BY MARK BOSCH, LEAD CRITIC
Lone Hemispheres
Ensemble Offspring
Carriageworks, 7 November
Ensemble Offspring is closing in on the end of another stimulating season of new music — its 24th season, in fact.
With the ensemble turning 25 next year, there’s going to be lots to celebrate.
Despite Claire Edwardes’ overtures to that fact, Lone Hemispheres was a pared-back affair, featuring just three of the ensemble’s core members — Edwardes, Lamorna Nightingale, and Jason Noble — each with an offering of two solos apiece.
Despite one or two technical hiccups, the evening was a smooth, cool unfolding of delicate and virtuosic works in Carriageworks’ desolate Track 8, uniquely configured by Michelle St Anne. Dry ice and three small reflective pools lit by candlelight added an element of mysterious calm to the otherwise bleak, sharp, triangularly configured stage space.
Noble’s contributions included Franco Donatoni’s Soft (1989) and the premiere of Damien Ricketson’s Borderlines (2019), which included a small speaker wedged inside the bell of the clarinet, adding a haunting and ghostly presence beneath Noble’s ebbs and flows.
Nightingale opened with the premiere of Elizabeth Younan’s outstanding Fantasia (2019), which, after a spritely beginning, surprised the audience with the inclusion of a bass drum. It was a challenging, rhythmically complex work delivered with aplomb by Nightingale — but perhaps no less challenging than Berio’s Sequenza I (1958), which opened the second portion of the program.
Edwardes demystified the space with a number of addresses to break up the music. She closed the evening with the first movement of Donatoni’s virtuosic Omar (1985), but its difficulty was not to be outdone by the second outing of Tristan Coelho’s A line is a dot that went for a walk (2018), which I had the pleasure of seeing at its premiere last year. It’s a very satisfying listen, and liable to become a classic for Edwardes.
Given the three performers and the stage’s triangular configuration, I’m not sure the title Lone Hemispheres was appropriate. But, in any case, this was a satisfying evening of elaborate solo instrumentalism.
I wish the ensemble all the best for its 25th year, and for securing their future for the following 25.
Images supplied. Credit: Nathaniel Fay. (Featured image shows Claire Edwardes at Lone Hemispheres.)
