Francesco Zappa, we're told, survived 25 years of the eighteenth century before making his final cadence. It is surprising his neighbours stood it for so long as that. Not that there is anything the least objectionable in his music. Quite the reverse. It suffers from complete perfection—impeccably elegant, blissfully symmetrical, and regular as a well-dosed patient. His notes could never be inegales. Francesco's twentieth-century namesake, however, recognized in these scores suitable material for transmutation into the golden glories of space-age timbres. Up an octave, down an octave. Here a zink; there a zonk; everywhere a zink-zonk. Marvellous are these tastefully prismatic outpourings. But whether Barking or Pumpkin combine graciously in consort seems quite secondary to the endless digital gratification going on before our very ears.
The performance took place at the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, famous for its take-away cod-piece dishes. Recommended as continuous background for anything from a tete a tete to a full-scale orgy, though the vigour of the allegros might make it hard to keep the peas on the knife.'