RHarsh for a virtual celebration last yearHuddersfield Contemporary Music Festival is back in person to present its trademark boundary-pushing show over one weekend. second part of James DillonThe U.S.’s protracted 70th birthday celebrations provided the focal point of Friday’s lunchtime concert. Dillon has long been a mainstay of Huddersfield shows, giving festival audiences the opportunity to hear the twists and turns of an elusive composing career made overseas.
Emblemata: Carnival, receiving its official world premiere, saw Dylan go far beyond the “new complexity” label often associated with his music. Featuring the musician, wrapped in darkness, surrounded by speakers and sitting behind the sound desk, an interleaved mesh of lightly pulsing sounds, bursting instrument lines and darting manipulative echoes followed.
Through 40 minutes of work, the members of the Red Note Ensemble began to wander like concertinos in one and two, supported by Dylan’s electronic underpinnings. Symbol: The Carnival isn’t Dillon’s most obviously esoteric offering; In a piece that had it all, the lightly fluttering ensemble writing also added a touch of humor at the end. The program also featured two contrasting acts: Eileen Sweeney’s The Land Under the Wave and Five Phase Sphere by Australian musician Luke Stiles, which began busy and spitting before being consolidated into Shostakovich-like stateliness.
That evening’s performance was less modest, mischievous grins twinkling across the faces of the Ensemble Musikfabrik as German composer Enno Poppe’s projection raised the ceiling. Pope began work on the projection in 2015, stopping eight minutes. He returned to it during the lockdown, which resulted in 50 minutes of tireless time. An epic essay for a large ensemble, the projection layers relentless waves of frantic intensity, a feeling that continues long after the piece’s towering climax. All are sacrificed at the altar of flow, into which, at points, the audience’s eardrums, as high brass and a quartet of percussionists chirp.
Light’s construction by Israeli-American composer Shaya Czernovin (Huddersfield’s composer-in-residence this year) is similar to the Projection in both length and sheer force, although Czernovin takes a more thematic approach to composition. A recurring elegy with throbbing bass drums and bartok pizzicatos anchors the piece, which expands into physical forms involving breathing, whispers, and tangible gestures that you can feel as you move in real time. Few surviving composers satisfy Goethe’s belief that “music is fluid architecture” more than Zernovin.
In its brazen intensity, the projection is convincing, as does building light in its clearly presented structure and simple touches (tap shoes are a wonderful addition to the percussion arsenal) but programming them together in the same concert. To do is a mistake. A thunderous applause followed each piece, but even the most ardent Huddersfield supporter left the concert due to the need to lie down in a darkened room.