Alpha J.S.BACH Goldberg Variations Recomposed by Peter Navarro-Alonso

These Goldberg Variations present new perspectives on a well-known score. Danish composer Peter Navarro-Alonso's composition is a note-by-note reinvention of the original Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach. Thus Alpha's innovative performance adds no additional notes in comparison to the original. It is merely through the very creative and extreme orchestration that the new composition gains its own life. “The combination of recorder, saxophone and percussion is clearly not very well suited to a baroque-style reorchestration,” claims Peter Navarro-Alonso, responsible for this arrangement tailor made for the members of Alpha. “But the richness in that combination lies in its enormous diversity in timbre and dynamics.” Alpha is a unique Danish ensemble, founded by Bolette Roed, Peter Navarro-Alonso, and David Hildebrandt, who all graduated from the soloist class at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen. As early as 2003, they were the first to explore this instrument combination, attracted by its many possibilities. Alpha was an immediate success, and have been prize-winners at contests and festivals all over Europe.

Ars Nova Copenhagen / Paul Hillier FIRST DROP

Conducted by Paul Hillier since 2003, Denmark’s Ars Nova Copenhagen has built an immovable reputation as one of the world’s most versatile and inventive vocal ensembles. First Drop is testament to that spirit; it’s a wide-ranging and ambitious project that interprets the choral work of some of the giants of contemporary classical music, including Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Louis Andriessen, Michael Gordon, David Lang and more. 

 “Almost all the works on this CD are first recordings,” Hillier explains, referring to one source of inspiration behind the title. “Ideally we wanted the idea of First Drop to remain ambiguous, but the diligent listener will sooner or later notice that it originates with Ralph Waldo Emerson.” 

Recorded over a stretch of nearly ten years, in different locations and with different configurations of singers, the performances documented here still come across as parts of a seamless whole. From the haunting strains of Michael Gordon’s “He Saw A Skull” (composed specifically for the 12 voices of Ars Nova) to Hillier’s vocal arrangement of Steve Reich’s classic “Clapping Music,” First Drop channels a vernal energy that’s unparalleled in new vocal music.

Alpha THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

To reduce a group of works from a variety of different scorings to fit just three specific instrumentalists is a most unusual process: especially in contemporary music, where normally the composer’s original scoring is assumed to be sacrosanct. In these cases, however, the composers have all acquiesced in their treatment, and no wonder! The resulting music reveals the form and richness of each composer’s imagination in a way that is both startling and joyful. It is like comparing a winter woodland to its appearance six months earlier. Gone is the profusion of colour and sensuous abundance, but instead underlying shapes emerge that were concealed before, and a more muted range of colours displays itself, each one intimately compelling in its singularity. Eventually a new sense of richness is created as the mind and the eye – and the ear – adjust themselves to the world about them. What seems at first glance to be only grey and brown begins to show elements of red, and yellow, and blue, and even green.

What further distinguishes this recording is the fact that the performers have had a hand in creating the music, as well as re-creating it. This aspect of music-making plays all too little role in contemporary ‘art’ music, apart from those instances where musicians are asked to improvise – and thus to use a skill that may virtually have atrophied from want of exercise. But improvisation is only one aspect of creative performance, and Alpha’s close encounter with the musical essences of these works seems to have given the trio a precious sense of ownership of the music, even while the works mysteriously and naturally retain their identity with the composers who made them. This idea of music as something ‘open’ – in this case, specific notes and yet open to different instrumentation and therefore different modes of articulation (which in turn open up a cornucopia of possibilities) – is something rare and valuable.

And finally the music: it doesn’t sound to me like new music with that slightly forbidding aura of something that may be good for you, but doesn’t frankly quite grab your attention as you secretly want it to. This music does grab and hold onto you. One must therefore give honour where it’s due: to the composers of course. But I think it also has something to do with the way the performers too have re-imagined it, and in the process invented a new level of meaning for the verb ‘perform’. (Paul Hillier)