Crash Ensemble

The Crash Ensemble's programme on Thursday concentrated on composers from Japan (represented by five pieces), Australia (two), China (two) and South America (one).

The Japanese repertoire for the flute, which is so often inspired by the shakuhacki, the Japanese bamboo flute, was represented in pieces by two composers born in 1930, Toru Takemitsu (Voice) and Kazuo Fukushima (Ekagra).

A transformation of the wispy edge of the shakuhachi's tone could be heard in the lightly grating bowing and microtonal waverings of the strings in In Memory Of Isang Yun, the piano trio by Toshio Hosokawa (born 1955).

Memorial 19 Fucks by the now celebrated Tan Dun (born 1957), who won an Oscar for his music to Ang Lee's film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is "a memorial to injustice to all people who have been fucked over" and offers coloratura settings of its keyword in 19 languages.

The shock value of the title is more interesting than the music, which is heavily dependent on cheap theatrical gestures.

The two pieces by the Australian Damien Ricketson (born 1973), Imagining Le Verrier for solo cello and Bucolica for tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, take a narrower focus to work out processes whose initial promise seemed greater than their ultimate yield.

Go by the London-based, Buenos Aires-born Alejandro Vinao (born 1951) creates an electronic choir from sampled voices and percussion, progressively stretching into realms of the vocally impossible, and teasing the ear with illusions of reality without fully sundering the connection with familiar expressive devices.