Invisible Cities, CBSO Centre, Birmingham
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Your support makes all the difference.Four world premieres all consisting of one-page scores. Players adding improvised responses in performance.
Four world premieres all consisting of one-page scores. Players adding improvised responses in performance. A whole evening inspired by Italo Calvino's magical evocations of Venice in his book Invisible Cities. The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group certainly initiated its new series in characteristically enterprising fashion.
John Croft's Per l'Aer Cieco ("Through the Unseeing Air") traced the outline of an aria from Act III of Monteverdi's Orfeo, alternately compressed and expanded, that concentrated on the upper resonance of the notes rather than their original pitch. The players wove the five delicate melodic fragments into an enchanting tapestry whose sustained pianissimo timbres and vibratos created an ethereal imprint of Monteverdi like an indentation on a pillow.
In Times Harp Tooth, John Woolrich's 14 terse and spiky Monteverdi-inspired slivers formed the basis of a brilliantly inventive romp. Febrile oscillations powered the work, whose Italian dynamism even extended to a hair-raising crescendo. The conductor, Peter Wiegold, rightly chose to pepper the concert with snatches of material from this piece - its sense of liberation provided a joyous contrast to more contemplative responses elsewhere.
How easily identifiable the composers were, even from the fragments they supplied. Simon Holt's A City of Invisible Shadows took the form of a long, characteristically melancholic threnody for oboe. James Macmillan's voice was equally identifiable in the Celtic Memory Is Redundant, with its folk-like fiddle tune, rhythmic ostinati and rapid clusters.
The generous programme also included Mary Bellamy's Earth and Sky Reflect Each Other, seeping eerie string glissandi and harmonics, John Woolrich's deft reworking for oboe and saxophone of a Monteverdi madrigal for two voices, "Favola in Musica II", and Peter Wiegold's deeply affecting Farewells Take Place in Silence, half jam-session, half memorial, with barely remembered suggestions of composers connected to Venice such as Monteverdi and Wagner.
The pieces were interspersed by selected readings from Calvino's book by the actor Timothy West. He relished the beauty of the writing and also teased out a large helping of wit, throwing away and milking his lines with equal panache; the jewel in the crown of the event.
The BCMG continues to astonish and delight with its virtuosity. Its natural talent for improvisation, shaped by Wiegold's inspirational direction, made the evening last rather longer than intended. But no one noticed: the entrancing mood seemed to suspend time itself. Curiously, the one item in the programme that was completely notated sounded improvised, while the two pieces with the least "given" material seemed structured enough to be composed. It's an irony Calvino himself might have enjoyed.
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