Etude Sur Les Mouvements Rotatoires, etc.

Although the 'Etude sur les Mouvements Rotatoires' gets top billing, the main meat of this disc, and most of its appeal, lies in the '24 Preludes' that follow it, or, in full, the '24 Preludes in 13-tone diatonicised chromaticism in quarter-tone system for two pianos', op. 22, initially published in 1934 then subsequently revised over the course of the '60s. Ivan Wyschnegradsky, their composer, had been born in Russia, but spent most of his adult life in Paris. In the wake of a quasi-mystical epiphany in his youth, he felt compelled to compose microtonal, or what he sometimes referred to as "ultrachromatic" music.

In practice, this most often meant composing pieces on a specially-designed piano he'd had made with two keyboards tuned a quarter-tone apart: for performances, in the absence of such a unique instrument, two differently-tuned pianos and two pianists would typically be called for. The theory behind the compositions is outlined in what is, for me, incomprehensible technical detail in the booklet notes. On hearing or seeing the preludes being played however, even an ignorant listener like me can get the general idea.

The effect is disconcertingly like one might imagine Scriabin's Preludes might sound like if played by Les Dawson. I find it fascinating, intermittently ridiculous and occasionally beautiful. The full set of Preludes is a bit of a rich meal for a single sitting, so when I listen it's usually to a subset of them. It must be remarkably difficult music to play well, given the degree of synchronisation needed between the two players: Sylvaine Billier and Martine Joste do the honours here in fine style.

Comments

All Wrapped Up

Here's another of the compilation cassettes I bought this summer, having taken home a Denon twin-deck hi-fi cassette player from the local charity shop. All Wrapped Up is a 1983 compilation of singles by The Undertones, with Side One filled with A-sides, and B-sides on Side Two. A cassette must be the least desirable medium for such an arrangement, with a long rewind required if one just wants to hear the hits repeatedly. The Undertones were unapologetically provincial and anti-fashionable, with their songs sharply-written slices of life that pointedly avoided any mention of politics, or of the then-continuing violence in their native Derry. My favourite tracks are the obvious choices: 'Teenage Kicks', 'Jimmy Jimmy', 'Here Comes the Summer', 'My Perfect Cousin' & 'Wednesday Week'. Their later singles showed increased sophistication but lack the some of the straightforward charm of their earlier work. The B-sides, not unexpectedly, are mo...

Complete String Quartets

While the string quartets of Nikolai Yakovievich Myaskovsky (1881-1950) were all published in the Soviet era, a few of them had pre-revolutionary origins. Two quartets he wrote in 1911 and '09 while a conservatory student re-surfaced some twenty years later designated as Quartets Nos. 3 and 4. An even earlier "schoolboy" piece was later re-worked more radically as Quartet No. 10, premiered in 1945. Myaskovsky partook of an ample share of the turmoil and tragedy of his times: he was wounded and shell-shocked after service on the front line in World War I, and his father, who had been a high-ranking military engineer, was brutally murdered by a revolutionary mob. Despite that, his music, even at its most sombre, hasn't the black bile or biting sarcasm of Shostakovich's, or of his friend Prokofiev's. Of the works collected here, in excellent early '80s performances by the Taneyev Quartet, only Quartet No. 1 has any significantly metallic tang of early S...

Onslow

George Onslow was an odd-man-out among 19th-century French composers. Born into wealth and privilege, the grandson of an English Earl, he had no need to follow the operatic gravy train, with string quartets (of which he wrote 36) and string quintets (there are another 32 of those) forming the bulk of his compositional output. The present disc contains his 28th, 29th and 30th quartets, in compelling performances by the Quatuor Diotima. These quartets were written toward the end of a prolifically-creative period for Onslow in the years 1829-35. Viviane Niaux, in her informative booklet notes, ascribes this to the composer's having heard performances of two of Beethoven's late quartets for the first time in 1828, at their Paris première. Like many of his contemporaries, Onslow was at once "fascinated and disconcerted", and, although he considered them "extravagant", they seem to have been powerfully inspirational. A further spur to creativity may have been his ...

This is a Recording

Search This Blog