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Fanfare

Firstly, just for clarification, the composer here is Samuel Andreyev; there are a couple of other composers named Andreyev in the Fanfare Archive dating back to the mid-1990s, and it is doubtful this is the same Andreyev, to put it mildly. Samuel Andreyev, a Canadian, was born in 1981 in Ontario. In 2003, he settled in Paris to study at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse and at IRCAM, moving to Strasbourg in 2014 after a one-year residency in Madrid, Spain. His music has appeared on a number of labels, including Métier (as here) and Kairos.

I admire the composer’s own introduction, in which he says, “If you’re in a hurry you can skip these notes; they won’t tell you anything you need to know, and listening to the music is more interesting anyway,” going on to say that “the proper reaction for an artist to their own work is confusion mixed with surprise. Satisfaction (a mediocre emotion) is unlikely.” In describing his working methods, Andreyev refers to a “3–4 month span of demented intensity.”

The first of Andreyev’s pieces here is Sonata da Camera, written 2020–21. The composer refers to a “particular colouration, a somber, amber yellow seemingly glowing from within.” He translates that into timbre and chord color brilliantly. Inspired by the domestic scenes of Vermeer (their “remoteness and dignified loneliness, free of sentimentality or complaint”), this is a remarkable piece. Ostensibly (on a technical level) an investigation of four textures—resonant monody, accompanied melody, chorales, and counterpoints—to my ears it speaks too of a certain wistful yeaning clothed in a modernist vocabulary. There is what sounds like a slow processional at one point that is markedly haunting. The performance is fabulous: Disjunct lines take on real expressivity, particularly from the clarinet (there is no listing of instrumentalists, but reference to Ensemble Proton Bern’s super-cool website—well worth a visit—suggests it is probably Richard Haynes on clarinet). That almost autumnal amber yellow referred to above seems to surface in particular late on in the composition. Pianist Coco Schwarz’s rippling arpeggios against sustained chords are most effective. A bassoon cadenza by Elise Jacoberger is a masterclass; it just feels like she absolutely went for it, and the results, both in the cadenza and in the rapid-fire solo passages thereafter, are infinitely exciting.

The Sextet in Two Parts (2019) and Vérifications (2012) share nearly identical instrumentation but are very different. The Sextet works with complex polyrhythms. One suffuses the first movement (of two), but again in a masterpiece of “Who cares?” the composer states that the technique “hardly matters.” The two movements exist in a state of “permanent contradiction,” the first part linear and contrapuntal, threaded by those arcane rhythmic techniques; the second is harmonic and chorale-like, and focuses the ear on harmonic subtleties. Neither is an easy listen, therefore, or for that matter an easy play. The Ensemble Proton Bern finds song in the first movement where many would not; on top of everything else, the players trace the contour of the music superbly, both in melody and in texture. The two movements of the Sextet combined take up almost exactly the same span as the Sonata da Camera. It is a mark of Samuel Andreyev’s individuality as a composer that, despite the differences between the pieces, they are identifiably by the same hand. Another point of interest is how in the first movement of the Sextet, Andreyev can generate significant excitement through the rhythmic processes alone by deliberately maintaining a low dynamic level. The writing for instruments throughout the disc, but particularly in this first movement, is miraculous, with everything seemingly perfectly idiomatic for each instrument. The second movement is almost a shadow of a movement, it is so quiet, and so it requires supreme control from the Bern players. Despite all of their super-virtuosity when it comes to technical challenges (and, indeed, rhythmic ones), it is this sense of total commitment and total control that is just so impressive. Conductor Luigi Gaggero seems to have a complete grasp of what Andreyev wants and how to convey that to his players. 

This is contemporary music at its finest, whether viewed from compositional or from performance standpoints.  Andreyev describes Vérifications (2012) as “cartoon music” and the first gesture, and the madcap mayhem thereafter, do indeed support that. Painted in primary colors, there is an energy of frenzy here; but the composer’s booklet notes do not refer to the quietude that is here, too. There are four movements, filled with incident. The Bern players revel in the playfulness here, but also realize that playfulness does not necessarily equate to frivolity.

Underneath all of this is real depth, a profundity we glimpse in the stiller sections. The elusiveness of the third movement suggests maybe some sort of scherzo template (and there is a lovely repeated glissando that reminds me of the children’s TV programme The Clangers). The finale seems to revel in juxtapositions, shadows of what we have heard. This is a remarkable piece, far deeper than the composer himself implies (I assume deliberately).

Finally, In Glow of Like Seclusion (2021–22) is a setting of texts by J. H. Prynne. The composer describes this as a cantata; he also says it took him some two full years of living with Prynne’s poetry before the music came to him. Jeremy Halvard Prynne (b. 1936) is associated with the British Poetry Revival, a collection of (not exclusively British) poets who favored modernism as an expressive aesthetic. Andreyev’s reactions are those of a composer-poet, and as such perhaps particularly profound; he has published two collections of poetry himself (Evidence, 2009 and The Relativistic Empire, 2015). Scored for solo soprano and six instruments, In Glow of Like Seclusion offers a hyper-expressive world where less is more, each note, each simultaneity, clearly minutely examined prior to compositional birth on the page. Soprano Peyee Chen (“an omnivore when it comes to performing,” states her bio) has a beautifully pure voice—small wonder her repertoire includes Monteverdi. Her pitching is exemplary; her melodic lines are supremely expressive. And yet this piece is not about soprano alone; Andreyev writes scrupulously for his instrumentalists, his combinations ultra-carefully considered. This is perhaps particularly apparent in the second song, “To eye apart,” where Andreyev’s writing is as elusive as Prynne’s poetry. The timbres seem to glint in Andreyev’s response to “Not Far”; it is “How smart we are” that is the still center of the work, though, both its longest movement and a pool of reflection.

Two instrumental “Impromptus” pepper the cantata, comprising the third and penultimate (sixth) movements, the first an instrumental song and the second a more meditative consideration of material foregrounding Ensemble Proton’s fine bassoonist. It segues into the finale song, “Lark Advent,” with Chen’s silvery voice taking on a timbral equivalence to high woodwind. This is a magnificent cycle and, simultaneously, a potent love poem itself to the works of J. H. Prynne. Peyee Chen also appears on the 2016 GB Records release of Gavin Bryars’s Nothing Like the Sun, and Prima Facie’s 2022 disc of music by Sadie Harrison, Pasture & Storm.

The recording is ideal. Although based in Bern, the disc was taken down in Zurich (at Radiostudio SRF); producer and engineer Andreas Werener does a sterling job. He clearly has as keen an ear as the musicians in presenting these performance sin in the very best light. This is very rewarding music, in the sense that the more effort the listener puts in, the more it gives back—the sign of old-fashioned, good music in other words. Yes, the musical surface is challenging at times, but there is huge beauty here, too. Wholeheartedly recommended.