It's unsurprising that
Sandglasses evades easy description: a combination of intense sound and more reflective video projection, the experience of the work is more important than subsequent analysis. And for its talk of being based on an exploration of "the acoustic, visual and symbolic meanings of sand-timers,"
Sandglasses has little in common with programmatic compositions that try to evoke scenes or narratives. The scale of the performance - four cellist, encased in huge cylinders, surrounded by rotating and, at times, suffocating projections - and the gradual build in volume says very little about those small, quiet objects that sit on the table and count down to the perfect boiled egg.
Juste Janultyte's composition - essentially a microtonal drone that uses the full range of the cello's register, from harmonic squeak to full-bodied baritone - convinces as a classical analogue to the rock experimentation of bands like Earth, who throw the immensity of the metal riff into a deep freeze. Minimal, but not in the sense of Glass' repetitions, it allows the differences in the speed and attack of each cello to expose details of sound, unfamiliar harmonies and, as the volume increases, the power of amplified strings. It avoids traditional
In isolation, the music is an endurance test, a display of compositional bravura that relies on the skill of the four cellists of the Gaida Ensemble. The projections, although tending towards a genric presentation of distressed surfaces, the occasional magnified grain of sand or water dripping down an eroded metal, add a layer of disturbing decay, illustrating the sound on an impressive scale. Rotating around the cellists, encasing them then releasing them, it propels
Sandglasses into a more sinister intensity.
Unfortunately, these gestures do not support the programme notes' insistence that this is in any way about sand-timers. The scale is too vast, the music too ferocious, more suited to the end of times than a short wait for dinner. Juste Janulyte is clearly fascinated by the way than sound and vision can be integrated, and creates an unholy, immersive spectacle. But until some description is found - the notes fall into that ugly language that has effectively undermined broader discussion of Live Art for the past thirty years - sonic art is going to struggle to convince that it has much to add beyond pure aesthetic experience.
