Live Reviews: Composers' Choice – Whispering Gallery
John McLachlan
NCH, 14th April 2003
Elaine Clarke (vn), Malachy Robinson (db), Roy Holmes (pf), Ruth Hickey (b.cl), Kate Ellis (vc), and the Elysium Trio
Jürgen Simpson – Piano Piece I
Simon O’Connor – Dedicated to Death
Donnacha Costello – r.i.3.1
Paul Smyth – For Elaine Rediscovered
Roy Carroll – Structural Damage
Judith Ring – Fusion
Brian Bolger – Arriviste
On this occasion the Composers’ Choice Series broke from its concept (of one central composer selecting a programme to reflect their interests) to produce instead the choices of a composer collective: Whispering Gallery.
In a pre-concert talk we learned that Whispering Gallery is not exactly made up of the composers represented in this concert: some members were not represented here, and three or four of the seven in this selection are not in Whispering Gallery. Therefore Whispering Gallery has ‘curated’ as an individual would, choosing others. So although this concert was made up of seven world premieres from a group of Irish composers of similar ages, the concert was surprising for its extreme diversity of aesthetics and styles.
The selection ranged over purely improvised music, electronic/techno, and straight(er) ‘concert music’. (Incidentally...
