Dan Barrett: De l'espace trouver la fin et le milieu
New Focus Recordings

De l'espace trouver la fin et le milieu roughly translates as “From space find the end and the middle,” and consistent with that, the cover image shows an incredible nebulae in some distant galaxy. However, the five premiere recordings performed by cellist Dan Barrett of works by French composer Dominique Lemaître (b. 1953) give a slightly different meaning to the word. The forty-four-minute recording engenders an enhanced sensitivity to space, especially when perhaps the most salient aspect of the cellist's playing has to do with presence. Each moment invites focused attention, such that the listener experiences with him the piece as it develops. And with such a modicum of instruments in play—Barrett alone on two and joined on the rest by a single partner—a spacious quality is conspicuous in each performance.

Reinforcing such impressions are the distinguishing characteristics of Lemaître's music. Texture, shape, and sensuality are prominent, and it's possible to detect the influence of figures such as Claude Debussy, György Ligeti, Gérard Grisey, and Tristan Murail. Mystery and melody are present also, though the latter more emerges indirectly in the form of melodic contour than compact statement. Interplay of light and shadow, oscillation between consonance and dissonance, and focus on singular tone sequences also characterize the album's settings. It hardly surprises that a 2018 book about his music has the title À la recherche du temps suspendu (In Search of Suspended Time).

Cellist Stanislav Orlovsky joins Barrett on the opening Orange and yellow II (2013), a “stereophonic” duet whose title was inspired by a 1956 Mark Rothko painting. Originally written in 2009 for two violas, the transcription sees the cellos entwining for eight minutes, their intense interactions engrossing throughout. During one passage, ascending figures alternate with a recurring three-note theme, but the material, like much else on the recording, resists simple definition when it unfolds like a living organism. Titled after the Egyptian god of scribes, the subsequent Thot (1994) pairs Barrett with clarinetist Michiyo Suzuki, their methodical interplay as unpredictable and focused as the cellists. A meditative, at times querulous quality pervades the work as its shadowy stillness extends across six minutes.

Two pieces feature Barrett alone, the first Mnaïdra (1992) titled after a temple erected in the south of Malta Island during the Bronze Age and the second, 2018's Plus haut (Higher), exemplifying a shape consistent with the title's meaning. Mnaïdra is treated to a bravura rendering by the cellist, his playing captivating in its blend of drawn-out bowed notes and pizzicatos and with dynamics exploited resonantly. The minimal gestures and use of space alludes to a time long past and a physical presence that now exists as little more than a memory. Intensity builds slowly in Plus haut until the ascension-oriented material seems to hover comfortably in the air, Barrett punctuating the performance with aggressive figures and upward swoops.

Appearing in the penultimate position, Stances, hommage à Henri Dutilleux (2015) qualifies as the album's centrepiece, not just for its nearly fourteen-minute length but for the impression it makes; that Lemaître dedicated the cello-and-piano duet to Barrett, who met the composer for the first time at a 2015 summer festival in Lucca, Italy, makes it feel all the more special. The main honouree, however, is French composer Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013), who Lemaître got to know and wanted to pay homage to on the one-hundredth anniversary of his birth. Barrett and pianist Jed Distler bring to life this gripping chamber setting, whose sixteen adjoined sections are structurally grounded in three tempos and three pitch reservoirs that regularly alternate. Like the album's material in general, it's a ponderous, spectral, and texturally focused work that progresses without haste and in accordance with a logic natural to it.

September 2020