Irina Muresanu | Divine Art Recordings

Métier Records, the new-music imprint of the Divine Art group, is to release in the autumn of 2021 an album of works for violin solo and violin/piano by the esteemed Romanian composer Dan Dediu.

The composer explains that all four works on this album share the process of hybridisation, i.e. they start from existing music and combine it and then transform it in a new manner. Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni is mixed with themes from Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem Don Juan, Rouget de Lisle’s French hymn La Marseillaise is filtered through Stravinsky’s arrangement for solo violin, and snippets cut from across the history of music paradoxically join together to sound like hybrid mythological beasts. Dediu revisits the music of the past with great refinement, masterfully combining subtle hints and effective hooks from this colossal reservoir. The sonic result is an attractive one, at once vernacular and ecumenical.

Instrumental virtuosity is another common feature of the tracks on the recording. From the pizzicati and spicy effects of the mottled and piquant Griffin to the fiery cascades of sound and telluric rhythms of the Dragon (both from ‘A Mythological Bestiary’), from the spiralling melody and eerie harmonies of the Sonata Op. 7 to the harmonics in the variations that compress the form towards the end of La Marseillaise, the whole musical development is permeated by the trepidations of virtuosity.

Finally, modularity is a third common stylistic feature. The narrative trajectory of Dan Dediu’s music is built from imaginary characters strung together through miniatures in a modular, puzzle-like design. These imaginary or livresque characters form the expressive basis of the various dramatic situations staged by the composer’s overflowing imagination.

This manner of composition can be called metastilism, for it starts from one or more historical styles and then comments on them, illuminating uncharted nooks and dusty and forgotten niches, from which musical ore is extracted and transformed into a new, creative language, like philosophers commenting on ancient texts, extracting new meanings and forging new concepts.

The two cycles for violin and piano – Don Giovanni/Juan and A Mythological Bestiary – were specially composed for the performers on this album, the charming and charismatic duo Irina Muresanu and Valentina Sandu-Dediu.

Irina Muresanu and Valentina Sandu-Dediu © Divine Art

Dan Dediu (b.1967) has composed orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal and piano works as well as music for stage, that have been widely performed throughout Europe. He has won numerous competitions, and prizes, and leads the composition department at the National University of Music in Bucharest, as well as being the rector of the University.

Irina Muresanu is an internationally renowned violinist who has performed in solo and chamber music throughout the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and South Africa. She has also developed a reputation as a compelling and elegant interpreter of contemporary music and her concerts have more than once been cited by the Boston Globe as among ‘The Best Classical Performances’. Her recordings include the complete violin sonatas of William Bolcom, and works by T.O. Lee, Guillaume Lekeu, Alberic Magnard, and Marion Bauer. She has won numerous top prizes, and obtained her Doctorate in Musical Arts from the New England Conservatory. A dedicated educationalist, she has taught at Boston Conservatory, Harvard and M.I.T. and is currently Associate Professor at the University of Maryland.

Valentina Sandu-Dediu is an acclaimed musicologist, author of ten books, 30 studies and over 300 articles and has also produced several books of university lectures. She is currently a professor at the Department of Musicology and Education at the National University of Music in Bucharest and also the University’s Doctoral Adviser. She has also been a Fellow of the New Europe College since 2010 and is now its Rector. Also a highly praised pianist, she has made recordings of Dan Dediu’s solo piano works and an album of Romanian music for clarinet and piano.