The latest instalment in the Irish Composers’ Collective’s In Dialogue series took place this Tuesday in the Wood Quay Venue. This series consists of concerts featuring new works by emerging Irish composers performed alongside one work by an established composer. The central work in this concert was the Brass Quintet by American composer Michael Kamen and new works were provided by Richard Gill, Killian O’Kelly, Aran O’Grady, Natasa Paulberg and Maria Minguella.
Killian O’Kelly’s Southbound focused on repeated patterns in the low instruments with trumpet solos overlaid. The juxtaposition of the fat rumble of the tuba and trombone with the bright peal of the trumpet made for very attractive music. The downbeat was persistently shifted throughout the piece giving it a jolt which beautifully complemented the cool and calm harmony.
Aran O’Grady’s Monolith was a programmatic work inspired by the monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the piece the first trumpet, horn and tuba represented the monolith while the second trumpet and trombone represented the human race. Harmonically and texturally this was a fascinating piece. The music was preoccupied with regular rhythms which gave it a propulsive and somewhat hypnotic effect. Harmonically, it was reminiscent of the non-functional triadic sonorities of Gyorgy Ligeti’s Horn Trio. The combined effect of harmony and rhythm was at once attractive and unsettling- in this regard the composer’s engagement and evocation of the programme was very successful. The piece ended with, in the composer’s words, “powerful chords moving in rhythmic unison representing how the human race has succumbed to the omnipotence of the monolith”. Powerful is indeed the word, as the coda was a striking passage which made brilliant use of the deep rumbly timbre that five brass instruments in unison can offer.
For me the highlight of the programme was Maria Minguella’s Fall & Doit. In everything from form to harmony to the use of instruments this piece was masterfully composed. Beginning with all of the instruments muted and playing very soft sustained notes which tailed off into glissandi, one was acutely aware of the peripheral sound of the players literally blowing into their instruments. This quasi-elision of the musical and incidental sounds gave the opening a great sense of tension. The music seemed to be constructed in waves of sound which rose slowly and faded away with plaintive dipping glissandi which added a certain serenity to the palpable tension. Over the course of the piece the mutes were gradually removed and the dynamic level suitably raised. The waves of sound went out of sync with the instruments now in competition rather than in discussion. The glissandi became sharper and the serenity of the opening was inexorably replaced with a sense of the bizarre and the chaotic. The piece ended loudly and unexpectedly which left a tangible sense of the calamitous hanging in the space in the moment of silence before the applause.
The next concert in the In Dialogue series takes place on the 13 December at 7pm in the Wood Quay Venue and will feature Samuel Barber’s Summer Music for wind quintet as its central work.
