Mar
12

It’s been a while…

Posted by jill on March 12, 2013

Can it really be almost a year since my last post? I haven’t stopped listening to music, but my tastes have change. A quick review of my diary for this year so far indicates that I’ve been to three gigs so far this year, but four classical concerts. Admittedly this is probably down to the excellent Rest is Noise season down on the Southbank but it really seems like there’s more experimentation in the contemporary classical world today than in the other music I come across these days.

Two of the highlights this year so far are Kraftwerk at the Tate Modern and the Harmonic Series special at the Hayward Gallery. Coincidentally both of these took place in art galleries, but in very different settings. Kraftwerk was everything you would wish a Kraftwerk show to be – there were great 3D graphics and a bespoke soundsystem for the gigs. Having heard the train noises coming from behind me for TransEuropeExpress, can’t really think any other Kraftwerk shows can top that.

The Harmonic Series concert at the Hayward Gallery was a part of the Light Show exhibition. Four musicians performed modern pieces amongst the artworks, which sometimes worked with the settings and sometimes not. We heard some Bach whilst staring at Olafur Eliasson’s amazing Model for a Timeless Garden (this was probably due to the necessity of a piece that the cellist could play from memory in strobing lights) amongst other works. But the best of all was listening to two female voices and the cello almost merge into one in Morton Feldman’s Voices and Cello whilst sitting in a room only lit by red fluorescent lights. This piece was originally written to be performed in Rothko’s Chapel, but save for only going to the real chapel itself, this was probably the best setting to enjoy the piece.