Brett Dean: Etüdenfest, Shadow Music, Short Stories.
Beethoven (arr. Dean) String Quartet op. 59/1: Adagio. Dean: Testament
Swedish Chamber
Orchestra
Brett Dean,
conductor
BIS SACD 2194
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New classical music releases reviewed in detail by Gavin Dixon
Wednesday, 19 October 2016
Brett Dean Shadow Music
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Brett Dean has a rare gift, an ability to make the
avant-garde accessible, and without any compromises. He now holds a position
similar to Luciano Berio in the previous generation, as the composer of serious
Modernist music that always keeps its face to the audience. Both composers often
employ a Postmodern element in their music to achieve this, writing works with
clear links to the much-loved music of earlier eras. But both also pursue more
abstract paths, though even then giving helpful clues—evocative titles, clear
thematic or textural ideas—to allow listeners to keep up. The five works
presented here come from relatively early in Dean’s career and present a compositional
voice gradually approaching full maturity. All of the textural, timbral, and
even structural ideas that make his more recent works so successful are already
securely in place, but what’s often missing is a sense of substance, of having
an important message to express.
Or perhaps that is the wrong way to approach this
music. The opening work, Etüdenfest
(2000), was inspired by the sounds emanating from conservatory practice rooms.
It is filled with extended string techniques, playfully layered and juxtaposed.
There is a quiet and often haunting atmosphere to the work, but Dean seems
determined to ground the music in its own prosaic origins: Just when you feel
something emotionally profound is about to happen, he introduces an obbligato
piano, incessantly practicing his arpeggios. And then the work ends. A playful étude
and nothing more.
But the brittle, half-lit atmosphere of Etüdenfest continues throughout the
program. In Shadow Music Dean
orientates the entire work around the idea of shadows, with dark sounds and
eerie percussive effects looming out of indistinct background textures. Winds
and percussion are added to the ensemble, following the strings and piano of Etüdenfest, but this is still
predominantly string music, and while Dean writes proficiently for every
orchestral section, it is always the strings that get the majority of the
interesting extended techniques.
Short Stories (2005) is, as its title suggests, more pictorial and
more narrative. The five “interludes” each have a different character, the quieter
ones following the shadowy mood of the previous two works. A narrative quality
comes through more strongly in the faster music, where we hear long, weaving
violin lines drawing the ear onwards through the ever-beguiling textures. No
actual stories are told (or at least acknowledged by the composer), apart from
in the penultimate movement, “Komarov’s Last Words,” a memorial to cosmonaut
Vladimir Komarov, the first casualty of space flight.
A greater emotional depth is evident in Testament (2002, rev. 2008), a work
inspired by Beethoven’s “Heiligenstadt Testimony.” Dean prefaces the work with
a chamber orchestra arrangement (flute, clarinet, and string orchestra) of the Adagio from Beethoven’s String Quartet
op. 59/1. The arrangement itself is very elegant, and Dean’s penchant for held
string pedals informs his settings of the accompanying textures. Testament follows the mood of the
Beethoven movement, but the actual allusions to Beethoven’s work within Dean’s
are subtle, brief quotations from the Adagio,
and also, apparently, allusions to the upbeat character of the finale of the
quartet. The result, in Dean’s words, is an ambivalence “somewhere between languor
and resolve.”
The BIS label has done great service to Brett Dean’s
music, and this is just the most recent in a long line of excellent SACD
recordings. Dean himself conducts here, and the focus on textures and balances
that characterize his composition transfer well to his work at the podium. The
pace at which he unfolds these works always feels patient, searching for, and
achieving, excellent clarity in each of the textural ideas he presents. Orchestral
playing is excellent throughout: It always seems to be with Brett Dean’s music,
a virtue, no doubt of his idiomatic writing. Recorded sound is very fine, too,
clear SACD audio, not the kind that shows off its high fidelity credentials,
but instead articulates the details without any harshness or edge and gives
subtle but valuable weight to the bass.
None of these works is labeled as a first recording. With
Etüdenfest, Shadow Music, and Testament,
BIS is here catching up with ABC, who recorded the three works with the
Tasmanian Symphony (ABC 4763219, released
2014). The latter work is an orchestral arrangement of a piece by the same name
for 12 violas, written in 2002, and the original is available on BIS 2016, as a
filler for the Violin Concerto “The Lost Art of Letter Writing,” to date perhaps
Dean’s most accomplished work. No other recording of Short Stories appears to be available at present, but, given the
huge interest in the composer’s work from a range of record labels, it is
probably only a matter of time before the next appears. No need to wait
though—these composer-led versions are unlikely to be surpassed any time soon.
This review appears in Fanfare magazine issue 40:3.
This review appears in Fanfare magazine issue 40:3.
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