Birmingham Contemporary Music Group at Snape Maltings Concert Hall

Jun 23 2009 By Christopher Morley

I’ve never seen “a venom of critics” (John Woolrich’s pithy phrase to me – he was one of a coven of composers present) unanimously joining in a standing ovation for a composer, so what happened at the Aldeburgh Festival on Saturday evening was a first for me.

The occasion was the world premiere of Elliot Carter’s On Conversing with Paradise, performed by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Oliver Knussen (the work’s dedicatee), in the smiling presence of the centenarian composer himself. When Carter made his way down through the auditorium to the front of the stage (those steps up to it are cruel for anybody) the place, audience and musicians alike, erupted – and so did I and my venomous colleagues.

A 20-minute cantata drawing its texts from Ezra Pound’s Cantos, Carter’s latest piece (there are more in the pipeline) moves seamlessly from episode to episode, and in true theatrical tradition, leaves the audience wanting more.

Pound himself is represented by a virtuoso horn commentary (Mark Phillips in habitually tremendous form), five percussionists provide wonderfully detailed punctuations, and Carter’s alert ear for texture, balance and structure energises his writing for strings, woodwind (including a deliciously telling contrabass-clarinet) and piano.

Leigh Melrose was the baritone soloist, his tones commanding, his diction, words so important to the work’s unfolding, somewhat clouded in this resonant acoustic.

Helen Grime can either be flattered or dejected that her own world premiere, A Cold Spring, partly a BCMG “Sound Investment” commission, appeared alongside the eminent Elliott Carter.

No problem: these three short movements reveal an almost Debussyan sensitivity to timbre and resonance, their virtuoso demands, including shifting time-signatures, brilliantly encompassed by Knussen’s BCMG.

* This concert will be broadcast on Radio 3’s Hear and Now on July 11.

Rating: 5/5