PÉCOU
Méditation sur la fin de l’espèce for Solo Cello, Processed Whale Songs and Ensemble.
Mada la baleine for Ensemble and Processed Whale Songs. MÂCHE
Vigiles for Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Sampler, Guitar and Recorded Bird Songs. BLACKFORD
Murmuration for Flute and Clarinet
Thierry Pécou, cond; Ens Variances OHUANA no catalog number (45:00)
PÉCOU
Nanook Trio for Clarinet, Saxophone, and Piano. Piano Sonata.
Sikus for Cello and Electronics.
Chant inuit for Solo Cello
Thierry Pécou, cond; Ens Variances OHUANA no catalog number (39:14)
This double album (download/stream only) from Ensemble
Variances is entitled Humain non Humain I and II. Both showcase the work
of the Ensemble’s conductor and resident composer, Thierry Pécou. His music takes
in various ethnic influences, here from the Americas, and sounds from nature,
particularly whale song. The results are atmospheric but always modern-sounding,
and always engaging enough to be more than mood music. Crucially, Pécou applies
his environmental ideology with a light touch: His ideas permeate the music, but
this never feels like concept album or moralistic discourse.
The first album is titled Chants d’espèces. The
main work here is Vigiles by François-Bernard Mâche. The concise but
well-translated liner note tells us that Mâche has been experimenting with birdsong
and sounds from nature in his music for many decades, and he is clearly a major
influence on Pécou’s own music. Vigiles is for a small
woodwind/keyboard/guitar ensemble and recorded birdsong (nighttime birds, including
nightingale). Mâche transcribes the birdsong and then arranges it for the
ensemble. Rather than notate every detail of its structure, Mâche instead just gives
the broad outlines, and when these are played along to the original, the result
is an engaging but relaxed heterophony. More complexity is introduced later on,
with call and response between the birds and the ensemble, but the concept is
always clear. The sound of piano and solo woodwinds playing fast, complex music
in unison is reminiscent of the Ensemble Modern album of orchestrated versions
of Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano studies (RCA 09026 61180 2). The difference
is that you never get the feeling here that Mâche is exploring complexity for
its own sake.
The album opens and closes with works by Pécou based
on whalesong. Méditation sur la fin de l’espèce is for solo cello,
ensemble, and “processed” prerecorded songs of humpback, killer, and beluga whales.
The most compelling sound in the mix is that of the cello, playing sliding
double-stops on its lower two strings to imitate the whale sounds. High flageolet
is also put to effective submarine use. In the ensemble, the contrabass clarinet
has a lot of useful sounds here too, growls and overtones. The relationship with
the recorded whales is free, with the instruments more predominant than the
whales. A short work for ensemble and tape closes the album, Mada la baleine.
This seems like a study for the first work (both are dated 2017), this time
with a humpback whale on the tape and the ensemble improvising on motifs derived
from its song. Also on the album is Murmuration for flute and clarinet
by British composer Richard Blackford. Despite being the only non-French
composer on this set, Blackford is the closest to Messiaen in his approach to birdsong.
It’s not quite as erratic as Messiaen though, as Blackford is also attempting
to trace the contours of flocks of birds in flight. He achieves this effectively
through broad dynamic contours and subtly evolving textural shifts.
The second album, Grands espaces, focusses more
on the “Humain” side. Nanook Trio for clarinet, saxophone, and piano, is
based on music that Pécou composed to accompany the 1921 silent film Nanook
of the North. In the second of its three movements, Pécou emulates a
technique of Native American singing that he describes as a “hiccup.” A simple,
repetitive melody is divided up between two voices, here clarinet and
saxophone, resulting in erratic interactions, sometimes dialogue, but just as
often overlay. The outer movements are more generalized evocations of
snowscapes, the textures often brittle, especially from the upper register of
the piano. The album closes with Chant inuit, a more straightforward setting
of the second movement melody for solo cello.
Pécou’s Piano Sonata has no explicit subject or
narrative, but explores a similar sound world. The composer tells us that it
was “inspired by the kabbalistic concept of the Sephiroth, the 10 emanations of
the primordial light.” He translates this to 10 chords, which are heard “wriggling”
throughout the piece, through tremolo and arpeggiation. The result tends
towards Spectralism, although with less complex harmonies and more movement in
the broken chords. Pécou understands “sonata” here though its etymology “to
ring,” and so the structure is more an exploration of these resonances than a
traditional developmental progression.
Pécou’s approach to ethnography is always abstract and
creative, never more so than in Sikus for cello and electronics. The
starting point here was research by the ethnomusicologist Mónica Gudemos into
the music of pre-Hispanic civilizations of the Andes. Pécou talks of attempting
to reconstitute this music in his work. Thankfully, though, his creative energies
are more focused on the broader social and religious significance of music in
these cultures. In the work, he samples Andean pan pipes, and then creates a
complex, prerecorded environment for the cello, with the pipe sounds radically
transformed and then projected to eight speakers around the audience and soloist.
The soloist responds in much the same way is with the earlier whale song,
imitating the overtones and formant identities of the recorded sounds, in
increasingly sophisticated dialogue with the tape.
The performances by Ensemble Variances are excellent
throughout. Special mention should go to the cellists, David Louwerse, Stéphanie
André, and Lucien Debon; the instrument is clearly central to Pécou’s musical
imagination, and both players are on his wavelength. The recorded sound is warm
and clear, and well balanced between the prerecorded tracks and the performers.
It is a shame, though, to miss out on the eight-track spatialization in Sikus.
Thierry Pécou is a unique voice in the world of environmentally engaged new
music. He’s somewhere between John Luther Adams and Gérard Grisey, and fans of
either of those luminaries will find much to enjoy here.
This review appears in Fanfare magazine issue 45:5