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Fanfare

The UK-based record label Métier has been doing sterling service for the music of Michael Finnissy (b. 1946); my Fanfare-reviewed discs include one by the New Music Chamber Players in Fanfare 37:1, and one by the Kreutzer Quartet in 42:4. At the core of the performers here is the Marsyas Trio (Helen Vidovich, flute; Valerie Welbanks, cello; and Olga Stezhko, piano). There are 10 pieces here (11 performances, as, fittingly enough, there are two versions of Alternative Readings), and the order of performance is crucial: They sit around the longest piece, Wisdom (2011), while the live and studio versions of Alternative Readings bookend the whole.

Written for the Canadia Trio Phoenix, Alternative Readings (2002) references the first movement of Bruckner’s First Symphony in C Minor (WAB 101). Perhaps it’s best not to strain too much for direct quotations, though, particularly as each instrument goes its own way in what Finnissy refers to as a process of “unforced awkwardness,” in which he asks that there is no attempt made to iron out any rough edges. Nothing here sounds “rough”; the desynchronization instead lends its own fascination. In a sense, the music forces the listener to listen linearly, not horizontally (a listening strategy that does indeed yield satisfying results). The final dissolution, both in terms of texture and in terms of events, is both effective as a compositional strategy and in these performances. Both the live and studio performances took place in Goldsmiths Music Studios in London. If the central idea of three independent lines operating simultaneously might bring in the idea of Ives, this is 100 percent Finnissy; the resultant harmonies are modernist but also frequently sensual. There is only five seconds’ difference between the performances; curiously, I find the studio version freer than the live account, the lines sinewy, almost snake-like. There is clear resonance between the three players: Olga Stezhko’s piano playing is sensitive, Helen Vidovich’s flute is hugely expressive, and Valerie Welbanks’s cello finds great expressivity in Finnissy’s lines.

A setting of Keats, Oxford in 1917, also refers to Finnissy’s activities at that English city. Finnissy was not a student at the university there; rather, he visited to write music for a play by a school friend. This song takes us back to 1966–67 and it comprises three “movements,” one for each of the poem’s three stanzas. Perhaps there is a Schoenbergian shadow to some of the melismatic vocal lines, but before one can fully immerse oneself in the ongoing musical stream the first sectionfinishes. Lotte Betts-Dean sings with charm, joined by pianist Joseph Havlat, who shapes the chordal phrases beautifully. Against the swooping melodic line, the piano’s chords are evenly spaced, providing a grounding of sorts. Repeated listening does not take away the shock of the end of the first stanza: The music is just left in the air. The second stanza is more rhythmically alive, with the piano’s contribution now rhythmically shifting before the stanza’s second couplet seems to take us into whole new worlds of Pointillism. It’s quite right that the two stanzas are so contrastive, as the first considers the Gothic and Doric elements of Oxford and its architecture, the second nature and animals. All changes for the final stanza, where voice and single-line piano find themselves, initially, in rhythmic unison. Betts-Dean’s voice is perfect, low on vibrato and so offering a lovely sense of simplicity of utterance.

Exotic melismas inform Botany Bay for voice, flute, and cello. Drone and microtones create an exotic soundscape. At the time of composition, Finnissy had discovered his connection to the aboriginal music of Australia. Although composed in 1983, the piece underwent revisions in 1989 and exists in various versions. The absence of piano seems vital in this version: The music seems to float beautifully, evocatively. The words are those of an anonymous colonial Australian folksong exhorting good, moral conduct, with the alternative being the penal colony of the title.

The song Blessed Be I (1992) is on the same emotional/energetic plane as Botany Bay, but here we do have a piano, as well as a cello. Fascinatingly, the text is from the Sermon on the Mount, with the differences between the reports of Matthew (Blessed Be I) and Luke (Blessed Be III); Finnissy effectively offers a deconstruction of gap-tone melodies from American hymnals (many of which, Finnissy states, “derive from hexatonic or pentatonic English folk songs”). Two of the four extant works of this title are presented here, music of rarefied beauty in impeccable performances. Tuning is so vital in this music (particularly in the moments voice and flute come up close and personal in Blessed Be III), and here it is perfectly honored.

The central plateau of the disc, Wisdom (2020), is about isolation (perhaps the date is not insignificant). The texts collate aspects of the human attribute of wisdom, some from aboriginal (dreamtime) myth, an Anglo-Saxon poem (The Wanderer) and the 1670 Revelations of Divine Love, shewed to Mother Juliana, an anchorite of Norwich, plus poetry of William Cowper. It’s an eclectic mix, but all speak of isolation in some form or another, and, eventually possible coping strategies. Some of the asynchronicity of Alternative Readings seems to surface in the extended instrumental fields here. Betts-Dean has complete control over her voice, as does flutist Helen Vidovich over her instrument; the two are asked to demonstrate that control in tandem, and the result is itself astonishing. Here, time can seem frozen, particularly in the seventh section, “I am your creature, your amusement.” Vidovich’s closing flute soliloquy is just stunning—timeless, in fact. Perhaps the time left on the disc between Wisdom and the next piece, Salomé I, is too short; Wisdom should resonate longer. Salomé I and Salomé II exist as a pair, so that gap would further have emphasized this. The two pieces juxtapose two views of the eponymous lady, those of Jules Laforgue and Oscar Wilde. They are linked by Finnissy taking the voice part of Salomé I and inverting it in Salomé II; but the piano contributions differ, the first being Pointillist and/or reveling in creating huge pitch spaces between registers so that, when piano right-hand and voice work in parallel, the effect is surprisingly moving. The second is predominantly more cantabile, and more perfumed harmonically (this second setting is dedicated to the present singer, Lotte Brett-Dean). Taken together, the two songs make one perfect unit.

There is also a distinctly bipartite aspect to Finnissy’s June (2013), written for one of the composer’s friends (and former students) who is an expert in Hildegard von Bingen. Based on Hildegard’s beautiful antiphon Deus enim rorem in illas misit, which infiltrates the flute and cello contributions in the first movement, and her Et ideo puelle iste per summun virum sustentabantur, which sustains the second (together with reminiscences of the first part), this is a piece of great beauty.

Stepping from that into the 2021–22 piece An der Mond is like stepping back into Expressionism. This is a cycle of three nocturnes with references to two of Schubert’s Goethe Lieder, D 250 and D 296. On piano. Joseph Hovlat has the most delicate of touches, and Betts-Dean is once more absolutely flawless. The end of the second movement is positively heartbreaking; the delicate final portion threatens to disintegrate before revivifying at the words “Alles geben die Götter” (the full translation of this last is, “Everything is given to those beloved of the gods, who are infinite”).

Perhaps one should try a mix of listening strategies when it comes to the closing version of Alternative Readings. Comparing first and last tracks is one way, and is fascinating; listening through so that the final, studio, version is heard after An den Mond gives Alternative Readings the flavor of an epilog, and in so being its fundamental tinta musicale is changed. It feels somehow valedictory, maybe even regretful.

Michael Finnissy’s music is many things (it literally comprises many aspects), but the connecting thread is an uncompromising expressivity, and it is just that facet that makes it approachable. It speaks to the heart, directly, and there are few finer examples of how this is so than this disc. The recording is stunning, so all credit is due to Nick Powell for his engineering skills throughout and the shared labors of producer Richard Jones and (for Wisdom) Pete Furniss. This is an unmissable disc, and one which, one hopes, will bring Finnissy’s music the attention it so richly deserves.