KAMMER Ensemble Review Sydney Conservatorium of Music, August 8 "GET CARTERED" was a headline for the Conservatorium program, with the KAMMER Ensemble pre-celebrated the 100h birthday (on December 11) of Elliott Carter, the trailblazing American disciple of dissonance last week. This group of eight musicians conducted by Paul Stanhope is a highly efficient New Music Network ensemble formed in 2006, presented by Musica Viva Countrywide, in residence at Wollongong Conservatorium. Carter's works explore unexpected sonorities and combinations, such as in Esprit Rude, Esprit Doux for lute and clarinet, or the canon Homage to William. He still composers, and is invariably worth careful attention. The program included a Night Prelude by Stanhope, described as a kind of danse macabre, ominous and orgiastic in turn. The New Music Network is increasingly noteworthy, demanding attention. Sydney Conservatorium of Music, August 8 ELLIOTT CARTER gleefully observed 'everything's a problem for the composer'. That was more than 60 years ago, and if a recent video interview is anything to go by, he's as well equipped to rise to this challenge now, on the cusp of his 100th birthday on December 11, as he was then. The problem of adding meaningful new work to the post-tonal tradition has been Carter's constant obsession, and he has shared the hard slog and occasional battering with his performers and listeners, as the title of this tribute - Get Cartered - registered right up front. Carter protests that his music is not difficult, and it's true it gets its point across eventually. But his musical solutions are remarkable for aspiring to the rarefied elegance of a mathemtical proof, as in the brief Canon for 4, which wrings from furious complexity music that seems to flow effortlessly. This impression was only enhanced by the unflappable demeanour of the members of the KAMMER Ensemble. Only in the magisterial Triple Duo did they give much inkling of being 'Cartered', and then to more compelling effect than is often achieved. Their penultimate bang was pretty shattering, to the point of regret that Carter's ingrained modernism compelled him to go out with a whimper. It was courageous of conductor Paul Stanhope also to program his 1997 Night Prelude. Despite occasional surface similarities, this was music Carter would not and perhaps, refreshingly could not have written. Five Carter chamber works showed that even he is prone to rely on a small catalogue of trademark gestures. Stanhope was not only a foil to the Carter sound, but also got what he wanted without pushing his players to the edge. Night Prelude does not approach the sheer brilliance of Triple Duo.But as a musically literate Australian's response to the vicissitudes of a European winter, it formed a welcome humanistic parenthesis in a concert that otherwise verged on the monomaniacal. |