George Benjamin, artist in residence at the Aldeburgh festival, conducted the London Sinfonietta in this programme of works offering a kaleidoscope of scintillating instrumental colour.
Harrison Birtwistle’s Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum was inspired by Paul Klee’s painting The Twittering Machine, in which four birds are connected on a wire with a crank handle. Birtwistle’s twittering song had its own mesmeric effect, his subtly engineered mechanisms binding the whole. Oliver Knussen’s four Songs without Voices, which followed, had a brilliant lucidity, with the final elegiac cor anglais solo given a heartfelt depth by Gareth Hulse. Benjamin’s own At First Light was also inspired by a painting, JMW Turner’s Norham Castle, Sunrise. The explosion of light at its heart has its counterpart in the often dazzling soundworld that Benjamin realises, in which blistering force is balanced by the most delicate poise.
This melding of extremes was characteristic of In Contradiction by Benjamin’s former pupil, the Jordanian-born, Germany-based Saed Haddad, his piece receiving its UK premiere here. With two solo cellos, Tim Gill and Joely Koos, taking a concertante role and embodying the contradictions implicit in the title, the dramatic tension of this piece – moments of tightly focused philosophical questioning contrasting with violently explosive outbursts – held the listener in thrall. Yet the even more intense experience came with Ligeti’s Piano Concerto, with the festival’s artistic director Pierre-Laurent Aimard as the formidable soloist. Every facet of this score emerged with the utmost clarity and immediacy: its tantalising polyrhythms, its luminosity, its haunting quality, and finally, its hell-for-leather finale.
It was an evening that eclipsed the previous one, and the awkward combination of Tal Rosner’s video and animation with Britten’s Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia. Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra played a stormer, but Rosner’s American perspective added nothing substantial.
