"Most composers' centenaries are marked by a flurry of celebratory discs, but in the case of Giacinto Scelsi, it was the centenary (in 2005) that seems to have prodded the companies into commemorating him. The results are appearing only now, though the Mode collection of orchestral works is the sixth release in its Scelsi series.
"Since his death in 1988, few composers of the 20th century have polarised opinion more radically than Scelsi; there are a number of significant figures, led by the late Gyorgy Ligeti and also including French spectralists such as Grisey and Murail, who have cited him as an important influence, while others have dismissed his music (around 120 pieces published, with more still in manuscript) as little more than the work of a charlatan. Certainly, the sense of holy writ that some of the more extreme Scelsi supporters promote and write about with such rapture is hard to stomach. At the same time, there is something undeniably powerful about the best of his music when you hear it performed with the devotional fervour he seemed to demand of his interpreters.
"One of the most famous of that committed group of musicians has been the singer Michiko Hirayama and her performance of the '20 Canti di Capricorno', which Scelsi composed for her between 1962 and 1972. Released in full for the first time on the Wergo disc, the cycle is totally compelling, with its fractured monodies, each obsessing around a single pitch or small group of notes, and punctuated in some of the numbers by drums, gongs, a wailing saxophone or recorder, creating a self-sufficient and unique sound world. In the massive trilogy for solo cello subtitled 'The Three Ages of Man', Scelsi focuses even more closely on the minutiae of sound, the inner details of a single pitch or timbre, often in a way that suspends all conventional notions of musical time. The demands on the player (Belgium's Arne Deforce in the Aeon recording) are extreme by any standards.
"The orchestral disc is the most varied of the three, and offers perhaps the best introduction to Scelsi's strange, quasi-mystical world. The 'Four Pieces on a Single Note', from 1959, is arguably his best known work; 'Uaxuctum', his 1966 evocation of a Mayan civilisation, includes a chorus and an ondes martenot in the aural mix.
"Most intriguing of all is 'La Nascita del Verbo', for chorus and orchestra. Composed in 1947, it was the last score Scelsi completed before he suffered a complete mental breakdown. What came after his recovery was something totally different from the rather earnest neoclassicism of that work, and couched in its own, personal musical terms." (Review by Andrew Clements from The Guardian. See here.)
Performer: Arne Deforce
1. I. Triphon: Jeunesse
2. I. Triphon: Énergie
3. I. Triphon: Drame
4. II. Dithome: Maturité - Énergie - Pensée
5. III. Ygghur: Vieilesse
6. III. Ygghur: Souvenirs
7. III. Ygghur: Catharsis/Libération
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