February 3, 2017

  • Chamber Music by Jane O'Leary

     

    Chamber Music of Jane O’Leary
    Concorde: Madeleine Staunton, alto flute; Paul Roe, bass clarinet; Dermot Dunne, accordion
    Elaine Clark, violin; Paul Roe, clarinet; David Bremner, piano;
    Andreja Malir, harp; Martin Johnson, cello.
    Contempo Quartet: Bogdan Sofei and Ingrid Nicola, violins; Andrew Banciu, viola; Adrian Mantu, cello.
    Navona Records 6068
    Total Time:  60:35
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Connecticut-born composer Jane O’Leary has made Ireland her home for over four decades and helped established the first contemporary music ensemble there, Concorde.  Current members of the group are featured on this new release of varied chamber pieces.  O’Leary studied with Milton Babbitt though her own pieces here feel less immediately serial.  Yet the way lines are shaped and unfolded feel like an extension of Babbitt’s own explorations of sound.  The pieces here though are all from the past six years  plopping us into O’Leary’s mature style.

    What comes across immediately is her interest in exploring sound from unique instrumental combinations.  This is apparent from the opening work, A Way Through (2013) with the use of alto flute, bass clarinet, and accordion.  The piece explores each of these instrumental timbres, often at the upper ends of the register for the winds.  The accordion is used in intriguing ways with clusters and harmonies that lend it a sound perhaps more unusual than is commonly attached to the instrument.  Bent pitch material at first lends an Asian quality but the music tends to always return to a specific pitch.

    A similar approach is heard in No. 19 (2012) as O’Leary explores brief ideas across a span of seven minutes set for solo violin.  The instrument takes the listener on a journey that seems to be looking across different scenes or moments in time.  The same might be said for the following work for clarinet and piano, Murmurs and Echoes (2015).  Over five movements, the composer explores the tonal qualities of the clarinet with sustained tones while the piano creates a variety of textures around these different tones, feeling almost like pedal points.  The piano line has these flourishes from time to time that help anchor the tonality of the music and even amidst the more unusual lines, helps create an entry point for those less comfortable with more cerebral music.  The splashes of harmony provide brief islands of arrival amidst the other seemingly random threads.  In From Hand to Hand (2011), she explores multiple sounds and effects that are possible between the harp and cello creating often intriguing textures.

    Often O’Leary’s music feels as if the ideas are unfolding in the moment.  Creating a sound, or idea, the music then seems to pause and then consider what direction it might take.  This sense can be picked up in the two movements here from her A Winter Sketchbook (2015) which have an almost Impressionistic feel of immediacy trying to capture an idea in the moment.

    The album takes its title from the final work, The Passing Sound of Forever (2015).  Written for string quartet, the three movement work is a finely wrought exploration of the opening notes of Beethoven’s eleventh string quartet (Op. 95).  Again, this idea is sort of dissected and sent on different paths using the traditional quartet as another combinatorial tool for O’Leary’s shifts between angular rows and moments of breathtaking sparse qualities.

    The performers here, some for whom the works were written, have a love for the music that allows these pieces to eschew the sort of cerebral qualities one might attach to composers flowing out of the Babbitt compositional approaches.  O’Leary’s lyrical lines have an often stunning quality, reminiscent of Impressionist shading, against which she sets unusual sounds, gestures, and textures that help lend the music a fine dramatic shape that engages the listener.  Though highly organized, the music has the sense of reflection that builds upon the motifs and ideas which precede it.  As is common with Navona releases, the pieces are organized in a way that helps the listener become accustomed to the composer’s unique voice and slowly draws you in to the more complex qualities which feel quite natural.