Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival review – ghostly echoes, fearless voices and the rattle of milk frothers

To the uninitiated, November may not seem the ideal time for a trip to Huddersfield. I arrived to find the Pennines under a thick blanket of cloud and the temperature hovering around zero. So it’s just as well that music is a largely indoor pursuit: since 1978, autumn here has meant the annual influx of big names in experimental and avant garde music for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival. Once a draw for postwar heavyweights including Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen and John Cage, the HCMF remains the UK’s largest international festival dedicated to new music, with more than 30 world and UK premieres on this year’s programme. The opening night featured three. In Huddersfield Town Hall, London-based Explore Ensemble sat in a pool of spotlights, the magnificent Victorian space made intimate. A new version of Canon Mensurabilis by Lithuanian composer Rytis Mažulis saw repetitive shimmers of microtonal dissonance interrupted by sparse octaves and fifths. The performance’s astonishing precision blurred the line between acoustic sound and an electronic track that gradually took over. Bryn Harrison’s The Spectre … Is Always Already a Figure of That Which is to Come worked a still more persuasive magic. Opening with what sounded like a creaking seesaw scored for chamber ensemble, shards of acoustic material were followed by ghostly echoes on a prerecorded electronic track. There were beautiful details – rough shivers of violin tremolo, flutters of bass clarinet, pedal-washed piano circling – but the work’s ultimate payoff came in its longer arc. The feedback loop gradually reversed so that the musicians responded to their electronic counterparts – the process of haunting complete and utterly compelling. The late-night concert saw venerable French outfit Dedalus Ensemble present the UK premiere of Motor Tapes by this year’s HCMF composer in residence Sarah Hennies. A subtly weighted drum roll launched an hour-long exploration of rhythm and timbre inspired by a study of human brain activity. An array of individual effects – knuckle-knocks, mouthy squelches and chinks of metal-on-metal – phased gently across the ensemble. A lengthy sequence in which the musicians applied milk frothers to various surfaces sounded like being in a room full of miniature jackhammers. By the time the piece ended with rapid switches between hushed plastic scrunching, key shaking and twig rattling – a dead ringer for an audience member digging in their bag – several people around me had nodded off. Sampling the range of what counts as “new music” is, of course, one of the pleasures of HCMF. Ninety this year, with albums of his music lodged permanently in the classical charts, Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is hardly avant garde. But the Carice Singers’ performance of his Sarah Was Ninety Years Old in their lunchtime programme was a welcome reminder of Pärt’s daring. Using only four pitches, three voices, a percussionist and an organ, the piece lapses repeatedly into silence – managed with absolute calm by conductor George Parris. Where the Pärt demanded fearless solo singing, the UK premiere of Žibuoklė Martinaitytė’s Aletheia showcased the lucid, full-bodied sound and fine-grained blend of what has become one of the UK’s most adventurous and accomplished choirs. • Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival continues until 30 November