ELISION Ensemble - Aesthetics

Aesthetics

ELISION's musical aesthetic is at the complex and virtuosic end of the contemporary classical compositional spectrum. A strong element of this music is the sheer difficulty of its performance; multiple compositional layers, complex and heavily detailed musical notation pose significant interpretative challenges. Interplay between the resultant unpredictabilities and performative decisions required by complex multi-layered and paradoxical strands of information embedded in notational practice can lead to a frustration for the player, or to a fascination born of engagement in the act of "what it is to make music". The latter is a key aspect for the members of ELISION; a further is the physicality of performance, the intimate connection between the musician and the instrument.

"The ELISION ensemble … celebrated its 10th birthday with a characteristic sequence of salto mortale items, proving yet again that ‘impossible’ is a relative word. Its repertoire, once relatively eclectic, has now become sharply focused: both technically and aesthically, it specialises in ‘tough cookies’. Typically, though not exclusively, these tend to be rhythmically highly complex, with dense webs of wide-flung micro-tonal melodies, and the same horror of rests that one finds in Fauré's later chamber works. In such a context, even a new cello solo by Stockhausen (Violoncello aus Orchester—Finalisten) sounded meek and mild."

The ensemble has commissioned and premiered new works from Richard Barrett, Chris Dench, Brian Ferneyhough, James Dillon, Michael Finnissy, Aaron Cassidy, Evan Johnson, Timothy McCormack and others associated with the so-called new complexity movement. A very long-term collaborator is Australian composer Liza Lim who has written three operas and over twenty smaller works for ELISION and its members. Other composers who have written for the ensemble include Franco Donatoni, Aldo Clementi, Karlheinz Essl, Volker Heyn, Richard Rijnvos and Australians John Rodgers, Timothy O'Dwyer, Dominik Karski, David Young, Brendan Colbert and Michael Smetanin.