I love the clean, cool architecture of Kings Place, and admire its founders’ courage for building a new chamber music venue in a part of London that still has a rung or two to climb up the gentrification ladder. But I wonder if its unusual programming needs rethinking, now that this inaugural season is drawing to a close. Having a different individual or organisation “curate” concerts, a week at a time, is an unusual and intriguing idea. But on the evidence of the modestly attended concerts I’ve attended, London’s musical public is either bemused or unimpressed.
Last week’s offering, celebrating the 30th birthday of the fine chamber group Endymion, was typical. An admirably diverse array of music was laid out over four days. There were new pieces by many leading and fast-rising British composers, mingled with late-night chamber classics ranging from chunky Brahms to ethereal Morton Feldman, and educational activities as well. The performers included some of the top musicians in London. But the audiences? Strip away critics, composers, friends and families, and it looked as if the event hardly registered in London’s crowded musical calendar.
A pity. On Friday I heard some lively new pieces, superbly played. James Weeks’s The Peckham Harmony was quite unexpected: a primordial stomp, with half a dozen instruments each confined to a single repeated phrase, but cumulatively ecstatic in impact. Morgan Hayes’s Shatner’s Bassoon, based on the satirist Chris Morris’s infamous spoof about a time-warping drug, was equally absorbing: it really did seem to expand and elongate a single musical moment through several different dimensions.
I wasn’t so struck by Melinda Maxwell’s wispy Single Rock, which drew its pallid inspiration from a Ugandan outcrop. But Philip Venables’s Fight Music, evoking a community beating up an outsider (the poor whimpering cello) was brutally effective, and Simon Bainbridge’s Two Trios haunting, ghostly and subtle.
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What’s more, the concert also included atmospheric and well-crafted pieces by two A-level music students — Hannah Robbins and Roksana Nikoopour — who have taken part in Endymion workshops. All commendable, as usual at Kings Place. But too much like a private club.