The music of Sir John Tavener tends to be something one either loves or loathes. For those in the former camp, Ikons of Light, the South Bank's three-week survey of Tavener's music and inspirations, is an exciting prospect, featuring performers of the calibre of the London Sinfonietta and the Chilingirian Quartet.
In recent years Tavener has experimented with writing for early instruments. This concert, given by the viol consort Fretwork, included three such works. Yet, in The Hidden Face, Fretwork seemed an underused resource. The distinc tive timbre of their instruments had little chance to make itself felt in writing so still and subdued that it allowed one of the players to drop out for a glass of water in the middle without causing any stir in the sound. The soloists, Michael Chance and Nicholas Daniel, communicated their lines beautifully, creating an atmosphere that lasted after the end of the piece until the applause began some 20 seconds later.
Apokatastasis, commissioned by Fretwork, was receiving its world premiere. This very brief work again involves viols and counter-tenor, with the distinctive contribution of two Tibetan temple bowls and a small gong. A celebratory incantation, it doesn't so much create a meditative atmosphere as rely on it being there already for the audience to have a chance of feeling the spiritual intensity - of which Tavener speaks in the programme note.
Tavener's music speaks to many people but does it ask any questions of them? His assumption of Eastern musical traditions can make for exciting and mesmeric sounds, but without a convincing structure underpinning them, it can also lead to triumphs of style over substance. Moreover, his self-conscious rejection of Western tradition perpetuates a rather patronising idea that spirituality is always to be found somewhere else: in new and unknown religions, in unheard sonorities in fact, in anywhere but within our own heads and on our own doorsteps.
It is telling that the most successful and substantial of his works in this concert was Nipson, the work with the most obvious structure and which made much use of Western musical language. Tavener shared the programme with viol works by his sixteenth-century namesake John Taverner, John Ward and Picforth. Next to the sober spirituality of the inexorable and inevitable logic of these, the modern works, for all their mesmeric qualities, seemed like fool's gold.
