Huihui CHENG (b.1985)
Me Du Ça [6:03)
Narcissus & Echo [12:05]
Messenger [12:25]
Calling Sirens [18:10]
Your Smartest Choice [17:18]
Youmi Kim, Silke Evers (sopranos), Noa Frankel (alto)
Claudia Chan (piano)
Ensemble Experimental/Detlef Heusinger
Ensemble uBu
Ensemble Mosaik
Neue Vocalsolisten
rec. 2016-2019
WERGO WER6432-2 [66:27]
Me Du Ça is a collage of sounds capped by snatches of vocalised text from soprano Youmi Kim. The sound is weird, eery and bewitching with an undercurrent of menace and evil. The music represents the mythological Gorgon whose gaze turned all those who looked on her to stone. However, it is not so much that element of the ancient Greek myth which inspires Huihui Cheng here as the fact that instead of hair, her head sprouted venomous snakes. In performance, we are told, the soloist has a number of tubes attached to her head which can be played like flutes, blown across the fingerholes, or scratched. Without that visual clue, there is still plenty in this music, scored for soprano and electronics, which brings the image very vividly to life, and the piece is certainly fascinating, if not entirely coherent in its own right.
Chinese composer Huihui Cheng looks for a new and distinctive voice by revisiting the ancient Greek myths, and a clue to her approach comes in the title to the disc’s generous and highly informative essay by Lydia Jeschke, “Playful mythological messages”. For her part, Cheng describes her music as “Theatrically-enhanced composition”, and all five of the pieces recorded here (along with a sixth available via a YouTube link) have an integral visual element; which is, of course, absent from this purely aural medium.
Narcissus & Echo ingeniously interweaves electronic and vocal sounds with those of a clarinet and cello in an aural event which looks at how communication is often swallowed up into self-absorption. Two singers are involved here – soprano (Silke Evers) and alto (Noa Frenkel) – and the performance also draws on computer-generated drawings and a spatial separation of the two singers to highlight the notion of individual self-absorption. Without the visual theatrical element, I am not totally sure the piece convinces. On the other hand, Messenger for prepared piano (Claudia Chan) does work well as an atmospheric and effective exploration of sound. Once again, however, there is a strong visual theatrical element to the performance; the upright piano and the performer are connected by means of nylon threads and attached to a frame which is placed over the performer’s dress. The piece certainly loses something by having these elements removed.
Calling Sirens is perhaps the piece which loses most by being presented in an aural only version. The intriguing description of the piece’s theatrical presentation suggests that the “second violinist” in an apparent piano quartet, is really a dancer. I suspect you need to see this rather than rely on a description for, musically at least, I find little here which makes much sense either in relation to the title or on purely abstract musical terms. It is a decidedly Pointillist succession of pitches jabbed out seemingly randomly from the players of Ensemble uBu.
The final piece on the CD is Your Smartest Choice, played here by a violin, cello, clarinet, piano and electronics, but requiring the listeners to download a smartphone app (the QR code for which is printed in the booklet) so that it becomes something truly interactive. Sadly, as I live in an area where dial-up internet is our only access to online content, I could neither access this nor the online video of a sixth piece, Your Turn, which is a game of cards involving spoken words. I leave it to the more adventurous listener (and those with a powerful broadband connection) to experience these.
Adventurous is certainly a necessary requisite in those approaching the pieces on this disc. Their visual theatricality is obscured by the fact that it is presented in an audio-only medium – the booklet’s small still photographs from performances barely do justice to it – and for much of the programme, the musical sounds on their own are difficult to comprehend. Nevertheless, Cheng is certainly an unusual graduate from the usually conservative Central Conservatory in Beijing, and I suspect her years in Germany have radically altered her musical outlook. This is music which unquestionably changes perceptions.
Marc Rochester
