Search - Ljubica Maric, Mladen Jagust, Oskar Danon :: Ljubica Maric: Songs of Space; Byzantine Concerto; Threshold of Dream; Etc.

Rather boring and meandering, to be honest

G.D. | Norway | 01/25/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Historical recordings of music by the little-known Serbian composer Ljubica Maric (1909-2003) aren't exactly usual Chandos fare, and it is especially surprising given that the music isn't more interesting and the recordings aren't better. The Byzantine Concerto is heavy with rhetoric but without any discernible narrative structure. The language is dissonant and irate with some interesting, subtle textures and some mildly interesting moments now and again; touches of Ravel, perhaps, and Schönberg, and not the least Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and Haba (acknowledged inspirations - Maric was a pupil of the latter), but aimless and meandering. Threshold of Dreams is a cantata written in a very gray modernist idiom typical of the 1960s; imagine Frank Martin and Manfred Schubert without anything interesting to say and a total lack of ingenuity.



If there is anything here I would ever want to return to, it must be the Ostinato super thema Octoïcha; dense and chilly like a cold fog bank, not without poetry, but mostly filled with menace and horror. The Songs of Space, however, is a 30 minute work apparently dealing with `them big issues' of life and time and death and so on - lots of time, it seems; this is a long half-hour. It is allotted a single track, and I congratulate myself for being able to sit through the whole thing; a mostly atonal Georges Migot at his least inspired, with touches of Berg and perhaps Howells at his most austere, but without anything by way of real inspiration; there's angst and passion here aplenty but it doesn't go anywhere, just mumbles and rumbles around until it finally dissipates.



The performances seem mostly up to the tasks given them (though they are sometimes a little rough); the sound quality not quite so, being severely challenged in tutti parts (where it is prone to distortion). The booklet notes are very good, with all texts and translations given. In sum, then, if aimless, austere mysticism appeals you might want to check out this one. But it isn't really worth the effort, to be honest."