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Birtwistle: Pulse Shadows

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Artistic Quality:

Sound Quality:

Though clothed in the stodgy, post-Webern standard-dress-of-the-academy rhetoric, this is a piece with a surprising amount to say, with fleeting hints at something beautiful beneath its thorny exterior. It is a large, generous meditation on death (another one) with texts by Paul Celan, a poet whose compact, economical style, where one word means thousands, is a natural fit for Harrison Birtwistle’s music. It works like an oratorio or passion, with string quartet interludes in place of choruses. A solo soprano sings (or sometimes speaks) the text, accompanied by a chamber orchestra, the string quartet adding comments in between. Of this composer’s musical style, the liner notes (which are in-depth but thankfully lacking in pretension) say: “In many Birtwistle works, melody attempted is as important as melody achieved.” This statement could not be more true here, where jarring, harsh music gives way to lines that are poignant and elegiac. The best example is the smoky, lush texture of Tenebrae (gorgeous singing over a walking bass-like figure, which floats and soars). A constant emotional throughline is added by the clarinets, which seem to haunt the soprano in the most ghostly fashion. It may not captivate you for the entire hour–especially in the interludes–but the beautiful moments in this piece are worth digging for.

The single biggest problem with this disc is the Arditti Quartet, whose relentlessly jagged, brutal playing offers more swagger than substance: it plays difficult music as if it were “difficult” music. This does a disservice to a work that already requires some serious attention from the listener. Claron McFadden sings with the sort of frantic indifference needed to carry off such a work, and she assays some truly harrowing leaps with grace, especially when accompanied by the Nash Ensemble. Reinbert de Leeuw, one of the great figures in contemporary music, really gives this piece the serious go it deserves. And the quality of the recording, if a little blunt, is highly appropriate to the music. [2/3/2002]


Recording Details:

Reference Recording: none

HARRISON BIRTWISTLE - Pulse Shadows

  • Record Label: Teldec - 3984268672
  • Medium: CD

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