Soldier's Tale Suite - Stravinsky
Hymnen: Region 4 - Stockhausen
The Idea and its Shadow; Yunnus; Kalu Rehearsals; Under the Green Time; Tradarr; The Iron Language Alphabet; Earth to Earth - Roger Doyle
The Netherlands Wind Ensemble invited Roger Doyle to create an evening-long programme of his music and, after touring with it in Holland, brought it to the NCH John Field Room last Tuesday night.
The ensemble opened the proceedings with a brilliant performance of Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale Suite and this was followed by Stockhausen's Hymnen: Region 4 for tape (its Irish premiere). Doyle says that "the multiplicity of styles prevalent in Stravinsky and the multiplicity of worlds imagined by Stockhausen have shaped his own languages", so they were a fitting introduction to his assemblage of pieces.
Even if it never quite attained the varied sprightliness of the Soldier's Tale or the cataclysmic nature of Hymnen, it embraced bewildering multiplicities as members of the ensemble played solos "learnt by ear and unnotatable".
The distinctive sound of uilleann pipes, played by Brian O hUiginn, contributed an indelibly Celtic feel to sections of the music; the interplay of taped sounds and live sounds, sometimes jazzy, sometimes oriental, explored other cultures: the voice of another composer (Kevin O'Connell) describing the process of composition was slowly drowned by a rising tide of music.
The various strategies adopted by Doyle, some of which came from his appropriately named magnum opus, Babel, culminated in a silence from which daringly emerged the oice of Sarah Grealish singing in a true traditional style the heart-breaking words of Amh ran Mhainse.
Unfortunately, Doyle could not resist the temptation of adding an accompaniment to the final verses, as if the song were just some more grist to his mill, a convenient way of leading up to a quite conventional-sounding finale.
The Netherlands Wind Ensemble responded to this as to the composer's other demands with bravura, informing the whole evening with a sense of excitement.