Giacinto Scelsi - Natura Renovatur, Anagamin, Ohoi, Elohim (Orch. Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, 2000)

Icy, ghostly uneasy listening from microtonal magician Giacinto Scelsi (1905-88).  This nice compact album from the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia contains four of Scelsi's works for string orchestra; as the liner notes point out, this is the ideal force for really exploring in depth how Scelsi's music was so unique.  The continuous shifting of the tonal and harmonic ground beneath your feet, coupled with the various advanced techniques applied to the strings, mean that any temporary refuge in a recognisable chord is likely to vanish into thin air the next moment.  

 

This can be appreciated to its fullest extent on the first and lengthiest piece Natura Renovatur (1967), a rewrite of an earlier string quartet.  The unrelenting darkness of Anagamin (1965) is next, contrasted with the calmer, luminous Ohoi (1966), then to finish comes the brief, but no less eerie Elohim, published posthumously.  Incredible music to get lost in on dark nights.

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Previously posted at SGTG: 
Quatro Pezzi Per Orchestra/Anahit/Uaxuctum 

Hurqualia/Hymnos/Chukrum
Tre Pezzi (Daniel Kientzy, saxophone)

Giacinto Scelsi - Hurqualia/Hymnos/Chukrum (1990)

Another trip into the strange, formless void of Giacinto Scelsi's mature period, previously explored early on in this blog when I first heard an album of his music.  This series of albums on the Accord label served as the first attempt at a major reappraisal of the bewitching, monochordal and microtonal Scelsi sound, just after his death in 1988.  So obscure had Scelsi became that nothing on this album had even been performed until the mid-late 80s.  A series of concerts, the rehearsals of which Scelsi oversaw in the final year of his life, and then these albums, kickstarted a long overdue and ongoing appreciation of his music. 

First up here is the four-part Hurqualia, with some of Scelsi's most dramatic and dynamic symphonic writing, focusing on the power of the brass and percussion.  Then there's the single-movement Hymnos, his longest self-contained piece with the grandest orchestral forces he wrote for (86 musicians), with Brucknerian influences but still centred on that unwavering, hypnotic Scelsi drone.  Closing the album is some of his most fearsome writing for string orchestra in another four-parter, Chukrum.  Truly stunning music for deep listening.

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Previously posted at SGTG: 
Quatro Pezzi Per Orchestra/Anahit/Uaxuctum
Tre Pezzi (Daniel Kientzy, saxophone)

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.

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Giacinto Scelsi - Quattro Pezzi Per Orchestra / Anahit / Uaxuctum (1959-69, rec. 1989)

The first few times I listened to the music of Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988), I felt dizzy and nauseous.  Whether this was a direct result of plunging unaware into a disorenting, gradually shifting world of monochordal, microtonal sound, or just shaking off a virus that same week (more likely, but I like to think it was fully the former!), the sheer strangeness of this music had me hooked.

A period of personal upheval in the post-WW2 years saw Scelsi's music begin to take the direction that he's best known for - writing around a single, unwavering pitch with the kind of microtones heretofore best known in Indian classical music, and subtle shifts in harmony and timbre.  Sounds like pretty minimal stuff, and it is - but to call both Philip Glass and Giacinto Scelsi minimalist composers is akin to calling Stephen King and Thomas Ligotti horror writers.  In both of the latter cases, you can frequently feel yourself teetering on the edge of some vast, unknowable void - but the deeper you look, the more unearthly artistic beauty unveils itself.

Quattro Pezzi per orchestra, ciascuno su una nota sola (Four Pieces for orchestra, each on a single note), (1959), is one of Scelsi's best known works, and as good a statement of intent as any for the rest of his career.  If these four pieces are largely flavoured by brass and thundering percussion, the next work on this disc, Anahit, Lyric poem for Venus (1965), makes the most of a bewitching solo violin part.  Anahit is probably my Scelsi of choice, rising and falling over its 13 minutes to brilliant dramatic effect.

Lastly on this disc comes Uaxuctum (1969), subtitled 'The legend of the Maya city, destroyed by themselves for religious reasons'.  The city in question is most commonly spelled Uaxactun, and the music, eerie chorale, ondes martenot and all, is perfectly descriptive.  The beginning of this work reminds me a little of the 'Nosferatu' opening to Popol Vuh's Brüder des Schattens - Söhne des Lichts, with both sounding like they've been beamed in directly from ancient history.  With Uaxuctum however, there's no resolution into a happy place - only darkness.

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