Last Monday saw the second instalment of the Irish Composers’ Collective’s In Dialogue series take place in the Wood Quay Venue. In Dialogue is a series in which a work by an established composer is performed alongside  new works by six contemporary composers active in Ireland. This concert saw Steve Reich’s Nagoya Marimbas performed alongside works by Sinead Finegan, Johanne Heraty, Paul Scully, Raeghnya Zutshi, Kilian O’Kelly and Maria Minguella.

Trinity Belles founder Raeghnya Zutshi’s Monkey Business was a highlight. A lighthearted affair, this work reveled in the warm, glowing sonorities that interlocking chordal patterns on two marimbas can achieve. In this regard the influence of Reich’s propensity for hypnotic, perpetually moving textures was clear.

The End by Maria Minguella was, predictably, most notable for its ending. The piece finished with a large crescendo on the cymbals followed by both performers dropping the cymbals on the ground while shouting. However, during the following applause, the performers themselves began to clap until the audience stopped, and they performed a sort-of coda in the vein of Reich’s Clapping Music. For me this work was provocative, offering a challenge to the sit-watch-clap paradigm of the concert hall, and blurring the lines between the sacred, theatrical space of the performance and the more relaxed space found between items on the programme.

Paul Scully’s Kokko was another highlight. The use of timbre in the piece was very effective and crucial in shaping its form. Beginning only with unpitched instruments, the music gradually incorporated the marimbas, at one stage calling for large and enveloping six-note chords from each performer. The snappy bongo roll which opened and closed the piece was a fascinating choice,  appearing as a sort of wake-up call, perhaps setting the inner stages of the work in surreality.

Constellation Spin by Sinead Finegan was definitely the stand-out work. Beginning with an excruciatingly tense ‘slow and stately dance’ (to use the composer’s words) between the two marimbas, the piece moved on to explore a huge range of sonorities exploiting fully the bongos, cymbals, woodblocks and make-shift tubular bells which performers Alex Petcu and Brian Dungan offered to composers as an extension to the timbral palette. The interplay of the pitched and unpitched instruments was managed with great skill such that throughout the work, the music remained tense, always moving, always engaging the listener and drawing them further into the unfolding drama until it suddenly and unexpectedly finished leaving the room heavy with suspense and unresolved tension. This was a truly brilliant piece and I regret very much that I was only able to hear it once.

Special mention must be given to the performers Petcu and Dungan. This was a concert which was as enjoyable to watch for the virtuosity on display as it was to listen to the music and to have mastered all of this new repertory in a short period of time was a significant feat.

The third instalment of this series of concerts. ‘In Dialogue with Michael Kamen’s ‘Quintet’, will take place on Tuesday 21st November. Find more information here.