Letter from London: Knowing the score

By JOE HARROP

If you were at a world musical premiere, would you buy the score beforehand? That was what I encountered at the Purcell Room, in London's South Bank Centre. Rock bands offer CDs and souvenir T-shirts at their concerts, so why not buy the score of a contemporary work?

If the scores sell, the works stand a good chance of being played or at least looked at again, but this situation lends itself to all sorts of tantalising comparisons, positive and negative. If you took a long walk through the bush, you'd probably take a map. Then again, would you bring a copy of the script to a new play?

At the Purcell Room, the ensemble Lontano and their conductor Odaline de la Martinez presented works by composers with an attachment (by birth or residence) to Australia or New Zealand. The concert was given the title Emigres - To the Antipodes and Back but it soon became obvious the Australasian preamble wasn't needed; the works validated their performance.

There are many motives for theming concerts of contemporary classical music: catchy publicity, attracting funding, audience accessibility. For example, the two other concerts in this series are billed The Melting Pot and China and Latin America.

Are these concert titles enticing in a vague contemporary cognoscenti kind of way, or just plain puzzling? To make your mind up, you'd have to go along - which one assumes is the goal of the exercise. However, the pieces stood without any of the cognitive musical crutches commonly proffered at performances of modern classical music.

Jeroen Speak, a Kiwi who has lived in Britain for seven years, had Arabesques for violin and piano performed. The piece was a set of variations, but the theme was never heard. Moreover, once the variations were written, Speak arranged them in reverse order of composition (all in the programme notes, which I read beforehand).

Put simply, the traditional variation working process of "simple to complicated" was turned on its head. The procedure can be quite moving - giving an eerie feeling of uneasy familiarity - like arriving at your desk without memory of leaving it.

This destabilising from within is a concept shared by the influential composer Michael Finnissy, with whom Speak is studying. The piece constructed many of the violin's sonorities and colours, placing them over a piano accompaniment remarkably orthodox in its attitude towards the violin.

But this well-played support only highlighted a lack of dynamic range in the violin, failing to make the most of sharp gestures, busy figuration and static moments. These required more energy and, conversely, more stillness.

James Gardner's Some other plots for Babel was given an impressive performance, but again I felt the violins let the side down. The work demands much of its soloist (New Zealand violinist Mark Menzies commissioned the piece). I couldn't help but think of Menzies commandeering the solo role - rising from within the ensemble to take the front of stage.

This, for me, was one of the work's real moments. The music literally throbbed with nervous energy. As the piece proceeded, layers of ensemble material were gradually peeled back. The music finally settled with the French horn and trombone whispering into their bell and mouthpiece - an excellent effect concluding the exciting sounds and blends from the percussion, winds, and lower strings. Gardner left us with a fainting, teasing melody paired between violins that made you hold your breath.

The highlight for many was Dorothy Ker's work entitled ... and ... Written for a large ensemble of winds, strings, brass, percussion, and harp, Ker employed the players like a single instrument - scoring a pair of bass clarinets with wolfish cello harmonics, punctuated by fat trombone pops. Brass breath with snare drum brush conjured up waves at low tide.

Though it sounds strange to describe, it was delicious listening. Set wide across the stage, expansive gestures moved through the ensemble with an almost spatial effect, manipulating the dry acoustics of the Purcell Room. The piece seemed the best-prepared of the works, but some of the cross ensemble playing was scrappy. The two violins were placed together, but the French horn was on the other side of the stage, behind the harp. Ensemble music is like any team activity; it helps to see the other players.

Did we buy the scores beforehand, and sit through the performance meticulously following every note? Of course not. Reading the score and hearing the piece performed live are two different experiences, in my view best kept separate.

Regardless of what To the Antipodes and Back might have referred to, the music by these New Zealand composers was distinctive enough to warrant a performance anywhere in the world. Lontano and de la Martinez did much to support this, and a three-quarters-full Purcell Room would most likely agree.