Goldscheider, Brother Tree Sound, Kings Place - music of hope from a young composer

Last night’s concert at Kings Place was a programme of contemporary pieces – including several premieres – by horn superstar Ben Goldscheider and string quartet Brother Tree Sound, “curated”, as the current lingo has it, by young composer Ben Nobuto, whose high-spirited and invigorating music finished things on a high.

There were some pieces for horn plus quartet – first violinist Anna de Bruin’s intricately-textured Aurea, John Croft’s beguiling Voi sete la mia stella and Nobuto’s finale Hope Spiral – alongside others for strings along, some garlanded with electronics and acousmatic elements. It was presented in the round, the players facing each other, with lighting as an important part of the theatre, and well-received by a full house.

The first half was mainly slow and meditative pieces, of which the highlight was Goldscheider playing Alex Groves’ Single Form (Dawn), for horn with live electronics. This consisted of individual horn notes from the harmonic series (with its characteristic “out of tune” upper partials) which were captured live and then played back as an emerging chord, dense and quietly pulsing. The composer describes it as “a slow-motion sonic sunrise” and the gradually ascending, crescendoing texture unfurled at a beautifully controlled pace, finishing in a spectacular radiant consonance.

The longest piece in the first half was Edmund Finnis’s String Quartet no.1, Aloysius. This was five mostly slow movements, finely wrought and enchanting in its sounds and gestures. The quartet played it sensitively, alert to the interlocking patterns and presenting a nicely blended sound. But at 20 minutes plus it needed an edit or a trim, the lack of variety a real problem.The second half was more successful (although I did wonder about whether one of the faster second-half pieces should have been swapped with one of the first half slowies). John Croft’s take on a Ferrabosco madrigal had a lovely considered maturity, Goldscheider’s playing faultless, Croft’s delicious sour harmonies subtle and persuasive, which contrasted with the youthful exuberance of the pieces by Nobuto and Japanese composer Yuri Umemoto.

His look at me, senpai took the Steve Reich trick of turning vocal phrases into musical lines, and turning them into hypnotic loops. It was a single-idea piece, but well done. As for Nobuto’s two pieces, they could not have been more different than his diffident and slightly mannered spoken introductions: they were both whirlwinds of energy and excitement, whipping up an exuberant, intoxicating frenzy. 

Playtime, for quartet alone was a riff-based piece, jumping from idea to idea without any spillover between sections, in a way that reminded me of Kevin Volans. The players were completely committed, whether tapping their instruments, playing harmonics or getting growls and whimpers out of their instruments.

Even better was Hope Spiral, written for this concert, and featuring all the players and electronics. This was a real tour-de-force, from the opening “parade”, the players shouting as the music strode out, a cheering crowd on the speakers, Nobuto’s idea of “hearing a major chord as if for the first time” really working. This was young person’s music and all the better for it – if you don’t write a piece like this before you are thirty, you are probably never going to. It was witty – the computer beeps that separated each new idea was a hilarious touch – and euphoric, with the accelerando in the final section, all the way up to 990 bpm and back down, a fitting climax for the piece. I heard some Nyman, some Ligeti, some Anna Meredith – but above all I heard a crazy exultance, an exhilarating weirdness and an individual musical voice I want to hear more of.

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