Ensemble Plus Minus, Kings Place

Or should that be plus-minus ensemble at King's Place? Or +/- @ kingsplace? This sort of typographical quandry is par for the course in the world of Modern Music.

And this gig was definitely Modern Music, with capitals and all. I felt like I'd been transported back to the late 80s. Within seconds of arriving I saw my first Man Dressed In Black.

When I was a nipper, there was a certain set of clichés about Modern Music and the people who went to hear it. Men (always men), almost certainly dressed in black, either bald as a coot or hirsute, possibly of questionable hygiene, never smiling. This is Modern Music. It's Serious. It's Art. NO SMILING. Angular, difficult, hard edged music. Music for Men. Men who smoke and shun deodorant. Men who probably write similar music themselves.

If you believe what you read on the internet (and why wouldn't you?) this sort of thing's yesterday's news. We're no longer scared of music written by non-dead people, we all love each other and even know girls. There were actually some girls there, but they tended not to be talking to the boys, a bit like a school disco. I did see a couple of people smiling, so things haven't remained entirely static since 1989 for these folks.

(I'm uncomfortably aware, by the way, that if you drew a Venn diagram of people who fit into the category I'm talking about, I'd have at least one foot inside it. A lot of these guys are dressed like 80s-90s students, i.e. exactly like I did when I was a student, and sometimes still do. Although I rarely wear all-black these days, it feels weird when I inadvertently do.)

Like Goths and Catholicism, though, the old guard survives, and you'll find them at a gig like this. The particularly fearsome man who sat stiff-backed, hands at the ready to applause the second the Xenakis finished to show he knows when it ends (and is therefore better than the rest of us), paunch nearly covered by grubby shirt and leather jacket, the gentle smell of stale fag smoke wafting gently from his person, was only the most striking example of this Lost World of Modern Music fans (as in fanatics). Gruffly barking "Bravo!" to show he understands and appreciates Difficult Music more than the rest.

Back in the day you'd have gone to a church or a school drama studio to hear this sort of stuff. Fortunately King's Place Hall two has much the same vibe as a drama studio, so there's some continuity there. The presentation is resolutely old-school, too. No talking to the audience or anything like that, just a procession of musicians coming on, playing, and walking off again. This is Difficult Music. If you don't understand it there's no point trying to explain it to you.

I've heard pieces by Xenakis that knocked me out, and others that bored me senseless. Neither of the works that began and ended the first half were at either extreme, though I preferred the piano solo Evryali to the violin and piano piece Dikhthas. Evryali came over like a cross between Ligeti's Piano Etudes and Ustvolskaya's Sonatas without being quite as compelling as either. In between came Rebecca Saunders' Vermilion. Saunders is published by Peters Edition, who despite their signing of the likes of Jonathan Dove in recent years will always be for me the publisher non plus ultra of Difficult Modern Music, printed in Very Big Scores. The scores in this case were surprisingly normal-sized, but it was still definitely the sort of piece where everyone plays from a score. Saunders clearly has a fine ear for texture, and there was much to admire in that respect, but I'm afraid it left me cold, neither seducing nor provoking me. It was there and it was OK, but I didn't feel any sense of its existence as being necessary.

It was the second half I was actually there for. I like Bryn Harrison's music, but there's no getting away from the fact that it's basically a massive rip-off of Morton Feldman. Talent borrows, genius steals, they say, which puts him firmly in the talented camp. If you're going to borrow on this scale though, you may as well do it well, and Harrison (Head of Composition at Huddersfield University) does. I do wish he'd reference something other than other pieces of his in his programme notes though. Unless you're deeply acquainted with his work it's unhelpful and irritating. The lengths he went to to avoid mentioning Feldman were amusing though. Repetitions in Extended Time was commissioned by the Huddersfield Festival.

I find myself wondering though. The Xenakis pieces are, what, 30-40 years old now? Which is old enough that the style has acquired a comfortably quaint, nostalgic patina. Is there some weird thing happening here where composers like that are for people like this what Beethoven and Mahler are for mainstream classical audiences? Something old and familiar, that they feel comfortable with (and therefore almost certainly no longer understand)? And is the Feldmanesque trope now becoming so common (there a a lot of other composers ripping him off, myself included) that it's in danger of going the same way? I'm certain that one day that style will seem just as quaint and cute as Xenakis does now. I'm sure the New Music Men see themselves as keepers of a flame. If there's one thing that's definitely better now than 40 years ago it's that there's no style police telling us what sort of music we can and can't write or listen to, so in a way it's reassuring that they're still about. But maybe they're just as hung up on nostalgia as everyone else. The trouble with writing the music of the future is that it tends to skip the present and go straight to being the music of the past.

Prom 68: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (RAH)

The Vienna Philharmonic have one hell of a history behind them, and a tradition that stretches way back. This isn't necessarily a good thing: it's only within the last five years that they've abandoned the tradition that women may not play in the orchestra. I recall Mahler's definition of tradition as "sloppy habits". They make a fabulous sound, rich and warm and unlike any other orchestra. But it's also a comfortable and slightly lazy sound. And that doesn't entirely suit Bartók, whose Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta opens this concert. They play with astonishing virtuosity, and conductor Daniel Barenboim brings out a wealth of detail, but it lacks the edge that's needed. The same can be said of Kodály's Dances from Galánta, which is given a surprisingly soporific performance, which nevertheless manages to whip itself into a lively finale.

They play better in Enescu's Romanian Rhapsody No.1; a shame, because it's a less substantial piece than either Bartók or Kodály. The piece that comes off best in this (for the VPO) unusual programme is, curiously, the most modern: the slowly shifting textures of Ligeti's Atmosphères seem to suit the VPO's lush sound very well, and I find myself wondering if this is because its glacial thought processes resemble those of Bruckner, whose music is part of the orchestra's soul.

Barenboim is an astonishing man, buzzing with energy that belies his 64 years. The VPO are an astonishing band, too, rich in tone and dazzling in virtuosity and style. They play an encore, something by Johann Strauss (I presume). They play it wonderfully. That's both what's great and wrong with them.

Proms 53 & 54 (RAH)

"I could tell everyone thought it was great, but I just didn't get it."

Well, Bruckner's like that, and it took me years to get him. Once I've got something, though, I tend to forget how much work it took to find my way in, so it was a salutary reminder when my companion at Prom 54, at which Bernard Haitink and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performed his Eighth Symphony, came out with this conclusion. Bruckner is hard work, especially when you're stuck in a hall for an hour and a half, and it's a credit to him that although she was left bemused, she was also surprised that it had been that long. My first impressions of Bruckner as a lad were that nothing happened, and it didn't happen for a very long time. My mature impressions are actually pretty much the same, only now I think that this is a Good thing. It seems superfluous to say that the performance was superb, but I shall say so nonetheless, because it was.

It's not often I have the luxury of going to a late-night Prom, so it was especially fortunate that one of the few occasions when circumstances allowed me to stay for the late shift that we should be treated to the wonderful Pierre-Laurent Aimard performing some of Ligeti's wonderful Piano Studies. These works are real gems, mind-bending in their complexity, yet also generous in their approachability, and I can never tire of hearing them, especially in the hands of such a wonderful player as Aimard. Before this, he took on the role of conductor for a romp through Haydn's 102nd Symphony with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. This juxtaposition emphasised the generosity and humanity of both composers. Next to these, Beethoven, whose 2nd Piano Concerto finished the concert, seemed overbearing, though this may have been down to the fact that we were tiring rapidly by this point. They played it beautifully though, and those parts where Beethoven wasn't intent on showing off were beautiful. These two concerts constituted a marathon, and we struggled to stay awake on the train home, though our exhaustion was tempered with a sense of worlds traversed.