I’ve
had an affection for the alphorn ever since a composer friend
of mine, Joost van Balkom, shook up the composition department
in The Hague with his gloriously
banal ‘Happy Alphorn Polka’, played by the highly professional
Herman Jeurissen in one of those deadly serious composers concerts.
This was the late 1980s and most of the students were still
suffering from the abrupt departure of Brian Ferneyhough and
the decease of Morton Feldman, but we bad lads delighted in
puncturing all that intellectual posturing, and ran through
the Donaueschingen psyche with metaphorical underwear on our
heads, well-informed but fun-seeking beer steins held high and
proud.
I’m
delighted to be able to say that Russian wind player Arkady
Shilkloper’s new album continues this grand tradition, being
full of convivial and entertaining noises, all superbly played.
Shilkloper
plays all of the parts and instruments in each piece, which
must have been a major feat of studio work – dubbing each part
with perfect timing, without any real sense of losing the spontaneity
of the compositional ideas. True, the ‘studio’ nature of the
work comes through, with reverb-enhanced sound taking the place
of vast mountain landscapes. You notice this most at moments
of extreme antiphony, where the subtlety of the production couldn’t
quite go as far as ‘throwing’ the acoustic effect over both
channels. Close your eyes on some of the ensemble works however,
and it’s like being surrounded by a warm, bovine pack of something
quite disturbingly organic – not quite as ‘sweet and low’ as
the Serpent, but quite distinct from the more penetrating conventional
French horn.
If
you doubted that the alphorn could be a jazz instrument, sample
Alpine Trail, which should be come an instant hit, with
insane improvisational figures over an equally insane ostinato
accompaniment. If you know and love the natural horn recordings
by Hermann Baumann, then you will know about the strange and
wonderful ‘min’ tuning of some notes on non-keyed brass instruments.
This is an effect which crops up often on this CD, and will
either make you ill or make you thrill. Personally, my trousers
blow up whenever I hear such glorious naturally ‘false’ notes,
about the only real non-western scale in our mean-tempered Western
music. Zum Gipfel und zurück draws heavily on this effect,
allowing four alphorns to melt together in some heart-stopping
clashes.
Extra
effects are thankfully few and far between, but those longing
for cowbells will find them at the opening of the Danza Pastorella.
Incredible fields of sound and bizarre lifting-sagging tuning
relationships are explored in the Erbauliche Studie,
which also introduces some lush jazz chords which are a feature
of some of the other pieces on this disc, like the Song and
Variations. Rhythmic excitement is also an element in this
work, heightened by ‘boomwacker’ slapping on the mouthpiece.
Brain
– (t)racking Work is, as
its title suggests, a lively and energetic minimalist miniature
of mind-mangling technical complexity. Another great highlight
for me is Hans Kennel’s Dance Five, full of off-beat
infectious rhythms to which you just have to dance, even
if you haven’t yet had your daily schnapps.
Before embarking on
this review I was reasonably confident in summing up by conceding
that, while this disc has a relatively short playing time, at
least by the end of it you will have heard quite enough alphorn.
The fact could hardly be further from the truth, and this disc’s
brevity just leaves you panting for more. Thank goodness you can
play these things more than once …
Dominy Clements
Arkady Shilkloper
(alphorn and horns) 
