Simaku - Solo
£13.25 £10.60
save £2.65 (20%)
special offer ending 27/05/2024
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Label: NMC Recordings
Cat No: NMCD278
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Instrumental
Release Date: 29th September 2023
Contents
Artists
Soloists of Ensemble intercontemporainWorks
Catena III - CoronaCatena II
Soliloquy IX
Soliloquy VIII
Soliloquy VII
Artists
Soloists of Ensemble intercontemporainAbout
Simaku's music has been praised for its 'depth of expression, and powerful imagination' (British Composer Award), and his unique blend of lyricism and complex modernity can be traced back to a pivotal moment in the composer's life; when he moved from the restrictive, highly-censored Stalinist Albania of his upbringing, to the UK in 1991. His studies with David Blake at the University of York (where he is now a Professor of Composition himself) were an awakening for the composer, as he was immersed in the music of modernist pioneers such as Ligeti, Kurtág, and Boulez. In the years since, Simaku's free exploration of these ideas has led him to carving out a 'breathtakingly original' compositional voice (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik), which has won him numerous prestigious awards.
The opening track, Soliloquy VII for clarinet and resonant piano, hears the piece's dedicatee, clarinetist Jérôme Comte, displaying the unparalleled versatility and dynamic range of his instrument, the 'vocal' qualities of its sound enhanced by the resonant chamber of the piano into which he plays. Catena II, performed by pianist Dimitri Vassilakis, is a journey into the spiralling colours, gestures and dynamics possible on the piano, in six distinct movements that Simaku conceptualises of as a 'chain'.
Percussionist Aurélien Gignoux brings to life Soliloquy VIII for marimba plus, in which Simaku aimed to 'treat the marimba as if it were an orchestra with a huge range of colours and a number of individual lines constantly interacting with one another.' In his composition of the delicate muted sections, menacing pitch bending, and bell-like resonances of Soliloquy IX for trumpet and resonant piano, Simaku conceived of the trumpet as part of a 'resonating canvas', brought to life by soloist Clément Saunier. The album is concluded by Catena III - Corona, Simaku's personal reflection on the devastating effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, heard here in tumultuous syncopated figures and gloomy, lyrical moments.
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