{"id":142678,"date":"2025-08-08T16:26:53","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T20:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/records\/quatuor-bozzini-owen-underhill-songs-and-quartets-vancouver-montreal\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T18:29:56","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T22:29:56","slug":"quatuor-bozzini-owen-underhill-songs-and-quartets-vancouver-montreal","status":"publish","type":"records","link":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/en\/records\/quatuor-bozzini-owen-underhill-songs-and-quartets-vancouver-montreal\/","title":{"rendered":"Quatuor Bozzini – Owen Underhill : Songs and Quartets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The music of Vancouverite Owen Underhill is original and ambivalent. This ambivalence arises from the fact that it occupies a sonic territory often straddling consonance and dissonance, between modernism and ancient music. This is evident in his two vocal works (the “Songs”) featured on this album, The Retreat,<\/em> and What is our Life?<\/em> The strange and ghostly beauty of their vocal lines somewhat recalls the cantus firmus of 15th and 16th-century polyphony, while the disparate accents (sometimes undulating, sometimes incisive) of the string quartet root everything in a contemporary modernity. Underhill adds a sackbut (the ancestor of the trombone) to the score, which offers a rustic color equally appropriate. The texts are by ancient poets: Henry Vaughan and Sir Walter Raleigh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two quartets offer a different perspective. The String Quartet No. 2, Northern Line \u2014 Angel Station,<\/em> is rooted in the legacy of the Second Viennese School. We are here in an austere, scholarly setting, meticulously woven, whereas Quartet No. 5, Land and Water,<\/em> brings us closer to the recent avant-garde, that of the second half of the 20th century, let’s say. There too, ashen panoramas, scattered textures, but magnificent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bozzini take on these scores with care. Kudos to countertenor Daniel Cabena and sackbut player Jeremy Berkman in the two vocal works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n