Concorde/Jane O'Leary

Trio - Katia Tchemberdji

Archaikos Gianvincenzo Cresta contained - Katherine Norman

Hommage a R.Sch., Op 15d - Gyorgy Kurtag

Gramvousa - Roderik de Man

The 1990s were an age of exploration, part of a continuing search for a new aesthetic of music. Listening to the five works presented by Concorde, one had the feeling that one was being addressed in an unfamiliar language, in which could be heard, now and again, a word one knew - "heart" or "star".

Kurtag's Hommage (clarinet, viola, piano), though highly compressed, had the most comprehensible vocabulary: the fact that it was a homage to Robert Schumann many have some bearing on this. Cresta's Archaikos (clarinet, violin, viola, cello, piano) used melodic fragments of an ancient hymn which emerged from a shimmering background of string glissandi, giving some shape to the shapeless but seductive sounds.

Seductive was not a word one would choose to describe the digitally processed sound that was used in Norman's [B] contained (clarinet and digital sound), nor was Man's Gramvousa (flutes, bass clarinet, piano, digital sound) any more alluring. Despite the declared intentions of the composers the effect is similar to that of adding gratuitous noise; it is as if the sounds of the traffic had penetrated the auditorium and interfered with the reception of the message.

Tchemberdji's Trio (clarinet, cello, piano) was the most conventional in form but its sound-world veered freely from the raucous to the restrained, its melodic line was now continuous, now punctuated by silences. The ideal of a shared musical language has gone. Each composer must invent an individual language and hope that it may find a receptive ear in Babel.