Octavian Nemescu - Metabizantinirikon, Trisson, Sonatu(h)r (1992 compi, rec. 1986-1990)

By request, an hour of shimmering, mindwarping tape-based spectral music, which, when I discovered it three years ago at the sadly-no-more Spook City USA, caused a Big Bang in my listening habits that led to at least a half-dozen other Romanian composers (see links below).  One of those other composers I went so crazy for that they're about to get their 14th post here on Wednesday.  For today though, very happy to bring back into circulation this 1992 CD of Octavian Nemescu's music, which was originally released as a 1991 LP with just the first two tracks.

Nemescu, born 1940 in the Moldavian city of Pașcani, has been active from the 60s to today, and revisiting his discogs page was a handy reminder that there's still a good few releases I must get hold of.  This compilation starts with Metabizantinirikon for saxophone (the great Daniel Kientzy) and magnetic tape, produced at IRCAM in 1986.  Intended to evoke the Byzantine era via its landscapes and bird & insect life, Kientzy's lead lines float over the buzzing and fluttering of the tape-manipulated electronics for a beautifully meditative 20 minutes.

The other two pieces are purely electronics/tape.  Trisson (1987) was commissioned by and recorded at GMVL (Groupe de Musique Vivante Lyon), and Nemescu recommends that it be listened to outdoors, on a spring or summer night.  The vast rumbling soundscape that underpins Trisson brings Eliane Radigue to mind for me, but the whole track is nowhere near as minimalist; the gently pinging melodies are perhaps closer to David Behrman.  After an ear-ringing finale, it fades out and it's time for the CD-only track Sonatu(h)r, composed in 1986 and mixed 1990 at the GMEB (Experimental Group from Bourges). 

As in the first track above, in Sonatu(h)r Nemescu is interested in the dynamic between human cultures and natural animal timbres, and again recommends outdoor, rural listening at dusk in springtime.  The shrill high tones escaping from my earphones in the office one lunchtime made someone ask what the hell I was listening to - Sonatu(h)r is definitely a deep-clean for the brain, and the most strikingly alien piece among an hour's worth of phenomenal, otherworldly sounds.  Massively recommended.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Split CD Nemescu/Cazaban
Other posts featuring Daniel Kientzy: 
Berio, Stroe, Stockhausen etc
Gerard Pape
Niculescu, Marbe, Vieru
Rotaru, Taranu etc

Daniel Kientzy - Musiques Contemporaines Pour Saxophones (1988)

The great avant-garde/modern classical sax master Daniel Kientzy, previously highlighted starring in ensemble works here and here, returns to these pages in an early compilation of pieces for solo saxophone.  Or indeed more than one sax at once, or sax plus electronics - it's all here at its most mind-bending, in one piece each from the seven composers listed on the cover.

If you love solo saxophone doing insane, improbable things, this is the album for you for sure; if you think it might be a bit much to sit through 71 minutes of this stuff, I recommend taking it in stages.  Personal highlights would be the blasting opener, the overture to Aurel Stroe's Eumenides opera (can never resist a Romanian composer) and the closer, Horacio Vaggione's Thema, that sounds like it's being played inside a gigantic cement mixer.  Then enjoy the frenzy of tape effects layered on to Aulodie by François-Bernard Mâche, then the slowly integrating layers of the Stockhausen piece, then the rest will be a breeze.  I promise.

link

Gerard Pape - Electroacoustic Chamber Works (1998)

Five ear-bending and mind-bending journeys into transformed sound today, courtesy of Gerard Pape, born 1955 in Brooklyn.  These works all date from the mid-90s both in composition and in recording, giving this disc the homogeneous feel of an album rather than a compilation from disparate sources.  Furthermore, they all display Pape's talent for using tape and/or computer to forensically investigate and transform sound at every possible micro-level; harmonics, timbre and so on.

Two Electro-Acoustic Songs, for soprano, flute and tape/sound projection, is featured first.  The tonalities of the voice and flute start out with their pure sound before Pape subjects them to various levels of alien warping, using the UPIC system developed by Xenakis.  This is followed by Le Fleuve du Désir for string quartet and tape.  Pape makes his inspiration erm, explicit, evoking not just water and rivers, but also applying Freud's writings on the libido to "my 'river of desire'... inspired by fluid flow, real and fantasised".  Bit too much information there, Gerard, but thanks all the same.

The longest piece is next, in the 32 minutes of Monologue for bass voice and tape/sound projection.  The libretto is taken from Samuel Beckett's A Piece Of Monologue, and Nicholas Isherwood's voice has great versatility for the dramatics of the performance.  Pape's soundworld swirls and hisses around it unobtrusively, providing a suitably unsettling atmosphere.  A choral piece, Battle, follows, performed by Vox Nova with Pape on tape - the inspiration here was a dramatic scene from Clive Barker's Weaverworld.  Lastly, our old friend Daniel Kientzy is the featured soloist on the ensemble piece Makbénach, the title apparently meaning 'flesh leaving bones'.  Ensemble 2e2m provide an ever-shifting backdrop for Kientzy's unique sax sound, as Pape warps the whole thing into outer space.

link

Daniel Kientzy / various orchestras - The Romanian Saxophone (1990 compi, rec '84/'86)

French avant-garde saxophone player Daniel Kientzy has been featured on these pages once before - and here's another phenomenal disc highlighting his close ties to some of Romania's most out-there composers of the 20th century.

Ștefan Niculescu, who was featured last on the Kluj disc, comes first this time, with his enjoyably mind-bending Cantos symphony, which also has variants for clarinet and orchestra, and for oboe, horn and clarinets.  Naturally, this is the sax one, giving Kientzy plenty of room to drone and skronk over the hallucinatory backdrop.  In the opening moments, which brought Vangelis to mind, I genuinely wondered if there were synthesisers involved, but nope, it's all orchestral.  A highly memorable and wonderfully weird trip through Byzantine-inspired melodies and musical forms.

We've also heard from Myriam Marbe before on SGTG, and her half-hour Concerto For Daniel Kientzy And Saxophones here is a good counterpoint to the brilliantly oddball works on that collection.  Kientzy starts solo, giving a great display of the range of his genius, before the ominous, fractured orchestral writing starts to fill out.  Plenty of long sax drones here too, intended to imitate bagpipes at one point and featuring Kientzy on two saxes simultaneously (eat your heart out, Beefheart/VDGG!).
 
The disc is rounded off by Anatol Vieru's Narration II, another nicely bonkers piece of orchestral surrealism that subjects "Frère Jacques", of all things, to a series of chromatic mutations.  Meanwhile, what sounds like a sozzled surf guitarist starts to stagger through the orchestra.  The remainder of the work is nicely trippy and off-beam - Vieru sounds like he's mildly spiked the whole ensemble.  Unique stuff, even in 20th century classical music, and really enjoyable.

link

Daniel Kientzy - Kientzy à Cluj (1999)

This post is a shout-out to the always great Spook City USA, for introducing me to today's main performer via a truly essential Octavian Nemescu disc.  Sax virtuoso Daniel Kientzy is French, but has become most closely associated with the Romanian avant-garde.  Since getting into Iancu Dumitrescu, I wondered if he'd ever called on Kientzy, and he has - on a 2005 piece called Nadir Latent - doesn't seem to have been released on album yet though.  So for today, we're heading north west of Bucharest to Cluj-Napoca, the creative hub for the four composers featured on this Kientzy release.

Unlike Dumitrescu, where you're spoiled for choice in readily available releases, Doina Rotaru, Călin Ioachimescu, Cornel Ţăranu and Stefan Niculescu all have slim discographies, let alone findable CDs, making a compilation like this all the more valuable if Romanian spectralism takes a hold on you like it has with me.  These three concertos and one choral work were all written with Kientzy in mind, and make for brilliantly mind-bending listening; the fact that such richly-textured music is led by an instrument more readily associated with jazz sometimes gives the impression of listening to Gershwin's orchestral work on some extremely strong hallucinogens.

Kienty's hardly a typical sax player in any genre, coaxing unearthly skronks from his battery of saxes; one possible comparison might be VDGG's David Jackson, and that still doesn't do Kientzy justice.  The long, low-register lines at the start of the Rotaru piece could bore through solid rock, and her concerto, along with the Ioachimescu one that follows, both feature stabbing, staccato bursts at times that are particularly memorable.  Stay around for the most atypical piece at the end of the disc - Stefan Niculescu's Axion features Kientzy flitting over the top of a Ligeti-esque female choir like some wonderful extraterrestrial version of Hilliard/Garbarek's Officium being beamed across the galaxy.

link