MUSIC / Oxford Elastic Band - Blackheath Recital Room

Meredith Oakes
Friday 11 December 1992 00:02 GMT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

The Oxford Elastic Band brought itself to London on Tuesday night, in the ritual way that university groups sometimes do. With upwards of 14 mixed instruments, it almost outnumbered the Blackheath audience.

Founder-conductor Richard James Baker must be charismatic to have collected so many skilled young instrumentalists for a night of Birtwistle, Steve Martland and Louis Andriessen, plus a world premiere by the composing team of Simon Opit and Ben Morison.

Opit and Morison's piece III Large ensemble shared out the instruments - here a violin, there a trombone - into two heterogeneous ensembles that started by playing a solitary semitone and then slowly sounded other intervals or clusters one at a time like stringing beads. This quiet piece was the only one in which the playing seemed dispirited, but it surely can't be much fun playing just one note, then having to count bar after bar until the next.

Counting was central to Louis Andriessen's Workers Union, too - a piece of rhythmic synchronised slogan-chanting for 'any loud-sounding group of instruments', in this case mainly trumpets, trombones and saxophones.

Steve Martland's Shoulder to Shoulder, a raucous off-the-beat barrel-organ parody for similar forces, sounded wildly imaginative by comparison. Birtwistle's exuberantly flatulent Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum still more so, musical joke or not.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in