• Jack Body: Turtle Time
• Anton Killin: A Priori
• Simon Eastwood: Jericho: Walls Will Fall
• Karlo Margetic: Hommage à W.L..
• Jan W. Morthenson: Unisono
• Charles Ives: The unanswered question
  Interval
• John Adams: "John Philip Sousa"
• Francis Poulenc: Sonata for clarinet and bassoon
• Henryk Gorecki: Piano Sonata No. 1
• Richard Robertshawe and Andrzej Nowicki: Concertino 5b
• Carol Shortis: Tesknota

SMP Ensemble’s first concert of the year, part of the St. Andrew’s Season running concurrently with the New Zealand Festival of the Arts was promoted in the media only by an article in the New Zealand Herald (although there was a little thumbnail in the Dominion Post). As a result, the audience was undesirably small, particularly considering the number of performers, and the volume and quality of their music. The concert drew heavily on last year’s Podróze series, but mixed in several other works to form a programme that looked (particularly in the second half) towards the more joyful side of contemporary music.

The opening rendition of Jack Body’s Turtle Time saw Karlo Margetic performing his best imitation of an over-caffeinated puppy in the spoken-voice role, bursting through the swirling textures to deliver Russell Haley’s appealingly bizarre text, setting the scene for the other witty music further down the programme. Anton Killin’s A Priori is a diverting exploration of language, opening with a collage of vowel sounds from different languages and speakers, vaguely reminiscent of John Young’s Sju Rather than dissolving into (so-called) abstraction, however, it segues into spoken sentences of German (and possibly other languages – I’d need to listen again). Of course, language is just a different means of organising – and hence abstracting – sound.

Two of the local compositions from Podróze followed in Simon Eastwood and Karlo Margetic’s works. After hearing each of these compositions twice previously the awkward section endings in Jericho feel somewhat less disturbing, but the eighty seconds or so of each section really is only enough to establish its bare features. Sitting on the opposite side of the venue from the previous performances of Hommage à W.L. offered a slightly different perspective, particularly of the first section, with the piano sounding much more clearly above, rather than through the texture.

Unisono, for bassoon, piano and electronics is a curious piece; the performance  at the Adam Concert Room last year was far more successful. The piece opens with the instruments playing sustained unisons, and gathers complexity as the instruments depart from each other and electronics coarsen the bassoon. Unfortunately, something seemed a bit off about the electronics – possibly unsatisfactory speaker position (I’m really not an expert) – which caused them to distract from, rather than add to the performance. Ives’s The unanswered question is possibly as far removed as possible from the stereotype of impossible complexity that his music attracts. This is a proto-minimalist work, founded upon a continuous pattern of soft strings, against which a solo trumpet and woodwind section (which were both positioned at the rear of the church) occasionally interject with their own motifs. On the surface there isn’t an awful lot going on here. Ives’ personification of the instrumental groups offers an explanation better than any that could be provided by a student one hundred years after the work’s composition on the basis of a single hearing.

“John Philip Sousa” is so utterly tongue-in-cheek that one can’t help grinning broadly from beginning to end. Adams’ aleatoric score specifies the directions of changes in pitch, but not the actual values of the pitches, creating harmonic chaos within a rigid rhythmic framework. Although it could be construed as either a homage to or mockery of Sousa, in the end it’s simply a joy to hear. Little changed when the action switched to Poulenc’s Sonata for clarinet and bassoon, which – especially in the third movement – might have been mistaken for fairground music played by a pair of tipsy monkeys, in this case Andrzej Nowicki and Kylie Nesbit.

Gorecki’s Piano Sonata No. 1 has seen a change of personnel since last year, with Sam Jury taking over from Laurel Hungerford. This resulted in a substantially different performance, with Jury treading more lightly than Hungerford in the opening Allegro molto, con fuoco, but balancing the angst-equation with a ferocious Allegro vivace. Now, going simply on the basis of those movement titles, this might seem like the wrong way round, but then I Am Not Henryk Gorecki. In any case, the obviously technically tough third movement received a pleasingly polished treatment. Concertino 5b was an entry in the NZSM Composers’ Competition (besides having an SMP performance). The work’s organic structure make it difficult (in the absence of a lights show) to determine exactly when preparation finishes and music begins. However, the Concertino doesn’t really need lighting to be spectacular, particularly with the ear-shattering tones of the central section. Perhaps neither this nor the Gorecki fit into the narrative of ‘happy’ music, but their turbocharged natures are nevertheless thrilling.

Carol Shortis’ composition is another that leaves one smiling contentedly. Shortis’ use of Polish folksong is stirring; the choir’s canonical half-whispering (or however one might term it) still sounds fresh. Perhaps it doesn’t seem quite so fitting as at the close of two of the Podróze concerts, but it really is a very impressive work. It’s also about the only thing on the Podróze CD that my father can bear to hear.

Things I want to see:

While Trial of the Cannibal Dog was really quite unexpectedly good, I’d love there to be a contemporary opera with some kind of established reputation, or at least by an established international composer (cf. 2006 with Tan Dun’s Tea: A Mirror of Soul). The hottest such opera right at the moment, of course, is John Adams’ Doctor Atomic, but it would be strange to see this programmed after the NZSO performed the Doctor Atomic Symphony last year. My personal preference would be one of Olga Neuwirth’s operas Bählamms Fest or Lost Highway, but I suspect that she probably wouldn’t be well-known enough to the New Zealand public to attract much of an audience.

Olga Neuwirth on the programme might also satisfy one of my other ambitions for the festival – a really fine chamber ensemble. Klangforum Wien works regularly with Neuwirth, as well as with a large group of other contemporary composers. Unfortunately, they’re busy in February and March next year performing new operas. Next time please? An alternative would be Bang on a Can (or some variant thereof), which would be a better option for more accessible contemporary music.

It would be nice to have one other NZSO concert, but that might be dependent on whether an audience could be found. The best thing to be said for the attendance at the Adams concert last year was that it was very easy to ‘upgrade’ seats. It would be hard to beat the music on offer at that concert – when I was having my harp lessons at the NZSO offices I actually did have a fit of glee when I saw the score for Shaker Loops lying around. Alan Hovhaness will have been dead ten years in 2010, and while he may have been one of those ridiculous-number-of-symphonies composers, at least these symphonies are well-constructed and accessible, if not particularly stimulating.

Some early music would also be a welcome addition, but unlikely due to the choirs being tied up. I’d like to hear some Josquin des Prez.