Evocations: New Music by

Harry Sdraulig and Carol Dixon

A review by Tom Attard
It was a warm pre-summer evening on the 20th of October when this fine selection of new
music was premiered.
The composers were obviously humbled that their works were to be performed in front of
an audience of friends, family and teachers. They thanked everyone for coming and
(got) on with it!.
The first piece was Evocations, also the title of the program. It was written by Dixon who
used a painting of a woman dancing by the seaside as inspiration for this work. The piano
and flute duo started with big dissonant piano chords, reminiscent of Debussy, with lyrical
flute soaring over the top. The piece developed into something more tonal. There were
musical motifs that evocatively produced images of allowing (coloured cloth) to fly like a
sail as mentioned in the well written program notes describing the dancing woman. This
was my favourite part of the piece. The composition ended, surprisingly, somewhat
chaotically. Dixon cunningly held back the dynamic til the last few bars which was very
effective. The fourteen minute work was played convincingly by Andrew Frampton on
Piano and Sin Williams on flute.
We were then treated to an organ and flugelhorn duet by Sdraulig, Ballade. This was
performed by Timothy Mallis and Joel Walmsley respectively. It struck me, as it always does
when I hear flugelhorn in the flesh, what a beautiful sounding instrument it is. The
composer took full advantage of this having three expressive cadenza passages with
organ pedal tone underneath. The duo started ominously, the flugelhorn wandering
around a Phrygian scale while the organ held a pedal tone. In between the cadenza
sections the organ had some solo passages. They were almost always quite dissonant which
juxtaposed with the other sections was striking. The six minute piece really demonstrated
the expressive capabilities of the flugelhorn and was the highlight of the program for me.
Finally another piano and flute duo was performed, this time composed by Sdraulig.
Written in four movements, it was a similar length to the first duo, however was contrasting
in most other ways. The first eerie movement, entitled Prelude, focused on the high ranges
of each instrument and had an unsettled feel. The second, Badinerie, was frantic and
described as a dance in the program. Im not sure that I could imagine people dancing to
such a piece of music but I was drawn to the Gershwin like piano chords that featured.
Next we heard Romanza which was expressive and lyrical, much different from the
previous two movements and an enjoyable contrast. The last started extremely softly and
build to a virtuosic and epic finale to round off the work. I enjoyed the performances of
again Andrew Frampton on the piano but this time with Kim Falconer playing flute.
This was a high quality concert with near flawless performances of striking new music.