Presto Music

Moving under the radar is The Gentle Erasure Of Time, an intriguing collection from Nathan Sherman exploring the versatility of the viola, its sound refracted through and around electronic effects. The music is certainly intriguing, drawing a variety of responses. Jonathan Nangle’s title track is far from gentle initially, with an agitated soloist and glitchy electronics. I Thought The Sea Would Sing To Me, by Karin Rehnqvist, is a dialogue whose musical paragraphs are punctuated by silence, before a low drone and silvery strings take hold halfway through.

Nicole Lizée’s Tuurntazm is a playful interaction between viola and turntables, beats forming with bursts of electronic noise. Sam Perkin’s More Beautiful Than It Has To Be brings a strong Eastern flavour to its brightly lit melodies, while Benjamin Broening’s Memory Shifts has contrasting thoughts, with sustained backdrops offering additional space. Finally Linda Buckley’s The Thin Veil is initially plaintive but finds a bigger voice, its powerful coda harnessing the electronics with distinctive motifs. A thought-provoking collection of commendable originality.

Strings and electronics also combine in a diptych from Dacapo of two intense pieces by Danish composer Rune Glerup exploring sonic and structural innovations that focus on the beauty of the musical material itself rather than using it as a language. The no-nonsense second string quartet, Perhaps Thus The End, asks early questions though wide melodic intervals, before the guttural bass sounds of the second section, Now to Press on Regardless, are contrasted with the uneasy tranquillity of the fourth, The Dark of Night or Day, where held notes are broken by sudden interjections. The work ends in a similar mood to which it began, inhabiting the rarefied atmosphere of slow music by Bartók or Ligeti, while offering something truly original.

—Ben Hogwood