touch! don touch! music for theremin

Chronique

The theremin isn't just for horror movies (and the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations") anymore. A crop of German and Russian composers, presented with the opportunity to write for two virtuoso theremin players, Lydia Kavina and Barbara Buchholz, have responded with compositions in what may be a new musical genre -- chamber music featuring conventional instruments and theremin(s). The theremin certainly broadens the timbral and sonic potential of chamber ensembles, and the composers represented here have discovered various possibilities for exploiting its unique qualities. One approach is to integrate the theremin with strings, which share some of its timbral and technical capabilities, and seamlessly blend those extended sounds with the string sound. Caspar Johannes Walter's Vakuum-Halluzinationen exemplifies this approach -- it sounds something like a surreally enhanced string quartet. Another tactic is setting the theremin's individual sound in contrast to percussive instruments that share few of its sonic characteristics, an approach that most of the composers here make use of.
What's most noticeable about many of these pieces (with a few striking exceptions) is the restraint with which the composers write for the theremins; they seem determined to avoid the standard (and fun!) dramatic clichés the theremin is known for -- the mad swoops from one end of the range to the other, the shamelessly quaking vibrato, the dire bending of pitches. Vladimir Nikolaev's Cherno-Balaja Muzyka for two theremins, violin, violoncello, piano, and percussion effectively incorporates the traditional theremin effects with newly explored timbral ideas, and successfully integrates the sounds with the conventional instruments to create a musically satisfying and eerily atmospheric piece. Moritz Eggert's The Son of the Daughter of Dracula versus the Incredible Frankenstein Monster (from Outer Space), for the same ensemble plus tape, is both hugely entertaining and skillfully constructed, and, as its title implies, is so loopily over the top that it should satisfy the most traditional horror-movie-theremin junkie; it's easily worth the price of the album. Iraida Yusupova's Kitezh-19, an elegiac and disturbing evocation of the desolation and loneliness of life in the Soviet Union's secret cities used for nuclear research and testing, inhabits an entirely different aesthetic universe than Eggert's piece, but it is equally effective, as well as being deeply moving and hauntingly beautiful. Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin supports the soloists with style and conviction.

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