The second concert in the Mostly Modern/IMRO Event Week offered food for thought. Susan Doyle (flute) and Deirdre O'Leary (clarinet) played music by the iconic Luciano Berio and by Giacinto Scelsi (1905-88), who tends to be known more by reputation than by experience.
Deirdre O'Leary played the clarinet version of Berio's Sequenza IX (the other is for alto saxophone) with a keen awareness of its multifarious gestures. But even with strong performance, this is disappointing music - repetitious and long-winded.
By contrast, time has not blunted the cutting edge of Sequenza I, which was composed over 20 years earlier in 1958. Susan Doyle made the most of this music's calculated, innovative flamboyance without exaggerating the necessary technical panache.
However, it was Scelsi who came out best in this concert, and not just because of the intelligent, sympathetic duo playing in Ko-Lho (1966) and Piccola Suite (1953), works from distinct periods in the composer's development. These pieces are scarcely less-calculated in technique than Berio's; and for their dates they are scarcely less innovative. Yet their range of stylistic references, their discipline with material and their expressive subtlety, achieve a human dimension which Berio does not. Ko-Lho makes unison or dissonance between flute and clarinet so static, so telling, that a small individual gesture sounds like a lyrical outpouring.
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