Page 97 - FINAL_CBSO Media Highlights - Sept 2021 - Jan 2022_Neat

a kind encountered on the other side of Great Hampton Street. Such urban realism aside, it
was an ideal setting for an event designed to appeal to the young professionals living or
working in this area, and the capacity (300 or so) attendance was gratifying to club and
orchestra alike. Assorted street food and designer cocktails were some of the attractions
available on the night.

The live element consisted of two half-hour sets played by a quartet drawn from the CBSO,
situated on a raised central platform, and amplified so neither visibility nor audibility was
an issue. The first set enjoyed a lively start with Year of the Boar from Sufjan Stevens’s
zodiacal electronica Enjoy Your Rabbit, popularized in Michael Atkinson’s arrangement for
the Osso Quartet. One of the most arresting younger American composers, Caroline
Shaw has written widely for quartet but, while Entr’acte provided a showcase for the
musicians’ dexterity – not least cellist Arthur Boutillier – its fractured continuity tried the
patience of numerous punters. Not so those teasingly ironic excerpts from Anna
Meredith’s Songs for the M8 – with Sigur Rós’s evergreen Hoppípolla, as reimagined by
the Vitamin Quartet, a delightful signing-off.

The inward fervency of Stevens’s Year of our Lord began a second set that touched on more
Classical fare with a visceral take on the second movement of Shostakovich’s Eighth
Quartet, then a lucid First Contrapunctus from Bach’s The Art of Fugue that only gained in
eloquence on restarting after violinist Colette Overdijk had lost her battle with a dislodged
microphone. The undoubted highlight was Bryce Dessner’s Aheym (Homeward) – a
commission from the Kronos Quartet for the guitarist of The National, this is music whose
propulsive energy and tensile interplay were to the fore in a performance which brooked no
compromise. Violinist Kirstie Lovie and violist Amy Thomas then came into their own in
excerpts from the Danish String Quartet’s folk-song anthology Wood Works, which made
for a scintillating conclusion.