It is difficult to say where this music goes wrong. New York-based American composer Bernadette Speach has a way with harmony and pacing–very elegant and restrained, vying for a Satie-like simplicity. It is a serious risk to take, to skirt this line of elegance and vapidity, and she spends time on both sides of it. What’s nearly missing from this collection is contrast: every piece seems to fall into the same slow tempo, which makes listening to the whole program something of a “white noise” experience. Perhaps Speach’s intention is to create motionless, meditative music–even the new-agey title suggests this–but the surface gets too active for stasis, too static to be compelling in the romantic sense.
However, there also is much here to like: Trios des Trois has some lovely, lush, fearlessly tonal harmonies and appealing instrumentation; Chosen Voices, a piece for prepared guitar and toy piano, has some interesting plinks and plunks–though the liner notes surprisingly fail to explain how the guitar was prepared. Speach’s piece for the Arditti Quartet, Les ondes pour quatre, probably is very elegant, but the Ardittis play everything with unnecessarily jagged ferocity, which makes a reasoned judgement difficult. In the aptly-titled Viola, Rozanna (no last name) plays the moving solo part with passion and intensity, building to Speach’s well-heard climax, and she’s matched by the powerful Anthony de Mare on piano. This pianist also takes very seriously the ridiculous solo venture When It Rains, Lleuve, which requires him to sing, snap, and tap, as well as play the piano. It’s a noble effort and a good performance, but to little end.
The strongest offering on the disc is Woman without Adornment, a 25-minute-long work for reciter, singer, guitar, bass, and piano. It is moving, mostly due to the subject matter of the spoken text–about the room inhabited by a mother who has since died–but the plaintive simplicity that Speach uses to set this straightforward poetry is appropriate and powerful. There are also more playful sections that require a bluesy sound from the ensemble (and even some foxy electric guitar work by Jeffrey Schanzer and walking bass by Mark Dresser). The text is beautifully spoken by its author, Thulani Davis, and well sung by Alva Rogers. But this piece, like the rest of the music found here, gets caught in the threnody trap, refusing to pick up. The disc was recorded with exceptional care for instrumental (and vocal) detail and with knowing regard for natural, appropriate balances.
