Iannis Xenakis is the elder statesman of the four composers represented on this resplendently well-recorded disc, and it's not difficult to sense the impact of his particular rigour and intensity on some if not all the other music.
Xenakis's own Okho (1989) is scored for three djembes, a type of African drum that is capable of great colouristic variety, and also of suggesting such basic pitch elements as octaves and major intervals. The music has a sustained belligerence that is exhilarating, yet although some of its most basic contrasts are saved up for the later stages I felt that it ended at least once too often. Watching a performance would probably help to sustain the interest more evenly.
Length and proportion are also problematic in Triangle Carre by Georges Aperghis. Percussionists and string quartet enact a drama that, in essence, progresses from incompatibility to reconciliation. Fortunately it is not an excessively solemn piece, but I wished that some of its more interesting inventions, particularly the dance-like music of the third section, could have been sustained for longer, and that the amount of vocalizing could have been reduced. Triangle Carre is eventful but too episodic: often subtle in timbre, but short-winded in form.
Francois-Bernard Mache's Eridan is a more satisfying structure, for while this too threatens an excessively episodic formal scheme, it proves that this composer can sustain memorable processes and shape them into an effective totality, building to a true sense of an ending. Allain Gaussin's Chakra, which has Indian associations to set alongside the Greek and Celtic references of Eridan, begins like a more austere version of Mache's piece, reiterating and bending a single note. Chakra too is a taut, skilfully sculptured conception, with enough moments of repose to balance the raw energy of the remainder.
The Arditti Quartet remain as ever imperturbable in this complex music—except that 'imperturbable' understates the positive character of their playing. It is difficult to imagine a safer set of eight hands for the performance of radical twentieth-century music, and the percussionists of Trio Le Cercle are no less expert.'