Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival review – ghostly echoes, fearless voices and the rattle of milk frothers

By Flora Willson · The Guardian Culture

Various venues, Huddersfield World and UK premieres launched the opening concerts of this compelling gala of new sounds, mixing precise ensemble play with electronic tracks and unlikely percussion sound effects To the uninitiated, November may not seem the ideal time for a trip to Huddersfield. I arrived to find the Pennines under a thick blanket of cloud and the temperature hovering around zero. So it’s just as well that music is a largely indoor pursuit: since 1978, autumn here has meant the annual influx of big names in experimental and avant garde music for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival . Once a draw for postwar heavyweights including Karlheinz Stockhausen , Olivier Messiaen and John Cage , the HCMF remains the UK’s largest international festival dedicated to new music, with more than 30 world and UK premieres on this year’s programme. The opening night featured three. In Huddersfield Town Hall, London-based Explore Ensemble sat in a pool of spotlights, the magnificent Victorian space made intimate. A new version of Canon Mensurabilis by Lithuanian composer Rytis Mažulis saw repetitive shimmers of microtonal dissonance interrupted by sparse octaves and fifths. The performance’s astonishing precision blurred the line between acoustic sound and an electronic track that gradually took over. Bryn Harrison’s The Spectre … Is Always Already a Figure of That Which is to Come worked a still more persuasive magic. Opening with what sounded like a creaking seesaw scored for chamber ensemble, shards of acoustic material were followed by ghostly echoes on a prerecorded electronic track. There were beautiful details – rough shivers of violin tremolo, flutters of bass clarinet, pedal-washed piano circling – but the work’s ultimate payoff came in its longer arc. The feedback loop gradually reversed so that the musicians responded to their electronic counterparts – the process of haunting complete and utterly compelling. Continue reading...