Apartment House review – an evening rich in discoveries, musical delights and magic | classical music

nNew music group Apartment House is celebrating its 30th birthday this year, but that’s not a sign of contemplation and nostalgia. With four world premieres and three UK premieres, this was a concert rich with revelations from a band at the top of their game.

The program is bookended by two UK debut performances by Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith, perhaps the best-known name on the bill. “Flowers of the Void” opened the proceedings, a plaintive, gently dissonant hymn for a string trio, its phrases hovering in the ether like the faintest of sighs. At the other end of the evening, Water Lily, her fifth string quartet, slowly breathes in and out, its drifting strings conveying a quiet beauty.

Remarkably, its third UK premiere was written in 1927 by Daniel Belinfanti, a Dutch composer who was murdered at Auschwitz. Simply called the quartet, its swinging lines and angry dissonances gave way to bohemian dance rhythms with an occasional whiff of Janacek. The playing throughout was unimpeachable.

The world premieres spanned from AZ. Paul Baccioni’s string sextet, after Ventadorn, paraphrases parts of a song written by the itinerant Occitan poet Bernard de Ventadorn in the 12th century. Characterized by modal harmonies, its strict lines are intertwined in a complex tapestry of aching grace. Aiden Lonsdale’s “A Thousand Autumns” etches undulating shapes on the piano against elongated strings, their inner workings shifting in a hypnotic kaleidoscope of patterns.

Adrian Knight’s Charm to protect a child was described as a six-part magical ritual, and had the comforting feel of an old, familiar song as well as the eerie bluesy tune. Meditative episodes for string quartet are juxtaposed with shimmering passages for syncopated piano, vibraphone, and singing bowls.

But the most magical work was “My Fragile Moments” by Lithuanian composer Ramunas Mutikaitis. In a frame of muttering piano strings, the quartet replaced the bows with small sticks with which they struck their strings. The effect was imperceptibly quiet at times, and lay somewhere between the imagined sound of nerves stretched to the breaking point and a group of increasingly bold mice tiptoeing across the attic floor in the middle of the night.