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The Smith Quarter, Jacqueline du Pre Music Muilding
This was the second in a two-part event entitled Circuits organised by Oxford Contemporary Music highlighting new music from Portugal. The first evening involved performances, by the Miso Ensemble, of text, music and live electronics that intriguingly altered the boundaries between poetry, sound and opera. The second was a recital by the Smith Quartet in which the first half of the programme was devoted to contemporary music from Portuguese composers, including Miguel Azguime of the Miso Ensemble. The quartet played in co-operation with Miguel and Paula Azguime, who together controlled the electronics and sound projection of the performances, an aspect of new music in which the Smith Quartet now have considerable experience.
Electronics were used in all three pieces in the first half and most prominently in Pagina Postica by Pedro Amaral in which a live recording of the piece in progress, distorted by digital filters, was played back at the quartet and the piece built from a sense of conversation through more intense dialogue to a level of disputation in which the live quartet had the last meaningful word. The whole was an intriguing interplay of pure and distorted sound that was powerfully abstract. Miguel Azguime's Paraitre Parmi, which moved through a series of dramatic chromatic ascents and descents, used electronics to add a further dimension to certain key moments in the piece.
d=3,3,1In the second half, the quartet, drawing on their own repertoire, showed just why they are recognised as one of the leading exponents of new music in the country. Their playing in Michael Gordon's dense piece Potassium was fiercely controlled and coloured. The quartet described this work as requiring playing "at the very limit". Similarly, in Steve Reich's Triple Quartet, in which the players have to synchronise perfectly with both each other and pre-recorded tracks on the PA, the quartet instilled both the rhythmic precision the work requires and an emotional intensity that comes from their absolute command of the intricacies of the score. This was an excellent evening of contemporary music played by a quartet who have seeming effortless control and understanding of some very demanding material.
5:14pm Wednesday 30th April 2008
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