The lighting is dusky and subdued. The clothes and staging are straight out of a BBC period drama. The audience chatters and cameras click with a rapidity that would be distracting were it not for the triumphant, churning Reliquary by British composer Ilan Eshkeri.
This is classical music in the 21st century: the soundtrack to a Burberry show. Reliquary is carefully, calculatedly dramatic. There’s no slack and certainly no dourness in the chamber piece. There is, after all, something to be sold here.
I enjoyed the piece and the presentation, in spite of the slight commercial odor of it. (At least it’s not this bad.) In the best light we can simply call it the fusing of two pointed artistic visions. I think that’s something I can live with.
Classical Dark Arts 