The programme for this year's Huddersfield contemporary music festival was as crammed as ever with premieres, but the highest-profile event was saved for the last concert, given by the London Sinfonietta conducted by Martyn Brabbins and Pierre-André Valade.
Two conductors were needed for Harrison Birtwistle's latest piece. Jointly commissioned by the London Sinfonietta and Ensemble Modern (who gave the world premiere in Germany in September), Theseus Game is a logical extension of Birtwistle's series of ensemble pieces, composed over the past 30 years (nearly all for the Sinfonietta). Two conductors are specified because the ensemble, arranged on the platform in tiers of strings, wind and percussion, is constantly divided into two groups, each playing music at a different tempo.
The players constantly switch allegiances from one conductor to the other, but what binds the rhythmically and harmonically dense web is a solo melodic line winding through the 35-minute piece. That melody is shared between the instrumentalists, who take it in turns to come to the front of the stage to deliver their solo, handing on the line like a musical relay, from the first violin to the flute, then to the horn and so on. This creates another of Birtwistle's mysterious musical rituals, in which one observes the role-playing without any knowledge of the rules governing it.
The title refers to the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur. Birtwistle compares the continuous melodic line to the magic thread that Ariadne gives Theseus to lead him out of the labyrinth. The labyrinth itself is presumably the meshing clockworks and intensely intricate textures of the ensemble writing, full of glinting mysterious colours and sometimes violent eruptions of sonority. The melody is the point of reference and finally a means of resolution to what is thrilling instrumental virtuosity within original musical architecture. The performance under Brabbins and Valade was spell-binding.
· Repeated at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1, tonight. Box office: 020-7960 4201.
