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JANSMUSIC RECOMMENDED RECORDING

Namaste Clarinet Quartet
MPS MPSCD005
Sergio Calligaris: Quartet no.1 op.34 / Tzvi Avni: 2 pieces for 4 clarinets / Guido Arbonelli: Immagini da Auschwitz / Marco Montaguti: Paprika / Alexander Graur: Preludio e Toccata / James Clark: Broken / Daniele Gasparini: Enigma / Gian Luca Deserti: Tema

 I haven't had much cutting edge contemporary music on the site so far but I felt I had to include this CD because it's quite unusual: I certainly haven't come across anything like before.  This comes from the same label whose wonderful electronics with trombone and didgeridoo were featured a few months ago.

It's what is says on the label, a group of 4 clarinets (including bass and piccolo). The group was formed to explore and cross boundaries, and it works with contemporary composers from different countries. The works on the this CD a in a variety of styles and use various structural devices from the more conventional fugue, through symmetry and use and development of small cells. Each piece is a gem, beautifully crafted.

I particularly like the first work, by Calligaris, which has a Toccata, Adagio and Fugue: the Toccata is showy, breathless, parts scrambling against each other like bubbles in a bath,  the adagio is serene, the Fugue begins busily but floats into a dreamy exploration of chromatic harmony. Avni's 2 aleatoric pieces are very atmospheric and contemplative, Arbonelli's works on the subject of Auschwitz, representing all the associated emotion, like hope and despair, is great - quite simply written, with different effects, sometimes single melody lines, sometimes chordal cascades, like different thought emerging from a crowd, and then as a final touch, a vocal hummed line, blending with the clarinets, which is incredibly poignant and represents, for me, the lost voices of Auschwitz.

Montaguti's Paprika is a study of sound, in a fairly improvisatory way, and in a way sounds like a classroom of children left to their own devices, with an occasional interjection of authority, represented by the plodding bass clarinet. Graur's Prelude and Toccata are more complex studies of the interaction of sounds and their effects on each other as well as for themselves - with some fantastic sounds in the Prelude - like putting together pieces of a jigsaw. The Toccata is busy and flows along like traffic along a busy highway. Clarke's "Broken" is full of searing glissandi and really focusses on the screaming dissonances, while Enigma is a gentle and undulating moto perpetuo, out of which emerges a theme, almost like a plainchant underlying polyphony.  I really like the final work, Tema, which is really fun and something to get your teeth into - built of several sections, each different, with some really spiky jazzy writing, and some lovely homophonic passages, with Messiaen-like fluttering .