Counterpoise

This unusual programme by an unconventional ensemble of violin, trumpet, saxophone and piano brought together film, music and speech and featured two world premieres. Ross Lorraine's Not More Lovely revived the genre of melodrama, or music accompanying speech, as occasionally practised by composers such as Mozart and Strauss. Based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Oval Portrait, the result was a harmless piece of laidback gothic, the music itself adding little more than distant atmosphere. Jean Hasse's new score for Watson and Webber's 1928 avant-garde short The Fall of the House of Usher took a more interventionist approach, aligning its spiky poetry neatly with dreamlike imagery. More substantial was John Casken's Deadly Pleasures, another melodrama, with narrator Johanna Lonsky bringing central sophistication to a text left unfinished by Pushkin and completed by DM Thomas. The perverse scenario describes Cleopatra offering to sleep with three men if they agree to be executed the following day. Each of the lovers is represented by an instrument: the soldier Flavius by Deborah Calland's trumpet, the poetic Kriton by Alexandra Wood's violin, the unnamed third man (who turns out to be Cleopatra's son, and who escapes his fate) by Kyle Horch's saxophone. Casken provided some skilful characterisation, but even he could not turn a story that registers as a sick fantasy into something more rewarding. The result showed what an awkward medium melodrama is. Utilising footage from FW Murnau's German expressionist classic, Mauricio Kagel's MM51/Nosferatu provided a stunning showpiece for pianist Iain Farrington, and achieved a fine balance between horror and humour.