This skilfully devised programme interwove Baroque and contemporary, with texture as the common thread. The Baroque was represented by arias from three Bach cantatas (BWV 21, 187 and 199) and an arrangement of two arias from Alessandro Scarlatti’s La Giuditta by Salvatore Sciarrino, deploying his trademark susurrations produced by mutes and harmonics. Julia Doyle was the accomplished soprano and Marios Argiros the sensitive oboist in the Bach, though occasionally, hearing this music on modern instruments and phrased and articulated accordingly, one felt transported back to the Sixties.
Sciarrino’s treatment of the Scarlatti segued neatly into the so-called tintinnabular style of Arvo Pärt, whose Fratres applies a minimalist aesthetic to the basic materials of an earlier period. The sense of stasis they produce is a far cry from the dynamism of Baroque style.
The microscopic minimalism of Ligeti’s Continuum — brilliantly delivered by harpsichordist Maggie Cole — whose textures the composer likened to “innumerable thin slices of salami”, certainly offers more to get one’s teeth into.
Anna Clyne’s Auden setting This Lunar Beauty (London premiere) felicitously evokes the atmosphere of the title: modernism with a friendly face. A Britten Sinfonia quartet played creditably throughout.
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