of the most playful of them was Asper by Portuguese composer Ricardo Ribeiro. This was in no small part due to the way that his hectic repetitive gestures, articulated by Concrète [LAB] Ensemble as if they were trying to push forward or through together, kept bringing to mind several people repeatedly trying and failing to walk through a doorway at once. The work’s use of interlude-like passages contributed to an engaging overall impression of a form of avant-rondo. In the same concert, but opposite in character, was All endings are sad, all endless things are impossible to bear by Luís Salgueiro (Portugal). This was a shattered music, fragments heard in isolation, in parallel, occasionally together. While aspects of its language felt familiar, its totality remained elusive, projecting a powerfully oppressive tone of black tragedy.
The highlight of Concrète [LAB] Ensemble’s concert was Platonic Solids, composed (appropriately) by Greek composer Leontios Hadjileontiadis. Its opening was utterly arresting: barely audible wisps from alto flute, vague nothings and traces of pitch from double bass, soft-tapped fingers on vibraphone. The combined effect was stunning, developing into something relatively tangible but as if refracted, shaken up by piercing shrieks from the combined forces of alto flute, bass clarinet and alto sax, the latter of which took on a siren-like quality later. Faintly bringing to mind the aesthetics of doomjazz, this piece was completely engrossing and – as with all the best new music – over far too quickly.
During the festival’s two-day excursion to Porto, we were treated to a concert by the city’s foremost new music group, Remix Ensemble, conducted by Ilan Volkov, in the epic Casa da Música concert hall. A seriously striking soundworld was created by Omri Abram (Israel) in Time passes Time. The strings used wooden sticks instead of bows, their juddery notes being the main contributor to the work’s atmosphere which was, to say the least, unsettling. This was extended later when distinct pitches briefly appeared only to be swallowed up, leading to a volatile sequence where faint tones and breath were answered by rude, loud, snarling brass. Everything, and everyone, sounded either tense or angry – yet the most extraordinary thing about this was that, every now and then, Abram gave the impression of something tangible beneath it all. Could it be that we were hearing a horribly contorted, distorted version of it? In every sense it wasn’t clear, dissipating back into soft wisps, making it one of the most tantalising works performed at this year’s WNMD.
In some respects Sie fuhr in die nacht by Slovakian Jana Kmiťová bore some similarities to this. Starting out as little more than breath – the mere potential for music – it slowly and unexpectedly arrived at a place where bright chords were laid out as arpeggios, like lights being fixed in space. Whereupon it was rushing, shivering, with nothing clear apart from this velocity and the subsequent tumult it led to. Somehow we found ourselves back where we’d begun, navigating past soft bell notes (invoking the earlier arpeggios) and wiry violin phrases to reach a distant tolling piano, ending the work with real solemnity. Again we were deeply impacted by enigmatic music filled with questions and suggestions rather than answers and certainty.
The final ensemble concert took place back in Lisbon, given by Ensemble MPMP and conductor Rita Castro Blanco in the São Luiz Teatro Municipal. There were again two highlights, both of which exhibited a wide dramatic range. Kaleidoscope by Shin Kim (South Korea) was an extended essay in play – or, at least, that’s how it seemed. The group’s antics kept getting caught in glistening diversions, bringing things to a halt (like a child seeing their first butterfly). The rapid-fire play kept returning, Kim ramping it up as if carried away by the sheer glee of sound itself. What was especially striking was the complexity of this individuated texture yet where everything sounding coherent (not a quality shared by every piece in this concert). Yet suddenly the music was halting, becoming almost nothing, playing with staccatos, only then to transform again, turning darkly lyrical before uniting in a boisterous closing tutti blending light filigree with scrunches of paper. Sensational.
Even more thrilling was State of(f) Emergencies by Portugal’s Ângela da Ponte. A compelling lyrical tension gave the opening an edgy atmosphere, before letting rip, now feisty and tough, and suddenly ascending into high registers. Following its behavioural and dramatic trajectory was an exhilarating experience: presenting a more complex form of lyricism; fracturing apart into pointillism, hardly any pitches speaking by this point; turning surly and unstable, ripples disrupting the material and triggering harsh accents, before finally something akin to earthquake tremors impossibly brought order in the form of suspended octaves. It was a powerful moment of focus bringing to end the most fabulous piece.
Not surprisingly, orchestral music was the least well-represented category, though its paucity was generally made up for by the featured works’ quality. One such was Unerasing by Jinwook Jung (South Korea) performed by Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra under Pedro Neves. On the one hand, its purported aim of reflecting on aspects of nationalist colonial erasure was far from obvious in the actual music. On the other hand, it was highly engaging stuff, intense from the get-go yet with an air of mystery that felt ominous. There was a distinct sense of the orchestra actively working through something together, in a context that, even when tension seemed to be gone, never felt secure.
Another South Korean composer, Ji-Hyang Kim, took Mahler as the starting point for Nachtmusik für Streicher, performed by string ensemble Camerata Alma Mater. The relationship between old and new was an intriguing one: from the warmth of Mahler (from his Symphony No. 3), Kim took the piece into wiry, edgy territory. Mahler’s symphony is rooted in concepts derived from the natural world, and Kim’s could be said to be adjacent to that, though represented here as a strange, rather surreal collection of disjunct sounds, fugitive ideas that glistened and thunked, signifiers of a presence paradoxically hard to pinpoint. Was the Mahler a red herring? A polar opposite? Or perhaps a what if? A brief glimpse from Mahler’s sixth movement (a soaring adagio) was in hindsight an almost desperate final touch of warmth before everything turned icy and evaporated.
Perhaps the grandest orchestral concert took place in Lisbon’s sumptuous, nature-surrounded Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, given by the Gulbenkian Orchestra conducted by José Eduardo Gomes. There was predictable disappointment from Finland’s Cecilia Damström in her piece ICE, yet again lacking sophistication, using the most primitive notions of “nice” and “nasty” music in order to keep ploughing her eco-message furrow. By complete contrast, augur by Murielle Lemay (Belgium) created something genuinely tantalising by taking delicate hints of Dvořák (from his Symphony No. 7) as a trace of tangibility amid tremulous, erratic material. Gear changes made the music more strong and imposing, and even when Lemay pulled things back the music’s energy was unquestionable. Yet a held string note emerged, and somehow it prevailed, leading to a curiously vague, airy conclusion. Considering the title, and those traces, one was left wondering what might have been revealed.
The highlight of this concert came from Kurdish-Iraqi-Dutch composer Hawar Tawfiq, whose M.C. Escher’s Imagination was a demonstration of superbly free-flowing ideas. Its strikingly beautiful introduction, lyrical but mysterious, took a rising phrase and made it resonant. It took on a dark opulence, made gorgeous as the violins soared and basses descended, before unexpectedly turning mischeivous. Orchestral scampering was punctuated by brass and timpani to the point that brash exuberance broke out, culminating in heavy percussion after which the music seemed quick and slow simultaneously. Concluding with a violin solo where the orchestra was a sympathetic backdrop, this was an engrossing musical narrative articulated with real flair and invention.
The most unforgettable orchestral performance came near the start of the festival, back in Porto’s slabtastic Casa da Música, by Porto Symphony Orchestra conducted by Brad Lubman. Esta Montanha já foi Fogo by João Caldas (Portugal), one of the few premières, was deeply intriguing. It seemed gestural but gradually this perception clarified into what appeared to be elemental forces, exploring forms and manifestations of energy is strange and nicely unpredictable ways.
But my heart still tremors a bit at the memory of Gorgons – Three Mythical Creatures by Serbian composer Veljko Nenadić. Taking inspiration from the sisters Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, Nenadić’s music was from the outset characterised by immense violence. One was tempted to hear it as borderline chaotic, yet it was abundantly clear how focused were the orchestra’s wild actions. A siren became an uncanny voice wailing over the throng (perhaps evoking Euryale’s famous cry), at which point Nenadić reduced everything via soft gongs, harmonics and bleating winds into more lyrical music. This repose was soon forgotten in what was an almighty dithyramb finale, all wind machines, rude trumpets, drums and mayhem, the members of the orchestra themselves joining in with the siren to make loud invocations to something unutterably portentous. This was the World New Music Days 2025, and contemporary music, at its absolute best and rarest: ambitious, imaginative, brilliantly effective and above all absolutely fearless.
Many thanks to Simon Cummings for his thoughtful review, to the Gulbenkian Orchestra and conductor José Eduardo Gomes for their outstanding performance of M.C. Escher’s Imagination. It was an honor to be part of the World New Music Days 2025.