Recollections- day 7

Wednesday January 23rd: Full afternoon of masterclasses with Mark Barden. First listening and discussion of his recent chamber orchestra piece for the Ensemble Intercontemporain, a tearing of vision, quite a lively dynamic piece with an incredibly exciting final section- a massive, slowing, microtonal warble of sorts for (almost?) the full orchestra.

Many of Mark's comments on pieces in the masterclasses (Sivan and Tony's pieces, as mentioned previously, as well as Kevin's But, Living for solo violin and my bass flute horn percussion trio) oriented themselves around issues of process with regards to form, timing, and expectations established and thwarted. Of particular interest were discussions of the placement of long silences in Tony and Kevin's pieces, proportioning and material distinction in Sivan's quintet, and potential lines of investigation nestled inside my notational decisions.

packing up post masterclasses; left to right:
Tony, Josh, Sivan (bending), Elise (sitting), Mark

Wednesday evenings concert featured a strange programme of works performed by ensemble recherché, including pieces by Hans Werne Henze, Philip Glass, Klaus Huber, George Antheil, Younghi Pagh-Paan, and Brian Ferneyhough. Particularly salient recollections include:

• the crushing pedantry of the Glass piece- a very early work for piano trio that, to my ear, totally failed to achieve the focus and saturation that his most successful work achieves
• the sort of bread and butter/meat and potatoes quality of the Klaus Huber cello solo, a highly sectional work with a great diversity of material, gave the impression (no idea how accurately) of being a real staple archetype of 1970s new music composition
• the incredible formal clarity achieved by the recent Ferneyhough chamber work (small mixed ensemble) inspite of its fairly complex trajectories of energy and material deployment. Astonishment at the ease with which recherche were capable of performing the piece.