Users' Reviews
By mm119339
29-Dec-2011
Martin Bresnick/Caprichos Enfaticos/Canataloupe
If Caprichos Enfaticos is representative of Mr. Bresnick’s work, he’s a fascinating combination of three composers. On one side he’s an east coaster, obsessed with working out the structure abstractions of music. On another side, he falls sometimes into post minimalist grooves and relaxed repetition. And finally, he has the ability to suddenly flip to a very quirky, whimsical, highly unpredictable, Dadaist side.
The CD is inspired by a series of Goya’s hyper–expressionistic, macabre paintings which were part of the original multi-media performance. There is a pent-up violence in some of Bresnick’s gestures that easily capture Goya’s explosiveness. Meanwhile, the work’s music language revolves mostly around the Spanish dance, the Farandula. Here the dance periodically returns in various guises and tempi, and is always skillfully woven into the more abstract elements of the music.
The first cut opens with this dance and takes it through various post-minimalist processes as well as a lot of fugal-like entries while the toms keep an insistent groove underneath. In the second movement, the piano enters with the same rhythmic material, only simpler and more lyrical. The piano writing is reminiscent of de Falla (mostly because of the insistent B6) but even more so of Bartok, in the use of octaves to articulate the main pitch structure. The third moment consists of militaristic toms with the piano giving quiet plaintive responses/cries for peace. The 4th cut is the whole ensemble again in another dance, featuring a piano section with interesting octave transfers. The fifth is another dance but each time it returns it is more abstracted, cannibalized, or blown to pieces in a
Goya/Webernesque way. The 6th cut has ritualistic percussion accompanying a kind of fugal dirge (reminiscent again of Bartok) with a lot of fresh harmonic turns and some beautiful voice leading from the pianist. Movement 7 further strips the dance down to shed of its former self, to the point that it goes into Crumb/Bartok night music territory which is occasional interrupted by the most Dadaist of interruption; a telephone ringing. The final cut returns to the tom groove of the opening, the piano dancing in 3/4 while the toms attack overtop.
So Percussion and Lisa Moore (the pianist) does an excellent job of conveying all the delicate intricacies and often-brutal violence of the piece. Worth checking out!
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