"Night Prayers" for stringquartet and tape
Combined with:
Ali-Zadeh: Mugam Sayagi
Yanov-Yanovsky: Chang Music III
Felmay FY 7022
Felmay FY 7022
Raw but committed performances of music from emergent post-Soviet territories
These three pieces for string trio and quartet from former Soviet Republics make an attractive programme, but their juxtaposition rather dramatically highlights their differences in quality.
From Azerbaijan, Frangis Ali-Zade (born in 1947) recently had an entire CD devoted to her by BIS, and her Mugam Sayagi has attracted the advocacy of the Kronos Quartet. However, in this work her intentions – to express ecstatic longing, in terms drawing on centuries-old Muslim traditions – are rather more interesting than their realisation, which, despite the addition of percussion in the later stages, is unimaginative and overlong. With their more suave overall approach The Kronos succeed rather better than the Xenia Ensemble in disguising these shortcomings.
Dmitry Yanov-Yanovsky (born in 1963), a Russian-Jewish composer from Uzbekistan, is far more creative in his handling of folk-derived material. He asks his string trio to imitate the sounds of the chang, a kind of small cymbalom, and within an essentially meditative framework his three movements cover a range of moods with a sure sense of timing.
More impressive still is Kancheli’s Night Prayers, from his cycle Life without Christmas. This is one of his darkest scores, and in its protesting intensity perhaps his closest to Schnittke. At the moment the only available alternative is Kancheli’s arrangement for saxophone and chamber orchestra, which in Jan Garbarek’s hands sounds much softer-edged than the new recording for the original forces.
Overall the Xenia Ensemble’s performances are not the last word in refinement, and the recorded balance is uncomfortably close. In compensation there is a palpable sense of commitment to the repertoire.
David Fanning
Gramophone, January 2003