Reviews

Morgan and Dullea do a superb job with razor-sharp articulation. [The Sonata] has that surreal, hallucinatory quality of much of Finnissy’s music. Métier have released some landmark recordings of Finnissy’s music in the past, and this is a worthy addition.

The evolution of post-war music, we are persistently told, has been etched around ideological clashes between tonality and atonality, but this disc proves that assumption to be a lame simplification – the rearguard action of composers foraging around in the harmonic fault lines has been important too. ‘Mississippi Hornpipes’ severs the arteries of tonality, American folk-fiddle theme collages, a process Finnissy equates to William Burroughs’s literary cut-up technique.

Violinist Darragh Morgan and pianist Mary Dullea play with cheeky verve, creating bright, crackling sonorities. Even those who experience difficulty in forging emotional connections to Finnissy’s compositions should be able to admire the composer’s quirky insight, the brilliance of the textures the performers have created, and the fidelity with which the recorded sound has captured them. Recommended.

Metier’s invaluable documentation of works by Michael Finnissy continues … all [the pieces] exhibit Finnissy’s exhilarating gift for treating a score as if it was a performance in itself; his music fizzes with gymnastic vitality.

This is music for violin and piano and it’s in the experimental section of the record store. Finnissy takes tunes, breaks them down into non-musical bits and then re-assembles them; sometimes the instruments combine to create a pattern, sometimes they don’t. He’s approaching it with some wit though … it is surprisingly melodic.

Each of the composers presented here has a distinctive and attractive musical personality. String-quartet playing of the first order … impeccable precision and conviction. The disc receives a high recommendation accordingly

An ensemble like Quatuor which is subscribed to ‘heavy fare’ does of course not have any difficulties with the challenging music, which listening to repeatedly is a very worthwhile exercise. The recording is immaculate, the booklet texts are authoritative contributed by the composers themselves. All in all highly recommended.

The composers are all living exponents of uncompromising new music, all showing a fine sense of craftsmanship and dramatic flair. None of the works are mundane or routine. They all are of a uniformly advanced nature and mesh together for a consistently rewarding listen. Quatuor Danel handles it all with an excellent feel for contemporary modernism and fine musicianship. Their playing is exemplary on this disk and the Manchester composers represented are in every way worthy of the quartet’s talented way. Recommended.

Completions of Grieg are not unique – but this one is certainly rather special. Finnissy has achieved something of a triumph. The Kreutzer Quartet players have long been champions of Finnissy’s music. In combination with Chadwick they are as eloquent as one could wish in the Piano Quintet completion, and skillfully negotiate the sudden stylistic shifts and non-sequiturs of Grieg-Quintettsatz: a notable addition to Finnissy’s discography – and Edward Grieg’s.

The four sections [of Finnissy’s completion of the Grieg Quintet] are seamlessly linked, The Quintettsatz is a moving tribute to the Norwegaian master and a fascinating work in its own right. The playing from Roderick Chadwick and the Kreutzer Quartet is of course expert, but the whole disc is an unexpected serendipity.

Here is a remarkable congruence of composers. [The completion of Grieg’s Quintet] is a creative transfiguration of academic prowess and critical insight.

The result [of Finnissy’s completion of the Grieg] is music of ravishing beauty. [With the Quintettsatz] the result is a fascinating and highly rewarding meeting of minds, the Grieg gradually and gracefully giving way to Finnissy’s contemporary idiom.

[Grieg’s original] 250 bars make for a very densely romantic work …once you get used to the premises of the Finnissy reconstruction it is an impressive effort, rather remarkable in the way a composer of today can transport himself into a musical world so long past. Chadwick and the Kreutzer Quintet [sic] do a fine job with the performances. Finnissy creates music that sticks with you, creates a sort of time travel that shows ingenuity, even brilliance. An impressive effort!

Due to the limited extend of the fragments, Michael Finnissy decided against a piece with multiple movements instead choosing the form of a chamber symphony with a single movement. The results are definitely worth listening to; in my opinion he succeeded in empathizing with Grieg’s style. The lyrical, melancholic passages in particular could have originated from the Norwegian composer.

Nominally this is a classical album … but it’s really an experimental album … [Zwaanenburg] knows his way around a flute. This a pretty out-there album. But we’ve played it a lot more that we thought we would, way beyond what’s needed for a review, because it’s interesting. If you’re working it makes for a nice noise that’s kind of comforting.

Five provocative cutting-edge works, each defining the new terrain in its own way. These are all works that bear study and close listening. Jos Zwaanenburg has an integral role to play here and he does it with a kind of selfless devotion to the compositional demands of the moment. He shines forth when called for in ways we can admire and at other times he gives the impetus for the evolving shape of a work with creativity and sensitivity. State-of-the-art live and interactive electronics are the order of the day. Well worth hearing.

Jos Zwaanenburg is the perfect expo­nent of these adventurous works—all of which explore ways in which the flute is able to interact with and affect an electronic component in real time. The more traditional, if you will, of these works, allow the flute to function in a recognizable, reasonably melodic fashion. The remaining works are even more complex, however, and—gleefully, it seems—raise ques­tions of musical relationships and intent. There are creators who distinguish themselves from musicians or composers by identifying themselves simply as sound artists. Certainly, Jos Zwaanenburg and the others represented here are straddling whatever line might be drawn.

Each composer decisively overrides the traditional chain of command between composer, performer and listener, and I admire their conceptual boldness.

Integrity, with the emphasis on grit. This release is fairly well documented and nicely designed. The definition of grist as grain that has been separated from its chaff in preparation for grinding is apt in this case, with the emphasis on ‘in preparation for’ suiting the exploratory, experimental nature of most of these works.

Zwaanenburg is an authority in the field of electronic manipulation of the flute. He therefore uses a special instrument with open valves so he can produce micro-intervals and glissandi. But I was totally unprepared for what we hear on this CD. Mind-boggling. The recording is of course spectacular, but adjust to the volume.