United Kingdom Boulez: Anthems and Dialogues: Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble (Aisling Agnew [flute], Sarah Watts [clarinet], Darragh Morgan [violin], David McCann [cello], Daniel Browell [piano]), Xenia Pestova Bennett (magnetic resonator piano), Peter O’Doherty (electronics). Sonic Lab, Queens University, Belfast, 19.10.2025. (RB)
@Paul McCusker
Pedro Rebelo – Crana
Boulez – Dialogue de l’ombre double; Anthèmes II
Saariaho – NoaNoa
Xenia Pestova Bennett – GLOW
This concert was a collaborative project between the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, the Northern Lights Project and the Sonic Lab SARC at Queen’s University, Belfast. The concert was a commemoration of the centenary of Boulez’s birth. All the pieces on the programme used a combination of acoustic instruments and electronic effects.
The first work on the programme, Crana, by Pedro Rebelo was a sonic exploration of the River Crana in Donegal. The work uses immersive field recordings of various sections of the river as a base. The instrumentalists then interact with this material. This piece was interesting in the way in which it tried to negotiate the relationships between the performers and the sound recordings. However, I was not convinced that the instrumental interjections added much to the musical narrative which was dominated by the sound recordings from the river.
Boulez’s Dialogue de l’ombre double (Dialogue of the double shadow) for clarinet and electronics was dedicated to Luciano Berio for his 60th birthday. The inspiration for the piece came from a scene in Paul Claudel’s Le Soulier de Satin, an 11-hour theatre work from 1929. Boulez’s Dialogue comes from a moment in Claudel’s thirteenth scene when a man and a woman are projected together onto a wall. The piece uses this as its starting point: a solo clarinet plays with its sonic shadow. The latter is a pre-recorded part which is spatialized around the auditorium. Sarah Watts’s performance of this piece was quite simply staggering. She displayed an extraordinary technical facility and dexterity while negotiating her own pre-recordings amplified around the room. The dialogue between Watts and her sonic shadow was well choreographed and there were some vivid rhythmic and dramatic contrasts.
Boulez’s Anthèmes I is a short piece for solo violin which was commissioned in 1991 by the Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition. Boulez drew inspiration from childhood memories of Lent-time Catholic church services for the piece. Anthèmes II is an expansion and revision of this earlier piece. It incorporates the acoustic violin part and surrounds it with a rich and complex electronic soundscape generated in real-time by a computer system developed at IRCAM in Paris. Darragh Morgan did a brilliant job navigating his way through Boulez’s complex array of virtuoso effects. The interplay between Morgan and the electronic effects was once again brilliantly choreographed. Morgan played with complete conviction throughout, and one could not help but be drawn into the immersive soundscape.
Saariaho’s NoaNoa is a work for solo flute and electronics. The title refers both to a woodcut by Paul Gauguin and to a travel diary by Gauguin during his visit to Tahiti in 1891-93. Aisling Agnew gave an impressive performance and used a range of elaborate techniques to achieve the composer’s objective to ‘exaggerate, even abuse certain flute mannerisms’. Once again, the soloist and the electronics team combined well to create an intriguing soundscape.
Xenia Pestova Bennett’s GLOW is a short, five-movement work about ghosts scored for instrumentalists and audiovisuals. Three stories are told in three different languages: a strange electric light envelopes masts of a sailing ship; fairy flames beguile a traveller at night; and a luminous presence enters a room. The instrumentalists weave through and colour the narratives. Each language is seen as an instrument in its own right and is explored for its unique sonic qualities. This piece used audiovisual material with the words and striking abstract images projected on to a screen. Bennett created some highly unusual sonorities with her magnetic resonator piano (which was echoed by Daniel Browell’s ghost piano offstage). The combination of audiovisuals and acoustic instruments worked well, and I found myself drawn to this attractive new work.
This was an intriguing recital featuring extraordinary virtuoso playing from the members of the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble.
Robert Beattie
Featured Image: Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble’s Boulez: Anthems and Dialogues