Chamber Music New Zealand's latest offering — a concert-goer's guide to the perplexities of today's music — was a brave venture.
The framing was perfect: four songs from Schoenberg's 1912 Pierrot Lunaire, ravishingly delivered by mezzo Bianca Andrew. Behind her, Hamish McKeich coaxed the glint of tungsten filigree from the contemporary ensemble Stroma.
In between, distinguished American critic and MacArthur Fellow, Alex Ross narrated our whirlwind tour, punctuated by extracts that carried us through to the twitchy postminimalism of 2000 vintage David Lang.
The clarity and incisiveness of Ross' 2007 best-seller The Rest is Noise would have been welcome in a mostly unengaging read through a sometimes dense text. Too many references were obscure for an uninitiated audience, compacted by audibility problems thanks to an inadequate sound system.
Among the mostly spot-on performances, only a short Ligeti duet in his early folkish style underwhelmed. However, the wild ride of Messiaen's Dance of Fury from his Quartet for the End of Time sorely needed the dramatic context of its two gentler flanking movements.
