MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively AmazonUK

 

Jérôme COMBIER (b. 1971)
Essere fumo (2005) [5:27]
Heurter la lumière encore (2005) [5:08]
Interlude 1 [2:30]
Feuilles des paupières (2005) [5:11]
Interlude 2 [2:32]
Bois sombre (2006) [9:19]
Essere neve (2005) [5:56]
Essere pietra (2004)a [6:03]
Interlude 3 [2:12]
Respirer l’ombre (2005)a [6:19]
Ensemble Cairn/Guillaume Bourgognea
rec. Espace de Projection, IRCAM, Paris, 24-25 February 2007
AEON AECD0754 [50:59]
Experience Classicsonline


Now in his late thirties, Jérôme Combier first studied with the composer and conductor Hacène Larbi. In 1997 he was at the CNSM in Paris where his teachers were Emmanuel Nunes and Michaël Levinas. 1998 saw him appointed composer-in-residence at the Royaumont Foundation where his studies were further continued with Brian Ferneyhough and Antoine Bonnet. After a two-month residency in Japan, where he won further distinctions, he entered IRCAM to study computer-assisted composition. In 2002 his orchestral work Pays du vent, les Hébrides was awarded a prize at the UNESCO International Composition Rostrum. A scholarship allowed him to stay at the Villa Médicis in Rome from 2004 to 2006 where he composed his instrumental cycle Vies silencieuses and met the artist Raphaël Thierry who was to realise the visual installations for that work.
 
Vies silencieuses is a cycle of seven short works for the Ensemble Cairn founded by Jérôme Combier who is also its joint musical director with Guillaume Bourgogne. The instrumental set-up is as follows: viola, piano, flutes (one player), percussion (one player), cello, clarinet and guitar. However all but one of the pieces call for smaller instrumental combinations: Essere fumo (flute, viola and cello), Heurter la lumière encore (guitar, percussion and piano), Feuilles des paupières (flute, clarinet, percussion and piano), Bois sombre (solo viola), Essere neve (clarinet, guitar and cello), Essere pietra (guitar, percussion, piano, viola and cello) and Respirer l’ombre (the full ensemble). All but two of the seven (Essere pietra and Respirer l’ombre), are without conductor. Although the composer’s insert notes do not necessarily make it absolutely clear, it seems that he later added three electronic interludes using the sounds of stone, sand and wind as recorded by Raphaël Thierry. The seven pieces were obviously conceived as a cycle since they often share material, and the overall effect is remarkably coherent. Combier evinces remarkable instrumental flair and a real liking for subtle and refined sounds. The music is inventive and imaginative in its handling of small instrumental combinations.
 
In his insert notes, the composer comments on his concern with the work of Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) and Giuseppe Penone (b. 1947) - terra incognita to me. A quick internet search gave me a rough idea of their work, although I am not much the wiser for that. However, the titles of some of the pieces in the cycle of seven come from Penone, who apparently used to title his works with a verb in the infinitive and a noun such as Essere fumo (“To be a smoke”), Essere pietra (“To be a stone”) or Respirare l’ombra (“To breathe the shadow”). The common threads involve aspects of Nature and the ‘mineral’ sound-world all imaginatively evoked and conjured. I suppose that this facet of the cycle is still more evident when heard in conjunction with the visual realisations by Raphaël Thierry; but the music alone speaks for itself, enough so, anyway, to make its point in a fairly direct way.
 
Jérôme Combier’s music was new to me. It impressed me through its sheer invention and its assurance. I now look forward to hearing more of it some day. I would be particularly interested to know if Combier’s music can work in longer time-spans than in these relatively short instrumental works. Certainly a name to watch for.
 
Hubert Culot

 



 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.