This entry was posted in CD Reviews on Decemby Kate Molleson. Mostly he believed these songs should feel like real life: “the dance song should choke in sweat, in people’s vapour and steam, while the melancholy weeping of the bride should be reflected in wedding songs.” Some operatic voices overstate or over-gloss the raw spirit, but soprano Martina Jankova and baritone Tomas Kral get it just right with light, clear, candid voices and a striking sense of space from pianist Ivo Kahanek. His settings never over-prettify the music, keeping vocal lines direct and a strong flavour of cimbalom, organ, fiddle and stomping feet in the piano accompaniments. The title of his most important published collection - Moravian Folk Poetry In Song - hints at how much attention he paid to the rogue rhythm of the words as well as the melodies. Leos Janacek wrote down thousands of rural Czech songs during his lifetime he loved the twisting modal tunes, the jagged lyrics.
Also on the disc is an earlier Frey work, Unhörbare Zeit (Inaudible Times), made of danker chords and even longer vistas of open space. Montreal’s Bozzini Quartet gave a virtuosically still performance of his Third String Quartet at this year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and the group’s recording of the half-hour piece is beautiful for the up-close, quiet, grainy realness of the string timbres, every bow hair and every arm quiver audible. It’s a neat image from the master of calm instrumental textures - a Wandelweiser group composer who explores silence as much as sound and writes egoless music that feels as though it’s always just been there. Swiss composer Jürg Frey said recently that all good music should be felt in some part of the body, and that his music is intended to be felt just inside of the ear drum. CD review: Jürg Frey’s Third String Quartet The scores often leave a lot open to interpretation there are two or three versions of several pieces on this disc, each one an insight into the astutely calibrated quiet textures made by Apartment House. 21st Century Music is a slow and starkly beautiful cycle of downward shifting intervals Wyoming Snow was inspired by a drive through a wintry landscape Beauty and Industry does what the name suggests, alternating soft-hewn gestures against clangy dark ones. His music is considered he doesn’t shout or clutter the edges or overfill the gaps. Michigan-born experimental composer Joseph Kudirka uses simple terms to say significant things. Later we get Tender Second Version - just 47 seconds this time, but now with more tremble and more pain. This album opens with a 53-second piece called Tender: sweet, husky, tentative sounds circling in space like a mobile.
First published in the Guardian on 17 December, 2015
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