The assembled works on this Karel Husa collection come mostly from the composer’s later period, when his musical language became increasingly atonal. Deux Preludes opens the disc with arrhythmic, discordant woodwind intonations that continue throughout both movements. The following Five Poems offers movement titles referring to birds in various states of motion or rest. Rather than replicating birdsong à la Messiaen, Husa employs complicated rhythms and meters to suggest the birds’ jittery movements. This, and the novel ensemble textures (including some clever horn writing) makes this work interesting from a technical standpoint.
The disc’s title work, Recollections, is the most forbidding of the bunch. The music’s overall gray cast is only intensified by the gnarly piano writing and thorny thematic material. Whatever is being recollected, it certainly doesn’t seem pleasant. The atmosphere brightens considerably with the concluding Serenade. The second movement, La nuit, surprisingly contains bits of consonance, while in the finale, La danse, there’s actually a full-fledged melody along with fetching dance rhythms that remind us of Husa’s earlier, more accessible period. For many, this brief bright spot in an otherwise gloomy hour of listening won’t suffice, the stunningly vivid recorded sound nothwithstanding. However, staunch Husa fans should be pleased with this release.
