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May the forceful conductor be with
you An evening spent consorting with viols doesn't immediately sound promising. Could the silvery, diaphanous sound of these early bowed string instruments - indelibly associated with Tudor or Elizabethan composers, especially Orlando Gibbons - sustain variety and interest? Fretwork, founded in 1986, has worked indefatigably to keep this highly specialised form of chamber music alive by commissioning new works from almost anyone you could name. The ensemble's current series, the Hidden Face Cathedral Tour, includes works new and old. Two dancers, Maxine Braham and Sarah Fahie, provided aristocratic choreography (by Ian Spink) and the programme, taking place in near darkness with simple, effective lighting, has the feel of a stage event rather than a concert. Orlando Gough's extensive Birds on Fire , inspired by Aharon Appelfeld's 1980 novel Badenheim 1939 , uses two klezmer tunes and gives the viols a haunting, drone-like energy, at once melancholic and driven. In From the Book of Disquiet, John Woolrich provides a punchy, pan-like oboe solo (Nicholas Daniel) to offset the sustained viol lines. His starting point for this vivid, fragmented work is the literary remains (from essays to scraps of paper) of the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa. Tavener's The Hidden Face, to a text by the composer, also uses oboe with soaring, muezzin-like countertenor and ghostly muted viols. Michael Chance, heroically overcoming the whooshing, banging fireworks outside, sang with the warm, almost dignified sound which singles him out. He may not have that piercing, skate-through-ice sound of some countertenors, but that's to his advantage. Michael Nyman's show-stopping Self-Laudatory Hymn of Ianna and her Omnipotence brought this compelling concert to a throbbing, strumming and audacious end. Fiona Maddocks http://www.observer.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,591193,00.html
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