Page 468 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

of the household and suddenly has eyes for her surroundings. Finally, she builds a lifeboat, but even
with that there is no escape.

For the macabre parable, Coult has invented music that is two-dimensional but very lively and colorful
in detail. The instruments of the London Sinfonietta combine unobtrusively with loudspeaker sounds,
the ticking rhythms of the percussion instruments, which haunt the score, contrast with the slowly
unfolding sound processes. Anna Dennis, who shone last year as Empress Rodelinda at the
International Handel Festival in Göttingen, has a brilliant role here as Violet, Richard Burkhard as her
stuffy husband goes along powerfully.

The abysmal play, which was staged two years late due to the pandemic, will have its German
premiere next October at the Ulm Theater. The current time reference in "Houses Slide", a concert
installation by Laura Bowler, who was almost the same age as Coult, was artistically less fruitful. In
the background, thirteen cyclists provide a more visual than acoustic attraction, in front the London
Sinfonietta under Sian Edwards goes through the usual catalog of noise sounds, and a soothing text
marathon on the subject of climate catastrophe trickles out of the loudspeakers. A singer, also on a
bicycle saddle, transposes the message into panic register. While the cyclists cycle on undeterred, the
composer lets herself be heard in a vocal performance with a warning voice. With a Fridays-for-
Future concert hall demo like this, she's running into open doors among the younger audience.