Several recent records released by ABC Classics and BIS have
given Brett Dean’s music the wider exposure that it undoubtedly
deserves. The works on this brand new disc tend to confirm Dean’s
status as a highly personal composer. He emerges as a composer
whose music tackles contemporary issues in purely musical terms
rather than in the bluntly polemical ones that one might have
expected. For example,
Pastoral Symphony and
Water
Music deal with contemporary concerns such as deforestation
and man’s repeated damage to Nature in
Pastoral Symphony and
the global problem of water supply and lack of it in
Water
Music. Other works such as
Carlo and
Testament draw
on extra-musical preoccupations such as madness and despair.
Other still such as
Game Over and
Vexations
and Devotions reflect on certain debilitating effects
of our present-day “civilisation” such as the banality
of modern TV and its game and reality shows or of the use of
often abstruse jargon alienating the power of speech.
Pastoral Symphony for ensemble and tape was composed
after the composer’s return to Australia. “This piece
is about glorious birdsong, the threat that it faces, the loss,
and the soulless noise that we’re left with when they’re
all gone” (Brett Dean). The work opens with a dawn chorus
on tape to which the oboe adds its harmonic overtones to create
an intense, atmospheric but by no means idyllic landscape. This
uneasy, foreboding feeling prevails for a while. The music then
seems to open-up but becomes more agitated and restless till
it reaches a climax when the insistent sounds of a logger’s
axe are heard. After the trees fall birds scatter and the music
launches into an aggressive, mechanical section leading into
the barren and desolate coda.
The Siduri Dances for flute and strings - the most
recent work here and the only one that does not use sampler or
pre-recorded material - draws on a piece for flute:
Demons composed
for Sharon Bezaly. The composer points that Siduri is a wise
female divinity from the Epic of Gilgamesh, who dwells by the
sea at the ends of the earth and offers sage advice to those
travelling to other realms. After a short, mysterious introduction
the music becomes livelier and dance-like while pausing for some
calmer episodes. It progressively calms down and slowly makes
its way back towards its mysterious close. This is a lovely work
that should find a permanent place in any flautist’s repertoire.
Sharon Bezaly’s playing and musicality is a real joy from
first to last.
Water Music for saxophone quartet and chamber orchestra
is a more serious affair. It is in three movements with titles
that clearly trace the music’s narration:
Bubbling (the
sound of water),
Coursing (the image of rushing water)
and
Parched Earth (the absence of water). Dean displays
his full compositional array. He does this in a most imaginative
way to suggest his various visions while avoiding any all-too-crude
pictorial effects. The sonic register of the saxophone quartet
- that the composer considers as a “super-instrument” -
is remarkably imaginative throughout. The composer also uses
more advanced techniques such as multiphonics, key clicks and
the like, but never extravagantly. Sampled material is also used
in the outer movements but is conspicuously absent from the central
Scherzo. The first movement is appropriately capricious whereas
the second is an energetic Scherzo in which the propulsive character
of the music rarely flags. Room is left for a slow chorale after
which the music resumes its course and rushes towards an animated
conclusion capped by a brief, dark coda. The final movement paints
a bleak and desolate landscape.
Carlo is the earliest and the most complex work
in this ear-opening selection. It draws on Gesualdo’s life
and work as well as on Dean’s admiration of his music.
It is scored for strings, sampler and tape. Meurig Bowen’s
excellent notes go into considerable detail about the complex
fabric of the music. It would be idle for me to try of sum them
up or (worse!) to repeat them, the more so in that I am not particularly
well-versed in Gesualdo’s music.
Carlo opens
with music by Gesualdo heard on tape/CD. This is soon confronted
with Dean’s own reaction to the music. This then proceeds
wave-like through a series of contrasted episodes until it reaches
its horror-stricken climax - Gesualdo stabbing his wife and her
lover? There follows a lengthy coda based on Gesualdo’s
second Responsory for Maundy Thursday ending with an unresolved
crescendo. To be quite frank I admit being somewhat prejudiced
about this piece before listening to it. However, repeated hearings
have convinced me that this is by far the most impressive work
in this generous selection of Dean’s honest and thought-provoking
music.
Performances and recording are first rate from start to end,
and Bowen’s detailed and well-informed notes considerably
add to one’s appreciation of these often gripping works.
Hubert Culot
Sharon Bezaly (flute)a;
Raschèr Saxophone Quartetb 
