The GoldenPlec Classical section are back again, with a comprehensive look at all the action at this year’s New Music Dublin festival. From premiere’s to quartets, here’s all of the action from Friday March 6th.

3:00pm: Nine Bells – Olaf Pyras at the National Concert Hall

With peeling paint and dusty floors, the cavernous space of the old medical library in Earlsfort Terrace is the setting for festival opener Nine Bells. With the crowd lining the two levels around the atrium, all attention is focussed on the central space below. With each of the nine bells suspended from a scaffolding frame, and a layer of sand on the floor, the work is as much a performance piece as a musical one. As Olaf Pyras begins his geometric progressions around the space, his footsteps set up a rustling rhythm, an underlay to the rising peals of the bells.

Playing with texture and dynamic range, Tom Johnson’s work makes use of the whole of the space, the sounds of the world around blending with the rise and fall of Pyras’ layered tones. As he moves among the structures, his steps clearing irregular paths in the sand below, his route adds a visual dimension to the unfolding tone sequences. Working with a small selection of mallets and varied tempos, each of the nine sections sees Pyras explore the sonic possibilities of the metal around him. As he comes to a rest for the final time, the last of the bell tones die away, Pyras looks for the first time to the galleries above, bringing to an end an intriguing opening to this year’s festival.

John Millar

6:00pm: Bang on a Can All-Stars and Trio Mediaeval

Norwegian vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval makes its one appearance at the festival at this concert, singing with the Bang on a Can All-Stars in a piece written for both groups together: Steel Hammer by Bang on a Can co-founder Julia Wolfe. Lasting just over an hour, the work addresses the fateful West Virginian story of ‘steel-drivin’-man’ John Henry. In the man-against-machine legend, the mighty man faces off the challenge of steam-driven machinery only to die seconds after reaching victory, a yarn that in the telling appears as everything from political polemic to tall tale to popular song. Wolfe’s score draws on the folk music – and dance – traditions of Appalachia that has the seven members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars play not only conventional instruments but also raw, improvised materials: rubbed sandpaper, hammered steel, stamped feet and slapped skin, as well as whistling and humming. During one section electric-guitarist/banjo-player Mark Stewart even breaks into a five-minute bout of seated step dancing.

Above the relentless energy of the instrumental story-telling, the three singers perform in superb close harmony, singing a text culled by Wolfe from the over 200 versions of the tale. The conflicting descriptions (‘he was small/he was tall/he was black/he was white…’) underline the power of this figure as an everyman. The artists bring infectious enthusiasm and tremendous energy to this work: each player covers a variety of instruments, while the singers move imperceptibly between vocal styles, encompassing both the characteristic purity of their ‘early-music’ sound and folk-singing. It is powerful, immersive and demanding music, constantly inventive, and receives a spectacular performance.

Michael Lee

8:00pm: RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra with So Percussion

David Lang, as curator of the festival, chooses tonight as the setting for the sole piece of his to be heard this weekend, man made (2013), a concerto-like work in which the four-piece ensemble So Percussion appear alongside the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. Much separates these two groups, most especially the percussion ensemble’s use of found instruments, represented here by twigs (snapped in sequence), empty bottles, and pieces of metal tubing along with rubbish tins. The work becomes a process of rapprochement, as So begin a sequence, which is picked up by the orchestral percussionists and elaborated on by the body of the orchestra, building layers of complementary colours, flourishes and rhythmic patterns. In the final section, the four soloists turn to more recognisable instruments (drum-kit/steel drums/marimbas) but the one-way pattern of interaction continues. Maybe that’s the point: that the artificiality suggested in the title fixes a limit to the possibilities of the form – but one can’t help wondering what else could have been achieved.

Irene Buckley’s Stórr (2009) – the name is that of a rocky hill on the Isle of Skye – draws on the heterophonic Gaelic psalmody tradition of the Outer Hebrides as a way of creating orchestral texture. The tonal smearing characteristic of Hebridean psalmody certainly comes across in the web of undulating, overlapping sound, as the work projects a gently engulfing atmosphere, with only occasional gestures seeming to break through the surface of the piece. This string-centred meditation finds a vivid contrast in the short work that follows, «rewind« (2006) by Anna Clyne. The renewed presence of brass and percussion provides an arresting shift in tone, appropriate for a work that is all about switching between states, and moving forward and back. The NSO players respond with some excellent playing, including a short, lyrical violin solo played by leader Helena Wood.

The closing work, eagerly awaited by some, is the Irish premiere of the award-winning Become Ocean (2013) by Alaska-based composer John Luther Adams. This lengthy study of interweaving flow is a work of long contemplation, with small repeated patterns across the orchestra creating a web of complex surfaces. It avoids any sense of structure or narrative: instants that suggest rising motion to a point of dynamic focus simply dissipate as mysteriously as they emerge. The idea is clearly to evoke an atmosphere of infinite horizons, although the work’s long-breathed continuum also threatens to fall into inertia, and moments briefly reminiscent of other, older pieces (Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloë, or Debussy’s La Mer) prove distracting. Throughout, however, the NSO, elegantly conducted by Jamie Phillips, approach the work with committed and focused playing.

Michael Lee

10:30pm: The Dublin Guitar Quartet

The Dublin Guitar Quartet were in the old Engineering Library in the NCH for the premiere of a new work from Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon. Written for four electric guitars, the work is well suited to the hard edged, almost industrial space of the room. That atmosphere is added to by the simple lighting, a bright white light in each of the four corners.

At just about an hour long, Gordon’s work is one that seeks to explore the possibilities of a blend of overdriven guitar tones. Each part overlaps with the rest to create a hazy wash of sound, one that builds through regular cycles, repeated and augmented subtly at each turn. The four players are tightly focussed; as the sound very gradually opens up, they are impassive before their scores.

As the piece progresses, there builds an expectation of a more dramatic move, though it is one that ultimately does not arrive. Though the layered waves of sound carry a power of their own, a warm wash of distortion, the work never quite seems to arrive at a conclusion, instead remaining an interesting, but incomplete experience.

John Millar