Palimpsest

Violinist Irvine Arditti, pianist Claude Helffer, and the Spectrum ensemble conducted by Guy Protheroe produce consummate performances of the Greek avant-gardist's unwieldy chamber music. If you're familiar with Xenakis's career you'll know he was trained in mathematics and enjoyed a successful career as an architect. Such background might prepare you for the music's preoccupation with line, volume, and form in an unusually abstract way, but it won't prepare you for its visceral, almost primitive power. On Akanthos, the singer Penelope Walmsley-Clark must cope with what is surely one of the most ridiculous soprano parts ever written.

Clarinet legend Richard Stoltzman and virtuoso marimbist Mika Stoltzman arrive on AVIE with a stunning collection of works in which the duo finds freedom in music of the past and equally breaks through boundaries with new arrangements and commissions. John Zorn’s title track, Palimpsest, written in 2018 for Richard’s 75th birthday, sets the tone, evoking layers of tradition and innovation. Richard’s lifelong friendship with William Thomas McKinley led to the jazzy collection Mostly Blues, three of which are performed on this album. The musical meat of the album are the couple’s own arrangements of monumental works by Johann Sebastian Bach – Mika’s solo marimba take on the Chaconne from Partita in D minor originally for solo violin, and Richard’s colourful Chromatic Fantasia for solo clarinet and Fugue, BWV 903 bringing him together with marimba and bandoneon.