Even before the concert, the atmosphere in the foyer of the Queen Elizabeth Hall was buzzy. The turn-out, predominantly young, for this all-Xenakis concert was massive, just as it used to be 30 years ago when Iannis Xenakis was one of the composers the then fledgling London Sinfonietta was championing so single-mindedly. The concert itself, thrillingly conducted by Diego Masson, didn't disappoint either, but reminded everyone that here was a unique, if sometimes baffling composer, whose finest work ranks alongside the best of the past 50 years.
This programme consisted of five pieces, composed between the 1960s and the late 80s, separated by a couple of extracts from the fine TV film that Mark Kidel made in 1991 about the life and music of the composer, who died two years ago. The nearest thing to a classic was the earliest piece here, Eonta from 1963, in which a solo piano (the ever astonishing Nicolas Hodges) is combined with a mobile quintet of brass. Sometimes they all play together, but more often they are in violent opposition, and the hurtling end of the piece, a furious brass toccata against which even the piano has no answer, is viscerally exciting.
The piece from 1989, Okho, for three djembés (African tuned drums), was a reminder of the variety and sheer physical impact that Xenakis could always extract from the most basic rhythmic patterns, and also how the music of west Africa could inspire such different sensibilities as his and Steve Reich's. While Echange, for bass clarinet and ensemble, composed the same year, showed that in his later years he sometimes pared down his style, worked with simpler melodic shapes and rhythmic unisons that can recall his teacher Messiaen.
N'Shima, from 1975, atomises a Hebrew text between a pair of mezzo sopranos (Linda Hirst and Hilary Summers) and sets their guttural expostulations against pairs of horns and trombones, while a cello tries to mediate between them all. It is archaic and ritualistic in its approach, raw and direct in its expressive world. Thallein (1984) was a Sinfonietta commission, and one of Xenakis's finest later works. It is a mad tangle of thematic elements, each simple in itself but creating a teasingly complex discourse, whose first impact is physical and emotional. We may think of Xenakis as a theorist who used mathematics and computer programs in his composing, but he was first and foremost a communicator, concerned with conveying real musical truths.
