Chronos Aion

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The UK premiere (five years after it was written) of Ferneyhough's Chronos Aion is part of tomorrow night's H&N from the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. I shall be particularly interested in this as the acoustic in Huddersfield Town Hall was rather "muddy" and a lot of detail (clear on the YouTube recording, "taken", I imagine from the Aeon CD) was lost. Having watched the concert of Gruppen made available by Chris, it occured to me how much BF's recent works (such as Plotzlichkeit and CA) owe to the Stockhausen (but without the continuity that Gruppen's overlapping layers provide).

The other works on the programme seemed less impressive on a first hearing: Fabien Levy's Qwerwuschig struck me as a collection of "Advanced Technique" cliches, and Francesco Fillidei's Finito ogni gesto, whilst being amiable enough, finished quite a long after it ended. I hope the broadcast demonstrates that the demands of the Festival had taken such a toll on me that I missed hearing a couple of splendid pieces.

Oh, and Stephen Fry has a few quite interesting comments on Conlon Nancarrow.

Best Wishes.

[ahinton]

Oh, and Stephen Fry has a few quite interesting comments on Conlon Nancarrow.Best Wishes.

Where? I'd like to read those!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Where? I'd like to read those!

As yet, unprinted. But the mini-Feast of Stephen can be heard during tonight's Hear and Now.

[Serial_Apologist]

Listening right now to the Ferneyhough, I am struck by how increasingly rich with passing idiomatic references his music becomes. Didn't get anything from the other new works played in this programme, but I think I could go on listening to Ferneyhough forever!

[geofflikesmusic]

For some reason I never pictured Fry to be a Conlon Nancarrow fan.

I'd like to hear his views when published.

[french frank]

For some reason I never pictured Fry to be a Conlon Nancarrow fan.

I'd like to hear his views when published.

They're now available as a podcast here.

[geofflikesmusic]

They're now available as a podcast here.

Thanks French Frank!

[Bryn]

geof, if you want to hear it in significantly higher audio quality (the podcast is a 128kbps mp3), try 40 minutes into Saturday's Hear & Now at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...011_Episode_2/

The iPlayer's HDS version is at 320kbps aac. It will be there until around midnight next Saturday.

[Oddball]

For some reason I never pictured Fry to be a Conlon Nancarrow fan.

I'd like to hear his views when published.

Same here - I had an image of Stephen as a hulky rugger playing macho Wagnerian - probably with Wagnerian political views.

However I found Joanna Mcgregor's comments far more to the musical point, and summarised excellently the essence of the music.

All in all a very good H&N, as was the previous week. But I think as regards Ferneyhough, enough is as good as a feast.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Listening right now to the Ferneyhough, I am struck by how increasingly rich with passing idiomatic references his music becomes. Didn't get anything from the other new works played in this programme, but I think I could go on listening to Ferneyhough forever!

I would have welcomed more of Bernhard Lang's Tables are Turned: I greatly admire Differenz/Wiederholung 2 and the Theatre of Differences, but some of his more recent stuff has seemed tame in comparison. The fragments from Tables sounded more like it! (I even heard someone at the Festival saying that "This is a totally new way of using the materials of Music. All that post-Minimalist and post-Complexity stuff's gone stale." Re-hearing the Levy - and remembering pieces by Einarsson and Franzson played by ELISION at another event - I felt what he meant.)
The Filidei had its many moments, but I still didn't get as much out of it as Worby and SMP did.

But the Ferneyhough was a terrific performance, and we heard a better, clearer sound on the i-Player than I did in the hall. It's Music that draws me in deeper with every listening and I think it's astonishing how he moves from piece to piece, evolving his writing so that each has its own identity whilst still being clearly the work of the same imagination.

Best Wishes.