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Two concerts from the festival’s fourth day included tributes to Oliver Knussen and Harrison Birtwistle alongside intriguing electronic shapeshifting from a contemporary ensemble based in Wales
Wheeling Past the Stars (NMC), the title taken from his settings of texts by Rabindranath Tagore, could be an exemplar for life: many styles and traditions living freely, fruitfully, distinctly, in the mind of one person. Born in Delhi in 1952, UK-based, Vir combines the Indian classical music of his formative years and the western tradition he later embraced, studying with Peter Maxwell Davies and Oliver Knussen.
Raga Fields (2014), conductor Enno Poppe, forges the improvisatory framework of a raga, for sarod soloist (the virtuosic Soumik Datta), with notated passages for 17 ensemble players, here Klangforum Wien. The result is meditative and sonically inventive, neither crossover nor pastiche. The Tagore cycle, for cello (Ulrich Heinen) and soprano (Patricia Auchterlonie), sets four sharply contrasting poems. Auchterlonie’s assured coloratura and Heinen’s springy pizzicato, delicate harmonics and rushes of glissando act in sensuous dialogue.