Donnacha Dennehy: The Hunger
Nonesuch Records

Donnacha Dennehy: Surface Tension / Disposable Dissonance
New Amsterdam Records

Some composers might regard the contemporaneous release of two recordings featuring their works as a less-than-ideal circumstance, the thinking being that each could dilute the impact of the other. It works magnificently in Donnacha Dennehy's favour, however, with these two releases combining to provide a splendid account of the Irish composer's abundant gifts. That's especially so in this case when the works in question are fundamentally different, The Hunger heavily vocal-oriented and Surface Tension / Disposable Dissonance instrumental. At the risk of oversimplifying, the works also reflect differing tendencies, the former amplifying Dennehy's emotional side and the latter a more intellectual bent. Interestingly, the two releases would make for a perfect in-concert representation of the composer, the three works collectively providing a satisfyingly encompassing portrait.

Dennehy himself characterizes each work on the New Amsterdam release as being “energized by an over-arching concept,” the words accentuating the intellectual dimension in play. Surface Tension and Disposable Dissonance are performed by the Chicago-based quartet Third Coast Percussion and the Dublin-based Crash Ensemble (which Dennehy founded in 1997), respectively. Predictably, rhythm is emphasized in Surface Tension, though the composer does cleverly integrate melody into its design. Wishing to make so-called un-pitched drums ‘sing,' he drew for inspiration from the Irish bodhrán and the Turkish Tar, both of which allow the tension of the drum skin to be altered to produce shifts in pitch. To realize this pitch-bending effect, Third Coast Percussion's members blew air into tubes attached to the sides of their drums, resulting in an ongoing slackening and tightening of the heads and consequent pitch-shifts. Adding to the sound design, marimba and bowed vibraphone appear, which in turn creates contrast and tension between the standard-pitched and pitch-bending instruments. Changes in dynamics, rhythm, and ‘melody' are executed with precision, resulting in a propulsive, twenty-five-minute performance that's about as engrossing as any percussion-centric work could be. Without losing momentum, the music ebbs and flows, alternating between loud and quiet passages; syncopated patterns move in and out of alignment, sometimes building in unison to a pounding crescendo before stripping down to an instrument or two and then remounting.

With Dennehy exploiting the mini-orchestral resources of Crash Ensemble, melody and timbre play stronger roles in Disposable Dissonance (though the piece was originally commissioned by Icebreaker, Crash Ensemble premiered it in its revised version at the Huddersfield Festival in 2012). Structurally, the fifteen-minute work comprises three uninterrupted sections, each of which deals with dissonance in its own way; in the first, for instance, it's generated by weaving overtones into the harmonic design, the result pitch-related dissonance. The three sections are delineable as separate parts, but with the piece unfolding sans interruption the listener more likely experiences it as a singular entity that advances through evolving stages. Throughout this insistent performance, Crash Ensemble generates a rich soundfield of woodwinds, strings, piano, guitar, accordion, and percussion, with the elements playing off against each other in the work's most ear-catching episodes.

The New Amsterdam collection definitely satisfies on listening grounds, but of the two releases it's The Hunger that's indispensable. A modern cantata performed by the American twenty-member outfit Alarm Will Sound (who commissioned it) and two vocalists, English soprano Katherine Manley and sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird (a member of the Irish/American band The Gloaming, he also made a memorable appearance as the singer in the film Brooklyn), the five-part work is a magnificent creation and one of great personal significance to the composer. Though Dennehy joined the music faculty at Princeton University in 2014 and is now America-based, he was born in Dublin in 1970 and has a deep-rooted connection to both the music of his homeland, including the sean-nós (“old style”) vocal tradition featured in the work, and the history with which The Hunger is concerned, the Great Irish Famine of 1845-52, which incurred the death of approximately one million people and the emigration of another million to primarily Canada, the US, and the UK. Working from the firsthand accounts of the famine collected in Asenath Nicholson's 1851 Annals of the Famine in Ireland (so struck was she by the number of immigrants arriving in New York, she traveled to Ireland to gather reportage), the composer fashioned the libretto sung by its two characters, Nicholson and an elderly man (invented by the composer, he's a composite of the Irish people).

Besides Dennehy's compositional writing, the vocal execution is the most arresting aspect. Manley gives a spectacular performance, her voice oscillating fluidly between ululations and dramatic fluctuations in pitch, all of it executed elegantly and with a deep, rich tone similar to Dawn Upshaw's. Ó Lionáird complements her with affecting ululations of his own, the characters' supplications resoundingly mirrored in the orchestral writing. In the opening “I Have Seen and Handled the Black Bread,” Nicholson's recounting of the old man's attempt to obtain even the barest scrap of food for his family is heartbreaking when presented so personally; in having the man sing the lines “A trua / Agus a leanna / Go dté a dheanfaidh mé?” (“Oh what sorrow / And my little child / What will I do?”) repeatedly during the work, Dennehy accentuates the desperation and hopelessness experienced by the individual and the Irish people; in these moments in particular, The Hunger assumes the character of an extended lamentation. As the work advances, the sharp separation between Nicholson (Manley) and the man (Ó Lionáird) diminishes, her assimilation of his sean-nós delivery a reflection of her growing empathy with the Irish peoples' plight (it's surely no coincidence that the fourth part, “Keening,” opens with Manley singing “A trua / Agus a leanna / Go dté a dheanfaidh mé?”). The physical separation also diminishes such that the initial alternation between the voices shifts to passages where they overlap and intertwine.

August 2019