Miserere Miriam Rainsford Beauty and the Beast - Jerome de Bromhead Nachtklange Axel BorupJorgensen 5vu Padraig Sheridan Petering Out - Siobhan Cleary Marchen Hans-Martin Linde No Mercy - Staffan Mossenmark
The recorder's contemporary repertoire seems pre-occupied with modern developments in technique. These include multiphonics, glissandi, abrupt changes of pitch, spiky rhythms, singing into the instrument etc.
All these were prominent in the concert given last Thursday lunch-time by Peter Wells - a true and persuasive virtuoso - in the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, as part of the festival. The concert included the announcement and performance of the winning pieces in the Mostly Modern/IMRO International Composers' Competition and the AIC/Mostly Modern Young Irish Composers' Competition. Both competitions specified a work for recorder, accompanied by tape or unaccompanied.
The concert's only piece which concentrated on the recorder's lyrical possibilities was the winner of the international competition, Beauty and the Beast (1999) by Ireland's Jerome de Bromhead. Recorder and tape played the obvious roles. The winner in the Irish competition was Padraig Sheridan's 5vu, (2000), a work overwhelmed by its own absorption in instrumental technique.
Marchen (1977) by the player-composer Hans-Martin Linde is a period piece of the Germanic avant-garde.
Peter Wells sang, declaimed and did anything possible with the recorder, all with zestful style. He was equally sympathetic in the intimate expression of Miriam Rainsford's Miserere.
The most interesting music came from those composers for whom technique serves rather than dominates musical concepts. Siobhan Cleary's Petering Out (2000) knows what it wants to do and follows that through.
But the winners in this concert were Scandinavian composers. Axel BorupJorgensen's Nachtklange is short, quiet and very concentrated.
Staffan Mossenmark's No Mercy (1991) pitches amplified recorder and pre-recorded tape into a discourse.