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7.45 p.m. Concert This trumpet fiesta, the brain child of John Wallace, continued through a long day, with workshop projects for two "all-comers" brass ensembles, who performed in the QEH foyer late afternoon. On arriving, there was a great sound from some fifty or more brass players, apparently mainly amateurs with members of the London Sinfonietta. We were in time to hear them perform an expressive piece for large brass band, Reflecting Dreams by Jean Hasse. Not an immaculate concert performance, but good enough to give a good idea of her accessible but by no means simplistic style. (The link above is to an earlier CD review, worth following up.) Next the main stage was occupied bythe RAM
Brass Soloists and guests from Scotland and California. In their
excellently presented and well balanced programme of contemporary
bras music in styles 'which transcend taste and social class', Robin
Holloway's Melody with Echo for two trumpets was pleasing
and Exposed Throat by HK Gruber (conductor of the
evening concert) is an ambitious solo cycle of pieces which to an
untutored ear appeared to develop creatively upon the Berio Sequenzas
and should earn a firm place in the virtuoso repertoire (PLG please
note for next January?). It was played with impressive assurance
by Lisa Edelmann of 'Calarts'. Next, the
hall was cleared rapidly for an introduction to a project with
Abbos from Uzbek. They play trumpets, flutes and drums
(qarnay, surnay and doira) the former astonishing instruments
made of copper, as long as the alphorn, and of deafening loudness.
It was good to hear Abbos in traditional music, given the stage to themselves, before joining with the London Sinfonietta in the 'main' concert for Peter Weigold's cross-over project, a free for all, largely in free improvisatory style, more like a jazz jam session than a serious concert work. Good fun, no more; it was an experiment worth trying for those involved, but not a composition ready to be taken too seriously in a London Sinfonietta concert. The LS soloists obviously enjoyed squaring up to challenge their visitors with friendly combative duologues like those familiar between soloists and Indian drummers on tabla, but in the context of this concert it outstayed its welcome, even though compressed. Abbos sounded far better on their own and in their own repertoire. The leader Abbos Kosimov is a virtuoso drummer and I have been delighted to find him performing in sight and sound on the Web. A few minutes watching and listening to "Doyra rhythms" at the click of the mouse is worth a hundred words! In truth the concert was over-long, even though pruned by omission of a Birtwistle item; no longer are they rarities. HK Gruber showed his quality as a conductor immediately in a boyant, transparent account of Gabrieli's in echo duodecimi toni, before Varese's Octandre (1923, still attractively abrasive) made a welcome reappearance and proved a bench-mark for other composers and is still as durable as anything else heard that day. Yanov-Yanovsky's Notturno was a charming lullaby, with a soothing tape about the Sandman. I look forward to hearing again Stuart MacRae's elusive new trumpet concerto, Interact, but less so HK Gruber new work which seemed trapped in a monotonous four-square rhythmic strait-jacket at the end of the evening, by which time concentration was flagging.
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TRUMPETS!
London Sinfonietta with Abbos and
brass departments of music colleges
Wallace
suggested that it might have been massed qarnay players that brought
down the walls of Jericho! The surnay and doira, less strident,
merit concert opportunities to hear their delicate melodic inflections
again at greater length.