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Cheltenham Music Festival 2010 (3) – New Music: Joe Cutler, Rolf Wallin, Michael Langemann, Richard Blackford, Graham Fitkin, Elena Langer (RJ)


Since its inception in 1945 the Cheltenham Music Festival has endeavoured to promote contemporary music, particularly British music, and it has staged several hundred premieres over the years. Unfortunately the heyday of orchestral commissions has gone - this year's orchestral concerts were distinctly middle-of-the road - but there has been a good range of new chamber music, including world premieres of works by Joe Cutler, Graham Fitkin and Brett Dean.

Joe Cutler's Slippery Music, commissioned and played by the Schubert Ensemble, certainly lived up to its name. The slipperiness is provided by glissandi in the strings, and two themes - one obsessive and neurotic, the other twitchy and playful - interact energetically and with a touch of whimsy. It was in many ways a very attractive world premiere.

The enterprising Solstice Quartet performed no fewer than three brand new works, including Epode by the young German composer Michael Langemann who is currently studying in London. The ten minute work adapts the concept of metric alternation and incorporates a number of interesting musical ideas, suggesting Mr Langeman is a composer to watch. Curiosity Cabinet by the established Norwegian composer, Rolf Wallin, was receiving its UK premiere. This is a sequence of miniatures, often strange and idiosyncratic, which make use of several imaginative musical effects, so it was impossible to get bored.

The clarinettist David Campbell joined the Solstice Quartet to play the Clarinet Quintet by Richard Blackford composed last year. Richard is best known as a composer of film and theatre music in which people and landscapes are important features, and it was no surprise that the quintet should be based in the real world. The work is inspired by Caradog Pritchard's novel Full Moon which describes the coming of age of a boy in North Wales whose mother is committed to an asylum. Here the clarinet represents the boy and the strings represent the environment with which he interacts. Amid the obvious tension there are some wonderfully evocative passages, especially in the slow movement.  Richard Blackford told me he is currently working on a choral work to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 9/11. outrage, which I feel sure will arouse great interest - and even outrage - when it is premiered in the autumn of 2011.

The talented Dutch reed quintet Calefax came to town to premiere Graham Fitkin's Compel, commissioned by the Cheltenham Festival Society. Fitkin explained at their concert that he was very impressed by the quintet's musicianship and was determined to write a piece that would really challenge their abilities. I believe he succeeded in this respect. This is a colourful, high energy work which offered little pause for breath.

The word opera conjures up scenes of passion and violent death. There was little of that in The Lion's Face composed by Elena Langer to words by Glyn Maxwell, in which the main character is an elderly gentleman in a care home suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. The gulf between the patient and the rest of the characters is shown by giving him a speaking role while the other characters sing - undoubtedly increasing his bewilderment. The originators of the opera consulted extensively with experts from the Institute of Psychiatry and others, so there is no doubting the clinical accuracy of the the scenes that unfolded before our eyes. While this is a thought-provoking piece, it is also profoundly depressing, and I somehow doubt that it will catch on with opera lovers accustomed to Verdi, Wagner and Bizet.

Roger Jones

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