Sound congealed: Rebecca Saunders at the QEH
Rebecca Saunders
Vimbayi Kaziboni, Paul Cannon, Juliet Fraser and Ensemble Modern
Queen Elizabeth Hall
Stalls A33, £15
19 January 2019
Southbank page
Programme
Fury II
a visible trace
Skin
Rebecca Saunders has a gift – to state the obvious – for making sound congeal. From the numerous individuals we see on stage emerges sound of a single, seamless whole. The alchemy is true of all three pieces in this programme from Ensemble Modern, whose fervid, acute playing under conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni catalysed that aural magic, each time nevertheless with a completely distinct character.
Fury II for small ensemble and double bass made me think of fast-moving skies on a glowering day, the whole heavens whipped by an invisible force that makes your hair lash against your cheek. Just as there is no hole in the sky, no corners, no instantaneous change, so Fury II warps and winds, every moment a miraculous shape snatched from perpetual transformation. Paul Cannon was superb but then so were all the soloists; I wonder if the context of the original Fury would make this more obvious as a solo work.
Another visual metaphor, I’m afraid, for a visible trace. To start with it feels like a ball, a single, self-contained entity that you can hold in your hands, rotating to see how the light shifts across it, almost independently of time – all sounds, again, a different part of the whole. But as time goes on and as you continue to move your hands over this object you should know, it behaves unpredictably; here your hands find a sticky tarry substance that won’t come off; over here is a pincer that nips you painfully; and then over here are small tentacles with hands that grab you and pull you down into a darkness that you cannot fathom further but than to know that everything around you is still part of that self-same ball you held in your hands.
No such imagery for Skin, perhaps because the impressive presence of Juliet Fraser nudged me back into more conventional reflection. A friend remarked when I saw this piece performed by a lesser singer back in May last year that when Fraser sings it she sings as though one possessed; and that’s true, although one possessed also of rock-solid technique. Her almost extravagant level of control over her voice I wonder risks playing against the sense that the music wants to expose, to cut, to bare – but then there is no shred of complacency in what Fraser is doing, itself equal to what every instrumentalist does; only intense commitment and exacting accuracy, and Saunders’s music rewards such things. Skin grips, gothic and crystalline, a beast you feel the animal heat of through its filigree hide, an extraordinary end to an hour of extraordinary music.
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