Michael NYMAN (b. 1944)
Yamamoto Perpetuo for Solo Violin
Chase Spruill (violin)
rec. 2018, Living Sound, Sacramento, USA
SUPERTRAIN RECORDS STR008 [41:28]
Supertrain Records is an interesting and quite new recording company (as the catalogue number suggests. This is the second of their recordings I have heard (the other was Patrick Cassidy: The Mass, with London Symphony Orchestra and London Voices 0015) and I have been impressed not only by the quality of their releases but their imagination in choice of repertoire. This release fills a very valuable gap in the Nyman discography, and the work itself has much that is distinctive while being very enjoyable.
Originally the work appeared as Volume 2 of Yohji Yamamoto’s series of albums, The Show, in December 1993, for the Japanese label, Consipio Record. Chronologically, the piece sits between the score for The Piano and The Piano Concerto. The theme of The Show was ‘Cinderella’ and Nyman was commissioned to write a piece with ‘some European folk element’ in the score. He drew on three Scottish folk songs, each in the A-minor Aeolian mode, which he had collected – but not used – for The Piano. In the original Japanese recording, played by Alexander Balanescu, the solo violin is accompanied on the piano by Nyman for track 11. The Japanese recording was issued as a limited edition, with 13 tracks. It is very much a collector’s piece, and I haven’t heard it. The new recording has only 12 tracks, all played just by solo violin, and is issued in a cardboard cover with no notes, so I assume, that the violin + piano track has been omitted. Timings in the new recording are very different from the Belanescu, so it is difficult to be certain. (The absence of notes is a pity, and not general company policy – the Cassidy recording has valuable notes, texts and translations).
Like the Baroque composers he admires so much, Nyman is a relentless self-borrower of themes. Large parts of this work appear as the music for first violin in String Quartet No.4, and various parts reappear in Strong on Oaks, Strong on the Causes of Oaks.
Chase Spruill, a violinist new to me, was recently appointed concert master of the Camellia Symphony Orchestra in Sacramento. He has appeared on the OMM label, playing music by Glass, and in an interview said that he has always wanted to play in the Michael Nyman Band. This recording demonstrates keen sympathy with Nyman’s idiom, demonstrating alertness to the different moods which range far beyond the chug-along minimalism of some of Nyman’s better-known compositions. Such an understanding of Nyman is caricature, anyway.
Playing his works, especially over the 40-minute span of Yamamoto perpetuo, requires toughness – this is muscular music – with fire and yet sensitivity to more tender moments, based on absolutely secure rhythmic foundations. The violinist has to sustain the listener’s concentration. Spruill, in this 75th birthday tribute to Nyman, succeeds superbly.
Michael Wilkinson
