Stravinsky & Milhaud Concert & Music Theatre

Trinity College's Contemporary Music Ensemble/Diego Masson
Chapel of the Old Royal Naval College 22 May
Richard Rodney Bennett's Rondel, Simon Bainbridge's Towards the Bridge, Shostakovich's Jazz Suite no.1, Roger Smalley's Cello Concerto (Hyun Jung Kim)
Stravinsky Ebony Concerto and Milhaud Le Creation du Monde

Milhaud Le Pauvre Matelot & Stravinsky The Soldier's Tale The New Professionals Battersea Arts Centre 21 May

The well planned evening concert by Trinity's Contemporary Music Ensemble, mostly of music with a strong jazz influence, was a typically entertaining and rewarding Trinity College event. The concert was additionally the culmination of Roger Smalley's residency in Greenwich.

The haunting harmonies of Bainbridge's tribute to Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn were lovingly presented; rarities by Shostakovich showed him in an unusually light-hearted guise, with his sardonic wit in evidence.

Roger Smalley's Cello Concerto (1985-96) - begun after his piano concerto* but not completed until ten years later - proved something of an odd man out in this context. It was conceived to 'gradually rise from lowest to highest register', but suffered from its inconsiderate instrumentation for ensemble of 17, with dense wind often smothering the cello, until a final adagio section derived from Schumann's Humoresque allowed Hyun Jung Kim to play cantabile. With the assistance of balance engineers, it would probably work well on broadcast or CD.

Perfect calculation of precise effects made Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto (clarinet soloist Charlotte Self) the most effective and successful item. It was afterwards good to finish with Milhaud's The Creation du Monde, a famous jazz-influenced work from the '20s, not heard nowadays as often as it deserves, which ends quietly, without that detracting from the enthusiastic reception by a large audience.

It has been quite a Milhaud month, with his Octet, assembled from its constituent string quartets, a particularly memorable event at the Purcell Room on South Bank. A similar fate to that of Smalley's cello concerto had befallen Milhaud's opera Le Pauvre Matelot at BAC Opera the previous night. A neat morality tale about a returning sailor who unwisely tests his wife's fidelity incognito, he ended up being murdered by her to rescue the family from poverty. Not one of his most inspired creations, the singers were overwhelmed by the large chamber orchestra in the BAC Studio 1.

It could only work with an orchestra pit; once again Stravinsky showed how to do it with his economically and transparently scored The Soldier's Tale, another morality about greed and the pursuit of money turning sour, looking well and sounding clear there. I expect The Poor Sailor had gone well in run-through with piano, and in prospect it promised to be a good double bill. It proved not so; match between musical work and venue can be so crucial.