CONCERTS

Your monthly critical round-up of performances, recordings and publications

London

Jonny Greenwood with members of the 12 Ensemble

12 ENSEMBLE, ANNA MEREDITH (ELECTRONICS) JONNY GREENWOOD (TANPURA)

BARBICAN 19 JUNE 2021

The main work here was Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony which, the programme failed to mention, is an arrangement of his Eighth String Quartet (no mention of the arranger either – presumably Rudolf Barshai). Before it the 12 Ensemble, conductorless and safely spaced, was joined by a group of wind, percussion and electronics for two new works: Anna Meredith’s Moon and Jonny Greenwood’s Water.

Meredith’s work was quite an event, with five movements based on Native American names for the full moon, accompanied by her sister Eleanor’s live illustrations and lit by globes that kept changing colour. There were a lot of ostinatos, with some stately melodic playing and later fast rasping tremolos, descending scales and syncopations.Greenwood joined them for Water, sitting at the front playing a tanpura. Here were more ostinatos, as well as ethereal harmonies, with slow-moving lines, interrupted by an outbreak of spirited pizzicato. It featured an extended violin solo played with crystalline purity of tone by Eloisa-Fleur Thom.

She played beautifully in the Chamber Symphony as well, emerging from the tutti of the first movement in a solo of rhythmic freedom and keening expression. The second movement had symphonic power and ferocity. There were a few ragged moments in the third, understandable under the circumstances; the massive chords had granitic weight, and the final Largo was bleak indeed.

TIM HOMFRAY

LAWRENCE POWER (VIOLA/VIOLIN) HÉLOÏSE WERNER (SOPRANO) SIMON CRAWFORD-PHILLIPS (PIANO)

WIGMORE HALL 22 JUNE 2021

This concert, entitled ‘A Night in Paris’, was a curious affair, with much to-ing and fro-ing. Here was Power in all his guises, as violist, violinist and even reciter, and very fine he was in the first two;I doubt his recitation of Lorca’s poem Debussy could be heard at the back.

MARK ALLEN/BARBICAN

The first work, Gabriel Willaume’s La noce bretonne, a set of little dances with an open-string drone, was played entirely offstage, and sounded initially as if he were tuning up, except it kept getting louder before going away again. Power’s first proper appearance was for Garth Knox’s 2020 work Quartet for One, in which he moved about between four stands. He was joined by Héloïse Werner, who sang Machaut’s Douce Dame Jolie and then the premiere of her own work Mixed Phrases, with many a stuttered consonant as Power moved between viola and violin, with some fine arpeggiated harmonics.