Peter-Anthony TOGNI (b. 1959)
Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae (2007) [55:52]
Jeff Reilly (bass clarinet)
Elmer Iseler Singers/Lydia Adams
rec. October 2008, Cathedral Church of All Saints, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
ECM NEW SERIES 2129 [55:52]
ECM have had a nice little line in choral singing with solo instruments on
top, and there are aspect about this piece which reminded me a little of that Officium disc
on which Jan Garbarek improvises over the singing of the Hilliard Ensemble.
Canadian composer Peter-Anthony Togni wrote the Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae as
a concerto for bass clarinet for Jeff Reilly. In five movements, the piece
covers the story of Jeremiah’s prophesies, with the bass clarinet acting
as a kind of vocal narrative - the voice of Jeremiah, the choir creating a
variety of atmospheres and backgrounds, and acting as ‘the crowd’.
This is both simple and complicated, both as a concept, and in the way the
piece is written. I have heard comments about the bass clarinet using every
special effect in the shop, but in fact Togni is fairly restrained in his use
of raucous roars and other wobbles. I have worked with bass clarinet players
myself for many years, and know its staggering range of organ-pipe like depths,
the sometimes almost frighteningly lifelike human voice it can create at certain
pitches, and the flexibility generated through the interaction of a reed of
chunky dimensions, and an instrument whose corpus contains enough wood to form
a small tree. Jeff Reilly is a very fine player indeed, and the balance of
this recording with the choir sees it both meeting the choir as a melodic soloist,
mixing with some of the choral textures, and standing out with sometimes chilling
starkness.
The choral writing is in general quite conventional, usually restrained, and
with the kind of resolving dissonances which can be heard in plenty of places
elsewhere. You can think of Arvo Pärt and be fairly close. The central
movement, Silentio, made me think of the final moments of another choral
piece, Sleep by Eric Whitacre, although my first reaction was tamed
somewhat on comparing the notes directly. Togni may be eclectic, but the closer
one looks the more intriguing are some of his ideas, and the more feeling one
senses being generated through what he calls a “direct expression of
my Roman Catholic faith.”
There are many fine moments in this piece, and taken at several levels it can
and will deliver a stimulating and moving experience. My own personal reaction,
which shouldn’t be taken as anything but a purely subjective set of responses
based on a listening background which has covered acres of quasi-similar material
to this, is one of mild frustration. I’m certainly not unimpressed with
the creativity and musicianship in all aspects of this recording, but in the
end have the feeling with this piece that I am inside a big inflated bag of
genre composition, the boundaries of which are so flexible that I roll around
and push was much as I want without really being kicked back or challenged
by anything seriously lumpy and powerful. If I’m dealing with the trials
of Jeremiah I want to come away with at least a modicum of spiritual bruising.
This piece is not essentially ‘comfort food’, but neither does
it, for me at least, convey with true force the suffering and desiccation in
much of the text. At one point there is a masterstroke where this kind of expression
is entirely synergetic with the text: the multiphonics of the bass clarinet
4:00 into the final movement Remember, O Lord, and the improvisatory
cries over the almost silent voices later on are devastating, the final high
peaks other-worldly. I suppose I just prefer these kinds of remarkable moment
and would rather they were stretched and developed more uncompromisingly and
compactly, rather than in the rather sumptuous framework which the full extent
of this piece delivers.
Given ECM’s usual fine engineering and the excellent performance standard
on this disc I would rather give an unequivocal recommendation than leave you
in a state of confusion. If you like the ECM aesthetic and revel in the religious
expression of others in their stable such as Pärt and the Garbarek/Hilliard
axis then you will find much to enjoy and explore here.
Dominy Clements