So there is figurative music. Music that, like a figurative painting, offers a fairly accurate depiction of reality. Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo's composition 'Hurricane Transcriptions' is just such a picture: 17 strings from the rather peerless ensemble Kaleidoskop do a nice impression of Hurricane Sandy that hit New York last year, and Lee Ranaldo sings a song to go with it.
Disappointing? Quite. Actually as disappointing as Greenwood & Dessner's performance at the Holland Festival last year, with Amsterdam Symfonietta. Even then, nothing beautiful actually emerged between the electric guitars of the pop musicians and the sounds of the classical ensemble.
Indeed, Lee Ranaldo's still limited number of effect pedals and rather dated instrumentation (an old Fender Rhodes, a peeling Strat and an acoustic guitar) share one and the same amplifier. So pressing such an effect pedal produces a rather loud click, and in the ambiance of the Muziekgebouw aan het IJ, this disturbs. Besides, Kaleidoskop's musicians don't need all that equipment to sound fuller, more frightening and quieter than Lee Ranaldo. With his cords.
How good Kaleidoskop is, they showed earlier that evening in a trio of compositions demonstrating the versatility of this 'solo ensemble'. Whether it is a musicologically extremely sound piece of atonal violin punches and glistening notes from Sebastian Claren's pen, or a piece of minimal drone By Julia Wolfe with which she won a timelapse accompanied film of harbour cranes (speaking of figurative): this one hipsters can do it all, in their carefully individually selected summer outfits.
Strangely, the roof of the Muziekgebouw did not come off until a piece of unadulterated Baroque virtuosity: a Scarlatti arrangement by composer Charles Avison. In their posture, their movement, their mutual contact and their charisma, the entire ensemble suddenly sprang up, where in the earlier works they mostly looked difficult.
So that hard look came all the way back at the world premiere of that Sandy painting by Lee Ranaldo. If the Kaleidoskop ensemble already looked difficult at that closing piece of the evening, Ranaldo himself looked completely difficult. Even in the passages where he sang into the microphone as a singer-songwriter, standing with guitar, he kept a particularly close eye on conductor André de Ridder. Logical, as he had written Something Very Difficult.
He was not telling his story, but singing his words on the right beat. This ensured that the content of his painting remained on stage, and did not make the leap to the audience.
And while I may be a huge fan of rock and pop myself, the moment Ranaldo took to his vintage Stratocaster with a bow, things got really embarrassing for a moment: there he was, bow in fist, rubbing the iron strings a bit pointlessly, while around him the storm raged from Kaleidoskop. Like a toddler with oversized football boots on the centre spot of the World Cup final.
What remains is an introduction to a virtuoso ensemble. For that is Kaleidoskop without question.
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