Recollections- day 10

Saturday January 26th: Last full concert day today. Very long afternoon, three "piano+" concerts featuring trio catch- an impressive and very young piano cello clarinet ensemble, and one of several all or mostly female ensembles represented in the festival.

piano+ 1, 3pm: Only managed to catch the second half of the concert, featuring two works by Xenakis and one by Jörg Widmann. I have little to no memory of Widmann's piece, other than that I enjoyed it quite a bit. The two Xenakis pieces were thrilling to hear live. Paille in the wind from 1992 is a striking miniature, belongs to a certain category of Xenakis works that maintain the visceral intensity that he is so well known for despite being materially seemingly quite distant from his most well known works. Simple in both form and material, large block chords in the piano and a strained, plaintive line in the cello, simple enough that it doesn't quite come across as solo and accompaniment. Something quite brutal about its bareness. Charisma for clarinet and cello I remember as moving through a series of durations of various grains and consistencies.

Paille in the wind; trio catch

Charisma; trio catch

piano+ 2, 5pm: A challenging marathon of listening, Arnold Schönberg's complete solo piano repertoire, each set of pieces interspersed with a selection from Lei Liang's My Windows. At points totally compelling, particularly the beginning of Fünf Klavierstücke op. 23, but inevitably draining and largely characterised by struggling to maintain the attention these pieces require, regardless of how compelling the performance was. This was followed by a very quiet clarinet cello piano piece by Beat Furrer and a strange set of two miniatures by Franco Donatoni.

View outside the venue, Radialsystem V

piano+ 3, 7pm: By this point totally drained and very hungry. What I'm sure was quite a beautiful song by Aribert Reimann slipped by, at which point my hunger developed into a tangible hatred for the long, subtle and incredibly quiet trio ... als 1... by Mark Andre, before turning into a neutral apathy- waiting for food- during the final Aperghis piece. Alas.

preparing the piano for Mark Andre's ...als 1....

Definitely a more stomachable presentation of so much music than had it been lumped into a single 6 hour concert. Very much enjoyed hearing trio catch play, and the Schönberg marathon was an interesting listening experience- but ultimately proved to be too much at the end of 10 days of almost constant live music listening.