Search - Tristan Murail, Yves Prin, Charles Bruck :: Tristan Murail : Memoire/Erosion ; Ethers ; Les courants de'espace

Some of Murail's lesser-known works, though still illustrati

Christopher Culver | 04/01/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This Accord disc features four pieces by Tristain Murail for varied forces. Murail is one of the founding figures of the spectralist approach to composition, where the very stuff of sound itself (waveforms, overtones, alternate tunings) creates a soundworld that is novel and fantastic yet more tonal than even standard repertoire.



"Memoire/Erosion" for french horn and ensemble (1976) is one of the most straightforward displays of the new spectral soundworld. Here, the spectrum of the french horn line is distributed among the other instruments, so the ensemble peculiarly imitates the soloist. In this fashion, Murail's piece can be compared to his colleague Gerard Grisey's "Partiels", where strings imitate the sound of a trombone. But Murail's piece only takes this idea as a starting point, and the imitation of the ensemble becomes increasingly less faithful, with the overall sound tending towards chaos. "Ethers" for flute and five players (1978) is similar, with the soloist producing pure tones on everything from a bass flute to a piccolo, and the small ensemble imitating them like a distorted mirror. I don't listen to "Ethers" as much, however, as I find its part for maracas rather grating.



Tristan Murail is a big fan of the ondes martenot (you can even hear him perform the soloists part in the EMI recording of Messiaen's Turangalila-Symphonie). "Les Courants de l'espace" (1979) is written for this early electronic instrument and a small orchestra. The soundworld of the piece is eerie, veering between typical spectral concerns and faintly disturbing polyphony reminiscent of Gyorgy Ligeti. Even if you hate the ondes martenot as heard in Messiaen, its application here may delight you.



The weak part of the disc is "C'est un jardin secret, ma soeur, ma fiancée, une fontaine close, une source scellée" (1976), a solo viola piece that seems rather lackluster compared to other recent solo viola pieces (Grisey's "Prologue", Ligeti's Viola Sonata, Norgard's "The Secret Melody").



The best introduction to Murail may be a Naive disc with, among other pieces, his "Desintegrations" for orchestra and electronics, since that is one of the most talked about pieces of modern repertoire around. Nonetheless, for fans of Murail's music, there is a lot of lovely and awe-inspiring moments here."