Ensemble Offspring
WHO DREAMED IT?
Carriageworks, 23 Sept 2017
Three new Noisy Eggs have hatched. Thanks to the generosity of patrons (including the AMCOS Art Music Fund, Kim Williams and the Noisy Egg Creation Fund) three substantial new works have had their first outing in Ensemble Offspring’s latest concert. Each composer was asked to respond to Unsuk Chin‘s fantastical Akrostichon-Wortspiel with a fantasy of their own.
Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh is currently based in San Diego where she’s completing a PhD and before that she studied in Melbourne with Brenton Broadstock and Stuart Greenbaum. Her new work, Half-Open Beings, is a tantalising smudge of organised sound which, like Bachelard’s image of the half-open door, both invites and obscures. Instruments make tentative bonds between each other, which melt into fuzz as another pitch, another timbre is added, like the elusive dream which flashes across your consciousness then evaporates, leaving only a vague sense of a memory of a feeling.
Anahita Abbasi‘s Incipio, Bibo follows Unsuk Chin’s lead by taking inspiration from Alice in Wonderland for a playful exploration of the weird and wonderful land of dreams. Soprano Jessica Aszodi is the adventurer who, in the unalienable logic of the dream state, must close her eyes to see better. Meanwhile, a desk top bell invokes that very special time, the Time of Tea. This is dizzyingly sophisticated reverie, using multilayered performance gestures, from words to notes to melodies to noises, brilliantly performed. If only Abbasi, originally from Iran and now resident in San Diego, could have been in Sydney to hear it. Thanks, Donald.
Lisa Illean‘s Cantor is an impressive, impressing work. She uses a wide palette of strings, winds and percussion with deft coherence, weaving together complexities — microtones and microtimbres abound — to somehow, miraculously, create clarity. I have no idea what it is about. I just know it makes my ears and my brain and my heart sing. It’s a real achievement and it’s good to know that, besides being recorded for broadcast on ABC Classic FM, Cantor will go on to have performances in the Netherlands, Canada, the UK, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
Ensemble Offspring framed these three noisy eggs with two vintage works. Unsuk Chin’s Akrostichon-Wortspiel was written in 1991 for the Gaudeamus Foundation: practically early music, in Offspring’s repertoire list, but drinking well now. It says something about the dedication of these musicians that, after a good 60 minutes of freakishly tricky music, they could come back on and perform a work demanding this level of precision and technical extension. Jessica Aszodi, in particular, demonstrated of stamina and control most could only dream of. Respect.
Photo: Blackie Bouffant. Bluebell Woods, Knockvicar, Co. Roscommon, Ireland
Finally, as with all good dreams, back to the beginning. Irish composer Jennifer Walshe wrote Everything you own has been taken to a depot somewhere for Ensemble Offspring’s 2013 season. It’s a nutty melange of speech, sound and gesture where three game performers variously pour water, play nintendo, do physical jerks and make the occasional musical noise. The Offspring trio of Claire Edwardes, Jason Noble and Lamorna Nightingale — fab dress, btw — go far beyond the usual remit of musicians, singing, shouting and clowning with gleeful conviction.
Everything you own… is frequently irreverent and often hilarious. The composer confesses her interest in sounds that ‘are normally considered flawed or redundant.’
Like… new music, perhaps?
It’s a ballsy move to open a concert of such uncompromisingly demanding (albeit beautiful) music with a work which systematically undercuts artistic pretention. But when you play these works with such persuasive articulacy, you can get away with pretty much anything. Bravi.
This concert was recorded for ABC Classic FM. Not sure when it’ll be on. Also, Incipo, Bibo and Everything you own… are both quite visual works. I’m not sure if Incipo, Bibo was videoed, but you can see Ensemble Offspring in an earlier performance of Everything here.
All this as a prelude to thoughts about two recent gigs. The first, the Australia Ensemble’s The Sound of Pictures, an illustrated talk, or an annotated concert if you like. Or perhaps just two hours of interesting stuff involving live music, music and film, and the mellifluous musings of composer, writer and broadcaster Andrew Ford in an inside-out inspection of how composers and directors and music and film interact.
Which brings me to the highlights of the evening, two recent works by Australian composers combining film and live music. The first was Scherzo Perpetuo by Andrew Ford, written in 2014 for the Flinders Quartet as an accompaniment to 
Just across town actor 
Before we get to next year, however, last week’s A Brahms Affair. For this, their latest gig at City Recital Hall, Omega presented a swirl of Romanticism: Schumann, Borodin and Brahms. Rowden and Raspopova gave a mostly glossy performance of Schumann’s Fantasiestucke for Clarinet and Piano, but a few hiccups — intonation and notes — took the edge off the shine. Alexandra Osborne led Borodin’s String Quartet No. 1 in A Major with a similarly fastidious approach, making a gloriously clear sound in the opening movement. However, there was something about the ensemble’s care and attention which made the performance somewhat introverted. Which is fine in a rehearsal space, but less so on stage. It wasn’t so much a lack of sound as a lack of connection — between the stage and audience, and between the players themselves. The second movement was hushed, the harmonics of the final movement were wonderfully ethereal but, ultimately, it felt like four individuals, playing to themselves. At this point the City Recital Hall felt very big and lonely.
Chamber music at the Summer School can be hit and miss, but that’s part of the fun. You might be the best, you might be the worst, you might end up playing obscure piano trios by little-known-for-good-reason composers. Happily for me, this week’s group has been outstanding: we all share the keep-going-at-all-costs ethos, and we all play in tune. Dochnanyi, Shostakovich, Elgar – it’s a feast!
Greeted at Totnes Station by blue grey skies, green fields and a welcome drop of twenty degrees in temperature. And my father, standing on the platform, all small and wonky and smiling. It’s been a year since I saw him and, as always, I scan him to see if anything’s changed. He’s perhaps a tiny bit shorter, but otherwise looking remarkably robust for 85. He insists on taking a bag as he walks me to his car, which is wedged awkwardly between the wall and a panel van with a slip of paper under the wiper.
We drive to the Hall with the quiet dignity of the falsely accused, weaving our way round parked cars (“Trippers…” says Dad) and construction vehicles. They’re digging a hole in the water meadows by the Gatehouse. It’s full of milky grey water, the colour of the sky.
Another day, another 11th century Church, this time 
As ever, their endeavours were inspiring. I mean, what’s not to love about young players, full of potential, full of enthusiasm, playing at a consistently high level, with frequent flashes of brilliance thrown in for good measure. There was some spirited ensemble playing and solos ranging from brave but blustery to utterly amazing. There were also poignant moments: the audience were there with one player as she stumbled, stopped, thought about giving up, then took a deep breath and pressed on; we drank up the delight of a new work, composed that week, by one of the students; and we saw their glee at sitting right in the thick of an orchestra, alongside professional players.