Dusapin Requiem(s)
Powerful, austere ‘metaphysical’ works performed with great conviction by Accentus
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Pascal Dusapin
Label: Montaigne
Magazine Review Date: 4/2001
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 47
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: MO782116
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Granum Sinapis |
Pascal Dusapin, Composer
Accentus Chamber Choir Laurence Equilbey, Conductor Pascal Dusapin, Composer |
Umbrae mortis |
Pascal Dusapin, Composer
Accentus Chamber Choir Laurence Equilbey, Conductor Pascal Dusapin, Composer |
Dona eis |
Pascal Dusapin, Composer
Accentus Chamber Choir Ars Nova Ensemble Laurence Equilbey, Conductor Pascal Dusapin, Composer |
Author: kYlzrO1BaC7A
Following his Solo orchestral trilogy of the mid-1990s, Pascal Dusapin’s equally striking choral triptych, drawing on the personal idiom evinced in his operas and oratorio La melancholia, appears on disc with welcome rapidity. As Antoine Gindt points out in his informative notes, there are strongly spiritual, but not religious, undercurrents. Granum sinapis takes as its starting point the writings of 14th-century metaphysician Meister Eckhart, whose speculation on the divine oneness of matter has inspired a meditative, often remote treatment, with only the passing emergence of solo voices to impart a more human ambience. So, too, with Umbrae mortis, the Requiem-derived fragments recalling late Nono in their stark otherworldliness. No comforting ‘holy minimalist’ overtones here!
Dona eis expands the frame of reference with the addition of a wind septet, whose sonorities point up the music’s wider expressive range. The mixture of spoken and sung texts recalls Ligeti’s Drei Phantasien, though without the emotional intensifications of that singular work. This final setting superimposes hieratic recollections of the ‘Requiem aeternam’ with a reworking of the final scene from Romeo and Juliet; music of restive, fugitive gestures, given coherence by the septet’s monochrome shafts of colour. Performed with intense conviction by Accentus and heard to ideal advantage in the acoustic of the Arsenal de Metz, this is music that communicates through its very restraint, and is further evidence of Pascal Dusapin’s distinctive creative voice.'
Dona eis expands the frame of reference with the addition of a wind septet, whose sonorities point up the music’s wider expressive range. The mixture of spoken and sung texts recalls Ligeti’s Drei Phantasien, though without the emotional intensifications of that singular work. This final setting superimposes hieratic recollections of the ‘Requiem aeternam’ with a reworking of the final scene from Romeo and Juliet; music of restive, fugitive gestures, given coherence by the septet’s monochrome shafts of colour. Performed with intense conviction by Accentus and heard to ideal advantage in the acoustic of the Arsenal de Metz, this is music that communicates through its very restraint, and is further evidence of Pascal Dusapin’s distinctive creative voice.'
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