Brian Ferneyhough [Single]

Ensemble SurPlus (Artist, Orchestra), Brian Ferneyhough (Composer), James Avery (Conductor), Avery/Veale/Friedrich/Tzschoppe (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 15, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Single
• Label: Zeitklang
• ASIN: B000ICM2PG
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #580,538 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Basic Wonderful Stuff, Early Middle and Late, February 21, 2007

By 

scarecrow "scarecrow" (Chicago, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Brian Ferneyhough (Audio CD)

Two works here features the Oboe,not really a neglected timbre within modernist expressions.
"Coloratura" is very early Ferneyhough 1966, a mere 7 minute work; exposed of angular contrapuntal means here but the semi,"seeds" are here of the complex discourse the dialogue between the two instruments.Early Ferneyhough you find simply less materials,less extended techniques,someone trying to master a language. As all Ferneyhough it is not easy to play, and demands a committment. I had heard this at a Darmstadt course in the Eighties. As the other work now more mature, seasoned "Allgebrah" for Solo Oboe 4 Violins, 2 Violas, 2 Cellos and Contrabass, this is from the latter creative domain now with full tilt extended timbres, microtonal inflections, spit-fire tremoli,pizz,taps,flutting sul tasto, snapped against the fingerboard,all quite exciting.The nasal oboe sputters itself unimpaired, in fact you sense the oboe giving meaning to the nefarious strings.Solos in all to crop into the discourse. This was an Ensemble Intercontemporain commission. The playing here however is fine, this music now is commonplace with all the live performances available in Europe.

Likewise the piano solo "Lemmi-Icon Epigram", really Ferneyhough's first mature work for piano. It has a wonderful structure to it,(find it in his collected writings, and in Perspectives of New Music Mag)and moves in textures and registers also displaces different spatial dimensions as it moves along, none of the materials of gestural inflections return, it has an encapsulated Listzian flourish then to it with its impenetrable virtuosity,now a icon a trope within the Ferneyhough pallette.Thye opening cascade of thirty-second notes under an asymmetrical division is wonderful, but it never returns.Return is a dirty word within this context. There are multiple recordings of this, I prefer this one, exposing the a-matter-a-fact-nature of the work. You cannot render the lines with too much emotive power or the gesture is ruined,becomes marred from the work's constituted purity,like an out-of-focus kalidoscope. Like wise the chamber "Incipits" you will find recorded with the Ensemble Recherche, but here again the playing is fine, it is curious now with these multiple recordings if there is a probelmatics, if in fact Fernyhough's music can be "interpreted" and not merely played."Incipts" features the Viola in a solo role, where the instrumental brethren are slowly introduced with wonderful,thuds,claps from the percussion. Again the strings do not try to get in the way of the soloist. the chamber setting is also a strong prevalent trope for Ferneyhough, he sicceeds quite well at not employing to many layers, or too much material to burden the density of the ensemble.