London Sinfonietta/RAM Manson Ensemble, Royal Festival Hall - music review

Karlheinz Stockhausen, who died in 2007, was the nutty professor of experimental modernism. Licht, his seven-opera cycle lasting nearly 30 hours, out-Wagners Wagner, while his Helicopter String Quartet has the players airborne in separate helicopters. Gruppen ("Groups", from 1957) lasts only 20 minutes and all 100 or so players are earthbound but divided into three orchestras, each needing its own conductor. It's rarely performed, so a nearly full house heard it as part of the Fifties segment of The Rest is Noise festival.

The orchestras (formed from London Sinfonietta players and students from the Royal Academy of Music) generate deep sonic perspectives but tiny details register with clarity, ideas passing unpredictably between the orchestras. While the musical activity is ceaseless, there are few moments of maximum volume. Like a Jackson Pollock painting made musical, tiny splashes of sound register within an overwhelming sonic wash. Even though every moment is shaped by Stockhausen’s score, the music feels improvisatory, implosion held at bay by conductors Martyn Brabbins, Baldur Brönnimann and Geoffrey Patterson. They needed to keep a close eye on each other as well as on the players.

Gruppen: so good they played it twice, once to open the concert, once to close it. Second time around, different events caught the ear. It wasn’t all Stockhausen, however. Two pieces by his contemporary Luigi Nono made the perfect complement. Whereas Gruppen provokes auditory overload, Nono’s Canti per 13 and Polifonica-Monodia-Ritmica force the ear to focus sound by single sound. Not a note is wasted, every moment matters; the effect was both sensuous and melancholic.