Mousikē: The Art of Muses, harpsichord music by contemporary female Composers

Album review

A transcontinental exhibition of modern female composers writing for the harpsichord in a dazzling array of styles, featuring many first recordings.

Ursula Mamlok’s Three Bagatelles are miniatures characterized by a free application of serial technique, courting expressionist parallels with rhetorical, concentrated gestures. In Tumbáo, Tania Leon uses a string bass pattern from her native Cuba without being confined to a specifically Latin style in its development. Graciane Finzi’s Espressivo evokes Romanticism (the period when the harpsichord almost disappeared from view) and could even be heard as an evocation of Chopin, but for a complementary tape part featuring a second, detuned harpsichord.

Karola Obermüller composed the Suite des femmages as a set of tributes to both the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger and Obermüller's own mother, Barbara, and they are accordingly imbued with a ferocity and a bracing power which reflects her admiration for both the women and their accomplishments. Errolyn Wallen dedicated Louis’ Loop to her infant godson, and there is a playful quality to the juxtaposition of frenetic activity with oases of peace, where echoes of the past resurface poetically and sometimes with subtle irony.

Santa Ratniece took inspiration from the world of astronomy for Mira, which is named after a kind of pulsing star: with every pulse cycle, Mira increases in luminosity and strength. The Mobius-Ring of Misato Mochizuki describes an earthly scientific phenomenon, looping like Wallen’s and Ratniece’s works through evolving pulsations of the same material. Sofia Gubaidulina organised the Ritorno Perpetuo along complementary principles of varied repetition, determined in part by numerology and the Fibonacci sequence. This is the most extensive work on the album, but every piece here has something distinctive to say, and gains from its contrast with the others.

A previous album of Italian contemporary works for harpsichord on Brilliant Classics demonstrated Luca Quintavalle’s eclectic reach and mastery of diverse styles, to which this unique collection makes a lively sequel. © Brilliant Classics