CLASSICAL MUSIC: Ensemble’s mission to bring new music

Feb 25 2008 by Glyn Mon Hughes, Liverpool Daily Post

IT MUST be a somewhat difficult task to come up with a new and innovative format for every performance.

While that must, to some extent, be a necessity for most contemporary music groups, not all do this successfully. But Ensemble 10/10 is having considerable success in its mission to bring new music to Liverpool audiences and the latest concert was no exception.

This time, under music director Clark Rundell, they performed a concert “curated” by Kenneth Hesketh, composer-in-the-house at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Importing a expression from the world of fine art and pictures hanging in galleries might seem a rather odd turn of events, but it did work – especially as Hesketh was present to explain his choices.

Beasts and Wild Bells was a compilation of works by composers who, according to Hesketh, “all seemed to reflect or project interests and concerns in my own work, be they musical or extra-musical, dramatic, rhythmic . . . or linguistic”.

As a result, this was a dynamic concert featuring a range of colours and textures, as well as solo performances.

Hilary Browning’s stunning performance of Edwin Roxburgh’s Soliloquy 4 for solo cello pushed the instrument to extremes.

At times, the minute dynamics meant the music was barely audible.

The opening piece, an icy and calculated performance of John Casken’s Music for the Crabbing Sun, written for a Renaissance-Baroque combination of instruments, produced a fascinating interaction between the flute and oboe in the second section while Thea Musgrave’s Ring Out Wild Bells provided each line with its own virtuoso challenge.

Add to all that the curious intensity of Colin Matthews’ Elegiac Chaconne, the rather beautifully Romantic moments in Anthony Gilbert’s Quartet of Beasts and an expert interpretation of Oliver Knussen’s challenging Processionals and Hesketh’s vision worked strangely well.