White Man Sleeps - Kevin Volans
Hunting Gathering - Kevin Volans
The music of Kevin Volans was featured in the penultimate concert in the Bank of Ireland Mostly Modern series. A large audience in the bank's arts centre in Foster Place, last Thursday lunchtime, heard some superlative playing, of pin-point persuasion, from the Duke String Quartet. These young British players have a close working relationship with Volans, who was born in South Africa in 1949 and lives in Ireland.
Volans explained that White Man Sleeps (1986) aims "to reconcile African and European aesthetics." Each of its five movements - all called "Dance" - intermingles ideas of European and African origin, is in at least three sections, and is economical with material.
Expansion is achieved by neat and truly inventive techniques of counterpoint and variation, with the last movement taking this to a reductio ad absurdum - ostinato playing for just viola and cello.
Hunting Gathering (1987) seems to derive its title from its references to pre-existing music - 26 or 27 pieces, Volens said - often presented over a walking-style bass. The references are rarely explicit. They tantalise, and work partly because sectional contrasts are well-judged in character and timing.
More striking than the differences between the pieces was the consistency of Volens's musical personality.
Direct ideas, varied overlapping in layered lines, terse rhythmic and melodic motifs, and sectional contrasts, all work together in a distinctive way.
Both pieces therefore make more than a nod towards minimalism. But they neatly dodge most of the dangers, in that technique is used to amplify the possibilities of inherently strong material.
