ENSEMBLE 10/10, Buxton
Festival, St John’s Church, Buxton
Clark Rundell brought
his Liverpool Philharmonic based new music group, Ensemble 10/10, back to
Buxton for a memorable concert in the bright acoustic of St John’s Church.
I missed the world
premiere they gave last November of Bosnian Voices, the new song cycle by Nigel
Osborne (it was repeated a day later at St George’s Hall in Liverpool), so it
was a discovery to hear it performed again in this year’s Buxton Festival. It’s
a moving and genuinely beautiful work – an arrangement, as Osborne says, of original
songs written by youngsters and others in the area of Srebrenica looking back 20
years to the horrific genocidal conflict that befell their country. He’s been
committed to humanitarian work in that place for years and comes to the task
with integrity, which has been reflected in his music already more than once.
There are seven songs,
of different natures, all sung by a mezzo soloist – Florieke Beelen this time –
with accompaniment of string quintet, flute, clarinets, horn and percussion, but
Osborne’s claim ‘I’m just an arranger’ before the event is self-deprecation. He’s
supplied a haunting opening and postlude with a long vocalise, and skilfully
varies the style and instrumentation of the songs, ending the earlier ones, in
particular in a mid-air way which is telling in itself.
There’s fun, too, in
the ‘gipsy’ idiom of The Golden Ship, written with some Roma children among
others, the nearly-English-pastoral background, complete with ruminative horn
solo, to the one about riding a bicycle in the open air, and rattling rhythmic ostinati
of the songs composed by pop group musicians.
There’s also
desperately under-stated sadness in Time, Life and I, the song by women
gang-raped during the war who still have seen no justice.
Some music lives
because it captures the essence of a time-rooted reality, good or evil, and
this is one of those. I hope it will live long.
*****
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