So, that's two ill-conceived messages in a row that have been SCGrewed up.

hello everyone!

reports from people involved in the performance add weight these impressions that Diego was not fully in command of the score in the way that Patrick Bailey was. I wouldn't know, but they would. I'm very thankful though for his wonderful moment of theatre when the score started slipping off the stand, repeatedly...

thanks all for this interesting discussion. I for my part feel sympathetic to Richard's reservations. I too had a very mixed evening. I was expecting to be bowled over (expectations, expectations...), having got to know and love the piece from the Metzmacher recording a few years ago (and not having listened to it since). On the night, I got very involved in the set pieces such as Holderlin, First Interlude and Three Voices A, but overall could not settle into the pacing or the rhetoric, which time and again I found myself becoming infuriated by, feeling the pacing to be misjudged (as Ian postulates) with regard to the material so that that it seemed portentous, massively overextended, empty, washed out, PASSIONless indeed. Further, I felt manipulated into a sense of awe and rebelled against that - the piece's attitude to me as a Listener was oppressive, claustrophobic, hectoring ('Listen!' - well, what do you expect?!). (I kept wishing Cage would come on and pop the balloon.) It seemed to me that the length and the pacing and the whole discourse of the work didn't grow out of the material, it was just imposed on it. The material itself, too - (pitches, sonic constructions etc - all those mystical augmented fourths and perfect fifths!) - just left me cold, felt old, dated, expressively tired and etiolated. I guess I just wasn't 'having the experience', and I was troubled by that, as I thought I would have. I didn't feel engaged on a human level, not, basically, sufficiently inspired or engaged to Listen with the new consciousness Nono implies. I ended up feeling I didn't need this any more, that things had moved on and left the work behind. At least for this Listener.

I'm sorry! especially to those who loved it - but anyway, I wanted to contribute a few first impressions. I'm going to listen to my recording again soon and have another go.