The London Sinfonietta's Inventions project is a development of the ensemble's former State of the Nation series, an annual showcase for new music by new composers. The format has changed, somewhat. The works of emerging composers are now juxtaposed with those of established figures, in this instance Simon Holt and David Sawer. The BBC Singers, meanwhile, have been drafted in to expand the project's range to include choral works as well as instrumental material.
The Singers' programme presented Sawer's Sounds alongside six newly commissioned pieces, not all of them successful. Elspeth Brooke and Julian Allwood placed themselves at a disadvantage by announcing that they were using poems previously - and in the event, preferably - set by Berio and Rachmaninov respectively. The most distinguished contribution was Peter McAleer's Doorkeeper, which blends spirituals with overlapping phrases reminiscent of Tallis in a demand for religious and political unity.
The two concerts of instrumental music similarly revealed divergences in quality. Anna Meredith's Axeman - poised between joke and nightmare - turns a solo bassoonist into a fanatical rock musician, while Tansy Davies's Neon evokes tawdry urbanity in music of dangerous vibrancy. James Olsen's Chameleon Concerto, however, had a fragile shallowness in its exploration of tintinnabulatory sonorities, and Mary Bellamy's Within Dreams 1 felt discursive despite her startling use of instrumental textures.
Hearing Holt and Sawer together inevitably brought out the similarities and contrasts between the two. Each has a dark, penetrating world view. Holt's influences are predominantly Mediterranean and his music blends lyricism with violence, above all in Eco-Pavan, in which a spectral instrumental ensemble echoes a piano solo that is by turns courtly and explosive. Sawer's imagination is rooted in Austro-German expressionism. Cat's-Eye combines the pungency of Kurt Weill with the sensuality of Berg. Rebus, receiving its UK premiere, uses fragments of dance music to create a Kafkaesque maze of sound that is both nerve-racking and beautiful.
