Is there a new regulation stipulating that any CD
of Elena Kats-Chernin's music must bear the title 'Blue
Silence'? This is the second in a couple of months. In fairness,
the other is subtitled 'Australian music for cello and piano',
and Kats-Chernin's
Blue Silence was in fact her only
work on that disc. That 'Blue Silence' was released by
Tall Poppies (TP222,
review)
who have, along with fellow-Australian label ABC Classics, put out in
recent times a fair amount of Kats-Chernin's music. It lends
itself particularly well to multi-composer anthologies - snappy titles
and brevity of statement among its very 21st-century attributes. In
the post-modern way, indeed, her best-known work, the
Eliza Aria
(often erroneously listed as 'Eliza's Aria') entered
the popular consciousness through a series of animated television ads
for Lloyds Bank. It was subsequently elevated to 'earworm'
status via the repetitious playlists of Classic FM.
At any rate, this particular 'Blue Silence', released
on the internet label Vexations840 ("A mysterious organization
dedicated to classical music at its greatest"), is a collection
of twenty short works for string quartet, all bar two lasting only a
few minutes. On grounds of length, therefore, there is nothing here
to deter the casual listener. From a musical point of view there is
still less. Kats-Chernin writes in a decidedly melodious, foot-tapping
style, of which the
Eliza Aria is wholly typical. A perusal
of the titles is all it takes to identify the importance to her of colour
and dance. The works sound in fact something like a cross between Ástor
Piazzolla and Philip Glass - the poetry and colour of the former combined
with the motoric-mesmeric qualities of the latter - yet more good-humoured
and consistent than either. It is difficult to imagine music that is
more listener-friendly, yet which does not insult the intelligence.
As it happens, few of these pieces were written specifically for the
string quartet medium. Most are what Kats-Chernin refers to as "re-versions"
of compositions originally for other chamber combinations or even theatre,
or indeed of works by someone else, as in the suite taken from
Bach's
Notebook for Anna Magdalena.
These items amount to nothing more than Kats-Chernin's complete
string quartet works
thus far. She has not ruled out further
pieces for this genre. Curiously, an album entitled 'Fast Blue
Village' was released - vexatiously? - by Vexations840 only a
few months previously, billed as the 'Complete Works for String
Quartet, volume one' and performed by the Acacia Ensemble
.
The Ensemble has become a mere Quartet for this disc. Only formed in
2010, its four members come from a variety of backgrounds and countries.
Kats-Chernin's music is not the most fiendish to play by a long
chalk, but the Acacias are clean and tidy in their work, repaying the
composer's confidence in their ability to communicate her pieces
with a goodly amount of panache.
Sound quality is very good. Only two complaints, both minor: the fake
reverberation added to the final chord of each work, and the occasionally
noisy intakes of breath of one of the violinists, these going into overdrive
in
Luke's Painting and
Kwong Song, where the
sniffs seem to be beating time!
The accompanying booklet is slim, but the information supplied is good
enough for most purposes, even if author Rosalind Appleby does lean
towards hagiography: Kats-Chernin is "the superstar of Australian
composers", a "beacon of success" whose "vivacious
personality draws a crowd". It can be downloaded for free
here.
The timing of 17'00 given in the booklet for
From Anna Magdalena's
Notebook is wrong: it is actually 14:20. In fact, several tracks
have wrong timings by a few seconds, most notably
Drinking Song,
given as 1:31, actual length 1:13. The biographical note on the Acacia
Quartet contains the following crime against good usage: "is comprised
of...".
Byzantion
Collected reviews and contact at artmusicreviews.co.uk
Track Listing
Fast Blue Village 2 (2006) [5:14]
Eliza Aria (2003) [3:18]
Moody Tango (2010) [3:06]
Mezmer (2010) [3:43]
Road to Harvest (2006) [4:21]
Kwong Song (2006) [3:36]
Luke's Painting (2007) [2:17]
Second Door on the Left [2:40]
From Anna Magdalena's Notebook (2006) [14:20]
Russian Rag [2:14]
Butterflying (2003) [3:49]
Pink-Breasted Robin [2:04]
Blue Silence (2006) [7:08]
Blue Rose (2001) [2:57]
Silver Suite [11:37]
Grotesk [2:09]
Drinking Song (1991-92) [1:31]
Charleston Noir [7:15]
Naive Waltz (1993) [1:40]
Slicked Back Tango [1:38]
