The Norwegian Nils
Henrik Asheim works in many musical
idioms; he has written orchestral works,
chamber music and choral works; he has
written for music theatre; a pianist
and organist himself he has written
works for these instruments; he also
works in the field of electro-acoustic
music; he is active in improvised music
too. This present CD juxtaposes fully
composed pieces with improvised pieces.
The brief improvisations
are designated as X1, X2 etc. I say
‘brief’ improvisations but, as the booklet
notes explain, these tracks are actually
"extracted from an hour of improvisations
made in November 2005 in between recording
the other pieces". Of the ‘method’
underlying this session of improvisations
I can do no better than to quote the
composer’s own words: "I specified
some guidelines and the ensemble listened
inwards in a circle of sound".
Whatever that means, precisely, it has
to be said that these brief fragments
are actually not especially interesting,
explorations of sonority that don’t,
in my experience, offer many rewards
on repeated hearings (with the partial
exception of the muted textures of X4).
The longer, composed
pieces are altogether more interesting.
In Navigo the two musicians are
invited to find their own ways (to ‘navigate’)
between scored sections. There are,
as a result, interactions both predictable
(from the score) and unpredictable.
There are passages of genuine dialogue
(though without a score one has no way
of knowing how far these have been ‘designed’
by the composer, how far they represent
the conscious ‘intentions’ of the two
performers or how far they are mere
‘accidents’). There are also passages
where the two instrumental voices seem
to be operating in ignorance of one
another (though, of course, each can
hear the other) and like two ships ‘navigating’
in a thick fog, their encounters are
both troubling and briefly revelatory.
Of Broken Line the composer writes
rather better than I could manage, and
his imagery certainly evokes something
(though, of course, the music is not
in any direct sense pictorial and, other
very different, imagery might also be
employed) of the experience of listening
to the work: "Bright reflections
encounter something opaque and viscous.
Above it and around it flies something
clear and vulnerable. Frayed fireflies,
indistinct contours of light. Subdued,
delicate sounds barely connected. Soft,
dense calligraphy and strong foregrounds
in which a string quartet borrows the
steadfastness of an accordion or pipe
organ".
In Chase two
string trios bounce some short passages,
slightly more conventional in rhythm
than most of the music on this disc,
one against the other. There are moments
here which sound almost Bartokian, though
the music never has Bartok’s continuity
and development. This is a striking
and satisfying composition which has
some real emotional weight; by comparison
with both Navigo and Broken
Line, here one is less tempted to
have recourse to the adjective ‘experimental’,
less likely to have one’s attention
taken by the means and methods rather
than by the ‘finished’ musical object.
The one vocal work
included, Licht, is also interesting
and appealing. For soprano and chamber
ensemble, it sets three poetic texts
(‘Einiges’, ‘Warum?’ and ‘Nicht’) by
the painter Wassily Kandinsky (texts
and translations are provided) taken
from his volume Klange published
in 1913. Klange, in its mixture of poems,
prose and prints was part of Kandinsky’s
ongoing fascination with the idea of
the gesamtkunstwerk and closely
related to his increasing use of musical
terminology in relation to his new,
abstract paintings, at the level both
of title and aesthetic theory. For composers
to work with Kandinsky’s texts (or,
indeed, to respond to his paintings)
has a particular aptness. Especially
if those responses are as impressive
as Asheim’s is. The frequent recourse
to a kind of sprechgesang perhaps
relates to Kandinsky’s friendship with
Schoenberg; certainly the interplay
of voice and instruments here seems
to owe more than a little to the Schoenbergian
tradition; in another sense, the vibrant,
shining instrumental textures, the constant
contrasts in dynamics, the varied use
of instrumental colour, might all be
thought to offer musical analogies with
the intensely busy visual activity,
in both line and colour, that characterises
paintings such as Composition
VII (1913) and Improvisation
of Cold Forms (1914). Isa Gericke
sustains the vocal role very well and
the whole is an intriguing, richly suggestive
piece.
Something of a mixed
bag, in terms both of style and quality,
the best here is ample reason for anyone
with a serious interest in contemporary
music to investigate this disc.
Glyn Pursglove