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The Art Music Lounge

With the release of this disc, hard on the heels of Edward Cowie’s marvelous new album, Métier is quickly becoming one of my favorite record labels, showing a commitment to really GOOD new music that doesn’t sound like an explosion in a metalworks factory. Mihailo Trandafilovski (b. 1975) is a Macedonian-born composer living and working in England who, in addition to one other Métier release, has had albums of his music issued by Innova, Neuma and LORELT. He describes his basic approach to writing music as “a hierarchical organisation of the harmonic language and the material in general, or the interaction of tension and release.” I’m not entirely sure what a hierarchical organization of the harmonic language means, since he does not go into detail on this, but whatever he’s doing is clearly interesting.

The opening of the Chaconne is played in straight tone, as are several later passages, but Skærved caresses the more legato passages with a sensuous but controlled vibrato. Frankly, I’m happy to hear it, because it gives contrast to the sound. The opening chorus consists of widely-spaced notes played slowly so as to emphasize the spacing rather than just barrage the listener with a flurry of dissonant, fast figures. I liked this, too; it gives us the chance to follow Trandafilovski’s musical train of thought as the piece unfolds. It is not entirely atonal but, rather, sounded to my ears more modal, in the lush, lyrical sections quite tonal indeed. Yet the composer managed to make these two very contrasting musical styles fit together. I was less pleased, however, with the abrasive flurry of atonality in the very center of the piece, played quite abrasively like nails grating on a blackboard. Honestly, I saw no point to this, neither musically nor in terms of mood. It was just annoying.

Sandglass, played by a clarinet, yet interestingly, the very first note, an extremely high G in alt, is attacked in such a way that it almost sounds like a violin before the player (Roger Heaton) moves down into his middle and lower ranges. Listening to this piece right after Chaconne, I think I’ve figured out Trandafilovski’s gimmick: the wide spacing of intervals is his hierarchical organization of the material in general. Sandglass, too, is a very slow piece dependent on the listener’s ability to put the slowly-played notes together in one’s mind. In Sandglass, however, he creates a more dynamic piece without resorting to a complete distortion of the instrumental tone during the music’s course. He also focuses much more on the instrument’s extreme upper register, which Roger Heaton plays with great virtuosity and a very exciting attack. (I have a feeling that Heaton is either a jazz fan or at least could play excellent jazz clarinet; he has the kind of chops such music requires.)

Šarenilo, a violin duet in two parts (marked “Mozaik” and “Nitki”), is a bit faster in places, which makes the music rather more exciting. Here, Trandafilovski plays off the two instruments against one another in an interesting fashion; in the notes, he states that the piece was inspired by a large plate of mosaic glass on display from the eastern Mediterranean c. 225-200 B.C. This piece also has brevity in its favor, each of its two movements being a little over four minutes, which makes the music tauter in structure. Interestingly, there is indeed something “glass-like” about this music.

Weaxan is a trio for violin, clarinet and piano in a style similar to the first two pieces although the more expanded instrumental texture adds more color to the proceedings. Trandafilovski treats these instruments not as a unified trio but, as he put it, “as if they are in separate worlds,” but to my ears it sounded as if the first two instruments often worked together while the piano only commented on the proceedings with occasional, isolated notes and chords. Nonetheless, he does explore the range and sonorities of each instrument in an interesting manner.

Interestingly, the cello solo Polychromy opens with two thumps on the body of the instrument, which are then repeated a few bars later, but this, like the opening piece, seems to also be an exercise in distorting the basic sound of the instrument, in this case so much so that it almost sounds like some punk rock instrument (which I did not like). Nonetheless, there are some very interesting effects produced here although I would not call all of them “musical.”

I was, overall, more fascinated by the guitar duo String Dune(s) with its superb use of the guitars’ abilities to resonate. Trandafilovski admitted that, before writing this piece, he studied the construction and possibilities of the guitar in some detail. In the case of the guitar, he used not just classical references but also how the guitar is used in Renaissance lute music, blues and flamenco music. All of these influences are to be heard in this piece, which to my mind is the most fully integrated on the album in terms of both sonic possibilities and musical approach. It is an EXCELLENT piece of music—so good, in fact, that it is worth the price of the full album.

The recital ends with the two-part suite for solo violin, Grain and Song. These are much like the first piece, except that here Trandafilovski relies much more on the edgy qualities he can coax from the violin and less on contrasting lyrical sections; the ones he does include here are also played with straight tone, which gives them more of an edge.

This is not really an album that should be listened to sequentially in one sitting as I did for review. The listener will get much more out of it by playing one piece at a time and thinking about it before going on to the next. I doubt that even the composer would ideally want audiences to hear all of this music in succession in one concert, and as I said, the cello piece didn’t exactly thrill me, but overall these are interesting pieces, worth checking out.