Shop Now

Fanfare

This is a major cycle by the composer South African-born Michael Blake (who has been based in London since 1977). The title of his nearly three-hour cycle Afrikosmos is deliberately close to Bartók’s Mikrokosmos; both composers use indigenous musical material from their respective territories (although Blake relied largely on the field work of specialists who work in southern Africa).

As with Bartók’s piece, there is a wide variety of levels of difficulty here, but running through that is a consistency of invention. Blake is lucky to have Antony Gray as his interpreter: Gray’s recordings of Saint-Saëns for Divine Art are models of their kind (neither has been reviewed for Fanfare, although I took them on for another publication). Gray has a wonderful touch. Try the pecking staccato of “If I had wings I could fly,” a traditional melody given an imaginative toccata-like treatment; and note how in the very next piece, “Walking Song (Homage to Percy Grainger),” Blake takes the staccato over to the left hand alone, with the right giving out the melody before moving into a passage that seems to have a slowed-down, Nancarrow type of mechanistic asynchronicity. (I heard Nancarrow again in “Dance in Seakhi Rhythm” that opens the second disc.) Pithiest of all the homages (appropriately) is that to Kurtág, “Message from the Nduna”; while the sparsest is “Reflection,” a homage to Satie. Gray seems to intuitively know exactly what Blake intends in each and every instance.

The piece draws on indigenous African scales and Xhosa bow harmony. Rhythm is obviously a major consideration, whether dissected into component parts under a microscope or heard in combinations to create complex walls of sound. There are some deliberate dissections of musical parameters in the movements called “Patterns”—examinations of those very patterns found in this music. As Blake points out, patterning is “as integral to African weaving as it is to music”; there is even a piece called “Weave” (it is deceptively simple, and Blake invokes the idea of an ongoing, repetitive action superbly). The piece “Four-note Patterns” is interesting in its slowness, as if Blake is holding the four-note groups and slowly rotating them in front of us. Gray laudably allows the music to unfold in its own perfect time.

There are several strands that run through this 75-piece cycle: birdsong (heard in the first piece, “Spotted Dikhop and Black Cuckoo,” for example); Xhosa music (a hexatonic scale or so-called “bow” harmonies); Hymns and Bells; Work Songs and Domestic Songs; Homages; and Popular Music. It is an eclectic mix, especially when one factors in the homages: try the charming “Lyric Piece” (No. 8, “Homage to Grieg”). Fascinatingly, there is an “Homage to Henry Cowell” called “Supermoon,” which has the pianist strum on the piano strings. There are also three movements comprising an “Homage to Robert Schumann” wittily called Scents of Childhood 1, 2, and 3. These are delivered with delicious wit in the first, a magnificent sense of harmonic awareness and beauty in the slowly spread chords of the second, and a sense of downright cheek in the third.

Of course, any work based on African music would be incomplete without “Call and Response,” brilliantly evoked by Blake. Intriguingly, another aspect is signposts—not in the semiotic sense necessarily, but literal signs: “Stay on the Path” and “Keep left, pass right.” It is as if we are being exposed to an all-angles view of Africa with the component parts dispersed, Picasso-like—and how exciting that makes it. Like wondering through a landscape and allowing the scenery to determine where one goes, the piece is full of surprises and is wonderfully varied. Perhaps that feeling of wondering is itself expressed in microcosm in the piece “Emerging Melody,” an interior, very special moment in the cycle.

Blake’s way with the traditional song “Song for the Evening” is absolutely beautiful, and Gray caresses the tune most effectively and touchingly. Blake also takes a traditional piece for his “Reedpipe Dance” and brings it into the vernacular of Afrikosmos. It is almost bell-like, with pealing descents that overlap in the most exciting manner. The melding of Western form with African musical dialect is another fascinating aspect; try the “Chaconne in Mbaqanga Style” for the most interesting example. As the music progresses, it almost becomes jazzy, the Chaconne rhythm obsessive, until it all suddenly stops short. It is complemented by a different sort of repetition, that of obsessive repetition, in the very next movement, “In Goema Style,” and in the chattering repetitions of “Diary of a Dung Beetle” (!). While I can imagine the repetitions of “Lebombo Bone” might be irritating to some, personally I find them fascinating. The perpetuum mobile “The music flows jolly as it won’t stop forever” has a pronounced Minimalist bent.

Structurally the set seems perfectly considered. Plateaus of calm (for instance, “Distant Cowbells,” a Mahler-free zone, although there is more than a touch of Bartókian Night Music) are strategically placed, and certainly allow for a straight-through listen. I tried it, along with listening to the discs separately, and then zooming in on individual numbers. Another beguiling staging post is the intriguingly titled “There cried a hippo,” a piece of lachrymose, slow-moving chords. The high-lying “High Fives” is perfectly placed, too.

Let us not forget there is purest beauty here: try “Major-Minor,” such a simple idea brilliantly executed both by composer and pianist. There is purest energy, too, latent but so evident in “Keep Left, Pass Right” in terms of movement, and latent in harmonic terms in the dancing “The Seven Steps.” Blake finds beauty in the simplest of gestures, as in “Sevenths Must Fall”; and Gray makes the silences between the suspensions speak, as he does in the very next movement, the penultimate “Haiku.” The work ends in bright sunlight with “Freedom Day Variation.” This is no virtuoso close, though, as befits a cycle as thoughtful and indeed thought-provoking as this one. The end is deeply satisfying: the tune, appropriately harmonized, finding its way to the surface before Blake’s more playful side interjects.

It is probably heresy to say that I prefer Blake’s Afrikosmos to Bartók’s Mikrokosmos; but there we are, it is true. The fine recording was made in the Menuhin Hall (Cobham, Surrey), with Simon Weir expertly in charge of production, engineering and mastering. The booklet is not only incredibly useful as a listening guide, but also itself is produced to the very highest of standards and has a beauty all of its own. As to the performance overall, Antony Gray’s achievement is not merely technical. He is able to sustain the attention throughout via what feels like deep saturation in Blake’s score. This is one heck of a ride into a host of Africanisms, something truly different, truly engaging—sonic African food for the soul, one might say. I would bet my bottom dollar Afrikosmos will be in my next Want List.