I’ll give you beacons: Beacons by London Sinfonietta at QEH
Beacons
London Sinfonietta
Queen Elizabeth Hall
Stalls D4, £15
16 May 2018
Southbank page
Programme
Emma Wilde, El blanco día
Rebecca Saunders, Skin
Charlotte Bray, Reflections in Time
Unsuk Chin, cosmigimmicks
How kind of London Sinfonietta to allow a programme of all-female composers! How thoughtful! I don’t doubt that Beacons was put together with the best intentions but I also feel entitled to expect rather more than bringing together four composers who have in common only that they are female and alive, gathered under a term that only makes me think of siren maidens luring listening men to unhappy ends. Beacons feels like a harassed response to #MeToo, to appease the clamouring feminists enough so that the Sinfonietta can go back to performing real music by real men. Hopefully this won’t prove to be the case.
The stand-out piece was Saunders’s Skin, a work of mystifying technique and unknown colours that wound against the delicate edges of my senses, setting my teeth buzzing and my skin humming, compressing my lungs. I was impressed throughout but also bemused, unable to grasp the wider structure that gave cause to the perpetual series of electric moments. My companions who had heard the piece in Hull tell me this was due to the Sinfonietta’s lackadaisical performance; I don’t know enough to tell if this is true, but the chilling imagination of the piece on the small scale makes me think Saunders must also have worked to a larger picture that should be discerned, whether through a different performance or just greater familiarity.
The most successful piece was Chin’s closing work, complemented by bravura trumpet playing. With my ears awash with Ligeti from the previous week’s indulgence to some extent the piece feels disappointing for what it gestures at but doesn’t do – but I know comparing with Ligeti is hardly fair. Judged on its own merits cosmigimmicks is charming entertainment, taughtly constructed throwaway froth that was an energetic and self-knowing tonic after the tedious meanderings of the Bray.
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