Poul Ruders Four Dances Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Oliver Knussen DACAPO 8.226028 POUL RUDERS (B
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POUL RUDERS Four Dances Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Oliver Knussen DACAPO 8.226028 POUL RUDERS (b. 1949) Four Dances in One Movement (1983) 19:04 1 Whispering – 1:44 2 Rocking – 5:03 Four Dances 3 Ecstatic – 3:52 4 Extravagant 8:25 Birmingham Contemporary Music Group Oliver Knussen, conductor 5 Nightshade (1987) 8:35 Marie-Christine Zupancic | flute, piccolo, alto Abysm (2000) 23:32 Melinda Maxwell | oboe * 6 I Abysm 12:32 Rebecca Kozam | oboe, cor anglais ** 7 II Burning 1:48 Joanna Patton | clarinet ** 8 III Spectre 9:09 Mark O’Brien | clarinet, bass clarinet *, contra bass clarinet ** Margaret Cookhon | bassoon, contra bassoon ** Total: 51:08 Mark Phillips | horn Jonathan Holland | trumpet Alan Thomas | trumpet * Ed Jones | trombone Julian Warburton | percussion 1 Adrian Spillett | percussion 2 Malcolm Wilson | piano Alexandra Wood | violin 1 Gabriel Dyker | violin 2 ** Christopher Yates | viola Ulrich Heinen | cello John Tattersdill | double bass * Abysm ** Four Dances; Nightshade Dacapo is supported by the Danish Arts Council Committee for Music POUL RUDERS (b. 1949) Four Dances in One Movement (1983) 19:04 1 Whispering – 1:44 2 Rocking – 5:03 Four Dances 3 Ecstatic – 3:52 4 Extravagant 8:25 Birmingham Contemporary Music Group Oliver Knussen, conductor 5 Nightshade (1987) 8:35 Marie-Christine Zupancic | flute, piccolo, alto Abysm (2000) 23:32 Melinda Maxwell | oboe * 6 I Abysm 12:32 Rebecca Kozam | oboe, cor anglais ** 7 II Burning 1:48 Joanna Patton | clarinet ** 8 III Spectre 9:09 Mark O’Brien | clarinet, bass clarinet *, contra bass clarinet ** Margaret Cookhon | bassoon, contra bassoon ** Total: 51:08 Mark Phillips | horn Jonathan Holland | trumpet Alan Thomas | trumpet * Ed Jones | trombone Julian Warburton | percussion 1 Adrian Spillett | percussion 2 Malcolm Wilson | piano Alexandra Wood | violin 1 Gabriel Dyker | violin 2 ** Christopher Yates | viola Ulrich Heinen | cello John Tattersdill | double bass * Abysm ** Four Dances; Nightshade Dacapo is supported by the Danish Arts Council Committee for Music POUL RUDERS: instrumental palette in the three works vibraphone and violin harmonics. A hint of less than ten minutes – yet it conveys the FOUR DancES in OnE MOvEMEnt; recorded here, but with only solo instruments of Stravinsky in what Ruders calls the ‘tall’ ‘deadly’ implications of its title (in English at his disposal the sonorous impact of a full chords at the end of ‘Rocking’ acts as a cue the potentially poisonous plant Belladonna nightShaDE; abySM orchestral brass or string section is ruled out. for the sudden eruption of ‘Ecstatic’, where is known as ‘Deadly Nightshade’) with Intensity has to be conveyed by concentration. the hard-edged sounds and exuberantly remarkable force. For Ruders, simply seeing No contemporary composer has displayed There could be no better illustration of clashing rhythms build in a carefully control- the word in print was enough to set his imag- a more idiosyncratic mastery of the modern this than ‘Whispering’, the first of the Four led crescendo of visceral excitement. ination racing. The meanings suggested by symphony orchestra than Poul Ruders. The Dances in One Movement for chamber orches- At first the finale, ‘Extravagant’, seems the plant’s two different names – a beautiful huge colour-enhanced canvasses of the First tra (1983), premiered in 1985 by the London quietly determined to contradict its title. The woman, seductive promise of nocturnal ref- Symphony (1989), Solar Trilogy (1992-95) and Sinfonietta under the composer-conductor opening muted violin lines recall the ghostly uge (‘night-shade’), death – carried Ruders the two operas The Handmaid’s Tale (1996- Oliver Knussen. Knowing that he was writ- shadowing process of ‘Whispering’ in more into a world of dreams or primal fairy tales. 98) and Kafka’s Trial (2001-3) show a Straus- ing for Knussen clearly focussed Ruders’s formal, quasi-fugal terms. This is the begin- It even suggested a kind of story: sian panache in the creation of arresting mind right from the start – Knussen’s aural ning of a long process of drawing together new timbres and textures. But in each case precision is legendary. ‘Whispering’ is an ideas from the previous three movements, ‘…a drama about something that is both it is the emotion conveyed, the atmosphere eerie little prelude in which the clarinet’s and of achieving a kind of resolution on – or threatening and fascinating: a small child generated by these means that leaves the hushed, nervous dancing figures are trailed around – the key of B (hinted at several times gets up in the middle of the night, leaves the strongest impression. by ghostly not-quite perfect echoes on violin, during ‘Rocking’ and touched at the end of house and disappears into a black forest. One might expect such a composer to be tremolo. One might imagine a child, stum- ‘Extravagant’). If this suggests a symphonic Something unknown and dangerous is less at home writing for chamber ensembles. bling over the words of a nursery rhyme, synthesis, it is worth noting that Ruders’s calling.’ But there is another side to Ruders’s musical aware that somewhere in the shadows a thin original working title for the piece was character – one that has more in common spectral voice is mimicking them. ‘Symphonic Dances’ – until, that is, Ruders Innocence and terrible experience is a recur- with the Nordic giant Sibelius than with ‘Whispering’ could almost stand alone as heard Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances ring theme in Ruders’s work. And while the Strauss. Ruders too thrives on the challenge of an atmospheric miniature, its effect out of and decided not to trespass on territory course of the story is not readily identifiable creating big effects with limited forces. Before all proportion to its means. But that would Rachmaninov had made so much his own. in Nightshade, the translation of its elements writing his Viola Concerto (1993-4), Ruders be to miss the transition into the second ‘Ecstatic’ gradually builds to an abandoned into sonorous terms is. To the deep – at told this writer how he was looking forward movement, ‘Rocking’, and with it the sensa- climax worthy of its name; but the end is times almost subterranean – sounds of con- to composing a score with no percussion, tion (no cerebral analysis is necessary) of strangely quiet – Ruders’s marking is ‘un- trabass clarinet, contrabassoon, trombone no samplers or digital keyboards, and with how the trumpet’s theme grows from the real’ – with fragmentary phrases of the waltz and double bass are added horn (mostly in only the familiar instruments of the classical rhythms of the clarinet dance figures. The theme gradually absorbed into silence. its lower registers), bass drum, a large gong orchestra – or as he put it succinctly, ‘I’m rocking movement soon crystallizes into a Nightshade (1987), written for the Capri- and the darkly voluptuous tones of the alto going to have to do it all with notes.’ Ruders slow waltz tempo (marked ‘Patient’), with corn ensemble, is still more concentrated flute. There are brighter sounds – violin, does allow himself a slightly more variegated the melody outlined delicately by bowed – just ten instruments, and a playing time pitched percussion, piano and a desperately 4 5 POUL RUDERS: instrumental palette in the three works vibraphone and violin harmonics. A hint of less than ten minutes – yet it conveys the FOUR DancES in OnE MOvEMEnt; recorded here, but with only solo instruments of Stravinsky in what Ruders calls the ‘tall’ ‘deadly’ implications of its title (in English at his disposal the sonorous impact of a full chords at the end of ‘Rocking’ acts as a cue the potentially poisonous plant Belladonna nightShaDE; abySM orchestral brass or string section is ruled out. for the sudden eruption of ‘Ecstatic’, where is known as ‘Deadly Nightshade’) with Intensity has to be conveyed by concentration. the hard-edged sounds and exuberantly remarkable force. For Ruders, simply seeing No contemporary composer has displayed There could be no better illustration of clashing rhythms build in a carefully control- the word in print was enough to set his imag- a more idiosyncratic mastery of the modern this than ‘Whispering’, the first of the Four led crescendo of visceral excitement. ination racing. The meanings suggested by symphony orchestra than Poul Ruders. The Dances in One Movement for chamber orches- At first the finale, ‘Extravagant’, seems the plant’s two different names – a beautiful huge colour-enhanced canvasses of the First tra (1983), premiered in 1985 by the London quietly determined to contradict its title. The woman, seductive promise of nocturnal ref- Symphony (1989), Solar Trilogy (1992-95) and Sinfonietta under the composer-conductor opening muted violin lines recall the ghostly uge (‘night-shade’), death – carried Ruders the two operas The Handmaid’s Tale (1996- Oliver Knussen. Knowing that he was writ- shadowing process of ‘Whispering’ in more into a world of dreams or primal fairy tales. 98) and Kafka’s Trial (2001-3) show a Straus- ing for Knussen clearly focussed Ruders’s formal, quasi-fugal terms. This is the begin- It even suggested a kind of story: sian panache in the creation of arresting mind right from the start – Knussen’s aural ning of a long process of drawing together new timbres and textures. But in each case precision is legendary. ‘Whispering’ is an ideas from the previous three movements, ‘…a drama about something that is both it is the emotion conveyed, the atmosphere eerie little prelude in which the clarinet’s and of achieving a kind of resolution on – or threatening and fascinating: a small child generated by these means that leaves the hushed, nervous dancing figures are trailed around – the key of B (hinted at several times gets up in the middle of the night, leaves the strongest impression.