Andrew Keeling

Reclaiming Eros was Keeling’s first release on Burning Shed, and is a well-filled album of high quality music commissioned and performed by a plethora of excellent musicians. The eponymous Piano Quartet is an exciting and energetic work, with plenty of ostinati and punchy rhythmic writing. There are moments of repose and a valedictory ending, but the nervous energy is maintained through the first half by micro-dialogues between the instruments, and secretive string trills and piano splashes. Keeling’s idiom is recognisably tonal – there are even some moments where Michael Nymanesque textures creep in. Even where more lyrical moments are allowed to develop the music resists easy sentimentality. Andrew Keeling has a penchant for open intervals in some of his other works, and in this one there is an almost oriental feel at times, with open fifths in transposition giving the tonality a pentatonic feel. At about 9:00 into the work, the cello is given an aria accompanied by the piano, and the mood elongates and is allowed more expressive breadth. There is some seriously gorgeous music in this piece, and with responsive playing from the Stor Quartet and pianist Torlief Torgersen this is a good introduction to Keeling’s work.

Scarlet Letters for solo guitar is, at just over 15 minutes, substantial to say the least. Abigail James’s playing is utterly convincing, and is the first thing which demands that you take it seriously and that demonstrates the piece to be worthwhile. Written using the full gamut and colour range of conventional guitar techniques, this has to be a work which should be taken up by serious performers looking to go beyond the usual classical and romantic repertoire; who are looking for something with melodic charm and expressive potential but which clearly demands considerable technical virtuosity. This work is filled with fascinating ideas and nuances, innocence and sophistication. Imagine something by Leo Brouwer, and if anything more so, and you’ll have some inkling as to what I mean.

Gothic Voices are an established ensemble, and have shown considerable imagination in commissioning new works over the years. Powered by Joy uses texts by Solage (Joieux de cuer) and Machaut (Il m’est avis), and plays with the words at an number of levels, using their inherent sounds to create rhythmic and colour contrast, but also at times setting the voices in almost barber-shop closeness of harmony. In this way Keeling and Gothic Voices have taken over the baton somewhat from the Kings Singers, who also ventured forth with new works from an elder generation of composers such as Paul Patterson, Richard Rodney Bennett and Malcolm Williamson. Keeling’s writing pays respect to medieval and renaissance in some aspects of the vocal writing in this piece, but gives it an edge and a sense of danger, crowding the notes into small spaces, inviting them and the words to collide in short, clipped phrases, as well as giving them longer, arching forms by way of contrast.

Powered by Joy sensibly cushions the guitar solo of Scarlet Letters from the ringing lute sounds of Black Sun. Without any notes for reference we are left guessing as to the significance of these titles. Black Sun might suggest some kind of science fiction doom, but is a fairly innocuous, certainly approachable piece of music, which, aside from the difference in sound from the guitar, would also seem appropriate for that instrument.

Gefunden for four viols also inhabits the world of ancient instruments, again bringing them squarely into the 21st century. This piece has been recorded less closely than most of the others on this disc, and the acoustic makes for a more tubby kind of sound. I know one should take into account the lesser brilliance of these instruments when compared to modern strings, but with my experience of Early Music in The Hague I know this ensemble might have been a little more sympathetically recorded. Never mind, the piece gives us some interesting new sonorities, giving the old instruments almost a Beatles-like tune at the beginning of the second movement, and making them pluck like harps and wend their way though unaccustomed melodic patterns and harmonies. The final movement, Semplice/Lamentoso e rigoroso is really gorgeous.

The two final works on this disc are both solo pieces. Seule, a setting of Nerval’s El Desdichado, is given a virtuoso performance by Catherine King, whose voice is sensitive to the breadth of expression given to the words. From virtually inaudible to coloratura display, the lines are beautifully drawn in this piece. The last note of Seule is nicely mirrored in the third of A Child Divine for bass viol. The ringing resonance is more sympathetic here than in Gefunden, though I’m not sure quite so much resonance was really required from the mixing desk – it sounds a little as if Susanna Pell is sitting, amplified, in the middle of an empty football stadium. There is also a little surprise at the end, in case you were about to fall asleep.

Dominy Clements, Musicweb International