Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Gone For Foreign

Gone For Foreign
Cygnus Ensemble
David Claman: gone for foreign; William Anderson: A Giddy Thing; Akemi Naito: Mindscape – Four Poetic Images; Rolv Yttrehus: Plectrum Spectrum; Milton Babbitt – Swan Song No. 1
Bridge 9195

What a marvelous combination of instruments the New York-based Cygnus Ensemble presents: flute, oboe, violin, cello and two guitars (or mandolins, or banjos). Needless to say, this striking but permanently unique configuration requires Cygnus to commission their entire tutti repertoire; some of the fruits of that ongoing project are presented on this new disc from Bridge.

The headliner here is clearly Babbitt, whose Swan Song No. 1 (written for Cygnus – hence the typically punny title – in 2001-3) emerges under the baton of Jeffrey Milarsky as an unusually lyrical, mellifluous work, with the composer’s typical jittery energy (in guitar and mandolin) submerged beneath a scrim of long-breathed melodic phrases in the winds and strings. The mercurial lightness of Babbitt’s later work is still present, though, as is a constantly shifting rhythmic drive, and Milarsky and Cygnus navigate these two simultaneous affective allegiances with a keen sense of balance and a welcome determination not to underplay Babbitt’s flowering melodic imagination.

Swan Song No. 1 is the last work on the disc; the other standout is the first, David Claman’s gone for foreign. These five short pieces admirably test the textural resources of Cygnus’s singular instrumentation. Riots of microtonal swirlings, rhythmically counterpointed guitar strokes. Pulsed figures come and go before you can really register them; the rock influence claimed in the notes consists only of that, as far as I can tell, and the cross-cultural exoticism that engendered the title is present, I suppose, but doesn’t make a nuisance of itself.

Between Claman and Babbitt are three other works, all of which lay claim to a compelling soundworld carved out of this unique sextet. Rolv Ytterhus’s Plectrum Spectrum, in particular, makes as good a case for the banjo in an “art-music” context as I have ever heard. Akemi Naito’s Mindscape – Four Poetic Images, as its title warns, veers close to the lugubrious in its combination of American-style New Romanticism and Takemitsian (?!) colorations and formal attitudes. Last and, in terms of length, least is A Giddy Thing for mandolin and tape by one of Cygnus’s own plucked-instrument virtuosi, William Anderson, a three-minute bagatelle filled with wit and wistfulness – and do I detect a hint of Bill Frisell?

Bravo to Bridge for this recording, both the concept and the excellent sound quality. Bravo to Milarsky and Cygnus for uniformly razor-sharp performances. And bravo in particular to Babbitt, whose Swan Song No. 1 is an unusual and immediately gratifying work, and Claman, who succeeds especially admirably in building a world of textures and instrumental approaches within which reigns a delightful unpredictability.

posted by Evan Johnson 4:59 PM