Label: Cold Blue

2台のヴァイオリンのために書かれた素晴らしい作品!!16歳で作曲を開始、1971年にジェームズ・テニーとリチャード・タイテルバウムに師事したロサンゼルスのコンポーザーMichael Byron。デヴィッド・ローゼンブームやフィリップ・コーナーの古い作品にも参加している大ベテランであり、本作はニューヨークを拠点に活躍する著名なヴァイオリン・デュオ"String Noise"の為に作曲された、圧倒的な超絶技巧を要する楽曲[Fabric for String Noise]。深い陶酔感に満ちた”普遍的なフォーク・ミュージック”的様相を漂わす、複雑ながらも美しい旋律が絶え間なく奔流のように押し寄せる2楽章。





Fabric for String Noise (2018) is wildly virtuosic music that is unlike just about anything else ever written for two violins. Composed for New York’s notable violin duo String Noise (violinists Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris), who perform it here, this two-movement (“two-part”) work, a tremendous and relentless river of complex lines, may be said to resemble a sort of universal folk music of madly driven ecstasy, a sonic canvas wherein intense continuous activity shares space with an overarching sense of motionlessness.

The composer characterizes Fabric for String Noise as a “sound object” that is “tangible, compact, and marked by extreme polyrhythmic complexity and intricate contrapuntal textures,” noting that it utilizes “only the higher registers of the violin, sharpening the music’s edge and crystalizing the perceptual object.”

Joining Fabric on this album is the first recording of an earlier Byron work, Dragon Rite. Dragon Rite (1973) is a haunting, slowly unfolding low-frequency texture for four double basses, occasionally utilizing quarter-tones and quiet harmonics that ever-so-slightly poke out of its rich mass. This beautifully rumbling work was recorded album via overdubs by Los Angeles bassist James Bergman. Dedicated to poet Philip Lamantia, Dragon Rite seems to continuously change the listener’s perspective while at the same time remaining unchanged.

Taken as a whole, this recording offers an interesting overview of a 45-year span of Byron’s work. Throughout that time, he has shown a fascination with drawing together and/or placing side by side seemingly at-odds minimalist and maximalist techniques, as well as sound worlds of immersive beauty and wild virtuosic abandon.