Up to 11: George Benjamin and Ensemble Modern at the Wigmore Hall
George Benjamin and Ensemble Modern
Wigmore Hall
Stalls I9, £5 (under-35s)
5 March 2019
Wigmore page
Programme
Cathy Milliken: Bright Ring
Christian Mason: Layers of Love
Luigi Dallapiccola: Piccola Musica Notturna
George Benjamin: Into the Little Hill
You won’t often catch me complaining about the Wigmore Hall’s acoustic, but, unfortunately, this time, it wasn’t the right place. The first two pieces in this evening’s programme showed the what the Wigmore can’t do, both Milliken’s Bright Ring and Christian Mason’s Layers of Love clearly written for larger acoustics. It’s negative in each direction: the loud writing for brass and percussion obliterates the delicate nuance and balance that make the Wigmore such a joy; and the Wigmore’s dry acoustic deadens the larger gestures meant to ring on.
It’s doubly unfortunate as these two pieces are the risky ones. The Milliken is, dare I say it, a not-very-interesting cycle through some very familiar ideas; a sprinkling of cool instrumental ideas only made me yearn a little harder for Rebecca Saunders. I’ve enjoyed Mason before and quite liked the macabre death march-waltz of Layers of Love – but again that acoustic was a real distraction, the placement of the cornet turning the piece into an unlovely cornet concerto that was surely not what Mason intended.
The endless repeats and brazen cornetiness of Layers of Love were in sharp contrast to Dallapiccola’s lovely Piccola Musica Notturna, a gentle unravelling of a soundworld much more at home in the Wigmore. I only felt the piece was a little too true to its name: the ending came far before I expected it and wrenched me cruelly from this landscape of mysterious beauty long before I was happy to leave. Better, I suppose, to be left wanting more.
Though I delighted in the Dallapiccola I do wonder in hindsight whether I, or indeed anyone, should have bothered with the first half of this concert; at least in this venue, the raison d’être was without doubt Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill. I’ve seen this live once before, in the Wigmore a few years ago, with Claire Booth and Hilary Summers. In my memory I could hear every word and I remember the feeling of being pinned to my seat, my stomach pinched, horripilated all over, barely daring to breath, frozen by the power of this utterly original, completely gripping, unbearably exquisite gothic chamber opera.
The words were not as audible this time round and I didn’t feel quite as strongly. In fact my heart sank as the piece started: the instrumentalists too loud, the singers too harsh, their consonants too indistinct! But I was wrong to leap to conclusions, and while soprano Anu Komsi and contralto Helena Rasker never had great text, possibly as neither of them is a native English speaker, they are certainly fabulous singers, Komsi in particular singing with incredible control and variety of colour. And then even if text and music together make this piece the best it can be, without we still have the luxury of hearing the superb Ensemble Modern play Benjamin’s writing. This is music that is a wonder to behold.
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