Pascal Gallois - Dialogues: Kurtag, Boulez, Schoeller (2002)

The other woodwind instruments have had their avant-garde champions, so why not the bassoon? French virtuoso Pascal Gallois, one-time member of Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain and currently a professor in Zurich, is certainly well qualified. His agility seems to know no bounds, circular breathing is second nature to him, and he can ease into and out of multiphonics with apparent ease.

The centrepiece is Boulez’s Dialogue, where the bassoon alternates with pre-recorded playback in a characteristically nervy, fastidiously crafted reworking of the original clarinet version. The two Kurtág pieces are the only ones for solo instrument. His homage to the writers János Pilinszky and Gérard de Nerval ends with a sustained ‘chord’ and a whimsical flick of the tail after an otherwise immaculately behaved monologue; his tribute to musicologist György Kroó is plainer still in its mainly scalic musings.

The three pieces by Philippe Schoeller (b1957) stand up remarkably well in this company. Isis II is a poetic evocation, with beautiful, fluttery harp writing and a theatrical entrance and exit for the bassoon; Omaggio Kurtág is, fittingly, an ascetic Shakespeare Sonnet setting with some percussion interjections presumably shared by the singer and instrumentalist; Lamento consists of a more abstract, extended duo with viola (all the obbligato parts are superbly taken, by the way).