Search - Giacinto Scelsi, Jean-Paul Dessy :: Giacinto Scelsi

Simply ESSENTIAL

uaxuctum | Madrid, Spain | 09/18/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Presented altogether for the first time, this referential renderings of all of Scelsi's wonderful four works for string emsembles should belong to any real and unbiased music and art lover's collection. Jean-Paul Dessy and the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie are not precisely what I would call famous, but hearing to recordings like these one really wonders why.The music, how to describe it? You really need to hear it, as Scelsi's music is simply something by far without any parallel in the whole history of music. A cascade of glissandos, tremolos, vibratos, a compact continuum of sound, of a three-dimensional deep and broad "spheric" sound, blessed with life as a living organism, constantly moving, changing, evolving, becoming. A real esthetic-existential experience of unpaired energy and cathartic power. Scelsi didn't even consider himself a "composer" (someone who puts notes together), but rather a "messenger", a mere conveyor from the Trascendental, slices of which he grasped in moments of deep meditation, of a keen state of awareness and unveiling of Reality behind mundane existence.Here you'll find the only recording I know so far of the brilliantly shining "Ohoi: the creative principles", based upon Scelsi's Third String Quartet. The dark and shady "Anagamin: he who chooses to come back or not" (the word seems to be Sanskrit, standing for he who has been freed from the cycle of reincarnations) was based in turn upon the Second String Quartet. While the nearly primigenial, even magical, "Natura renovatur" ("Nature renews itself", in Latin) was build upon the same compositional matrix --those recorded improvisations which have been the centre of raging disputes about Scelsi's authorship-- as the Fourth String Quartet, this one being the work Scelsi was most proud of and his very crowning architectural achievement, describing a large arch climaxing at the Golden Section and then descending ecstatically into a most thrilling end. As the fundamental recording (performed by the Arditti Quartet and released by Salabert) of Scelsi's absolutely magisterial Five String Quartets --already considered by some as the best String Quartet cycle since Beethoven's, thus even better (and undeniably much more risked and advanced) than those incredible of Bartok and Shostakovich-- is (unbelievably and outrageously) not available any longer, the works on this CD are then the closest you can get to hearing them. But it should be noted that these are not mere transpositions of the Quartets into string ensembles, but achievements in their own right, and the missing bridge between Scelsi's chamber and ochestral works.The disc --only about 35 minutes in length (but WHAT 35 MINUTES!!!)-- ends with the extremely curious "Elohim" (one of the names for God in the Bible), a work which remains unpublished, even though it is a very fine and interesting piece and no doubt the most bizarre in this collection.This release was considered a "Choc" by "Le Monde de la Musique" and marked 5-stars by "Diapason".So what are you waiting for to BUY it??!--and I suggest it would also be REALLY FINE that you asked your public library to acquire a copy of this jewel!!--"