Now this was more like it. Day three of the RSAMD's festival of new music, Plug, featured a defining triple bill, culminating in a rip-roaring performance by the RSAMD Big Band.
The key factor in Plug is that any young composer who has something to say can argue for a platform. The first concert was a cracker, which featured second year students, under the collective name Artundleistung, flexing their muscles in composition and performance before a capacity audience in the Guinness Room.
Six composers, six new pieces, with as many different styles of composition, some highly original instrumentation and no significant reliance on existing models: there was not a dud among them. John de Simone, one of the veteran students in the RSAMD, featured in the second concert of the night. His Dante's Inferno, a collaborative composition with members of de Simone's impressive Ensemble Thing, is a major piece that would grace a cutting-edge Radio 3 programme.
A staggering array of musical impressions of the Inferno, from chaos to pathos to grief, shrieking frustration, and utter desolation characterised de Simone's version of hell, with mind-bogglingly varied music from classical heavy metal to Verdi to ethereal electronic sound and plainchant.
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