Benjamin’s Pied Piper fable and Kurtag’s nihilistic fragments dazzle eye, ear and brain.

Sydney Chamber Opera, Carriageworks, Sydney

January 17, 2014

This is Sydney Chamber Opera’s first year as part of the Sydney Festival and this eclectic double bill proves that they are entirely deserving of their place at the top table. What’s more, a clever pair of Australian premieres from living composers gives us much food for thought and all in under the space of one hour.

György Kurtag combines the sparse economy of Webern with the colour and occasional eccentricity of his fellow Hungarian György Ligeti. His 1993-1998 work, …pas à pas-nulle part… (or … step by step, nowhere…) is a setting for string trio, percussion and solo voice of fragmentary thoughts scrawled down by Samuel Beckett on scraps of paper in the 1970s. The dot dot dots are key to the meaning here as what Kurtag is drawn to are flashes of things glimpsed out of context – snippets with neither beginning nor ending. The tantalising point of it all is that, just like our own selves, we don’t know where these thoughts have come from and even less, where they are going.

The music is almost a chamber...