175 East at Hopetoun Alpha

By WILLIAM DART

It's been far too long since the last 175 East concert, and Sunday night's programme must go down as one of their strongest offerings to date.

Keeping us au fait with what is happening on the other side of the world, four British works were featured.

The full ensemble let their considerable power loose on Andrew Toovey's Adam. Toovey, a composer with the reputation for being relentlessly earsplitting, almost lived up to it.

Roger Redgate's +R came with the sort of programme note that makes the head spin, but clarinettist Gretchen Dunsmore rendered it with such lucidity, it became something akin to sonic sculpture, hewn from what seemed to be three-dimensional sound.

Flautist Ingrid Culliford charted the cool beauties of James Erber's Flourish while Laurence Crane's Sparling NZ, specially arranged for the Auckland group, revealed a composer who's not afraid of major and minor harmonies, and all the possible shades in between. Think Satie and Part and you're on the right track, and conductor Hamish McKeich ensured there was an immaculate balance from his musicians.

175 East director James Gardner contributed three pieces. As If and Ingrid were tributes to ensemble members. The first pitched horn player Helen Burr against cello and bass in streaky, attenuated drifts, and caught the ear most winningly when horn and bass shared their own twilight world. Ingrid, a flute solo for Ingrid Culliford, featured alto flute in mellifluous sweeping arcs.

What If explored the melting sonorities possible in a brass trio (Burr against trombonists Doug Cross and Tim Sutton).

The coup de concert was Chris Watson's Nacelle, a clarinet concerto for the brilliant Dunsmore. There were complex compositional procedures afoot, but also a lucidity that did not depend on them. The chordal substructure could be heard moving implacably under the generally florid wind writing along with Watson's trademark saturated harmonies, sometimes coloured by an admonitory blast from trombone.

Later in the piece, one was strangely aware of parallel sound worlds merging and emerging while humour was mixed with a lithe and loping grace in the two cadenzas. Eventually, the unflappable Dunsmore led this ace ensemble to a thrilling close.