Volume 26 Issue 5 - February 2021

DISCOVERIES | RECORDINGS REVIEWED
DAVID OLDS
In the two months since the last issue so much, and yet so little, has
happened that it’s hard to know where to begin. One true highlight
was spending a week savouring Welsh writer and musicologist Paul
Griffiths’ latest novel Mr. Beethoven. I received an inscribed copy of
the small press UK edition sent just before Christmas by the author,
but I’ll wait to write about that, and the music it led me to, until later
this year when the book is released in North America.
I suppose the best place to start is with old
friends. During my tenure as host and
producer of Transfigured Night (1984-1991)
at CKLN-FM, I became interested in the field
of electronic music, to the extent of
becoming a founding member of the
Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC).
On a trip to Montreal in 1986, for a conference
that led to the establishment of that
national organization, I met and became friends with a number of
movers and shakers in that rarified field, including Jean-François
Denis, who went on to found the internationally renowned empreintes
DIGITALes (electrocd.com). At time of writing, the Montrealbased
label has 171 releases featuring the most distinguished
practitioners of electroacoustics, acousmatics and musique concrète
from around the world. While at CKLN, I commissioned radiophonic
works from a dozen composers, one of the most successful of which
was Figures de la nuit/Faces of the Night by Francis Dhomont. Since
the late 1940s working with magnetic wire recorders in Paris – one of
the first exponents of what Pierre Henry would later call musique
concrète – Dhomont has been a pioneer of electroacoustic composition,
and has worked exclusively in fixed media (i.e. magnetic tape
and its digital progeny) since the 1970s. From 1978 until 2004,
Dhomont split his time between France and Quebec, where he taught
for 16 years at the Université de Montréal. I am pleased to see, as
witnessed by the recent CD Images nomades (IMED 20167), that at the
age of 94 Dhomont is still active in his studio in Avignon, France. This
release includes three recent works – a particular favourite is
Perpetuum mobile (Pluies fantômes) – plus a cycle of 15 shorter tributes
to friends and colleagues such as composers Bernard Parmegiani
and Jonty Harrison he calls Ami-versaires – composed between 2002
and 2020. This and the dozen or so discs of Dhomont’s music available
from empreintes DIGITALes confirm him not only as a pioneer in the
field, but also as a master of his craft.
A new ATMA release – Krzysztof Penderecki
featuring Quatuor Molinari (ACD2 2736
atmaclassique.com/en) – also feels like an
old friend. Although I did meet Penderecki
on several occasions, I did not have the
opportunity to get to know him. But I have
met founding violinist Olga Ranzenhofer
and through her the quartet’s namesake, the
late painter Guido Molinari, both of whom I
would consider friends. This latest disc in
the Molinari’s extensive catalogue includes Penderecki’s two early
avant-garde string quartets from 1960 and 1968 with their graphic
scores and extended techniques, and the much later, more conservative
String Quartet No.3 “Leaves from an Unwritten Diary” from
2008, a kind of autobiographical reminiscence replete with references
to earlier works. Being familiar with these from a number of recordings,
particularly those of Kitchener-Waterloo’s Penderecki String
Quartet, of more interest to me are the in-between works included
here, that give a kind of context to the transition from angry young
man of the 60s to the successful gentleman of his later years. They
include the brief movement for string quartet, The Broken Thought
(1988), the String Trio (1990) and a Quartet for Clarinet and String
Trio (1993). The trio opens aggressively but gradually subsides into
variations on Penderecki’s signature descending-note motif. The
clarinet piece begins gently, and even in its more strident moments is
playful and melodic. Clarinetist André Moisan proves to be the perfect
foil for the members of the Molinari, whose playing, as always, is
exemplary in its expressivity. A fitting tribute to Penderecki, who died
in late March, 2020 after a long illness (not related to the coronavirus).
He was 86.
My first exposure to Penderecki’s clarinet
quartet was on a Sony recording from the
1993 Penderecki Gala celebrating the
composer’s 60th birthday. That performance
featured, among others, the exceptional
American violist Kim Kashkashian, who is a
key player on one of two recent ECM releases
that I’ve spent a lot of time with over the past
two months (ecmrecords.com/shop).
Kashkashian is joined by eight other A-list musicians, who mostly share
her Armenian heritage, on Con Anima (ECM New Series 2687), devoted
to the chamber music of Tigran Mansurian, an Armenian composer
born in 1939. Again the highlights include a String Trio and a clarinet
quartet, Agnus Dei. The clarinet is accompanied by violin, cello and
piano in this instance and this is the only work on which Kashkashian
does not appear. The earliest piece on the disc is String Quartet No.3,
dating from 1993, which Kashkashian performs with violinists Movses
Pogossian, Varty Manouelian and cellist Michael Kaufman. Two recent
works from 2015 and 2016 are duos: Die Tänzerin where Kashkashian is
joined by Manouelian and Sonata da Chiesa with pianist Tatevik
Mokatsian. Mansurian’s music is characterized by restrained pointillism,
subtle rhythms and delicate impressionistic beauty. Most of his
works begin and end quietly, as in the opening Agnus Dei, dedicated to
the memory of violinist Oleg Kagan, which sets the tone for the entire
disc. Contrary to expectation, the title work Con anima (in a spirited
manner), is no exception. Completed in 2007, this string sextet, which
adds former TSO principal violist Teng Li and cellist Karen Ouzounian
to the string players noted above, is a gloss on Shostakovich’s String
Quartet No.13 in which the viola dominates. That role is given here to
first violist Kashkashian, whose gorgeous dark tone leads the others on
a transformative journey. A brilliant, subdued and contemplative disc,
perfect for our troubled times.
The other ECM release, Lost Prayers (ECM
New Series 2666), features chamber works
by Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür. I
had the pleasure of meeting Tüür several
times, when he was in Toronto for the
Border Crossings Festival in 1990, and again
in 2010 when he was featured on a
Soundstreams concert. This disc is bookended
by two piano trios effectively
performed by Harry Traksmann (violin), Leho Karin (cello) and
Marrit Geritz-Traksmann (piano) which are the earliest and latest
works presented. The dramatic Fata Morgana (2002) is a quasi moto
perpetuo whereas Lichttürme (2017) is relatively introspective.
Although rollicking string ostinati echoes of the former work emerge
from time to time, the latter begins and ends with a sense of calm. The
same can be said of Synergie (2011) featuring violinist Florian
Donderer and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff. Written the following year, String
32 | February 2021 thewholenote.com