Song of Songs
David LANG (b. 1957)
Just (after Song of Songs) [12:47]
Luciano BERIO (1925-2003)
Naturale [19:03]
Betty OLIVERO (b. 1954)
En la mar hai una torre [13:13]
Trio Mediaeval; with Garth Knox (viola), Agnès Vesterman (cello); Sylvain
Lemêtre (percussion), Cliona Doris (harp) (Olivero)/Andrew Synnott
(Olivero)
rec. 2014, St. Peter’s Church of Ireland Drogheda.
LOUTH CONTEMPORARY MUSIC LCMS1502 [45:17]
David Lang’s Just (after Song of Songs) is
an admirably simple and restrained work that for some reason drags out an
impenetrably complicated booklet note by Paul Griffiths. The ‘Song of
Songs’ is also known as the ‘Song of Solomon’ or ‘Canticle
of Canticles’, a text from the Hebrew Bible that presents “the
voices of two lovers, praising each other, yearning for each other, proffering
invitations to enjoy.” So much for Wikipedia. Lang’s take on this
text has some subtle adjustments, but the jist of the piece is the litany
performed as a sequence of juicy cadences sung to perfection by Trio Medieval,
around which the instruments gradually add notes and lines. This all owes
a little to Pilip Glass and Arvo Pärt but is none the worse for that.
Luciano Berio’s Naturale is a good deal more theatrical, combining
the ‘here and now’ of the performers on stage with the recorded
voice of a singer, Peppino Celano. The worlds of Berio and folk music conjoin,
collide and cross-fertilise, with Garth Knox’s viola the leading actor
in its virtuosity and depth of expression. This is a strange confluence, but
one brought into a kind of ‘natural’ unity within Berio’s
idiom. If you know this composer’s theatrical and chamber work then
the poetry of his writing for these instruments and in this dual context will
hold no real shocks. Subtle timbre, the stretching of time through seemingly
aimless musical wanderings and moments of surprising beauty and emotional
directness are all here. Berio had an impossible “utopian dream…
to create a unity between folk music and our music – a real, perceptible,
understandable conduit between ancient music-making, which is so close to
everyday work, and our music.” With Naturale this ‘utopian
dream’ doesn’t seem so very far away after all.
Betty Olivero is one of Berio’s pupils, and the connection between the
multiple strings to Berio’s viola and Olivero’s interweaving voices
in En la mar hai una torre brings about an extension one to the other
in the context of this recording. The title translates as In the Sea there
is a Tower, and ancient Sephardic and other melodies layer, fold over
and answer each other, together with harp and gently bowed strings combining
to create an acute juxtaposition of ancient and modern. Performed with exquisite
sensitivity, this is the kind of work that justifies the descriptions ‘magical’
or ‘spellbinding’. As the complications have built up over time
so are they dismantled by the end of the piece, in which the voices unite
in an enigmatic but highly expressive coda, “A garden locked is my sister…”
This is an unusual but surprisingly desirable trio of works, very nicely recorded
and performed to perfection. CD and booklet presentation is also excellent,
with plenty of colour and stimulation for your optical nerves. Sung texts
are not printed in the booklet, but this is not a big problem as far as I
am concerned. David Lang’s vocal parts are clear as crystal, and while
it would be nice to have those from En la mar hai una torre the vocal
parts are combined into something with an almost instrumental function, and
for the most part it would be a challenge to untangle words and notes. Lang
and Olivero’s works were both commissioned by the Louth Contemporary
Music Society, which is also deserves plaudits for creating this strikingly
canorous trinity.
Dominy Clements
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