The final notes of the 34th Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival have only just faded away, but the hcmf// team are already throwing themselves into organising next year’s event. In the meantime, here are some highlights to enjoy from hcmf// 2011’s ten days of concerts, talks and workshops, as seen by some of the audiences, critics and musicians who were there.

The festival’s opening weekend had a strongly bittersweet flavour, courtesy of the music of hcmf// Composer in Residence Bent Sørensen. As well as the UK premiere of his mesmerising new piece It is pain flowing down slowly on a white wall providing the climax of the first concert on Friday 18 November, audiences on their way to concerts at Bates Mill were halted in their tracks by the sounds of voices and church bells drifting from an unassuming corner of the warehouse complex’s yard, where Sørensen’s Snowbells featured as an installation throughout the festival. A silent documentary film showing the composer both working and avoiding work at home in Denmark intrigued the Huddersfield Examiner, meanwhile, when it accompanied Ensemble SCENATET’s performance of his music during Dokumentary Koncert #1 on Saturday 19 November.

Our photographers were out capturing images of both performers and audiences at hcmf// and you can see day-by-day albums of the festival on our Facebook page. On the audio side, representatives of the music publisher Edition S were at hcmf// to support many of this year’s strong Danish contingent and you can hear their impressions and short interviews with a variety of artists on their Soundcloud page. And if you missed Growing in the Dark, Duncan Chapman’s performance of music composed from recordings of forced rhubarb collected as part of hcmf// Learning and Participation workshops with Overthorpe Junior School, visit the Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb site to find out more about the project.

The range of concerts presented during the week at hcmf// had Twitter alive with comments and conversation: audience member @elsie33 tweeted, “Watched 3 excellent concerts featuring some of Europe's best up & coming composers – what variety, and what a privilege”. Mark Knoop’s recital of Trond Reinholdtsen’s Faust, or The Decline of Western Music on Thursday 24 November prompted @CathrynJane to tweet, “Opera for solo piano @HCMFUK was amazing! Completely not what I expected! Brilliant!” And Carl Rosman (@carlrosman) found time between playing with ELISION and musikFabrik to turn a wry eye upon proceedings: “I have to confess, when ensemble)h(iatus threw buckets of feathers at the audience I couldn't help feeling a little down.”

The closing weekend of hcmf// kept up the pace, with St Paul’s Hall packed for a sold-out performance of Xenakis by the Arditti Quartet and Ian Pace on the evening of Friday 25 November, before a late-night appearance by Annie Gosfield Trio and Athelas Sinfonietta for Gosfield’s Floating Messages and Fading Frequencies. The concert was rounded off by a performance of Gosfield’s Combustion Chamber / EWA7 that brought Chris Cutler’s drumming skills to the fore. Watch it here on YouTube:

The first British performance of James Dillon’s sixth string quartet by Quatuor Diotima on Saturday 26 November impressed critics from both the Telegraph’s Ian Hewett, who described it as “delightfully new-minted” and “truly original” and the Guardian’s Andrew Clements, who praised it for “bold, striking gestures and not a note wasted”. Clements was also among those who enjoyed the long-overdue UK premiere of Brian Ferneyhough’s Chronos Aion in Ensemble Linea’s concert the same day. You can watch the entire concert, which also includes music by Fabien Levy and Francesco Filidei, on the ensemble’s YouTube channel.

Don’t forget to visit the hcmf// Facebook page or follow @hcmfuk on Twitter as well as this website for more clips, photos and for the first news about hcmf// 2012.

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