Música Contemporánea

El primer álbum en solitario de Gaspar Claus se ha hecho esperar. Desde hace quince años, el violonchelista ha multiplicado sus viajes, encuentros y colaboraciones con grandes artistas de todos los horizontes: desde su padre Pedro Soler hasta Barbara Carlotti, pasando por Rone o Bryce Dessner. Con todas estas influencias, el músico ha encontrado el mejor hogar posible en el sello InFiné, donde presenta Tancade, un álbum eminentemente personal, ya que por primera vez es el único capitán a bordo del barco. Saludemos las notables contribuciones de Francesco Donadello y David Chalmin en la masterización y la mezcla, que han dado a esta grabación un sonido único y rico en contrastes.El material es mínimo: con un violonchelo como único equipaje, Claus cautiva con la variedad de sus composiciones, explotando las infinitas posibilidades sonoras de su instrumento. Pizzicatos, arcos que son alternativamente flexibles y chirriantes, bajos resonantes que son respondidos por agudos aéreos... Como un verdadero arquitecto del sonido, el intérprete logra hacer de cada uno de los títulos que componen este trabajo un mundo propio, convocando sensaciones únicas. Así, uno puede verse arrastrado al trance casi tribal e hipnotizante de los pizzicatos percusivos de Une Foule, antes de encontrar la atmósfera más meditativa del crepuscular 1999. No se puede sino admirar el genio de Claus para esculpir tanto material con tan pocas herramientas, limitándose la contribución de la electrónica a discretos efectos de reverberación o distorsión: lo mínimo, en definitiva.La gran fuerza de Tancade es que nunca se hunde en una pura demostración de técnica instrumental. El álbum no es un catálogo de todo lo que un chelista puede producir con su instrumento. Está claro que, en cada tema, es solamente la atmósfera deseada la que preside los procesos de composición e interpretación. Gaspar Claus ha creado un álbum magnífico, lleno de inventiva y poesía, que reconecta al oyente con un cúmulo de emociones que se remontan a miles de años atrás. Se puede decir ya que Tancade se convertirá en un clásico imprescindible para el violonchelo contemporáneo. © Pierre Lamy/Qobuz

Dying too soon in July 2020, Nikolai Kapustinas was like a UFO in the Russian musical landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries. Classical? Jazz? It is difficult to attribute his music to a precise genre as the symbiosis between the two styles is so perfect. For his part, the composer has chosen his side: "I was never a jazz musician. I never tried to be a real jazz pianist, but I had to do it because of the composing. I'm not interested in improvisation – and what is a jazz musician without improvisation?  All my improvisations are written, of course, and they become much better; it improves them.” These words perhaps best sum up one's feelings when listening to Kapustin's compositions. These are resolutely classical scores, as revealed by their titles, "Concert Etudes", "Sonatine" and "Sonate", but from them emerge harmonies, rhythms and a lexicon that are definitely related to the world of jazz.Although reluctant to perform his works in public, the composer has nevertheless recorded a substantial part of them. This indubitably explains the small number of performers who dare to measure themselves against the works of the Russian master, so captivating were his interpretations in their perfectly mastered virtuosity. Almost a year to the day after Kapustin's death, Yeol Eum Son presents here some choice pieces: among them, the unmissable 8 Etudes de concert, Op. 40, and the Sonate pour piano n° 2, Op. 54. The South Korean pianist, silver medallist at the 2011 Tchaikovsky competition and accustomed to orchestral repertoires, gives a generous amplitude, depth and groove to these pieces, whereas Kapustin had accustomed us to dazzling interpretations achieved at a single stroke. Yeol Eom Son's playing shows how much Kapustin's compositions follow the lineage of the greatest masters, from the Romantic period to Gershwin, and that they have their rightful place in the concert repertoire. © Pierre Lamy / Qobuz 

In this installment in "an ongoing Shostakovich survey", Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra bookend the composer's brilliant, often turbulent symphonic career. Nearly half a century lies between Shostakovich's triumphant debut with the First, premiered before his 20th birthday, and the Fifteenth, an inventory of influences written under the shadow of his own mortality. Penned just two years earlier, the Fourteenth is a symphonic song cycle, and the Chamber Symphony is a skillful adaptation of his tragic String Quartet No. 8. © Deutsche Grammophon

Recorded: [1-4]: January 2014, at Towson University Center for the Arts [5-7]: August 2016, at Grusin Music Hall, University of ColoradM Boulder [8-12]: May 2018, at Powell Methodist Churchm Ohio

Gérard Grisey's Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil ("Four Songs for Crossing the Threshold," 1999) was one of the last things he composed before his sudden death from a brain aneurysm. To call it a foreshadowing is on the mystical side, but it's quite a haunting work, comprising four separate "deaths" (of the Angel, of Civilization, of the Voice, and of Humanity), followed by a tender Berceuse that will touch even those not attuned to the work's sparse modernist language. Remarkably, Hannigan both sings and conducts the Ludwig Orchestra in this work for soprano and 15 musicians; apparently, no videos of how she accomplished this have surfaced, but it would be fascinating to see how she did it. Hannigan joins the Grisey to two other works, possibly concerned with death: Luigi Nono's "Djamila Boupacha" for solo soprano, about the death of an Algerian revolutionary, and Haydn's Symphony No. 49 in F minor, H. 1/499, subtitled "La Passione." The subtitle was not Haydn's, and there is some question as to whether the work was intended as seriously as it is presented here. However, Hannigan's performance of this Sturm und Drang-period work is a remarkable one, hard-driving, with a buzzing harpsichord sometimes emerging from the background. Listeners' mileage certainly may vary here, but there is an X-factor in Hannigan's favor here: the boldness of the entire project is something few others attempt. © TiVo

Erkki-Sven Tüür's Mythos, which occupies more than half of the present recording, was composed to mark the 100th anniversary of the Estonian Republic in 2018. It's not strictly a programmatic work, but online listeners may wish to seek out Tüür's description of the music: the opening, which seems to arise out of the formless void in the manner of Mahler (absolutely a major influence on this composer), actually is inspired by sea creation myths of the Finno-Ugric peoples. The work is a tour de force of orchestration, with sonorities that sometimes sound electronic even though only conventional instruments are used. Tüür's handling of the winds is especially ingenious; among many examples, consider the Star Trek transporter-like sound that appears at 23:00 and 24:00, and underlies the action over much of the next several minutes. These are flawlessly rendered by the Estonian Festival Orchestra under Paavo Järvi, and in general, it would be hard to imagine a more idiomatic and committed performance than the ones these works receive here. The textures are quite complex but are completely natural and intelligible in this recording. The other two works on the album, the short Incantation of Tempest and the ecologically oriented Sow the Wind, fit with the theme of chaos and are also memorable. The three pieces were recorded at different places and times, but they hang together remarkably well. Those last two works are recorded live and don't have quite the crackling engineering of Mythos, recorded at the Estonia Concert Hall, but this is a satisfying package showing that musical nationalism is not dead, and that offers an ideal introduction to Tüür's recent work. © TiVo