Composers: Alex Paxton, Tansy Davies, Louis Andriesson and John Adams
Conductor: Christian Karlsen
Complicated and fast, the compositions in Pulse and Presence push the London Sinfonietta to its limits, with many of the musicians swapping instruments in the middle of the pieces and scrabbling to turn over their music pages. But there’s joy and vivacity, too; a pleasure to watch as much as it is to hear.
First, and in a UK premiere, is Alex Paxton’s Scrunchy Touch Sweetly to Fall, which is as colourful as the composer’s outfit for the evening. Beginning as if the musicians are tuning up their instruments in readiness for the main event, Paxton’s 10-minute piece is a delight from start to finish, with the strings and flute capturing the scrawling voices of children, perhaps at a birthday party. It’s full of witty surprises: cellist Joely Koos gamely accepts the challenge and delivers more la-la-las than Kylie at the O2, and flautist Michael Cox proves that a handlebar moustache should not be considered an impediment to playing the instrument. So thrillingly energetic is Scrunchy Touch Sweetly to Fall, you can’t help but wish it were performed as the final piece.
Tansy Davies’s Soul Canoe is a more sombre affair, and her usual funk influences are muted. Inspired by a decorative Oceanic canoe she saw in a museum, her 20-minute composition begins as if the wooden boat is inching through an ice-filled river. When Huw Davies, on the electric guitar, delivers the bluesy twang motif, echoed by Cliodna Shanahan’s piano, it’s like the canoe has drifted into the Southern states of the USA on a sultry night. Perhaps it moves through a town, too, where a lone typist bashes out their letters in a deserted office. It ends its journey in the hum of an accordion.
Zilver by the late Dutch composer Louis Andriessen would make a great soundtrack for a film noir. Full of ascending scales and dramatic percussion, the piece is inspired by Bach. Jess Wood and Heledd Gwynant on the vibraphone and the marimba are precision-perfect in their playing and bring something of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians to Andriessen’s short 15-minute piece.
The evening ends with John Adams’s Chamber Symphony, a play on Schoenberg’s Opus 9. It’s incredibly frenetic, with Enno Senft’s double bass doing most of the heavy lifting at the start, lending the three movements a jazzy feel. Bassoons galumph while the brass, especially Ryan Hume’s trombone, pick out a more traditional tune. So spirited is Adams’s music that conductor Christian Karlsen can’t help stamping his foot occasionally. Much of the audience is doing the same.
Reviewed on 13 March 2026
