Whom, exactly, was it for? It was more than the local public needed, yet it wasn't a draw for visitors. The orchestra, which had crammed rehearsals and concerts into the one week, sounded hard-pressed but spirited Nobody needed the concluding suite of Purcell dances. The conductor, Martyn Brabbins, alarmingly spoke of it as "sweetening the pill", which begs a few questions.The sheer density of the "Old Stones, New Fires" festival raises others. With strings alone, Anderson in Tye's Crye launched engaging quick-fire ambushes on his source material but fleetingly enough to sound like a sketch for something bigger.
The slow chordal sequences of Cashian's In the Still Hours brooded with a suppressed intensity that was not fully released.When Maggie Cole played the Falla Harpsichord Concerto, the sheer lucidity of the music came as a relief. So, too, with John McCabe's Two Latin Elegies - the neatest dovetailing of old and new into a cohesive whole - and the evening's popular hit, the brief and beautiful Incipit Vita Nova by Gavin Bryars. An eloquent line for counter-tenor (David James) soared over the resourceful series of sound images towards a definite "event", sudden hushed fragments of Lully to encapsulate the poet's evocation of what can never be. Some felt lost or short of information; few were confident in addressing the composers publicly. New pieces were written by Julian Anderson, Edward Dudley Hughes, Philip Cashian, Piers Hellawell and Rhian Samuel: good names all, but out of the same small world, and much of a muchness for non-specialist listeners. They had to use a theme from a pre-1600 piece, an idea that might have been a gimmick, but apparently caught everybody's imagination.Of the three in Saturday's concert, Samuel's setting of Path by Anne Stevenson was the most richly felt and realised.
They were glad to have composers on the spot, talking and answering questions. It was an uphill struggle to reach the country concert audience. Saturday's final concert, however, drew in an appreciative gathering that included first-timers. Afterwards, people said they enjoyed the informal mix of short pieces. But will it make a marriage? Sinfonia 21 has had an eye for lively repertoire, and a flair for going to work in unexpected social settings, ever since it was founded as the Docklands Sinfonietta Inner cities are one thing; rural Sussex is another. So Sinfonia 21's festival of new and early music in the unfamiliar setting of Michelham Priory was a honeymoon, complete with thrills and over-exertions, uncomfortable discoveries and impulsive changes of plan. Then she produces the whole card from inside an orange, complete apart from the little bit we're still holding.
I've seen this trick more than once, and it really is magic.. They say it was love at first sight: the orchestra manager fell for an Elizabethan barn and rushed straight into action. "Some men in the crowd started to kick me through the sacking, and the more I screamed, the more it turned them on." On the other hand, a young insurance salesman who tied her up in Brighton fell in love with her and threw up his career.How did she storm her way into the male-dominated Magic Circle? "With what I call my 'card and orange' trick." We choose a playing card and tear it to bits We give her all the bits but one, and she burns them. I learnt to use my failures rather as Tommy Cooper did." What about hostile audiences who sabotage tricks? "Awful It's like dying on stage. My whole body goes numb." One of her worst experiences came when she was doing her escapology act - inviting spectators to tie her up and seal her in a sack - at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Until, that is, someone said she'd make a wonderful clown, and why not try her hand at it in Hyde Park? "I loved it.
