April 29, 2019

  • Eclectic Explorations of Color and Sound

     

    Tacit-Citat-Ion
    Melis Jaatinen, mezzo-soprano.
    Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi, electronics.
    BIT20 Ensemble
    Silje Aker Johnsen, soprano. Ellen Ugelvik, prepared piano.
    Hilde Annine Hasselberg, soprano. Manuel Hofstatter, percussion.
    Joshua Rubin, clarinet. Yumi Murakami, piccolo.
    Hans Gunnar Hagen, viola.
    Ravello Records 8011
    Total Time:  57:51
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Ravello Records tends to bring a variety of contemporary music that explores unique approaches to composition.  Here is a chance to explore the chamber music of Finnish composer Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi.  Her work is a combination of acoustic instruments, voice, electronics, and fixed media that have their roots in the avant-garde experiments of the 1960s.  The music has this sense of deconstruction to primary elements of timbre, attack, and expression which are then reassembled to have the listener consider these components of music.  The pieces here include a host of vocal settings with several works for instruments in an eclectic collection of contemporary music.

    There are several vocal works on the album.  The opening track, Dada-Aria (2016) is a striking exploration of pure vocal writing that references 19th-Century opera, though here all the extraneous accompaniment support has been removed to focus on the sounds of the voice which is stunningly performed here by Melis Jaatinen.  Herze Beim Spinnrade (2013) takes its inspiration from a familiar Schubert song though reinterpreted here through a harsher, almost mechanical accompaniment enhanced with a prepared piano.  Vocal virtuosity that requires a full range of technique is also employed with an equally excellent interpretation by Silje Aker Johnsen.  It is another of the ways that Ahvenniemi’s music works to merge traditions from different musical eras.  One can hear this more in the very brief L’Operette D’Amor where the past and present collide with the use of looped electronics and percussion elements against the vocal aria.  The more extensive Det Osynliga Barnet (2013) is an opportunity for Ahvenniemi to use her compositional technique, with its own moments of ambiguity, in a text that is equally so.  Banalala (2014) connects with the composer’s philosophical and aesthetic intersections with another work for voice and fixed media.

    Three pieces for solo instruments with electronics and/or fixed media display how Ahveniemi explores the qualities of these solo lines within this context.  The clarinet work, Ode to a Tree (2016), is among the eco-musical approaches where pre-recorded vocal sounds have a somewhat primal feel against the timbre of the solo instrument.  The piece was premiered in an area surrounded by trees making this larger connection to the woodwind and its surroundings.  Lucia (2009) is a work for piccolo that also employs electronic manipulation to amplify and alter the decay of this instrument as its own unique color is emphasized.   Finally, one of the composer’s more performed works, A Song for the Viola (2011) creates an equally intriguing, brief dramatic work inviting us to consider the multitude of directions an idea might take us.  Perhaps the most experimental piece here is Winds (2016) which focuses on breathing sounds imaged originally in surround sound.  The air moves through a melodica which adds some slight tonal quality to the music.

    The album’s title comes from one of the two works for string quartet included here.  Wuthering Modes, Not Moods (2017) explores aspects of how music is being created with these methods of expression being stretched within the texture.  The idea here parallels that of the opening work as timbre and musical gesture become the key elements of Ahvenniemi’s creation.  Finally, Tacit-citat-ion (2013/2018) serves as a sort of summary of Ahvenniemi’s integration of the past and present which here also includes a reference to modern musical style, in particular that of Kaija Saariaho whose Nocturne for solo violin is the departure point.

    Though one can certainly hear the distant experimental music of the 1960s and 1970s in her work, the eclectic collection here shows how Ahvenniemi has taken these approaches and blended them into a unique musical language that wants the listener to rethink and rehear the way our own expectations of sound and tone color are created.  In that respect, the album makes for an often fascinating listen with many fantastic, committed performances.