London Sinfonietta/Baker review – Tansy Davies' distinctive music lingers
Andrew Clements
Updated
Jolts and Pulses, the London Sinfonietta’s concert devoted to Tansy Davies’ music, was the latest in the Kings Place Venus Unwrapped series. Conducted by Richard Baker, the portrait included six of Davies’ works, ranging across 20 years of her composing career, including the first performance of a co-commission from the Sinfonietta. It was a vivid demonstration of how distinctive her music can be, and though the programme she had devised also included quietly impressive pieces by Naomi Pinnock and Clara Iannotta, it was her own musical images that lingered longest in the memory.
The brand new work, The Rule Is Love, is a song cycle to words by John Berger and Sylvia Wynter, one text by each, both set twice. Songs haunted by the tropes of pop music (the score describes the music as “channelling David Lynch electropop”), they were composed for the mezzo soprano Elaine Mitchener, though the low-lying vocal lines seemed to make relatively little use of her extended vocal technique and skill as an improviser; as in so much of Davies’ music, though, the fragile surfaces seem to hide much more than they reveal.
Both Saltbox, an evocation of landscapes of the north Kent coast from 2005, and Grind Show, written two years later and inspired by a Goya painting, underpin moody ensemble writing with mysterious, threatening electronic sounds, while the piano piece. Loophole, played with just the right fierceness by Elizabeth Burley, turn Scarlatti sonatas into feisty two-part inventions. The concert ended with what is perhaps the archetypal Davies work to date, Neon, from 2004, in which pulse schemes influenced by Birtwistle are overlaid with the driving insistence of funk. As the Sinfonietta performance showed, it’s music that is entirely itself, with a raw intensity impossible to ignore.
The Money Saving Expert has issued a warning to UK homeowners who have curtains hanging up in their homes - saying you could save hundreds by following his advice.
Motorists can save up to 25 percent on petrol and diesel by removing one item from their car, according to motoring experts. The item in question is a common sight on many vehicles
Gemma Atkinson has spoken about her relationship with her fiance Gorka Marquez, including having discussed them being away from each other due to work commitments.
Samantha Davis, the wife of Star Wars and Harry Potter actor Warwick Davis and herself an actress, has died aged 53. Samantha co-founded the dwarfism charity Little People UK and featured in the final Harry Potter film, alongside Warwick. Warwick announced the news in a statement to the BBC, revealing she had died on 24 March.
Prince Harry and his brother Prince William were said to be inseparable - but one moment six years ago at Harry's wedding their 'happiness together' reportedly changed
BBC Question Time host Fiona Bruce was forced to intervene and reprimand a Tory Cabinet Secretary after he launched a personal attack on another panellist ...
Israel’s strike on Iran on Friday morning will not come as a surprise to Western observers – but it will cause great concern in Washington and London as the region tips closer towards an all-out war.
If this Israeli attack on Iran is no more than it presently appears to be, then it is rather well modulated. If the airbase at Isfahan has been attacked - home to the 8th Tactical Air Wing of the Iranian Air Force, and not a Revolutionary Guard installation - then the Israelis are making their point against a conventional military target. It is not an enrichment plant or a reactor, but the wide-ranging nuclear research conducted there involves some 3,000 Iranian nuclear scientists.
Israel’s presumed counterstrike against Iran has proved Joe Biden and David Cameron wrong in their insistence that Israel should just “take the win”. Instead, it fought back – and yesterday Iran was trying to pretend that nothing had happened.