Search - Henry Brant :: Autumn Hurricanes

More extraordinary Brant

Discophage | France | 04/05/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Thus far I've heard and reviewed vol 1, 2, 6 and 8 of this Innova Henry Brant Collection - as I write it runs to nine volumes, including Brant's orchestration of Ives' Concord Sonata on volume 7, and the four remaining ones are on their way (see my reviews of HENRY BRANT COLLECTION V1 (2CD), V.2 HENRY BRANT COLLECTION, The Henry Brant Collection, Vol. 6: Rainforest and The Henry Brant Collection, Vol. 8). I just can't get enough of Brant - a recent discovery for me, though of course I had read about him and heard a few of his works in the LP era: but apparently that had failed to leave a strong imprint. But I happened upon the Phoenix reissue of his Kingdom Come and Machinations - see my review and read my enthusiasm: Kingdom Come/Machinations. And now I can't stop.



Brant's music is incredibly wild, powerful, imaginative, innovative, and this present volume 5, containing the huge "Autumn Hurricanes" from 1986, is no exception. It is subtitled "A Spatial Cantata for Widely Separated Vocal and Instrumental Groups". Brant is famous for being, not the inventor (he confesses his debt to Ives) but the foremost experimenter in- and developer of spatial music - and much of that, obviously, will be lost on a stereo CD. Yet, what remains is still great. The cantata is couched in seven sections, each dealing with a different Caribbean Hurricane throughout history, from the Great Hurricane of October 10, 1780 which started in the Barbados and devastated the Island of Santa Lucia, Martinique, Saint Pierre, Puerto Rico and all the way to the Bermudas, to the one that flooded Texas and Mexico on September 7, 1967. In customary Brant fashion, the texts are very factual - they could be a record found in a newspaper or a textbook. But the music attempts no description per se. As the notes (presumably by Brant himself) have it, it offers impressions thereof.



All the hallmarks of Brant's style are present: the noisy confusion of shouting choruses, the declamatory soloists, the unruly Big Band Jazz sections (track 3 at 1:17), the passages for demented percussion & Wind band (try track 1 at 3:49 or 6:25 or track 3 at 1:56), the unleashed energy of solo percussion, the mesmerizing vocal melismatas (track 2 starting at 2:54), the brass calls sounding like the trumpeting of some Brobdingnagian elephant (track 1 after 5:45, begining of track 6 or again at 5:29), the ritualistic and eerie bells and chimes (track 4), and always the uncanny sense of orchestral color(s) and the fully contemporary and highly imaginative language often verging on cacophony and sheer noise (track 3 is pretty representative, and breathtaking)



The back cover of the CD booklet humorously reproduces a caricature by a Linus Coraggio, depicting the composer at work at his disc - I'm sorry: desk - on a sheet of music paper, with the caption "Elderly composer". There is nothing elderly in Henry Brant's mind. His glee at raising a racket is the mark of an ever young spirit.



Not music for those for whom the alpha and omega of contemporary music is the neo-Romantic, tonal, easy-listening stuff apparently fashionable nowadays, but if you like the music written in the 60s and 70s by the European avant-garde - or simply the music of Varèse, you are likely to enjoy this, hopefully as much as I do.



Texts provided, good general essay on Brant, very terse notes on the piece itself - but it is self-explanatory, really.



Now, beware : this music is LOUD, even deafening at some points (and I personnaly love a good din). Exercises caution when setting the volume.



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