Search - Gavin Bryars, Malcolm Forsyth, Arvo Part :: Soaring with Agamemnon

Lovely playing

Stephen Chakwin | Norwalk, CT USA | 04/27/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Amanda Forsyth is the daughter of Malcolm Forsyth, a composer. Not surprisingly much of this disc is devoted to dad's music. It's not music that does much for me. It is fluent and well-written and slips from my mind a few moments after I hear it. So why am I so strongly recommending this disc?

For two great pieces, totaling 20 minutes, that are more than worth the price of the album.

The first is "The South Downs" by Gavin Bryars, a fairly early work that is a kind of rhapsody for cello and piano. The cello is like the voice of the wind and of the imagination soaring along with it. The piano is, perhaps, the physical landscape and the human heart. Or maybe not. All I know is that I've had this piece for about two months after I pulled over while driving to hear it. The work was so powerful that I couldn't drive and listen to it and I would not turn it off. Since then I've probably listened to it at least every other day, some days more than once. Part of the magic is the music itself. It sounds as if it is the love child of a piece by Shostakovich at his most lyrical and Philip Glass at his. And love is what shines through the playing. Forsyth's playing is technically superb with amazing fluency and intonation and so full of expression that she sounds like a great singer singing a song or aria that she loves. Tenderness, warmth, caprice, lightness, richness - the playing here is like an encyclopedia of all the magic that a great instrumentalist can use to reach a listener. This listener is more than reached. He is hooked and landed. And the music echoes in my heart and in my mind.

Part's piece - the title, mirror in mirror, suggests how the movement of the lines reflects back on itself as the work goes on - appears in different arrangements, including a lovely one recorded by Kremer for violin and harp. It's a cool, serene work on the surface, but Forsyth's vocal quality of playing suggests a tenderness beneath the gleam of the surface. Hypnotic is a good word for the piece. Like so much of Part's music, it plays with time and rhythm, seeming to move slowly or more flowingly depending on how you focus on it.

Forsyth pere's compositions sound pretty quotidian by comparison, as I've suggested, but are pleasant enough and could not be better played. You might find more in them than I did.

Longworth is a fine partner for Forsyth. He's there when he needs to be and neither too assertive nor too deferential. I'd like to hear him in some solo work.

I don't understand what the cover photo has to do with anything - I know this disc from the iTunes download which doesn't give me liner notes - but there could be almost anything on the booklet cover and the disc would still be a must-have for anyone who loves great cello playing and is open to music of our time.

There is an alternate recording of the Bryars in print with the composer and a British cellist. I haven't heard (I will some day) but I can't imagine that it would be more compelling than this one. At best it might be a useful supplement."