Affinity Quartet has given the world premiere of Huw Belling’s Now vanishing, now forming, written for the ensemble as part of TAIWA—a dialogue. The program marked 50 years of friendship between Australia and Japan, placing Belling’s new quartet alongside music by Tōru Takemitsu and Paul Wiancko.
The public premiere took at Tadao Ando’s MPavilion in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens, followed by a performance at Anglesea Memorial Hall. Affinity also previewed the work at its annual fundraiser, hosted by Kennedy Nolan in Fitzroy.
The work takes its title from Kamo no Chōmei’s thirteenth-century Hōjōki (An Account of My Hut), whose opening image is of water and bubbles ceaselessly vanishing and reforming. Belling’s quartet turns that reflection on impermanence into music: gestures gather, dissolve and return in altered forms.
Affinity brought characteristic precision and energy to the piece across its Victorian performances.
Huw Belling 