Customer Reviews

Music from the Ether: Original Works for Theremin

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great album. I particularly like Lydia Kavina's original compositions, where the Theremin is clearly the ideal instrument.

Kavina's use of the Theremin is much more effective than Clara Rockmore's. While Rockmore's recordings show skill and ability, I cannot imagine anyone saying "yes, the Theremin is the ideal instrument" for the music on Rockmore's album. Speaking as an electronic musician who loves to explore the frontiers of music, I feel that under Rockmore the Theremin's appeal was more for its curiosity than for its appropriateness to the music.

With Lydia Kavina we have a different situation entirely. The music is ideal for the Theremin, and many of the compositions (particularly Kavina's) have real emotional power. I cannot imagine these pieces played with any other instrument (besides a synthesizer programmed to sound like a theremin).

Lydia Kavina is exploring a new musical space, appropriate to the Theremin. This album gives a fine sampling of that space, hopefully hinting at more to come.

After listening to this disque repeatedly, I would now dare put forth the notion that Lydia Kavina may have proven to the world that she is the greatest thereminist of all - even better than the legendary Clara Rockmore.

Whilst Rockmore may be the better performer in a solo/piano accompaniment setting, she very rarely played in an emsemble setting with the rest of the 'serious' instruments found in the orchestra.

Kavina's real strength is in her ability to successfully mesh the unique sound of the thereminvox with other orchestral instruments. Her rendition of Bohuslav Martinu's "Fantasy For Thereminvox, Oboe, Piano and Strings" (the second-most overlooked and forgotten piece of classical-electronic music - the first being, of course, Darius Milhaiud's "Suite for Ondes-Martenot And Piano") is truly incredible.

For those of you listeners who appreciate how well the oboe and viola work and sound together, Ms. Kavina creates the same effect with the thereminvox and oboe in Martinu's work. Unlike Rockmore's novelty-sound in "The Art Of The Theremin", Kavina makes the thereminvox work as capable and as successful as any of the more 'convential' instruments found on the disque.

The music featured on this disque is as bright and fresh as "The Art Of The Theremin" sounds like muzak for the funeral home.

If you need further proof of the ability of this performer, then check out Kavina's brilliant work on the "Ed Wood" soundtrack.

Miss Kavina is a very talented thereminist, certainly up there with the likes of Clara Rockmore and Samuel J. Hoffman.

Nevertheless her choices in repertoire for this CD are mostly forgettable. Free Music #1 for four theremins (1936) was no doubt very avant garde at the time, but it's no more listenable now than then.

Also the timbre of her instrument in most of the pieces varies from overtone-less sinewave to drinking-straw nasal buzz, with nothing pleasant in between. Absent are the sweet, second-harmonic and pitch/time-variant harmonics that make Rockmore's ancient thermionic custom machine so nice to listen to.

But nevertheless Miss Kavina is to be applauded for helping keep the theremin visible in the electronic music field, with her emphasis on live performance and traditional musicianship, rebuffing the studioism and MIDI-ization of the last three decades.

Definitely a worthy addition to all theremin enthusiasts' CD shelves.

Lydia Kavina "Music from the Ether original works for Theremin" marks a new moment for the instruments history. Far removed from Theremin-splotation, B-movie Science fiction soundtracks and novelty, this recording showcases more then just a warbling whistle, this is a second debute for the instrument. Beautiful, colorful and above all tasteful.

The music world is not exactly teeming with theremin virtuosi. Quite simply, the theremin is one of the most difficult of all electronic instruments to master. Imagine an instrument which is played in thin air. The thereminist has no contact with a keyboard or a fingerboard. This instrument is played by moving one's hands close to or away from two antennae. One antenna controls pitch. The other controls volume. It is a terribly unforgiving instrument. It demands that the player be able to remain perfectly still, apart from his or her hands. Slight movements of the body can and will affect pitch.

Lydia Kavina is a master of the theremin. Very few have ever mastered it on her level. She was taught by the inventor of the theremin himself, the late Leon Theremin (Lev Termen). Since the death of Clara Rockmore, it is good to see someone continuing on in promoting this most magical and difficult of instruments.

This recording offers many treats for the listener. Chief among them is the Martinu Fantasy. For those who admire Martinu's work, this CD offers a recording of a rarely heard work of Martinu's.

This CD is a true gem. It contains the work (both some composition and all playing) by the worlds greatest exponent of the Theramin. Strange? Yes! Wierd? Yes! A Master Piece? YES, many times over. Buy this CD at once!

The album "Music from the Ether: Original Works for Theremin" exhibited to me the wide range of possibilities of electronic music, other than the noise, robotic, futuristic music that is hard for me to understand and appreciate. In the album, the theremin, electrical music and orchestral ensemble are neatly blended together. The "Fantasia" in the album would be the best example of such synthesis. In the piece, the theremin was primarily used for the main rhythm of the piece, while the orchestral ensemble was bringing into play the accompany rhythm and background music. The piece has everything that resembled classical orchestra, other than having the electronic instrument the theremin in the orchestra. In the piece the theremin successfully blended into the orchestra; for those who do not know what they heard, it would be easy to have mistaken the theremin as a violin or one of the wind instruments.
In contrast to the soothing nature of the piece" Fantasia", the last piece in the album, "Voice Of Theremin", appeared to be something totally different. Rather than using the theremin with the orchestral ensemble through out the piece, the piece appeared to ensemble the usual ideal of computer/ electrical music most of the time. The use of a bird singing as well as the human voices in the piece also brings about much resemblance of the style of music, musique concrete, a style that takes common noises from the real world and applying it on musical compositions. With the addition of tape work, the pieces sounded like and resembled much of the characteristics that one can find in the computer music of the 1960s with the application of synthesizer and sequencer. For almost two thirds of the piece, the main rhythm did not seem to have existed neither with the theremin nor the electrical/ tape music. However toward the end of the piece, an impressive synthesis of the theremin and tape work was finally presented, with the theremin playing the main rhythm. The composer adopted various noises through out the piece, generating much of a dissonant, inharmonic feeling through out the composition, creating much tension and uneasiness; with which one can find its root in the early years of electrical music while Satie and Schoberg were trying to break away from the mainstream music. Aside from the unpleasant feeling that the piece gives, the piece does a good job in demonstrating the wide variety of sounds that the theremin is capable to make.
The album "Music from the Ether: Original Works for Theremin" could be seen as two different sections: the first nine pieces of the album that showcase the perfect harmony of the incorporation of the electronic instrument, the theremin, with orchestral ensemble in classical music and the last three pieces that stood contrast, demonstrating a whole different realm of music, the technosonics with a feel of the synthesizer and musique concrete added to it. With the two sections focusing on two contrasting field of music, they would obviously appeal to very different audiences. If one is looking for a taste of the colorful nature of the theremin, or is looking for some relaxing background music that one can enjoy, this album "Music from the Ether: Original Works for Theremin," would definitely do the charm and brighten your day.

ah yes, the theremin... that weird sound in "Good Vibrations"... and much, much more: here we have a collection of "serious" compositions for this enigmatic electronic instrument dating from 1929-1996, performed by the (of course) mysteriously beautiful Lydia Kavina (described as "today's leading thereminist"... though many would argue that Geoff Brady is equally deserving of that title and just as mysteriously beautiful.) These pieces are presented chronologically and are all for theremin accompanied by other instruments (piano, string quartet & oboe, magnetic tape, or other theremins... no "solos" for some reason...)

The music is either pleasantly ethereal, engagingly eerie, maddeningly tedious, or just plain ridiculous (the more recent theremin+tape works often sound exactly like one of those "Halloween Sound Effects" albums.) Basically, the shorter the better is the general rule here... keep it under three minutes or you're in trouble (this will help with radio play too...) The real appeal is hearing the pieces you never knew existed for this instrument by Martinu and especially Percy Grainger (is there another composer more underrated than Percy Grainger? You just gotta love Percy Grainger!) The bonus is a couple of nice enough (short) things from other obscure 1930s composers (Schillinger, Wilckens, & Achron -- sounds like a law firm...) The problem is the more recent material, which is all totally disposable and/or annoying as hell (but I guess it fills up the CD.)

Basically, while this disc is essential for theremin-o-philes (yes, they are everywhere) and interesting enough for the curious, at the end of the day you will have to admit that nothing here can ever measure up to the greatness of "Good Vibrations."

This is a great record. Lots of quirky pieces by little-known composers and nice works by more famous ones (like Grainger and Martinu). The Martinu piece alone would be worth the price of the whole disc...his writing for theremin is the best I've ever heard and the piece as a whole deserves to be better known. Clara Rockmore's music sounds deadly dull next to these pieces.

Unlike Clara Rockmore's "The Art of the Theramin", this is an album written exclusively for the theramin instrument.

The theramin has great dynamic and soprano range. In some of the pieces, the theramin is set against a human soprano. To exhillarating effect.

The theramin presages the Moog synthesizer.

If you had ONE theramin album, it would not be this one.

Choose the Clara Rockmore version, instead.