Roger Redagte Ensemble Expose
| Ian Moore | Palette de Couleur et de Lumière |
| James Dillon | L’Ascension and Nuée |
| Richard Barrett | What Remains |
| James Clarke | Verstörung |
| Giacinto Scelsi | Riti: I funerali di Carlo Magno |
| Iannis Xenakis | Rebonds |
| Brian Ferneyhough | Fanfare for Klaus Huber & Bone Alphabet |
This concert is a rich tapestry of post-war modernism and its legacies, uniting established figures of 20th-century avant-garde with newer voices in the field of contemporary complexity.
Ian Moore’s Palette de Couleur et de Lumière suggests a sensuous focus on colour and light, evoking impressionistic or painterly associations. As a composer often featured alongside the New Complexity circle, Moore’s title here hints at a perhaps more atmospheric or timbrally nuanced approach, likely exploring shifting instrumental textures rather than dense rhythmic strata.
James Dillon’s L’Ascension and Nuée continues his engagement with French symbolism and spiritual ascent. Dillon, a central figure in British New Complexity, fuses sensual lyricism with immense formal precision. The two-part work may contrast verticality (L’Ascension) with turbulence or chaos (Nuée, meaning “cloud” or “swarm”), reflecting his layered, semiotic approach to structure.
Richard Barrett’s What Remains is likely reflective and introspective, though still executed with his characteristic intensity and intricacy. His music often addresses philosophical or political themes, so this work could imply a meditation on memory, loss, or transformation—using high-density counterpoint and micro-gestural detail.
James Clarke’s Verstörung (German for "disturbance" or "disruption") is an apt title for a composer whose work interrogates silence, fracture, and structural resistance. His aesthetic tends to resist gesture for its own sake, favouring spare, carefully curated sonorities that evoke tension through economy. It contrasts powerfully with the density of Barrett or Dillon.
Giacinto Scelsi’s Riti: I funerali di Carlo Magno is ritualistic and darkly ceremonial. Scelsi, focused on single-note micro-variation and spiritual symbolism, offers a deeply contrasting aesthetic. Where the British complexity composers revel in notational control, Scelsi seeks transcendence through sound and timbre. This piece, in particular, blends droning harmonies with ceremonial pacing to evoke an ancient, meditative space.
Iannis Xenakis’ Rebonds for solo percussion is iconic: elemental, powerful, and architectural. Unlike the cerebral detailing of Barrett or Ferneyhough, Xenakis channels his training in mathematics and architecture into primal rhythmic forms and sonic mass. It is music of gesture, energy, and raw physicality—a unique presence in this otherwise finely filigreed programme.
Brian Ferneyhough closes the concert with two works: Fanfare for Klaus Huber, a short, dense tribute to his teacher and mentor, and Bone Alphabet, a solo percussion tour de force. Bone Alphabet pushes the performer to their limits, demanding complex polyphony across untuned percussion. It is a seminal work in the solo percussion canon and typifies Ferneyhough’s belief in notational precision as a vehicle for expressive freedom.
This programme juxtaposes two distinct threads of post-war modernism: on one side, the New Complexity movement (Ferneyhough, Barrett, Dillon, Clarke, and Moore), and on the other, composers of more intuitive or elemental approaches (Scelsi and Xenakis).
The New Complexity composers all explore extreme instrumental virtuosity, dense polyphony, and highly personalised notational systems. However, even within that group, there are significant differences: Ferneyhough is the most rhythmically intricate; Dillon the most poetically allusive; Barrett the most politically and structurally engaged; Clarke the most austere and elliptical.
In contrast, Scelsi and Xenakis offer sonic experience rather than cerebral analysis. Scelsi’s piece channels mysticism and ritual; Xenakis’s Rebonds emphasises the visceral and the physical. Their music is felt before it is analysed, providing sensory relief from the intellectual tension of the complexity works.
Moore’s contribution, with its suggestive title and painterly metaphor, may serve as a bridge between the more abstract constructs of Clarke and the sensual tactility of Scelsi.
Overall, this concert reflects not only the breadth of late 20th-century modernism but also the tensions between structure and spontaneity, notation and interpretation, material and meaning.
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