March 27, 2017

  • Chamber Music by Alla Elena Cohen

     Red Lilies of Bells, Golden Lilies of Bells, White Lilies of Bells
    Marissa Licata, Melissa Bull, violins; Alexander Vavilov, viola; Sebastian Baverstam, cello;
    Alla Elena Cohen, piano, recitation;
    Chamber Orchestra: Bianca Garcia, flute; Izumi Sakamoto, oboe; Todd Brunel, clarinet:
    Timur Rubinshteyn, timpani; William Manley, vibraphone; Matt Sharrock; marimba; (above quartet); Lauren Nelson, viola.
    Rachel Schmiege, soprano;
    Ravello Records 7953
    Total Time:  79:43
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    This new Ravello release introduces us to the music of Russian-born composer Alla Elma Cohen.  She emigrated to the United States in 1989 and currently resides in the Boston area and is on the faculty of the Berklee College of Music.  The album pulls together seven chamber works that mix large forces and smaller combinations in a rather fascinating program of often unwieldy titles.  The titles suggest the way Cohen explores different sound combinations for musical ideas lending each work a unique quality that parallels a painter’s different canvases of the same subject.

    Three smaller chamber pieces are dispersed throughout the album.  The first piece is a string quartet, “Blessings” (“Inner Temple” Volume 2, Series 1) cast in three movements.  The music has an almost Baroque-like feel in the string writing that invites the listener into a mostly tonal harmonic world that soon gives way to sliding pitches and interesting textures.  A similar approach can be heard in the central movement of the following Trio for violin, cello, and piano whose title is also that of the album.  The trio is bookended by the recitation of a poem, first in Russian in the opening, and then in English as the final movement.  A few melodic lines appear in the spoken text (a bit of Sprechstimme) that will then become embedded in the trio discussion.  The piano tends to provide bell-like chords as the violin and cello provide a sort of musical reflection of this line that is developed in often very descriptive writing.  Trill and pizzicato ideas become more intense and visceral as the piece moves towards its final bars gradually losing steam.  Another example of Cohen’s text setting occurs in Inscriptions on a Bamboo Screen.  It consists of six brief movements for soprano and viola.  These are dramatic settings with great demands on the vocal range and an interesting way that the voice ideas are imitated in the glissandi and slides in the viola line.  A cup gong is also used in the final movement.  The vocal and viola lines are like brushstrokes reflecting on one another.  It is a fascinating work that perhaps is an encapsulation of Cohen’s compositional style.  In the solo cello work, Hoffmanniana”, Cohen explores a variety of techniques that shifts from pizzicato and strummed ideas to intense lyric lines at all ends of the instrument’s register across the four movements.

    There are three chamber orchestra pieces spread throughout the album.  The Homage to Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais is a three-movement work.  An exploration of small motivic phrases can be heard from the start of this work, continuing the style that appears in the other works.  What is often striking are these intense dissonant moments that create tension out of which a fascinating lyric line might appear.  In this sense, it is a bit of Dutilleux and Lutoslawski melded together to create Cohen’s unique voice.  The central movement tends to focus more on the development of one aspect of a lyric line as it moves through the ensemble.  The second chamber orchestra piece bears the “Inner Temple” volume 1, series 12 title of the opening quartet.  The textures here are a bit denser in the first movement with dramatic gestures emphasized by timpani.  More intricate writing appears in the central movements as they wind about one another with mallet percussion helping provide a more tonal interjection along the way.  The album closes with Shabbat Nigunim (“Inner Temple” volume 1, series 11), a four-movement work that serves as a sort of overview of Cohen’s style further exploring interesting instrumental combinations.  In some respects it is like a variation and reflection on a particular motivic idea or harmonic block that is somewhat deconstructed and explored.

    Cohen’s music is certainly expressive.  The music has great intensity but also flashes of lyric writing that are quite striking as the music’s dramatic shape helps to heighten these moments so well.  The recording here is all well balanced and the latter pieces are notably from a live concert at the Old South Church in Boston.  This is an intriguing album of often intense, but engaging contemporary music.