Hugo Ticciati & O/Modernt: From the Ground Up: The Chaconne
Signum Classics

If ever an example were needed to argue for the critical role presentation plays in the impression a release makes, From the Ground Up: The Chaconne would be a prime choice. Clearly the product of considerable care, the release comes in a compact hardcover booklet, the disc tucked inside the cover and accompanied by fifty-four pages of track details, artist bios, photos, and commentaries; no expense was spared in an impeccable presentation that immediately stands out from the crowd. Without wishing to downplay the quality of the musical content, From the Ground Up: The Chaconne would clearly be a lesser project were it experienced as a download only.

The music, thankfully, is as splendid. Midwifed by violinist Hugo Ticciati with his ensemble O/Modernt (Swedish for ‘un/modern'), the fifty-five-minute collection cuts the widest of stylistic swathes as it tackles the chaconne from multiple angles. Before its emergence in sixteenth-century Spain, the chaconne, its form built upon repeating ground basses (hence the album title), originated as a South American dance that over time evolved into a hybrid form emphasizing two aspects: the festive and the melancholic. In England, it inspired Purcell and in Germany Bach, whose “Ciaccona” inhabits the recording's center.

The set augments that treatment with pieces by Purcell, Pellegrini, and Piccinini, contemporary works by Johannes Marmén and Dušan Bogdanovic, three improvs based on Purcell themes, and vocal settings featuring readings from Shakespeare by actor Sam West and rhymes by beat poet Baba Israel. In addition to the aforementioned, the performers are Marmén (violin), Julian Arp (cello), Gareth Lubbe (viola, overtone singing), Jordi Carrasco Hjelm (double bass), Cecilia Knudtsen (viola da gamba), Henrik Måwe (piano), Svante Henryson (electric bass), Nora Thiele, Leandro Mancini-Olivos, and Elsa Bradley (percussion), Alberto Mesirca, Christoph Sommer, and Karl Nyhlin (guitar and theorbo), and mezzosoprano Luciana Mancini.

West's mellifluous voice opens the recording with a minute-long reading from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the passage where Lorenzo famously extols music's power (“The man that hath no music in himself / Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds / Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ...”). Mancini's voice soars over guitars, viola da gamba, and percussion during a stirring quintet reading of “Yo soy la locura” (‘I am the madness'), its lively rhythmic drive offset by a distinctly melancholy tone. Accompanied by the same performers, she returns as affectingly for “Vuestros ojos tienen d'amor no sé qué” (‘Your eyes contain I know not what of love'), another touchingly melancholic song from Spain.

As stated, Bach's “Ciaccona” (from the Partita in D minor for Solo Violin BWV 1004) is the album's centerpiece, not only for its fourteen-minute length but for Ticciati's realization, the violinist sustaining an incredible level of concentration as he works through the piece's sixty-four variations. Spanish and Latin America flavours blend with Bach in Bogdanovic's “‘Chaconne' from Suite Breve”,” which a solo Mesirca renders with sensitivity (and not a little virtuosity) on acoustic guitar (he's also the sole performer on Alessandro Piccinini's brief “‘Ciaccona in partite variate',” though this time on theorbo, a large member of the lute family). Certainly one of the more unusual tracks is Marmén's “Inside One Breath,” which augments alternations between percussive accents and wavering strings with tactile sounds (e.g., a flat drum skin stroked with the hand) before introducing a descending guitar figure that alludes to the ‘gravitational pull' of the chaconne.

Composed around 1680, Purcell's “Chacony in G minor Z 730” exudes all the elegance one would expect, with Ticciati and Marmén leading a strings-heavy quintet through the stately rendering. The lustrous sounds of Sommer's and Nyhlin's guitars combine with percussion and viola da gamba to entrancing effect in a stately performance of Domenico Pellegrini's “‘Chiaccona in parte variate alla vera spagnuola'” (from the 1650 collection Armoniosi concerti sopra la chitarra spagnuola), with the chaconne's buoyant triple-time lilt a key reason for the piece's impact.

The three improvisations naturally offer dramatic contrasts to the composed settings, “Ground” and “Being” offering an opportunity to hear unscripted playing by Ticciati, Marmén, and others and even overtone singing by Lubbe. Accentuating the project's connection to contemporary matters, the album's final three tracks are given over to remixes, the first of which, “Chaconne Ground in D minor Remix,” weaves into its rollicking design West's reciting of Shakespeare's 130th sonnet (“My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun ...”); the concluding “Two Grounds in C minor Remix,” on the other hand, follows West's reading of a Caliban speech from The Tempest (“Be not afeard / The isle is full of noises ...”) with rapid, politically charged flow by Israel (“In a world filled with madness ...”), the differences in their enunciation and delivery making it easy to identify each one in turn. Any run-through of the recording's contents reveals immediately how varied the programme is as well as how amenable the chaconne is to a myriad of treatments. However widely the material ranges, the latter's presence as a common thread imparts cohesiveness to the release.

August 2019