Four premieres filled a bristling London Sinfonietta concert conducted by Martyn Brabbins at St John’s Smith Square. The reconfiguration of stage and seating, so we sat in an arc round the players, benefited both acoustics and intimacy. Spanish-born but having studied in London, at one time with Thomas Adès, Francisco Coll (b1985) has already had several high-profile commissions including Hidd’n Blue for the London Symphony Orchestra. His Liquid Symmetries (2013), first performed in Madrid, draws on notions of uncertainty and flux – reflecting, the composer says, the instability of the times in which we live. Opening with a flurry of high woodwind and a dominant thwack of high temple block and xylophone, the work has a busy continuum and impressive fluency.
The rapidly emerging British composer Tom Coult (b1988), a student of George Benjamin, left a strong impression with Spirit of the Staircase (2016) played for the first time. Alternating, though not in any formulaic sense, rapid “stairways” of fast notes, zipping up and down, with passages of near inaction, this had impressive individuality. Coult had drawn on the French notion of l’esprit de l’escalier, that brilliant, unsaid afterthought. The 15 expert musicians, including celesta and piano sometimes played simultaneously, harp, vibraphone and low woodwind, made light, often witty work of it.
The London Sinfonietta was equally adroit in Falling Angel by Tansy Davies (b1973), premiered in Birmingham in 2007 but new to London. Dense and intense, with often abrasive fanfares and marches as well as a central, lyrical lament, it is based on the painting by Anselm Kiefer. Then came the world premiere of Five Lessons in a Frame by Harrison Birtwistle (b1934). The composer had written duets for some of the Sinfonietta players, long-term collaborators, for his own 80th birthday concert. Now those duets have been set in a musical “frame” that unites them. Each pair of players (except the less mobile cello and double bass) move forward for their solos: clarinet and trumpet, horn and trombone, violin and viola and so on. The spatial impact is startling, as if these minimal resources – 13 players including only one percussion instrument, the side drum – are expanding to the limits of character and sound. In an evening of new music, this was true freshness.
