Olivia De Prato: Streya
New Focus Recordings

Austro-Italian violinist Olivia De Prato's self-description as “a passionate advocate of new music” is amply borne out by the programme of her New Focus Recordings set Streya. On her debut solo disc, the Mivos Quartet first violinist performs works by six composers—Samson Young, Victor Lowrie, Ned Rothenberg, Taylor Brook, Reiko Füting, and Missy Mazzoli—positioned at the forefront of contemporary classical music practice; adding to the recording's appeal is that all but one of the settings are world premieres. Rothenberg's Percorso insolito, Lowrie's title piece, and Brook's Wane were written in 2016 expressly for the album, while Füting's tanz.tanz and Young's Ageha.Tokyo have had pride of place in De Prato's solo repertoire for a while; concluding the album is Mazzoli's Vespers in a new treatment derived from the original work written for Victoire, one of two other new music ensembles (Signal the other) of which De Prato is a member.

Being a solo recording, Streya naturally rises or falls on the strength of her performance, but she's more than up to the task. Each of the six pieces is executed with conviction, the violinist customizing her approach to satisfy the emotional and technical demands of the material and playing with gusto, audacity, and sensitivity throughout. And though it is a solo recording, the sonic palette is liberally expanded upon by the incorporation of electronics that in certain cases makes it sound as if other performers are sitting in with De Prato. The contrast that arises between the pure solo passages and those rendered more elaborate by electronic enhancements makes for a thoroughly engaging listen.

Certainly one of the bolder settings is Young's Ageha.Tokyo, whose panoramic vistas De Prato peppers with a bravura range of effects pedals-enhanced techniques. Aggressive scrapes, bowings, and swoops are scattered across a shimmering base of synthesizer-like sparkle and convulsive rumblings, all of it tailored around a central melodic motif that's both explicitly voiced and indirectly alluded to. Microtonal sonorities distance Brook's ten-minute Wane from the other pieces, as do electronic treatments that see echo-drenched glissandi generated by five multi-tracked violins, each in a different tuning, rippling alongside one another. The violins express individual phrases but also gather to form sawing, crescendoing masses, the work's trajectory unpredictable and the overall effect transfixing.

On the solo performance front, the austere title piece, composed by De Prato's Mivos Quartet colleague, violist Victor Lowrie, finds the violinist deploying a plethora of techniques to bring its ponderous world into being; pizzicato, double-stops, and hushed harmonics surface during a nine-minute performance that alternates between soothing lyricism and caustic angularity. Rothenberg's explorative, pastorale-like Percorso insolito exudes a peacefulness redolent of the composer's study of Japanese shakuhachi honkyoku music, whereas Füting's impish tanz.tanz coyly references Bach's Chaconne whilst also drawing for inspiration from the Haruki Marakami novel Dance Dance Dance.

If I've a favourite of the pieces, it's Mazzoli's Vespers, based on her dramatic chamber work Vespers For a New Dark Age. The NY-based composer's star has steadily risen over the past decade, a justifiable ascent that culminated in the acclaim her second opera Breaking the Waves (a collaboration with librettist Royce Vavrek) received during recent performances in Philadelphia and New York. Though only five minutes long, De Prato's electroacoustic rendering of Vespers proves intensely haunting, especially when its gracefully swooping lines are shadowed by ethereal choral voices and undergirded by a thrumming textural mass. It's difficult to determine whether it's De Prato's performance or Mazzoli's composition that's the more remarkable, though more likely it's an equal match in this instance.

April 2018