The major train-inspired piece of the first half of the 20th century was Honegger's Pacific 231. Steve Reich's Different Trains of 1988 showed that railways and locomotives still exerted their particular pull on composers' imagination over half a century later. And Donnacha Dennehy has added his carriage to the musical train with Derailed, for ensemble and tape, the first work to be premiered in 2000 by the Crash Ensemble.
In an Irish context, it seems entirely appropriate that the source of inspiration should have been that most frequently talked-about of railway phenomena, the notoriously antiquated Dublin to Sligo line. Although the composer took recording equipment on the journey a number of times to sample its unique sounds, his work turns out to be more abstract in effect than either Honegger or Reich. The instrumental possibilities of the ensemble (harpsichord, flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, double bass) are not seriously explored, and the overall effect at Sunday's concert was rather flatter than the experience of the Sligo train itself.
The evening's other major ensemble piece was John Godfrey's Differing sobriety, a work which interestingly explores the dislocational intersections of similar material, but at rather too great a length.
Stephen Gardner's Mutable Sea suffered from the top and bottom-heavy amplification that marred much of the evening's music. Gardner's essay in sea evocation seems to call for the acoustic blending of a normal concert environment rather than the separated, cutting edges of Sunday's presentation. Steve Reich's Vermont Counterpoint for flutes (Susan Doyle) and taped flutes, was again given amplification that provided lots of presence, but little body, a fault that's only partly that of the composer.
Iannis Xenakis's short 1994 tape piece, S.709, exhibited the composer's typical relentlessness in sounds that brought to mind the chirping of demented birds and the threatening buzz of a large electronic insect.
The mere fact, let alone the nature of the amplification of Xenakis' 1992 cello and piano piece, Paille in the Wind, must stand as one of the biggest artistic blunders the Crash Ensemble has yet made. And close behind would come Natasha Lohan's wide-of-the-mark vocal handling of the pastiche, lounge-music Gertrude Stein settings of William Brooks' Medley. All in all, the Crash Ensemble's courageous venture into the interesting space of the Temple Theatre was not one of their finer outings.
