Gavin BRYARS (b.1943)
After Handel’s Vesper (1995) [11:47]
Ramble on Cortona (2010) [12:34]
Piano Concerto (The Solway Canal) (2010) [28:21]¹
Ralph van Raat (piano)
Capella Amsterdam
Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic/Otto Tausk ¹
rec. August 2010, Sweelinckzaal, Amsterdam and February 2010, Muziekgebouw
aan’t IJ, Amsterdam (Concerto)
NAXOS 8.572570 [52:42]
Gavin Bryars’ music tends not to deal in opacity. It can loop, gaining reserves
of emotional response through repetition – the most obvious example is Jesus’
Blood Never Failed Me Yet – and it can allude, but it doesn’t obfuscate.
But Bryars has cast his net widely over the years and we should welcome evidence
of his versatility. This latest disc includes two works for solo piano and
his Piano Concerto, titled The Solway Canal. After Handel’s Vesper
was written in 1995, originally for the harpsichord, but is heard here
in a sanctioned version for piano. The calm start leads to more dynamic writing
which casts off the air of relatively static post-minimalist writing. It embodies,
to a degree, the kind of freedoms to be found in a fantasia, a feeling that
is, for me, intensified at 8:40 when a sudden trill and simple figure announces
the emergence of more explicitly baroque-leaning affiliations.
The title of his next solo piano piece, Ramble on Cortona, sets up
Graingeresque expectations, but these aren’t wholly met. This is the composer’s
only work originally conceived for solo piano, and bases its themes on Laude,
a recent vocal work of his. These in turn derive from thirteenth century Italian
music in manuscripts found in Cortona. Slow and meditative, it’s flecked
with ghostly ascending treble steps. But one senses too the impress of Spanish
textures as the music slowly speeds up in its journey. It casts something
of a spell, as it’s quietly expressive.
The Concerto (The Solway Canal) was also written in 2010. It sets poems
by the Scot Edwin Morgan whose death last year was either the catalyst for
the setting, or a coincidence – we’re not told which. This isn’t, and one
would not expect it to be given it’s Bryars, in any sense a traditional cut-and-thrust
Piano Concerto. Here the solo voice is interwoven into the music’s textures.
One might think that the Busoni Piano Concerto – which has a chorus too –
is a spur, but if so it’s only in the vaguest of terms and I would prefer
to think of that work only as a precedent. The work is wistful, often romantic
and without flourish, and again deeply intimate in reach.
The Ramble and Concerto are both dedicated to the highly able soloist in this
recording, Ralph van Raat, who shows every sign of becoming a Bryars muse
of the first order.
Jonathan Woolf
Wistful, often romantic and without flourish, and deeply intimate in reach.
see also review by John France