Ensemble intercontemporain / Susanna Mälkki BRUNO MANTOVANI La Sette Chiese - Streets - Eclair de Lune

 

LA SETTE CHIESE - STREETS - ECLAIR DE LUNE

 

Nicolas Baldeyrou DIALOGUES

 

DIALOGUES

 

PIERRE HENRY La Dixième Symphonie - Hommage à Beeethoven

LA DIXIÈME SYMPHONIE - HOMMAGE À BEETHOVEN

Renaud Capuçon RIHM - DUSAPIN - MANTOVANI

French violinist Renaud Capuçon is clearly relishing playing in live performance these twenty-first century concertos which were written specifically for him. Inspired by the number of commissions given by fellow violinists, notably Gidon Kremer and Anne-Sophie Mutter, when commissioning works Capuçon enjoys the privilege of being able to contribute towards expanding the repertoire of the violin. When working with living composers, Capuçon has stated that he enjoys the collaborative aspect of the project.

The earliest work here is Jeux d'eau from French composer Bruno Mantovani a work he completed in 2012. Like many composers before him, conspicuously Liszt, Debussy and Ravel, Mantovani has used a theme of water. With Jeux d'eau, Mantovani was specifically motivated by “the sound of clear water that flows from a mountain torrent.” It was Capuçon who premièred the score in 2012 at Paris. As the title suggests, the score to Jeux d'eau has an ineluctable aqueous quality marked by writing that feels clean, fresh and fluid. There is a variety of textures in both the violin and orchestra parts and noticeably broad dynamics.

Wolfgang Rihm is one of the pre-eminent composers working today. The winner of several prestigious awards, Rihm has been the recipient of numerous commissions. By my reckoning, Rihm has now written five violin concertos of which the best known is Gesungene Zeit (Time Chant) for Anne-Sophie Mutter who recorded the work on Deutsche Grammophon. Rihm’s violin concerto Gedicht des Malers (Poem of the Painter) was introduced by Capuçon in 2015 at Vienna. Rihm talks about the inspiration for the work coming from artist Max Beckmann, who painted Max Reger a year after the composer had died. Rihm has stated that he could visualise Beckmann painting virtuoso violinist Eugène Ysaÿe in the same way. It is as if the soloist has taken control of the artist’s brush on the canvas. Immediately, the aching intensity of the writing has a Bergian feel and the mainly high lying violin part strongly evokes celestial images. Two main contrasting impressions dominate the work first a mainly cool and shadowy often mysterious atmosphere and secondly episodes of coarsely-hewn agitation. The moods are disrupted by the quickly built screeching outburst at 9.23 and a sudden thunderous eruption at 12.40.

Another Frenchman, Pascal Dusapin, is represented by Aufgang, his concerto for violin and orchestra. In 2008, Dusapin was motivated by conductor Marek Janowski to write a violin concerto, but after some work on the piece, the project didn’t come to fruition. Subsequently a meeting with Capuçon led to the composer reviving the concerto that he completed in 2011. The first performance was given by Capuçon in 2013 at Cologne. Titled Aufgang, the word in English means Ascent, possibly meaning a staircase to the sky, relating to the high register where much of the violin part lies.

Dusapin talks about “emerging light” yet it is the contrasts that are striking. Evident in the opening movement is the very high lying register of the violin part against the orchestra, which becomes increasingly weighty and anxiety laden. Shadowy, infused with nervous tension in the movement two, the violin part gradually gains in prominence and assertiveness. Conspicuous in the third movement is the wild and fiery character at turns coolly expressive.

The liner notes include an essay by Marguerite Haldjian and a note from Capuçon which are helpful and interesting. Recorded live the sound quality across three separate concert halls is uniformly clear and well balanced. There is some minor audience noise but nothing too distracting, and applause has been kept in on two the works.

Playing with robust and impassioned lyricism, Renaud Capuçon is on exceptional form. This is the finest release of contemporary violin concertos I have heard in some years. (Michael Cookson)

Jean-Guihen Queyras 21st CENTURY CELLO CONCERTOS

Canadian-born French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras has been the featured cello soloist for the Ensemble InterContemporain for some time and appeared in this role on DGG's 1992 recording of Pierre Boulez's the Ligeti Cello Concerto with that ensemble. Queyras, however, doesn't just make contact to new music through composers who come through IRCAM, but also seeks it out on his own; Harmonia Mundi's 21st Century Cello Concertos combines three such commissions from composers Bruno Mantovani, Philippe Schoeller, and Gilbert Amy. When approaching this disc, one must be prepared for the reality that in Europe much "new music" of the twenty first century sounds like that of the twentieth, particularly the new music of the 1960s and '70s. While there are those, like Nicolas Bacri for example, who are finding ways to move on, these composers are in a sense defined by the degree to which they orbit the core experimental literature of the '60s, with Mantovani cycling the furthest away, Schoeller quite a bit closer, and Amy altogether belonging to that tradition. 

It is partly due to his total absorption into the milieu of the '60s -- as a participant in that scene and the conductor who took over the Domaine Musicale concerts from Boulez -- that the Amy concerto seems the strongest of these three. Amy's Concerto pour violoncelle et orchestre (2000) is the longest of the concertos, maintains the most consistent overall mood, satisfying formal development, and sense of variety throughout its seven short movements, which effectively add up to a single-movement work, though feeling subdivided into the usual three. Amy's orchestration is beautifully done and the concerto is also reasonably free of "new music clichés," most certainly not the case in Schoeller's The eyes of the wind (2005). This piece is subdivided into four short movements that sound an awful lot like one another, although there is some variability in the third movement. Schoeller uses a relatively small number of gestures throughout the 20-minute work, and a distant, shimmering atmosphere as established in the string section of the ripieno is an important element overall. In the first movement, however, there is a cliché in the form of an intermittent woodblock figure that resembles the "organizing woodblock" of Xenakis' Akrata; after awhile, one wearies of hearing it go "tic-tic-tic" over and over again. 

Bruno Mantovani's Concerto pour violoncelle et orchestre (2003) begins like gangbusters with a riotously colorful range of ideas that are expanded well; ultimately, though, these ideas end up being caught in a cycle that grows gradually shorter in a contracting loop, and one loses patience during this section. Then this stops and a new section begins of weaker material until the piece is concluded; the concerto feels seamy and none too finished. While Harmonia Mundi's 21st Century Cello Concertos may not seem like the freshest new music one could encounter in the twenty first century, overall it is high-quality music with some measure of flaws, though at least some measure of provocative and evocative moments as one would expect in such music. All of the pieces provide a considerable showcase for Queyras as soloist, particularly a cadenza in the Amy concerto where he is required to keep a dialogue going between figures in three different ranges of his instrument. Throughout, Queyras is mightily impressive; the recordings are made on three different occasions, with the Mantovani being the most responsive and the Schoeller least so. (Dave Lewis)