Mon, 30 May 2005
Sanctuary, the heart has its reasons
Peter Togni, Christoph Both,
Jeff Reilly, Sanctuary String Orchestra
Alain Trudel
LP, Warner Classics
This is a modern piece inspired by the words of
Blaise Pascal "Le cour a ses raisons, que la raison
ne connait point"... The heart has its reasons of which
reason knows nothing. The words were written in 1654 as the great
scientist left science to pursue philospophy and theology.
And this is the humanist message that the music seeks to
convey "perhaps more appropriate at the beginning of the
twenty-first century than it was then."
The music is flowing and somewhat mournful and has a
pared-back romantic feel to it to start with. Not that it's minimalist at
all, it just doesn't have the largeness that surfaced in
a lot of Romantic pieces. To some extent people's liking of this
might be coloured by their likes of different instruments.
There is, for example, quite a lot of clarinet and then
quite a lot of cello.
Later, the feel becomes less Romantic and more sparse
and there's an interesting mix of traditional harmony
and more out there sorts of things.
It is nicely done, with both textural and harmonic interest
and without that grating modernity that just wants to be
noticed and doesn't particularly care how that end is
achieved.
(Count K)
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pre Dec 04 reviews are here
