New Dots is a new initiative devoted to supporting emerging composers and performers in contemporary music, and this was its second-ever concert, at The Forge in Camden. Four world premières and one UK première – all New Dots commissions – plus a bonus performance of a recent piece by Mark Simpson were performed by members of the Atéa Wind Quintet and pianist Richard Uttley, in various instrumental combinations. They formed a pleasingly varied programme, all taking inspiration from a non-musical source, and yet each using this inspiration in profoundly different ways.
Piers Tattersall’s At a Distance of Less than a Yard… was a strong opening which stood out for the sharpness with which it characterised its three instrumental parts. Based around the plot of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel Jealousy, this trio tells the story of a man (piano) whose wife (clarinet) is having an affair (with a French horn). Perhaps understandably, the piano spends most of the piece going slightly nuts, and prompts a shrill response from the clarinet. The horn begins as an apparently rather confused bystander, but gradually unites with his lover, perhaps in opposition to the barrage of unreasonable outbursts coming from the piano. A slower coda sees the piano, feeling sorry for itself, slip into a rather self-indulgent light jazz style and reluctantly take on the role of accompanist to the two soloists. It’s easy for compositions like this to slip into unintelligibility, but Tattersall’s was full of wit and enjoyable to try and interpret.
The following piece, Emma-Ruth Richards’ Caught on the Corner for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon, was less of a laugh. Though a standalone composition, it draws on the dramatic themes of an opera she is writing about sex trafficking. This gritty subject clearly provokes harsh music from Richards, who uses mutiphonics (multiple notes played at once on the same wind instrument) to create some extraordinarily piercing dissonances. This felt like a very effective illustration of the grim themes being tackled – especially in the third movements, with its sinister hints of something lurid – but I missed an actual dramatic element: as an abstract work with no narrative, its unrelenting grimness lacked context.
Yuko Ohara’s Double Helix for solo flute, on the other hand, is an intellectual rather than emotional response to its subject matter, using every technical trick in the book to represent the structure of a double-stranded molecule. Compelling in its virtuosity, Double Helix was superbly realised by Joshua Batty.
When the world is puddle-wonderful for clarinet, flute and piano by Michael Cutting had a rather vaguer relationship to its inspirational source, E.E. Cummings’ poem in Just (from which the title is taken). There’s an air of quiet joy to the poem, which vividly depicts a spring day, and something of this carries through into Cutting’s contemplative, smiling, whispered composition. This provocative piece stood out for its softness, answering few questions but asking quite a lot.