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GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2018
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Dean . Francesconi Dean Dramatis personae Francesconi Hard Pace Håkan Hardenberger tpt Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / John Storgårds BIS F Í BIS2067 (59’ • DDD/DSD)
I can’t find any evidence to corroborate the booklet note’s suggestion that Brett Dean’s trumpet concerto Dramatis personae is a preparatory work for the opera Hamlet, which opened two weeks after this disc landed on my desk. But the idea is a fertile one nonetheless. Not only is Dean’s piece as theatrical as its title would suggest, it also has a compelling downwards trajectory right from the ominous, Dohnányi-like bass melody that takes over soon after the concerto has pattered its way into being, rather like Dean’s Viola Concerto does.
The first movement, ‘Fall of a Superhero’, maintains a rhythmic groove pretty much throughout its 13‑minute span. Hardenberger’s trumpet moans, whines and cries with uncannily human qualities in the following ‘Soliloquy’ and seems haunted by responsibilities it doesn’t want in the final ‘The Accidental Revolutionary’. Hamlet undertones there, for sure. But just as interesting is how the trumpet – the lonely prince or not – pursues or abandons flawed relationships with dramatis personae from the orchestra.
Luca Francesconi’s concerto Hard Pace couldn’t be more different but is just as special, perhaps even more so. The composer himself talks in the booklet about Miles Davis, which rings alarm bells, but it needn’t: his love for Davis delivers the very opposite of musical tokenism but, instead, extreme care with Francesconi’s own sort of poetry, in which the trumpet dare only speak, during some exquisite passages, in isolated notes like faltering lines drawn on a wall. Textures are spare, harmonies are rich, tension is high – not least as the trumpet is pressured into a treacherous ascent at the end of the first movement (the mirror image of Dean’s fallen hero). The piece’s distilled atmosphere and harmonic calligraphy reminds me of
Henze’s Requiem, but it might just be that I’ve not heard trumpet-playing like it since Hardenbeger’s recording of that piece. With Storgårds and the GSO, it’s a dream team. Andrew Mellor (8/17)
Dusapin String Quartets – No 6, ‘Hinterland’a; No 7, ‘OpenTime’ Arditti Quartet; a Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra Aeon F AECD1753 (57’ • DDD) originally reviewed with:
Dusapin ‘Item’ Ifa. Imagob. Immerb. Incisab. Inveceb. Iotab. Ipsoa. Itemb. Lapsc. Ohéc ac Benjamin Dieltjens cl bcArne Deforce vc Aeon F b AECD1756 (102’ • DDD)
He may have limited presence in UK concert halls but Pascal Dusapin (b1955) continues to be among the most recorded of contemporary composers. These new Aeon releases focus on chamber music, including a follow-up to the Arditti set of his first five string quartets (9/10).
Both the latest instalments were written in 2009, but here similarities end. The Sixth Quartet features orchestra in what is less a concerto concept than an extension of the quartet’s sound world on to a larger expressive canvas, the first movement setting up harmonic and rhythmic premises which its four successors build on in a visceral yet ultimately inconclusive manner, the discourse running down to an uneasy stasis. By contrast, the Seventh Quartet consists of 21 brief movements – each a variation on the motivic fragment heard at the outset – that can be heard as falling into three larger groups whose impetus is channelled towards increasingly stable and cohesive effect, the music reaching a calm which is audibly devoid of exhaustion. Both pieces reaffirm Dusapin’s quartet cycle as among the most significant now emerging.
The other release brings together Dusapin’s music for cello and/or clarinet,
a substantial body of work which extends across almost two decades of his output. Earlier pieces tend to reflect the influence of those composers (notably Xenakis) who shaped Dusapin’s attitude to timbre and texture, though even here an emphasis on gestural continuity points towards the organic formal designs of his maturity. Such is evident in Laps, where the two instruments unfold a dialogue that takes on greater emotional import as surely as it gains in momentum; qualities no less to the fore in Ipso, where solo clarinet focuses on spiralling arcs of sound that build to a heady culmination. The highlights, though, come with two major works for cello on the second disc. Immer makes inventive play with non-standard tuning in music whose melodic contours evince subtle overtones of folk music. Imago is more overt in its recourse to admittedly ‘false’ popular songs – its three pieces become unexpected and intriguing variations on each other in music that is among this composer’s most engaging and approachable.
Both discs enjoy spacious and lifelike sound, notably in the frequently intricate textures of the quartets, with detailed though occasionally abstruse booklet notes (some knowledge of post-war French philosophy and aesthetics would not go amiss). Anyone new to Dusapin’s music might start with the collection of orchestral works from Myung-Whun Chung (DG, 6/14) or the atmospheric and wide-ranging opera Perelà – Uoma di fumo (Naïve, 6/05), but the present discs are no less representative of this composer and as such can be warmly recommended. Richard Whitehouse
Pickard Monteverdi Orfeo – Toccata (transcr Pickard) Pickard Symphony No 5. Concertante Variationsa. Sixteen Sunrises a Matthew Featherstone fl aGeoffrey Cox ob a Nicholas Cox cl aJarosław Augustyniak bn a Ian Fisher hn BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Martyn Brabbins BIS F Í BIS2261 (63’ • DDD/DSD)
The chief work on BIS’s fourth CD devoted to the music of John Pickard gramophone.co.uk
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GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2018 15