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Record companies, artists and publicists are invited to submit CDs to be considered for our Editor's Pick's of the month. Send to: Jerry Bowles, Editor, Sequenza 21, 340 W. 57th Street, 12B, New York, NY 10019
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Thursday, February 02, 2006
Davidovsky: People and Machines
 Synchronisms No. 5, 6, and 9; Duo Capriccioso; Quartetto; Chacona.
Mario Davidovsky
Manhattan School of Music Percussion Ensemble/Jeffrey Milarsky; Curtis Macomber, vln; Aleck Karis, p; Speculum Musicae.
Bridge 9171 55 minutes
People and machines. The complex relationship between humans and the amazing machines they created and developed was one of the many dichotomies that characterized life in the 20th century, and which continue today. Fascination, fear, and revulsion live side-by-side when we contemplate our technology. This dichotomy is given expressive musical form in the series of pieces called Synchronisms, by Mario Davidovsky (b. 1934).
The Synchronisms are scored for an instrument or instruments and tape. Davidovasky began the series in 1963, and Synchronisms 11 and 12 are scheduled to premiere this year. When heard in performance the pieces are tense and dramatic. The effort required of the performers to stay in sync with the unyielding tape is a central part of the performance. On a recording a little bit of this aspect of the pieces is lost, but another comes to the fore—the relationship between the color of the instrumental sounds and the timbral variety of the taped sounds.
The Bridge disc offers three of the Synchronisms and three instrumental pieces, all in new performances and all well-played. What makes this a compelling program (besides the expressive quality of the music and the performances) is that Synchronisms and the instrumental works alternate. The explorations of color and human/machine interaction of the Synchronisms are followed by the very different, but still distinctive explorations of the composer’s instrumental pieces.
Davidovsky’s style is a kind of bel canto pantonality. His melodies, and they are indeed melodies, sing an angular, sometimes even jagged, song. The dissonances are “resolved” over time. That is, when all is said and done (or when all is played and sung) the music comes to points of relative rest in fitful cadence.
The performances here are of uniform high quality, as is Bridge’s sound. The tapes in the Synchronisms pieces are very clean, and the good old analog sounds on them have by now an almost nostalgic feel to them.
posted by Steve Hicken
9:47 AM
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