Review: Hidden Notes Festival, St Laurence Church Stroud

Well you have to admire their chutzpah – Hidden Notes 2019 was promoted as a ‘brand new annual two day event presenting contemporary classical and avant-garde composers’. But this is Stroud, and given the continuing artistic and critical success of their annual Jazz Stroud weekender then why not? And with the obliging venue of St Laurence Church offering good acoustics, great atmosphere and an impromptu bar it proved a fine new musical experience.

Spindle Ensemble (pic: Tom Jacob @tomjacobfilms)

By this, the second day of the festival, there was quite a buzz in the impressively numerous audience about Saturday’s line-up, with Emily Hall’s choral pieces and Manu Delago’s ensemble project both getting high praise. The place filled early for Spindle Ensemble’s acoustic blend of romantic impressionism and gentle minimalism, with established favourites Once a Squirrel and Sleepcloud both assembled from simple and stately themes passed between instruments. Much of the emphasis was on textural shifts, crisp pizzicato gradually giving way to bowed cello and violin, languorous sweeping passages shifting into brisker riffing moments. Two new, unnamed numbers had a more complex construction giving a greater sense of narrative and the crisp and tight writing of The Chase was a fine rhythmic exploration. The set was an instant success with the audience and composer Dan Inzani was clearly delighted to find this spiritual home for their project.

Claire M Singer (pic: Tom Jacob @tomjacobfilms)

Inasmuch as she was hidden out of sight at the church’s organ things got more obscure for Claire M Singer’s set, a series of meditative pieces using the contrasting tones and subtle dynamics of the instrument. Some pieces centred on drones that emerged from an introductory mantra, others introduced chord cycles to extend the musical idea or break the tension – at one point a third chord bursting in was like the sun coming out. Rich sonorities revealed pulsing beats of not-quite unison and the judiciously deployed cello of Sandy Bartai added flashes of colour. Most impressive was Claire’s use of dynamics, enhanced by electronic effects, to give a breathing quality to the music which organically fitted St Laurence’s imposing architecture and ornate fixtures perfectly.

Sebastion Plano (pic: Tom Jacob @tomjacobfilms)

Argentinian cellist and producer Sebastian Plano has been taken up by Verve records and his Hidden Notes set showed why. Using an adapted cello through effects and loops combined with synthesiser and prepared sound sequences he delivered a polished and commercial sound with his admitted influence from Vangelis very much to the fore. Plaintive melodic phrases were layered into looped rhythm textures hinting at a distant heritage of 80s electro-house, perhaps reflecting his adopted home of Berlin. It was all well organised – and one effect whereby he appeared to be playing the wind through his cello was certainly ear-catching – but after the previous performances it felt a bit shallow and out of place.

Hatis Noit (pic: Tom Jacob @tomjacobfilms)

Not so Japanese vocal artist Hatis Noit who also deployed loops, assembled live on stage, to construct an intriguing sonic mix of hard-edged Eastern European singing with more mellifluous Japanese styles and soaring Western operatics. The solo rendition of her Angelus Novus was especially impressive, the full-throated Bulgarian-style introduction giving way to something evocative of Gregorian chant, cushioned by a wash of close harmony voices rising and falling. Her spontaneous pastoral song inspired by her impressions of Stroud’s bucolic setting was beautifully appropriate and, naturally, well received.

Lubomyr Melnyk (pic: Tony Benjamin)

It wasn’t clear whether Ukrainian pianist Lubomyr Melnyk realised he was performing some few hundred yards from the birthplace of Extinction Rebellion but Stroud was an interesting place to launch a diatribe about Greens being ‘fanatics’ and electric cars threatening to be the death of the planet. This was his introduction to The End of The World, an apocalyptic piece that began with an echo of the Moonlight Sonata before mutating into intense arpeggios that themselves evolved and shifted towards a climactic moment. The music coalesced, briefly, into forceful chords that melted back into a rippling flow with a slightly more upbeat feel. This was what he calls ‘continuous music’, a technique he has developed whereby each hand ceaselessly plays separate fast and evolving patterns of notes allowing both harmonic interaction and also the emergence of melodic phrases. It’s a dazzling and demanding approach, physically and emotionally intense for player and audience alike, and his set of numbers all deployed it. It was most striking on Floating No 2, where he played against a recording of Ukrainian bandura player Ivan Tkalenko, the clatteringly crisp 50-string instrument a sharp contrast to the fuller tone of the piano.

Spindle Ensemble’s Dan Inzani (pic: Tom Jacob @tomjacobfilms)

It was a well-chosen end to the eclectic programme, and we were left wrung out with the intensity of the music yet still glowing from what went before. Full credit must go to the organisers from Good On Paper, Stroud’s monthly cultural magazine – itself a fine tribute to the vivacity of the town – for the audacity of the idea and the well-chosen programme. Given the solid support the festival received it surely must be appropriate to look forward to next year’s offering.

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