Reviewed: Crash Ensemble/ Pierson
Crash Ensemble/ Pierson
Vicar Street, Dublin
Terry Riley- Ancient Giant Nude Hairy Warriors Racing Down the Slopes of Battle. Gerald Barry- First Sorrow. David Lang- forced march. Kevin Volans- Joining the Dots. Donnacha Dennehy- Grá agus Bás
RTÉ Lyric fm is hosting this year's Unesco International Rostrum of Composers, an annual forum for the exchange of new music between national broadcasters. In partnership with Lyric, Dublin's Crash Ensemble, under conductor Alan Pierson, gave a showcase concert of "Crash originals" - works written for or commissioned by the ensemble - with a busload of international specialists in the audience.
A major inspiration for Crash, including the name, was New York's Bang on a Can All-Stars, and the involvement now cuts both ways. Crash featured in the marathon at this year's 21st birthday Bang on a Can Festival. And this programme featured the first performance of Forced March, commissioned from one of Bang on a Can's founders, David Lang.
Lang's description of his piece is fascinating. Having written an irregular, free-flowing melody that "seemed to go on forever", he set out to find "how much regularity would have to be added before the piece changed its character entirely".
The answer here was, actually not a lot. The ratatat of side-drum and thwack of kick-drum can function musically like blows to the head, or the flash of a bright light, which momentarily take one's attention away from whatever else is going on.
Hearing Forced Marchfor the first time, its point seemed to be made early on, long before the work reached its end.
It was perhaps unfortunate for Forced Marchto come after one of the evening's quietest pieces, Gerald Barry's unamplified string quartet First Sorrow, a mostly quiet, hesitant exercise in viol-like poignancy, with an almost startling diversion into intense vibrato, and a daring ending which has the four players singing quietly to their own accompaniment the words (but not the familiar tune) of Twinkle , Twinkle, Little Star.
The evening's other quiet piece was Kevin Volans's Joining Up the Dots, a slow, drifting work for two pianos and strings, where much of the musical action came across as little sparks seen from afar.
Terry Riley's Ancient Giant Nude Hairy Warriors Racing Down the Slopesmoves from a slow, splayed-out, orientally bluesy start to what's effectively an old-style battle piece.
Crash's amplification, however, did the work no favours, making the strings sound like the thin and nasal instruments that even students try to avoid.
Grá agus Bás, by Crash's artistic director Donnacha Dennehy, features sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird.
Crash's performance has changed a lot in detail of presentation since the premiere in February last year.
The rock-band impact has been toned down, Ó Lionáird's contributions sound fuller, more characterful and more confident, and there's more inner life to a gritty piece that still strikes me as strangely static in overall effect.
