The physical structure of Egon Eiermann’s annex to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche feels integral to these pieces, though it is unlikely an attempt to describe this space entered the composition. Whether serendipity, or the influence of the building came later, you get the sense that the American composer, now based in Berlin, is an artist alert to the ways in which the staging of a work can become core to the work itself.

Positioning of the four trombone players in Inter Spatia around the perimeter of the auditorium creates a natural surround sound and a shifting physical relationship with the audience, as well as between the musicians. We are encircled. But we are also encircling the group of Tuba players in the middle. This kind of interplay and inversion is echoed in the architecture: at times the windows appear lit from the outside, as if it is still daytime (it is dark Berlin winter night). At these moments it is the meditative blues and the splashes of red and yellow of the glass you notice, like the map of a landscape that is at once familiar and difficult to place. Elsewhere in the auditorium the spotlight effects are more prominent, and then it is the concrete honeycomb around the stained glass panels that catches the eye.

Clear tones cascade and converge and gently collide. This is not a tsunami. Each note is afforded space, like the steady drip of rainwater into a hundred different buckets. It is layers being spun rather than a linear journey from A to B. In this expanded harmonic space, the intensity comes from subtle tonal shifts and layering effects. There is no attempt to ‘push’ the music. Resolution coincides with dissonance. 

Catherine Lamb’s work has been described as microtonal—that is, her music is characterised by the way she brings in notes that don’t exist on (for instance) a piano, the ‘in between notes’. Many of these intervals are more familiar outside western music, and it can feel as is if we being urged to break out from the chains of a single unquestionable intonation system.

You have to go with it. At times it is hard going, but at other points you could put it into a techno set. There’s even a hint of a major 5th in there, as in Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Ode To Joy! It is not dour, nor whimsical, it simply exists. It moves in an orderly fashion. There is logic, you feel, even if no attempt is made to declare it. It is not ‘just’ frequencies, it’s just that frequencies are the form in which we are operating. The liberation belongs to the listener as well as to the maker, if we choose to accept it. 

The first piece, performed on synthesizers by players seated opposite one another, like chess players on the elevated concrete section that hangs vertiginously over the audience, is the more difficult of the two works. Music stands, dotted around the auditorium, are illuminated and holding manuscripts but there is no one there. It feels like a ghost concert. It took me a good few minutes before I looked up to the gods and realised where the music was actually coming from.

A few people go to the toilet. It could be a long three hours. And yet, just as my mind begins to wander, something always brings me back. A certain frequency or rhythmic pattern: elements that may be recurring or new—the mind is no longer sure—and that’s the dance here.

As always with the Avantgarde we’re being asked to let go of our preconceptions. And it is freeing. Outside, the world may be burning and untold horrors being committed, but in this place of pure sensory immersion, there is life, there is possibility. While the sound palette is austere, the sonic palette here is huge. Arriving at the final polymorphic descending scales, it feels as if we have travelled through a rich landscape of light and shade and intensities of colours, and that our perception has been opened, stretched and unpacked.

The action moves from above our heads down to our level and the instrumentation switches from homemade synthesisers to a septet of brass (three Tubas in the middle, a trombone quartet dispersed around the edge). It is an altogether more intimate affair, and the room feels smaller for it. We now have something reassuringly concert-like to watch. A low rumble of bass frequencies ease us in. This is coming from the tubas in front. It is soon joined by higher frequency patterns from the trombones behind our heads. It is not quite call and response, but a connection has been established.

Recognisable motifs and ideas from the first piece are reprised, which feels like a reward, and when the trombone players step forward in a choreagraphed movement to take up new positions at the waiting music stands, the sense of coming together feels genuinely climactic. This happens twice, ending with the two groups of musicians united in a central position, surrounded by the audience. A multilayered descending scale—an echo of how the previous piece ended— signals that the journey is complete, and we can get off and go back to our ordinary world, which feels just a little more vibrant and textured than before.

Revisiting modernism, whether through the music of Catherine Lamb or the architecture of Egon Eiermann’s octagonal belfry, feels apt at this moment. Shaken and exhausted by a global pandemic, stunned by the return of war to Europe and the grim reminders of a past we thought was behind us, there is solace to be found in the seriousness and abstraction of form on display. It will not attempt to solve our current geopolitical problems, but it may offer a way out of the cul-de-sac of endless revivalism and pastiche.