The Quatuor Bozzini, Les Plaisirs du Clavecin and the Orchestre de l’Agora present the music of Alexandre David, born in 1989. David is a Montrealer who studied in Europe and took up an artist residency at the Hellerau in Dresden. It was during this residency that his String Quartet was born, a nervous work that pulses with microtonal effects, spectral vibrations and a variety of colourful shimmers. David’s musical expression is pointraitist (sonic points and short lines) and abstract, firmly rooted in the avant-garde school of contemporary music. That said, the young composer’s personality is strong and assertive. Needless to say, the Bozzinis are exceptional performers who bring David’s music to its maximum expressive potential.
Nanimissuat Île-tonnerre (Nanimissuat, thunder-island) was written for the ensemble Plaisirs du clavecin, comprising Caroline Tremblay on recorder, Marie Nadeau-Tremblay on violin, Camille Paquette-Roy on cello and Johanne Couture on harpsichord. Joining them for this vocal piece are Virginie Mongeau, soprano, William Duffy, countertenor, Arthur Tanguay-Labrosse, tenor and Clayton Kennedy, baritone. Nanimissuat Île-tonnerre is a musical incarnation of texts by Innu author Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine. In the first of the two texts set to music, Je suis l’île (I am the island), the extensive vocal techniques integrated with an expressionist, often stripped-down discourse create a sound plane in which Kanapé-Fontaine’s words become more like onomatopoeia, giving the impression of being viscerally derived from a very ancient, primordial land. This is understandable, since the island in question is essentially that of the Tortoise, as the North American continent was known to Indigenous peoples.
Je suis ma grand-mère (I am my grandmother), the second poem in this vocal diptych, is more reminiscent of a form of historical plainchant, coloured by quiverings of recorder and harpsichord, in a stop-and-go phrasing, rather like Morton Feldman. As far as I’m concerned, Nanimissuat Île-tonnerre is a work of the highest quality, perhaps an authentic masterpiece. Demanding, yes, but very impressive.
Photogrammes is the album’s title track and was conceived for the Orchestre de l’Agora (in relatively small format, though, with some twenty musicians only) and its conductor Nicholas Ellis. Some of the spectral gestures heard in the Quartet are to be found here, but the tonal abstraction takes a step back, at least occasionally. Photogrammes, from David’s point of view, is a revisiting of vivid musical memories, emotionally imprinted on his mind. The result is a series of classical (Romantic) or even pop musical reminiscences set against a cushion of sustained atonal chords. Imagine a surreal daydream, where fragmentary images from the past appear, superimpose or even merge kaleidoscopically, then disappear.
This is a landmark album, bringing to the fore a major young voice on Canadian art music scene.
