ECM have had a nice little line in choral singing with solo instruments
on top, and there are aspect about this piece which reminded
me a little of that Officium disc on which Jan Garbarek
improvises over the singing of the Hilliard Ensemble. Canadian
composer Peter-Anthony Togni wrote the Lamentatio Jeremiae
Prophetae as a concerto for bass clarinet for Jeff Reilly.
In five movements, the piece covers the story of Jeremiah’s
prophesies, with the bass clarinet acting as a kind of vocal
narrative - the voice of Jeremiah, the choir creating a variety
of atmospheres and backgrounds, and acting as ‘the crowd’.
This is both simple and complicated, both as a concept, and in
the way the piece is written. I have heard comments about the
bass clarinet using every special effect in the shop, but in
fact Togni is fairly restrained in his use of raucous roars and
other wobbles. I have worked with bass clarinet players myself
for many years, and know its staggering range of organ-pipe like
depths, the sometimes almost frighteningly lifelike human voice
it can create at certain pitches, and the flexibility generated
through the interaction of a reed of chunky dimensions, and an
instrument whose corpus contains enough wood to form a small
tree. Jeff Reilly is a very fine player indeed, and the balance
of this recording with the choir sees it both meeting the choir
as a melodic soloist, mixing with some of the choral textures,
and standing out with sometimes chilling starkness.
The choral writing is in general quite conventional, usually
restrained, and with the kind of resolving dissonances which
can be heard in plenty of places elsewhere. You can think of
Arvo Pärt and be fairly close. The central movement, Silentio,
made me think of the final moments of another choral piece, Sleep by
Eric Whitacre, although my first reaction was tamed somewhat
on comparing the notes directly. Togni may be eclectic, but
the closer one looks the more intriguing are some of his ideas,
and
the more feeling one senses being generated through what he
calls a “direct expression of my Roman Catholic faith.”
There are many fine moments in this piece, and taken at several
levels it can and will deliver a stimulating and moving experience.
My own personal reaction, which shouldn’t be taken as anything
but a purely subjective set of responses based on a listening
background which has covered acres of quasi-similar material
to this, is one of mild frustration. I’m certainly not
unimpressed with the creativity and musicianship in all aspects
of this recording, but in the end have the feeling with this
piece that I am inside a big inflated bag of genre composition,
the boundaries of which are so flexible that I roll around and
push was much as I want without really being kicked back or challenged
by anything seriously lumpy and powerful. If I’m dealing
with the trials of Jeremiah I want to come away with at least
a modicum of spiritual bruising. This piece is not essentially ‘comfort
food’, but neither does it, for me at least, convey with
true force the suffering and desiccation in much of the text.
At one point there is a masterstroke where this kind of expression
is entirely synergetic with the text: the multiphonics of the
bass clarinet 4:00 into the final movement Remember, O Lord,
and the improvisatory cries over the almost silent voices later
on are devastating, the final high peaks other-worldly. I suppose
I just prefer these kinds of remarkable moment and would rather
they were stretched and developed more uncompromisingly and compactly,
rather than in the rather sumptuous framework which the full
extent of this piece delivers.
Given ECM’s usual fine engineering and the excellent performance
standard on this disc I would rather give an unequivocal recommendation
than leave you in a state of confusion. If you like the ECM aesthetic
and revel in the religious expression of others in their stable
such as Pärt and the Garbarek/Hilliard axis then you will
find much to enjoy and explore here.
Dominy Clements
Jeff Reilly (bass
clarinet) 
