Duo Étrange - i wish i were dead
Duo Étrange - i wish i were dead
With their debut album, Duo Étrange, Sahara von Hattenberger and Vanessa Croome, presents a collection of contemporary works, blurring between art song and chamber music. Supported on some of the pieces by pianist, Joanne Kang, and clarinetist, Airat Ichmouratov, i wish i were dead claims to brazenly support contemporary classical music. Even on its fringes, the works are all focused around traditionally pleasant sounds and accessibility. Duo Étrange's mission also comes across as quasi-paradoxical, giving us all newly composed music, but only when directly related to ancient themes and traditional mystic texts.
Two pieces by Jeffrey Fong open the album, new commissions which set excerpts of a Medieval epic poem. Fong's jerky vocal writing is assuaged by Croome's incredibly lyrical voice, but it still results in the musical impression that the composer has no care whether or not the text is heard and writes for the duo as two individuals rather than an ensemble. Following is Luna Pearl Woolf's cycle of Rumi quatrains, written for voice, cello, and piano. Bracketed with a short, rhythmic statement, first in solo voice as an introit, then again closing the piece as an ensemble unison, Quatrains of Love comes together as a perfect example of a chamber song cycle. Here the duo and Kang's chamber music skills are on full display. The trio's communication and Croome's emotionally clear diction result in a theatrical interpretation. It is an interesting choice to include this work on their first album, as the more traditional piano accompaniment pulls the work closer to art song and does not highly the duo's virtuosity and independence. Not included in the official track listing for some reason, a plain-voiced yet beautiful rendition of Anders Hillborg's arrangement of Kväll closes the first half of the album.
The second cycle on the album, Airat Ichmouratov's Quatrains of Wisdom, features the composer on clarinet and duduk and Kang again on piano. The cycle is lush, filled with cliché, and has a seemingly random grasp of form. Following this is a duo arrangement of Maya Fridman's Tree of Life, which while gorgeous, goes on for more than twelve minutes and looses traction. The final two works on i wish i were dead are by far the strongest. Laurence Jobidon's short and energizing story of Simone: myth moderne gives off a dizzying sense of urgency. Croome is at home in Jobidon's musical world and effectively presents the work like an opera scene. To close off the album, Nicole Lizée's Urbexcelsis (Doesn't It Fill Your Eyes) xxx. A collection of three dirges for Duo Étrange and electronics, Urbexcelsis is in a world of its own, unsettled and somehow simultaneously calming. Lizée's ability to abuse the sense of glitching technology is auditorily addictive. "Dirge I" is longer than the other two combined and starts the work with the reoccurring concept of both tempo and pitch 'glitching out' making any attempt to hold on to what is happening difficult. Throughout the next two dirges, the music continues to glitch out more and more, until entire spots of "Dirge III" are seemingly missing, like a corrupted audio file.
While i wish i were dead is a lovely listen, especially for audiences interested in art song, the album is quite awkwardly curated. This is often saved by the high quality of performance given by Duo Étrange and their guests. Major credit also needs to be given to Anne-Marie Sylvestre, for the impeccable recording and mixing throughout the entire album. However, I think it is a poor choice for Duo Étrange to debut themselves in this manner. Most pieces prioritize sounding pretty over being musically interesting. Highlights of the album are primarily works which were not commissioned by them or include additional performers, pulling our focus away from the voice-cello duo and preventing them from becoming a legitimate new chamber grouping.
distributed via ATMA Classique
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