Home listening - digging up the past with a masterful flourish

The Guardian 0

Two ensembles resurrect the sounds – and instruments – from another era. Elsewhere, the eternally charismatic Leonard Bernstein

• From ancient to modern at the flick of a switch: with music from over two millennia ago and music written yesterday, our sonic choices are disorientingly diverse. There is little in common between Apollo & Dionysus, the last product of the European Music Archaeology Project (Delphian) and the 12 Ensemble’s Resurrection (Sancho Panza), except that they are both creative responses to their material. Commendably, Apollo & Dionysus does not claim to be reconstructing the sounds of classical antiquity, but aims to create something more ambitious, “an idea of what it might have sounded like to be in the past”. I bet it wasn’t quite as pure as this.

The reconstructed instrument technology is impressive, from the growling trombone-like lituus and the eloquent twin-piped aulos, to the water-driven hydraulis organ. (You have to be careful using the originals, as the trumpets from Tutankhamun’s tomb fell apart when played.) The actual music is so speculative as to remain puzzling: I was convinced by Stef Conner’s Delphic Paean, while the duet aulodia is pure Steve Reich.