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Embers
While the Pandemic persists in making regular concerts impossible, the Louth Contemporary Music Society continues its work in the studio. Last autumn’s CD release Meadow, featuring music by Linda Catlin Smith, won praise from leading critics on both sides of the Atlantic, including Alex Ross in The New Yorker. Now comes a follow-up, Embers - three world première recordings again devoted to music for strings – instruments that, in their intimacy, seem to touch our moment.
In Samuel Beckett's radio play Embers, the main character stands at the sea shore, sifting through fragments of memory and story that are still living embers, hot to the touch. So it is in this recording, in which music by distinguished Irish composer Raymond Deane supports robustly an important quartet by one of the great masters of our age, Valentin Silvestrov.
While the Pandemic persists in making regular concerts impossible, the Louth Contemporary Music Society continues its work in the studio. Last autumn’s CD release Meadow, featuring music by Linda Catlin Smith, won praise from leading critics on both sides of the Atlantic, including Alex Ross in The New Yorker. Now comes a follow-up, Embers - three world première recordings again devoted to music for strings – instruments that, in their intimacy, seem to touch our moment.
In Samuel Beckett's radio play Embers, the main character stands at the sea shore, sifting through fragments of memory and story that are still living embers, hot to the touch. So it is in this recording, in which music by distinguished Irish composer Raymond Deane supports robustly an important quartet by one of the great masters of our age, Valentin Silvestrov.
Raymond Deane
The opener, Deane’s Marthiya, is named after a form of Middle Eastern lament. It was composed in the wake of the 2003 Iraq invasion. The music’s 'atmosphere of mourning', Deane writes, is 'not unrelated to the devastation wreaked on Iraq since 2003, and to the wider carnage inflicted upon the Arab and Islamic world'.
Deane’s other contribution is the title track, written thirty years earlier but with the same recognisable voice. Though perhaps more questioning than elegiac, Embers is music again on the edge of tears. Ideas, bits of tune, come and go, and recur, very much as things come and go, and come back once more, like in Beckett's play. To quote the composer: 'The piece obsessively turns over musical fragments which seem to have some remote but uncertain origin.'
Deane’s other contribution is the title track, written thirty years earlier but with the same recognisable voice. Though perhaps more questioning than elegiac, Embers is music again on the edge of tears. Ideas, bits of tune, come and go, and recur, very much as things come and go, and come back once more, like in Beckett's play. To quote the composer: 'The piece obsessively turns over musical fragments which seem to have some remote but uncertain origin.'
Valentin Silvestrov
Silvestrov’s music gives voice to the sense we may all feel of being bereft, left behind by what was once a social culture of sympathy and togetherness. Listening to his Third String Quartet, composed in 2011, we seem to be watching from the dock as a great ocean liner slowly slides away, taking with it our hopes and our dreams. Something of this feeling of being on the sidelines of history may come from the composer’s inheritance as a Ukrainian. Ireland, he notes, is not so far away: 'I believe there is some Irish accent, and some simple melodies, that permeate the whole work and may sound as symbols of this wonderful country, in whose destiny and historical legacy I perceive a close spiritual affinity to Ukraine, my homeland.'
All three works are captured in intense, poignant performances by leading ensembles: Crash (Marthiya) and the Carducci Quartet (Embers; Silvestrov, String Quartet No.3).
Embers releases on 5 March 2021 on CD, iTunes/Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Qobuz and all main digital service providers. It is the world première recording of Silvestrov, String Quartet No.3, Deane's Marthiya and of the string quartet (original) version of Deane's Embers, which has been released previously in its subsequent string orchestra version by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in 2016.
Embers releases on 5 March 2021 on CD, iTunes/Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Qobuz and all main digital service providers. It is the world première recording of Silvestrov, String Quartet No.3, Deane's Marthiya and of the string quartet (original) version of Deane's Embers, which has been released previously in its subsequent string orchestra version by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in 2016.
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Download on iTunes Stream on Spotify Stream on Deezer High definition download from Presto Music Louth Contemporary Music Society is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and financially supported by Create Louth. Cover image: 'Grotto' by David Quinn, used with kind permission of the artist. |
LOUTH CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PROFILE
EMBERS REVIEWS
'Rallying After The Silence', Brendan Finan, The Journal of Music
'Engaging and affecting, it’s a grower ... immaculately produced and designed ... When lockdown eases, I’m Louthward bound.' Graham Rickson, The Arts Desk
'A program of great coherence. ... Superb release from a label we here on our side of the big lake wish to know a lot more soon.' Frédéric Cardin, Pan M 360
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