Holland Festival
It's a tricky genre, which drone, or ambient. Or, what do you call the avant-garde cello experiments of the Icelandic Hildur Guðnadóttir (1982). Very slow, very repetitive, very minimalist. Abstract sound art that leans heavily on loops, resonations and buzzing, über syrupy tones that swell into a large, layered sound collage. All very much in place at the Dutch bastion for Difficult Music, the Bimhuis. But the real bombastic outburst fails to materialise. Alas.
Guðnadóttir, visibly a little nervous, sits down under the spotlight, and introduces her two science-fiction instruments, both made by Icelandic violin maker Hans Jóhannsson. Guðnadóttir: "He's a genius." One is a kind of deconstructed 'surround cello', seemingly little more than a wooden skeleton with a few strings. The cello is connected to three separate amplifying elements suspended at different heights in the hall, and three regular violins and a cello, scattered around the stage, which also vibrate along with the sounds. The result is an architectural surround effect, making it sound like we, the audience, are deep inside the belly of the cello. Indeed, a stroke of genius.
And Guðnadóttir plays the Halldorophone#5 - also a strange thing - that keeps the tone bobbing around internally after each strike of its own accord. Armed with a laptop, a switchboard (operated with her big toe), her voice and a mixing desk, Guðnadóttir conjures three compositions from her instruments. A short prelude, the piece 'Leyfdu ljosinu' and another unnamed work (as well as a very short encore).
First of all. It sounds great. Every cautious touch, or even the slightest touch of the instruments is audible, and there is a tremendous depth to the sound. The hall is dead silent. So quiet, in fact, that the heavy smoking piping of a visitor three rows away becomes irritating and you become afraid of sitting down or accidentally knocking over your glass.
But what she plays is very, very, very minimalist. She presses a string, a tone sounds, it echoes for minutes, and then another tone, two tones merge, and then she strokes a string, another tone. Everything buzzes around. She shakes her instrument, changing the tone. And she strikes another. And so on. Quite intriguing, and of course this genre is a matter of taste, but as a performance it is heaven-defyingly boring.
Some drone, like, for example, the magisterial work of Tim Hecker, often makes it so exciting is that it builds from nothing into an immense wall of sound that vibrates to the marrow of your bones. Despite its minimalism, that music constantly grabs you by the throat thanks to its small variations. That is not the case with Guðnadóttir.
At one point in 'Leyfdu ljosinu' runs her own voice and fuses the sound with her careful cello tones in a beautiful, layered soundscape. But never does the pounding go, and it all dies down again. So Guðnadóttir's performance ripples on, and after an hour I am outside again. Without a shudder.
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