The Philharmonia’s early-evening Music of Today series – offered as a free prelude to some of its mainstream concerts at the Royal Festival Hall – is sometimes overlooked as a contribution to new music in London, but it does come up with some significant premieres. The latest of these short concerts, which preceded a rather mundane programme of Dvořák and Brahms, featured the percussionist Colin Currie in concerto-like works each lasting around 20 minutes by Luke Bedford and Philippe Hurel, conducted by Michael Francis.
Bedford’s piece, Staggered Nocturne, which was composed for Currie and commissioned by the Philharmonia, was receiving its premiere – the first performance had been originally scheduled for 2020. As the title suggests, it’s not by any means a conventional concerto crammed with flashy percussion writing, though that doesn’t mean it ever gives the soloist an easy ride. In the first movement the ensemble of 14 players creates a convincingly nocturnal mood with lilting chords and hints of languorous melody, to which the percussionist adds persistent pulsings, before switching to a drum kit for the second movement to set up complex polyrhythms over which the other instruments weave long-limbed melodic lines. Beautifully lit textures create a luminous sound world, not at all what you might expect from such a lineup.
Hurel’s Quatre Variations, which followed, was as extrovert as Bedford’s nocturne had been introspective. Yet it’s essentially a memorial piece, composed at the turn of the century in the wake of the death of Gérard Grisey, alongside whom Hurel had first explored the techniques of spectralism in the 1980s. He buries references to Grisey’s music in the fabric of each of his variations, but the effect is of a vivid instrumental kaleidoscope, full of stylistic allusions, all of which the percussionist leads and provokes without ever overpowering. Currie and the Philharmonia players made sure it all glittered exactly as it should.
