Merlin Music Society Review September 2007

The first concert of the new Merlin Music Society season took place in the Blake Theatre recently.

The New London Chamber Ensemble is a relative newcomer, having been founded in 2001 ‘as a result of a mutual desire to explore different ways of communicating musical energy to an audience’.  It certainly lived up to its aim.  The performance began with a Byrd Pavan and Galliard during which the players danced their way onto the stage.  This was most striking, but it did make for some ensemble problems.  Next they performed Mozart’s Andante for Mechanical Organ in F and I, for one, found the contrast between the pert suavity of the Byrd and the sweetness of this piece a little too uncomfortable.  The Mozart was, however, very pretty, and at times there was playing of great tenderness from the clarinettist and the flautist, including some delightful work from the clarinet in the chalumeau register.  At times some truly lovely pianissimo accompaniments from the horn player and the bassoonist exceeded the beauty even of this.  Fauré’s Dolly Suite brought murmurs of appreciation from the audience, though I found the famous first movement (famed for its use on Listen With Mother) the least successful of the six.

Before even hearing (or indeed seeing) Alison Beckett’s Queue, I was intrigued, as it is a new work which incorporates speech and movement as well as music.  This was the only work of the first half to have been originally written for wind quintet, and it showed.  Earlier problems of balance and ensemble melted away, despite the fact that the players were side-on to the audience, queue-fashion, so that those in front could not see the other players.  The integration of speech and music was clearly complex but achieved with great slickness, though I felt throughout that the piece would have been just as effective, or maybe more so, had the speaking been taken away.  The musical input seemed to be very well judged, as well as very well played.  I found the joke with the Horn at the end, mimicking a fire-alarm, particularly amusing as a way of closing the piece.

The second half consisted of more challenging works; Carl Nielsen’s Wind Quintet and Luciano Berio’s Opus Number Zoo, and the performances of both works were more polished than those of the first half.  I thought it might have been possible for the players to elicit some more of the characterisation present in the Nielsen, which was written to depict several members of one of his orchestras.  I felt I was listening to some very well played music, but one had to try hard to envisage the persons it was intended to portray.  Opus Number Zoo is an interesting work, again incorporating speech and movement. In many ways it is a precursor to the Beckett, written in 1951 and revised in 1971.  It tells several animal-related stories, and the composer stipulates that the instrumentalists must recite these when not playing.  The New London Chamber Ensemble supplemented these with actions, making their task even more difficult. Judging by the hearty laughter, the audience found this performance, and indeed the whole evening, entertaining and engaging. 

Daniel Wilkes (Monmouth school, Form VI.2)