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Canberra Today 12°/16° | Saturday, March 30, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

CIMF Review / Shining work of women composers

THE National Portrait Gallery was transformed into a concert venue for “Half the Sky: The Sound of the Sexual Revolution”, music written exclusively by women, and most of them still alive.

Concert 12. “Half the Sky”. Photo by Peter Hislop.
Musical director Roland Peelman pointed out the gross gender inequalities in contemporary music compared to the other fine arts, before introducing Ensemble Offspring – a group who had dedicated an entire year to playing only music by women composers.

The audience moved between different performance locations in the Gallery, where Ensemble Offspring, augmented by different combinations of performers (some unlisted in the program), presented works by 12 extraordinary women. Works by Felicity Wilcox, Cathy Milliken, Amanda Cole and Natacha Diels were staged throughout the portrait collection.

Jason Noble’s masterful performance of Wilcox’s “Yurabirong” for bass clarinet was noteworthy for its fine control of extended techniques.

Somewhat less successful was the decision to stage four performances simultaneously in close quarters. Works by Joyce Tang, Katy Abbott, Sofia Gubaidulina and Margaret Sutherland were performed with only the barrier of a glass door between them.

The sound bleed was so great that the audience for the Sofia Gubaidulina piece were unable to hear the work. It was also a shame not to have the option of hearing every piece on the program.

The Gallery’s foyer provided a perfect acoustic to works by Cassir To and Kaija Saariaho, at the start of the concert, and Chen Yi and Mary Finsterer at the close.

Although all the works in this program were extraordinary, the one that stood out for me was “Cendres”, for flute, cello and piano, by the remarkable Kaija Saariaho. This post-spectral work is a lexicon of instrumental colour. Opening with sul ponticello trills in cello, and a sustained alto flute senza vibrato, “Cendre” broadens into a tapestry of interwoven gestures. Ostinati arise and then fall back into the texture, as though they’d never existed. The flute presents accented ornaments before subsiding into flutter-tongued breves or vanishing beneath microtonal glides in the cello part. This is one of the great works of the late 20th century. Saariaho builds sound from the physical quality of the instruments themselves and so avoids the heavy tritone saturation so common to the ’90s when this was written. “Cendres” is deeply poetic in the walnut tones of the alto flute, the precise but subtle piano and an expansive cello. Saariaho draws a broader palette from these three instruments than most composers get from a full orchestra. This is an incredibly difficult work and it was performed beautifully.

Special mention should also be made of “Avialae for sextet” by Cassie To, the youngest composer in the program. From its first stratospheric notes in sul ponticello strings, it was obvious that “Avialae” was a mature work. Moving from pointillism through a kaleidoscope of pitch fields and cells, “Avialae” was expressive and complex at the same time. Extended performance techniques were employed tastefully and to dramatic effect.

I hope this concert is one of many to come that feature living women composers.

 

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