London Sinfonietta/Baker review – Tansy Davies's distinctive music lingers

King’s Place, LondonThe raw intensity of Davies’ writing was perfectly captured in this concert that also showcased impressive works by Naomi Pinnock and Clara IannottaJolts and Pulses, the London Sinfonietta’s concert devoted to Tansy Davies’ music, was the latest in the Kings Place Venus Unwrapped series. Conducted by Richard Baker, the portrait included six of Davies’ works, ranging across 20 years of her composing career, including the first performance of a co-commission from the Sinfonietta. It was a vivid demonstration of how distinctive her music can be, and though the programme she had devised also included quietly impressive pieces by Naomi Pinnock and Clara Iannotta, it was her own musical images that lingered longest in the memory.The brand new work, The Rule Is Love, is a song cycle to words by John Berger and Sylvia Wynter, one text by each, both set twice. Songs haunted by the tropes of pop music (the score describes the music as “channelling David Lynch electropop”), they were composed for the mezzo soprano Elaine Mitchener, though the low-lying vocal lines seemed to make relatively little use of her extended vocal technique and skill as an improviser; as in so much of Davies’ music, though, the fragile surfaces seem to hide much more than they reveal. Continue reading…
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