The Stockholm-based chamber ensemble O/Modernt, led by violinist Hugo Ticciati, brought a programme that linked Lera Auerbach and Leoš Janáček to Osvaldo Golijov and Gustav Mahler at Wigmore Hall. The concert, part of a three-residency series, showcased the group's trademark ability to make the old new and the new old through unexpected musical juxtapositions and arrangements.
Auerbach's Sogno di Stabat Mater
The evening opened with Lera Auerbach's Sogno di Stabat Mater (2005), a reimagining of Pergolesi's famous Stabat Mater. A solo violin and viola lament in ghostly harmonics, sounds skimming and slipping glassily off one another, set the tone. Christ's sinews snap in the explosive pizzicato of two double basses, before a vibraphone takes over: counterpoint suspended like drops of blood in a bowl of water, harmony smudging into cloudy new shapes. This piece served as a microcosm of O/Modernt's aesthetic.
Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind
Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind (1994) followed, a clarinet concerto in all but name. Soloist Christoffer Sundqvist was a hypnotic cantor at the centre of the ensemble, now chattering in tongues, now driving the strings in an urgent, convulsive dance. A history of Judaism in three movements, joy and suffering are inextricably entangled in music that's rarely still, always shredding and reinventing itself. O/Modernt acted as a responsive congregation, with Ticciati and Sundqvist locked in trance-like union.
Mahler and Janáček
The Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony served as emotional relief and release, though it lacked the swell of a full symphonic string section. This movement is freighted not only with the composer's own undeclared passion for his beloved Alma but with all the fatal yearning of Visconti's Death in Venice. The programme concluded with Janáček's String Quartet No 2 Intimate Letters, scaled up for string orchestra by Ticciati himself. This musical love letter was a delight: big and batteringly rough. If you weren't bruised and gasping by the end of this concert, you weren't listening hard enough.
Evangelical Energy
Over the past six months, O/Modernt has roamed from Hildegard of Bingen to Lennon and McCartney, via Ligeti, Brahms and Arvo Pärt. Their intense musical conversations are propelled by an energy of playing that's evangelical in its zeal. This concert, part of their three-concert residency at Wigmore Hall, demonstrated why they have spent well over a decade expanding our ears and minds.
