Percussionists are classical music’s original multitaskers. But even by their standards, Colin Currie is a virtuosic outlier. For portions of the world premiere of Tansy Davies’s percussion concerto Earth Works, Currie sat almost motionless at the kit except from the elbow down, as he sent a complex, glitchy weave of cymbal and drum skittering across an orchestral texture that ran on an altogether more monumental timescale. An arm shot out from behind a screen of tubular bells to reach a hi-hat cymbal amid an invisible juggling act dominated by what sounded like cowbells. There was a passage centred on an upturned dustbin and a tiny gong that might have been a small dangling frying pan. There were multiple just-in-time dashes back to a drumkit.
Behind Currie, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales looped melodic cells and exposed strata of flutter-tongued brass and delicate veils of strings, thick wodges of double bass, searing woodwind and elemental rumbles of orchestral percussion rolling across the stage.
That thrilling premiere was sandwiched in the first of BBCNOW’s two appearances at this year’s Aldeburgh festival by a stately account of John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine (more classic car on a Sunday than F1) and a no-holds-barred performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 10. In the latter, conductor Kevin John Edusei stood as if in the eye of the storm – cool, efficient, elegant – leading the orchestra from a desolate opening via screaming woodwind and vicious strings to a devastatingly loud pelt to the end, BBCNOW on blistering form even in the sauna conditions at Snape Maltings.
Energy levels were lower elsewhere. The world premiere of Alex Ho and Rockey Sun Keting’s Chronicle – a kind of a cappella song-cycle about the lives of six female Chinese poets – was a meditative, low-light affair intercut with white-noise electronics. Celebrated as one of the UK’s finest choirs, Sansara was exquisitely polished in a score that blends English folk music, the Anglican choral tradition and hints at Chinese idioms.
The tranquility of Orford Church was another counterbalance to Snape Maltings’s bright-as-a-lemon acoustic. It couldn’t entirely mask the unstable intonation that marred some of the Sacconi Quartet’s programme, but their performance of Freya Waley-Cohen’s Dances, Songs and Hymns for Friendship was a joy, the players revelling in Waley-Cohen’s exploration of how four musical voices might intertwine, divide and coalesce.
More Waley-Cohen featured in BBCNOW’s second concert. The world premiere of The Dreamer, the concerto composed for her sister, the violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen, opened with folksy double-stops from the soloist. There were rhapsodic passages as the violinist soared and looped – her fingers flying – before being overwhelmed by the orchestra. Some of those waves were dramatically effective and surely intentional; others a result of the challenging acoustic. Amid the bells-and-whistles virtuosity, flashes of simplicity stood out: the soloist floating ethereally over a bed of meandering whole-tone strings; tonal chords gleaming as one colour among many.
The BBCNOW and Edusei brought their visit to a close with Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. Edusei’s tempos started steady but were always flexible. The most Romantic moments bloomed voluptuously, while rhythms were crisp and charismatic. Towards the end, Edusei raised his fist through the last, almost painfully loud climax, releasing a vast gong crash before bedding into the final exhilarating rhythmic tattoo. Even the musicians were left smiling.