Ruutsu: The Girls in the Magnesium Dress
Valentina Ciardelli (double bass)
Anna Astesano (harp)
rec. October 2021, Palazzo Cigola-Martioni, Italy
DA VINCI CLASSICS C00553 [61]
Discs of music for double bass and harp are rare enough but this one is interesting because of the contribution of Valentina Ciardelli, the bassist in question, who has arranged several of the pieces and two of whose original works also grace the programme.
She uses the range of her instrument compellingly. In her arrangement of Michio Miyagi’s The Sea in Spring, for example, she plays arco with a pronounced Japanese inflection as well as pizzicato, drawing from Anna Astesano’s harp a series of limpid and refined responses – a Japanese ensemble in miniature. She has also arranged Ravel’s Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé and Soupir certainly casts something of a spell in its startling new guise. In Placet futile her bass is cellistic in sonority and the whole conception is both vividly accomplished and also striking in effect. The first time in the recital that she takes the bass ‘downstairs’ comes in Yoshihisa Hirano’s Elegy where she broadens the timbral range of her playing not least in some intense exchanges with the harp when playing pizzicato. The harp plays rather blithely which makes a formidable contrast to the vehemence of Ciardelli’s bass as it traces its threnodic way through this original piece.
The glissandi in Saint-Saëns are evocative whilst the harp’s lines are both clear and clean. Ciardelli’s own pieces merit interest. Igor II is for double bass solo and is a brief, elliptical piece inspired by Stravinsky whilst After Igor is for harp solo and cites The Rite of Spring. Textures here are rather fuller than in the work for solo bass. Ciardelli’s own Randori Suite offers three views of Japan. The first, inspired by a Van Gogh painting of a blossoming almond tree, mixes limpid harp with percussive - as well as more refined - legato bass. A sense of delicate impressionism permeates the movement inspired by Basho which conveys in music his haiku The Old Pond whilst the final panel evokes Japanese ritual.
The two musicians are most effective at conveying those evanescent elements of Japanese art – rising cloud, say, in Stefano Tean’s Ukiguomo – but Ciardelli has also sought to evoke elements of Madame Butterfly in her 12-minute Butterfly Effect which, whilst not imitative is evocative and offers a true dialogue for both instruments, though I am not wholly convinced it can sustain the full twelve minutes. I won’t point out the obvious danger of appending a ‘bonus track’ called Blessed Relief – the piece is by Frank Zappa – as I’m sure both musicians have thought of this themselves. It’s another fine Ciardelli arrangement and brings this unexpected programme to a contemporary close.
The recording quality has been well judged, and the booklet notes are extensive and full of colourful pictures of both musicians – though only half their faces are fully visible – covered in kabuki makeup against a stark, black background.
Jonathan Woolf
Contents
Michio Miyagi [Wakabe; Suga], [Nakasuga Kengyō] (1894-1956)
The Sea in Spring arr. Valentina Ciardelli
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé arr. Valentina Ciardelli
Yoshihisa Hirano (b.1971)
Elegy
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
XII Chanson: Sur l’eau claire et sans ride
Valentina Ciardelli
Igor II, for solo double bass
After Igor, for solo harp
Randori Suite
Butterfly Effect after Giacomo Puccini
Stefano Teani
Ukigumo
Franz Zappa (1940-1993)
Blessed Relief arr. Valentina Ciardelli
