GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2021
The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, face up to the challenges of the music of their one-time composer-in-residence Michael Finnissy (see previous page)
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P H O T O G R A P H Y
here via Janá∂ek). The first movement, ‘Anthropogenic Debris’, opens with a brief descending semitone motif on woozy brass backed by scratching Waldteufels (a type of drum pierced by a string). Droning wind multiphonics givexan impression of didjeridoos. The second movement’s strident opening solo≈trumpet is marked ‘with lyric abandon’. Throughout there is a sense of wonder mixed with despair, of nature grown delirious.
The style of post-new-complexity music, where extended instrumental techniques can mean one hears few distinct notes, lends itself to a focus on nature, a ferment of wild sound. Parts of Extinction Events’ material comes from Lim’s transcription of the mating call of a now extinct bird, the Kauai O’o, a mating call forevermore unheard. The closing movement, ‘Dawn Chorus’, imitates the titular natural phenomenon in the coral reefs with a wonderful jabbering and clacking across the ensemble. It’s quietly devastating. This music’s stakes are higher than normal.
Axis mundi for solo bassoon refers to a tree in Norse mythology linking heaven and earth. The bassoon becomes a tree in animistic animation. Lorelei Dowling gives a wonderfully emphatic performance, switching seamlessly from microtone scales to enharmonic trills to glissandos.
A continuous work in five sections, Songs Found in Dream refers to Aboriginal song lines, wherein geographical landmarks embody myth. Lim unifies her material through the Aboriginal idea of bir’yun, using trill figures alongside percussive rattles. In places you might wish for a more memorable landmark, like a melodic phrase, but Lim’s concern is elsewhere. Liam Cagney (August 2020)
Pickard Three Chicken Studies. Daughters of Ziona. The Gardener of Aleppo. Ghost-Train. The Phagotus of Afranio. Snowbound. Serenata concertata a Susan Bickley mez Nash Ensemble / Martyn Brabbins BIS F Í BIS2461 (79’ • DDD/DSD)
The seven works on this terrifically played, imaginatively programmed disc cover over 30 years of John Pickard’s career. They are not presented chronologically, however, but sequenced rather to form a trajectory from darkness (The Gardener of Aleppo, Daughters of Zion) to light (The Phagotus of Afranio and Ghost Train), though with much intermingling of the two along the way. Like the cantata Daughters of Zion, beautifully sung by Susan Bickley, The Gardener of Aleppo (2016) deals with conflict and suffering. It honours Abu al‑Ward, who maintained a small garden centre in civil-war-torn East Aleppo until a stray bomb tragically killed him. The work’s scoring for that most euphonious of ensembles – flute, viola and harp – emphasises the fragility of existence (floral and human). Forget any notion of Debussian rapture: this is an essay in loss, the musicians fully aligned only in the central span, otherwise following ‘independent tempos’.
Isolation and darkness of different sorts colour Snowbound (2010), a trio for bass clarinet, cello and piano. A study in lower sonorities, the title tells you all you need to know, with some wonderfully wintry imagery in its 10-minute discourse. (The only work here to have been recorded before, it is slower paced than its Toccata Classics rival but just as compellingly
20 GRAMOPHONE 20 GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2021
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