Live Reviews: Rolf Hind (piano) & David Alberman (violin)

Printing House, Trinity College, Dublin4 December 2007Theloosely-themed programme of New Sound Worlds in December focussed on the developments made in twentieth and twenty-first century violin and piano music, highlighting the distance travelled between early...

Printing House, Trinity College, Dublin
4 December 2007

Theloosely-themed programme of New Sound Worlds in December focussed on the developments made in twentieth and twenty-first century violin and piano music, highlighting the distance travelled between early twentieth-century salon music, represented by Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in G major and the likes of Rolf Hind’s Die Unenthüllte from 2002.

Die Unenthüllte,a pseudo theatre piece, offered an appetising glimpse of the ensuing programme. From the outset there was a sense of confusion surrounding this work as violinist David Alberman, although somewhat audible, was nowhere to be seen while Hind himself exploited the percussive potential of the piano with a series of extended techniques. As the work progressed Alberman moved from ‘station’ to ‘station’ around thevenue. This approach, while nothing new, still disorientated the audience present, so conditioned are we to the nineteenth-century modelof music reception; one is not quite sure how to react when the modelis broken.

Raymond Deane’s Parthenia Violata whichpremiered at the 1999 Sligo New Music Festival relied less on theshimmering use of extended techniques and presented a stark contrast tothe previous piece. While written at a time when Deane can be seen ashaving a well-established style, and while the logic of the compositionwas quite apparent and often quite beautiful, the spirit of Messiaen seemed to hover too much above this composition, in particular Quatuor pour la fin du Temps.

Siobhán Cleary’s Fall and Passion,which I heard premiered earlier in the year at the Warehouse in London,benefited from a closer and more dedicated performance here. It kept inline with the direction Cleary’s more recent work has taken: whilequite beautiful to listen to, the work to me seemed trapped in between two irreconcilable worlds, and at times it seemed as if this work would have been better programmed alongside the likes of Arvo Pärt. Meanwhile, Iannis Xenakis’ Dikhthas was a fitting climax to this varied programme, a brutal tour de force executed with immense professionalism.

While offering an applaudable cross-section of music from the first quarter of the twentieth-century to the present day, the concert suffered slightly from its sheer eclecticism. It was nevertheless an interesting programme, and sadly the last in the current series.

Published on 1 January 2008

Seán Clancy is a composer living in Dublin.

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