The world will never, unfortunately, receive a full performance of Stockhausen’s Klang; Stockhausen had completed 21 of the 24 component works when he died in 2007; Havona one of the last of these, and did not receive a performance until the beginning of the year. Nicholas Isherwood is well-known for his championing of both early and contemporary vocal music,, and performed the role of Lucifer in several of the operas from the Licht cycle. Klang is the thematic heir of Licht, both in its concern for providing music for the hours (as opposed to Licht’s days) and in drawing inspiration from the Urantia Book. According to Urantian cosmology, Havona is the last galaxy before Paradise, consisting of a billion planets. Stockhausen’s text takes the form of a ritual chant depicting the journey to Paradise, in the process also referring to other elements of Urantian theology, such as humans “black, white, green, yellow, red, brown and blue”, which Isherwood described in his pre-concert talk as a joke, but which is, in fact, key to a Urantian conception of evolution.

Havona is constructed from two elements; one is a double tone-row, the other is the lower elements of the electronic work Cosmic Pulses, also an hour of Klang, which forms  a backing track. Havona is split into 24 one minute sections, each of which has a section of music attached to it. The music for each section may be sung freely, the performer judges the lengths of notes and rests, as well as timbre and dynamics, although this must necessarily fit into the framework of Cosmic Pulses. Isherwood appeared to be concentrating largely upon the strength of his performance, singing with unwavering conviction. Combined with the costume of a white robe and orange scarf, this was an imposing performance.

If Stockhausen is always fascinating, Christian Wolz was certainly an unknown quantity. Wolz also used electronics in his performance – a largely understated backing track and electronic echoes, shifting quickly between his two microphones to produce slightly different sounds. Wolz’s oeuvre is semi-improvisational, using unfamiliar timbres. In particular, he has an interest in Middle Eastern singing and other unusual vibrato techniques, which he employed throughout Atropa-Bella-Donna. He describes the work as ‘”an acoustic performance in 3 stages”, but these are really undetectable, for in fact  it has far more divisions than this, switching to a different technique every minute and a half or so, an irritating feature which prevents the work from evolving beyond a too-long (50 minutes!) showcase of Wolz’s abilities. After half an hour, I was frustrated and exhausted. The other twenty minutes were fairly torturous. (To be fair, I was fairly tired beforehand; it would probably have been easier in a better state of mind, but this problem certainly didn’t exist for the Stockhausen – twenty four minutes felt like ten)

Stroma’s second concert of the year could scarcely have felt different to the first. The uniquely lyrical modernism of Jenny McLeod, David Downes’ ferocious rhythmic onslaught and Michael Norris’ fierce technicality were replaced  by music of pure aggression, at least for the first half of the concert. American-based New Zealander Chris Gendall, who I have a weird feeling may be an Onslow graduate, won the 2008 SOUNZ Contemporary Award with Wax Lyrical. To be perfectly frank, and although the piece was delicious, delicious soup, it probably shouldn’t have won. Wax Lyrical is based off a single device – a forced gesture that expands into a held note. The interaction between melodic lines – which all seem to utilise this device aside from the harp and piano, which cannot – is quite spectacular, but there is simply too much of it; there is very little contrast of instrumentation, with either the whole ensemble playing or a solo string.

UnCage my HeArt was loud, chaotic, and absolutely hilarious. I really hope that nobody was listening to the radio broadcast of the concert, because it really would make no sense at all. Jeff Henderson’s score is a box, or rather many different boxes, with one unique box for each of the performers and conductor. From what it was possible to take in, each side of each box had particular characteristics and techniques associated with it, depending upon the various colours and images painted thereon. For much of the piece there was seemingly only a single dynamic – as loud as possible – although there were moments of relative calm at box-turning points.

Three theories about UnCage my HeArt:

1. Just a fun piece of music, with no real extramusical meaning. If this is the case, it succeeded admirably. I was laughing. Jo was laughing. Probably everybody else was laughing.
2. “I know what would be fun! I’ll troll a bunch of pretentious snobs by creating a preposterously complex improvised work which will have them nodding in approval as they ponder its implications whilst stroking their beards!” This would, I suppose, explain why it lasted so long, and why it was so utterly idiomatically passé. And why the title makes such pointed hints.
3. Henderson was actually 100% serious. There actually was some significance to these sounds! I want suggestions.

Quaderno di Strada demonstrated a much greater sense of instrumentation than Wax Lyrical. The work is a song cycle, with texts taken from a number of found sources, including a letter from Rainer Maria Rilke. The voice part is surprisingly light on extended technique, but does include a number of potentially difficult registral shifts. Sciarrino uses a cellular method of constructing the instrumentation, slowly developing and layering repeating passages. It is sparsely orchestrated, to make the most of the various timbres, particularly the flute. The dynamics are largely very quiet – a complete contrast to the violence of UnCage my HeArt – in fact, the loudest moment came when Bridget Douglas dropped one of the many flutes in her lap while changing. Nicholas Isherwood sang very finely, bringing out the sense of loss and regret that pervaded most of the texts.