A major force for good has arrived on the British music scene in the form of Marin Alsop, recently appointed principal guest conductor of the City of London Sinfonia. She combines charisma with dynamism, intelligence with enthusiasm and flair. She also gets results - I haven't heard the CLS play this well in years.
Alsop also possesses a rare, Bernstein-like ability to talk music as well as she conducts it. In the second half of the concert - the first in the orchestra's new-music series - she took us through James MacMillan's Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, first getting the CLS to play the hymn on which it is based, then analysing how MacMillan fragments and reconstitutes it, before turning in a tremendous performance of the work. The percussionist - balletic, beautiful, thrilling - was Colin Currie. The piece itself, revelling in orchestral virtuosity and spiritual joy, has lost none of its clout.
The first half of the concert was devoted to premieres of works by three emerging British composers, all of whom to some extent assert that the way forward is to peer back, past the over-dominant presence of serialism and minimalism to a wider range of influences.
Alasdair Nicolson's Ghosts at the Water's Edge reverts to the Orpheus myth, which in the 17th century formed the basis of classical music's secular break with religious traditions. Nicolson depicts the poet on the banks of the Styx, harried not so much by Furies as by spectral phantoms. The music is shivery, wraith-like, suggestive of forms coalescing and fading. It also goes on far too long.
Sally Beamish's The Caledonian Road is a set of variations on a medieval chant, opening unforgettably with a winding oboe over rocking low strings. Her theme is pilgrimage, personal and spiritual: the Caledonian Road leads from London (where she was born) to Scotland (where she lives); the work also depicts the bones of St Andrew being carried northwards in procession. Beamish's directness of expression remains compelling.
Joe Cutler's The Dubious Concoctions of Dr Tillystrom is an exuberant fantasy. We're told little of this strange scientific figure beyond the fact that he lives at the north pole and that his laboratory is frequented by "deviant elves". What these creatures are up to remains a mystery, but once past sustained string cords redolent of freezing cold and vast spaces, the music opens up into a kaleidoscopic scherzo that combines Stravinskyan rhythmic propulsion with the glamour of Liszt's Faust symphony. A bit derivative, perhaps, but tremendous fun all the same.
