Barbara Monk Feldman: Verses
Another Timbre

Linda Catlin Smith: Ballad
Another Timbre

The respective works of Canadian composers Barbara Monk Feldman and Linda Catlin Smith exemplify as great a sensitivity to space and silence as sonority and as such embody wonderfully the character of the Another Timbre imprint on which they appear. Whereas Verses is the first disc of Monk Feldman's music recorded by Simon Reynell and Another Timbre, Ballad is Smith's fourth issued by the Sheffield, UK-based label. The releases continue a theme that originated in 2017 and 2018 when it issued its Canadian Composers Series, with Smith's Dirt Road (earlier released on the label in 2016) part of the ten-album project.

Monk Feldman's output includes opera (though she thinks of them as ‘non-operas' for their nontraditional handling of drama), but its largest concentration is on chamber, ensemble, and piano music. Verses accentuates the latter in presenting five delicate works primarily performed by GBSR Duo, percussionist George Barton and pianist Siwan Rhys, with Apartment House violinist Mira Benjamin joining them on the longest work, The Northern Shore. Verses isn't GBSR Duo's first recording for Another Timbre, incidentally, as the outfit's recording of Oliver Leith's good day good day bad day bad day appeared in August 2020 on the label.

The changing instrument configurations add to the recording's appeal, with each piece presenting a different arrangement than the one preceding it. The austerity of the presentation gives it the compressed meaningfulness of poetry and encourages an introspective, meditative response in the listener. With sounds reduced to the essential, every musical gesture assumes heightened meaning, which in turn makes the material all the more engrossing, however spare it is. Aptly put by Barton and Rhys, “This music has a meditative, unpretentious, unassuming aspect to it, but it also hints at a kind of heroic internal quest: always quieter, always purer, always less affected, as if stripping away the layers of the sounds themselves.” That Monk Feldman has an interest in Noh Theatre (referenced in an interview with her conducted by GBSR Duo) comes as no surprise.

Despite the differences between the five pieces, certain aspects are common to all, including pacing so slow it makes the sounds seem as if they're hovering or suspended in space. Rhys and Barton demonstrate remarkable sensitivity to dynamics and space in their rendering of 1988's Duo for Piano and Percussion, with his vibraphone and her piano generating a shimmering tapestry. Sprinkles of tones appear like the gentle utterances of wind chimes as faint bell accents appear ‘behind' the primary instruments. In this and other pieces, sustain is integral to the character of the soundworld created when piano and vibraphone lend themselves so naturally to tinting with subtle colour the spaces between the notes.

Barton's by himself for 1994's Verses for Vibraphone, but he generates a compelling panorama for its five-minute performance, with sounds again positioning themselves at distinct locations. Rhys performs solo too, in her case The I and Thou (1988) at the album's centre and Clear Edge (1993) at its end. While the pensive former advances at a glacial pace conducive to contemplation, the latter caps the release with a bright, ruminative reverie. In pushing past thirty minutes and converting the duo to a trio, The Northern Shore (1997) understandably dominates, even if its tone is consistent with the overall character of the release. Minimal violin utterances appear softly alongside piano and percussion, the three elements carefully intertwined in Monk Feldman's arrangement. The title refers to a place she visits every summer in eastern Quebec where the St. Lawrence River meets the Atlantic Ocean, and certainly the writing suggests the elemental timelessness of interactions between water, wind, and air. While the presentation is largely peaceful, the piece isn't lacking for incident, with the music subtly ebbing and flowing as it wends its deliberate way.

Similar to Verses, the material on Smith's Ballad is performed by two musicians, Apartment House's Anton Lukoszevieze (cello) and Kerry Yong (piano). Ballad features two pieces only, however, with the 2005 title work a particularly long exploration at forty-six minutes. Also like the pieces on Verses, Smith's, recorded in March 2021 at London's Goldsmiths Music Studio, are capable of inducing a state of meditative calm in the listener receptive to their tranquil charms. Common to both works is the fact that Smith composed them for her brother Andy, a classical cellist.

Though the title Through the Low Hills (1994) derives from Cormac McCarthy's novel The Crossing, Smith selected it for the piece only after the music was written; the words resonated with her upon reading the novel, specifically in the way they aligned with the shape of the musical material and its concise phrases. Certainly the wide range of pitches between the instruments and the wealth of lower-register notes voiced by the piano evoke dramatic contrasts in elevation; one could even visualize the instruments as fellow travelers advancing side-by-side, with one at one moment taking the lead and following the next. As a modest number of elements are used and subjected to variations, a sense of repetition coalesces as the piece advances, similar to the way walking establishes a regulated rhythm.

August 2021