Customer Reviews

On Photography

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With "On Photography" we are introduced to a broader range of interests than the recent and equally outstanding "Oi Me Lasso". Still, Bryars seems lately to be charged with making aspects of early and sacred music into something better-tuned to the contemporary ear. While the forms may be familiar, few composers are able to strike such a distinctive tonality. Turning as he often does to unusual texts for inspiration, Bryars here offers a fascinating piece drawn from the writing of Thomas de Quincy on the death of Kant. But the title piece may be the most interesting. In addition to being the first performance of his first piece for choir, "On Photography" features Bryars performing on harmonium and imparting a melancholic, slowly breathing sense of life to the title work.

The performances are as meticulous as the compositions, imbued with great detail and a pronounced tendency to avoid more typical turns and familiar cadences. Production and final mix reveal a detailed soundstage with concise placement, left to right as well as front to back. There are equally compelling pieces by Maskats and Silvestrov -- whose 2004 ECM release, "Silent Songs" deserves your attention as well. Each composer here provides an excellent complement to Bryars' compositions.

There are several seemingly more popular artists at work on similar ground today. From the perspective of performance, Trio Medieval (again, check into "Oi Me Lasso") and even at times Anonymous 4 come to mind. Among composers, you may find Bryars associated with Arvo Part or John Tavener, or the many works of past and contemporary composers performed by the Hilliard Ensemble. Yet Bryars demonstrates a well-developed sense of and feel for modernity that the others often and deliberately set aside. And he does this without cutting himself or the listener completely off from past traditions. Consequently, his work is immediately recognizable, while never becoming as outwardly ornamental, abstract or as overtly sentimental as that of many others. Importantly, the subjects which he chooses are not strictly sacred, as likely coming from this world than exclusively from "the next" -- "Sinking of the Titanic"; and "A man in a room, gambling" are only two more demonstrations of his ability to take remarkable and ordinary moments from every day life and set such egalitarian experiences to such elite music. Which is why Bryars' work is proving to be some of the most consistently interesting and unique in the contemporary catalog, in touch with making the routine anything but, and more capable of becoming and remaining intimately connected to our world and our lives.

"On Photography" is still another example. Here, the work results from a singular aesthetic sensibility that has been refined and distilled to create music of complexity, restraint, purposeful beauty and intellect that places it among the most rewarding of the late 20th or extremely early 21st century I've heard.