“Ombre-bouchure”
By BLC
“LA BELLE OMBRE.” Music of Yael ACHER and Paul Hindemith. Acher: flute and electronic tracks. Capstone CPS-8768. TT=51:37.
Perhaps it’s merely a fleeting impression, but it appears to us that New York is abounding with spectacularly good flutists. The several orchestras are always auditioning for wind players, many chamber groups often need guest flutists, there are several flute ensembles, such as that of Gerardo Levy at Manhattan College, and teaching posts have to be filled.
Yael Acher, a recent comer to the city, doesn’t appear to fit any of these molds, at least not easily. In her native Israel, where there must also be lots of competition among good flutists, the halil has always been a traditional part of the landscape. Think of Leonard Bernstein’s composition with that name. The Israeli landscape was hauntingly evoked in that work, and the profound loneliness expressed was intensified by the fact of its being dedicated to a flutist killed in the 1967 war.
Ms. Acher chose to make her career elsewhere, moving to Copenhagen in 1992 when she was still in her twenties and then in 2003 to New York where she learned just about all the very latest in electronic sounds through a course run by Harvestworks (Max/MSP Jitter). Her performance reputation has developed to the point where she has been invited to perform in such far-flung countries as Israel, Scotland, Italy, Japan, Romania, France and the U.S. This has certainly given her a multi-cultural outlook on the world, something deeply reflected in her music.
In this sole recording of hers thus far, the range of performing skills and compositional ideas leaves the image of a flutist standing in the middle of the Negev far, far from the mind. But images are most definitely of importance to her as we shall see.
First let’s note that her playing of a solo flute classic, Hindemith’s Eight Pieces for Solo Flute are performed as an outstanding student might perform them with as much subtlety as is allowed for. As Ms. Acher points out, these are neo-classic studies meant to remind the audience of the 1920’s that something called form or structure still has a place in music. One may find it odd that the Hindemith tracks divide the CD, mainly of her own compositions, right in the center, in AHA format, if you will. But the atonality of the Eight Pieces keeps the listener from being distracted from the very advanced and contemporary works on the remainder of the disc.
Ms. Acher’s own eight-part Suite for the Spirits, identified as her Opus 2, appears in no way inspired by the Hindemith. Starting slowly with just a bit of mystery in the Adagio and Cantilena—mémoire, things get going in the Menuet—ad Libitum with some jazzy licks that one surmises will color her later works and her engagements with jazz groups. There is a restful sense in the Espressivo—per due voci and Sarabande—ad Libitum played with a long rest separating the two sections if not an intended pause. A Scherzando again produces some extended techniques, such as tapping on the flute to emulate the sound of a drum, as well as passages requiring breath control of the highest order. The work ends with a Dolce that is rather sad and may conjure up for the listener a portrait of a dying spirit. Before then, the characteristics of the various spirits ranged from ominous to playful to somewhat intimidating, if not downright nightmarish.
The composer describes her inspiration for the work as “derived from the idea that the spirits drowned in the sound are appearing as the music flows.” That they do, and it is interesting to us that another flutist, composer Judith Shatin, wrote her Ruach (Hebrew spirit) with the thought of a spirit in mind, albeit a gently flowing one, vis-à-vis Ms. Acher’s multiple, sometimes demonic, characters.
Despite the dazzling effects Ms. Acher has produced with her solo flute, her impulse to go further in composition led her to the hi-tech realm. Her Sketch 5/12 shows a subtle command of the medium with breathy percussive sounds by the flute processed on an Arp 1000. The hint of speech in the background at one point is actually from a recording of Gertrude Stein reciting her poetry. The four-minute work has a deceptively quiet simplicity to it; in the mixed sonics one can hear the suggestion of Buddhist temple bells, a cricket, Latin instruments and a rumbling bass, among other sounds.
The notion of cross-sensory artistry is strongly suggested in the last two works. Cinématique asks listeners to “explore their inner visual imagination [and] create … sequential moving images.” Audio Images I-IV uses multiple track flute recordings to produce “images” that “do not necessarily refer directly to the visual world.” The four images are Voices and Timpani, Flute Frequency, Greek Noise and Illuminations. We found the finale to be the most illuminating, indeed. The idea of light emerging, dying, emerging again is a sensual one and it is done here with great beauty and evocation. In at least two points, one may think the music has ended only to surge up again. One cannot help but think of Dylan Thomas’ metaphor, “Do not go gentle into that good night/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” especially if one sees “rage” as simply the unwillingness to close one’s eyes.
What is also interesting about these final 4½ minutes is that the sound engineer has now become part of the artistic process. Up to the final track the ambience was of the standard studio model, and that worked well in general. But now we have a moving, absorbing picture, the illusion of a symphony orchestra playing pianissimo, so rich and natural are the timbres produced. Ms. Acher rightfully credits George Vassilev with processing, mixing and mastering. The CD was made in Valais, Switzerland.
Truly, the music in this CD is 100% that of Yael Acher and should be listened to several times before coming to a final judgment. There are a few bad spots (i.e, distortion), particularly in the timpani patch in the first of the Audio Images. The miking is often rather close, and we found some of the extended techniques disconcerting at first. But after the fifth listening we became convinced that the wildness of some of the passages, the occasionally unabashed poppish flavor were that of an artist with a genuinely unique voice, yet so much in tune with the current music scene. The CD is highly recommended.
