The Southbank Centre is riddled with cubby-holes, and it was in a particularly tucked-away corner – the “Spirit Level” bar – that a small audience of dedicated sound-lovers heard this exciting concert of morsels and miniatures. Perched in this top-floor bar, our picturesque backdrop to the stage was a dusk view of Westminster. Delightful but devilishly distracting!
Beginning the evening was some music by Morton Feldman written to accompany a 1960s film about Jackson Pollock. This commission was originally turned down by John Cage, and his influence on Morton Feldman was obvious in the work’s pauses and mini-gestures, that seem to operate in a vacuum, devoid of direct relation to each other but contributing to the impression of the whole – just like the Jackson Pollock pictures the video showed. Intimate this most certainly was, but the drawn-out silences and very quiet music were punctuated by strains of Beatles covers emanating from a loud restaurant 6 floors down. Whilst John Cage’s theory of “Indeterminacy” would abash me for pitting “art against life”, Strawberry Fields Forever was too bizarre a juxtaposition to allow me to take the film and music seriously.
An intense performance from Oliver Coates followed. This solo cello piece, written specifically for the concert, was short but profound. When introducing the piece Coates said he felt that each note had importance, its own independent gravitas, and the gripping nature of the performance didn’t contradict. In particular, the final flourishes, pitching high, aggressive scratch tones against resonant, low open strings, simply sounded great.
Jonathan Green's piece for cello and electronics demonstrated an entirely different approach, and demanded a very different kind of virtuosity from the performer. The performer bowed only one note throughout, but the electronic element of the sound was controlled by finely-graded movements in bowing position. The hardware adaptation to the bow allowed it to act as a tape-head; playing back previously recorded cello music. This is an interesting and intuitive adaptation to the instrument, technically well realised – but I was desperate for the live cello sound to burst into song and really interact with its own accompaniment, and vice versa. In the end this piece was much more a study examining an idea than a functioning piece of music in itself.