London Sinfonietta, Queen Elizabeth Hall, review

By Ivan Hewett 239PM GMT eighteen March 2010

The new strain universe has the share of would-be innocents, composers who similar to to elicit the boundless participation in prolonged hold notes, or take retreat in romanticism and fake modernism never happened. Its all deeply knowing, and each bit as mortified as the troublesome modernism it opposes.

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But between all these faux-naifs is one genuine naif. Richard Ayres is a 45-year-old composer with lots of trusting enthusiasms mountains, animals, folk-tales, the rough receptive to advice of encampment bands. Most of them appeared in this UK premiere of his new mini-opera, declared No. 42 (In the Alps).

Like Ayress initial opera, The Cricket Recovers, this is a childrens story etched in low-pitched fantasy world. An infant girl, stuck on a mountain-top, is taught to sing by the animals. Down below, in the valley, a tongue-tied child can usually promulgate by his trumpet. They listen to each others strain opposite immeasurable spaces, and set off to find each other.

Ayres has a might for evoking enchanting and country soundscapes, and when he set out to invite us the square worked. The dusky opening, suggesting nightly hootings and rustlings, and the small interludes evoking the time-scales of opposite animals immeasurable for whales, short for insects were a delight. Barbara Hannigan as the infant lady lifted by goats and communicating in trills, bleats and (eventually) trenchant high song, was wonderful.

But all the stupid things the players ready to go in Alpine corpulent pullovers, boots, knapsacks and hats, and transmitter Martyn Brabbinss dumb-show chaff with trumpeter Alastair Mackie done my toes curl. The sorcery was effortless, but this felt forced.

The sound-world of Gerald Barrys Beethoven, a environment of the composers usually flourishing love-letter to the obscure Immortal Beloved, was only as bizarre as Ayress piece. And no wonder, since Beethovens minute is so bizarre itself. Its full of ardent avowals of love, invocations to the Almighty and complaints about travelling conditions, but additionally a be scared about agreeable to intimacy.

Barrys environment catches the romantic complication, with an frequency of gasping appetite and a kind of strangled pathos thats both quirky and touching. But it was the drum Stephen Richardson as Beethoven who unequivocally brought it to life, with a riveting multiple of naivety and desperation.

Its a contrition that the last section, formed on the Yuletide tune O Come All Ye Faithful, struck a differing note. Without an intuitively transparent fluent purpose, utilizing something so obvious only seems a obscure distraction.