Nicolas Bacri is one
of those living composers who offer
hope for the future. Others include
Arnold Rosner, Lionel Sainsbury, Ronald
Stevenson, Ian Venables, Loris Tjeknavorian,
Avet Terteryan and Ghiya Kancheli not
that any of them sound like each other.
Each however breathes a sincerity that
communicates with today's audiences
- no ivory tower self-gratification
here.
Bacri, a Parisian,
strikes out in quite different directions
from those dictated from IRCAM or by
Boulez (though the composer himself
claims affinity here) or Messiaen or
Reich or Adams. His absorption and language
is in the grave melodic tendency rooted
in Bach-Finzi territory. He has not
lacked for recordings either and a number
of his discs have already been reviewed
here.
In the case of this
disc the melodic strand is strong and
finds a natural complement in Florent
Héau's clarinet which forms the
axle for this CD. Bacri's Op.37b Divertimento
is not at all the cassation you might
have expected from the title. In fact
if he had called it a sonata no-one
would have blinked. Its gravity and
serious intent is never in doubt. After
a bustling first movement in which Bernstein
meets Tippett meets Copland comes a
sweetly and quietly intoned Canto
lontano - the essence of one chapter
of the Bacri language. Even the finale,
which resumes the cut and thrust of
the first movement, cannot resist the
lissom modest singing and ends in introspection.
The four movement Concerto has the riptide
virtuosity of the Stravinsky Ebony
Concerto in the first two movements
even if the long first movement ends
in another of those Bacri invocations
to beauty. This is a theme resumed in
the Adagio espressivo which has
the spirituality of the late Beethoven
quartets. I wondered if it should have
gone slower than it is taken here. Unusually
the last movement is the longest of
the four containing a chilly arioso
and the accustomed technical flamboyance.
Why Mondorf for the Sonata: because
it was written in that Luxembourg spa
town of that name. Im Volkston is
a series of seven miniature tableaux
none of which outstays its welcome and
all of which are written in a deliberately
populist style recalling Bernstein,
Prokofiev, Britten (tr.12). Dance, sometimes
of a macabre stamp, plays a major part
in these miniatures. Ideal relaxing
fare in a concert of more emotionally
demanding works. Night Music glumly
muses with suggestions of inimical fate
woven in. The same can be said of the
bleak landscapes of the two Rhapsodies.
Once again there is a chill in this
music and less of the lyrical tendency
noted in the outstanding Divertimento
and Concerto.
One can only hope for
recordings of his four string quartets:
two early (1980, 1982) and two late
(1995 onwards). The Symphony No. 1 and
First Violin Concerto are also from
the early post-serial phase. Since then
there have been a Cello Concerto (1985-87),
Symphony No. 2 (1986-90), four more
symphonies and ten concertante works.
His Sixth Symphony was in the finals
of the international competition ‘Masterprize
2003’. It was played by London Symphony
Orchestra/Harding last November at the
Barbican in London. On the present showing
all of these works should be worth hearing.
If they attain the heights of imaginative
writing achieved in the modestly titled
Divertimento we should be in
for some revelations.
I should add that there
is another disc of Bacri clarinet music
in which the Divertimento No. 2,
Adams Dances; Im Volkston;
Divertimento Op. 43 and Concerto
da Camera appear alongside substantial
works by Guillaume Connesson and Anthony
Girard. There the clarinettist is Philippe
Cuper. This collection entitled The
Paris Connection is on Clarinet Classics
CC0043. I shall be reviewing that disc
in due course.
Rob Barnett
Florent Héau (clarinet) 
