Music
Tectonics, City Halls, Glasgow
Keith Bruce
four stars
The new music of Eliane Radigue, whose Indian summer of composition applies the lessons from her electronic work of half a century of more ago to the skills of specific acoustic musicians, is utterly absorbing but poses questions that none but the quartet who visited the BBC SSO's weekend of new music are equipped to answer.
Only at the end of two hour-long recitals of a total of five pieces from her OCCAM OCEAN series did all four play together - harpist Rhodri Davies, bassoonist Dafne Vicente-Sandoval, cellist Charles Curtis and tuba player Robin Hayward having appeared in most duo combinations, some solos and one trio up to then. Ever piece demanded extraordinary concentration and technique but deployed few notes at epic length, and they were the bridge between the Grand Hall, where they were performed, preceding the orchestra's concerts of new compositions, and the Old Fruitmarket, where the music-making was less formal.
Those musicians straddled the gap too, Davies appearing with Fluxus veteran Ben Paterson in a celebration of events on the composer's birthdate, and Hayward teaming his amazing technique with the French horn of Norwegian composer Hild Sofie Tafjord in a late night duo. It was she who had given Sunday's programme a rollicking kick-off with a commission entitled Mural that filled the venue with brass players from the Gorbals Youth Band, Coalburn Silver Band and Kirkintilloch Brass Band as well as the SSO and her own electronics for an aural feast.
The orchestra's Sunday concert included the UK premiere of Enno Poppe's sumptuously-orchestrated Altbau and the brand new Topophony by Christopher Fox, which left soloist Rhodri Davies to add his own improvised electro-acoustic gloss to lyrical swathes of strings before Daniel Padden's Glass Hundreds utilised beer bottles and wine glasses alongside a chamber orchestra to close the weekend in a vaguely Penguin Cafe fashion.
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