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Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of Sergei) explores the interface between classical music and electronic remixes thereof. He runs a label, Nonclassical, and classical club nights that blend live instrumentals with laptop and turntable DJs. So far, so intriguing, and his seminal work, Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra, is a piece I'd be keen to hear performed around these parts.
With eight perky speakers and a sizeable mixing desk ranged around the stage, the programme he curated at the Queen's Hall opened with the eternal masterpiece of live/recorded music: Steve Reich's New York Counterpoint. The clarinettist was Pete Furniss. I've heard brighter and tighter performances, but he reminds us there's room to be lyrical in this music. He and laptopist Alex Harker performed their own New York Counterpoint Reimagined, weaving air sounds and long notes around the harmonic skeleton of Reich's original and ending up sounding a bit like Copland.
Edinburgh-born cellist Peter Gregson has built a career out of working with new media and cross-genre musicians like Prokofiev. Here he played music by Icelandic composer Daniel Bjarnason: multiple cello tracks provided propulsive rhythms and easy-on-the-ear harmonies, but a haunting elegy needed bigger-boned playing from Gregson. Prokofiev's suite Cello Multitracks also offered plenty of potential for Gregson to be rhapsodic against the machine, and hints of the composer's heritage crept in with a fleeting macabre waltz, heavy-set and angular. Generally, though, the material was unremarkable; a final remix overlaid beats and samples, all skilfully done, but too earnest and detached to really get under my skin.
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