Works for various forms of ensemble were explored in four concerts during this year’s World New Music Days in Bucharest.
The first, and in many respects the most playful of them, was given by Pulsar(t) Percussion Ensemble. Play was literally the point in Romanian composer Liviu Dănceanu‘s GAME, which entirely lived up to its title, being not so much a composition for percussion quartet as a doubles match. Assorted individual salvoes – each player running into the space, one at a time – were broken up and embellished by literal bat and ball volleys, often causing impromptu scattershot melodies as they landed all over the keyboard percussion. Yet there was a contrasting focus at work (not play) here too, games as something serious as well as playful. Dănceanu kept them separate as best he could for the most part, occasionally attempting to make them into a team. By the end, though, the question i’m not sure anyone could answer: did anyone actually win, or was it simply the taking part that counted?
Percussion has always tended to invite predictable forms of mindlessness and monotony, and in addition to the 16 insufferable minutes of Steve Reich‘s Mallet Quartet, another Romanian, George Balint, unfortunately gave us some of that in his Mostly Percussion. Described as a “duo-fantasy” – Sorin Rotaru with pianist Daniel Dascălu – it was standard-issue, upbeat rhythmic blather, replete with a spacious, noodly middle section (piano, tubular bells and vibes) that served the function of ‘generic contrast’, before, as expected, returning to how it began. All very cookie-cutter. (i’ve previously pondered a moratorium on jet whistles and trills in contemporary music; perhaps ternary form should be added to the list?)
In Rythmodia by yet another Romanian, Nicolae Brânduş – this was the opening concert of the festival and clearly the host nation wanted to make their presence felt at the start – the performance begged the question: though it had plenty of drive and momentum, was that all it had? Brânduş is one of the more radical Romanian composers i’ve encountered, and the reality is that Rythmodia, though rhythmically charged, is also mischievous in its shifting between surfaces, seemingly determined to bring everything to hand (and body) into its restless, non-stop dance. Yet in this performance, while the timbres and colours kept changing, the emphasis seemed to be on relentless pounding and pulsing, making it feel flat and forgettable.
The most beguiling work on Pulsar(t)’s programme came from Yun-Chen Chang (Taiwan). In her trio Towards (homage to Brancusi), textures, forms, nascent ideas, all initially tremulous, gradually sustained into pitch. Yet how were they directed? The impression here – and considering its title, this was hardly surprising – was of intricate coordination and sophisticated structure. Yet, in a way that was both enigmatic and satisfying, the work gave little away, in the process becoming ever more intriguing. A work that, ideally, needed to be heard again immediately after.
There were slim pickings to be had at a concert given by ATEM Ensemble, opening with another example of chugging post-minimal yawnblah from Asher Lurie in Time Breach 807B (what has happened to US contemporary music? – does no-one care about craft, imagination, originality or risk anymore?). The Stockhausen Menagerie, a duo for flute and clarinet by Ukrainian composer Anna Pidgorna was far better. The dialogue was playful, each short section a kind of bite-sized morsel. The third of them, the two players by this point physically circling each other, brought an unsettling suggestion of potential conflict, though this was followed by a much more reflective exchange that felt almost sensual, as if it were all an elaborate mating ritual.
Romanian Călin Ioachimescu‘s Tetrachords was as interesting as it was because it embodied paradoxes that created a palpable listening tension. Gesturally speaking, the music felt very familiar, yet its language was the opposite, difficult to penetrate. Similarly, in terms of structure and narrative the piece seemed akin to a stream of consciousness, yet constantly gave the impression of being intensively organised. Confusing, but definitely stimulating.
Profil Sinfonietta’s concert, conducted by Tiberiu Soare, was similarly mixed. The most testing piece was Bembé a Obbatalá y Oddúa by Louis Franz Aguirre (Cuba), music in a permanent state of clatterbang and clamourshout, like being in close proximity to an extravert for too long. Furthermore, for a supposed display of dithyrambic frenzy, it was all so organised, so strategic, so fake. Similarly problematic was Czech Jan Ryant Dřízal‘s Morphing Amadeus, five minutes of mucking around with Mozart’s music, with no indication of why he bothered.
But the standout work in Profil’s concert was also a real festival highlight, despite being something of a slow-burner that only revealed its scope gradually. At first, Peter Javorka‘s (Slovakia) sans Marteau et sans Maître seemed fairly innocuous: pedal notes with assorted gestures thrown around on top. It sounded spontaneous yet focused, everyone working together, sharing behaviours. Becoming highly rhythmic, Javorka attenuated pitch down to just a single note, the tam-tam spoke … whereupon the most astonishing series of huge screams was unleashed by the entire ensemble. Everything seemed to be glowing hot after, silenced by tam-tam scrapes, nicely coloured with overtones, reduced down again, to piano alone. The winds fought to overcome this sedate turn of events, yet their burblings were answered by a strange outbreak of light tapping sounds just before the end. As a whole sans Marteau et sans Maître was superbly enigmatic; in spite of its moment-by-moment unpredictability, everything sounded right – and extraordinary.
The highlight of these events was given by Ensemble Couleurs, where almost every piece on the programme was riveting in a unique way. Secret Garden by Evis Sammoutis (Cyprus) – one of only eight individual submissions included in the entire festival (among all its rules and quotas about everything else, the ISCM has nothing official regarding these) – was a short essay in unity, with exuberant ideas getting stuck in small grooves of activity. This had the curious effect of blurring the clarity, making one wonder whether action was more important than result. By contrast, Basque composer Mikel Iturregi‘s Isila bezain ilun was made up of a texture of small potentialities, all of which seemed to be neither significant nor insignificant. We were thus caught in between, a place of ostensible non-meaning, yet that didn’t prevent the material from creating a potent sense of intrigue.
Lithuanian Diana Čemerytė also reached to past music in her „Meine Seele wartet…“, after listening to Bach, yet despite deriving from extant ideas, their treatment was fascinating, being reduced, deconstructed, abstracted. Elements of shape and pulse were preserved, while pitch, articulation and register were made fluid, to the extent that the piece felt like being in a dream. Another dream-like work was Citywalk by Sanda Majurec (Croatia), due to its flow of ideas that were each concrete (in every sense) but highly different from what went before. Its high point came in a gorgeous episode focusing on vibraphone and piano, with faint notes coming from the rest of the ensemble. A subsequent, unexpected acceleration seemed to be whisking us away from dream logic back to real-world rationality, but Majurec fragmented it before it could become energised.
Paul Clift (Australia) achieved the most telling and dramatic sonic effect of all in his On the celestial hierarchy. From a negligible opening, barely hinting at anything, there was a sudden surge – yet the music became even more gaseous after this, mere floating molecules of material. Another outburst eventually made things seem more tangible, yet before long we were within yet another dream-space. Fragments cycled around, the ensemble as a whole not coherent, the individual players semi-coherent, music through a gauze fug. Finally the music stabilised around ideas circling round and round, everyone united, before abruptly petering out.
