The loos at the Huddersfield contemporary music festival have signs that read: "Do not use the hand-dryers during the performance." Perhaps if Harrison Birtwistle's The Axe Manual were suddenly interrupted by a blast of electrical interference, it might be mistaken for part of the score.
Birtwistle's economical suite for piano and percussion begins with some ominous pedalling at the darkest reaches of the marimbas, which create a murky, mechanical throb. The piece then ascends in pitch and intensity, with the sudden jazzy intrusion of the high-hat signalling a switch from dark-toned wood to piercing, ringing metal.
Written as a compendium of compositional devices for the pianist Emanuel Ax, and here given a riveting UK premiere by Claire Edwardes and Nicolas Hodges, the piece could be seen as Birtwistle's Well-Tempered Clavier - except that where Bach demonstrates infinite means of establishing order from chaos, Birtwistle does it the other way around.
There is a similar programmatic pattern to James Dillon's expanding volume of piano literature, The Book of Elements. Here Hodges ripples lyrically through the first performance of the latest instalment, evocative of whatever the fifth element is supposed to be. Dillon hints that there are issues of connectivity between this and the preceding volumes, though only a full performance of all five will reveal what they are.
An intriguing preview of Gerald Barry's third opera had to overcome a similar lack of context. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is a work in progress: here we hear only act two. The tenor of the action - a sado-masochistic lesbian love tryst inspired by a Rainer Werner Fassbinder film - is also somewhat diminished by the sight of two Sapphic sopranos standing primly behind their podiums.
Majella Cullagh and Julie Moffat make a magnificent effort to render the colloquial text audible above the tumultuous orchestration. But the most graphic moments of this concert performance, given by the orchestra of Opera North under Pierre-André Valade, are purely instrumental. Particularly outstanding are the adrenaline-pumping evocation of an accelerating bicycle ride, and a suicide sequence accompanied by a nerve-shredding ascent on the strings, like a macabre conflation of the death of Wozzeck with the theme from Psycho. Given an appropriately over-the-top production, Barry's opera will be a coruscating prospect when it is finished.
