**Young Voices from the Margins**
**The Hoxton Thirteen: New works by thirteen young composers**
Composers’ Ensemble; Peter Wiegold, conductor.
NMC D 076. Format, 67:22.
What to make of this curious document from the turn of the millennium? Thirteen composers, most still in their twenties when these pieces were written, all given the same brief—five minutes, small mixed ensemble, Brighton Festival deadline. The result feels less like a cohesive recording than a snapshot of a particular moment in British composition, captured with all its contradictions intact.
The disc opens with Tansy Davies’s “Patterning,” and immediately one senses a composer unafraid of texture. There’s real grit here, a willingness to let instruments scrape and breathe in ways that feel physical rather than merely cerebral. Jonathan Powell’s “Saturnine” follows—darker, more introspective, though the brevity of the format prevents the piece from fully settling into its own gloom.
Mary Bellamy’s “Constellations” reaches for something more expansive, and you can hear the ambition straining against the five-minute constraint. It’s like watching someone try to paint a mural on a postcard. Morgan Hayes’s “Buoy” bobs along with a certain nervous energy, while Sam Hayden’s “Partners in Psychopathology“—now there’s a title that promises more than it quite delivers—shows the kind of technical assurance you’d expect from the “elder statesman” of this cohort at the ripe old age of thirty-two.
The more accessible pieces fare better, frankly. Jonathan Cole’s “Caught” has an immediacy that some of the more complex works lack. Rachel Leach’s “Green Plastic, Pink Oil and Water” is genuinely delightful—there’s wit here, a sense of play that feels refreshing after the earnestness of some earlier tracks. The instrumental colors shimmer and slide in ways that suggest a composer with a real ear for timbre.
Alastair Stout’s “Deep in your Coral Caves” practically drips with impressionistic haze—one half-expects Debussy to emerge from the mist, bewildered but approving. Julia Simpson’s “A Beast of Burden” confirms what the Leach piece suggested: that humor and lightness need not be antithetical to serious composition. Why do so many young composers forget this?
Oscar Bettison’s “Cadence” takes the minimalist gambit—a single descending phrase, repeated, varied, worried over like a loose tooth. It works, mostly, though by the end one craves some harmonic resolution that never quite arrives. Richard Baker’s “Los Rábanos” remains elusive even after multiple hearings; I’m not entirely convinced the composer knew what he wanted to say, or perhaps he knew too well and the five-minute format simply couldn’t contain it.
Alison Kay’s “Rat-Race” lives up to its title—all scurrying anxiety and nervous gestures. It captures something of urban life at century’s end, though whether that makes it worth repeated listening is another question entirely.
The disc concludes with Deborah Pritchard’s “Chanctonbury Ring,” a "scherzo" that finally lets the Composers’ Ensemble show what they can really do. The instrumental virtuosity required here is considerable, and Peter Wiegold’s players deliver with evident relish. It’s the most purely enjoyable piece on the disc, which makes one wonder if it should have opened rather than closed the program.
The performances throughout are committed, even when the material doesn’t quite justify that commitment. The Composers’ Ensemble plays with the kind of technical precision and stylistic flexibility that this repertoire demands. The disc, made at St. Silas in Chalk Farm, captures the intimate scale of these works without making them sound claustrophobic.
But here’s the difficulty: what purpose does such a compilation serve beyond documentation? As a survey of British composition circa 2000, it’s valuable enough. As a listening experience, it’s fitful—some genuine discoveries amid considerable couplings. The enforced uniformity of format and duration works against the composers as often as it helps them. One comes away wishing for the chance to hear what these composers might achieve with fewer constraints and more time to develop their ideas.
Twenty years on, it would be instructive to revisit these names and see which have fulfilled their early promise. But that’s the treacherous game of spotting talent in its larval stage—you’re as likely to be wrong as right.
For those keeping score of British new music, this is essential listening. For everyone else, it’s an occasionally rewarding but ultimately uneven collection that captures a moment without quite transcending it.
