New Traditions by Macklay, Balch, K., Van Der Aa, Lewis, G., čt 22 úno 2024, Od (2024/2024), Dirigent Jack Sheen, South Bank Centre, London, United Kingdom

Sky Macklay’s Microvariations lulls listeners into a false sense of tonality before whisking them on a whistle-stop, microtonal tour of 19th-century European orchestras, ‘a fast-forward and transcontinental sonic truncation and fantasy on’ the journey of British conductor George Thomas Smart and his tuning fork in 1825. In George Lewis’ lively Tales of the Traveller, the titular character’s travels take place within the limits of imagination: the piece allows a soloist (on any instrument) total free reign to improvise against a notated ensemble part. After the interval, Katherine Balch’s waste not, a ‘serenade to lost or wasted time’, plays a soprano soloist against four hand-held cassette tape recorders to distort and fragment our memory of the piece even as it is played. The programme is rounded off by Michel van der Aa’s latest commission for the London Sinfonietta, Shades of Red. It illustrates the different perceived properties of the colour red, alongside a soundtrack which confronts the players with their own warped and distorted sound-world.