Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s first concert of the new year featured four French composers and one Swede, the latter a former pupil of one of the Frenchmen.
Ivo Nilsson’s Rapidità, inspired by the writings of Italo Calvino, was the latest of BCMG’s Sound Investment commissioned premieres. Exploring air – as breathed by the performers and as the spatial element within which music is created – the work was intriguing for being gradually conjured out of air, then growing into a denser coalescence of sound before fading back into nothing. As an exercise in acutely focused listening, this first performance was a striking opener. Similarly, it was the spatial effects in Marc-André Dalbavie’s Palimpseste, with the interplay between piano quartet on ground level and flute and clarinet opposing each other in the gallery, that were captivating. Frédéric Durieux’s Etude en Alternance No 3 - Filer, another first, flew by in a fast moto perpetuo, a good ploy leaving one wanting more.
Cosmic space was a factor in two pieces. Nilsson’s Doppler Wobbler, a double concerto for viola, bassoon and ensemble. Astro-nerds will recognise the pun on the method for finding planets in other solar systems, and Christopher Yates’s viola and Gretha Tuls’s bassoon duo formed the graceful planet orbiting the instrumental ensemble. Allain Gaussin’s sense of wonder at the whole universe often prompts his music, and Mosaïque Céleste was both exploration and contemplation, its highly poised rhythmic figurations contrasting sharply with the long-held notes.
Yet the deepest impression was made by Pascal Dusapin’s Jetzt Genau!, dedicated to Wolfgang Rihm. Soloist Nicolas Hodges’s control of the evocative piano chords was compelling, as was the taut rhythmic discipline of BCMG’s playing and Franck Ollu’ s conducting.
