It has been a busy summer for 25-year-old Stuart MacRae. Hot on the heels of the Proms premiere of his Violin Concerto, his playful new wind quintet, Joindre, was premiered at the international festival. It was vividly performed by James Macmillan and members of the Britten Sinfonia.
Instead of trying to make the instruments gel with one another, Joindre insists upon the distinctive timbres of each player. The instruments try to create melodies by passing single pitches to one another, but the music collapses into disagreement. The piece ends with a reflective, lyrical chorale, as if the divisive argument has reached a temporary truce.
Like many of MacRae's recent pieces, Joindre makes striking use of silence. The opening of the piece presents individual fragments punctuated by long rests. Each sound assumes a weighty presence. This objective approach characterised other pieces in the Britten Sinfonia's all-MacRae programme. In the Three Pieces for Cello and Piano, the music circles endlessly round a collection of intervals and pitches. But in the four movements of The Witch's Kiss, MacRae's musical techniques become powerfully expressive. The third movement creates a keening lament from the simplest of melodies, and the Britten Sinfonia relished this haunting, immediate music.
