The World New Music Days features a wide variety of instrumental combinations, but the majority of music performed at this year’s festival were chamber works. Some of these fell within a trio of “extraordinário” concerts, each focused on a solo instrument, clarinet, cello and saxophone.
The clarinet recital, which featured no fewer than three soloists (Nuno Pinto, Frederic Cardoso and Gonçalo Pinto) took place in Porto’s Casa da Música, a magnificent cross between a concrete spaceship and the Jawa sandcrawler. OBJECTs253 by Komei Itoh (Japan) was tantalisingly elusive, with barely-speaking multiphonics, tiny lip noises and far off glissandi. It was impossible not to be pulled deep into its soundworld, eventually hearing small phrases develop, only to be rudely jolted by the complete contrast, as the piece ended with fast, very loud run. The title of Soliloquy by Barbara Jazwinski might have suggested gentle rumination, but was an extensive lyrical workout for the instrument, with a convincing narrative.
The highlight was Time Spell by João Pedro Oliveira (Portugal), for clarinet and electronics. The relationship between acoustic and electronic was all the more effective for being fluid, with the electronics by turns an expansion, a duo, in dialogue, a counterpoint and an imitation of the clarinet. Nicely typified by retro analogue sounds this worked both to distance and, at times, bring the electronics close to emulating the sound of the instrument. But ultimately the strength of its impression mostly came from its obvious ambition, proving absolutely compelling from start to end.
Filipe Quaresma helmed the ‘Extraordinary Cello’ recital, which included one of the most striking of the individual (i.e. not state-sponsored) submissions, Reflect by George Christofi (Cyprus). Its material constantly got away from us – gestural, fickle, fugitive, yet was at the same time demonstrative and tangible, with distinct glimpses of melody within its percussive and accented ideas, only to vanish at the end.
Just as impressive was Poland’s Tomasz Skweres, who in Suite Macabre initially presented us with extremes of violence, alternating with soft dyads. Similar contrasts followed, with ideas rising from an intense lower grinding to attain light dancing and high harmonics, subsequently plunging to earth again. Its final part was best of all, rapid obfuscated pitches leading to a wild sequence with a crazed melodic shrieking out over a drone, before being rudely broken.
Later the same day, it was saxophonist Henrique Portovedo’s turn to be “extraordinário”; three of the six pieces in his recital met him halfway. Hassan by Slovenian Tilen Lebar was one of them, giving the impression of a slow, stretched-out melodic line. Placed in an ambient environment, it had a kind of timelessness to it. The most striking piece in the concert was undoubtedly Music for Sax and Boxes by Diogo Alvim (Portugal), which worked more like an installation than a concert piece. Portovedo was expanded by a collection of large boxes around and among the audience projecting additional material. It all cohered into a single voice, though, to the extent that the work’s climax, a huge, wailing pitch chorus, was overwhelmingly impressive. It was as if the saxophone had expanded to fill the entire space, setting it ablaze, before pushing beyond into a place of dense ambience.
Most outstanding of all were the Three Short Pieces from The Darkness Book by Paulo Ferreira-Lopes (Portugal), which at a mere eight minutes was far too short (i’d like either to have heard some long pieces, or a lot more short ones). That being said, the three effectively became one in Portovedo’s performance, forming a single, coherent dramatic structure. Super aggressive violent intensity receded to a reverberant tension, slow, spare but charged, and kept poised through held tones in the electronics. The sax let rip again, but what transpired was lovely, a dark but beautiful atmosphere of rumble with high churring tones mingled with soft breath from Portovedo. Genuinely extraordinary.
Another trio of connected concerts came halfway through the festival, in a back-to-back-to-back three-hour Piano Marathon. In the first of them, given by Elsa Silva, one wondered if Bence Kutrik (Hungary) might have been pushing his luck in a self-confessed Ligeti homage, Chorale Machine, but if paid off. Employing a similar high concept rhythmically patterned momentum, the work moved liberally around the keyboard (one of many occasions when Silva demonstrated real power and commitment) in a way that felt, if not methodical, then at least logical – and, at its abruptly thumping end, fittingly playful. One of the most beguiling works during these three hours was Harmónicos for piano and live electronics, by one of Portugal’s most renowned 20th century composers, Jorge Peixinho. All situated as upper harmonics (of a putative low C), the piano played with a delayed playback of itself, creating dancing forms and shapes in a way that transcended its simple delicacy.
It was the second of the three recitals, by José Pedro Ribeiro, that proved most successful. In Paráfrase sobre “Lettera Amorosa” de Claudio Monteverdi by Cândido Lima (Portugal), a world première, it felt like we had not so much tumbled down the rabbit hole as just suddenly found ourselves there. Rich, allusive, mysterious, evocative, robust and direct, beautifully idiomatic, with Monteverdi manifesting as chord progressions amid turbulent low runs, yet in a way that felt entirely complementary, the two integrated. Though Lima’s language was somewhat post-Romantic it was nonetheless exploratory, untethered and individual, sounding entirely authentic. Having been whisked to this magical place we were returned in the same way, the music instantly vanishing.
At the time, the fact that Hugo Ribeiro (Portugal) had given his new piece Études for piano solo a plural title didn’t sink in. Yet it worked extremely well whether viewed as a series of short pieces or a longer composite, as it was a relentless music, regularly stopping and (re)starting, obsessed with a tight, filigree idea that never expands yet never gives up. The fact that this may well have been several little pieces all ploughing the same furrow only makes it more fascinatingly compelling. Best of all was HESPER(Í)A by Romanian Carmen Cârneci, a piece that felt caught (stuck?) between two states, one meticulous the other playful. Or was it a meticulous articulation of playfulness? Is that a contradiction in terms? Perhaps that was the point, as the piece became a curious contradiction that ended up become a lot more than the sum of those two options.
As i mentioned at the start of Part 1, each of these three concerts featured one piece by a major 20th century composer. Elsa Silva’s account of Berio‘s Sequenza IV was masterful, playful and serious at once, with stunning clarity in its almost bewildering array of articulations flying past. José Pedro Ribeiro made Boulez‘s 12 Notations like a whole world slowly being revealed, its scale and scope slowly dawning on us as if we were being drawn ever deeper, becoming enveloped. But the most exhilarating of these three came in the third recital by Mrika Sefa, an otherwise disappointing concert that ended with Nono‘s … sofferte onde serene … for piano and tape. Two pianos: one bright, foregrounded, the other dark, muffled, submerged; a telling juxtaposition. Sefa made her material sinewy while the tape became akin to a reverberant fossil, yet lurking and looming like an ominous threat of a future to come. Background and foreground met in the upper register, the tape interrupting the piano like an echo or a memory, the two parts eventually walking gingerly around each other. One of the most engrossing performances of the entire festival, proving again how fresh and immediate Nono’s music continues to be.
Elsa Silva and Filipe Quaresma were joined by violinist Vítor Vieira for a concert as Sond’Ar-Te Trio, that featured several more excellent new chamber works. sobre a areia o tempo poisa by Sara Carvalho (Portugal) occupied a place of strange beauty, where music was deconstructed, reconfigured into something with recognisable features and gestures but which seemed alien and just not quite right. Its mystery became yet more pronounced in its final section, atomising into pizzicati and percussive sounds. Despite having to compete with the São Luiz Teatro Municipal’s loud but necessary aircon units, Welsh composer Ashley John Long‘s Beyond the Haze of Winter’s Edge made a very strong impact. Bold, confident material was deliberately undermined by less certain passages, setting up a palpable tension with its strong lyrical sensibility.
i still feel i’m reeling from (and keen to hear again) the work that ended the concert, torque by José Luis Perdigón de Paz (Spain). Harsh, violent gestures were the grammar for its language of violence, begging the question to what extent the member of the trio were in fact all on the same page. In particular, the violin and cello often seemed separate from the piano (being most demonstrative when it was at its most subdued), leading to impressions of friction and potentially conflict. Howevr, later they seemed most definitely (re)united, pounding together over a heavy pulse with details flowing out between each beat, a wonderful effect. Yet a bass-heavy outburst from the piano stunned the strings into suspension, leading to brooding intensity that suggested unity might have been an illusion. It was a captivating conclusion to a fabulous piece, becoming all the more disturbing as its music became gentle and obliquely lyrical in its closing moments.
The loveliest location for the chamber concerts came right at the end of the festival, when the Quarteto de Cordas Solistas da Metropolitana performed in the cloister of Lisbon’s historic Jerónimos Monastery. With an azure sky as the sun went down, it was a fitting place to hear Bleu II by Tsu-Yao Yang (Taiwan). And what a complex blue it was – glinting soft harmonics; forceful scurrying passages and big, dramatic crescendos. Music of real volatility and contrast, it oscillated between aggressive gestures – not so much in shadow as in the brightest of light – and furious energy, with accents to heavy they distorted. i’ll never look at the sky the same way again. An altogether different soundworld occupied Variations by Hong Kong composer Samuel Hong Yu Leung. Everything seemed intricately designed and constructed, with each sound in its proper place. Yet it wasn’t all about care and order, articulating an intensity that was all the more striking being in this context, ending at the cusp of audibility.
The highlight of the concert was a piece that proved to be that most rare and unusual of things in so much new music: genuinely moving. In the two childhoods, Leevi Räsänen (Finland) established a world where strained attempts at stability kept losing their footing. The quartet would be delicate, slow and relatively diatonic, but keep breaking out in huge, tremulous passages that make everything fraught. Composure was regained, only to be lost again in shrill squalls and distortion, with everything becoming askew. It’s hard to know to what extent to trust the state in which the piece ends: holding to a basic chord sequence but feeling unpredictable; stable perhaps, but overwhelmingly fragile.
