Principal Sound is three days of concerts devoted to the music of the last half century. It takes its title from the only organ work composed by Morton Feldman, who was the featured composer at the first event two years ago. There was Feldman in this latest weekend of concerts too, but this time the focus of attention was the late music of Luigi Nono, the fragile, fragmented pieces he composed in the years up to his death in 1990.
Performances of those works, often involving electronics and exploring extended instrumental techniques, are still rare in the UK, but four of them were included during the weekend. There was … Sofferte onde Serene..., for piano and prerecorded sounds, with its remembrances of Venice’s bells and the echoing emptiness of its lagoon, played with wonderful authority and assurance by Siwan Rhys, and A Pierre, Dell’azzurro Silenzio, Inquietum from members of the Explore Ensemble, a tribute to Boulez from 1985, in which electronics blur the edges of the sonorities of bass flute and contrabass clarinet. Most enigmatic of all was the last piece that Nono composed, “Hay Que Caminar” Soñando, for two violins (Clemens Merkel and Alissa Cheung from the Bozzini Quartet) dispersed around the auditorium and responding to each other in halting phrases or assertive outbursts.
Alongside this music, the late Feldman pieces seemed almost straightforward. Why Patterns?, played by Rhys, flautist Jenni Hogan and percussionist George Barton, is a typical tapestry of ravishing inconsequences, while Three Voices pits a solo soprano against two recorded versions of herself to create a beguiling filigree around the words of a Frank O’Hara poem. It’s an extraordinary tour de force for any singer, and Juliet Fraser’s performance seemed even more magical live than it did on her recording last year.
