Sarah Aristidou: Æther
Alpha

It would be hard to imagine a more audacious debut album than Sarah Aristidou's, its daring immediately intimated by the imagery adorning the package. In place of the standard studio portrait, the French-Cypriot singer is shown within an Icelandic landscape, enveloped by mist and her features obscured. In presenting her so mystically, the release already distances itself from the prototypical soprano album, as does the repertoire. Yes, songs and arias by Debussy, Delibes, Handel, and Poulenc appear, but so too do pieces by Varèse, Adès, and, most arrestingly, Jörg Widmann.

Binding the selections together is the album concept. In liner notes, she characterizes the titular term as designating “the divine essence of the soul,” whereas in Greek antiquity, it symbolizes “the upper regions of the heavens, the purer upper air that the Gods breathe.” As diverse as the set-list is, common to its pieces is a longing and straining for something elusive and unattainable. It's a short step from the character of the music to Aristidou's voice, which in places similarly inhabits the uppermost reaches of the vocal stratosphere. In those same notes, she clarifies that the programme grew out of a desire to “combine the classical and modern repertoires for coloratura soprano, but rather than lining up a series of bravura arias, [she] wanted to evoke the inner quest, reminiscent of the quest for aether, which the heroines of this so-called ‘celestial' tessitura all seem to experience.”

Helping her realize this provocative vision are soloists (appearing separately) Daniel Barenboim on piano, Emmanuel Pahud on flute, and Christian Rivet on baroque guitar. Other settings augment her with Thomas Guggeis leading the Orchester des Wandels (Orchestra of Change) and the Chor der Klangverwaltung. Easing the listener into the sixty-five-minute recording is a poised rendering of Varèse's brooding “Un grand sommeil noir,” with her expressive delivery ably supported by Barenboim. The austerity of that opening is accentuated by the arrangement of Poulenc's “Fac ut portem,” which sees the soprano soaring authoritatively over choir and orchestra in the first of two extracts from Stabat mater. After a moving treatment of Delibes' mournful “Sous le ciel tout etoilé” from Lakmé, Aristidou's joined by Rivet for a captivating whispered-and-sung treatment of the traditional Swedish folksong, “Näckens Polska.” Elsewhere she presents gripping performances of “Mes longs cheveux” (from Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande), “Nightingale's Song” (from Stravinsky's The Nightingale) and “Tu del ciel ministro eletto” (from Handel's il trionfo del tempo del disinganno).

Aristidou's vocal prowess is evident throughout, conspicuously so in the sustained high E that ends Delibes's “Chanson de la fille des Parias (air des clochettes)” (also from Lakmé) and her handling of the treacherous high-wire vocal part in Adès's “Ariel's Song” (from The Tempest). At the album's centre is the premiere recording of Widmann's Labyrinth V, which ellcits from an unaccompanied Aristidou a bravura performance that ranges from manic laughter and screams to gurgles, murmurs, sobs, and percussive pops. At times hair-raising, the eleven-minute performance registers as the album's most riveting for the sheer novelty of its effects.

February 2022