Lionel Friend, The Nash Ensemble - Turnage: This Silence (2005)

Tracklist

01. This Silence: Dance
02. This Silence: Dirge
03. True Life Stories: Elegy for Andy
04. True Life Stories: William's Pavane
05. True Life Stories: Song for Sally
06. True Life Stories: Edward's Refrain
07. True Life Stories: Tune for Toru
08. Slide Stride
09. Two Baudelaire Songs: Harmonie Du Soir
10. Two Baudelaire Songs: L'invitation Au Voyage
11. Two Baudelaire Songs: Eulogy
12. Two Vocalises: Maclaren's Farewell
13. Two Vocalises: Vocalise
14. Cantilena



This is the third disc from the Nash Ensemble devoted to the music of Mark-Anthony Turnage and it is, in a sense, the most representative. The first presented mainly early works in his tough urban vein (NMC, 9/95); the second implied membership of some latter-day cowpat school (Black Box, 8/01). The latest collection gives more indication of his range.

My favourites come from opposite tendencies. Slide Stride (2002) is a noisily affirmative piano quintet based on James P Johnson’s style of jazz piano and dedicated to Richard Rodney Bennett, whereas True Life Stories, unveiled as a group by Leif Ove Andsnes in 2000, are cool piano miniatures. As is usual with Turnage these days, not all the core material is new and the last in the sequence, the haunting tribute to Toru Takemitsu, cheekily reprises the final item on that Black Box anthology. Ian Brown plays it with more restraint and less pedal this time around – or it could be simply that the sound is not as resonant.

It seems a churlish sort of response but I couldn’t help wondering why certain British composers are so well represented on CD when others have yet to make any sort of impression. While Turnage demonstrates a continuing ability to straddle disparate musical worlds, his startling fluency begins to look as much a problem as an asset. In Two Baudelaire Songs (2004) he sets poems already transmogrified by Debussy and Henri Duparc. Only here L’invitation au voyage is deconstructed rather than indulged, a peculiarly dissonant close undercutting the ‘Luxe, calme et volupté’ of the text. As miked, the soloist Sally Matthews is very much one of the band. Lawrence Power’s viola seems rather forwardly placed in the autumnal Eulogy (2003), an immediately convincing composition that doesn’t strive for novelty.

Turnage’s world has dark, claustrophobic qualities, underlined here by the immediate, focused recording masterminded by Chris Craker. Barry Witherden’s copious notes are helpful even if they enthuse a bit too much for me. I’m not sure I would want to digest the entire concert at one sitting though this generous selection of definitive performances is well worth sampling.

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