Modern and Contemporary

Scelsi – Integrals des quatuors a cordes; Trio a cordes
Quatuor Molinari
ATMA ACD2 2849 (atmaclassique.com/en/product/giacinto-scelsi-complete-string-quartets-and-string-trio)

Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi wrote some of the most sublime music of the past century. It’s also some of the most radical. He was notoriously secretive, even forbidding photos of himself.  Yet these string quartets, which span a forty-year period, are so personal that heard together they reveal much about this remarkable composer whose musical language was transformed by a profound spiritual awakening. 

This is the first complete recording of Scelsi’s five string quartets since the legendary Arditti Quartet’s from 1990. It’s a significant addition to the Montreal-based Molinari Quartet’s invaluable series of complete string quartets by key modern composers. The Molinari brings the precision and clarity required for the close listening Scelsi’s music demands, plus a contemplative soulfulness. ATMA’s stellar sound does the rest. 

You can already hear Scelsi pushing boundaries in the post-Schoenbergian String Quartet No.1 from 1944 – the gong effects, the pitch-bending. But after a devastating mental breakdown he came to reject its engaging rhythms, intricate counterpoint, complex harmony and delightful thematic developments.

 Immersing himself in theosophy and eastern religions, Scelsi spent months at the piano repeating one note over and over. He eventually switched to an Ondioline, an early electronic keyboard. It allowed him to explore the infinity of sounds contained in a single pitch through alterations like microtones, vibrato, glissandi and ostinato. The searing Trio from 1958 initiates his new language, a year before his acknowledged breakthrough work, Quattro Pezzi su una nota solo. 

 The more expansive Second Quartet followed two years later. There’s an especially thrilling passage which reveals the Molinari’s mastery of Scelsi’s strange and wonderful style when the heightened drama of the fourth movement resolves into the dreamy incantations of the last movement. He gave each of the five movements of the Third Quartet titles describing conflict, liberation and catharsis, though there’s more catharsis than conflict. In the more fraught Fourth Quartet the Molinari unfurls an enthralling sweep of colours and textures in a single movement. 

 The Fifth Quartet was Scelsi’s last major work. Distilled into seven transcendent minutes, it serves as a fitting memorial to this remarkable composer.

Listen to 'Scelsi: Integrals des quatuors a cordes; Trio a cordes' Now in the Listening Room

Gabriel Dharmoo – Vestiges d’une fable
Members of NACO; Gary Kulesha
Centrediscs CMCCD 34324 (cmccanada.org/shop/cmccd-34324)

Gabriel Dharmoo makes you laugh and then wonder if that was the right response, and then laugh again. So yes, it is fine to hear and feel the mirth behind the title track of his recent release: Vestiges d’une Fable (2014, current arrangement 2023) for voice (originally for soprano but here the composer’s own) with flute cello and piano. The musicians on the disc are select members of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, conducted by Gary Kulesha. The players are excellent, and Kulesha very capably marshals their forces. 

Dharmoo produces theatrical, evocative, even surreal music. Vestiges references his mocumentary performance piece Anthropolgies imaginaires, and the fog in our poise (2016) “evokes the ceremonial music of an imaginary culture” per the liner notes. Like the writer Jorge Luis Borges, Dharmoo posits alternate worlds from which to explore our own. His voice in Vestiges seems drawn from an alien cabaret, or one where the creatures we know sing text we can almost understand. The final track, sur les rives de (2011), gives us his impressions of the opposite and contrasting banks of the Ganges river. 

Moondaal Moondru (2010) at 18:10 is the substantial centre-weight of the disc, the piece comes in taut sections, with virtuosic outbursts sometimes punctuating a droning whine. Dharmoo lacks nothing in orchestrational skill, and his moods are clearly if unsettlingly depicted. There’s a roll and a rhythm to the music, and I suggest you move with the underlying pulse to best experience it. 

Amy Brandon – Lysis
Various Artists
New Focus Recordings FCR414 (newfocusrecordings.com/catalogue/amy-brandon-lysis)

Canadian guitarist/composer Amy Brandon has created a fantastical series of journeys with her latest album Lysis (defined by dictionary.com as “…refer(ring) to the breakdown of a cell caused by damage to its plasma (outer) membrane).” Brandon nails the deconstruction aspect in an almost delicious spectacle of all things human and otherworldly. Cells break down on one level and are reconstructed on another. Brandon deftly manages to create parallel voices that beautifully ignore, while simultaneously hearing, each other, almost as two separate cultures managing to co-exist. 

Opening with the brilliant Microchimersisms for solo flute, we enter a world of roaring lions, whispers and outbursts of exhalations, masterfully delivered by flutist Sara Constant. Threads for string trio follows, a tightly wound exploration of a submarine-like journey. Alternate tunings are featured in Intermountainous where the guitar delivers almost pastoral material, underscored by dark and aerie ambience that intertwines and comes apart. Caduceus for two cellos and electronics is strangely combative while expertly weaving microtones in and out of one voice. The track Tsyir is an almost trance-like swim in partial harmonics, while Affine travels between breathy phrasing of repeated notes and upper pitches of winds and low piano. 

Now we arrive at Simulacra, the album’s JUNO-nominated show-stopper for cello solo and orchestra. This full orchestral score, with its dynamic and driving rhythms, sets up a virtuosic and melodic cello line that soars into stratospheric heights and returns to the depths. Cellist Jeffrey Zeigler pulls out all the stops with a stunning, heroic performance. 

The album closes with the work Lysis for string quartet; a complex exploration of the upper partials of the harmonic series, this piece also mines the symbiotic relationship between the nuances of pitch and colour realised by different bow pressures, while also exploding apart from it. As with the entire album, it’s not necessary to contemplate the mathematics of the writing, just enjoy the results.

Paolo Griffin – Supports & Surfaces
David Zucchi; Duo Holz; David Hackston; electronics
Sawyer Editions SE028 (sawyereditions.bandcamp.com/album/paolo-griffin-supports-surfaces)

Imagine the challenge of having to approach music of Supports & Surfaces being told that all of the sonic quivering, undulating and often hypnotic ellipses of sounds were just “a series of pitch classes, whole numbers of octaves apart.” Try realigning that part of your brain that hears sound and redirecting your inner ear to tune into the pitch class of the frequently caressed, the note(s) C (or D, E, F or G). Lost in stultifying academia yet? 

Fear not. There is much more to this meandering, hypnotically repetitious music. Its evocative gamelan-like sound is redolent of Zen-inflected gongs, whooshing woodwinds, yammering drums and hissing cymbals, the dazzling arco wail of the violin, all heated by the soaring countertenor voice. 

Suddenly you will find yourself free of a proverbial desk in academia, despite perhaps encountering complicated pitch integers in the sonically charming music by Paolo Griffin. 

Bending notes in the light and shadow of Griffin directs David Zucchi to employ alto saxophone and the ululations of atmospheric electronics to explore The Purpose of an Empty Room. You will emerge from the dizzying geometry of this musical space with a sense of enrichment and delight. Next, violinist Aysel Taghi-Zada and percussion colourist Michael Murphy describe the stasis of being Alone, Together. Finally on Madrigal, countertenor David Hackston melds voice and electronics to spellbinding effect.